IMPERIAL ARMY DEFENDS CAPITAL FROM CHIMERIC ABOMINATIONS
Yesterday, all Kheriahans knew that something terrible was happening. For days, we had all heard word of the unnatural sandstorm moving east toward the city, completely out of nowhere. As the storm approached, official instructions were to seek shelter and not go outside until the storm passed.
At the same time, and as we reported in this paper, the Imperial forces which defeated the Allied Kingdom's troops at Al-Alamein suddenly stopped their advance toward Arigzandria and moved south at all speed, appearing to be racing against the storm itself to reach Kheriaha first. To the shock of many, the Kingdom's garrison in Arigzandria didn't move to intercept them. The reasons for this lack of action are still unclear, although given the poor showing of Albion's soldiers at Al-Alamein a certain level of speculation cannot be helped.
Despite initial fears, the Imperial Army didn't move to occupy Kheriaha upon reaching the capital, something which it could easily have accomplished given its strength compared to the troops defending the city. Instead, they began setting up defensive positions directly in the path of the storm, while advising the population to evacuate the districts located directly behind their positions. An Imperial delegation was sent to the Royal Palace, but no information is available at this time as to what words the Imperial envoys exchanged with His Majesty.
Then the storm hit, and the truth was revealed. It wasn't just the winds, however harsh, that the Imperial Army had come to fight, but that which walked alongside the storm : hundreds of grotesque monsters, monstrous fusions of animal and man driven only by the desire for murder. The pictures accompanying this article (which I do not recommend for the faint of heart) were taken in the last hours of the battle, after the sandstorm had abated with the same impossible speed with which it had formed in the first place. According to the Imperial soldiers we were able to interview, these attackers slaughtered one of the nomadic tribes of the desert that had the misfortune of crossing their way. They also vehemently insisted that the Empire wasn't to blame for the monsters' presence.
Our sources within the Kingdom's forces stationed in our country have told us that unconfirmed rumors indeed blame the sudden appearance of these monsters not on the Empire's Wunderwaffen, but on the Allied Kingdom's own operatives. To this reporter, such rumors make a disturbing amount of sense : it will be obvious to even the least informed of our readers that the Allied Kingdom, along with every other major power on the planet, has been trying to catch up to the Empire's superweapons. But such research must surely be dangerous, especially when performed during wartime, as opposed to the no doubt much more careful and slow pace the Empire used while building its arsenal.
With that danger combined with the need for secrecy, where else would the Allied Kingdom have located its research facilities but in our very own Bardad Desert ? Not only would their mages and scientists be hidden by hundreds of kilometers of sand, but even should things go wrong, as they obviously did, it would not be their precious Albion that would be in danger but Kemet instead.
Fortunately for us all, the Empire was better prepared to handle such a crisis than our colonial overlords. Of course, a cynical mind might argue that the Imperial Army's motives in rushing to the defense of Kheriaha weren't purely altruistic, and I do not doubt for a moment that strategic calculations played a part in their decision. But this does not diminish the courage of the brave Imperial soldiers who held the line against the horrors that came from the desert under the cover of that great sandstorm …
Excerpt from the front page of the Word of Kheriaha, a Kemetian newspaper with known anti-Allied Kingdom tendencies, October 8th, 1925.
"… the gateway itself appears to be a class-VI dimensional breach, kept stable by the archway to which it is anchored. Unlike the accidental breaches that sometimes manifest during Elder research, this one appears to have been deliberate and, for lack of better terms, controlled and aimed. It is our belief that the individual(s) who created it had previous experience with the location on the other side, perhaps having discovered it during earlier experimentation.
As on Nazza-Duhni, time does not appear to work properly within the Nameless City. Timepieces and any mechanical device more elaborate than the level of technology one would expect from the Ancient Kemetians inevitably break down, with the sole exception being the D-24 computation orb. Using those, we have taken records of the city as well as of the black sun that shines its eldritch light upon it. The black sun in question is completely immobile within the skies of the Nameless City, and its true nature eludes us as of the time of writing.
While most of the bones in the immediate surroundings belong to humans, others clearly do not, which contradicts with the return to human shape observed on Fiend corpses. The sheer number and damaged state of bones make reassembling full skeletons a difficult task, but there are two possibilities that we can think of. One is that the Nameless City was home to other inhuman creatures who did not survive the battle and subsequent millennia (perhaps having been devoured by the Fiend population before it turned on itself, leading to the Heresiarch petrifying them). The second is that, within the Nameless City, dead Fiends do not revert to a human form for one reason or another. Without living specimens, however, we cannot verify that hypothesis.
The Nameless City mostly follows construction styles of Ancient Kemet, albeit at a greater scale and using materials native to this realm. A quick survey by aerial mages showed that the black sands surrounding the city stretch out infinitely, with a total absence of curvature to the horizon suggesting that this is an entirely flat plane, or a planet so vast as to appear so to our casual observation.
Several artefacts of historical interest have been recovered from the devastated buildings, but access to the central pyramid was forbidden by Colonel Lergen …"
Excerpt from the analysis report of the Division Y occultists assigned to the Imperial Southern Expedition regarding the gateway to the Nameless City, October 10th, 1925.
October 12th, 1925 – Bardad Desert – Ancient Kemetian Settlement
The area was in a very different state than the last time Niniane had seen it. None of the buildings were still standing, and the pillars around the area had been toppled and covered in claw marks.
"I take it this wasn't like that when you found it ?" asked the Imperial captain escorting them as he noticed their reaction.
"No," said Carnahan, sounding like he was grieving. "It was perfectly intact, preserved across the ages …"
"Well, it was like that when we arrived," said the captain. "It seems the Heresiarch didn't agree with the decor. Follow me, please."
