"In contrast with most previous deployments of Division Y, Operation Bildersturm was almost completely improvised once it was approved by Berun High Command. Information about the numbers and capabilities of the opposition was even scarcer than during the Defense of Kheriaha, where General Romel and Colonel Lergen had the scouting reports of their aerial mages and the testimony of the two Albish agents to go on.
All that was known was that a great number of Eikons were present, along with the Ildoan Army and the superweapon responsible for creating a path through the Alps. Imperial intelligence had detailed information to the Ildoan Army's capabilities, but the common soldiers weren't what was threatening the Empire.
Following the defeat of the Southern Army, the Ildoan troops had occupied nearly all of Bovaria. Only a handful of pockets of resistance remained by the time the operation began. The vast majority of Ildoa's men were stationed to the north of Bovariastadt, having established defensive positions there.
Bringing the Wunderwaffen into position was also more of a challenge than previously, as the entire Bovaria region was either occupied by the Ildoan Army or in chaos. However, with the help of General Zettour, the Director was able to secure passage through the railway network for the nine instances of Projekt H that were completed in time for the operation. Given the size of the Hünen, only the heaviest railways were capable of transporting them, but thankfully the Imperial efforts to facilitate logistics within the Fatherland allowed the battle group to get within striking distance of Bovariastadt. The Untoten and aerial mages flew ahead of the train during the move, ensuring the lack of Ildoan presence and the integrity of the railroad.
Operation Bildersturm began three hours after sundown, in order to take maximum advantage of the excellent night vision of Division Y's supersoldiers and remove the risk of exposure to sunlight for the instances of Projekt U that were deployed."
Excerpt from the final Division Y report and tactical analysis of Operation Bildersturm, added to the records on February 12th, 1926.
January 3rd, 1926 – Outskirts of Bovariastadt
Colonel Virginio Calandro, of the Ildoan Army, marched along the edge of his troops' fortifications, such as they were. The flatlands surrounding Bovariastadt made for poor defensive terrain, and there was only so much digging trenches, building watchtowers and assembling bunkers could do. They shouldn't be holding position here, not when the Imperial Army must be using every ounce of its considerable ability to gather a counter to their invasion. They shouldn't even be here in the first place –
They should –
They should –
He shook his head, fighting off a rising headache. They should be attacking, yes, that was it. Sitting still and waiting for the enemy to come to them felt wrong. They were the chosen of God, bringing His Light into lands that had been left to wallow into darkness for far too long. They should be on the offensive. But the orders had come from the top, from those chosen by His Holiness himself to lead this glorious Holy Crusade. As a colonel, Calandro was blessed to have been told the reasoning behind their holding position.
While the ultimate goal of the Crusade was the liberation of the Empire from the corruption that had claimed it, the greatest obstacle toward that hallowed objective was the arch-heretic who led Division Y, the source of all Imperial Wunderwaffen and the root of heresy.
The witch, the spawn of the Devil that went by the name of Tanya Degurechaff, would not, could not, tolerate the Crusaders' presence onto Imperial soil, for by their very presence they denied her evil and brought light into the darkness that shrouded the Empire and blinded its people to the corruption she spread through her blasphemous works. Her influence depended on the image of invincibility she had built by crushing those who were ignorant of her true nature and lacking in the blessings of the Lord which were needed to send her back to the pit out of which she'd crawled.
She had to respond to their challenge, had to pick up the gauntlet they had thrown in her face. And if by chance she didn't, rightly afraid of the might of God's chosen, then she would still lose. The people of Bovariastadt would be illuminated, and once they saw the truth, the shame of their sins would drive them to join the Crusade, and they would repeat the process elsewhere, until the witch was cornered in her lair, surrounded by the liberated Empire.
Suddenly, cries of alarm rose from the soldiers around him. A wall of fog was advancing toward the trenches at great speed, despite the lack of wind. Calandro immediately recognized what was happening : this was the foul sorcery that had befallen the Osfjord months ago, and heralded the downfall of the Legadonian Entente. He took hold of the closest radio, and bellowed :
"We are under attack ! The enemy is here !"
He got back half of a reply, then the fog reached the command center, and the transmission cut off. Cursing, Calandro turned to the soldiers he could still see :
"Get ready, men ! The heretics are coming, and it falls to us to send them to Hell where they belong !"
The soldiers responded with commendable alacrity, but Calandro couldn't help a flicker of unease. The Imperial sorcery had effectively nullified the greatest advantage of their defensive positions : the terrain would have made a great killing field for their machine guns and artillery, but without visibility they were rendered almost useless.
The Colonel's moment of unworthy doubt ended with the sound of great wings beating, as a Holy Knight descended from the heavens to land alongside the soldiers, his arrival met with silent awe. The Holy Knight raised his spear, blazing with divine fire, and the malevolent mist recoiled, burned away by the holy radiance. Around Calandro, the men cheered, and he joined his voice to their chorus –
There was a flash of light, then the sound of thunder as the world around the Ildoan Colonel vanished. He blinked as his consciousness returned, trying to orient himself. There was dirt all over him, along with multiple scratches where flying debris had torn through his uniform, but nothing his faith in the Lord couldn't carry him through.
He was luckier than the other soldiers who had been in the trench with him : none of them appeared to have survived the attack, whatever it had been. The blasphemous fog had returned in force, but he still saw the Holy Knight – or what remained of him.
Calandro's heart dropped at the sight of the hallowed warrior's remains, his armor melted and his blessed flesh scattered through the mud. Righteous hatred then filled him at the sight, and he drew his pistol before turning back in the direction of the unseen enemy, determined to make the heretics pay for their sins.
Then, through the mists, he saw a tall, horned figure draw near. He aimed at its head … then it grew larger. And larger. And larger still, with the earth trembling with each of its momentous footsteps. Despite everything the Colonel knew, his blood ran cold as the true size of the approaching horror became apparent. It was huge, larger than any warmachine Calandro had ever seen. He barely came up to the silhouette's ankle, which from what he could see of it through the mist was covered in metal.
