From : Brigadier General Zettour
To : Prime Minister Churbull
Subject : Cooperation Offer
Date : July 20th, 1926
Prime Minister,
After careful consideration, we have decided to accept your offer of cooperation against the threat of the Progeny. Our strategists believe that the mages trained in the use of Ancient Kemetian sorcery can be of use in our upcoming operation in the Federation, and such is the importance of this mission that we are willing to look past your nation's previous offences in order to increase its odds of success.
Though doing so may be somewhat gauche, I feel the need to remind you that, should you play us false and your mages attempt to do ANYTHING to impair the successful prosecution of our cleansing operation in Russy, the consequences for the Allied Kingdom in general, and you and your government in particular, will be of the utmost severity.
As Colonel Lergen hinted at in the Southern Continent, we are not afraid of deploying the operatives responsible for many of the mage casualties our enemies have suffered on fools ready to compromise the survival of all Mankind for petty political gains.
With all due respect,
Brigadier General Hans von Zettour, Imperial Army High Command.
INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE ASSEMBLES TO FIGHT RUSSY HORRORS
As the situation in Russy continues to evolve, with more refugees reaching the safety of the Empire every day, the Reich gathers its strength to deal with the foul threat that has chased them from their homes. Yet, for the first time since the Great War began, our brave soldiers will not go into battle alone. The Imperial Eastern Army, which has spent the last few weeks mustering in the Russy city of Tiegenhoff, has been joined by a contingent of American troops, first dispatched to assist with the situation in Ildoa.
This unprecedented alliance between the Empire and the Unified States was the result of intense diplomatic exchanges at the top of our respective militaries. The Solstice Event, which was felt all the way to America, is believed by American arcane experts to be a threat to even their distant homeland, and thus a large part of the USA forces deployed to Ildoa to ensure the Kingdom's stability have moved to reinforce the Imperial Army.
With them have come superweapons of American design, built in the utmost secrecy since the reveal of the Wunderwaffen. Truly, we can all be grateful that our friends from across the ocean have seen reason and chosen to reveal their existence in order to participate in the coming battle for the fate of the Federation and Eastern Europa.
Against the might of such a powerful host, surely the darkness dwelling within the ruins of Moskva will soon be defeated, and the people of Russy freed from the threat of the monsters roaming their Motherland !
In related news, General Rudersdorf praised the reaction of the Imperial people, who have given most generously to the various charities put in place to assist the refugees fleeing from the monsters ravaging the Federation …
Excerpt from the front-page of the Berun Post, July 21st, 1926.
July 22nd, 1926 – Tiegenhoff
Well, thought Niniane as she looked at the flabbergasted faces of her peers, this is just as awkward as I thought it would be.
Ten aerial mages in Albish uniform stood at attention before her. They had arrived to Tiegenhoff mere hours ago, having travelled by boat from Albion to a port in the north-west, before flying the rest of the way under escort by thrice their number in Imperial aerial mages.
Officially, the Imperial mages had already been on their way from the Imperial Northern Army to reinforce the Eastern one, but everybody knew they had been ordered on a detour to make sure the Albish mages didn't go anywhere they weren't supposed to. Imperial High Command might have accepted Prime Minister Churbull's assistance, but while the threat of apocalypse made for unlikely allies, forgetting the Allied Kingdom's behavior in the War so far was another matter entirely.
"Hello, Lancelot," she greeted one of them, a tall gentleman with blond hair, blue eyes, and the kind of face that would seem at home in a stately mansion surrounded by servants whose family had served his for at least five generations.
"Hello, Niniane," the other apprentice of the Royal Wizard replied with a smile, before kissing her proffered hand and looking her up and down. "You seem in fine health. The Imperials have treated you well, I hope ?"
"Their hospitality has been impeccable, don't worry." It really had been : she'd spent her time in the Empire inside a lovely cottage, with a pair of female guards and permission to go visit the nearby village. Yes, Division Y had drawn her blood for 'testing purposes', whatever that meant, but their doctor had been very efficient about it and she'd been given more than enough food to recover quickly.
