"Colonel William Drake,
Your services are required for a mission of extreme importance to not just the Allied Kingdom, but the entire Europan continent, perhaps even the world should our worst theories be correct.
Our intelligence services have identified the man responsible for the creation of Division Y, and the unleashing upon the world of the Wunderwaffen and all the death and destruction they have caused. The man in question is none other than the one who led the troops which crippled your uncle at the Rhine, Eric von Lergen.
As you are no doubt aware, Colonel Lergen is presently leading the Imperial forces in Ildoa, having invaded the Kingdom and razed the Holy See to the ground. While the details of what exactly happened at the Holy See are still under investigation, Lergen's continued presence away from Imperial territory, and with comparatively little protection, presents us with an opportunity unlikely to repeat itself.
Your sole mission is to eliminate Colonel Lergen. Everything else, up to the survival of your unit, is secondary to that objective. We have reason to believe that this man is more than he appears, and poses a threat to the long-term existence of the Allied Kingdom itself.
Because of this, and the presence of numerous Wunderwaffen in Remula, your unit will be accompanied by a group of magic-capable experts, led by the Royal Wizard himself. They, too, are expendable to the mission's fulfillment, something which you can be assured the Royal Wizard is fully aware and approving of. He will explain the situation in more details during your journey to Ildoa. Although what he will tell you may appear fantastical, I urge you to treat it seriously, lest you and your men meet the same fate as your uncle's own unit.
I trust I need not tell you how strategically important and diplomatically sensitive this entire matter is. I assure you that we're fully aware of it as well, yet believe that this mission is of paramount importance regardless.
May God be with you."
Excerpt from a confidential letter addressed to Colonel William Drake of the Albish Aerial Mage Corps (Named 'Lancelot'), 4th February 1926.
"The Americans have accepted the Empire's proposal, and they have sent a task force to assume peacekeeping duties in Ildoa. They are sending over fifty thousand soldiers, and a lot of equipment our agents weren't able to identify. My best guess is that the Americans have been working on their own superweapons since the Wunderwaffen's reveal, and they are bringing their prototypes along.
I doubt whatever they managed to cobble together in less than two years is anything us or the Empire need to worry about, but that isn't the main issue. The convoy is supposed to arrive in three days : their President has pushed for things to get ready quick, and their army was making preparations since the start of the War just in case public opinion changed or something forced their hand.
Once the Americans are in Ildoa, Lergen might leave, and even if he doesn't, making a move will be diplomatically disastrous – the last thing we need at this stage is for the States to join the War on the other side. We need to move before their arrival if at all possible."
"Understood. We strike tomorrow. For King and country."
Private communication between Agravain and Merlin, members of Albion's Round Table, February 8th, 1926.
"There have long been rumors regarding what laid beneath the surface of the Holy See. During the days of the Inquisition, its agents scoured Europa in droves, burning any magic user they encountered without the political support needed to avoid accusations of witchcraft and heresy, but while their lore was often lost with them, stories abound of grimoires and artefacts being carried back to the Holy See. However, the secrecy of the Church made proving this difficult.
Those rumors have now been confirmed. Our investigation into the ruins of the Holy See has uncovered the existence of a vast network of tunnels, many of which collapsed as a result of the battle against the Congregation's Ivory Blasphemy. Within, we found traces of magical wards carved in the walls, which we believe were the reason the Congregation was able to work without tripping every alarm in the Kingdom of Ildoa. As was detected before in the Francois Republic, the lingering aura of the Eikons also suffuses most of the tunnels (though it can only be detected at a certain depth, as anything closer to the surface was contaminated with the aura of the Ivory Blasphemy).
We've also found the remnants of what we believe (thanks to the testimony of the Lunarchs sent from the Division's headquarters) to be the laboratory of Doctor Schugel, where he performed the arcane operations which made the Congregation's Eikons superior to those of the Republic. While most of the notes we recovered were ineligible due to the madness of their author, some of it might grant us insight into the nature of Being X, and they've been sent home for further analysis.
Entire chambers full of ash were also discovered. Our current theory is that those were repositories of ancient lore until recently, whose contents were destroyed by the Congregation as Being X's hold on the minds of its members drove them to fanaticism. Given the use the Division could have made of such lore, it might also have been a deliberate attempt to deny the Reich any advantage possible following the Crusade's defeat at Bovariastadt.