And in the distance, he could hear more titanic footsteps, along with more thunderous booms. How many of these hellish giants had the Empire called forth from the infernal pits ? And how could they hope to stand against them ?
It was all a mistake. They shouldn't have come here. How many soldiers had already died ? They didn't need to come here, they –
They –
They –
They had to fight, no matter how terrible the odds may be. Even now, more Holy Knights were coming to strike down the heretics' creations. No one had ever promised that fighting the good fight would be easy, and in this holy war, the souls of the worthy would be separated from those of the chaff through the crucible of sacred conflict.
Calandro heard the inhuman howling of lesser hellspawns growing louder through the muffling fog, and demented laughter echoed down from above. He saw frost spread on the mud, making him realize the cold he felt wasn't due to the weakness of his mortal spirit.
With a prayer on his lips, Virginio Calandro prepared to die for his God.
"Once the Director announced the beginning of Operation Bildersturm, Projekt N was deployed in order to reduce enemy visibility and suppress their communications. Given the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Ildoans, preventing them from coordinating was absolutely crucial, even though the Ildoan Army was only a secondary concern next to Operation Bildersturm's true objectives.
The supernatural fog swept across the defensive positions, driven by the will of the Division Y occultists. Five time as many occultists were involved in this process as had been during the previous deployment of Projekt N at Osfjord, for not only was the targeted area much larger due to how spread out the Ildoan Army was, there was a chance that the Eikons would be able to dispel the fog, leading to a contest of wills between the Ildoan supersoldiers and the occultists.
In order to get as many occultists trained in the deployment of Projekt N and to have those participating at full strength, no Rite of Union was performed during the full moon of late December 1925. At the request of Director Degurechaff, additional medical personnel and supplies were transferred to Castle Schwartzstein to assist Doctor Iosefka in keeping the candidates for induction into Projekt W alive during this delay – though it was expected that not all of them would survive until the next chance to perform the Rite and grant them a shot at restoration.
This hypothesis would prove to be correct, as numerous Eikon-type mana signatures were detected within Bovariastadt soon after the deployment of Projekt N, quickly moving in its direction. With the presence of the Eikons confirmed, Colonel Lergen, acting as Director Degurechaff's representative, gave the order for the rest of the offensive to begin. The twenty Untoten who had been gathered for the operation all immediately ingested their assigned doses of Endlose Nacht and took to the skies to meet the Eikons, while the Werwölfe charged, advancing in the shadows of the nine instances of Projekt H that had been completed in time for the operation …"
January 3rd, 1926 – Outskirts of Bovariastadt
Frieda strode the battlefield like a titan of ancient legend, and despite all that was at stake in this battle, she couldn't suppress the part of her that exalted at the power she commanded in that moment.
Her mount was clad in thick tank plating, and the two mages on its shoulders were ready to cast shields capable of turning aside artillery shells at a moment's notice. Getting the armor completed on all nine Hünen had been a challenge even for the engineers of Division Y, who were used to being asked to do the impossible. But thanks to the logistical sorcery of General Zettour (which frankly, in her Frieda's opinion, was as awe-inspiring as anything she had witnessed in Castle Schwartzstein) and some repurposed Nazzadi spells meant for navigating their ruined homeworld, they had managed it. Who knew what civilian uses these spells could have, if only the war effort didn't consume every available resource.
It was still a rush job, and the engineers were likely going to start working on a better version as soon as they woke up from the coma they had collapsed into after the task force departure (none of them had slept in three days by that point in order to get everything ready on time).
But, rushed or not, the armor certainly was as effective as it was impressive. She knew what the Hüne looked like seen from the ground : a horned giant of blackened steel, nearly eighteen meters tall, its metallic skin inscribed with blazing sigils. Yet the feats of engineering that had gone into preparing the Wunderwaffe's exterior paled in comparison to those which had wrought the means to control it.
The piloting chamber in which Frieda was strapped was tight to the point of claustrophobia. Prior to its implantation within the Hüne's flesh, it had been a metallic ovoid, covered in engraved sigils and circuitry. The seat directly under her had been taken off a fighter plane's assembly line, and each of her hands rested on a D-24 computation orb with a custom suite of spells that let her pilot the Wunderwaffe.
The control interface was the result of months of work by the researchers who had been part of Projekt H before its sealing by the Director, but who had continued searching for ways to make use of the results of their previous work during what was supposed to be their off-hours. Eventually, they had managed to come up with a design suitable to present to their boss, who, in the wake of Projekt S' failure and the following events in Kemet, had decided to approve its construction.
Not that Frieda could see the inside of the chamber at the moment, of course. Her vision was overridden by the Hüne's own senses, though to call what it perceived 'sight' was to do it a grave disservice. Her human brain was just interpreting signals from senses no living creature on Earth possessed, which were heavily filtered by the interfacing spells, in a way she could understand.
The fog of Projekt N was no obstacle to the combined perceptions of the Hüne, allowing her to see the battlefield in what the Director had called 'thermal vision' when it had been described to her following the command interface's testing. Focusing on a single enemy brought to mind a flurry of details, such as their gender, general age and state of health (during testing, they had accidentally discovered one of the researchers had a latent disease that had seen him immediately sent to Doctor Iosefka for treatment). She could also hear radio signals if she made the effort to listen, although it didn't help break through the Ildoan Army's encryption. Her own mana detection was overlaid above this weird landscape, showing her the mages of Division Y blazing bright and the Untoten as dark shadows.
And along with those perceptions came the Hüne's own thoughts, simple and bestial but present nonetheless. The creatures the Projekt had summoned into existence had been unaffected by their confinement, rousing from slumber as the heavy doors of their vault were opened. Instead of immediately attacking, however, they had reacted to the Director's presence in much the same way hounds might respond to the presence of their master, although nobody sane would have compared the sounds they'd made to a dog's bark.
