Chapter 192: How the Game Evolves

Thacea

Something had changed in the intervening leaps from one era to the next.

There was… a palpable friction, a chafing away of the expected narrative beats which grew with every passing monologue.

It was subtle at first. A slip of her tone here, a loss of her signature bubbliness there, as these elements of another story started percolating towards the surface; a story lying in wait.

But where I saw a careful waltz descending into a danse macabre, my highborn peers saw something much different — a tango set to a rhythm of their own desire.

In Ilunor I saw a desperate raconteur, a proponent of that which he clings onto solely out of the fallacies of self-worth, precluding all conversation save for that of debate.

In Thalmin I observed an underlying complexity, an eagerness born of equal measures martial intrigue and an admittedly naive hope — a desire to see in Earthrealm what he one day hopes to gain and covet.

Yet neither truly fell into the rhythms of Emma’s waltz, even if their own perspectives may convince them to the contrary.

Ilunor

“Emma?” Thalmin uttered calmly, and so softly in fact that I’d scarcely even registered it.

“Yes, Thalmin?” The earthrealmer replied louder, clearer, yet no less ineffectual against the unrelenting wrath wrought on by the airships above.

“From what I understand, every craft you have shown us previously operates under the same fundamental principles of aethra primus, correct?” The prince continued, his poise and lackadaisical demeanor acting as a comical foil to the scenes around us.

“That is correct.” Emma nodded, each syllable of every word blending into the thump thump thumps of the pathetic attempts made by these ground cannons against targets set far above the cusp of their reach.

“Tell me then… how exactly does a craft this large and unwieldy generate enough lift to sustain itself in flight? It cannot be that those small engines are capable of providing enough power, yes? Especially not without wings?” Thalmin prattled on and on, so much so that he started to become the unwanted whispers set behind this orchestral symphony of devastation.

“Correct.”

“Then I assume it is as you implied — lighter than air. Hence the suffix of ‘ship,’ yes?”

“Correct on that first point… not so much the second.”

“Semantics aside… if not by magical means nor by any principles of aethra secondus, then how, pray tell, is the weight and buoyancy maintained as such?” The mercenary prince’s words had now become second fiddle to the boisterous, panicked shouts of the cannon operators, as I noted with mixed feelings the coordination, speed, and precision of their motions.

Alas… it was all for naught.

“Might I be so forward to assume that the answer lies in its cigar-shaped bladder? In lieu of any obvious means of injecting heat into its confines, or any enchantments of any sort, perhaps it's some sort of… lifting gas?”

Pfft. Such pedantry. In light of everything, this is what you focus on? How quaint—

“Yes. Back then they filled it with hydrogen.”

—WHAT?!

My world came to a halt as my heart twisted and my whole body shuddered in place.

“HYDROGEN?!” I exclaimed… surprisingly alone. This made my eyes narrow sharply at the pair of sycophants, expecting at least some degree of the same bewildered reaction.

None came.

Instead, the lupinor dared to find reason in this madness.

“I don’t see where the issue here is, Ilunor. You of all people should know that some pyromancers and artificers do much of the same, and it can be perfectly safe provided the proper precautions are taken.” The prince paused before turning to Emma.

“So… what sort of precautions did your people take, Emma? Surely they are to be quite the novelty given the lack of artificing and enchantments in your realm?” He pondered aloud, garnering a nod from Thacea before we all placed our full and undivided attention on the earthrealmer.

“Well… you see, I’m not the most well-versed with these ancient airships, er, zeppelins as they were called in this particular period. But I believe they had some built-in systems, anti-static protocols, stuff like that to avoid accidental ignition sources, as well as very tightly sealed nozzles and all that…”

“Ah.” Thalmin nodded slowly, clearly less confident in his assertions now. “Well, I’m certain such measures will be sufficient in—”

Vrrrrrrrrrr…

…

Another familiar noise entered the fray, severing my thread of thought and forcing my gaze back upwards.