While the vast majority of the Holy See's inhabitants either died during the battle or fled and were detained, some of them remained behind. Unfortunately, all of them were caught in the Blasphemy's indoctrination aura before its destruction, and whether due to its sheer power or the circumstances of its summoning, the effects of it were even more pronounced.
These Wretches, as the soldiers accompanying us call them, have completely lost their minds to Being X's unholy light, beyond the indoctrination observed on the people of Bovariastadt before the defeat of the Counterfeit Saint by the Director. They do not appear to be self-aware, reduced to mere animals full of hate and anguish, lashing out at anyone they encounter who isn't one of their own with extreme violence and feeding on the provisions packed in the tunnels for the Congregation's use. All of them are blind, their eyes having either melted in their sockets or having been bloodily torn out by their own hands, but their other senses seem to have improved to compensate. Attempts to reason or heal those we managed to capture were met with complete failure, which combined with the loss of several troopers and a pair of occultists to an unexpected ambush has led us to adopt a kill-on-sight policy. Fortunately, none of them appear to possess any supernatural ability, with their surprising strength being instead attributed to their insanity.
At the moment, we are unsure how many Wretches remain within the tunnels : the largest group of them we encountered numbered over twenty. We will continue our efforts to map what remains of the entire complex and cleanse it of this last pathetic and bitter gift of the Congregation."
Excerpt from the report of the Division Y team tasked with investigating the remains of the Holy See, February 6th, 1926.
February 9th, 1926 – Remula – Imperial Exclusion Zone
Colonel Eric von Lergen took a sip of his coffee, savoring the deep flavor of the Ildoan grains that had been used to make it. As much as the Empire was a primarily coffee-drinking nation, he wasn't enough of a patriot not to admit that the beverage's average quality was much higher this side of the border.
Although admittedly, he would have drunk even the swill they served at Headquarters gratefully right now. The month since the razing of the Holy See had been the busiest of his entire life, and only moderately less stressful than the days of desperate advance that had preceded it. Between coordinating the investigation of the Holy See ruins, ensuring the quarantine was maintained in both directions despite the countless curious idiots trying to get in, maintaining the fragile peace between Imperials and Ildoans, and reporting back to the Fatherland, he barely had time to sleep.
His duties had taken him all around the Ildoan capital, always under heavy escort. As the man who had led the strike force, commanded the troops involved in the destruction of the Holy See, and accepted the surrender of the Ildoan King, his name and face were now known across the globe. And while the bulk of the Ildoan population had either accepted their defeat or were still reeling from the sheer shock of how fast the Crusade had been declared and defeated, it would only take one crazed gunman to kill Lergen, who lacked the ability to project a personal magic shield or regenerate from all but the most immediately fatal of injuries.
It was one of the things about the Wunderwaffen that worried him, when he laid in bed at night trying and failing to sleep. The supersoldiers of Division Y each possessed considerable power, yet they were beholden to mere mortals like himself. It was the same potential issue he'd foreseen among aerial mages. Before the advent of the computation orb, a single individual soldier's combat potential had been limited. But now, even a single platoon of mages could raze a small city to the ground.
The discipline of the Imperial Army had kept any desertions from happening among the mage corps, and from what Lergen understood the supersoldiers were too in awe of Degurechaff to even think of rebelling against her authority, but … it still disturbed him. As this new form of warfare became more and more common, ensuring the loyalty and obedience of soldiers would become more and more important, and the methods by which this was achieved would also need to evolve. After all, it wasn't as if one could simply have a misbehaving Werwolf lashed.
The Colonel was trying to put those thoughts aside and focus on his coffee when the alarms suddenly started to ring. For a single heartbeat, he remained immobile, then put his mug down with a sigh and walked to the radio operator.
"What is going on ?"
Lergen's blood ran cold as he listened to the operator's hurried (but not panicked, the part of him that was still a Personnel officer noted) report. Multiple magical signatures had just appeared on the detection array and were approaching from the west. Most of them were unknown, but a handful had been identified as belonging to Albish aerial mages who had been observed across the Dodobird Strait, where Imperial and Albish mages had spent the last few months staring at one another and daring each other to make the first move.
"The 'Lancelot' and his wing, someone with a lot of mana, a bunch of extras grouped together, among whom … oh. What a surprise," he muttered to himself as he recognized one of the names, whose magical signature had been recorded on the Southern Continent several months ago.
