Before Lepochim could head out, he first needed to contact the various quasi-sapient leaders. Olm was able to contact the other devilbats from afar using some kind of ultrasonic emergency frequency--Lepochim wasn't too keen on the specifics--and as a result, many of them could now be seen swarming to Basalith's skies.
Lepochim glared at one of the more powerful kursi in the crowd--he didn't know the man's name--and tilted his head sharply to the side, implying that the man should use dragonleaf to contact all the quasi-sapient heads. Thankfully, the fairly powerful kursi took the hint, or so it seemed, and he saluted up to Lepochim's imperious form.
Lepochim had told the kursi at the beginning of their Sunday brief to watch for a signal to rally the quasi-sapients. 'I can't believe I neglected to tell them what the signal was,' Lepochim thought to himself, rather embarrassed. He disdained the use of crude gestures like jerking his head to substitute for a planned signal. 'This wouldn't have happened back on Sigenolf-74...' Lepochim worried that he was letting himself grow rusty. Thankfully, the activities of COTD would call his experience into play and put his languishing abilities to the test.
Lepochim drafted out a plan of attack for the quasi-sapients on Sunday, contingent on whether or not Basalith's residents would, in fact, leave the city to wreak havoc. He asked them all to send detailed descriptions of their capabilities via dragonleaf transmission. He hadn't actually seen any of the quasi-sapients in action, though he assumed they wouldn't outright lie about their own capabilities. Of course using many quasi-sapients added in another factor of variability into attack plan, but Lepochim figured it was best to give as many entities of Basalith as possible combat experience before serious foes made their appearance.
Seeing that the quasi-sapients had been contacted, and realizing that the expected number of 500 devilbats were all present, Lepochim led the initial advance out of the city. Spineroot willingly let them pass, its many tendrils draping harmlessly over the entire force. Were they enemies, the very same tendrils would have savagely flayed them.
Lepochim led the devilbat force through the air, taking note of a few hovering helicopters and tanks in the immediate vicinity.
"There are jets circling above," Olm said. "A few miles up."
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Lepochim nodded, though shook his head internally as he lamented his inability to detect enemy forces from so far out. 'I really must petition Bath about echolocation boons.' He coughed lightly, then replied, "As expected. Can the devilbats get started clearing the way for our ground forces?"
"Yes."
That simple "yes" ushered in an absurd level of topographic destruction.
Basalith was located in a particularly flat area of Virginia. This made it so that the advancing devilbats emitted a supersonic screech that actually pushed the flat terrain downward, its grassy surface breaking out into numerous fissures to dissipate the force. As screeches rained down in succession, even these cracks soon smoothed out, leaving a fairly even--and low--path for the other Basalith forces to follow.
Lepochim tried to think of how much force the devilbats needed to produce with their voices to create such an effect. Clearly, their voices were working in sync to pulverize the ground, and a single devilbat wouldn't have nearly the same level of destructive effect, but all the same, the devilbats' might was unquestionable.
'If this is what a World Devourer can produce in a few days...' Lepochim still wasn't convinced Bath was a World Devourer. But if Bath really was a World Devourer, and all World Devourers had his abilities, Lepochim was exceedingly grateful that destruction was only the aftereffect of Devourers' insatiable hunger; they didn't need, or want, to destroy things for destruction's sake.
Lepochim was starting to wonder if there would be anything left for the ground forces following along at a slower pace. The newly-flattened ground served as a perfect road for them to follow; even the many areas where landmines and bombs had gone off had been rapidly concussed into a semblance of uniform flatness. As the devilbats swept over the land, the shrieks of hidden soldiers resounded in their wake.
He hadn't given any specific orders to the ground troops below. It took nearly all his willpower not to do so; unfortunately, Bath had given him strict instructions for Basalith's first battle a week back. Lepochim recalled the conversation now.
---
"Lepochim, war will come to Basalith sometime soon," Bath stated coolly, leaning on the balcony of The Anima's upper meeting room.
"Clearly," Lepochim sniffed, eyes narrowing. "Why bring this up now?"
"Do you understand what it means to direct chaos?" His voice pierced through the high-altitude breeze.
"...To engender order," Lepochim finally answered, wondering if the question was a trick.
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Bath leaned further into the balcony and sighed. "I'd prefer to do away with such a veneer."
"How is order a veneer?"
"What am I, Lepochim? Am I order," Bath now turned around, his form visible to Lepochim's night-vision-optimized eyes. "Or chaos?" Bath suddenly broke apart into nothingness; Lepochim didn't see a scrap of his previous self. Then, just as quickly as he disappeared, Bath reformed himself. "I am never more than my most fundamental essence, the chaos swirling at my Center. If I were ordered, I would be like you, or any other sapient in this universe. I am chaos, directed.
"That is how I want you to lead the Church of the Dragon. Let its members embody chaos, let them rip forward like rabid dogs. But, direct them."
Lepochim just stared. He was always somewhat surprised when this side of Bath came out. He really did exude a primordial air when he spoke about chaos and order...
But all the same, Lepochim thought that Bath's request was idiotic. "You want to just let the completely unordered masses run out into the enemy's waiting forces?"
