AYKRR Chapter 17

All Quiet on The Eastern Front

Warning: Canon typical violence. Perhaps a bit more than canon typical.

7th September 1942,

St. Petersburg,

That morning, Tsar Aleksei arranged for two colonels to drive me and Ludwig to two different sections of the borders. Neither of those sections had ever been attacked by a Moskva faction skirmish. Before I departed, I had ordered half of my security detail to leave with Ludwig, despite his protest that he could take care of himself. Better to be safe than sorry.

"Wait!" I heard a cry before I could board a military truck with the guide that the Tsar had arranged for me. I could fly directly to the border, but then one of my men would have to piggyback our ride along the way.

I turned around to see Millicent Caldwell running towards me, camera in hand. "Chancellor! Can I come with you to the border?" She asked.

I looked at her in puzzlement. Why would she follow me to such a boring section of the border?

"I want to conduct an interview of the soldiers guarding the border. The southern and southwestern borders are too dangerous to conduct an interview, so I thought I'd hitch a ride to the east with you." She answered my unuttered question, smiling.

I've always felt uneasy around Millicent Caldwell. The two times in the past that I had let myself slip in front of her was proof of the effectiveness of her easy-going façade. She would lure her interviewee into a false sense of security, make them think that they were talking to a close friend, and let them accidentally blurt out critical information. Logically, I should refuse her request. But I wouldn't be able to explain the reason to my driver and my guide.

Begrudgingly, I let her come with me. Learning from my past mistakes, I avoided running my mouth. Luckily, the colonel that was ordered to take me to the far eastern border of the Russy Tsardom, Ivan, was a talkative man. He had basically talked the whole way, expounding on his experience during this war and his hopes on the Tsar to lead the land of Rus towards a new prosperous chapter. I asked him if the Tsar was often involved in the war's strategic planning, and he gave me a negative answer. Apparently the Tsar was more well-versed in governance than warfare.

When we arrived at the borders, we were greeted by major general Dimitri Smirnov, who was responsible for the two divisions stationed in this fifty-kilometre stretch of border. Me and Millicent were welcomed into his command tent, where we were served some biscuits and tea. It seemed that despite the Tsar's austerity, many generals still had a taste for the small luxuries in life. The general didn't seem nervous to see me at all, if anything, he looked at me as though an angel had descended.

"General, I trust that there has been no border infractions from Kostroma?" I asked in Russy.

"Of course not, Madam Chancellor. Mikhailov might be greedy, but he knows that if he attacks the Tsardom, he leaves himself vulnerable to the Moskavites. This part of the border has never been attacked for as long as I have been in charge."

I nodded. That was fantastic. I could conduct my inspection of the border fortification in peace. I then asked if I could have a quick look at the border fortifications, which made the major general look uneasy.

"Well, Madam Chancellor, we dug some trenches for our fortifications, and I just don't want you to subject yourself to such a filthy environment."

I scoffed. "I've lived, eaten and slept in trenches for eight years. A few minutes more is nothing."

Acquiescing to my request, he allowed my guide to lead me to the trenches reinforcing the border. The trench was dug through an expanse of flat plains and small hills. Just five kilometres to the south was a great forest. As I approached on foot, I recognised the fortification for what it was.

Absolute dogshit.

The line reinforcing the border was just a long zigzagging worm, perhaps two men wide and chest deep at most. I almost felt the itch to pick up a shovel and dig a real trench for them. The most challenging fortification built there were the pillboxes, which was a death sentence if you get caught sitting in one. Artillery or mages would tear those pillboxes down like papier mâché. The men were at least thankfully armed with Stg-40s and machine guns. They also had a few First Great War era 3-inch anti-air guns to deal with mages. A few artillery pieces. No tanks. I sure hoped that the southern and southwestern borders of the Russy Tsardom were more well-defended than this.

Even worse, the men here were complete greenhorns. According to colonel Ivan, most of them had just finished basic training and were sent here as their first assignment.

