Chapter 831 – Red Streams, Crimson Shadows, Scarlet Cities.

The Lunus forward base can support three months worth of fighting at the current pace we are going at. Word from the war council is that they wish to extend that for the entire duration of Arda’s final six months, but a delay of three months is more than enough. If Imperial industry is slowed down enough to render completion of their sky-island project impossible, the objective is impossible.

Whereas the current tactic relies on a thousand different, smaller strikes to wipe them away. I would forward a suggestion to the Conclaves: We do not know of the rate at which the Ardans can rebuild, we know that what they call ICDT towers were raised, at least partly, through Divinity to explain the speed of their building. There is no individual structural weak point in the Imperial military-industrial complex. Likewise, we have to take into account the prediction that should Imperial industry fail, the rest of Arda will step in to try and alleviate the losses. They are already stepping in, after all.

Nevertheless, the sky-island project has one crucial weak point. I call into question the sky-islands themselves. Whereas reports indicates that they are being built throughout the Empire, we currently have three confirmed islands from external locations: virtually a hundred in a hundred islands are produced in Arcadia. From what we know of their magic in the Great War, it is virtually impossible for human mages, alone, to channel the energies required to raise them at the rate the War College of Arcadia is raising them.

The critical point, in that, is Arcadia, and Elassa herself.

I propose, even when knowing the difficulty in piercing through magical shielding, that we target the school.

- Internal documents detailing the current operation on Arda.

Lyca somersaulted in the air, streams of scarlet flame materializing around him as he took once again to the skies of Wein. The city stretched underneath him in all directions, palaces and castles and churches, interspersed amongst the tall city blocks. Skyscrapers rising in several districts, skyscrapers falling in several more. Imperial soldiers swarming the streets as reinforcements came in from nearby bases. The local commander came over the earpiece in Lyca’s ear. “Airstrike ready, Anich, Pest, Birno and Raga are on the list. Sorcerers, I’m skipping if you can handle it yourselves.”

Lyca turned around and looked at his unit, eighty sorcerers, half of that had served under Ashen Skies, a fifth of that half still remembered Kirinyaa. Eliza, Fleur and Edmonton had been assigned their own cities to intervene, each with their units under their command. “This is Scarlet-One, pass it on, we won’t need assistance.” Wein was not the only city under threat, the point of deploying sorcerer brigades was to relieve the airforce of needing yet another target to protect.

Lyca’s scarlet fires grew thicker, until they were red walls that were impossible to see through. He was sure that everyone had their own method on how to counter the angelic waves, his method had been the same as when he was a pyromancer. Back then, his flames needed to grow hotter to overwhelm magical shields. Now, it was the same, he just needed more power.

Lyca snapped his fingers, waved a hand, and a wisp of sorcerous scarlet fire wisped from his side to give the usual commands in his team. Anassa gave knowledge and power, training that could only barely be called training, and that was it. The rest, of how brigades were managed, and how the training should look, was entirely up to Lyca’s pejorative. The wisp of scarlet flame transforming into a lion and roaring forwards meant to attack. The change into a wolf was wolfpack tactics, to separate into teams of five or six. A cheetah would have been permission to stalk alone.

So eighty sorcerers split up, Lyca taking his own team as they took to the skies. The invisible shockwaves conjured by angel blades were deadly, seven sorcerers fell on the first blow. On the second, none did. Lyca ticked it off in his head, those seven would have never made it in the first place. And his team moved like him.

Crimson battering arms in the air, swarms of furious hornets that moved quickly and independently, ignoring the commands from the ground, letting the army below reorganise themselves around the sudden reinforcements rather than even pretending they lay anywhere in the official military hierarchy. An angel raised his blade and shield, the wings flapped as Lyca’s team came over him.

Four sorcerers and one prime sorcerer, two from below, to from above, Lyca from the front, all launching their waves without any regard for dodging, just trusting that their own barriers were strong enough to repel whatever would be thrown at them. Lyca saw the blade rise, flew under the angel arm as it lost a wing and the power to float, and Lyca’s snapping fingers conjured up a faint red string that became a blade, and the blade severed through steel and skin and muscle and own as easily as it severed through the air.