"Good." Lancelot hesitated briefly before continuing : "I admit that we didn't expect to see you here : I was under the impression the Imperials intended to keep you and the rest of the prisoners from Remula under lock and key until the end of the War. But if you are here, have you … have you heard anything about our master ?"
"I have," she replied, steeling herself. "He is doing well too. Apparently, the Imperials considered pulling him out of confinement to help in this, but they decided he was too unstable to risk it."
"Unstable ?" Lancelot bristled at the word. He had always been one of Merlin's most dedicated students, and the accusation clearly stung him. Not that Niniane looked down on him for it : she had been much the same before her experiences in Kemet. But this needed addressing now, before Lancelot did something stupid.
"Yes, Lancelot, unstable," she repeated. "For God's sake, Merlin would have razed Remula to the ground with an uncontrolled detonation spell if I hadn't stopped him."
The other apprentice's eyes widened at her confession, confirming that Albion still had no idea of her part in the Royal Wizard's capture – though after today, that was certain to change. The fact that she might have just burned any chance of returning to her homeland might have given her pause, if not for the fact that, like every other mage in Eastern Europa, she could feel the baleful presence of the Dark Mother in the distance, radiating tainted mana like a dark magical sun.
"And the mana detection radars of the Ildoans had already picked up our signatures, and not all of them would have been destroyed by the explosion," she went on. "Over half a million people would have died, and such an atrocity would have branded Albion as the enemy of the entire world. The Imperials would have sent their Wunderwaffen to our homeland en masse, before dismantling our entire colonial empire, and the rest of the world would have cheered them on, if not joined them. And to top it all off, the old coot only did it because he couldn't accept being wrong about Lergen !"
Niniane took a deep breath : somehow, she had ended up nearly screaming by the end of her tirade.
"Sorry about that," she said to a stunned Lancelot. "I have had several nightmares about that scenario in the last months." She didn't anymore, of course : nowadays, like every mage on the Russy front, her nightmares were about the thing which had devoured Moskva.
"I … I see," said Lancelot. He clearly didn't, but as long as he was willing to let it go, that was fine. "Well, if Lord Merlin isn't going to be here, then let's get onto our next, more pressing concern. What can you tell us about what we're going to face ? All the intelligence we have comes from that bloody illegal news-sheet back home."
That would be Mister Andrew's reports, then. Niniane had met the Albish journalist when she'd arrived in the camp from the Empire : they had tea together (because even here, in the monsters-ravaged Russy, certain standards had to be maintained). His faith in the Allied Kingdom had been as shaken by what he'd seen in the Rhine as her own by what she'd witnessed in Kemet.
"I will share what our hosts have told me," she said to Lancelot. "Come, let's find somewhere to sit."
She wasn't sure what game Churbull was playing by sending the remaining apprentices of Merlin to Tiegenhoff, but she was going to do her best to ensure they were as prepared for what was to come as she could make them.
"Four-hundred-and-fifty (450) instances of Projekt W, of various sub-types. Per order of the Director, the remaining have remained at Division Y's headquarters, to guard against possible sabotage, either by Being K's pawns or by another party hostile to the Reich. Listed below is their repartition by sub-type :
Phantoms : one hundred eighty-three (183), assigned to the main battle force.
Mirages : one hundred eighty-four (184), assigned to the main battle force.
Echoes : ten (10), brought in case of unexpected aquatic Progeny, otherwise assigned to the main battle force.
Shadows : fifteen (15), assigned to reconnaissance and targeted strikes.
Spectres : twenty (20), assigned to the reserves, to be deployed on targeted strike missions.
Whispers : twenty-four (24), assigned to the reconnaissance corps.
Nightmares : six (6), assigned to the main battle force.
Vampires : three (3), assigned to the main battle force.
Efreets : three (3), assigned to the main battle force.