If this area was ever attacked, it would be obliterated within minutes. Luckily, all of the Moskva faction's mages and men were focused on the oblasts of Pskov and Leningrad, not Vologda.

My and Ms. Caldwell's presence stuck out like fireflies in the dark. I wasn't sure if it was because it had been ages since they've seen women, or if my reputation in the Russy Tsardom preceded me, but I was stared at everywhere I went. When they started saluting, it confirmed that it was the latter.

I hopped down into a section of the fence, and the soldiers there immediately made way for me to walk through. At least the trench here was clean and free of rats.

I called out for one of the men to come to me, who looked as though he was a deer caught in front of a car's headlights. But the colonel pulled him over for me to ask a question.

"What's your name, sergeant?" I glanced at his uniform to determine his rank.

"Boris Volkov, ma'am." Whether the man was shaking because of me or the cold, I had no idea. Surely my lack of stature would dispel any intimidation that my reputation casted over these men. I was a good five foot nothing in height. Boris here was at least a foot taller than me. Millicent stood behind me, ready to record his response.

"Do you find manning the border interesting, sergeant? Answer truthfully."

The man paused for a second to think, before answering. "I think it's terribly dull, ma'am. But at least we're not getting bombarded like the boys to the west."

I nodded in appreciation at his honesty. No soldier preferred getting shot at.

"So, what do you soldiers like to do to pass the time?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing much, Chancellor. We play cards or dice. Maxim over there even invented this game where you would bet on the number of birds in a flock when they fly by. For example, that flock of birds there is a dense one. Probably sixty or seventy… wait." I followed Boris's gaze and noticed the flock of flying birds he was pointing at.

Only they were not birds. They were too fast, and too bright. Spells. Travelling at us at rapid speed. Just before they hit, I activated my shield, protecting both the sergeant, the colonel and Milly. The spells slammed against the border fortifications like a hammer on anvil. The air was immediately filled with the screams of dying men, thickened with dust and soot.

Multiple realisations came to me at once. We were under attack by mages. Kostroma was no longer neutral. They were under control of the NKVD.

Immediately, I launched into the sky, activating my Type 99. I shouted for Milly to find safety and for someone to call for reinforcement using a communication spell. My six security mages ascended with me.

"Orders?" Neumann asked.

I activated a sensory spell. Seventy-two magic signals. Those mages were around forty kilometres away. Speed of around five hundred kilometres per hour. If we fought, we would be outnumbered by a factor of ten. This wasn't just a skirmish. This was a full-blown attack, aimed to secure territory. That meant the mages should be accompanied by regular troops.

Just as I thought, my optical enhancement spells let me see that emerging from the tree line was a massive wave of infantry soldiers, supported by hundreds of tanks advancing towards our position.

The border guards here numbered only 20,000. My lowest estimate for the number of troops heading for us was at least 400,000, and they haven't even finished emerging from the tree line. At least a thousand tanks too. I cursed. This wasn't a simple skirmish but a full invasion of Vologda. I hoped that Ludwig wasn't facing the same thing as me in Arkhangelsk.

The most logical thing to do right now was to retreat. I didn't sign up to fight against overwhelming odds. This wasn't the First Great War anymore where I had to listen to orders or be court-martialed. I was the one giving orders now.

However, if I did retreat, my reputation and credibility would be in tatters. My popularity would drop like a brick for my hypocrisy of sending hundreds of thousands into war, only to show my cowardice at the earliest opportunity. If I retreated and let the Moskavites cross the border, they might push to take all of Vologda. This devastating news would undo all of the morale raising I did. The war effort back home might even suffer, leading to OZEV failing our objective of defeating the Moskva faction before winter.

I've backed myself into a wall. I needed to do something to shift responsibility away from myself. Fortunately, I could see major general Dimitri Smirnov run towards the trench. He was surely going to order a full retreat when he saw the difference between the two forces.

