Aziz spent the rest of the day in a fitful rest, tossing and turning. His bed, which was usually cool and reassuring to the touch, had turned into an uncomfortably warm steel plate, and no matter what the colonel did, he couldn’t quite sleep properly.

All that could be attributed to the fact that the North’s Locomotives were arriving tomorrow. He had never seen those metal behemoths in action before, but he had read the reports on their live-fire exercises. Each of these Locomotives could decimate any contemporary army, those capable of flight or otherwise, but now, they were approaching the Great Divide as a fleet.

The reinforcements from the other nations were also drawing closer to the battlefield, but to Aziz, they no longer seemed like much, compared to the incarnations of destruction those metal hulks were. A good estimate of each Locomotive’s firepower would be that of a Demigod’s, which meant that for the first time in history, mortal means were able to close gaps that used to be insurmountable.

Granted, Aziz had no doubt that individually, weapon fire from a single Locomotive would never be able to match up to the penetrative power of a Demigod, but that almost certainly wouldn’t be the case when it came to inflicting casualties on an immense scale. The demon hordes would be annihilated upon first contact, and the remaining battle would be within the semi-divinities and the Knights.

The First Aerial’s role was almost over.

This was precisely the reason behind his unease. While the semi-divinities and the great gods fought high above the sky, the mortals would be made to labour on the ground. A mad rush for territory would follow, as the rulers of the Five Lands reached out for resources and land.

In the middle of it all would be the newly-freed militaries. However, rather than sacrificing their lives for the sake of family and friend, these soldiers would be forced to fight a long ground campaign for riches and resources that they would never see. What would happen when these soldiers realised that?

And what would their leaders’ response be?

His thoughts and delusions began to mix together, and the colonel found himself sinking into a lucid dream. There, under a bloody sky, he and an army of faceless soldiers swept through a land of boundless sand, slamming into a turbid mass of maddened demons. The misty world muffled the sounds of war, and all around him were silhouettes of desperate combatants, striking down endless enemies.

Bodies keeled over as the insane, impossible battle played out in his mind, and as Aziz looked up from the latest corpse he created, a second, equally large army appeared on the horizon. At that sight, the faceless soldiers around him began to beat a retreat, breaking into a rout.

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As a bloody claw closed in on his throat, the mist that had shrouded the battlefield deepened. When it next lifted, Aziz was now looking down on a hastily-built encampment. There, thousands of soldiers had gathered in the camp’s main square.

They were protesting, and although all Aziz could hear was a distorted roar, made up of words he recalled hearing when awake, the colonel had enough presence of mind to know that they were protesting.

Was this dream his subconscious telling him that his fears were not unfounded? Aziz looked down on the rebelling soldiers in a foreign land. Their faces were blurred out. Any identifying features that could have been used were invisible, lost to the mist.

It could be anyone.

The protest continued, but the mist had returned. The deafening, distorted roar was actually that of the blood rushing in his ears, as they coursed through his veins madly. At the same time, his lucid dream began to fade out, and Aziz’s vision returned to that of the drab ceiling above. He was still lying on his bed, but the shirt he had put on was sticking to his back, leaving a cold clamminess behind.

From the very start, Aziz knew that it was all a dream. The endless war. The rebelling soldiers. Everything earlier was just his nightmares given life and animacy.

“This war cannot drag on.”

Those five words echoed in his barren bunk, filled only with the barest of necessities and furniture. Sitting up slowly, the colonel gently removed the thin shirt he was wearing, and then walked over to the small bathroom. It didn’t take long for him to freshen up, but even then, he still hadn’t thought of anything.

It was an expected outcome, all things considered. He was a military man. Someone who knew how to take orders. Someone who was also capable of thinking up solutions, so long as the problem was in his specialised field.

Yet, when it came to looking for long-term solutions to the basest problem of all — greed — Aziz was simply helpless.

“Maybe I should I find Marie. The marshal probably has the same considerations, right?” Aziz muttered out loud. Adjusting a button on his uniform, Aziz shot a critical glance at his bed, which had some sweat stains from it, and then left his bunk.

The drab hallway of the division headquarters did nothing to lift his mood, so he quickly left the area. Flying over to the Guardian Barracks, where Marie had arranged to meet him in the morning, Aziz looked around him randomly, hoping to find someone or something that could inspire a solution or two.

The only thing he saw, however, was soldiers training with each other.

Infantry troops practicing how to move, coordinating movements that would ultimately be of little use in a battle between semi-divinities. Movements that were meant to hold a fortification.

These soldiers never signed up for an offensive campaign. They were never trained for one; the infantry of the Heaven-cleaving Fortress had been drilling on movements and means to hold the line.

If things went as his dream went, as what the marshal predicted, these soldiers will be thrown into a path of no return.

Long ago, when Aziz made his vow, to become a Knight, he swore to protect his subordinates. He had lived up to it; he had prepared them over and over for a devastating war.

The casualties taken were not something he could be responsible for.

However, he could not, in good faith, watch the First Aerial march to their deaths in a foreign land.

Even if he had to lose his commission for it.