They obeyed – as if they had a choice. Since they had been rescued from the monsters of the Nameless City, the two Albish operatives had been kept under tight guard. They hadn't been mistreated, but they hadn't been given any opportunity to escape, and had been kept apart until this morning, when they'd both been put into an Imperial vehicle equipped for desert travel – some kind of weird prototype designed in an Imperial military research lab that the Allied Kingdom's intelligence would probably love hearing about, unless Niniane missed her guess – and driven back to the place where this whole mess had started.
Tents had been erected around the ruins, Imperial soldiers and scientists moving around with purpose, taking samples and examining them, while also keeping a sharp eye out for any threat. Niniane had expected their approach to be questioned, but every Imperial soldier didn't give them a second glance after seeing the captain escorting them.
They were brought to a tent set up atop a dune overlooking the entire complex, with a clear view of the central building, which could easily be identified by the gateway which was the only part of it left intact, the portal to the Nameless City gleaming malevolently in the afternoon sun. Niniane was grateful for the shade, and even more grateful for the water canteen their escort presented to her and Carnahan.
A man in an Imperial officer's uniform was standing in the shade with his back turned to them, smoke rising from a cigarette held idly in his right hand. There was a small table next to him with a couple of boxes on it, and a larger one with a map of the region pinned down, but the four of them were alone.
"Colonel," said their guide with a salute after he'd let them quench their thirst. "I have brought you the captives as requested."
The colonel took a few puffs on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke, then turned to face them. He was young for someone of his rank, though he was made to look older by an expression of simmering anger that lined his face and worried Niniane. A pair of sharp, intelligent eyes looked at the two Albish from being a pair of glasses.
"Thank you, Captain Uger."
'Uger'. That was the name the Imperial mage who had rescued them had used when he had addressed the flying monster. Was it a coincidence ? The thought that they might very well have been in the company of that insectoid monstrosity all that time sent a shiver down Niniane's spine despite the oppressive heat. But more importantly, she recognized the face of the colonel in front of her.
"You know who I am," he said conversationally, as if he'd expected as much. He spoke in clear Albish, though he didn't even try to hide his Imperial accent.
"You are Colonel Lergen," said Niniane. There was no point in hiding it. "The architect of Division Y."
Next to her, she heard Carnahan gasp. The archaeology professor hadn't known, of course – there had been no reason to brief what was essentially a civilian contractor on the full extent of the Allied Kingdom's knowledge of the Empire's workings. He looked at their captor with renewed fear, now aware that there stood the man who, as far as the Allied Kingdom knew, was the source of the Empire's crushing victories in the Great War and the complete upheaval of the balance of power in Europa.
The colonel chuckled. "You give me too much credit. All I did was help the right people be at the place I thought their talents could best be used. But yes, I am indeed Colonel Eric von Lergen of the Imperial Army. And you are Professor Henry Carnahan of the Royal College, and Miss … Niniane, was it ? I see Albion's sense of humor hasn't improved since they thought it would be a fine jape to join a war just as it was about to finally end. The Empire is just as fond of mythological naming as any power, but that seems a little on the nose even then."
Despite everything, Niniane couldn't stop herself from flushing. It wasn't as if she had chosen that codename when she had joined the ranks of the Royal Wizard's apprentices ! The pool of codenames was defined by traditions going back hundreds of years, and those available to women were few and far between. At least Niniane was better than Guinevere or, God forbid, Morgana.
"In any case," continued Lergen, "I'm sure the two of you are wondering why you are here."
"The question has crossed our minds, yes," replied Niniane, trying to keep any sarcasm out of her voice. Now wasn't the time for wit, at least not while there was still a chance of making it out alive.
"To begin with, his Majesty the King of Kemet isn't happy with you. His people watched the battle, and we showed him the recording of your interrogations. He knows it was his Albish 'friends' who let loose that ancient evil upon his country, and he knows who saved his capital."
Oh, that wasn't good. No, it was a god-damned disaster. The Allied Kingdom needed Kemet; most importantly, it needed the Suan Canal, both for trade and to bring in the troops raised in the Eastern colonies.
"Of course," continued Lergen, "his Majesty is all too aware of the disparity between what pitiful forces your country allows him to keep and the might of Albion's armies. So your masters won't have to worry about a colonial revolt … for now." The colonel gestured to the water canteen on the table where Captain Uger had put it down. "But a king's gratitude at least extends to providing food, water and fuel to the Imperial Southern Expedition at bargain prices. And when the time comes, as it must, for guns to fall silent and diplomats to speak in their stead, well. Certain concessions will be expected."
It was a cunning move by the local king, Niniane had to admit. He couldn't exactly be blamed for giving basic supplies to the Imperial Army, not when it was parked right next to his capital with an awful lot of firepower and the Allied Kingdom's army having completely failed to stop it.
Although the Allied Kingdom had granted independence to Kemet a few decades back, everyone knew it wasn't as simple as that. The King of Kemet could rule his country as he saw fit, but when it came to international matters, he was still very much expected to follow Albion's lead, in exchange for the protection of their army and navy to enforce his borders and reign. Niniane was aware that many Kemetians saw this as little better than vassalization, especially since the Suan Canal, which allowed direct passage from the Eastern Sea to the Inner Sea, was still under the control of the Allied Kingdom, despite being located in Kemetian territory.
By establishing favorable ties with the Empire, the King of Kemet could expect that, if the Empire ended the Great War in a dominant position, it would put pressure on the Allied Kingdom to withdraw its military presence from the region, allowing Kemet to truly be independent once more. She had heard it said that the Empire considered war to be the continuation of politics by other means (or, more glibly, that the reverse was true), but this was a masterful move in the Great Game, and one that her own actions had made possible.