Thalmin did the same, and so did Thacea, as we saw what appeared to be a group of bi-winged craft attempting yet another sortie of the airship.

We’d seen them try once before and fail, so how would this be any dif—

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

They attempted their assaults, firing what were now very clearly… machine guns, their sounds indicative of a rate of fire that far surpassed that of the gatling… as much as I hated to admit it.

However, nothing happened as of yet. Indeed, what I saw simply reaffirmed my assertions, as many of these tan and green aerial craft adorned with roundeled heraldry were downed by the airship’s own machine guns.

I smirked, seeing that despite their newfound ability to ascend to heights previously inaccessible to them, they still had little they could do against these unrivaled masters of the sky.

Yet in spite of that… my thoughts swirled around that frankly idiotic revelation.

Flaming gas… really now?

My heart clenched at these instruments indicative of an established order that made sense.

My insides twisted in anticipation of what I knew was to come as I conjured scenario after scenario as to what fate awaited these undisputed aerial titans.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-FWWWOOOOOSHHHHHHHH!

Yet none could prepare me for the sights of a foregone fate.

KA-BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!

Indeed, I found it difficult to put into words precisely how such a sight could be any less of a dignified end for such a craft.

SCREEEEEECHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

For the whole thing had just… collapsedinwards, crumpling at the point of the first explosion near the center of the cigar-shaped balloon, and subsequently twisting, churning, then finally… folding straight in half.

The sounds of twisting and scraping metal sent chills down my spine, even more so than the constant explosions and the roar of flames as it slowly, almost in defiance of fate itself, returned back to ground.

I should have felt my knees weaken at the sight.

I should have perhaps shed a single, well-earned tear at what had become of my reprisal.

Yet I could not.

Not when the humans had doomed this craft from the onset.

“This would not have happened if you did not use HYDROGEN as your means of accomplishing the prerequisites of Aethra Primus for this craft!” I yelled.

“We later used helium.” Emma retorted calmly. “But to be honest, Ilunor, even if we had used it for these craft, it would’ve resulted in the same doomed fate, perhaps with less flames, sure, but as you’ve seen yourself… these airships were sitting ducks in mid-air. The name of the game for the domain of aerial warfare has and will always bespeed. Speed, maneuverability, the ability to gain a better vantage over your enemy is how we conduct our air wars. Loitering fortresses are quite literally the inverse of this principle, and as you’ve seen here… this is the fate which awaits anything that doesn’t conform to those rules.”

“If I may be Ilunor’s advocate, Emma…” Thalmin spoke up, his words sending a renewed sense of hope throughout my core.

“Yes, Thalmin?”

“Why not just bolster these airships’ armor? Perhaps increase their active defensive armaments? Find a means by which you could resist the bullets fired from the nimbler aerial craft?”

“Yes, YES! You see the logic, Prince Thalmin!” I beamed. “THIS, THIS! This is the role our sloops were made to fulfil! Do you not recall from my own presentation, Cadet Emma Booker? You merely need more arms with which to fell these pesky nuisances from the air!”

“And therein lies the problem.” Emma responded with a frustrating degree of poise. “It simply cannot be done, not when you’re playing on hardcore mode. We’re talking Aethra Primus here, not secondus, let alone tertius. So unfortunately we’re stuck with plain-old flight mechanics, without any sneaky workarounds to the cruel mistress that is the principle of buoyancy. In short, if we were to tack on more armor, more armaments, and the ammunition required for said arms… we’d need more gas to compensate for the increased mass.” Emma eventually trailed off, allowing for Thalmin to finish her thoughts.

“Which necessitates a balloon with a greater volume, and thus more surface area to be armored, requiring more lifting gas…” Thalmin offered, before letting out a sigh of despair. “It’d be an exercise in futility.”

“I see it, earthrealmer. I see it.” I finally, through gritted teeth, acquiesced. “It is yet another result of your… limitations.” I acknowledged, though fittingly, this was not so much an admission of defeat as much as it was an appeal to pity.