With the Director keeping the Hünen peaceful, the occultists had been able to install the command interfaces, and Frieda had gotten her first taste of her mount's mind. It wasn't sentient, that much had been obvious. Much like the researchers had suspected, the Hünen were smart animals with alien instincts, who did not understand the world around them. Through the guidance of a human mind, however, they could remain calm even without the Director's presence to cow them.
Right now, the Hüne felt … 'happy' probably wasn't the right word. Pleased, that was it. It was enjoying the frigid temperatures caused by the entropic presence of several Untoten using Endlose Nacht in the skies above. The deathless mages were raining entropic spells across the Ildoan lines, turning entire squads of soldiers to dust with every shot. Even with them several hundred meters above, their collective presence was still causing the temperature across the front to plummet, creating thin sheets of ice that shattered with every step of her Hüne.
Frieda was well aware of how this all looked. Giant, horned figures emerging from a fog that advanced against the wind, while a menagerie of smaller monsters ran ahead and undead blood-drinkers laughed madly while flying in the cloud-filled skies and sending weaponized death unto hapless soldiers ? Even the greatest Imperial propagandist would have struggled to make them look like the heroes of this battle.
But that was fine by her. She had learned that the glory of war was nothing but an illusion months ago on the Rhine Front, watching her fellow cadets slaughtered like chaff by the Republic. She and Warren were the only survivors of their entire graduation class – the rest hadn't even been left intact enough to be inducted into Projekt U. Warren had survived thanks to becoming a Werwolf, while she had escaped that hell by being transferred to Division Y after the rest of her unit had died and some bureaucrat somewhere had decided she would be more useful in Castle Schwartzstein than in the trenches.
That transfer had saved Frieda's life, and she had thrown herself into her new duties, determined to prove it had been the right decision for the Empire, not just for herself. She had gone through Major Degurechaff's hellish training with only as much complaining as the other, older mages, and learned to use the D-24 enough to pull her weight in security operations. And when the Director had gathered the aerial mages under her command and told her about Projekt H and what it required, she had volunteered, alongside every single one of her colleagues.
War was ugly, cruel, monstrous and merciless, in ways the horrors with which Division Y dabbled could never hope to match. The only reason to participate in it was to defend yourself and, more importantly, the ones you cared about. Everything else was just vainglory.
And then she felt them, at the edge of her perception and swiftly approaching. There they were : the reason for the unsealing of Projekt H, and the root cause of the Empire's current woes.
The Eikons.
Their mana signature was a raging pyre in her senses, burning so bright – too bright. It was a foreign, alien fire that consumed everything the Eikons had been before their transformation, using the spark of their immortal souls as kindling for the blaze. She tasted bile in her mouth and felt pain in her hands as she gripped the D-24s too strongly and her body locked in place, anger not entirely her own filling her mind. She needed to extinguish that fire, to silence that awful song –
"Wotjek, are you alright ?" The voice of Lieutenant König, reaching her through the communication spell, suddenly returned her to her senses.
"I – yes," she replied. "Just surprised. The Hüne doesn't like the Eikons at all."
"Hmm. Interesting. I don't think the Werwölfe reported something like that at the Rhine."
"Worry about that later," cut in Neumann. "They are coming !"
He was right : a trio of Eikons were plunging toward her, hurling spears of magical lightning. She felt König and Neumann react, their training kicking in before conscious thought could even register the attack. Together, they deployed a shield right in time to intercept the attack.
Even through the Hüne's senses, Frieda could tell the shield was very different from what aerial mages always used on the battlefield. Standard magical barriers used the caster's mana to create a bubble which was impassable to solid projectiles and magic alike, with the strength of the caster directly proportionate to the barrier's resilience. From the outside, they looked like a translucent sphere, barely visible when it wasn't actively blocking something if you couldn't sense the mana involved.
The two lieutenants' spell, cast through their D-24s, was an entirely different beast. Following the events of Arene, the Director had ordered the researchers of Division Y to develop counters to the Eikons that didn't involve the use of Kosmosblut and Endlose Nacht. The attempt to figure out a way to cancel the enhancements bestowed upon the Eikons by whatever foul process created them had failed, but the researchers' work hadn't been completely fruitless. After many sleepless, coffee-fuelled nights (there was a reason the drink was joked to have its own line in Division Y's budget reports), they had designed a spell formula that should allow an aerial mage to stand up to the far greater mana output of the Eikons.
König and Neumann were powerful mages, but they couldn't have hoped to withstand repeated bombardment from the Eikons using a standard mage shell : they might have been able to block one or two attacks, but that would be it. Instead, the spell they used briefly tore open a hole in the very fabric of reality. For a length of time less than the blink of an eye, there was a vast span of nothing between Frieda's mount and the Eikons, which swallowed the attack, sending it to another dimension with only a minimal expense of mana.
It was difficult to cast. It required incredible timing and coordination in order to intercept the attack (König had compared it to shooting a bullet out of the air). And should the casters get distracted and lose control at the same time, the consequences could be catastrophic. If not for the Major's relentless training, no one would have even thought it possible to achieve with any degree of consistency.
But boy, did it look impressive. Especially when perceived through a Hüne's supernatural senses : human eyes simply saw total blackness when the spell was used, and mages perceived mana at the edge of the two-dimensional affected area and absolutely nothing inside it. But her mount could sense the gaping hole in reality, and hear the skittering things that dwelled on the other side as they screamed on wavelengths no man-made device could ever pick up.
The two mages were, of course, keeping up their own personal barrier spells at the same time, just in case an Ildoan sharpshooter decided to try to snipe them. The casting prowess of the D-24 was, as always, leagues above anything the rest of the world possessed – well, except for the Eikons, but as far as the researchers who had performed the dissection of the captured specimens had been able to tell, they didn't need any arcane catalyst to use their prodigious mana reserves.
