[One blink, everything changes its course]
Time was passing by and the soldiers kept pumping shell after shell into the cannon. They worked together, acting as a mechanism of flesh. There were no words exchanged, no looks and no complaints. All was silent in the trenches when the general sentiment of damnation struck the entire made-up division to apply their most raw training. When one part was moved, another was inserted. For as long as the shells were within the stockpile- they worked until they dropped.
Were one to fall on duty, his place would be immediately taken over by another Viper. Promethean, Soldier, Guard, Screamer- who cared? They were nothing but cogs in the great war machine, fueling the efforts of the loved ones at home. That was their doctrine, the hope that kept pushing everyone into a trance whenever shit hit the fan. Dawn began to shine through the dark clouds, but even a full sun wouldn’t illuminate the corpse littered grounds. Elves, Denorans, even offshoot Demonia bands that ran away from their Emperor’s reign.
On the contrary, back in the lines of the oppressors, Elves remained tranquil. In their very own trance where spirits were invoked and used to conjure their strength through natural materials or on rare occasions to force them into outright existence. Overlapped realms, yet there was a clear barrier between them offered by the Great Tree back in their mainland. It was through that very tree’s existence that they acted and felt as one. All Elves were intrinsically connected to one another. Zafiro, the appointed commander, was on the front with his kind to guide them through meditation. A true sage and guru to those who aimed at communion. He had ventured more through the spirit realm than the current Prince.
“Hold on to the golems; it’ll be harder to reestablish the link if we let them crumble. I want the line to leave room for their shells. You know the positions… I don’t have to tell you anything further… A storm is coming.” Teishi said as he made haste to grab ritualistic elements and set up a doll.
He spoke, a tall and skinny man. He wasn’t particularly imposing, his frame wasn’t awe inspiring or terror inflicting. A gentle man, with long and dark hair that always seemed to be littered with leaves and tree branches. His robes were revealing ribs and skinny arms, with a wooden sword loosely tied to his waist. Charms adorned his twin colored robes- black and a light blue. He didn’t wear any sandals and didn’t seem to tidy himself often. Yet his stance was impeccable and tidy- being offered respect he never demanded. Yet nobody decently competent believed in his apparent passive nature.
The suspicions of Commander Teishi were right- although slowly running out of ammo, the Denoran Army was soon going to make a breakthrough. It was already terrible enough that all they were equipped with was the post-Crusade stockpile, but the attrition and unfavorable terrain was actively holding them from making real advancements. Even then, orders were orders. None could be belayed by anyone, especially since there wasn’t a commander of their own present on the field. Rudimentary radio equipment was all that they were equipped with, not that far from their top tier technological advancements in the absence of a Gravitational Slingshot.
But there was one element, one single hair of hope that the entire battlefield clung to- War Hounds. Legendary, top tier soldiers that were almost irreplaceable. Once the constant fire support of the Golems halted for a brief moment to reposition, a dark cloud emerged from the skies. Not birds, not rain, but an overwhelming amount of smaller jets charging straight into enemy dominated air territory. Howling Howlers would violently fly through the mana irradiated air and begin crashing into the locations that intelligence marked down as high potential for talisman emplacements.
Orders came through the headsets of different inmates strapped to the planes as pilots. They hardly had any knowledge in how piloting worked- but they didn’t have to know anything. Their task was simple: suicide bomb into the enemy weakpoints to clear a path for the actual pilots and the “special cargo” they transported. There wasn’t a warning, a hint or clue of the swarm invading, it was all gambled away rather than planned by the Director himself. The one behind all military operations, the one whose gambits and wits remained outmatched by the entirety of Denora. Just as he had predicted weeks ago, the planes would go down in flames and hardly manage to strike the targets, but that was more than enough to offer the allies an opportunity to advance.