Widows : two (2), assigned to seek-and-destroy missions against Progeny leaders (Satyrs).
Every instance of Projekt U has been mobilized for Operation Gottesmörder. In total, they number forty-one, and can be split in the following group :
One (1) Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov, the Director's personal adjutant. Two (2) doses of Endlose Nacht, and the blood of the Director herself.
Seven (7) veterans of the Battles of the Rhine and Bovariastadt. Two (2) doses of Endlose Nacht, and the blood of enemy Eikons (the side effects of the latter have completely disappeared at time of writing).
Thirteen (13) veterans of the Battle of Bovariastadt. One (1) dose of Endlose Nacht.
Twenty (20) fresh recruits following the Battle of Remula and the break-in at Division Y's headquarters, whose first deployment as members of Projekt U was against the Progeny.
Fourteen (14) Lunarchs, former Eikons who were freed from the influence of Being X during the climax of Operation Bildersturm. After extensive testing and training at Division Y's headquarters, the Lunarchs have been judged to be the equals of an Untote with unlimited mage blood supply. While inferior to an Untote under the effects of the Endlose Nacht serum, they are also less susceptible to the overenthusiastic behavior observed in Untoten partaking of the serum.
(Director's reminder : the Lunarchs' lack of the Eikons' indoctrination ability has been repeatedly confirmed. There is no need to fear any mental pollution of soldiers deployed alongside them.)
Ten (10) instances of Projekt P. They have proven their ability to defeat Lycans in close-quarters, as well as immunity to the Satyrs' mind-altering abilities, and should be deployed to deal with the latter as a priority.
(Addendum : Günther has recently become the second instance of Projekt P to be capable of speech. While this can facilitate communications, it must be remembered that he is still the equivalent of a child in terms of language skills, and shouldn't be separated from his handler for long.)
Nine (9) instances of Projekt H. The Hünen that were damaged during the battles of Bovariastadt and the Holy See have been fully repaired, and upgrades done to their armor and weaponry to solve issues revealed during their first urgent deployment.
Fifty-three (53) aerial mages trained in the use of the D-24 dual-core computation orb. Of these, eighteen (18) will be reserved to operate alongside the Hünen, providing shields and additional firepower as per the method used during the deployment of Projekt H during Operation Bildersturm.
Five hundred (500) Division Y troopers armed with M-912 rifles. The effectiveness of the M-912 on the Progeny has been extensively field-tested : a single shot can disable Progeny infantry, though they can survive hits that do not hit what passes for vital organs within their demented biology. As such, concentrated and sustained fire is recommended as the best way to deal with Progeny swarms. Due to the fragility of the M-912 rifle (which remains an issue despite numerous attempts at improving the design), the stockpiles of Division Y's headquarters were all but emptied, bringing a total of two thousand three hundred and sixty-seven (2367) units to the Tiegenhoff inventory. Division Y's officers have run several training courses on how to handle the M-912 rifle with Imperial soldiers, but the volatility of the weapon combined with the short time available resulted in a low passing rate : only one hundred and eight (108) soldiers were deemed qualified for the use of the weapon by the start of Operation Gottesmörder.
One (1) Projekt Mjölnir, the original Projekt from which the M-912s are mere derivatives. Currently stored within a secure container and watched constantly by a Division Y team.
(Director's note : Projekt M is our best shot at taking out Being K quickly and without heavy casualties, but it has never been tested at full power. The magical formulas check out, but we are dealing with enough energy to wipe out a good portion of Europa if we mess this up.)
Research Group 51 brought with it twenty (20) suits of power armor, along with enough pilots for them all, and one (1) Titan. General Hutton has authorized Professor Teslus to share the specifications of these warmachines. The suits of power armor (provisional code name : 'Knights') have been assigned to the frontline, alongside the Werwölfe. Their ranged weaponry has greater range than most Werwolf abilities.