"Why are you telling us all of this ?" she asked.
"Because I want you to understand the situation here. I want you to understand the magnitude of your fuck-up."
The sudden swear from the calm and collected officer caught Niniane off-guard. Lergen continued as if nothing had happened :
"I want you to realize just how close your actions came to condemning hundreds of thousands of people to a fate worse than death, so that when I send you back to your miserable little island, you understand what is at stake."
Despite the shade the tent provided, the temperature was still well above what Niniane was comfortable with. Yet now, as Lergen stared at her without ever raising his voice, it felt as if it had dropped several degrees below freezing temperature.
"Right now, there are six children in a hospital who have lost their entire families to the monsters that came out of that gate. They don't even have bones to bury, but they do have the memories of their dying screams, and all our efforts to ensure they're taken care of won't change that. And in the Empire, there are hundreds of children who will never see their father again, because they died in defense of Kheriaha."
"And the worst part," hissed the Imperial Colonel, "is that despite all of that, this is still as close to the best possible result of you breaking the seal over this place as we were likely to get. If we hadn't been able to stop the Heresiarch in time, by now Kheriaha would be either a graveyard or worse : a spawning ground for hundreds of thousands of Fiends, all of them serving the Heresiarch and hungering for human flesh. The entire region would have become a slaughterhouse."
Lergen's words echoed the nightmares that had plagued Niniane since her escape from the Nameless City. Though she hadn't been kept informed of the evolving situation, she had picked up bits and pieces from the conversations of their jailers : she knew that the Imperial Army had rushed to Kheriaha, and that a great battle had been fought there against the Heresiarch and his horde of once-petrified monsters (which it seemed the Imperials called Fiends, a fitting name in her opinion).
She was the one who had awakened the Heresiarch from his slumber. She was the one who had led the rest of their team to their deaths. Carnahan had been there too, yes, but he had deferred to her authority, and he was an archaeologist, not a mage. It was Niniane who had pushed for them to continue, driven to fulfill her master's orders and secure the means by which the Allied Kingdom could defend itself from the Empire.
Instead, she had barely escaped with her life, ended up being rescued by the Empire, and had almost spelled the doom of Kemet. Every time she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, she was haunted by her imagination conjuring nightmares of the Nameless City's horrors rampaging through the crowded streets of the Kemetian capital. Guilt and shock haunted her, and it was only through a considerable effort of will that she had kept herself from completely falling apart.
"So far, the Empire has refrained from taking hostile action against the Allied Kingdom, apart from that little incident at Londinium that brought us both here."
"What about the ships your commerce raiders sunk ?" asked Niniane before she could stop herself. "Or does the Empire not consider that 'hostile action' ?"
The look she saw Carnahan give her from the corner of her eyes told her what the older man thought about contradicting their captors, but she couldn't let that sort of thing go unchallenged. Albion's behavior in this war was far from unimpeachable, yes, but that didn't mean the Empire was saintly either.
However, Lergen didn't appear troubled by her accusations. If anything, he looked amused by them.
"Yes, I have read those claims in your newspapers. Strange how none of the names of the ships they mention as having been sunk by our submarines show up anywhere in the listings of our ports or the ones we've seized, or as being in completely different regions of the globe. It's almost as if somebody was trying to blame the Empire for a decrease in trade caused by, say, the Francois Republic no longer being willing to deal with Albion."
"You're lying," Niniane managed to say. He had to be.
"No, I am not," he immediately refuted, before adding : "I may still be wrong, of course. What I just told you might be the Empire's own propaganda, a cover for the actions of some over-zealous submarine captain. Despite my position, I am not aware of everything going on within the Imperial bureaucracy. But, well. We aren't the ones who sent a bunch of mages on an assassination mission without declaring war. Or the ones who sank a fleet belonging to their own allies. Or the ones who performed Elder sorcery research in a colony with only the most bare bones of personnel and no security measures to speak of, nearly resulting in the deaths of millions."
The rebuke, however politely delivered, forced Niniane to silence.
"I want to make it clear, again, that the two of you are not solely to blame for this disaster. But I intend for you to carry a message back to Londinium, and it is time to show you how seriously the Empire takes such things."
The colonel opened one of the boxes on the table and took out a small cylinder with a button on one end. He glanced at the captain, still standing in one corner of the tent, who nodded shortly.
"Thousands of years ago," began Lergen, "when the Ancient Kemetians built this stronghold to guard against a resurgence of the Nameless City, they had limited tools at their disposal. That they managed to erect a seal that lasted this long is impressive and worthy of praise. But things have changed since then, and we do not need to contend ourselves with merely plugging that hole and keeping an eye on it anymore."
With his back still turned to the ruins, the colonel pressed the button. One second later, a massive explosion erupted from the ruined fortress. Pieces of stone the size of a man went flying, before bouncing on a magic shield suddenly englobing the site of the detonation. The Imperials had been ready for this, Niniane realized, with mages keeping up a shield to contain the explosion that she hadn't been able to detect due to her distraction.
"Captain Uger, report," said Lergen, still utterly calm.
"It's gone, sir," replied the man who might not be a man at all, staring at the cloud of dust roiling within the shield as if it were no obstacle to his sight at all. "The breach is closed."
"Good. That's one less loose end."
"You … you destroyed it ?" It was Carnahan who spoke, sounding halfway between relieved and appalled.
"Of course. Division Y makes its own weapons. The Empire learns from the past, it does not plunder it for sharp sticks and shiny toys." Lergen sighed. "Also, we do not plan to stay in this country forever. At some point we will have to leave, and clearly we cannot trust the Allied Kingdom not to do something stupid if we'd just left the gate intact." Behind his glasses, his gaze seemed to pierce through Niniane's face and into her very soul. "Can you honestly tell me that if the Allied Kingdom learned how to create the kind of monsters you unleashed, they wouldn't do it ?"