The sun began to shine through the burning clouds- rays of gold falling onto the dazed soldiers that beheld everything from the ground. While looking at the allied planes going down in flames, eroded in the air, shot down by enemy spells from a distance or crashing and unleashing violently into the hills, soldiers began to return to their senses, only to feel terror. The explosions and alarms going off were enough to wake anyone up from a trance, but the view was so horrific that some couldn’t even bear to witness. Though all would change with a familiar trampling in the distance and a similar tune echoing through the skies. From behind, reinforcements would arrive and the anthem of Denora would play up in the clouds from a partially concealed ship that carried the “package”. This time, proper Gravitational Slingshot equipment was used with the rudimentary weaponry all but exhausted finally. With Shock Sects, more Vipers and even the long sought after Rampart Battalions coming from behind, soldiers began to have their spirits lifted. Inside the invisible ship, a dashing captain donned the helmet to his power suit and began strapping onto the launch pod.
“Alright lads, this is just cleanup duty. Expect in the worst case scenario Verbannung Elves. I personally don’t think any particular elites will pop out besides the general bandits, but this gets me rid of any of you dying without knowing this would happen.” He smiled, sealing into the helmet. Not for one second did he believe anyone would die in this mission.
That young man was Elias Xavier- the leader of the War Hounds special operations squad. His hair was his most prominent feature besides the strong facial features. Despite being one of the top military positions, he was not forced to keep his hair short, rather was allowed to wear it in a slim and slight ponytail down his back. Strange markings were crossing his cheeks and arms, complementing his glowing yellow eyes. His body alone was a testament to the true power man could achieve, but something about him was odd in the public’s view. Some thought him to be an illegal magic wielder, some believed he was one of the first bio engineered super soldiers that had rumors flying about. Nevertheless, to all he was a national hero that led a squad of four other top tier soldiers into battle.
With the anthem blasting about, launch pods were fired from the camouflaged ship as the field of magic was fading away, marking the success of the suicide bombers. Flying through the air, the metal cages landed on different locations. Straight into the front line, a giant armored monstrosity of a man- supplied with shields and mechanical appendages armed with various machetes, spread pallet Slingshot guns and gadgets that weren’t even comprehensible to the average footsoldier. The War Hound marched on while setting up a wall- physical and energetic to defend those behind him. Heavy steps quaked the trenches and crumbled the ground, cracking it beneath. Steam blew from armor vents and began heating up engines built into its frame as defensive concealed guns began to reveal themselves, opening up the bulwark armor and showcasing what the peak of defensive engineering could achieve.
In the back, a lightly armored figure with canisters and caches of drugs jumped straight into the trench, dispersing a strange gas with a lightly green hue. Medicine in Denora wasn’t particularity advanced, hardly managing to merge man and machines. Lacking the magical component that all the other races had at their disposal for rejuvenating magic, the solution was developing chemicals that could take away pain and supplement bodily functions. Although fleeting, the effects were maximal when used at War Hound grade, tales of raising the dead from their grave spreading across battlefields as well. Working with nothing short of perfect efficiency, the “medic” managed to set up drones and put back together plenty of soldiers before having to resynthesize its fuel even once. It wasn’t particularly efficient for battle- offensive or defensive, but the support focus was unmatched.
Farthest from the point of combat, without even being present on the ship, a lonely War Hound would bring up a long and esoteric rifle. Vastly different from all the other weaponry from the infantries, it would bear something closer to a rail gun. Different locks began popping open, a barely visible purple field bending along the length of the barrel. What usually was invisible, began to take form in such a concentrated space. Gravity Slingshots were more than a military and futuristic concept- it was a religion. From the dawn of time man had grasped the original Divine Frame’s principle. After years of efforts, it was realized as a trick of gravity not fully understood, but that could be implemented into any machine to compensate for anything if used creatively enough. Being able to use anything for a bullet and release it with power unmatched by conventional engineering, it was also the graveyard of revolutionary discoveries, having people grow lazy and reliant on them- as such, electricity never reached its full potential and medicine is still a testing grounds for this universal answer to all problems. Nevertheless, the sniper aimed down the sights and fired a beam that seemingly tore through the atmosphere itself, reaching its target instantly. The aim was for the slightly revealed head of a Golem, instantly shattering it and signaling the beginning of the counterattack.