"Now !" called out König as the shield dropped, and Frieda prepared to fire back.
While the Hünen had been dangerous before being sealed away, their current combat prowess dwarfed anything they'd been capable of before. It would take much more than a few Werwölfe and an (admittedly gifted) aerial mage to take them down now.
The Hüne's left arm ended in a monstrous claw capable of erupting into tentacles, not too dissimilar to that of the Nightmare-type Werwolf (who was also part of the operation, somewhere else in the fog). And in its right hand, it held a scaled-up version of the energy rifle of Division Y's infantry, called the M-625 cannon. The weapon was wholly fused to the limb's armor, with the upper arm bearing the power generator from which came the massive surge of current that ran through the blue crystal in the cannon's main body.
With a thought, Frieda raised the cannon toward the three Eikons, casting a modified targeting spell to ensure her shot would hit. Then she triggered the weapon, and a beam of cerulean light the width of an artillery shell erupted, momentarily blinding her. When her vision cleared, nothing remained of the three Ildoan supersoldiers.
"Something is wrong," said König. "Where are the Ildoan mages ? The Eikons might be faster, but we should be able to detect their mana signatures by now."
"Haven't they all been turned into Eikons ?" Frieda sent back while firing another beam of energy at a pack of Eikons that were bombarding another Hüne to her left. Two of the Ildoan supersoldiers vanished, while the third fell down, a chunk of his body missing.
"If that were the case, we would have heard something about it before they declared this stupid Crusade. After what happened in Francois, our intelligence agents in Ildoa knew to be on the lookout for any suspicious disappearance or 'reassignment'. So either they really dropped the ball, or …"
"Or the Kingdom's aerial mages are somewhere else," finished Neumann grimly. "Great. As if we needed something else to worry about."
"The Director will know what to do," said Frieda, commanding her mount to advance while also unleashing its left arm's tentacles to reduce an Ildoan tank trying to ram its ankles to scrap. "For now, let's make sure our part of the plan works."
"The combined deployment of Projekte Nebel, Werwölfe, Untoten and Hünen (the greatest number of different Projekte having ever been deployed simultaneously) proved to be every bit as effective as had been hoped for. Despite the mind-bending influence of the Eikons preventing the soldiers from panicking, the Ildoan lines collapsed immediately.
The Werwölfe's ability to sense each other's presence was unaffected by Projekt N (as was established during testing, see report N-W-8 for more details). With the Ildoan artillery either disabled by Projekt N or focusing its fire on the Hünen, the Werwölfe were free to move through the Ildoan trenches unopposed, the Ildoan infantry doing as little to slow them down as all unaugmented troops had in previous engagements. The new Nightmare and Efreet types especially proved devastatingly effective, each amounting for hundreds of enemy kills with their wide-range attacks.
Scores of Eikons joined the battle (post-battle counts would put their total number in the invading force at over two hundreds). They were more disciplined than during previous encounters, and the Untoten who had fought them on the Rhine Front later confirmed that their skills were greater too, not just their mana output. Either because of this or due to the indoctrination of the Ildoans, there were no repeat of the friendly fire incidents noted during the Eikons' second deployment.
While the attack had drawn all enemy eyes, the absence of the Director among the combatants combined with the confusion of the frontline successfully kept the superweapon responsible for opening a passage through the Alps from firing. With this confirmed, the second part of Operation Bildersturm began …"
January 3rd, 1926 – Imperial City Bovariastadt
Before the start of the operation, Zerayah had been sent ahead of the main force, slipping into Bovariastadt under the cover of early night. She had volunteered for the mission, alongside a handful of other mages. She was the only Nazzadi of the group, having successfully argued that her experience sneaking around in environments full of monsters who could kill her immediately if they found her could be used in the Eikon-infested city. Eventually, the Director had agreed to give her this chance to prove herself.
She had stayed in the shadows, avoiding to use even a flicker of magic, knowing the Eikons would detect her at once if she did so. And even though she had only been here for a couple hours and had never been in a proper city before (the village near Castle Schwartzstein was tiny by comparison, even if it held more people than she had seen in her entire life before the Lady of Stars had saved her people), it was obvious things were deeply, deeply wrong in Bovariastadt.
Despite the late hour and the sounds of battle coming from the north, the streets were bustling. There were thousands of people outside, but they weren't going anywhere : they were standing in the streets, or kneeling on the pavement, chanting what Zerayah was fairly sure were prayers (she had been introduced to the concept of religion only recently, and while not forbidden it wasn't exactly encouraged within Division Y). The same prayers, repeated over and over by men, women and children with wide, bloodshot eyes, all of whom looked exhausted.
This was the indoctrination Lieutenant König had uncovered during his investigation in the land of Francois and that Zerayah had been warned about. It was unsettling in the extreme : even after all that Zerayah had witnessed in her life, she had never seen something like it. The monsters of Nazza-Duhni had killed and mutilated, but not even Akhar-Zegog had been able of such violation of its victims' mind.
She had caught glimpses of fearful faces looking out of windows at the gatherings before hastily pulling the curtains back. So at least not everyone was affected yet, but it was poor consolation for those already lost. She hoped the Director would find a way to help them.
When she heard the sounds of distant battle, she took to the air. Now that the Eikons had moved out to meet the attack, she could fly with less risks of being shot down, and the mess of mana signatures that so many Eikons had created was starting to clear. Across the city, the other infiltrators were doing the same. They had spread out to maximize the area covered : it was imperative to the operation that the target be located as swiftly as possible.
As she flew, she suppressed the awe and wonder she felt at the sight of so many buildings standing up all around her. Even now, after months (and it had taken a while for her to get used to actually measuring the passage of time, too) in this new, strange and beautiful world, it still felt alien to not be surrounded by ruins, to not wake up wondering if this was the day she failed and got herself (or worse, those who relied on her for leadership) killed.