She wanted to scream. She wanted to shout, to tell him that yes, of course she could, of course the Allied Kingdom would never stoop so low. That it was the Empire who had made monsters and used them for war, and that all the Kingdom wanted was the means to protect itself.
But she couldn't, because for all her faults, Niniane wasn't a fool, and she refused to lie to herself. So she said nothing.
Lergen chuckled humourlessly at her silence. He opened the second box on the table, and tossed it in her direction.
"This is yours, I believe."
Niniane just managed to catch it, before freezing in place when she realized what it was. It was a small silver cross, the very relic entrusted to her by the Royal Wizard, which had allowed her to ward off the Heresiarch in the black pyramid and which her captors had taken from her after their escape from the Fiends.
Why ? Why had he handed her a magical tool ? He knew she was a mage, knew that she could use that relic to cast spells. This was the equivalent of giving her, a prisoner in the middle of an enemy camp, a fully loaded shotgun. She could use it to attack him, even if doing so would be suicide in the long run, especially if her suspicions about Captain Uger were right. Why would he …
A cold shiver ran down her spine as she realized the truth. Lergen had given the relic back to her because to him, it made no difference whether she had it or not : she was still completely harmless. She couldn't sense any mana from him, even from so close a distance, and the Kingdom's investigation hadn't found any trace that he possessed even a sliver of magical talent. But this was the man who had faced Colonel Drake without fear, who commanded the respect of Division Y's creatures and destroyed ancient, priceless artefacts without hesitation.
Who knew what he was capable of if she made any hostile move ? By giving it back to her, he was making a statement that not only did he have nothing to fear from her, the Empire itself had no need for such a trinket – despite it being a priceless, irreplaceable relic.
"I don't know if your masters will listen to anything I said," Lergen continued. "They are not the ones paying the price for war, after all : just the ones who get to declare it. But I want you to make sure they know this : it doesn't matter how wealthy, influential, or powerful they are. If the lords of Albion set the world aflame with their greed and ambition, they will pay the price. No matter where they hide, we will find them before the end, even if I have to personally swim to your wretched island to drag them out of their holes and shoot them myself."
There was a moment of silence as he looked at them, his gaze pinning them in place as they digested his words.
"That will be all," Lergen said. "Captain Uger, please escort our guests back to Kheriaha. Leave them in front of the Allied Kingdom's embassy; I expect they'll be able to find their way home from there."
"Yes, sir," the man – who Niniane was now all but certain was the winged horror she'd seen during their desperate flight from the Nameless City – replied with a sharp salute.
"Goodbye, Miss Niniane, Professor Carnahan. I hope that if we ever meet again, it will be under more peaceful circumstances, and not because we have to, say, burn Londinium to the ground because your masters accidentally summoned a dark god back into the world."
"Y-yes. I hope the same. Goodbye."
Eric von Lergen, Niniane thought as she and Carnahan were returned to the vehicle that'd brought them here in the first place, too shaken to do anything but meekly follow. What a dangerous man …
October 13th, 1925 – Castle Schwartzstein
I looked at the reports on my desk, sent by the team assigned to the Imperial Southern Expedition, and sighed. Despite the losses taken in defending Kheriaha, and for which I had already written the death notices to the families of the dead along with the paperwork for posthumous promotions, commendations, and (most importantly) the relevant increases in the pensions owed by the Empire, things had gone a lot better than we had any right to expect. When I had heard that the Albish had managed to rouse an ancient Kemetian not-mummy from his slumber, I had expected the worse.
It was one thing for stuff like that to happen in movies, where a band of plucky heroes were sure to put the evil sorcerer back into his sarcophagus by the time the credit rolled, but reality was another matter entirely. I couldn't be certain what impact the conquest of Kemet by an ancient warlock and his army of flesh-eating monsters would have had on the global geopolitical stage, but somehow I doubted it would've favored the Empire. No, moving the ISE in order to deal with the situation had been the right move. Besides, all strategic and political considerations aside, I doubted many soldiers would've been happy to sit on their backsides and do nothing while civilians were slaughtered in their thousands.
Apart from being revolting from a humanitarian point of view, being denied a fight wasn't the sort of thing that pleased the kind of war maniacs that seemed to populate the Imperial Army.
Part of me wanted to scream at Weiss for claiming to be the champion of the Lady of Stars during his fight with the Heresiarch. Even if he had said it way behind enemy lines, Uger had still picked it up, and that tidbit had apparently spread through the troops like wildfire, meaning I would never be free of that ridiculous title if anyone outside of Division Y ever made the connection with me. But for one thing, he had just won a battle against a Mythos undead sorcerer at great personal risk, and for another, he had said it while under the effect of a boosted mental doping spell. Much like being drunk, the latter wasn't a fool-proof excuse, but it did buy you some degree of latitude when it came to saying stupid things. I would have to content myself with making sure his training following his recovery was just that little bit more intense, since he'd proven beyond doubt that he could handle it.
Aside from that, I also had to deal with the aftermath of our first prepared battle against a Mythos-empowered force, and the lessons to be drawn from the engagement. General Romel had asked about the possibility of getting more M-912s for troops outside of Division Y, as well as bigger versions of the energy guns, since those were the only way available for standard soldiers to stand up to Mythos entities (at least when there was a storm preventing aerial or artillery bombing).
Diversifying the derivatives of Projekt Mjölnir made sense, so I had forwarded his request to the researchers of Projekt M with instructions to write a proposal, an estimated budget, and suggested safety measures to deal with the strange resonance that happened when several M-912s were brought in close proximity, for me to look at later.