(Director's note : we have made sure to expose the pilots of the Knights to the Werwölfe's transformed aspects to ensure they don't panic during battle. It took several days, and two freak-outs of quite impressive proportion, but they've all gotten used to it enough to fight alongside them. And besides, it should provide good training for the horrors of the Progeny).
Eleven (11) Albish mages trained in the use of Ancient Kemetian warding spells, led by Miss Niniane. The wards have proven their effectiveness against Mythos spells and entities alike, though they haven't been tested against those of a higher Class. While Colonel Lergen vouches for Miss Niniane's character, the other mages' dedication to the Operation remains suspect : they are not to be deployed anywhere near Projekt M or any other vital component of Operation Gottesmörder.
One (1) Zertrümmerer array, piloted by Subject Totenkopf (real identity classified), who volunteered for deployment when he learned about the situation in Russy, a proposal the Director approved personally. While the Zertrümmerer array has never been used in a real battle, it is believed by the engineers who worked on it and observed its tests that it should be capable of standing up to all types of Progeny in a one-on-one fight (barring the Kinder themselves, for obvious reasons).
(Director's note : until the end of Operation Gottesmörder, keep the Zertrümmerer array away from the Albish mage contingent to avoid a potential diplomatic incident.)"
Extract from a report on the Mythos assets available for Operation Gottesmörder, July 22nd, 1926.
From : Colonel Lergen
To : Brigadier General Zettour
Subject : Coalition Readiness
Date : July 23rd, 1926
General,
Our preparations are complete. General Hutton, Major Degurechaff and myself have polished the last details of Operation Gottesmörder. We will depart Tiegenhoff tomorrow at dawn, and not return to the Empire until the threat of Being K is dealt with.
In addition to Projekt M, we have designed a number of contingency plans to deal with this Mythos incursion. While I dare not believe that all will go as planned, I do think we have done all the preparations we could possibly do : the rest will depend on the efforts of our soldiers, be they mundane or enhanced.
May God be with us all.
"… it is with great shame and contrition that I must report that the fiend still eludes us. We have found plenty of evidence of her activities, and with time and care, some of the survivors might eventually recover, but the demon herself remains ever one step ahead of our hunting parties, despite our best efforts and those of the mages recalled from the war in Manchuria …
… based upon the traces of her passage we've found, she appears to be making her way south, toward the capital. Once again, I respectfully advise your August Majesty to remain within the Imperial Palace. While its wards might not hold up to a determined assault by this threat, they will still give warning to my colleagues, and time to intervene and secure your personage …
… maintaining secrecy remains of paramount importance. The records are clear that the Fox has ever been at her most dangerous if allowed to spread her lies within the hearts of men, and merely knowing of her existence gives her an opening. When last she roamed our beloved country, dealing with her cults of deluded worshippers was one of the hardest tasks our honored ancestors had to face …
… despite our countries' tumultuous history, our colleagues from the mainland are well aware of the threat she poses and the damage she inflicted to both our people in the past. As our hunt continues, they have begun to search through their ancient libraries for the methods by which she was chased from their land in ages past, just as our own archivists search through our own records to reconstruct the sealing spells with which she was imprisoned …"
Extracts from a letter from Rokuro Adashino, Supreme Onmyōji of the Akitsushima Dominion, to the Akitsushiman Emperor, delivered to the Imperial Palace on July 20th, 1926.
July 23rd, 1926 – Castle Schwartzstein
Kory woke up covered in cold sweat, shaking in terror, with a scream on her lips and the image of too many big, yellow eyes in her mind. Then someone hugged her, gently, and even in her panicked state, Kory recognized them as safe.
"It's okay, Kory," said Miss Elya softly as she hugged Kory close, rubbing her back as she whispered in her ear. "It's okay. You're safe."
Kory sobbed in the embrace, relieved beyond words that the nightmare was over. She had dreamt of the big black bad goat again, the monster who had eaten a city full of people. She'd had those dreams ever since the goat had come to the world, and she really, really wished they would stop.