In a startling turn of events similar to that second sight-seer, I’d found myself… pitying such brazen warmakers.

For in their hearts they dreamed themselves masters of the sky, but in pursuit of such lofty aspirations, they found themselves burning at the hands of their own hubris.

However, as the fires roared and the embers of that ambition ascended back towards the tapestry, the constant thrum of cracking whips and echoing thunder was quick to remind everyone present that there was yet to be any rest for the wicked.

“So what other innovations do you have in store for us in this war, Emma?” Thalmin would be quick to chime in, his chipper attitude never once failing to reemerge.

“You’ve seen our weapons — the progression of the humble firespear into sophisticated repeating rifles, blazingly fast machine guns, and their much larger counterparts in the form of artillery.” Emma began, as she responded to Thalmin’s inquest tit-for-tat, albeit with a noticeable shift in the underlying lilt in her voice. “You’ve seen how they’re built, the introduction of the replaceable part, the integral role mass industry plays in the facilitation of warfare.” She continued as the scene around us shifted yet again, this time towards sights far, far away from the battlefield. Delving deep within cities, embedded within smog-choked towns, and next to waterways steeping in the runoff of these smoke-belching manufactoriums scattered along their banks.

The sights had abruptly increased in their pace and rhythm, passing by similar structures and compounds no longer isolated to a single indeterminate settlement but throughout bustling cities whose populations I could only scarcely begin to ascertain in the midst of the shuffling between each scene.

Yet before each transition, an attempt was made to ground us to these locations, as if to remind us that we were no longer operating on hypotheticals or standalone examples.

VICKERS LIMITED — SHEFFIELD, UNITED KINGDOM.

We were witnessing in blinding and disorienting haste the constituent pieces of this so-called industrial era, passing by the names of manufactoriums and their cities.

SCHNEIDER & CIE — LE CREUSOT, FRANCE

One—

FRIED. KRUPP A.G. — ESSEN, GERMAN EMPIRE

—after another—

FIAT — TORINO, ITALY.

—and so on—

SKODA WORKS — PILSEN, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

—and so forth.

We witnessed within these immense workhalls a great ballet of uninterrupted motion. Of mortals and metal moving as one, their actions weaving in concert a flow of labor where man and artifice seemed to blend into a single, reprehensible visage.

This was no place of greatness, nor was it a vision of prosperity.

This… was no better than the lower manufactoriums of Midlands make.

And yet, as we moved throughout each workhall, ducking and dodging the flurry of presumably sweaty bodies and disgusting stench — provided humans did sweat — we were eventually met with the fruits of their labor.

Thalmin

Rifles — hundreds of them — lined up by the crateload, vetted and packaged with the same repetitive monotony observed throughout its creation.

I eventually counted about a thousand, and if the accelerated passage of time outside the manufactorium was to be believed — spanning but a single sunset — then all of this was implied to have been made over the course of a single day.

…

I pondered what father would have made of all of this, and what sorts of old kingdom adages Uncle would have presented us with were he present to witness all of this.

Impossible… I could hear Krahmin uttering.

A complete bluff… Luscin would say.

But Uncle?

…

I could only imagine but one word.

Obsession.

But one he could respect.

Because if a people were this committed to the art of war, such that they would dedicate entire cities just to feed its ravenous appetite?

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Then there was no question as to their ability to see things through.

This wasn’t the work of a single smith forging a legendary blade in a fit of brilliance, nor was it an artificer who might have constructed a legendary warbow in a bout of unexpected muse.

No, this… was bland, repetitive, and completely thankless drudgery.

Yet it was a drudgery towards a ceaseless river of breathtaking weapons.

These weren’t the trappings of a culture merely experiencing a passing brush with the fires of war.

This wasn’t a fluke.

Nor was it a transient phase.

These… were the trappings of an institution, one devoted not merely to war as an art form, but to a scholarly, empirical pursuit.

An institution dedicated towards the impossible task of replicating the Crownlands’ wars on their own manaless terms.