From what the preliminary dissection of the Fiend corpses had found out, while they had returned to a human appearance after death, it was very much only an appearance. DNA sequencing wasn't a thing yet, and wouldn't be for a few more decades if I remembered correctly, but just looking at the blood of the Fiends under an optic magnification spell (equivalent to a microscope, but much less fragile when walking on campaign) had revealed that whatever the Fiends' corpses might look like, they weren't humans, unlike our Werwölfe. Looking at the notes we'd copied from Professor Carnahan's rubbings and those bits that had survived the Heresiarch's tantrum, it seemed that, during the war against the Heresiarch and his master, Fiends had been created from captured enemy soldiers and civilians. Which meant there had to be at least some degree of brainwashing involved, since otherwise you would expect the newly-transformed Fiends to turn against their tormentors instead of following their commands.
Combined with the instinctive hatred of the instances of Projekt W and the fact that, oh yeah, they had eaten people and each other, and it would be a scorching day in Antarctica before I approved of any research into making our own Fiends, even if we had found the means to do so in the Nameless City. The Werwölfe were just better in every single way, and I wasn't going to risk having them mutiny just to get access to their dollar-store, walking-war-crime equivalent.
We could likely have learned much from the Nameless City, but Colonel Lergen had decided the risk of it falling back into enemy hands was too great. Much as it had disappointed the crazed researchers working on Projekt S, I had agreed with his judgement on that one. I had been equally relieved when I'd been informed he'd expressly forbidden any incursion within the black pyramid where the Albish explorers had awakened the Heresiarch. It was unlikely there was another undead sorcerer slumbering within it, yes, but unlikely didn't mean impossible. Maybe the Heresiarch had rivals in the court of his 'Black Pharaoh' and hadn't wanted to share command of what remained of his army with them. Irrational, yes, but then his brains had literally rotten thousands of years before Weiss annihilated what remained of them with his explosion formula.
The Black Pharaoh … now there was another reason to worry, as if I needed a new one these days. The Heresiarch had used that term twice : once when he'd woken up and talked with the Albish, and another when he had faced Weiss. My best hope was that this was just a title bestowed upon that 'Nameless One' mentioned in the hieroglyphs around the gateway. In my old world, at least, the ancient Egyptians had erased the names of their most despised criminals, for religious reasons if I remembered correctly. Some ancient wizard discovering the Mythos and using it to raise an army of monsters certainly would qualify.
And yet, I couldn't help thinking I was deluding myself by clinging to that hope. Because there had been another being called the Black Pharaoh in the Cthulhu Mythos. By now, I was certain that whatever was going on behind the scenes wasn't exactly like the cosmic horror setting Lovecraft had introduced to my old world, but Division Y's research had uncovered far too many similarities for my peace of mind. So far, the most likely scenario was that Being X had engineered the Black Pharaoh's rise thousands of years ago, waited for a few years while he ravaged Kemet, then granted blessings to his enemies so that they could fight back and defeat him, thus increasing faith in the divine (just like I suspected he was trying to do with me and the Empire, except we were proving more resilient than he had expected). Of course, that theory implied that the Ancient Kemetian pantheon had just been another of his masks, which wasn't great news.
Oh well. Maybe we'd be able to learn more from the Heresiarch's staff, which was securely in the possession of Division Y's assets on the Southern Continent and would be brought back to Castle Schwartzstein for deeper study as soon as possible.
On another, more optimistic note, Colonel Lergen was playing his part as commander of Division Y's forces exceptionally well, although I was worried he might be getting too 'into character', so to speak. One of the last things I needed was for one of the few reasonable and Mythos-aware people in the General Staff to get caught up in the enthusiasm born of witnessing the awesome power of the Wunderwaffen at work, or in understandable anger at the Allied Kingdom's blunders.
Now that the threat of the Nameless City had been dealt with, the Imperial Army was ready to continue with its official mission. With the Allied Kingdom's troops holed up in Arigzandria and understandably not in a hurry to face the Wunderwaffen themselves, crossing the Nile and reaching Suan shouldn't be too difficult. And once the Empire had an army stationed next to the Canal, hopefully the Kingdom would see sense and accept to start negotiating. Having had their troops crushed at Al-Alamein and the fuck-up of their expedition almost resulting in Kheriaha being overrun by flesh-eating monsters should've also taught them a lesson or two.
If the Kingdom was rational, then the threat to their economy the ISE sitting next to the Suan Canal alone should be enough to get them to stop. General Romel wouldn't even need the support of Division Y to blockade the Canal if he chose to : artillery pieces and aerial mages were more than capable of sinking any civilian ship trying to cross it while flying an Albish flag.
General Romel was under very strict instructions not to blow up the Suan Canal under any circumstances (except for those detailed in a sealed letter I'd written for him, which basically amounted to 'either we blow up the Canal or the Inner Sea gets overrun with giant sea monsters because someone messed up very badly'). It was a very important piece of infrastructure, vital to trade for all of Europa and beyond : actually destroying it would make a lot of people very angry at us. We didn't need that right now, or ever if I had anything to say about it. That being said, there were lots of things the Imperial Southern Expedition could do short of completely blocking the Canal to mess with the Allied Kingdom, and the John Bulls knew it.
Unfortunately, regardless of what the rest of Central Headquarters might think, Brigadier General Zettour and I were all too aware that nobody else on this planet seemed to be as rational as us, and the sunk cost fallacy coupled with them having gotten the means to protect their homeland from our Wunderwaffen might be enough to make them continue fighting. Or, more appropriately, continue making their soldiers and colonial recruits fight and die while the ones making the decisions stayed safe in Londinium. I had read about the callous disregard for the lives of their soldiers of the First World War's generals back in my old world, but it was another thing entirely to live through such a staggering waste of human resources myself.