"Is the young miss awake again, Elya ?" called out Grampa Gehrman from the next room.
"Yes, Professor," replied Elya. "Could you get us some warm milk, please ?"
"Of course. Evelyn ?"
"Yes, Gehrman," came a woman's voice, with a weird accent. "One moment."
Gently, Elya helped Kory out of bed, and they walked into the other room, where Elya sat Kory at a table and continued to look after her while Miss Evelyn warmed a cup of tea for the two of them.
Sitting in front of his workshop, where he was working late again despite everyone who told him he shouldn't, Grampa Gehrman was in a wheelchair, like Miss Elya used to be. Unlike Miss Elya, though, it wasn't because he was hurt and needed time to get better. Kory had asked Tanya about it, and she'd said that because Grampa Gehrman was old, he was tired, and didn't have the strength to walk anymore.
Kory had asked if that would happen to her too, and Tanya had smiled and said, maybe, maybe not. If she ate her vegetables and did her workouts, then it was less likely. So Kory had made sure to eat all her vegetables, because while Grampa Gehrman was nice, and had the nice lady Evelyn to push his wheelchair, she didn't want to not be able to walk and run when she was old.
"Here," said Miss Evelyn, putting two cups of hot milk on the table for Kory and Elya.
The two of them sipped their drinks, the warm goodness and bright lights of the room slowly pushing away the shadows of Kory's nightmare. She didn't sleep with Vreta and the others anymore, but that wasn't because she'd nightmares. Tanya had said something about the bad goat attacking her while she was away, so she needed to stay with Elya and Evelyn, who would protect her – Grampa Gehrman would help too, but he was too old, and he shouldn't fight anymore. But when Kory had told that to him, Gehrman had laughed, a sad little laugh, and told her that if it came to it, he would make sure she was safe even if he was too old to fight.
Kory didn't understand, but she felt that, somehow, not helping would break Grampa Gehrman.
She looked through the window, and into the darkness of night. There, far away, was the Very Bad Thing, the big goat which kept appearing in her dreams. Kory didn't know what it was, but she knew it was very, very bad. She had felt it appearing, just like everyone in the castle. Thankfully, Tanya had been with her when that'd happened, and she'd been able to calm Kory down.
But Tanya wasn't here anymore. She had left with most of the people in the castle to go fight the Very Bad Thing, just like she had fought the evil dragon in Vreta's home, and the bad people who had stolen Kory's old name.
Even Doctor Iosefka was gone, because a lot of people were going to get hurt and need her help to get better.
Kory didn't want people to get hurt. She had never, not in the few months of her life that she remembered, wanted anyone to get hurt.
She wished there was someone she could pray to for Tanya and everyone to come back safe.
July 24th, 1926 – Western Russy Airspace
At long last, the Imperial Army and its allies had begun to move out of Tiegenhoff and toward Moskva.
From my position in the air, protected from the wind by a mage's shield, the view was truly spectacular. Thousands and thousands of Imperial soldiers were on the march, along with every piece of motorized equipment Colonel Lergen had been able to get his hands on. Tanks, trucks, motorbikes : with the Dark Mother's influence driving most animals crazy, using horses (something even the supposedly modern Imperial Army still did) was impossible, so machine and manpower would have to do.
We were bringing enough heavy ordinance to make the Rhine Front blush : artillery was the battlefield's great equalizer, and the best way of using the conventional troops at our disposal as anything else than walking enemy rations. Given how ludicrously outnumbered our Mythos elements were going to be, even with me all but emptying Castle Schwartzstein and the Americans bringing their own toys to play, the ability to cover the land in high explosives was going to play a very important part in our battle plan.
The mere thought of the cost figures for all of this was enough to make my head spin. Simply moving this host for a single day, let alone fighting, would cost the Reich more money than the entire monthly budget of Division Y. And once the artillery shells started flying, that cost would increase even further.