And all of this… without yet taking into account the cartridges which fed these rifles…

It was now clear to me that we had yet to have reached the crescendo of Emma’s tirades. That we had simply run its preamble to its course, and were now about to see every disparate element of Emma’s overtures to war playing in concert. My excitement grew as we went higher and higher above the map until factories became imperceptible dots, cities became smaller than a splotch, and mountain ranges became useful scales for borders and kingdoms.

We hovered above the map of a continent. One that seemed almost tooconvenient in its design, as if a mapmaker had taken it upon themselves to forge the perfect conditions for resource disputes, border clashes, and territorial claims.

But what came next would come to upend my sense of scale, my understanding of her choice of transitional framing, and the underlying reasons why she’d chosen to pull our perspective back to such a radical extent.

“It’s time that we put all of that into practice.” She spoke ominously. “Because this war — what was then known as the Great War, or the War to End all Wars — was one which was no longer confined to a single continent, or even a pair of continents. Nor was it a disconnected series of related wars fought independently from one another. This… was the first truly global war, fought using the full might of industrialized powers, and connected using the power of both steam and combustion.”

Emma snapped her fingers, but instead of snapping back to any specific region, we were instead greeted with borders.

Another snap, and we were greeted with board pieces representing armies.

Another snap, and we found a complex web of continental railroads, canals, pathways. Each attempting to tie these impossibly wide nations together in a manner otherwise inconceivable to the average adjacency… at least, not without portals.

Yet another snap, and we found ourselves looking at the map of an entire realm.

…

More borders were drawn.

Then, two major colors were painted over a majority of them.

…

Things couldn’t be this simple… could it?

“I know it might seem a bit… reductive, and in some ways it is. But this is as close to the truth of the matter without complicating things.” Emma continued, her tone of voice having shifted enough that I’d finally noticed her departure from her role as a fellow military enthusiast. Instead, she now edged closer towards that of a morose academic, one who seemed deliberate in picking and choosing her choice of words. “This was not a war between two kingdoms, but rather, between two major global alliances. It was the ultimate extent of the world as it was prior to the contemporary era. One which more resembled a reality you guys may be more familiar with — a time of Kingdoms and Empires, of Monarchies and Hereditary Regimes. This… was their final grand gambit. A last hurrah centuries in the making.”

A final snap, and we were witness to the motions of not merely armies, but ships. An unrealistic number of these goliaths of iron and steel, traversing not just one or two, but seemingly every conceivable expanse of water, all in an attempt to connect, supply, and maintain control over dominions without once grasping at the faintest hint of a manastream.

“But it wasn’t as if they understood it as such. Not even on the eve of war. Because none at the time could fathom just how… horrific such a modern conflict could be. And to be fair… how could they? Especially when the means of waging war had long since outpaced all prior conventions of what a war was perceived to be. Indeed, the Great War is in many ways the death knell of an entire era; the reckoning of an order that had long mistaken its… permanence for an immutable truth. These kingdoms and empires that had at one point wielded the destinies of an entire globe found themselves brought to ruin not by a failure to realize their ambitions. Instead, they were brought on by the horrifying successes of the means through which they sought to realize them.”

My heart swelled with equal measures excitement and a lingering sense of ominous dread, both spurred on by Emma’s increasingly dour delivery.

Jabs at Nexian ideologies notwithstanding, Emma was quick to draw us back into the thick of things, as the map of Earthrealm soon gave way to our descent towards the continent at the heart of this conflict. We arrived along a particularly large and expansive border towards its west, between an Empire and a Republic, and towards the very front of the battle lines.

It was there that I was treated to the same sight we’d arrived to — an impossibly long and complex trench line zig-zagging across tens upon hundreds of miles, situated between a grey, muddy, dreary expanse of dirt with seemingly no intrinsic value other than the one offered by the defensive line itself.

It was around that same time that Emma would gesture at us towards a small enclosed dugout deeper within the trenches, as we looked towards a battlemap which defied all reasonable convention.

