No one will even argue about the fact that we were thoroughly outmatched throughout the entire war in the realm of military organisation. Kassandora’s high command was simply better than White Pantheon leadership. To pretend otherwise is to simply deny reality. Imperial Legions were tightly organised, they could readjust fronts on a whim, they took a minimal amount of time to respond to our offensives. They could turn a naked field into an unassailable fortress in a matter of months. In fact, I would say that Imperial Legions set a new standard in how militaries should be organised.
I am sure that Kassandora had issues of her own when she commanded her armies, but I doubt that her problems were as great as mine. The fact that White Pantheon leadership already had problems of agreement and trust, and we had the major threat of Arascus to force us into collective action, should have prepared me for the fact that we would be dysfunctional once the times of peace came.
It did not though, or maybe I simply missed the lesson fate was giving to me. Every battle was a paranoid calculation of predicted losses before, then an argument after. It was not that we were incompetent in fight and once a plan reached the stage of execution, problems began to be solved. Chipping Doctrine worked against Kassandora’s armies, even with the Mutual Healing Agreement, she could not replace her losses at the rate we could. Slowly, ever so slowly, we started to grind Imperial forces down. There shouldn’t have been cause for argument.
Yet argument there was. Allasaria would talk about her precious Seekers and how this was a collective effort. That her Orders, whilst willing, were not there to be used as meatshields. Maisara and her Paladins would be overeager in every battle, then use that overeagerness and excess effort as some reason to hold us in debt. Kavaa would not forward any plans or suggestions after a while, and would only do the bare minimum required of her. Atis declared that his hunters were far too valuable and low in number to waste, we generally agreed, at his peak, the Hunter’s Lodge had only six hundred members throughout the entire world. Elassa used this Lodge Exception to declare that since a mage is inherently more valuable than a mundane man, she should not be asked to sacrifice any of her own.
These were the figureheads I was supposed to negotiate with.
- Excerpt from “Recollections”, written by Goddess Fortia, of Peace. Never published.
Helenna stood on one of the hills overlooking the capital of Rancais. Grande Aris, as the entire metropolitan area was called, stood like a giant imposition upon the landscape. It was not the whirring of mass industry, with factories and steel giants highlighted by blinking light, nor was it the flattening of agriculture, where wheat stretched from one horizon to the other. It was not the farce of mass art, with homes built upside down for the sake of it, and it was not the bustle of a major port that would die if it ever stopped moving. No. Helenna felt the wind sway her hair, it had chosen the colour of pitch-black for the pitch-black business they were going to run today. She smiled to herself, impressed by that noble city. Grande Aris could not be called a city. It was an imposition. And what did it impose?
Everything.
Everything civilization was and everything it aspired to be. On a hill in the northern sector of Aris stood modern skyscrapers. The city’s business district, now with lying quiet. A modern archway, all square and sharp edged, stood in the centre. It lined up perfectly with the Grand Arch of Aris in the city’s centre. A monument to the city and to the country and to everything it represented. The city’s centre itself, with city blocks anywhere from four to six floors tall, all out of sandstone and all overflowing with statues and patterns, were a damn maze. Modern city planning existed only in the edges of the city, where trees and parks were interspersed even greater towers that housed hundreds of people each. A church to almost every Divine of Epa and every Divine of the Pantheon existed in the city although all of them lay sad and in disrepair. The clergy of the White Pantheon temples had been evicted during Epan Separation, the clergy of the Epan Cathedrals had been killed during Anarchia’s takeover.
And then, in between the hill on which Helenna and her team stood was the Imperial Military. Helenna remembered the Great War, when she had been on the receiving side of this great beast. Now, she stood behind it. She remembered feeling the safety of seeing Elassa or Allasaria or Iniri on the battlefield. Great Divines that were borderline unstoppable. And yet there had always been a question in Helenna’s mind: what if Neneria were to appear? What if Irinika? What if Olephia? What if Kassandora?
Well, Kassandora was here now.
Kassandora herself was not some great warrior Goddess, yet when Kassandora personally led a battle, that meant they had already lost. The few times they had managed to push Kassandora away back then, the losses had been so great that whatever land had been claimed was immediately lost.