Now wasn't the time to get distracted, however, because if she messed up, people would die. As she moved, she kept sending scanning pulses, looking for – there.
The building where she had detected the anomalous mana signal was taller than those around it, and much older too. It was clearly a temple of some sort – the Nazzadi still didn't really get the concept of religion, and it hadn't been a priority to teach them. Two spires rose from the main body of the building, and a platform of wodden beams and metal had been constructed between them. And on that platform, surrounded by a golden sphere of magic far stronger than anything Zerayah was capable of, was the 'Saint' of the Ildoan crusade.
This was the weapon that had removed the mountains blocking the path of the invaders. Having seen mountains for the first time when she had walked outside of Castle Schwartzstein, Zerayah couldn't conceive of anything so powerful – but then, she couldn't have imagined anyone powerful enough to defeat Akhar-Zegog either.
She raised her right arm and poured her energy into the flare gun she had been given. When she pulled the trigger, the sky above her position was marked with a bright star, signalling the location of the Ildoan 'superweapon'. Only then, with her duty discharged, did she dare to fly closer, to see if there was anything she could do to help disable it -
No. Not 'it', she realized with horror.
'She.'
It was a child. A girl, barely the same age as the Director appeared to be – no, younger. She was wearing ornate robes and holding what looked like a computation orb in both hands. And her face … Even the indoctrinated children Zerayah had seen amidst the praying crowds had more life in their faces. There was just nothing there. Nothing at all. If the child had detected Zerayah's approach, she gave absolutely no sign of it.
Behind the girl, she saw a man in a white lab coat that reminded her of the researchers at Castle Schwartzstein. He held a staff in his hands made of gilded clockwork and whirring with magical energy. It served a similar purpose as her orb, except that from what Zerayah could sense, the man before her was no mage. Instead of providing mana to the device himself, he was drawing it from somewhere, something else. And the energy had the same feel as that of the empty-eyed child.
In her life (which was long by the standards of her people, yet short by those of her new, adopted homeland), Zerayah had known anger many times. Nazza-Duhni was a world that gave many reasons for fury. Never had she felt such rage as in this moment.
"How dare you ?!" she howled.
The old man turned and ran, fleeing down the closest spire. Zerayah landed on the platform and gave chase, but despite his age, the man was fast. In fact, he was running down the stairs so fast it was a miracle he hadn't fallen down and broken his miserable skull. She would still have caught up quickly, except the moment she entered the spire in pursuit, her mana suddenly felt sluggish and unresponsive – and then, a voice boomed into her head, each word like a hammer blow. She stumbled, nearly falling to the ground, as the voice that was a voice in the same way the Saint was a child spoke :
WORTHLESS
HERETIC
KNEEL
"I AM ZERAYAH !" she screamed as she plunged her own knife into her left hand, the pain clearing her mind from the abominable voice. "DAUGHTER OF NAZZA-DUHNI ! WARRIOR OF THE LADY OF STARS ! AND I DO NOT KNEEL !"
She ripped the knife from her own flesh, aiming its blood-dripping blade at the old man. He raised his staff, gleaming with golden light.
"Vade Retro, Satanas !" he bellowed, eyes wide with zealous hatred. "You have no place in this House of God !"
The young Nazzadi woman snarled wordlessly in response, and started to walk closer, determination pushing back the alien influence trying to make her stop and drop to her knees. She had spent her entire life running from monster. Magic or not, wounded or not, eldritch pressure or not, she would not run from the one before her.
She was going to kill him.
January 3rd, 1926 – Imperial City Bovariastadt – Frauenkirche
On the other side of Bovariastadt from where the combined forces of Division Y were attacking the Ildoan Army, Tanya Degurechaff saw Zerayah's signal, and immediately injected herself with her third dose of Kosmosblut. She and a group of select companions had made their way around the city undetected, and now it was time for them to play their part in Operation Bildersturm – and, should they fail, all that had been done before would be for naught.
Sensing the sudden surge of power from the south, the Eikons that had been kept in reserve at the city's walls by the lords of the crusade flew toward the Lady of Stars, while the skies above the city roiled with black and golden clouds as opposed eldritch influences clashed. Half a hundred Holy Knights stood between the Lady and her destination, each remade in one of the holiest sites in the world, their mana output further enhanced by the ministrations of Doctor Schugel. They were the fist of the Lord whom they served body and soul, and the aerial mage corps of whole countries would have broken before their might.
But the Lady of Stars flew with her moonlight blade in hand, and her trusted companions at her side. Zerayah wasn't the only Nazzadi to have sworn herself to the one who had freed them from their miserable existence : eight charcoal-skinned mages flew alongside the Lady of Stars, holding a D-24 computation orb and blazing with power. The Nazzadi couldn't match the Eikons one-on-one, but they worked together to target those who made it through the Lady of Stars' defenses or tried to flank her. Spell formulas designed to repel the monsters of their homeworld and improved to Imperial standards disrupted the mana of the false angels, sending them crashing down into the city below.
And there too was Lieutenant Serebryakov, her second dose of Endlose Nacht fuelling her deathless might, along with the blood of her mistress she had drunk just before the battle. The exiled Russy mage cut a figure nigh as terrible as her superior's, haloed in the black light of a collapsed sun's hunger that also filled her eyes. The Nazzadi had to stay clear of her to avoid freezing to death, as the very air around her plunged to nearly sub-zero temperatures, causing a rain of ice crystals to follow her as she advanced. She was kept from frenzy only by the close proximity of the Lady of Stars, whose presence served as an anchor to the Untote's sanity, but this made her no less terrifying.
Death itself was at her command, the effects of Endlose Nacht amplified by the Director's altered vitae to create a demigoddess of darkness and entropy, however briefly. Spears of un-light erupted from her hands, turning Eikons to dust in a single heartbeat, and her fangs tore through their armor without pause, her strength far above that of the Eikons despite being half their size. The only thing holding Viktoriya back was having to be careful to avoid landing her spells in the city.
