It started as one might expect a war where one side has guns and the other does not, with a one-sided artillery barrage. All along the Imperial border the night was illuminated by the light from explosions and muzzle-flashes. The barrage carried on from the time that the light of the sun had disappeared on the night it began to the very first light of the next day. By the time the forces of the Gaian Alliance had begun to move the forts that had stood for decades and in some cases even centuries had been nearly reduced to rubble and smoldering ruins. As the waterways and canals of the Empire began to be filled with the full might of the Arcadian Navy’s Amphibious MSGs and the skies darkened as steel clouds and swarms of flying MSGs made their way toward vital areas, one thing stood out to the attackers.

It was quiet and easy. Too quiet and easy.

They had come to expect that the nation closest to the Theocracy would fight tooth and nail for every millimeter of ground with every citizen, young and old, sick and healthy, male and female trying to defend their homeland. But this wasn’t the case. It caused some to question what exactly was going on. Entire stretches of land were completely abandoned, and it seemed as if the populace had simply vanished. There were signs that people had left, but these signs were over a month old. Whatever had forced these people to leave had not done so with a gentle hand either as the bodies of several people were discovered and were believed to have been people who refused to leave. As the forces of the Gaian Alliance advanced further into the lands of the seemingly deserted Holy Crux Empire, there was a terrible sense of foreboding and a general feeling that something horrible had happened in this nation. When the invading forces arrived at their first major city, the truth of what had happened began to make itself clear.

…

The city was wide open. The gates were open, and the portcullis was up, not that either of those would have stopped the march of our Creator’s glorious Armed Forces. We expected that, like all the other places we came to find, it would be devoid of human life. We were both correct and incorrect in that assumption. As we advanced into the city we occasionally picked up movement on our sensors, but the movement was too erratic and animalistic to be human, so we assumed it to be stray monsters. Once again, we were both right and wrong. As we approached the center of the town, the movement in our sensors began to increase and we understood we were surrounded.

From all directions they came at us; things less human than animal. They were almost like what would happen if you crossed a human with a rabid and starving wolf, as they scampered towards us on all fours while screeching and howling like madmen. Even when we put a bullet or beam between their eyes they still charged us as if nothing had happened, which inevitably forced us to take flight, or for of us who could not, the tops of buildings.

Soon enough the feral humans began to try and climb the buildings to try and get to us, but thankfully reinforcements arrived and through the application of overwhelming firepower we managed to beat back the first wave. Even as they lay broken and torn they still twitched with life, which unnerved us to no end. Once someone got the bright idea to simply burn the bastards to ash, we managed to stop their movements quite permanently. Still, the sensors kept picking up movement and after relaying the event we had experienced to High-Command more of our comrades came to aid in cleaning out the infestation.

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As soon as those reinforcements arrived, more reinforcements had to be sent to the other major cities as they too were infested by these feral and monstrous humans. While it likely would have been safer to simply pound the cities to dust along with the ‘Ferals’, the odds that one or more of them would escape and cause havoc elsewhere was too great to risk doing anything less than a personal scourging of these cities by us Mobile Suit Golems. It was going to be time consuming and labor intensive, but that may have been the reason these things were even left here to begin with.

…

Autopsies of the ‘Ferals’ showed they were indeed humans at one point in time but after experiencing some kind of radical treatment they had become what they were now. It was highly likely that these ‘Ferals’ were the poor and unfortunate citizens of the Holy Crux Empire that had been absent from everywhere else.

If nothing else, the numbers of the ‘Ferals’ that had to be put down matched the rough estimate of how many citizens that were missing from the Holy Crux Empire, but one thing was off. There was one city that was closed and thus was surrounded by the forces of the Gaian Alliance. It was the one city that, as aerial reconnaissance showed, was filled with non-feral humans and was doing quite well. As was to be expected, this city was the capitol of the Holy Crux Empire itself, Sunhallow.

It was easy to put two and two together. The Holy Crux Empire had effectively turned their citizens into diseased monsters that could spread a mind and body altering plague in an attempt to defeat the Alliance. What confused the High Command of the Alliance was why one city was untouched and had their people living in ease. The hypothesis was that, during the time that the DMZ was created and a month ago, the Empire was struck with a financial calamity due to a lack of trade and resources. Because people begin to question their government when economic crises happen, the Empire tried to tighten its grip only to have more dissent occur.

With their Emperor already willing to sacrifice others for his own personal gain, it was therefore likely in his nature that he would not tolerate revolt and in a move that cut both ways he gathered up every potentially non-loyal citizen (everyone outside of Sunhallow) and used some insidious means to turn them into a tool designed for chaos and carnage.

Of course, they would likely not be able to ask the Emperor himself, as the defenses that surrounded the city of Sunhallow were the strongest that had ever ben encountered. If they would need a sustained bombardment to deal with this city’s defenses, then one could only guess what king of fortresses existed in the Theocracy proper. To take Sunhallow they would either need to pound it into the dirt or risk a costly urban battle, and Arkhan’s forces were almost demanding him to let them attack without softening the city up with artillery.

Arkhan didn’t understand why they wanted to do this, but the fact that they had not fought a costly engagement in over three years made them assume they had gotten rusty. To those who had not participated in the Battle of Arkhan’s Village or the Battle of the Uncharted Dungeon, this would be there chance to show the world and their Creator that they were just as hardcore as those who had fought in those battles.

This would be their crucible, and their chance to show the world the futility of defying their God.