The Colonel couldn't believe the Albish were stupid enough to attack here, in another country that had already surrendered to the Reich and whose declaration of war had been spurious in the first place. He supposed he should be glad that their counter-intelligence efforts to make him seem like the head of Division Y instead of Degurechaff were working : it didn't take a genius to guess that he was the most likely target of this task force. It seemed having their Navy humiliated hadn't been enough to convince the Albish that all of Operation Enigma had been a deception.
"Initiate defensive protocol Delta," he told his aides. "Everyone ready for aerial mage attack. Be on the lookout for the anti-Mythos wards we encountered during Operation Enigma."
With the order given, he began to move out of the room, down the stairs, and into the secondary command center. They hadn't been idle since their arrival in Remula. As the battlefield between two factions wielding Mythos Magic, the remnants of the Holy See were a site of interest to every great power, and nobody who had worked under Degurechaff was the type to take chances.
The basement of the hotel in which they had installed their headquarters had been converted into a bunker and command center that wouldn't have been out of place on the Rhine Front, and every building in the vicinity emptied of those few Ildoans who didn't have the good sense to run away when the horned giants had rushed in to fight the Ivory Blasphemy (as the creature the Congregation had summoned was nicknamed in the city).
More aerial mages had been dispatched to help keep the peace across Ildoa : apparently, General Zettour had decided now was the perfect opportunity to test another of Degurechaff's idea. Using aerial mages as a highly-mobile response force operating independently instead of suborning them to a more conventional unit was, admittedly, somewhat mundane compared to the rest of the Major's 'innovations', but it had still proven very useful. Who knew : in another life, one where Division Y had never taken off, maybe that idea alone could have been the pivot around which the Reich's entire military doctrine shifted.
Here and now, however, it was one more tool in the Empire's arsenal. Lergen was fortunate that the aerial mages were ready for deployment at the moment, but with Headquarters worried about the threat in the East, the devastation of the Southern Army, and the casualties the Northern and Western Armies' own mage corps had suffered during the War, the number of mages available for peacekeeping duties had been limited. He only had a score of them stationed in Remula at the moment, none of whom were trained to the standards of Division Y. Technically, he did have six of the latter ready, but they were needed at the Holy See perimeter to help the three Hünen enforcing the quarantine. And he couldn't move the giants from their position, either : the last thing he wanted was for the Albish to fuck things up again and let loose a tide of Wretches in the middle of Remula. Even if they didn't try to break the containment, he couldn't move the Hünen to assist unless it was in extremis : the diplomatic situation was already tense enough as it was without the giants battling inside Remula once again.
But however good he knew the Imperial mages under his command were, two-to-one odds weren't anything he cared to bet on. The nearest squadrons had already been recalled, but it would take them time to get here even going at full speed – time that they didn't have. The Albish had planned their attack well : Lergen didn't doubt for a moment they had agents in the city who had watched his movements and warned their comrades that now was as good a time to strike as they were going to get.
From a purely tactical perspective, disregarding the strategic and diplomatic consequences, this attack had clearly been well-planned. Unfortunately for the Albish, Lergen hadn't spent so long working alongside Division Y without picking up their habit for seemingly-overkill contingencies.
"Captain Weiss," he called out briskly over the radio even as he moved toward the bunker, "gather the occultists in the ruins and have them perform the ritual of Correspondence, then explain to our visitors that they need a visa to come here."
"Yes, sir," came the reply. "I'm on my way now."
He didn't need to tell the Captain to be quick about it. By now, Lergen doubted the Albish were expecting anything but the fight of their lives when tangling with Division Y : it wouldn't do to disappoint them.
February 9th, 1926 – Skies of the Kingdom of Ildoa
To Colonel William Drake, bearer of the Name 'Lancelot', flying had always been a great joy. Nothing compared to the experience of moving through the air under one's own power, at speeds far beyond anything the human body could hope to achieve on its own.
Even during his stint above the Dodobird Strait, where he had earned his Name in a number of skirmishes with the Imperial mages, there'd always been an edge of simple, childish joy to go along the adrenaline of battle and the deep, barely-suppressed dread that today would be the day he met one of the Reich's mage-killers. Sure, Albish Intelligence claimed they could only be deployed at night, which was why no aerial mage ever sortied past the sunset, but the spooks hadn't exactly covered themselves in glory in the War, what with them having completely missed any hint of the Wunderwaffen until Dacia's ill-fated invasion attempt.