The Eikons fought well, better than the ones the Lady of Stars had slaughtered during the Eclipsed Liberation. But it wasn't enough. They died in droves, the survivors sent crashing down into the streets while the attackers kept moving. However, they didn't need to win. The Congregation's plan to deal with the Lady of Stars had always rested on their ultimate weapon : all the Eikons had to do was hold her at bay long enough. When the mana within the cathedral suddenly spiked, the Lady of Stars abandoned caution and rushed ahead, her companions opening a path for her and keeping the remaining Eikons from striking at her back while she flew at full speed, flying above the river that cut Bovariastadt in two and would have stopped her undead allies in any case.
The rush of her passage shattered windows and sent small objects flying, yet as the energy reached its crescendo, it seemed she wasn't going to be fast enough.
The Saint gathered power that wasn't hers, her body moving in response to alien compulsions. But before she could fire the terrible weapon which would unmake the Lady of Stars, her allies, and half of Bovariastadt, the lifeblood of Adelheid von Schugel was spilled on the altar below her as Zerayah, wounded and exhausted from her battle with the mad scientist's Eikon bodyguard but still victorious and vengeful. By this singular act, the cathedral's consecration was thrown out of alignment, and - just for a moment – the Saint hesitated.
The Lady of Stars could have seized that opening to strike down the vessel of her hated adversary's power. Indeed, her rational side screamed at her to do just that, to weigh the costs and benefits and make the obviously correct choice. Yet much as she denied it, even to herself, the soul that was Tanya Degurechaff had changed, perhaps as much as the flesh hosting it. She had gained comrades she trusted, and a much better understanding of people. As a result, her own emotions had grown, and though she was not and would never be 'normal' (whatever that word might mean), she was no longer the cold-blooded fiend who, once upon a time, had so scared Eric von Lergen.
And the person she had become would not kill a child, even to save the Empire. The moonlight blade came down, and struck at the Trinity's Tear with a sound like the pealing of heavenly bells cracking. As magical energy arced around the two of them, melting the ancient stone of the church and warping reality to the point that, had anyone else stood close by, they would have been ripped apart, the Lady of Stars locked her star-filled eyes with the Saint's empty gaze, and spoke :
"WHO ARE YOU ?"
And as she spoke those words, holding firm at the center of a vortex of unearthly power, the entire city heard them.
"WHO ARE YOU ?"
He is Cavan Ehrlich, citizen of the Empire. He is husband to a wonderful woman and father to two beautiful daughters, and now he realizes he hasn't thought about them in far too long.
He is kneeling in the streets, in clothes he has been wearing for the last two days, since he left his home to join the crowd massed in the streets. His throat hurts from all the chanting and praying he has been doing without pause for the last day or so.
He remembers praying, singing the praises of God. He remembers vowing to join the Crusade, to purge all heresy from the Empire. He remembers the thoughts that ran through his mind then, as he heard the Holy Knights' endless song.
He would scream, if his vocal chords didn't hurt so much.
"WHO ARE YOU ?"
He is Dominico Ricci, soldier of the Ildoan Army. Like most of his comrades-in-arms, he was conscripted when the Great War began and the Kingdom started to prepare for the worst. Before the Holy Crusade was declared, he didn't think he was going to see action, and he was perfectly fine with that. When he was young, his grandfather told him of his own experience with war, and even though he knows the old man held back from telling him the really messed up stuff, it was still enough to give him nightmares.
He realizes that he forgot about that at some point.
Dominico looks at his rifle. He remembers long days spent training on the range with it, improving his accuracy until he was the best shot in his squad. He remembers feeling proud of that.
He remembers shooting Imperial soldiers trying to surrender with it during the march through the Alps. He remembers the feeling of absolute righteousness he felt as he pulled the trigger, the utter certitude that he was doing God's work.
Dominico screams as he throws his rifle away like it just turned into a snake. Then he collapses on the street, weeping and puking, ashamed and horrified.
"WHO ARE YOU ?"
She is Nala, daughter of Onika. She lies in the street, surrounded by broken stone, her golden armor dented, her magic-charged blood seeping out of a dozen different injuries.
When she tested positive for magical potential, she was promised a better life by the men of the Church, as well as food and medicine for her village. The local priest was always kind and helpful to her people, so she accepted the offer. They took her away from her home in one of the Francois colonies on the Southern Continent, and trained her to use her gifts.
When she was ready, they called her and eleven others out of the training barracks and into the most grandiose building she had ever seen. She listened as the Francois priest spoke. She felt the Light descend from on high and wrap itself around her, before …
Before …
She remembers now. She didn't want this. This is not what she agreed to. She isn't stupid : she knew her village's colonial overlords wanted soldiers. She was willing to accept that, even if it meant becoming a killer, so long as her people gained from it.
But that is not what happened. The Congregation didn't train her into a mage. They tried to destroy everything she was, and turn her into an obedient puppet. A soldier is supposed to protect, and she has not protected. A soldier is supposed to follow the laws of war, and she has not done so. She has burned and slaughtered; she has enslaved and destroyed. And as she did so, she thought it good.
Nala screams, and her burning wings shift to the color of moonlight, while her golden armor blackens to the color of soot.
"WHO ARE YOU ?"
Atop the cathedral of Bovariastadt, the little girl who had been taken from the orphanages of the Holy See and remade into a weapon by the rites of Archbishop Beauvais and the ministrations of Doctor Schugel cried out, in a heart wrenching sob. Everything she was had been erased by golden light, down to her very name. But the spark of free will that makes humans what they are was still there, for while it can be caged, shackled, and tormented to the point of breaking, it can never be truly erased – not without destroying that which the Lord of Heavens required in His chosen.