The fact that Mythos research was, on the whole, so much less expensive than conventional warfare was another reason why preventing proliferation was so important. Waging a modern war was ruinously expensive : prior to the Great War, I don't think anybody in Europa had any idea just how expensive (except me, but I was cheating off my future knowledge of total war). Morality aside, that simple fact should prevent any country with sane leadership from using it to pursue its interests, since whatever you stood to gain by conquest was very unlikely to be worth the price you would need to pay.
And yes, I was aware that hadn't stopped wars in my previous world, but I was still pretty sure there had been less wars fought with artillery than with bows and arrows, even if the ones which had been fought had been much more destructive. The point was, Mythos superweapons combined the worst of the two : they were both hideously destructive, and relatively cheap. The only barrier to entry was knowledge.
I didn't know what the budget for Research Group 51 looked like, but I was pretty sure it was several orders of magnitude larger than Division Y's, given what they had managed to accomplish in so short a time, even with a genius like Teslus at the helm. Teslus himself was somewhere in the advancing force, in case we needed some last-minute maintenance (though I also wanted him somewhere I could keep an eye on him, just in case he turned out to be a plant of Being X or another of his ilk after all).
The first phase of Operation Gottesmörder was to reach an abandoned Russy train, which our scouting parties had located and our engineer corps spent the last days working around the clock to refurbish it. While the Federation's rail network was far inferior to the Empire's, it was still our best shot to get the components of Projekt M where they needed to be. Then we would be able to advance far more quickly to Moskva, at which point we'd see if all these hours of planning with Colonel Lergen and General Hutton had been worth anything.
This, I reflected, was not the safe and peaceful posting I had been hoping for when I had been sent to Castle Schwartzstein, what felt like a lifetime ago. Yet try as I might, I couldn't think of any point where I could realistically have prevented this. It wasn't like I had known what my research paper would result in, and once Mythos magic had been discovered by Division Y, trying to sabotage it to prevent the Empire from adopting it would only have resulted in my removal from the Division, leaving the occultists to manage themselves – a thought which, even now, made me shiver with dread.
To give them their due, they probably wouldn't have messed things up quite as badly as the Federation had, but since there wouldn't have been anyone to stop whatever catastrophe they ended up unleashing, the end result would likely have been even worse, hard as it might be to believe while considering the devastation of Russy.
Aerial mages had managed to make contact with the remnants of the Federation Army, which was holding its ground in Josefgrad. They were keeping the city clean of the Progeny through the use of concentrated artillery fire being called any time their scouts saw so much as a hint of a monster in the distance. With their industry in as much chaos as the rest of the country, it wasn't a sustainable way to fight, but it was working for now, and keeping the Progeny from devouring tens of thousands more civilians.
On the whole, the Federation was handling the loss of Moskva exactly like I had thought it would : poorly. With how obsessed Comrade Josef had been with concentrating power in his hands to prevent anyone from betraying and usurping him, the Solstice Event had decapitated every single national organization in Russy, and the rest of the country was promptly descending into anarchy. I was bitterly certain that the only reason there wasn't half-a-dozen civil wars already was because a large chunk of the country was busy fighting off the threat of the Progeny, and because the Empire had made its intent to intervene in the region clear, so any would-be warlords were waiting to see how that panned out.
Such a waste. Such a terrible, monstrous waste.
From a purely cold-blooded, mathematical perspective, I supposed a point could be made that this disaster would thoroughly discredit the Communist ideology, thus sparing this world the atrocities it had caused in my previous one, along with all the messes the Cold War had left all over the planet. In such a costs-and-benefits analysis, the deaths of nearly the entire civilian population of Moskva and its surroundings might be considered an acceptable price : two millions lives lost to preserve those of many, many more.
To my own faint surprise, however, after spending so much time preparing Operation Gottesmörder and learning more about what Being K had done to this land, the very notion now filled me with disgust. Given my usual pragmatism, it had taken me some time to realize why : any 'greater good' argument that justified death and devastation on such a scale just wasn't good enough. There was a line between a necessary evil you had to live with, and an evil you just failed to stop, and this disaster was firmly in the latter category, for a number of reasons, both ethical and personal.