Right now, however, as he flew above the Kingdom of Ildoa toward its capital, his joy utterly failed to penetrate his nervousness. The briefing he and his men had received on the boat trip that had brought them to the West coast of Ildoa had been … disconcerting. Even now, he wasn't sure whether he believed the Royal Wizard's claims.
The fact that the Wunderwaffen existed at all, and the various events which had occurred since their reveal, had admittedly forced him to reconsider his former definition of the word 'impossible'. But the notion of some ancient, body-hopping wizard who returned every few centuries to try to conquer the world with an army of monsters still sounded fanciful at best. Had it come from anyone but one of the Allied Kingdom's most respected men and its foremost expert in all things magical, he would've dismissed the whole idea out of hand as the paranoid ramblings of someone trying to make sense of something about which he didn't have the first clue, regardless of how many mental hoops he needed to jump through in the process.
Still, he was a Drake. His family had served the Allied Kingdom for centuries, and he wasn't about to be the first in generations to fail in the prosecution of his duties. Even if the Royal Wizard was wrong, if this man – this Colonel Eric von Lergen – was only what he appeared to be, he was still a valid and valuable military target in his own right.
And, William quietly admitted to himself, he was also the man who'd given the order that'd left his beloved uncle crippled beyond the help of even the Allied Kingdom's most advanced healing magic. He had been taught too well to let vengeance affect his reasoning, but he couldn't deny the part of him that wanted it all the same.
"Here they come !" he called out as multiple mana signatures suddenly appeared, rising above the city to meet them. He felt the mana of his own men surge as they activated their various boosting spells – and then, with the speed that was typical of combat between aerial mages, they were all fighting for their lives.
Unlike the rest of the Albish mages, the Royal Wizard didn't carry a computation orb, but a pair of what, to Drake's inexpert eyes, looked like ornate, gilded sticks. Apparently those were Ancient Kemetian relics, recovered from the Southern Continent before the whole mess which had required the Imperial Army's intervention and led to a rather severe loss of face for Albion. His apprentices carried a variety of holy relics, along with more modern computation orbs.
The Imperial mages were tough bastards, veterans from the Great War and carrying Imperial computation orbs, which despite the best efforts of the Allied Kingdom's arcano-engineering teams remained more advanced than anything else on the planet. Drake had trained his people as hard as he could, but training wasn't the same as battlefield experience. Still, quantity had a quality all its own, and eventually the last Imperial mage went down. By that point, Drake's battalion had been cut to a third of its initial size, and only a handful of the casualties would live to see the next day if they got medical attention soon.
Luckily, both sides hadn't wanted to risk getting the Remulan civilians caught in the cross-fire, so the fight had been limited to the airspace directly above the evacuated district surrounding the Holy See. Even more fortunately, the horned metal giants who'd punched through the Ildoan Army like it was made of wet paper and killed the unholy monstrosity that had left the area in ruin hadn't gotten involved either, though Drake didn't doubt they would've if any of his mages had even looked like they were going to try to breach the invisible cordon.
Of course, that begged the question of why the Imperial Wunderwaffen weren't joining the fight even as their comrades were fighting to the death. Limiting collateral damage might be the reason, but Drake couldn't help but think there was another, more disturbing explanation.
Then, suddenly, it was as if a new sun had risen above the Eternal City. It took Drake a few heartbeats to realize he wasn't seeing it with his eyes but with his magical senses. Atop the ruins of the Holy See, a figure was flying, blazing with power. Never before had Drake encountered anything so powerful.
He knew what this was, of course. He'd been briefed about the super-mage the Imperials had deployed during the Defense of Kheriaha. But it was one thing to hear about the existence of a man who had fought the master of the Nameless City one-on-one and emerged victorious, and another entirely to feel his power yourself.
The super-mage flew straight at the largest group of Drake's men. Their attack spells scattered pitifully against his shield, which absorbed enough firepower to level a fortress as if it were a light rain. Then he was among them, and within the blink of an eye four of Drake's comrades were nothing more than charred pieces of meat falling to the ground below.
"Now !" shouted the Royal Wizard.