For maybe the first time in her life, Helenna felt comfortable in battle. Her hair relaxed into a lighter shade of black. No longer was it the sort to make pure shadow blush from jealousy. The Sixth and Seventh Doschian Division were already driving towards the city. Another Infantry Division was coming from the north, it would be here within the half-hour. Heavy artillery and anti-air was dug in, trenches had been excavated around it, armoured carriers were slowly trundling forwards, tanks led them, men on foot even further ahead. Above them, helicopters and circling planes provided air support. Pre-emptive air superiority had been another of Kassandora’s doctrinal changes that the White Pantheon had not used in the Invasion of Kirinyaa, yet now to not have fighters in the air before a battle started was effectively signing over air dominance. The standard forces would have been enough simply by their sheer scale. It must have been tens of thousands of men, with more than two thousand heavy vehicles between them, but the Empire was not done. At the very front, Divinity marched.
Paida of Rancais and Saksma of Doschia had both been pulled in. As had Aslana of the Sword, Labrys, Bess, Pridwen and another five weapon Divines. The Nationals stalked through the tall grass in their armour, with blade drawn and ready. The Weapons stalked wielded by their Godwielder. A soldier who held them, with the Divine form behind them and a dozen various incarnations of swords, or axes, or muskets floating around.
It was exactly as Helenna had imagined it.
A single Divine, the likes of Anarchia, could simply not do it. It would have to be the Pantheon, or Tartarus, or Paraideisius, to level the playing field and have a fighting chance. Otherwise? Well, if there wasn’t overwhelming force on the other side, what was there?
“Are the cameras running?” Helenna asked the men besides herself. She would document this battle from up here, although other members of her units had been sprinkled in amongst the ground forces. Two men had even been sent to record the liberation of Aris from the view only helicopters could provide. This battle would go down in the history books, not because it was the biggest defeat or the largest clash, but because it was the first piece of warfare documented on such a large scale.
“They are Goddess! All cameras are up!” One man from the unit shouted back. A squad had been left behind to protect Helenna’s troops although the Goddess of Love imagined she could do it herself. She had survived more than one attempt at assassination in the Great War after all. Helenna stood in her dark coat that trailed down to her knees. There were two dozen blades hidden in that coat, she was no stranger to battle-paranoia.
“Start recording.” Helenna said as she pointed to the dots coming out of the city. Her Divine eyes caught them first: men who were flying in suits of spandex or gaudy uniforms, each one different and unique, each one utterly indistinguishable as they all became an ugly mish-mash of colour. The Goddess of Love pointed one hand towards them. “One camera there.” She pointed up at the white clouds in sky. “One there, prepare to zoom in and focus.”
The crying explosion came a few moments later. The sound of jet engines kicking in and activating, the roar of Raptor One as the black plane suddenly burst from the sky. The four engines were bursting with flames as the plane dived so harshly that it left Helenna recoiling. It cried, the sky around it darkened for a moment, the beak of yellow on its front cried out. Its tongue of metal spat out countless rounds in a fraction of a second. One man fell to the ground as Raptor One spun around onto its side and flew straight past another pair of men. Helenna had no clue what happened, but the men fell down to the ground as Raptor One arced upwards.
Another cry of a furious bird came from the clouds above. The huge black arrowhead that was Raptor Two burst out and followed the course of its partner. Its red eyes almost seemed to gleam and glow as its cannon roared. Another hail of lead came from its jaw. Unlike Raptor One, which fired for less than a second, Raptor Two kept the burst going for a moment as it made a sharp turn. Roof tiles and tarmac, windows and sandstone walls, were ripped apart into fogs of stoney dust. Three more of Anarchia’s heroes fell to the ground.
Helenna felt a tap on the shoulder as two more planes came in. She had to force herself to pull her own eyes away from the machines dive out of the clouds and pick off the blessed of Anarchia. A piece of paper was forced into Helenna’s hand. Helenna read it: Sorry I’m late. That was pretty handwriting. Oh.
Finally Helenna realised that she was ignoring Olephia. The Goddess of Chaos was smiling and leaning down to force her way into Helenna’s vision. Black hair framed purple eyes, one hand held a whole sketchbook and a pencil and Olephia waved theatrically to introduce herself. “We’ve just began.” Helenna said. With Kassandora here, she had thought that Olephia had been reassigned somewhere else. “Where were you?”
Olephia quickly wrote down a reply. Lubska, we’ll talk later on it. She pointed to Aris centre, past grand churches and huge palaces in the very middle of the city.