But if Albion decided to be unreasonable, well. That was what Operation Enigma was for. As Director of Division Y, the preparations for it were but one of the many demands on my time, however, so I returned my attention to the paperwork piled up on my desk.
The next piece of paper was a welcome piece of good news : a message from Iosefka informing me that Colonel Sue's recovery was going along nicely. The Legadonian mage could get out of bed on his own and walk for a few moments before needing to get back to rest. She wanted to keep him under observation for another week, just to be sure, but after that she expected to clear him to be sent to live with the rest of his men for the remainder of his recovery, with the medical personnel handling the captives enough to deal with his rehabilitation and any emergencies not taken care of by her regular visits. His wife and daughter would be delighted : the camp was much closer to the village where they had been relocated after their hasty departure from Legadonia. Maybe Grantz would be disappointed to have less chances to see Mary, but then if he was serious he should put in some effort himself.
Next was a report on the Nazzadi who had asked to be taught how to fly. They were learning the advanced mathematics required for the job a lot faster than I would have expected them to given we were still working on the language barrier, but then I should have known better. It wasn't that the Nazzadi were smarter than regular humans : it was that they saw their lessons as the key to being able to use the same magic they had seen used by Neumann, Visha, and others since their arrival to Castle Schwartzstein, which would make them much harder to kill. Any subject, no matter how boring, became much more interesting when you were motivated by a lifetime spent being hunted by a seemingly-invincible monster.
In the other direction of the cultural exchange, the Nazzadi had taught us useful formulas for purifying water and removing toxins from biological matter so that it became edible, if not palatable (the sight of a bunch of Nazzadi weeping in the cafeteria as they tasted proper food for the first time in their lives had already become legendary among the personnel of Division Y). They had also developed a bunch of survival spells that, while not as flashy as most of the standard arsenal of an Imperial aerial mage, would no doubt be very appreciated by mages caught in the kind of gruelling, prolonged warfare that I knew would become the norm in the future.
Next were a series of minor but necessary requests needing my approval, and then Elya's weekly report on her efforts to make Division Y's activities more secure. That particular document was covered in squiggly lines that would only cause anyone trying to decipher them to develop a splitting headache : I picked up my walking stick and, with a quick flash of will, applied the appropriate decryption spell. It was one of the suggestions made by Visha's friend since she'd arrived : nobody without a D-24 would be able to make sense of the document, and I suspected someone trying to brute-force it would only drive themselves to madness. Of course, the fact a D-24 was needed both for encryption and decryption meant we couldn't use it for everything – that, and I shivered at the thought of broadcasting Mythos-coded messages over the wireless. But for internal communications, it served well enough.
I read the report carefully before burning it to thin ash with another, albeit much more basic, quick spell. It seemed everything was progressing nicely on that particular front of Operation Enigma as well.
A less rational person than I might have started hoping the Albish would be unreasonable after all, if only so that all our preparations didn't end up for naught. But of course, I was too much of a peace-loving individual for that to be the case. I would very much prefer all our hard work to end up unused if it meant an end to this stupid war.
October 15th, 1925 – Southern Coast of the Francois Republic
König sighed as he looked around the empty building. They were too late.
This building had served as a smuggling outpost for decades, hosting various pieces of contraband brought in from the sea before being sent elsewhere. Now there was nothing in it except for empty crates and dust. He could still sense the unmistakeable lingering mana trace of an Eikon saturating the space, but the creature was gone. At a guess, they had only missed it by a few days, which made the whole thing even more annoying.
For four months, König and his team had tracked down their quarry across Francois. They had followed the tangled web of the missing Archbishop's connections across the Republic, but that trail had eventually run cold somewhere in the south of the Republic. After that, they had turned their attention to the rumors and strange reports by the local law enforcement, heavily relying on Sophie to smooth things over. This far from Parisee, attitudes toward the Empire were both more relaxed, as the people had been further from the front, and more agitated, because the stories of the Empire's Wunderwaffen seemed more like just that : stories.
Eventually, something had drawn their attention. Across the entire southern half of the Republic, several dozens people had gone missing, all of whom had relatives in the Republic's mage corps. Some of them had expressed sympathies for the various groups rejecting the Francois surrender, but others hadn't, not even in private. It hadn't taken a genius to figure out what might be going on, and so they had set off to find the missing citizens – a hunt that had brought them here, to this empty building on the outskirts of a wood near the coast of the Inner Sea.
"What do we do now ?" asked Sophie.
"Now ? We search everything and dismantle the building roof to ceiling, just to be sure they didn't leave any trace or clue. Then we go back to base, and I'll contact the Major and tell her about this."
"She won't be happy," commented Kuhn.
"Of course she won't. I am not exactly jumping with joy myself." König sighed, then shook himself. "The Eikon could still be around. Stay focused, everyone."
As they'd learned in the Parisean catacombs, so long as the Francois supersoldiers remained in his human form, König wouldn't be able to detect their mana signature. The rest of his team knew that, so they began to work with an eye out for any sign of attack. It soon became clear that a lot of people had moved through the building recently – several small pits had been dug outside for latrines and disposal of garbage, indicating people had lived there before leaving, probably to meet up with a boat on the coast, and from there, who knew ? There were probably hundreds if not thousands of boats operating in the area that could have carried them anywhere around the Inner Sea.
Still, he had his suspicions. It was just that none of them were pleasant to think about, and all of them had implications way above his pay grade. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, König resigned himself to reporting failure to the Major. Four Eikons had escaped the Battle of the Rhine. One of them had died underneath Parisee. Another had been here recently. And unfortunately, König had a terrible certitude that those three weren't the only Eikons left on the planet anymore.