Now that spark fought back, kindled by the eldritch light of the Lady of Stars, and the nameless child screamed. She would never remember what was taken from her, for the light had burned it completely. But in that moment, she took back her agency, and in doing so was the Saint no longer. She let go of the accursed orb, the Trinity's Tear, and recoiled from it, collapsing on her back, her body wracked by sobs. Still the cracked Trinity's Tear hung in the air, pulsating with divine power, a gateway to the Kingdom of Heaven that flared through the eldritch sky like a false sun.
The Lady of Stars howled her defiance to the face of Him Who Watches, and pushed her moonlight blade down, cutting through the holy relic. Antithetical energies met. The connection was severed, and the radiant, scourging light vanished as if a cosmic switch had just been flicked. The girl who had been rendered nameless shuddered in relief as the presence of her tormentor was banished, while across the city, the citizens who had been affected the most by the Eikons' presence fell blissfully unconscious.
But power cannot be so easily unmade. Reality buckled, then started to crack. With a titanic effort of will, the Lady of Stars redirected the disruption upward before it could swallow the city and drag it into some other-dimensional abyss. The heavens themselves were torn, a scar upon Creation that would linger like the memory of a stab wound.
"The destruction of the Ildoan Mythos-based computation orb effectively disabled the remaining Eikons, as well as entire swathes of the Ildoan Army. Whole companies surrendered or were no longer in any state to continue fighting, leading to Operation Bildersturm winding down. The forces of Division Y advanced to complete the liberation of Bovariastadt, but were far too few in numbers to prevent those Ildoans still in possession of their wits from fleeing.
This, of course, had been anticipated. The thought of tens of thousands of foreign soldiers loose in Bovaria was not one High Command enjoyed, but it was very much the lesser of two evils. With little knowledge as to the mechanisms of the Eikons' indoctrination abilities, preparations had been made for every scenario from an ordered retreat to a fanatical last stand, even mass suicide or an attempt to purge Bovariastadt's civilian population (which was partly why Division Y moved immediately to secure the city). Elements of the Northern and Western Armies were on the move, waiting for news of Operation Bildersturm's success before proceeding to reclaim the region.
The lifting of the indoctrination that occurred following the Director's confrontation with the Saint was closer to the best-case scenario than anyone had thought likely, though this did not come without its own problems. The Ildoan Army reacted to their sudden freedom in various ways, with a not insignificant portion beginning to flee back to their homeland. There was little Division Y could do to stop them, but while the Reich had little reason to object to the departure of common troopers, there were those trying to flee who couldn't be allowed to escape …"
January 3rd, 1926 – Somewhere to the south of Bovariastadt
Corporal Karla Vogt watched as her target emerged from the burning wreckage of the car she had hit with a carefully thrown grenade. Now that she had taken her Widow form, she couldn't smile, but she really wanted to.
When the preparations for Operation Bildersturm had been made, Colonel Lergen had raised the risk of the ringleaders escaping. The Operation's focus, after all, was to deal with the superweapon which had opened a path through the Alps. But if the individuals responsible for the Holy See and the Kingdom of Ildoa's sudden descent into religious mania escaped, they could potentially start over elsewhere.
They hadn't been sure the ringleaders had accompanied the Ildoan Army, but the chance that they had needed to be addressed. Which was why Karla wasn't with the other Werwölfe tearing through the Ildoan soldiers, but was instead here.
And that precaution had paid off, because she had recognized one of her primary targets among the handful of Ildoan high-ranking officers who were fleeing south aboard that car : Pierre-Michel de Lugo, the man widely decried by his own home country as responsible for the utter disaster that had been the performance of the Francois army in the late stages of the Republic's participation in the Great War. The grenade she'd tossed (her Widow form was quick, but not quick enough to catch up to a military vehicle) had killed or incapacitated the rest of the car's passengers (she could still hear two heartbeats, though none of them were very strong), but De Lugo appeared to have made it through the crash relatively unscathed.
The disgraced Vice-Minister froze as he saw her emerge from the shadows, black carapace lit only by the stars and the flickering fire lit by the explosion. To his credit, he appeared completely unafraid despite being faced with a horror straight out of nightmare (Karla was self-aware enough to know what her transformed shape looked like, she just didn't care).
"Surrender, De Lugo," she called out, knowing her voice alone would have undone the courage of most men. "Your weapon is no more, and your golden scarecrows have been broken. The Ildoan Army will be crushed soon enough. There is no point in running. Unlike you, we respect the laws of war : you will not have to fear for your life if you lay down your arms, at least not until your trial is over."
He laughed in response, the sound wild and crazed but full of undeniable conviction.
"Do you really think your infernal masters have won, monster ?! This is not over ! God's will cannot be denied so easily !"
"Your 'god' is a fraud," Karla hissed back. "And you and your associates are fools to believe its lies."
She had no doubt De Lugo was favored by some kind of entity : the Eikons and the Saint hadn't come out of nowhere. She just didn't think De Lugo's patron was anything someone sane would ever choose to serve out of their own free will.
Then again, it was doubtful De Lugo had any of that left. After all, he would have been among those who had been exposed to the Eikons' indoctrination effect the longest.
"Say what you want ! The Congregation of Michael does His will. And though your vile mistress has struck down His Saint and slaughtered the noble crusaders with your foul sorceries, their martyrdom won't be in vain ! He will not allow it. All you have achieved this day is slap away the hand with which He reached out to welcome the Empire back into His embrace. Now, all that remains is for holy fire to cleanse this wretched land !"
"Then you won't surrender. I would say it is a pity, but I would be lying. Very well."
De Lugo drew his sword. Despite the blade being ceremonial (even in the brutal close-quarter combat of the trenches, swords had long since fallen out of favor against the much more practical shovel), it was clear that De Lugo knew how to use it from his posture.