From below, the garrison looked up as they received their orders: March on, advance through the city. Push them into the air where the sorcerers will clear them out. And then another set of orders, directly to Lyca himself: Word has come from high command, secure the area underneath the portal itself and hold it. Prepare for a long hold.

Etala stood, hands behind her, as she finally gave a speech that went against everything she was incarnated to do. “Today, I, Etala, stand here as the Goddess of Democracy. Democracy, the will of the people. And I stand here, and I tell you: To let Arda fall is not the will of the people.”

Eliza stopped floated an inch above the ground before cutting her power and dropping onto the fat heel of her boot. It clicked against the ruined stone, where the defenders of Holn were trying to regroup and recover. She always felt as if the worst fucking jobs landed on her. Maybe it was because whereas Lyca had eight, Fleur and Edmonton a hundred, she had somehow managed to draw two hundred sorcerers to serve in her unit. “The skies will be secured when you issue a counter-attack, my unit is spreading out to reinforce the defenders.”

By any other means, she was the most immature in this room, the commander was a man in his forties, the second in command a mirror image with wrinkles and a greying moustache. The captains of the teams on the ground that had reorganised in this area all looked to be in their thirties, one of them had a scar across his cheek that was obviously left over from the Tartarian War. She was twenty-one, shorter than anyone else in the room, the black-red coat over her would probably struggle to fit on their daughters, if they had any.

It made no difference. General, captain, major and lieutenant averted their eyes when a sorcerer prime entered the room. “If there are orders, then give them to me now, I command from the front. Otherwise know that my unit will be ready in…” Eliza had to pull back the dark sleeve on her hand to check her watch. “Roughly five minutes, ten at the most.”

General Kinchel, command of this city’s defence nodded. “We have received a directive from High Command, word says it’s from Goddess Kassandora herself.”

“Go on.” Eliza said. The man had probably never seen Kassandora, and Eliza had trained under Anassa. It depended on the Divine, but from what Kassandora sounded like, then the Imperial Military had it easy compared to the sorcerer corp. “What of it?” Simply said, it would not impress her no matter who the order came from.

“Holn is one of the city’s chosen to test the new counterattack proposal.” Kinchel spoke slowly and carefully, struggling to meet Eliza’s eyes. Surely sorcerers were not that terrifying. “The five-hundredth and twelfth artillery will arrive in the city within the hour. By rail.”

Eliza understood what the man was talking about. She needed one glance at the map to know that the railway was far in the exclusion zone. “I expect an organised, coordinated assault then in order to secure the railyard.” She didn’t know how Edmonton and Fleur did it, but she knew how Lyca did it, and she did it in an entirely different way. Lives were precious.

“And then we have to secure the region underneath the portal.” Kinchel said.

Eliza stared at the map, the slash of deep blue where the portal had been drawn. And then back at the general, twice her age. “It will be done.”

Etala continued her speech. “Arda is under threat, and if I have to stand side-by-side with the Empire to save it, then I shall stand.”

Fleur hovered high above Reinnes as she watched the city burning. “Form formation.” Fleur’s voice boomed to the hundred sorcerers under her command and no one else as the rest of them appeared from the crowd. She had received the briefing over the earpiece and she could see the paylod: a full battery of eight artillery pieces slowly rolling forwards, an armoured anti-air complement of eight vehicles ahead and four behind.

A crimson blade materialized by Fleur’s side. Her aeromancy made it somewhat easier to conjure at range. The whole point of magic over the air was that there was no direct link to you. “Find targets and hold.” Another blade materialized by Fleur’s side. And another. Twenty of them. And then thirty. Until it was fifty, twice as much as the next best in her unit, although she had to maintain superiority over them. The she-devil of Rancais was not a title that had been claimed lightly after all. Down below, the Imperial garrison was pushing ahead, the infantry swarming through streets.