The trench lines in question didn’t just consist of this seemingly grand line, no.

There were multiple of them. An entire web of such complexes consisting of various sizes, types, and constructed with what appeared to be long term habitation in mind.

“You’re better off fortifying a castle…” I muttered out loud.

“The leaders of this war expected a conflict which would resolve by year’s end.” Emma continued unabated, her ‘gaze’ transfixed over the dead horizon. “That deadline came and went, and instead of a decisive blow, a stalemate formed. Military leaders expected the same maneuver warfare of old, but were faced with a reality where the defender now held an unprecedented advantage. Modern rifles, artillery, machine guns, barbed wire, and mines had overwhelmingly stalled advances. This forced all on the Western front into the next most logical reaction — trench warfare. A response to the terrifying lethality of the modern battlefield, with victory determined by logistics and attrition.” Emma spoke plainly, simply, and without her usual lilt of encouraging optimism.

“So you are reducing yourself to vermin?” Ilunor finally interjected. “I cannot fathom why you would even choose to hide in these terrible excuses for fortifications? We’ve seen your grand cities and great manufactoriums, did we not? With all that labor and production capacity, you should be able to construct grand walls and even grander fortresses!” He yelled out. “And has anyone tried to cross this gap yet? How can the battle lines be so static? According to these maps, they haven’t moved in, what… months, years even?” He guffawed. Though that latter line in particular was one which I found some merit in.

“I… understand why the former may not be ideal.” I offered. “But it’s the latter that I might require some addressment, Emma.”

With a wordless nod, Emma brought us back out of what was clearly an officer’s field room as we approached one of the higher points in the trench line, and found the soldiers present hunkering and huddling in deeper points along the dugout.

Ilunor narrowed his gaze. “What’s going on here? What are they all cowering from—”

FWEEEEEEEE!!!!

A series of whistles erupted, prompting Emma to turn to the three of us with what I assumed was a severe expression beneath her helmet.

“If any of you would like to leave now, you may. Or better yet, prepare a cone of silence for yourselves if things get a bit too loud—”

“I’ve heard your cannons and guns, Emma Booker. What more can you offer that I have yet to—”

THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP

Ilunor didn’t speak, though he kept his composure.

I, on the other hand, awaited the eventual end of these far-off shots.

THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP

…

But they never came.

In fact, the first explosions arrived before the chain of distant shots had even ended.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-BOOOM!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-BOOOM!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-BOOOM!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-BOOOM!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-BOOOM!

I held strong for a while, but eventually cast a limited spell in order to at least drown out the worst of the noises.

Ilunor, however, had winced and shielded himself entirely.

This assault continued for a few minutes more.

Then it stretched on for five.

Following which, Emma would begin to accelerate the passage of time.

I watched the sun’s motions hastening, and counted the grand orb’s rise and fall seven times before it finally ended.

…

Seven.

That wasn’t possible.

There couldn’t be enough cartrid—, no, shells, in the world that could sustain that amount of fire.

I turned to Emma, expecting some sort of a jocular jab pointed at Ilunor, or perhaps myself.

But none came.

“Emma… this was seven continuous days of unrelenting fire.” I spoke plainly.

“Yes.” She nodded.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I… unfortunately am. In fact, the seven-day count isn’t even the longest recorded continuous barrage. I think the record was about two weeks. Passchendaele, 1917, if I’m not mistaken. Though what you just experienced was the British bombardment on the Somme that lasted for seven days. The latter went through about 1.5 million shells, if you were curious.” Emma rattled on those facts, delivering them with a wary sort of severity.

“It should be noted that the batteries did not fire continuously during that entire time. There were some lulls, a few instances where artillery pieces needed to be moved, rotated, adjusted, repaired, and replaced. But the constant stretches of drumfire could last for hours on end, nine being one such figure recorded during Verdun. 350,000 shells fired during that nine-hour stretch of time, leaving the ground completely scarred for decades to come.”