Bath turned his head around to give Lepochim a stone-cold smile. Now, as Bath spoke, Lepochim heard his voice echo out from several different locations surrounding his head. "Have faith in the Way of the Dragon." As the phrase finished, Lepochim flinched as the snapping of jaws filled the space right next to his head.
Bath chuckled. "It's amusing how you continue to doubt me." Then, he turned back to the balcony and waved a hand in dismissal. Lepochim left without response.
---
Because of Bath, Lepochim felt like his hands were tied. He wanted to scream orders to the forces below, to organize them off into different directions and ensure that each group had a suitable mix of professions and quasi-sapients, but he resisted the urge. To keep himself busy, he decided to talk with Olm.
"You're all only a few days old, right?" Lepochim wanted to confirm.
"Yes, but our mental and physical growth were rapidly accelerated." Olm resumed projecting his voice with an efficiency that Lepochim approved of. 'Utterly ridiculous,' he sighed to himself as Olm glided forward. Now that Olm was leading the pack of devilbats, he kept a slightly slower, almost perfectly horizontal flight pattern. Lepochim now found staying on Olm trivial.
'If he was toying with me earlier for any other reason than to prepare me for possible combat maneuvers...' Lepochim menaced, though the threat was empty. Obnoxious flying style aside, Lepochim was fond of the bat's deep, monotone voice that forestalled most attempts at humor...exactly the kind of voice he appreciated.
---
Kayt rode Nimesh at the head of the ground forces, the white wolf having taken control of the Dawn wolf pack. Close behind them were the manned horses and the unmanned raptors. Further back were the bears; just above them all were the hawks. Kayt knew that falcons were somewhere overhead, though they were too high for her to see with the prevalent smoke and heavy cloud coverage. She'd heard that there was also a species underground, apparently one of the quasi-sapient species that hadn't yet made a public appearance.
In terms of appearance, the horses actually didn't look too different from standard Earth horses. They all had impressively long legs that, combined with their undoubtedly redesigned musculature, enabled them to gallop forward with enough speed to keep pace with the wolves.
The raptors looked like some kind of weird two-legged lizard with thick, plate-like scales that ended in sharp points. Their forearms were tucked close to their chests as they ran, but Kayt knew that their hands had thin, dagger-like talons that offset the thick, wickedly curved ones on their feet. The hawks were about the size of the average person and wielded their gargantuan, gleaming, metallic talons with confident grace.
Kayt didn't have any idea what anyone, or thing, was supposed to be doing. As far as she was concerned, the only guidance anyone present had received was to leave Basalith and give the enemy hell. Following along the bat quasi-sapients' flattened trail was a clear option, but the bats were flying over increasingly craggy and mountainous terrain; as a result, the trail ahead was growing increasingly unpleasant to traverse.
'When do you think we should split off?' Kayt asked Nimesh.
'We can leave now; many others separated on the way, and this seems as good a place as any.'
'Even though you're leading the Dawn wolves?'
Nimesh transmitted an image of a toothy grin. 'Where we go, they'll follow. I smell humans to the West.'
---
Dean had decided to go separate from the main expeditionary group. One of his biggest motivations was that he didn't want anybody from Basalith to be around in case they got caught in friendly fire.
Originally, his primary reason was that he didn't want people in Basalith to know he had received a set of clearly superior boons; he enjoyed his anonymity in Basalith and didn't want this to change if possible. In a moment of annoyance over the futility of sorting out the trajectory of his life, Dean commissioned a re-moldable dragonleaf mask from Dawn faction. 'One problem solved, and countless other to go,' he'd thought cynically when a squirrel came to deliver it.
Dean had only seen his family three times in the past few days. They kept asking questions about his own advancement through the profession system. Like just about everyone else, they'd quickly fallen prey to the notion of self-determination.
Dean knew he'd probably be the same way if he hadn't been subject to a behind-the-scenes glance into the makings of Basalith and COTD. Whatever Bath was, he wasn't a god in any sense that Dean recognized. Bath had acknowledged as he welcomed the newcomers of Basalith--in an audio recording that had quickly gone explosively viral--that COTD was wholly unable to assist people with affairs of the spirit. The "religion" felt like the total opposite of Earth's many current major religions that stressed renouncing the material world--the body--for the sake of spiritual advancement.
Dean clucked deprecatingly to himself as he walked forward, taking his time to scope for hidden explosives. 'Even as you recognize that this entire church business is incredibly suspect, here you are, rushing out to defend the city from government forces...'
Dean actually wasn't aware of an even deeper, truer underlying motivation: the desire to inflict violence.
---
"We are the chosen of the Dragon," Amalo's voice carried throughout the steadily growing network of tunnels. Each of his loosely-ordered subordinates had branched out, as expected; their species functioned as solo-operatives. "If their heart rates increase before they've been silenced, you've failed."
They all had superior hearing, capable of picking up on his elevated voice for miles out. Plucking the thrummings of a human heartbeat out of the soundscape above would be child's play, even with explosions, gunfire, and screams of despair. Amalo knew that the only thing they lacked was experience, and hoped that this battle would offer perfect...live practice.