Fleur raised her hand above her, pointed straight into the air. “Aim and calibrate.” A thousand different machinations of sorcery, crimson paintings drawn over reality, all turned and twisted as her unit found the targets from above. The angels must have spotted them. A few were looking up at the air, some were even trying to swing at them, although this high up, their attacks did little more than cause turbulence. Infantry started firing, suppressing the street level and forcing the Paradeisian forces into the air. To be targeted by the heavy anti-air and to make easy targets for Fleur’s unit.

Fleur lowered her hand. “Fire.” Her blades her shot forward. Others conjured their own, from red lions that fell from the sky to eagles diving down, or spears trying to match the speed of her blades, or faux-lightning incarnated out of sorcery rather than electricity. Crimson fell from the sky, and crimson met pale bodies in white dresses and silver amour. And from those bodies, it the deep-red crimson that reeked of power disappeared and was replaced by warm, red, hot blood which splashed down. In the city below, the gunfights turned vicious as Paradeisian forces held their position, stopping their attack and instead just raising their shields, unable to find an opening in the hailstorm of steel.

More swords appeared around Fleur. The she-devil turned her attention towards the city streets, where various angels were pinned down by heavy fire, unable to move and unwilling to brave the heavy calibre of the anti-air guns. “Fire at will, until there are none.” Her unit needed nothing more than that. Tigers and tridents, serpents and swords, flails and falcons, lightning and lizards.

An artillery battery pointed down.

The sky began to rain crimson.

“so I will not command you, but I will ask you. To march with me and fight in the war in the Epa, to go to the Empire, and to help save Arda.” Etala straight ahead as she finished. She did not understand how Kassandora, or Fortia, or Arascus, could give such speeches. This single most was the worst in the world. She felt as if her life was held in the balance.

When the crowd cheered, it went from the worst to the best moment in her life.

Edmonton raised his hand to block another impossible blow, a shockwave that reverberated through the air as it travelled onwards. Yet his shield hardened, rumbled, and then deflected the explosion away. Edmonton snapped his fingers, the red barrier grew spikes and then those spikes shot forward. Manceinon was going to be secured without Divinity, and Edmonton would do it without the help of Divinity.

His unit moved with him, separated into three platoons, thirty each, one from the north, to secure the Queen Victoria railway station, one from the south east, led by him, to stab into the centre of the city. And another from the south west, to secure the universities and save the troops within them. Fleur stabbed at range, Lyca pounced like a wolf and Eliza moved in to serve as a wall but Edmonton flowed through the city like water. He burst through walls, cracking old red brick and modern glass without a care in the world.

The artillery regiment slowly moved behind the sorcerers, securing their position in the city’s square. Concrete tiles cracked underneath the lumbering vehicles as they readied themselves. North platoon would be the defenders, conjuring barriers as Edmonton’s team began to take their positions, on the roofs of city blocks, ready to serve as counter-batteries for anything that came out of the blue slither in the sky. South-west team would clean up whatever was left in the city. The local garrison came in to support.

Edmonton cracked his neck to the side, stepped onto a tramline, and threw a hand forward. A hundred small spikes shot from ahead of him, tiny crimson icicles that ripped through the angel which had just floated out of a side street and was defending against another assault from the other side of the road. The creature’s body fell to the ground, disfigured by holes left behind by Edmonton’s attack.

And then, the sorcerer stopped and saw the guns ready. Over the earpiece, he heard the local general give the order in one quick word: Fire. And artillery fired into the air. Edmonton tracked the shells, or tried to, although it was borderline impossible for human eyes to make catch such things. But the confirmation of success came sooner than anything else.

Above, the sky line was being split with a line of blue. Or rather, it had been split by a line of blue. Now, the blue changed orange and red and yellow and all the colours of explosions as shells successfully flew through the opening in reality and struck whatever was on the other side. He clicked his earpiece, sure that other commanders were also reporting the exact same thing. “This is sorcerer Weaver.” Edmonton said. “I visually confirm the success of artillery strike on the portal. We are shooting through.”