“What am I looking at?”
Olephia was as fast as the next set of planes that dived down. They opened fire with guns. And then the Aris returned with its own. A steel beam suddenly burst out from between buildings, flying upwards like a lightning strike. It hit one of the Imperial fighters straight in its centre of mass. The jet and all tis armament immediately exploded in a glorious conflagration of flame against the dull, grey sky. Olephia passed another note: Are they going to destroy the national library?
“I don’t think so.” Helenna replied. “Why?” Before the wreckage of the plane crashed down to the ground, Helenna saw the traces of Kassandora run through the entire Imperial army. She had seen it in the past although once one knew what to look for, then it was beyond obvious. If one didn’t though, then War’s Orchestra could be playing in plain sight and still be impossible to see.
The army fell silent and the army sped up. Everything from the Divines to the tanks to the men on the ground. Vehicles that were suddenly constantly adjusting their pace suddenly managed to hold it perfectly. Some men went to ground with no orders being shouted, others started to deploy mortars. Teams of riflemen began to pick up the pace to get to the city sooner. The wheeled artillery in the back raised guns, all moving in perfect unison and synchronization. Even the helicopters, which had just before been circling now backed away from the city and flew in far too low too be part of protocol.
And it was all done without a man so much as looking down to whisper into his radio. No sergeant or corporal gave hand signs, no tank commander or driver or even any of the Divines serving to spearhead the army turned to inspect what was happening. No one needed to. Helenna could see it from here, Kassandora was personally leading the entire assault. Olephia passed Helenna another note: One of my paintings is there. I want it.
“Kass said she’s not here to flatten the city.” Helenna replied, as if to prove her wrong. An artillery barrage started. Olephia raised an unamused eyebrow, those purple eyes doubtful, but she said nothing. No second volley came. In fact, it wasn’t much of a barrage in the first place. One gun had fired one shot into the air. An explosion suddenly burst out in the middle of the city. Dust rose into the air. Helenna realised this was where the steel pole had been thrown from.
One of the Raptors burst out from the clouds again. It roared, it opened fire. It entered a pirouette. This time, a piece of shredded metal, what looked to be the body of a car, was sent up. Almost immediately, before the black plane even entered into a dodge, another artillery gun from an entirely different battery fired. And again, one gun, one shell. Kassandora was managing her army perfectly.
Raptor One screamed, it pulled up in a sharp turn far too tight for a plane of its size. And then it shot off into the clouds. A moment later, the explosion from where someone had tried to shoot it down sounded through the city. Another cloud of dust rose. But the planes had succeeded. Anarchia’s flying units had been forced out of the sky, they disappeared back into alleyways and roads hidden from Helenna.
Kassandora’s army closed in with their rapid pace upon Rancais. When the first wave of Divines was within a human’s throwing distance of the buildings, three men burst out. All in yellow suits, one in a hat and a sword. Another with an axe and a pistol. A third with some monstrosity of a club. They screamed their united curse at the Goddess of Rancais. And then charged at her. Helenna knew she expected Paida herself to handle it, she knew she expected Kassandora to handle it, and she knew she expected the army to handle it. But…
Well, she had no expected such an instant and tempered reaction. If there ever was perfection on the battlefield, it was what she had just seen. Kassandora managed to make it look easy.
Paida instantly raised her blade, she twisted on the ground, she stepped to the side and split one of the men attacking her cleanly in two. And throughout it all, she concentrated only on the man she had just killed, the other two may as well have not mattered. But then again, they did indeed not matter. A burst of fire from a single soldier to her right killed another man. The machine gun on a tank felled the third. No one said a word. No one even reacted to the death. In fact, no one seemed to notice it. They must have though, soldiers spread out to avoid the bodies in the grass, tanks and personnel carriers immediately moved with them to conserve the bare minimum distance which would stop them running their own troops over. Yet still, no one even raised a hand to issue a command. No one even raised a hand to confirm the threat had been eliminated. The army had reacted to their appearance with the perfect amount of discipline to eliminate the threat and do nothing more, and then the army had reacted to the deaths with the perfect amount of discipline to continue its assault.
Kavaa had once described what being inside War’s Orchestra was to Helenna. That woman made it sound almost pleasant. Helenna stared at that silent force enter Rancais. The fact she had changed teams did not make it any less terrifying.
It was exactly as she remembered it.