"HOLD THE LINE AT ALL COST! FOR THE MOTHERLAND! NO NEED TO FEAR THEIR MAGES! WE HAVE THE ARGENT WITH US!" He shouted, dashing my hopes like dust in the wind. What was with old generals and honourable last stands. It would expose my agenda if I came down to argue with him for a full retreat, so I had to make do with what I had.

Damn you, Being X. I was sure this was his fault somehow.

I sighed in resignation. At least this time I'll get to directly shoot at commies.

I turned to my bodyguards. "We'll snipe their mages from afar first to whittle them down. Once they're close enough to engage, perform evasive dogfighting. Once the line is overrun, I'll grab Ms. Caldwell, and we'll perform a fighting retreat. When reinforcements arrive, we'll come with them to take back this point." That should convince people that I courageously fought until it was deemed impossible to continue. My coming back to take back the border should also prevent my reputation from being damaged.

My men muttered confirmations.

We all aimed our rifles at the approaching mages. They were within fifteen kilometres now. The effective sniping range for a mage increased with the quality of the computation orb and rifle, which can increase sniping range by up to a few kilometres. But the main deciding factor for a mage's sniping skill was skill.

The average mage could hit a target within three kilometres. The worst soldier in my 203rd could hit a target from ten kilometres away. My max range was thirty kilometres.

We waited until they were eleven kilometres away from us before we started charging our spells. All of my bodyguards were channeling an artillery spell. I alone was using a thermobaric bombardment spell. As my spell would be the most destructive, I would fire first, while my bodyguards would fire after a delay to pick off survivors. After that, free firing.

I fingered the Type 95 hanging from my neck. Should I use it? As much as I hated Being X's device and its mental corruption, I had a decently high chance of perishing or being seriously injured if I solely relied on the Type 99 in this battle out of sheer stubbornness. I've been out of practice for eleven years, and the enemy were mages with dual-core computation orbs that performed nearly on par with the Type 97. This wasn't the First Great War anymore when the massive difference in computation orb technology and training had allowed me and my men to roll through mages with ease.

We were also severely outnumbered. Considering this offensive was a massive one, it would also make sense for the enemy to field their best mages. And who knew whether they had further reinforcement or hidden anti-air support.

Additionally, if I died here, OZEV's intervention would fall apart. My death would surely demoralise OZEV and the Russy Tsardom, leading to the opposite effect that I wanted when I came to the Russy Tsardom. Without me to lead Germania, would Visha and Ludwig be able to hold OZEV together against the threats of the communists and TATO?

I couldn't bear to imagine what Visha's reaction would be. How heartbroken would she be? How long would she grieve? How furious would she be that I broke our promise and gallivanted off to a battlefield just to perish? I couldn't hurt her like that simply because of my vendetta against Being X.

At the end of the day, I loved her more than I hated Being X and his damned contraption. I had too much to live for to even risk dying for a personal grudge. With my resolve hardened, I started channeling my mana into the Type 95.

"Neumann," I called out for my trusty security chief. "If I start acting weird, I need you and the men to ignore it."

"The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways." I muttered loudly. "Do not fear them, for the Lord your God is the one fighting for you."

As the spell started growing unstable with how much mana I was pumping into it, I let the spell go. It flew from my rifle like a shooting star across the sky, leaving a sonic boom in its track.

"Your enemies are tinder, and you are the flame."

3 minutes ago,

Kostroma Oblast,

Lev waited in the shrubbery with the rest of his mage battalion. Next to him, his friend Karl fiddled with his borrowed SV-1 computation orb. Director Kruglov had wanted to portray an image of strength, so he had ordered the NKVD to rotate around the eighty or so SV-1 orbs that they had to whomever went on active missions that day. In this way, they could fool OZEV and the other factions in the Russy Federation into thinking that all eight battalions in the NKVD were equipped with dual-core orbs.

"Don't tinker with your orb, Karl. It's one of the substandard ones. You might break it by accident." Lev warned his comrade.