October 16th, 1925 – The Holy See
Under the surface, where uncounted pilgrims came from all across the world to witness the beauty of the Holy See, many secrets laid hidden from all but the most faithful. Underground archives and vaults collected the relics of past centuries alongside books and scrolls containing knowledge that had been judged too dangerous to be allowed to spread, but not tainted enough to deserve destruction. There were other rooms too, many of which hadn't seen use in centuries, since the Inquisition had cleansed Europa of heretic and pagan sorcery.
Now, these rooms had been re-opened, and given over to the newly formed Congregation of Michael, so that it might prepare to do its holy work safe from the malefic gaze of its foe. Ancient wards had been carved into the walls of this place by priest-mages who had sworn their lives and souls to the Lord, and they kept the mana emanations of what happened within from being detected by the magical radars of the Kingdom of Ildoa.
General De Lugo and Archbishop Beauvais walked together through these venerable corridors, lit by electric lights that had been installed down there as part of the refurbishing of the place for the Congregation's needs. The two of them were dressed in the simple clothes of monks, with nothing to mark their respective ranks in the Congregation (although De Lugo was self-aware enough to realize the Archbishop was far more important to the organization's work than he could ever be).
A pair of holy Knights stood guard at the door, their spears crossed to bar entry. When the two mortal men approached, they withdrew their weapons and stood at attention, recognizing the man who had transfigured them from fallible human clay into blessed instruments of God's will.
Beauvais paused at the entrance, smiling warmly at the two champions.
"Valentin, Clémentine. Nice to see you two. How are you today ?"
"Ready to serve as ever, Lord Archbishop," the two ascended answered as one.
"Good, good. Keep up the good work."
De Lugo had no idea how the Archbishop could distinguish the Holy Knights from one another. The difference in armor design made it easy enough to recognize whether they had been men or women, of course, but apart from that they looked completely identical to him.
Recruiting women into the ranks of the Holy Knights had sat ill with him at first. De Lugo had been raised with traditional Francois values, which were quite clear that a woman's place was definitely not on the battlefield. But his mind had been opened since then : they were all servants of the Lord, and the details of birth were irrelevant in His holy gaze. Men, women, colonials : it mattered not, so long as they were blessed with magical ability and had faith in their souls.
Dominico, the man who had brought De Lugo and Beauvais to the Holy See, was working tirelessly with his associates to ensure a constant flow of candidates to the Holy See. These candidates were then trained and taught the basics of magic before being chosen for the weekly Ascension, where the Archbishop would perform the ritual within one of the many consecrated places available to them.
In the months since their arrival, scores of candidates had been blessed with ascension, the Holy Knights remaining hidden from view so as not to repeat De Lugo's mistake in the Republic, where he had sent them out too early due to his desire to save his homeland. This time, the Congregation would strike with overwhelming strength, and leave nothing to chance as it fought to do the Lord's will and purge the Empire's heresy.
Despite the grace of God, the preparations weren't going entirely smoothly. For one thing, the Francois candidates who had arrived yesterday, escorted by the last Holy Knight to have remained in Francois, would be the final ones. There would be no more from this source for the time being : the Imperial heretics had tracked down the operation like dogs.
De Lugo knew that some of the candidates, especially those who had yet to lay eyes upon a Holy Knight's glorious radiance, had doubts upon their arrival. It was understandable, for the human mind was small and recoiled from that which it did not understand. But being in the presence of the divine, learning the truth of the Congregation's holy mission, soon wiped those unworthy fears away, replacing them with iron-clad faith in the Congregation's purpose. By the time the candidates knelt before Archbishop Beauvais to be anointed and rise anew as Holy Knights, they were all ready to give their lives in order to strike down the evil that festered within the Empire.
Past the gate was a spiralling stairway going down, leading into the underground workshop where the Congregation's greatest weapons were prepared for the Crusade to come. As they descended, De Lugo spoke out :
"What do you make of the reports we've heard of what happened in Kemet ? Of the Imperial Army fighting at the gates of Kheriaha ?"
Even now, De Lugo still had a handful of contacts among the Francois colonies on the Southern Continent. With their help, he'd been able to arrange for a few agents of the Congregation to make their way there in order to observe the actions of the Empire. Their reports lately had been troubling, to say the least.
"Evil ever turns on itself," said the Archbishop wisely. "It is in its nature."
"But if the Allied Kingdom starts to follow the Empire into heresy …"
"Do not fear, my friend. Though their faith has its differences with our own, the Albish still serve the Lord, in their own way. In time, the path they walk will lead them to standing at our side against the evils of the Empire."
"… if you say so, then I shall trust that this is the will of the Lord."
They paused at the bottom of the stairs to catch their breaths, neither man being in the prime of their lives anymore. De Lugo looked ahead, at the heavy but unlocked door that stood between them and their destination.
"The work going on in here still feels blasphemous to me," admitted De Lugo. "How can man possibly improve that which was made by the hand of God ?"
"That is not what we are doing, General," the Archbishop gently rebuked him. "The rite of ascension bestowed upon me was but the fragment of His glory that my mortal mind could withstand. Just as I am but the hand of the Lord in shaping the faithful, so too is the good Doctor in bringing them ever closer to His perfection."
The two of them entered the underground laboratory. Various arcane devices were scattered through the room, buzzing with mana and electricity alike. On one table laid down the unconscious form of a Holy Knight, newly ascended and recovering from the blessed surgeries that would make him the equal of his fellows, despite lacking any kind of martial or magical experience prior to his ascension.