In the short time it'd taken the super-mage to slaughter a whole flight, five of Merlin's apprentices flew around the Imperial champion, and, in a display of coordination that left Drake reluctantly impressed, activated a singular spell. A solid sphere of golden light three meters across popped into existence right around the Imperial mage, blocking him from view.
There was a tense pause, then a booming sound as something banged against the inside of the sphere, once, twice, thrice. The sphere shuddered with every blow, cracks spreading from the point of impact before filling back in. Drake could see the apprentices' tension and sense their mana spike with every blow. This was a containment spell, which Merlin had described to Drake and his men on the way to Ildoa as being derived from some of the Ancient Kemetian relics the Royal Wizard had rescued from the hands of private collectors during Albion's Kemetian craze of a few decades back.
"How long can they hold him ?" asked Drake.
"Hopefully long enough, but we didn't have any opportunities to test this before today," replied Merlin darkly. "So we shouldn't tarry, Colonel."
Drake's remaining men stayed behind to protect the apprentices from interference by any remaining Imperial forces, leaving the Colonel alone with the Royal Wizard and his last free student, a young woman with a face set in stone – Niniane, she'd named herself during the trip.
They moved immediately, toward the building which their spies had told them was the headquarters of the Imperial presence in Remula. At Merlin's signal, the mages opened fire with attack spells, and within seconds, nothing was left of the building but rubble, a reminder that, for all that the Wunderwaffen had taken center stage in the Great War, aerial mages wielded awe-inspiring power of their own.
"No," muttered the Royal Wizard, frowning. "It would be too easy. He isn't dead yet."
Drake had to agree : after everything that had happened, it would be somewhat anti-climactic if the great mastermind of Division Y perished so easily. Of course, he was well aware that war wasn't a story, and even the life of the most esteemed warrior could end suddenly and randomly – but in this case, he wouldn't believe Lergen was dead until he'd seen the body with his own eyes.
They looked, and there, amidst the ruins, Drake saw a heavy metal door. He flew down, covered by Merlin and Niniane, and with a burst of reinforcement magic pulled it open.
"Let's go," said the Royal Wizard, and they went into the dark tunnel, senses boosted and shields deployed. Drake didn't think the Imperials would risk booby-trapping the path to their command bunker – there hadn't been enough time to set up explosives since they had started the attack, and he doubted they would have risked setting them up beforehand in what had been a civilian building – but better safe than sorry.
Soon, they reached a large space that had probably been a wine cellar of some kind, but had since been repurposed as a bunker and command center for the Imperial forces. Men with strange rifles, like those his uncle had described to him and which had punched through his shield and crippled him, stood with their weapons at the ready, but it was difficult to focus on them when five hideous, giant monstrosities filled almost the entire space of the bunker.
The Devils of the Rhine were far more terrifying in person than in the recordings Drake had been granted access to, though only two of the horrors present were of the same breed as the ones which had first been deployed against the Republic : the others were a mix of various but equally nightmarish shapes that, combined with the fact they were underground, made him think he'd just accidentally stepped into Hell. The sight of them actually froze Drake in place, though the fact it did the same to the rest of the party, including the Royal Wizard, was some slight balm to his honor.
And amidst it all stood one man in the uniform of an Imperial Colonel, looking utterly unperturbed by the inhuman monsters around him. Drake recognized him from the briefing's photographs : this was Eric von Lergen, the mastermind of Division Y and, according to the Royal Wizard, the single greatest threat to Albion.
The two of them were of the same rank. William also had the advantage of being an aerial mage, where Lergen was someone who had spent most of his career behind a desk. And yet, looking at how calm the other man was – if anything, he seemed annoyed at the whole situation – William couldn't help but take Merlin's theory more seriously than before.
"Hello, gentlemen and miss," Lergen called out in slightly accented Albish. The sheer absurdity of him speaking as they faced each other gave them pause, briefly preventing the situation from turning into a brutal, close-quarters fight (one that, for all his training and faith in the Royal Wizard's preparations, Drake wasn't in any hurry to start).
"I am honored that Albion would send someone as important as you, Sir Royal Wizard," he said to Merlin, who stiffened almost imperceptibly – not that Lergen missed it. "Oh, come on. of course I recognize you. Our spy networks might not be as widely spread as yours, what with us not having any interest in fostering chaos and distrust across the globe in order to prop up a colonial empire, but we do keep track of people in important, official positions."