After the main factory for producing their SV-1 orbs was destroyed, they had to switch production to their auxiliary factory. However, the factory's productivity was so poor that Director Kruglov had approved reusing the same computation case of the old single-core orb for the SV-1 orbs produced there. In that way, they could produce SV-1 orbs at a quicker pace, albeit with slightly worse performance. They could also break if you fiddle with them and make something come loose.

Quantity over quality. The good old doctrine of the Russy Federation.

As an A-class mage, Lev was using a normal SV-1 orb, while Karl was a weaker mage and thus used a substandard one.

Lev checked his watch. 9:58am. In two minutes, his battalion commander Major Sokolov will signal the beginning of Operation Conqueror. As a squadron commander, Lev was expected to closely follow his lead.

"Hey, do you think they'll have mages there?" Karl asked.

"Probably not. OZEV just came yesterday. If they did station mages, it'll just be a flight or two." Lev answered. "Still, expect strong resistance. It'll be a bitch putting OZEV mages down. The Germanian ones especially are in a class of their own."

"At least we're not the ones in charge of distracting the Devil, eh?" Karl joked.

"I sure don't envy them at all." Lev muttered. The Devil of the Rhine was sure to be present where the din of battles was the loudest. That meant the southern border of the Russy Tsardom in the battle to take back Novgorod. And that meant the boogie woman of mages was as far away from them as possible.

There was a commotion at the head of the battalion as Major Sokolov gave them the signal that Operation Conqueror was a go.

Like they had been ordered, Lev's battalion aimed their rifles up, channeling an artillery spell. One kilometre away to their left was another battalion who were doing the same. As they were over fifty kilometres away from the enemy to avoid detection, they would be firing their volley in a parabola.

"3,2,1. Fire!" Major Sokolov ordered.

Seventy-two artillery spells travelled to the firmament before falling down like meteors. Immediately, his battalion ascended and advanced towards the enemy line. When the artillery spells detonated, that would be the signal for the main army forty-five kilometres ahead of them to advance into Vologda.

Flying three kilometres up in the air, Lev could see the artillery volley decimating the enemy trench. A fantastic surprise attack. With luck, they would have taken out the enemy general as well.

Lev detected magic signals flying through the smoke and dust kicked up by the volley. Seven mages total. He almost felt bad for how badly they were outnumbered. If they were smart, they'd escape before it was too late. That was until one of the men in his battalion yelled.

"Major! Several Named detected!" Shit. They could expect moderate casualties then. A Named was at least an ace.

"How many?" Major Sokolov yelled back.

"Six, sir! All except the one in the middle. That one's magic signature isn't in our database." A corporal reported. Lev used an optical spell to spy at the opposing mages. Like the corporal said, there was one much smaller mage amongst the six larger Named mages. Must be a teenage girl who recently joined the army or something.

At the corporal's report, everyone in the battalion started pulling up the Named registry with the computation orb's mental interface to determine their identity. What they saw nearly made them sweat bullets.

Dirk Meyer. The Cutthroat. 11 kills.

Emilie Hoffman. The Spider. 12 kills.

Adolf Weber. Headbasher. 18 kills.

Finn Bartel. The Maw. 19 kills. 203rd mage battalion veteran.

Akim Fischer. The Disposer. 22 kills. 203rd mage battalion veteran.

Rhiner Neumann. The Rhino. 53 kills. 203rd mage battalion veteran.

Every single one of them had fought in the Second Great War. Each and every single one of them was considered an elite mage. Not to mention that three of the Devil's Own were present. This revelation almost made Lev's battalion halt in their tracks, but an order to keep advancing from Major Sokolov made them press on.

"I don't care if they have an ace of aces! We outnumber them! If I see a single one of you turn back, I'll have you shot!"

Reluctantly, they pressed forth. Lev could see doubt and hesitation in his men's eyes now. Karl was sweating like a block of ice left under the sun.