After all, I had been the one to lead Division Y to finding the Mythos, however unwittingly. I was the one who had brought the Kindermärchen into this world, the one who had judged the security measures of Castle Schwartzstein were good enough. And yes, the thieves had only succeeded due to the literal intervention of a god-like being, but given the nature of Division Y's work, that was no excuse.
I shook my head. In the end, it didn't matter. Nobody but me would ever know what could have been if not for the arrogance of the Federation's rulers unleashing Being K upon themselves and their people. And while I intended to argue for the people of the Federation to be treated fairly once the current crisis passed, if only to ensure none of them felt desperate enough to delve into the Mythos again, my influence on matters of international policies would be limited once the War ended.
And the War had ended, except for this last battle for the fate of the world. Even the Albish had pulled their head out of their backside and joined us, though we were keeping a wary eye on their mage contingent, just in case. If Churbull tried to restart hostilities after this, he would be dragged out of office and left hung out to dry, possibly literally.
I chuckled at the mental image of the rotund, cigar-chewing Albish Prime Minister being kicked out on the street, before a voice pulled me out of my caricature-like imaginings :
"Director ?"
"It's nothing, Zerayah," I told the Nazzadi mage. She was flying close by, along with Wüstemann : the two of them were my assigned guards for the day, until the sun set and Visha was fully operational once more. "Just thinking about things."
She accepted that non-answer without question. Truth be told, Zerayah's talent as an aerial mage was humbling. Despite how little time she had spent training, she was at least the equal of all but a few of Division Y's mages, and she didn't have Weiss' 'advantage' of an entire orichalcum prosthetic limb to channel her mana through. It wasn't just her Nazzadi heritage, either : while none of the off-world refugees who had chosen to become mages had flunked out of my training regimen, she was still head and shoulders above them. Sometimes, I wondered if she was perhaps the last descendant of some kind of magical royalty, from before the calamity which had destroyed Nazza-Duhni.
… not that such a theoretical line of royalty had done much to protect Nazza-Duhni in the end. Even now, we still didn't know where Akhar-Zegog had come from, nor what exactly had happened to the Nazzadi homeworld – and, even more worryingly, whether it could happen to our world as well. The Devourer of Hope hadn't been responsible for the planet's broken skies, I was sure of it, and Being K wasn't likely as a candidate either.
I sighed. It seemed that, even once this War was over, the peaceful retirement I longed for was still far, far away.
AN : Somehow, when I started writing this story, I didn't think it would involve a scene where a Jeanne d'Arc expy wakes up from a nightmare of Not!Shub-Niggurath before being handed a cup of hot milk by the Doll from Bloodborne. And yet, here we are.
Gods, I love writing.
I ran the numbers for the Werwölfe after checking my notes for the entire story. Unless I made a mistake somewhere, between the successes of each Ritual of Union and the casualties taken by Division Y, there should be 38 left in Castle Schwartzstein, but I didn't put the number in the report to cover me in case I miscalculated (plus it hardly seems like the kind of intel that would be included in a file General Hutton has access to).
The response to the April's Fook Omake was overwhelmingly positive. As I posted on SpaceBattles, I'm considering writing a full-fledged story from it, but only once I have finished this one. Certainly, given how much time I'm spending playing Helldivers 2 these days, I might as well write a fanfic out of it.
But it will be a much shorter one than this one. Because of the way my brain works, I already have an idea for the ending of A Communist Cyborg's War Against Managed Democracy, and I fully intend for that fanfic to remain within a reasonable length. I mean it. Stop laughing !
Next up, Operation Gottesmörder starts in earnest. As always, I look forward to your thoughts, theories and suggestions for this chapter.
Zahariel out.
PS : also, the alerts on FFnet seem to be broken again.