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Lastly, directly into the enemy lines, Elias and one last War Hound landed. It was equipped with mostly white armor, the War Hound had moderate plating and plenty of built-in jets for mobility. With a strong accent on its mechanized and heavy aspect, it didn’t excel at anything but total destruction. Effortlessly, it leaped from one Elf guard to another, punching right through blades that couldn’t pierce it. Whenever distance was attempted at being created, it would use one of its various mounted weapons to engage fleeing enemies or overture its engines to catch up and crush into a pulp whatever turned its back. Equipped with everything Denora had to offer, ranging from flamethrowers and guns to slight chemical warfare in the form of drugs and deadly gases, it was the white its armor shared with Elias’ that made the aggression possible. Why the two of them were fighting ahead of the rest and the one who was focused on defense ensured infantry could pick up the pace and join the maneuver.
The Soldier that hours before had given up hope, found himself brought back from the brink of insanity. His gaze fell onto the medic’s silhouette, mistaking it for an angel. Recovering from the war frenzy, his hearing returned and everything became as clear as it could have, although explosions and sirens were still blurred out by the anthem. Salvation had come and tears started flooding his eyes. A smile so wide it looked ridiculous appeared on his face as he fell to his knees, grabbing desperately onto the leg of his savior. His heartbeat boomed in his eardrums and every inch of his body was bursting with joy. Getting up from the ground and grabbing his rifle, he gazed into the sky as the night they endured was worth it, for the daylight they awaited. Close by, the sound of rumbling intensified as modern Sects took a hold of the ground and began arming their barrels into artillery mode. A claw dug into the ground beneath and after a short process fabricated its own shells from unconventional materials, firing them into the sky with force that would turn anything into a flying bomb. Mobilized Sects started rolling ahead, soldiers clinging to their tracks and chassis as they passed by trenches, hopping onto convoys and rushing on. Chimera Forges- engineers and mechanics that took part in construction at home and on the battlefield arrived as well, beginning to assemble a giant iron hunk directly onto the battlefield, not a good sign for any enemy.
With war screams unanimously escaping everyone’s mouths, they left their hiding spots and picked up rifles- theirs, their friends’, whatever was on the ground was up for grabs. A burst of hope exploded within their hearts, eyes full of tears while charging onwards towards what seemed like certain victory. Shining, tall mechs marched on alongside the tanks and convoys carrying few soldiers into the battle, while swarms of allied fighters began darkening the now uncontested air. Each step of their boots now was worth it, for three years they held on and on this day it would make a breakthrough, truly a moment that would make them forget all of the pain endured and all of the madness suffered so far.
"Vereinigung, arm yourselves! Mana blades, bows, spears, whatever you can find. Invokers force them into a bottleneck, ruin the ground beneath them. I want the Valkyries up in the skies, Hawks, everything!” Zafiro began to raise his tone, shattering the initial illusion of frailty. He realized the importance of the War Hounds’ presence and accelerated the process of preparing the doll. “Even the Verbannung…!” He demanded in a grim tone, allowing the volunteer forces to take part in the defense of the ground, even if they severed themselves from the Great Tree’s connection.
Elves began arming themselves, picking up weapons and shields to form a front line that would grab a foot and play a defensive war against the heavy superior firepower of the humans. Verbannung shifted into the spirit realm and would begin charging towards the enemies, being essentially outside of the real world until they traversed. Stealth fighters, traversing a world accessible only to elves, the Verbannung had their own military rankings and divisions, but were often shunned and reduced to their race’s name regardless of their specialization. As such, blades, bows, specialised ritual weapons, whatever they used they were all just Verbannung- strong meat for the grinder that the Vereinigung used maliciously outside of their home’s safety laws.
Riding on top of what could only be described as armored dinosaur-like creatures, Valkyries would take flight and join the combat against the air dominance of the humans, with great hawks and flying spirits inhabiting and augmenting animals coming to their aid. Realistically, the Elven power was on the ground with other means of combat being encompassed by that ground support. As such, it was invokers that conjured elements- most often fire, to scorch away Denoran flyers from the sky. More experienced ones would take advantage of storms and call down thunder, taking out several fighters in one smooth weave of the staff. A wall of arrows would begin to form in the back of their lines, assaulting both the sky and the ground, a challenge that Denorans had to face every time they went on a dogfight against the Thamaenas. Unfortunately, this had escalated into a war hidden by the media on both ends, usually news and information leaking out only once a side had won.