The enemy mages had assembled in a formation and started charging their spells. Lev frowned in confusion. They were still at least ten kilometres away. That was too soon to be charging their spells. Then he noticed the peculiarity of the small mage in the middle of the formation. The one that they had dismissed as a non-threat. The spell they were charging up had too much mana for an ordinary mage to possibly cast.

Frantically, Lev pulled up the Russy Federation Named mage registry again and compared the small mage's magic signature to all the ones the Russy Federation encountered during the Second Great War. Nothing.

Then he compared it to the database of the magic signatures Yugoslavia encountered. Nothing.

Ildoa. Nothing.

Then he pulled up the Francois database. What he saw almost gave made him shit his pants.

Tanya von Degurechaff. The Devil of the Rhine. 588 kills.

The Devil has come out to play.

"EVERYONE! EVASION MANEUVERS! IMMEDIATELY! IT'S THE DEVIL OF THE RHINE!" Lev ordered the battalion despite not having the authority to. The men looked at him in momentary bewilderment. Some of their pupils contracted in panic and fear. But by then, the spell was already loosed.

It zipped across the sky, faster than even a bullet. To Lev's relief, the spell wasn't aimed at Lev's battalion. However, it was aimed at the battalion next to them.

The spell almost seemed to rip apart the sky asunder when it detonated. A light so bright it drowned out even the sun and made Lev cover his eyes lest he went blind. The proceeding heat nearly singed off Lev's eyebrows despite being over a kilometre away. He hastily erected a barrier. The pressurised shockwave that followed ripped it apart like Waldstatten cheese and ruptured his ear drums. His world was thrown into chaos and all he knew was pain. Lev was thrown into a spinning whirlwind by the shockwave, unable to find his balance to keep himself afloat. He felt himself smack into a tree and the wind knocked out of him.

Ignoring his damaged ear drums, Lev squinted his blurry eyes to look at the sky. Their ally mage battalion was no more, eviscerated in the explosion. Their flesh, bones and organs vapourised. All that was left was the twisted remains of their guns, which fell down in a dreary iron rain. Half of the best mages in the Russy Federation had been killed with a single spell of untold destruction. Above where the spell had detonated, a column of smoke and debris the shape of a mushroom rose above even the tallest of mountains. The eerie black and orange mushroom cloud felt like a manifested amalgamation of the souls that were consumed by the Devil's terrifying power.

Standing up hesitantly, Lev searched his surroundings. They had been swept by the shockwave into a nearby forest. There were other mages around him who had been knocked unconscious by the shockwave. All of their ears were bleeding. Only a couple of them could still stand up like him. He looked around for Major Sokolov. He had to convince the man to order them to retreat.

After a minute of searching, he found his commanding officer, leaning against the stump of a tree. His neck was snapped in half, twisted in a ninety-degree angle. The man's eyes were open in uncomprehending terror, as if he had seen the deepest depths of hell. Lev thought that they all did.

Cursing to himself, Lev hastily shouted for a retreat. But then he realised that none of them could hear. He went and gathered the survivors, using rudimentary sign language and mouthing his words to communicate. They casted rudimentary healing spells on each other to stop the bleeding of their ears. Many of his battalion had died from either the shockwave or the subsequent fall, including Karl, whose forehead was pierced through by a piece of stray shrapnel. Eventually, all fourteen of the surviving members of his battalion ascended out of the forest, five minutes after that spell had knocked them out of the sky.

When they ascended high enough to see the battle, it was a slaughter. The soldiers in the enemy trenches had started firing back with artillery. With the mages on their side temporarily decommissioned, the Devil of the Rhine and her ilk had free reign to devastate the main army. Spell-loaded bullets fell from the sky like a hailstorm, ripping the men below to shreds. Regular enchanted bullets failed to penetrate the armour of their tanks, but some of the mages casted flame spells to roast the men inside alive. Bullets bounced uselessly off their mage shields. On a battlefield with no anti-air weapons, mages were gods.