Merlin didn't answer, merely continuing to glare at the Imperial Colonel, who shrugged before turning his gaze on Drake (who very determinedly did not flinch) :
"And you … you remind me of someone, 'Lancelot'." He snapped his fingers. "Right, I remember now. You wouldn't happen to be related to the last idiot with a death wish Albion sent after me, would you ?"
"That was my uncle," Drake hissed, while half the Imperial soldiers chuckled, and the Devils made a noise like a man drowning in his own blood.
"Was it ? You should have learned from his mistake, then. But then, learning from your failures is something the Albish aren't particularly good at." His bespectacled gaze moved to one of Merlin's assistants. "Isn't that so, Miss Niniane ? You of all people should know better than to take part in this folly."
"We all have our duties, Colonel, and mine demands that I be here now," replied the young woman he'd been addressing.
"Duty …" Lergen sighed. "I suppose so. Still, it is a shame that your masters are so willing to spit in the face of our offers of a peaceful resolution for this conflict between our nations like this. What do you even think you're going to accomplish here, anyway ? Besides reminding the entire world that you are willing to launch attacks in the middle of the capital of a country with which you aren't at war ?"
"Enough playing around, fiend," snarled the Royal Wizard, cutting through the awkward silence that had followed the Imperial Colonel's accusation. "Your wicked words won't deceive us. Show us your true face, before we end you."
The Imperial Colonel blinked, seeming genuinely off-balance for the first time.
"… I am sorry, what ?"
"Don't try to hide it !" Merlin all but spat. "We know the truth of it now. You tried to hide your tracks by wiping out the remnants of your work in Kemet, but it didn't work !"
"My – you know exactly what we did in Kemet !" Lergen protested. "It was your country that unleashed the Fiends of the Nameless City, we were just on the Southern Continent for the Suan Canal !"
"Oh, I'm sure that is what your 'superiors' thought," sneered the Royal Wizard. "And it was my apprentice's actions who led to the unleashing of the Fiends, yes. But you knew about the Nameless City from the start. Why else would you accompany the task force yourself, instead of entrusting it to one of your minions ? I will tell you ! Because you knew that someone might find proof of your previous incarnation's involvement in the Nameless City, which could expose your masquerade to your Imperial dupes !"
"My 'previous incarnation' ?! What the hell are you talking about ?!" asked Lergen, flabbergasted. The Imperial soldiers were glancing at each other, clearly as confused as their commanding officer.
What followed was equal parts terrifying and embarrassing. For almost a straight minute, Merlin ranted (ranted, that really was the only word for it), proclaiming the theory he had shared with Drake and his men as if it were fact. He named Lergen the Not-Man, the ancient, body-hopping warlock of old, who had been reborn again and again in order to create monsters, only for his creations to be defeated, his incarnation slain, and all traces of his works wiped away by the good men who ever opposed him. How Lergen had created Division Y, using others to do his dirty work for him while he stayed in the shadows until events had forced his hands; how he had come to Remula to defeat the power which had enslaved the Holy See in order to remove a competitor to his throne of dominion.
When Merlin was done, Lergen simply stared at him. There was a moment of complete silence, broken only by the distant sounds of the ongoing battle above. Lergen opened his mouth, then closed it. From what Drake saw in the corner of his field of view, the Imperial troopers looked just as confused as their commander (if the Devils were confused, their faces were too inhuman for him to tell).
"You are insane," said Lergen at last, before looking Drake straight in the eyes. "Come on, Colonel Drake, surely you cannot believe this nonsense ? This old man clearly has lost his senses – which if he's the one who handled Elder Magic research for your side, then I guess is understandable, but –"
"Silence !" roared Merlin, raising the Ancient Kemetian relics in both hands, each suddenly blazing with power. "Your forked tongue will not avail you any longer, serpent ! By the power I wield and the sacred secrets I have gleaned from your old enemies, I shall defeat you once more !"
A castigation spell erupted from the Royal Wizard, bathing the entire chamber in its golden glow. The eldritch guns of the Imperial troopers fizzled and crackled, while the Devils shrieked as they fell to the ground, twitching in agony. Yet Lergen still stood, utterly unaffected by the Royal Wizard's spell.
"No," whispered Merlin, pale-faced and horrified at the sight of their quarry resisting his magical assault. "No, it cannot be ! We cannot be too late ! I cannot fail ! I WILL NOT FAIL !"