A moment of pause, one of severe reckoning, shot through my core.

And not a moment following an attempt to reconcile with such figures were we greeted with another sight which forced my hands to go cold.

I’d assumed Emma had taken us to a mountain, but after another cursory glance, it became clear precisely what this hill was.

“Are these all just… spent shell casings?” I pondered out loud, expecting a typical jab from Emma or a joking chuckle.

Once again, none came.

In fact, the opposite arrived.

“That’s correct, Thalmin.” Emma spoke with a sobering calmness.

…

I took a moment to compose myself.

I took a moment to appreciate, marvel, and look on in a strange sort of macabre fascination at this inadvertent monument to industrial warfare.

If anything, this was the purest testament to such a notion.

A million and a half shells spent… and yet the war marched on, completely oblivious to its waste.

Because it wasn't a waste.

It was just the status quo for Earthrealm.

“This just confirms my former suspicions.” I spoke with a darkened smirk. “Any fortress, castle, or what-have-you would be reduced to rubble in a matter of hours given this… scale of artillery assaults.”

“I wanted to show you the walls of Constantinople falling to Ottoman bombards but I thought I might as well jump to this.” Emma explained.

“I… see.” I nodded slowly. “And I… assume this is why one cannot simply cross the wasteland between trench lines?”

“That is but one of the reasons for it, yes.” Emma nodded. “Though credit should be attributed not just to artillery, but its smaller, less obvious contemporaries. The most visible of which… is the machine gun.” She gestured towards the large gun wedged in between bags perched up on the lip of the trenches.

With a flick of her hand and another ‘reset’ of the board, it became excruciatingly clear why such credit had been given to the smaller of the two guns.

Whereas Gatling’s gun had been slower, manually operated, and frankly somewhat underwhelming when compared to Emma’s sidearm… this would prove to be something else entirely.

I watched with bated breath as the whistles emerged from beyond the trench line we inhabited, as artillery fire preceded a wave of men charging towards our position.

Following this, after a brief spat between an assistant and the main gunner, the weapon was primed.

KA-CHUNK!

Then…

“You cannot be seriou—”

RATATATATATATATATATATATATATAT!

A maelstrom of bullets ploughed across the wasteland.

The soldiers who were approaching wore no armor.

The bullets struck them, penetrating the cloth, bandoliers, canteens, and whatever other items and paraphernalia they had on their persons.

The result was all the same.

They all dropped like flies.

And that was only accounting for those downed by gunfire.

Because no sooner than the guns had started firing did something else start massacring men — explosions.

But it wasn’t the shells dropping from above, no.

These… were explosions emerging from deep within the earth.

“Landmines.” Emma preempted my questioning. “Explosive ‘traps’ buried just underneath the dirt, and detonated when stepped upon.” She explained, gesturing at the… horrors inferred by the silhouetted figures. Any blood, grime, and viscera obviously obscured by their shadowy forms.

We watched in silent horror at the scene, yet there was something else that started to feel vividly out of place. As I finally adapted to the horrors of the scene, my eyes focused on a strange, almost magical occurrence — the deaths of many a machine gunner, and whatever other soldier who attempted to poke their head above the trench line.

“Emma.” I began, as I gestured towards the dead in the trenches. “What manner of weapon was used here? I rarely see any of the charging men firing their guns, so how do you explain these deaths?”

“Oh, right, sorry. I’d completely forgotten.” Emma apologized with a nod. “These are the work of snipers — designated marksmen who have specifically designed rifles capable of firing accurately over distances measured in thousands of meters. The gun, that is. That’s the maximum ballistic range of the thing. When operated by a marksman, though, the practical engagement distances drop down to about 500 to 900 meters.”

That… gave me pause.

Those distances… were significant. Not so much that it rewrote my understanding of Earthrealm capabilities, but enough to give me some degree of pause.

Still. The fact remains — this was a serious shot fired straight at the martial gap.