Underneath where his fellow mage battalion had been wiped out, were thousands, no, tens of thousands of corpses arranged in a wide ring. Lev realised that the spell had killed them all when it detonated right above the army. The blast had vaporised all the soldiers in the centre while the ones unfortunate enough to be close by had been killed by the shockwave. Tanks and bodies had been thrown hundreds of metres away.

The army was in disarray. That spell of mass destruction had broken the men's spirits. Thankfully they were moving back into the forest; it seemed that the commanding general had ordered a full retreat. Six hundred thousand men and two thousand tanks were fleeing from a mere seven. No, it was more accurate to say that it was fleeing from the incredible feats of one person alone.

Then he saw her, floating above Lev and his survivors like the overlord of the skies. The Devil of the Rhine. They were only a kilometre apart and she wasn't looking at them. Despite her diminutive frame, Lev felt like he was facing a behemoth that dwarfed the world. He felt so incredibly small. Her blonde hair flapped wildly in the wind, framing around her head like a halo. The sides of the ascending mushroom cloud silhouetted her frame like wings on the angel of death.

Acting like Lev and his mages were invisible, she nonchalantly aimed her sights down at the men below, five kilometres away, channeling artillery spells. Lev and his battalion could do nothing but watch in horror as a sixteen-round burst was unleashed - each bullet packed with an artillery spell - and fell down onto the army like judgement day, eviscerating an entire battalion. Lev was glad he was deaf at the moment, otherwise the screams below would haunt him for the rest of his life. Dread built in Lev's stomach.

A man shot a spell at her, which exploded uselessly off her barrier. Amidst their shock and awe at the man's stupidity, the Devil turned around to meet their gazes. Her unnatural yellow eyes that glowed like molten metal almost seemed to petrify them. Lev had to galvanise his muscles to move. His survival instincts told him to flee immediately, and he let it direct his actions.

Lev launched into his max speed, pushing his orb to the limit and escaping to the west, not caring if the survivors of his battalion would follow him. In fact, it was better if they stayed behind and provided a distraction for the Devil.

He needed to get back to the NKVD headquarters immediately to relay critical information. Vologda was a trap. Their plans had been leaked. The Devil of the Rhine was in the southeast of Vologda, not Pskov or Leningrad. She invented a spell that could wipe out entire battalions of mages, even divisions of infantry. They needed to shift all of their anti-air weapons to the east before she could reach Moskva.

To his better judgement, Lev looked behind him and what he saw was a massacre. The Devil descended onto the survivors of Lev's battalions like a shark upon minnows. It was pandemonium. Bullets fired. Spells casted. Mage shields shattered. Limbs and heads flew. Lives ended. And at the centre of it all was a goddess of war.

Her spell vapourised the arm of a man. Her mage blade severed the head of another. The next mage was bayoneted through the throat. Four mages tried to fire upon her in a concentrated volley, but she weaved around them like a demented fairy and fell upon the four men like some divine punisher. A torso turned into a donut. A head split in twain. A man bisected at the waist.

The last man was either crazy enough or stupid enough to engage with her in hand-to-hand combat. The bones of his fist crumpled like sand when she let him punch her reinforced cheek. The man didn't have time to scream before the Devil's backhanded blow snapped his neck and almost decapitated him. Her glowing golden eyes shone even under the sun.

Another three men tried to flank her at close range, only for two of them to end up falling from the sky like puppets with strings cut as the Devil bayoneted one through the chest and smacked the butt of her rifle into the side of another, caving in his rib cage and shattering his spine.

The third man realised the folly of trying to overpower her in close combat and tried to gain distance, but she whirled around after finishing the second man and pounced on him like a night predator. He didn't get the chance to scream before he fell from the sky in five separate pieces.