Again, the Kemetian relics blazed, power gathering within them. Drake felt it spike right past the level of the castigation spell, past that of any attack spell he had ever sensed. For a single heartbeat, he didn't understand what was happening, then cold realization dawned on him.
Merlin was going to kill them all. He was pouring all of his considerable mana into the relics, using them as a prism through which the immense magical energy the Royal Wizard was capable of gathering would be unleashed all at once. In that way, he was hoping to overcome whatever defenses Lergen was using that let him resist the castigation spell. But while that would doubtlessly work, it would also vaporize the entire chamber and everyone in it, shield or no shield. Hell, given how powerful Merlin was, Drake wouldn't be surprised if it took out a good chunk of Remula along with them !
For one agonizing second, Drake hesitated, unsure what he was supposed to do. His orders had been clear. 'Eliminate Eric von Lergen at all costs'. Everyone in the attack team was expendable if it was to achieve that objective, including the Royal Wizard himself. But it was one thing to sacrifice himself and his team to the mission, and another entirely to let civilians be caught in the blast. Yet it wasn't as if there was much he could do, either : the Royal Wizard was so much more powerful than him -
And then Niniane moved, clutching her relic to her chest. Haloed in an aura of her own, one that was the silver of moonlight to Merlin's gold, she walked through the storm of energy surrounding Merlin as if it were not here, before raising her right hand and placing it on her master's balding skull.
Merlin looked at his apprentice, horror and consternation on his face; then he fell down, unconscious, and would have slammed head first into the floor if Niniane hadn't caught him with surprising gentleness.
For one awful moment, as the Kemetian relics hovered in the air and vibrated with power, Drake thought that Niniane's treachery had been for nothing, and they would all die in an apocalyptic blast anyway. Then the two priceless artefacts shattered into pieces which broke even further, until all that remained was a fine, glowing dust which fell onto the concrete floor.
Again, doubt and fear clashed in Drake's mind with his orders to take down Lergen at any cost. Then he saw one of the Devils stand up and stare at him, its body lit with the very fires of Hell, its glare promising only a burning, fiery demise.
He turned and ran, flying through the tunnel at frankly unwise speeds. He told himself the attack was a bust, and his superiors needed to be informed of what had just happened, before the Empire twisted the narrative into whatever truth served their interests best. He told himself there was nothing more he could do down here but die, whether at the claws of the monsters or by the very same weapons which had crippled his uncle.
Drake stopped dead in his tracks as he emerged from the tunnel. There, hovering above the ground and crackling with overflowing power, was the Imperial super mage, who had broken free of the containment spell. Drake could see the apprentices and his men laying around amidst the rubble, dead or unconscious he couldn't say for about half – the other half were very, very clearly dead.
"You would be wise to surrender," said the super mage, his voice cold as ice. "I promise you that you will be treated in accordance with the laws of war, no matter how little regard your country seems to hold for them." Then, he added in a somehow even colder tone : "Division Y can always use more captive mages."
Well, thought Drake as he slowly raised his arms away from his computation orb, fuck.
February 10th, 1926 – The Inner Sea – Unified States Navy convoy
Nicol Teslus smiled as he breathed in deeply, enjoying the fresh air after so long spent below deck.
The engineers had worked like crazy to get the Titan in a state fit for shipping, and were still working to make it ready for deployment. Teslus himself had been working on the warmachine for what had only felt like a few hours (but had, in fact, been nearly forty) before his assistants had all but bodily dragged him out of the room and told him to clear his head, eat something, wash up and then go to bed.
If he hadn't managed to teach four of the academics the President's people had found for him how to build T-Engines without his help (out of the ten he'd been sent, though at least none of the others had gone mad this time), he would never have been allowed to join this expedition. Which made sense, of course, but it had still chafed him, because it'd reminded him how his entire legacy to Humanity had been hanging on the precarious thread of his own finite, mortal life until then. While not all of Research Group 51's work relied on the arcane technology of the T-Engine, their truly revolutionary inventions did, and the thought that its secrets would be lost with his death had been disheartening to say the least.