And, at the center of the room, tinkering with a complex apparatus De Lugo couldn't begin to make sense of, was the man who had asked him and the Archbishop to come visit him, claiming he'd something to show them.
"Ah, gentlemen," said Doctor Adelheid von Schugel, greeting them with a smile on his face and his typical zealous glint in his bespectacled eyes. "Welcome ! "
Once, Doctor Schugel had been one of the Empire's top researchers, leader of a programme tasked with designing new, better computation orbs for the use of the Empire's aerial mage corps. But when the Empire had begun unleashing its Wunderwaffen on Europa, he had realized his country had fallen into heresy, and faked his death in order to escape the Empire, before being picked up by the Congregation of Michael. His expertise had proven very useful in helping the Holy Knights adjust to their new, heaven-forged bodies. De Lugo lacked the knowledge to make much sense of how exactly it worked (and, truth be told, Schugel wasn't exactly gifted at explaining his work to those lacking his particular spark of genius), but it had something to do with regulating the mana outflow through the implantation of basic, miniaturized computation orbs in certain parts of the Holy Knights' bodies.
Each such tuning cost a veritable fortune in resources, but if there was one thing the Holy See wasn't lacking in it was money, and Ildoa's neutrality in the Great War allowed for a constant flow of the materials required for Schugel's enhancements as well as his continued research.
"You wanted to see us, Doctor ?" asked De Lugo. The exiled Imperial nodded enthusiastically.
"Yes, yes ! By the grace of the Lord, I have made a breakthrough on my latest project. Look !"
He gestured dramatically at the table in front of him, as if expecting the two Francois to fall to their knees in awe.
"… I'm afraid I don't follow, Doctor," De Lugo said diplomatically. "It all looks very impressive, but what exactly is that ?"
"Oh, right. Sorry. This, my brothers in God, is the first functioning tri-core computation orb !"
De Lugo blinked. He knew, of course, that every computation orb used by modern aerial mage had a single core, and that the very notion of using two was still years, even decades into the future. If Schugel had actually managed to design an orb that could reliably use three at the same time … Wait.
"That is very impressive, Doctor," he began, "but the Holy Knights do not need computation orbs, do they ? They wield their power through the grace of God, not the imitation relics of Man."
"True, true ! But you don't understand, General," replied Schugel with a wide and slightly patronizing smile. "If my calculations are correct, and I know they are for the Lord Himself assured me of it in my visions, then this device will allow its user to perform mana manifestation. Even the Holy Knights are limited by the amount of power they can store within their blessed forms, for despite His blessing they are still forged of imperfect mortal clay. But with this, the Trinity's Tear, a chosen warrior will be able to accumulate magical power without an upper limit and unleash it all in battle !"
Now it made sense, and as De Lugo exchanged a glance with Beauvais, he saw that the Archbishop too had seized on the strategic import of such a capability.
"How soon can you start testing it ?" he asked the scientist. "And how many do you think you can prepare in time for our strike against the Empire ?"
"To answer your last question first, General, I'm afraid this will be the only one. It took the intervention of the Lord guiding my hand for me to create it : attempting to make a copy would be sacrilege." A shame, but even one such device would be of immense use against the Empire's monstrous weapons. "As for the first, that is part of why I called you. The Trinity's Tear needs a special wielder to manifest its full, God-given potential : we need a true chosen of the Lord, marked by Him to serve as His Apostle and carrier of His wrath unto His wayward foes."
"It will take me some time to finish the device," continued Schugel, looking between the General and the Archbishop. "Do you think you can find a worthy candidate by then ?"
"If we have to search the entirety of the Kingdom of Ildoa and the colonies," swore De Lugo, "we'll find one."
"Don't fret, General," said Beauvais, still smiling beatifically. "In this, as in all things, the Lord will provide. We have but to follow His guidance."
AN : DUN DUN DUN !
Honestly, I'm shocked that not all of you saw that coming a mile away. Not only did the manner of Schugel's "death" not leave a body behind, but Dominico specifically mentioned the Congregation had recruited someone from the Empire.
Oh, and the Congregation has a lot of Eikons that they are working on improving too. That's probably worth mentioning, I guess. Also, if you have suggestions for a character that may be expi-ed to serve as the wielder of the Trinity's Tear, please go ahead. I have a back-up candidate lined up if nothing inspires the Muse in the mean time (it will still be some time before the Congregation makes its move in the open), but I'm not quite satisfied with them.
I find it deeply amusing that being brainwashed by Being X has inadvertently turned De Lugo a lot more tolerant by our modern standards than he was before (although, as stated in the chapter, the main reason I went that route was that the Congregation's options to get recruits are somewhat limited).
Something funny to do is read the entire scene of Lergen confronting the Albish explorers like a James Bond villain and try to imagine his own point of view while doing this. Oh, Lergen. At least I'm still kinder to him than the canon LN. No, I don't think I am exaggerating there. Read it for yourself if you want to see what I mean.
And yes, the Kemetians are aware of the monsters that attacked Kheriaha. The fact that the battle went on for several hours after the Heresiarch was destroyed and the sandstorm abated guaranteed that would happen. Of course, this chapter's newspaper is biased against Albion, as I hope I made clear. You can expect the AK's own headlines to present the events somewhat differently.
Do not use my presentation of Kemet's political situation in a history exam, please. This is a fanfic of an Alternate Earth where magic is real, and I only used our own history as inspiration. Also, I didn't name the King of Kemet for the same reason I didn't name the Presidents of Francois and the Unified States : they don't have canon names, and I don't want to get IRL politics involved by adapting the names of politicians of the era.
That's all for now. I look forward to your comments, reactions, and suggestions for this story going forward.
Zahariel out.