The rumours were true. The Devil had been anything but complacent during her tenure as the leader of Germania. If anything, she's deadlier than ever before, having improved in every aspect. Her skills, her magical capacity, the capriciousness of her fighting style. She drank in violence like the ocean drank in rivers. They never stood a chance. They could hurt her no more than an ant could hurt the sun.

She was the lion, and they were the sheep. And when a flock of sheep challenges a lion, the lion does not see a threat. It sees a buffet.

The others soon recognised the futility of fighting and started fleeing like Lev. The horror of the realisation that none of them would live if they fought had fully sunken in. The Devil simply fired a series of three-round bursts, executing the fleeing mages one by one. All that was left was a hail of charred corpses. Forty seconds after the Devil gazed upon the remnants of his battalion, Lev was the only one left.

Knowing that her full attention was on him now, Lev realised that he had no chance of fleeing. But to stay and fight was suicide. He had to think outside the paradigm.

Lev pushed most of his mana towards a healing spell, aimed at accelerating the repair of his ears. In a few seconds, he managed to repair his hearing, albeit for the cost of over half his mana reserves.

Leveling his rifle as he flew backwards, he unleashed spell after spell at his relentless pursuer until he ran out of ammo. None of them found its mark. She was catching up quickly. Whether it was her orb, her mana capacity or her skills that allowed her to travel at nearly twice his speed, he had no idea.

Lev turned around to fly forward and slightly decreased his speed, lowering his altitude to be just three hundred metres above the canopy of the forest, allowing himself to become an easier target. He eyed the forest below for foliage while listening to the Devil's approach. Just as he predicted, the Devil levelled her rifle and fired a three-round burst. Pretending that he couldn't hear the sound of the spell coming and only turned around to see it at the last moment, Lev erected a weak barrier, allowing the first two rounds to slam into his barrier cracking it. The last round destroyed the barrier completely, smacking into his torso like a cannonball. Lev felt two ribs broke at the impact.

He shut off all his spells and allowed himself to plummet from the sky, falling through the canopy of the forest and into a thick cushion of moss and grass. Lev forced his body to go limp to pretend that he was unconscious. At the same time, he strengthened his body with an orbless reinforcement spell. The impact of the fall knocked the wind out of him and likely broke several bones, but he was still alive.

This was his gambit. He had allowed himself to be hit and pretended to be knocked unconscious by shutting off all mana flow to his computation orb. He had calculated his fall so that he would land onto a natural cushion formed by vegetation. But even then, he had to cast the strongest orbless reinforcement spell he could for a chance of survival. The Devil should fall for it. No one could survive from a fall from that height.

Now, all he needed to do was play dead and wait until the Devil flew back to deal with the rest of the army. After that, he would escape to Moskva. He would be reprimanded for fleeing the battle, but the Director wouldn't punish him once he heard of the intel he brought back.

Lev kept his eyes shut and his breathing to a minimum to prevent his chest from rising and falling. He used another orbless spell to calm down his frantic heart. His body was still limp as a corpse. Without using his orb, he could now no longer sense where the Devil was. Hopefully she would fall for his trick and go away. As someone who lived in a communist nation, Lev was never a religious man. But at that moment, he started praying in his head reverently.

A noise from above froze his blood in place. The sound of branches brushing by a body. A crunch of dead leaves underneath boots as a mage landed close by. The footsteps on the forest floor. Leading closer and closer to him. Lev held his breath as he heard the Devil stopped near his head and crouched down. She searched his body and took his orb from him. That was fine. As long as she left, he could walk back even with his injuries.

But instead of standing up and walking away, she pried his right eyelid open so that Lev could see her smiling face, eyes now sky blue and staring into the depths of his soul. But he knew that underneath that beautiful face was a complete monster. Her voice came out clear and lilting, more suited for a singer than the embodiment of death itself.

"Nice trick, but I tried a similar thing back in Norden myself."

Only then did he allow himself to scream.

Author's note: The fight scene with Tanya was inspired by Chapter 16 of the book Dark Age (book 5 of the Red Rising series) by Pierce Brown.