The inventor had been required to sit on several meetings where the military officers in command of the expedition had discussed the tactical applications of the Research Group's superweapons. Pretty soon, they had come to the conclusion that they didn't have enough of them to use them as anything but a counter to any superweapons their hypothetical opponent (the Empire was the most likely candidate, but what had happened in Francois, Kemet and Ildoa proved that they weren't the only ones with Elder Magic) might deploy. Strategy wasn't Teslus' area of expertise, so he'd deferred to them, merely answering their questions regarding the technical specifications of the superweapons and devices Research Group 51 brought to the table.
During the trip, they had run tests on the soldiers to find those with enough magical potential to activate the nightvision googles and trained them in their usage. The officers were almost salivating at the thought of using these to deal with Ildoa's banditry problem : they could hardly have asked for a better testing chance than a bunch of scattered Ildoan deserters with poor discipline preying on civilians. They'd also trained additional pilots for the score of completed suits of power armor they'd brought (along with a bunch of spare parts and tools to make field repairs if needed).
Apparently, there had been some kind of commotion in Remula yesterday, with the Allied Kingdom launching an attack on the Imperial task force and getting their backsides handed to them. The magical detection arrays they had brought with them had picked it off all the way across the sea. Some Albish bigwig had been involved, and the Allied Kingdom was fervently denying having authorized the whole thing, which the Imperials were taking as seriously as one might expect.
It would probably delay the official transfer of peacekeeping duties until things were sorted on the diplomatic front (apparently, following the initial schedule might be interpreted as running away due to the raid, which didn't make sense to Teslus but he wasn't a soldier), but that hadn't slowed the convoy down. If anything, the Ildoans were even more eager to have them here than before, as the general understanding was that the Albish were unlikely to try again if there was a chance the Americans could get caught in the crossfire.
Which was fine by him. For all that Teslus was proud of the work he and his colleagues had done (and hadn't that been a new if not unpleasant experience, to no longer work alone on his projects and have people around him who actually managed to follow him most of the time), he was still a pacifist at heart. The engineer part of him might be disappointed if there wasn't an opportunity to field-test their creations, but the rest of him would take the disappointment over the loss of life any such opportunity would involve.
Although, he reflected with a frown, if the whispers he had heard about the Russy Federation were true, then that opportunity might come whether he wanted it or not. Before departing the Unified States, Teslus had been read in on the communiqués the Empire had sent regarding what had happened in Ildoa, as well as the more confidential claims that an agent from the Federation had stolen Elder Magic research from Division Y's own headquarters – research that, according to the Imperials, was incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands.
The Unified States' Intelligence was divided as to whether the Imperials were simply against anyone else having access to their Wunderwaffen or were sincere in their fear of what the Federation might achieve with such knowledge. Given what Teslus knew had occurred in Russy since the revolution, he could well believe the latter. And, much as he believed that maintaining the balance of power between nations would ultimately help prevent devastating conflict, that theory depended on the nations in question maintaining a certain level of rationality, which wasn't frequent in autocracies.
He could only hope, and do his best to ensure the Unified States was ready to play its part if it came to it. With a firm nod to himself, Teslus left the deck and went to get himself something to eat in the mess before going to sleep.
AN : By now, I think it's been established that Lergen responds to mind-numbing terror and fear for his life by becoming extremely sassy. Which wasn't something I planned for, it just happened, and since I think it's funny, I kept it in.
You may have noticed that Teslus is surprisingly chill about the whole 'clash of superweapons in a battle for the fate of the world' thing. That is very much intentional, and I look forward to your updated theories as to what is going on with him now that we have got a POV from him and he isn't acting like the Congregation and the rest of Being X's indoctrinated thralls.
As promised, the next chapter will be something of a breather episode, made up of slice of life scenes from various characters. Well, after perhaps one or two scenes dealing with the immediate aftermath of the Albish attack, of course. What do you all think will be the reaction of the various international parties to this latest stunt of the Round Table ?
And what could Niniane's sudden turn possibly mean, I wonder. Of course, you all already know why Lergen wasn't affected by Merlin's castigation spell at all.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts, theories and suggestions. And I still don't get any emails from ffnet, nor does the site believe any of my stories have gotten any views in the last two months, despite reviews being registered correctly. Hopefully those of you following this fic did receive a notification, at least, because I myself have been reduced to manually checking the Alerts in my settings.
Which isn't much of an imposition, admittedly, but after nearly nine years of things working more or less as they should it's still annoying.
Zahariel out.