Furthermore, whatever it had once been, that sword was no mere Ildoan steel. She'd no doubt it was capable of harming her, even of killing her if she was careless. But she didn't intend to be. While her orders had been to bring her targets back alive in order to investigate the full extent of the Holy See's involvement in this so-called crusade, the Major had made it clear that was very much a secondary objective compared to preventing their escape.
Besides, De Lugo and his 'Congregation' had burned more than enough bridges with their actions for nobody to make a fuss about his summary execution. There weren't any sections in the laws of war prohibiting the mind control of an entire city, but deliberately endangering civilians was very high on the list of possible war crimes. At most, the Francois President may raise a token protest that he hadn't been able to sign the execution order of the disgraced Vice-Minister himself.
Karla's transformation into a Werwolf had come with a general dampening of her emotions. She could still feel, but the intensity of everything had been diminished, or perhaps 'slowed down' was a better descriptor. It certainly made her better suited to what the researchers working on Projekt W were all but certain the Widow-type had been designed for, since she could lay in wait for hours, even days, without getting bored or annoyed.
And yet, as she prepared to kill the man who had done so much harm to the Fatherland, she couldn't deny the cold joy she felt.
AN : For those of you without the patience to check Google Translate, 'Operation Bildersturm' translates to 'Operation Iconoclasm'. Yes, I know, Tanya isn't exactly being subtle there.
The entire scene of Tanya facing the Saint was inspired by the song Vera's Cry by Cami-Cat, available on Youtube. As for the Saint's identity ... well. I had several candidates in mind, but eventually I realized how much more on-brand it would be for the Saint to be nameless. After all, is this not the fate Being X wanted for Tanya in canon ?
The Hünen are based on the Engels from CthulhuTech, specifically the Seraph type. It's probably obvious, but just to be sure : the Hünen are not as powerful as the Seraph-type Engels from CthulhuTech. The Reich's technology isn't anywhere near the level of the New Earth Government, and while magic works in completely different ways in YS and CthulhuTech, that isn't enough to make up the difference. That being said, the Hünen are still giant biological mechs armed with energy cannons, tentacles with the strength to crush a tank like cardboard, and a magic shield thanks to the two aerial mages assigned to support each one.
Also, if you have ever been on train ride and thought it was stressful because of a crying child, try to imagine what the blood pressure of the crew tasked with transporting the Hünen across the country looked like. The occultists had to spend the entire trip keeping the monsters quiet.
The Hüne pilot shown in this chapter, Frieda Wotjek, is based on a member of Tanya's regiment who exists only in the manga (where she is mostly referred to as 'the newbie' due to having joined the group at the same time as Grantz). After asking, I don't think she has a canon name, so I made one up.
Colonel Virginio Calandro is also a canon character (but a named one), who shows up in the latter volumes of the Light Novel. He wasn't part of the initial batch of officers who were called to the Holy See, hence why he has brief moments of lucidity in his POV before the indoctrination reasserts itself. And yes, I went with "indoctrination" as the term for the Eikons' mind control, which is a reference to the Reapers from Mass Effect. The "Tempering" from FFXIV's Primals would have also worked, but the word didn't sound like something the rational Empire would use.
Funny story : I remembered that the Ildoan mage corps existed and hadn't had time to be converted into Eikons when this chapter was almost finished, which is going to make the next chapter of this story just a tad more interesting. And by that, I mean that what was initially planned to be just one chapter to wrap things up before moving on to the next arc is probably going to end up longer.
I've already decided what the price of Tanya using Kosmosblut again will be, but if you have suggestions for the side-effects of a second dose of Endlose Nacht for Visha and the other Untoten who survived the Battle of the Rhine, feel free to share them. Also, I have only just realized that Kosmosblut : KB : K-Bröt. Truly, some things are multiversal constants.
Due to the new chapter of Fate Grand Order being released and my making ill-considered bargains with the Gacha Gods (hallowed be Their name), I am going to focus on A Blade Recast for the foreseeable future (either until I finish the current arc, which should be four chapters if things go as planned, or the end of August, whichever comes first). This will involve brute-forcing my way past the writer's block I have had on that fic since January, so ... wish me luck.
Regardless of how that goes, I still have the goal to finish this story before the end of the year. This would make it the record-holder for "most rapidly completed story I have ever written". And because I can be generous, here is a list of other YS/Weird War ideas that you can use for Omakes or even full-on stories of your own (which would certainly help get the Muse's attention once I return to this story) to keep you busy until I come back :
YS/Hellsing : the Empire finds the remnants of ancient vampires and uses them to create undead supersoldiers.
YS/Magic the Gathering : the Empire discovers Phyrexian oil and uses compleated soldiers to turn the tide of the war, unaware that they are also plotting the overthrow of the government and the compleation of the entire world.
YS/ResidentEvil: BOWs developed in a secret facility are deployed by the Empire in the trenches of the Rhine Front. They are the equivalent of Wesker in terms of superstrength, speed and resilience (less efficient BOWs are simply not worth the effort in a world with aerial mages).
YS/Bloodborne : the Empire discovers a Great One underneath one of its castles. The Great Ones were the ones to introduce magic into the world tens of thousands of years ago. The Empire uses its blood to create supersoldiers, although they can devolve into uncontrollable, immensely powerful Beasts.
YS/Ravenloft : an Imperial expedition at the South Pole discovers an Amber Sarcophagi, containing the crystallized remnants of an ancient god slain by Being X aeons ago. The echoes of the gods' last moments before their demise has corrupted their lingering power, making it extremely dangerous and difficult to use. But, after much experimentation (and Tanya communing with the ghost of the dead god whose amber sarcophagus' discovery started it all, her hatred of Being X allowing her to forge a pact with it), the Empire figures out a way to use tiny pieces of Amber to transform humans into superbeings (although terrible and frightening ones).
That's all for now. Oh, and you can expect one more update of Ciaphas Cain : Warmaster of Chaos very soon : I want to finish the current chapter before I focus on A Blade Recast.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts and comments on this chapter.
Zahariel out.