And that wasn’t even to mention the case of artillery…

“So…” I attempted to collect myself, clearing my throat as I did so. “How were these lines crossed? I expect nothing less from humanity than an innovative workaround to such… obstacles.”

“You have high expectations, Thalmin.” Emma nodded slowly, and for the first time since the start of this whole endeavor, she managed out a smile, albeit a reticent one. “But thankfully, your faith is not misplaced. We did eventually devise an innovative… workaround to the trench issue, though they really started being deployed towards the latter half of the war.” Emma gestured towards the wasteland shortly after another snap of her fingers, ushering in the arrival of these rhomboid metal… boxes. Boxes with treads on either side, complete with what appeared to be a side-mounted cannon.

I blinked, cocking my head, watching as these strange crawling bugs skittered across the battlefield at speeds slower than a brisk pace.

And yet… They performed their role dutifully, completely circumventing the trenches beneath them by means of their long, wide tracks, and ignoring most, if not all, attempts to shoot at them with ‘small arms.’

But they were by no means a panacea to the horrors of this… industrial warfare. In fact, the solution was quite obvious.

…

Guns.

Albeit larger, more cumbersome, frankly comical-looking variants of the standard rifle. The aesthetics of which were similar to the standard fare, but just made bigger in all of their proportional aspects.

However, that wasn’t the only solution.

The more obvious ones, more obvious than the creation of a larger rifle, were the cannons.

Field artillery, as Emma called them.

These worked surprisingly well, all things considered, piercing the relatively thin metal armor of these…

“Tanks.” Emma explained. “They’re called tanks.”

“Why?” I shot back reflexively. “Do they hold water?” I offered jokingly, yet in that jesting jab, I found a wave of realization abruptly hit me. “OH! Are they for the aquatic variant of humanity?! Hence why you need to have them filled with water?! Hence, tank?” I beamed, feeling some degree of levity returning as I had finally found the solution to this frankly bizarre naming scheme. “This also explains their ridiculously slow speeds. They’re heavy, hence…” I trailed off.

Because as quickly as that realization came about, so too did it give me pause for thought.

“But if they are filled with water… why aren’t they leaking when you shoot at them?” I pondered out loud.

It would be Thacea of all people to take the wind out of my sails, however, as she pondered the same question… but from a completely different angle.

“I would assume the name is not to be taken literally, Emma?” She questioned.

“That is correct, princess.” Emma nodded.

“Then I suppose it to have resulted from either a colloquialism spurred on by the soldiers, or a rather non-sequitur term assigned from above?”

“It’d be the latter, princess.” Emma acknowledged.

“Is that so…” The princess pondered. “A code word, perhaps?”

“Correct.”

“An attempt at misdirection, I presume?”

“Affirmative.”

“I see.” The princess nodded before turning back to me. “Then Prince Thalmin is correct, in a sense. Or perhaps the term has indeed once more found a victim centuries removed from its original context.”

“I beg your pardon?” I shot back.

“Thacea is right on the money, Thalmin. The ‘tank’ was referred to as such, because its creators wanted to throw off the enemy. Such that they’d assume it to be just another logistics vehicle — a water tanker — rather than a revolutionary machine of war.”

It was following the conclusion of that conversation that our attentions were now turned towards the skies. The low, droning vrrrrrrrrrrs of those early aerial craft signalled the start to the skybound phase of the war.

We watched as these frankly flimsy craft lazily flew circles around one another, ducking, weaving, dodging, and of course… firing those machine guns either straight through their propellers, or up above and out of the way by more cumbersome mechanical means.

“While the air war wasn’t as prominent as one would see in subsequent conflicts beginning from World War Two and onwards, the Great War did see its fair share of dogfighting and aerial combat maneuvers. In fact—”

“If I may, Emma?” Thacea interjected.

“Yes, Thacea?”

“What do you mean by World War Two?”

Another silence fell across the room, as all eyes were yet again fixated on Emma, who now stood in the crossfire of both our gazes, and the two aerial craft currently engaged in a fight to the death.