As soldiers would rush to reach air to ground batteries and unleash bullets into the air to aid their planes, the air became an indistinguishable mess of life, machine, energy and death constantly changing, exploding and going down in flames for both sides. The skies would once more darken with smoke and block out the majority of the dawn’s sunlight, thrusting everyone into blind combat. Vines would sprout from the ground and create artificial walls, an enforced asymmetric battlefield within purpose but to halt the advances of the motorised battalions. Bottlenecks were created and Prometheans as well as specialised Sects would unleash their flamethrower blaze to burn through the barricades, although at a lower efficiency due to the inherent magical nature of it. It took quite a while before the close quarters units of the elves were engaged by the soldiers, whose weapons began to have lower efficiency against the reinforced shields. Less distance meant less power lost on the imperfect Slingshots, as well as a tank running over the forces directly- both were good enough to force a closer approach to the shield line.
In the backline, from where Golem assault ceased its onslaught, the Warhound assisted by Elias kept fighting against the majority of the Verbannung forces and units trained to guard the core of the army. The Assault would chase down the elves whose determination wavered the most, bursts of its jets sending it flying across the battlefield and flying its knee directly into the enemy skull, shattering it on impact. Landing in a spinning kick, the jets would flare once more and create a blaze that would get turned briefly into a hurricane that kept the foes from closing in while vulnerable. Before the smoke could clear, its arms began shifting and altered to machine gun barrels, unleashing fire onto the farthest elves that struggled to track it down and aim. It was the pale nullite covering its plating that offered it such efficiency against magic and caused its signature to be almost undetectable by magic senses. Locking onto different targets, it unleashed flares from its wrists and continued firing down on the terrorized Thamaenas.
Elias was much more methodical in his approach to warfare and less sadistic, fighting not for pleasure, rather out of duty. An ace at what he did, he would rather use weapons that he had on himself instead of built-in ones, it offered a more modular approach and prevented any accidents from occurring, such as jamming. Although he still used bullets, explosives and close combat to fight against the majority of his foes, he had a strange lightning affinity unexplained- was it machine, was it a gift for magic, none could tell really. It was however thanks to his efforts in the Crusade and following aid to the nation paired with The Director’s sympathy that not only allowed him to serve, but to prosper as well. With a stomp of the foot, he would set up an invisible web underneath him, then backstep and allow enemies to chase him into the traps that triggered and shocked them. It was those brief periods in which he used usually one bullet to pierce the available weak points. He described it as time slowing down, as the ability to see opportunity in chaos whenever he had success with his lightning strikes.
Spirits would rise from the ground and materialize, inhabiting the remains of the elves, animals or the inanimate objects to create their own amalgamated bodies and wage war against the invaders. Some spirits trespassed directly into the realm of the living, something one could explain only as mana beyond what was considered pure. Their bodies were more like controlled explosions that took the shape of animals most often, but strange and mythical creatures would emerge sometimes as well- with tentacles, several limbs and indescribable masses of abnormal silhouettes.
Elias knew that the elves never really reached the peak of their spellcasting, but the more he looked at the spirits, the more he unconsciously grasped onto the understanding of these beings. Regardless, he would employ the same baiting tactics and force his enemies into traps before using either special nullite rounds or lightning to dispatch them, while the Assault Warhound could only deal with the physical elves, which was proving more troublesome with the proper intervention of the Verbannung attacking at awkward angles and disappearing before a chance of counter attacking was given. It was a slow crawl to grind out enemies, but it would come to a sudden halt with a burst of mana from a blue circle established a while ago by Zafiro.
“O, Tree. Awaken, Embody, Impose, Oppress. Irene; Catastrophe Embodied.” The man would chant, raising the doll into the skies and allowing it to take the shape of the Great Spirit, becoming a proper Effigy that used its abilities to a limited extent. Usually, Zafiro was capable of Silent Casting as a prodigy of the new generation’s awakening, but there were many rituals that even he couldn’t grasp the gist of. Especially for Irene, it was already impossible for anyone so far to conjure a Great Spirit without the full ritual. On Her especially, it was particularly difficult. Though he believed it would be enough to rush the ritual and use a botched doll to create an already faulty Effigy. If only he had more time and preparation…
[Fronts clashing head on; Warriors of Legend facing each other in glorious combat; The Eye blinked once more as the memory came close to its finale. It learnt much, it envisioned the story and began to etch it into its great and vast memory]