Time moved faster when one had a finite amount of it.
The minutes seemed to count down like seconds for everyone across all fronts. Anxious breaths filled the cold air of the icy tombs deep within Caldera Industries’ Derma Layer base.
The attack force of 2,500 personnel stood in wait before an empty space. They all stood atop a frozen lake, waiting for the next portal to open. No one dared to say what they all thought out loud.
“This will be the biggest battle we’ll ever have the honor of serving in.”
“We’ll be one last summon away from the largest battle we’ve seen since the War in Heaven.”
The latter belonged to veteran personnel such as Operational Conductors, who were tall Dwarves that wore dark blue coats with yellow trims to differentiate them from combat and machine-operating roles. Only 50 of them existed in Caldera Industries, and only 3 were present. They also wore peaked caps of an identical color scheme and yellow monocles.
Due to the nature of the battles against the Hearts, there was no need for them to chart out a plan of attack. However, they did not rest and scribbled into a papyrus book with an ink pen whilst their personnel caught their breaths.
They tallied the number of personnel they had, the number of operational machines as their assistants scurried around, reporting their losses. Not a single word left their lips. The combined angst of their personnel was countered by their stoic demeanor.
Suddenly, one of them shut their book. The other two followed right as the trims of their coats began to glow. The undersides of their peaked caps also emitted a soft glow alongside a low-frequency hum, akin to that of a tuning fork rather than the murmurs of a machine.
Then, a masculine Operational Conductor formed a ring with his fingers. If one peered through it, then they would find a void on the other side.
“This is an announcement from your Operational Conductor.”
[Amplification] magic allowed the Operational Conductor to speak to them through an unseen intercom.
White particles poured out from that darkness like the materials that could be harvested from black holes thanks to CogitO’s Reality Manifesters. They formed a glorious two-handed hammer with a handle far taller than themselves, and with a head more than five times the size of his body.
It was a black ball that absorbed light.
He lifted the enormous weapon with only a single hand then slammed the base of his handle against the ice.
“The Amalgam is drawing close to the enemy.”
A wave of others joined him in slamming the handles of their weapons against the earth. If their weapons were too short, then they resorted to stomping. The bass of the distant smelteries and forges played in the background.
“Remember what they have taken from you.”
Soon, all 2,500 men and women rhythmically stomped with their boots and weapons, rattling the world. The mechanical Augers lifted their enormous, kilometer-long drills into the distant skies. Though they were deep underground within the Derma Layer, the blue ceiling was so far away that it looked like the skies of the Epiderma Layer.
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They too began to clap. The sound alone caused visible ripples to cascade across the complex.
“Swarm them as they have. There are no stipulations other than what the Code of Conduct has laid out for us in accordance to the ‘innocent’. Otherwise, there are no rules to obey.”
The utter cacophony of their battle sounds instilled a sense of unity. It expelled the fear from their hearts. If the enemy could hear this then they would second guess themselves. War was a battle of psychology, and the Operational Conductions knew this through experience.
Machines, sound, controlled chaos – it was all a tactic to reinforce them mentally, as well as to invoke terror into their enemy’s hearts.
Suddenly, a great rift opened before them. The sound of a horn cut through their battle chatters before a unanimous roar rattled the air. The machines of war were the first to leave, and they were swiftly followed by foot soldiers into the maw of their enemies.
“May they never tear us away from who we are.”
They charged into a world of gold and gore. Streets of gold bled under the immense weight of their boots as they attacked the various attractions of the Blood Festival Heart of the City. Amongst them were the Organized – beings that oversaw the attractions.
“Endorse Attachment.”
The Operational Conductor entered the portal. There was no need for him to do this, but he did so anyway, following in the immediate footsteps of chaos. The buildings and attractions moaned in agony as though they were alive, and each step he made onto the brick path caused it to squelch like it was made from flesh.
Immediately, the floor groaned as it prepared to open. A giant lip pursed between his legs as razor-sharp teeth emerged. But before it could open, he slammed his hammed down with the weight of a collapsing star.
Black cracks instantly spread in eight cardinal directions from his hammer. It instantly compressed anything it touched. Newly emerging Organized, which were beings that were stitched together with varying body parts, were painfully spaghettified when just a single hair was caught by the cracks.
Their bodies were first stretched thin, and then like a wet towel, they were wrung until they became a strand thinner than a piece of hair. The eight-pointed star-like formation of his hammer remained, carrying the cracks as he began to spin it around his waist.
“This is what they have always done.” He uttered deeply to himself. One wrong move could cost him his life, as the weapon did not discriminate with who it devoured.
The fact that he could embellish his weapon like it was a toy reflected how he viewed this battle. He did not see the Blood Festival as a threat, as they were not their personal enemies.
However –
“They rot everything they touch.”
It brought him great grief to see how the Heart of the City had transformed the land into a living nightmare. Between the cracks of ruined structures struggled the remnants of humans, Demi-Humans and alike. But when they finally clawed themselves free, he swung his weapon upwards and pointed it at the cloudy skies.
The black orb compressed as the debris in the immediate surroundings were sucked into it. It rapidly grew in strength, dragging things as far as 50 meters away to be devoured. Then, the cracks of the black hole extended to over 100 meters away, arching downwards into the earth where it attacked various living attractions like bolts of dark lightning.
“… Livestock is what they see you as. I know those eyes. So they’ve brought people in from the Derma Layer into here… the sudden ascension has distorted your bodies.”
Indeed. The people that managed to survive the immediate wave of Caldera Industries by sheer luck had the eyes of newborn fawns. Their lower bodies were reduced to mush, and they crawled on their hands as they left behind a trail of mucus.
They were like slugs.
Their eyes glistened at the sight of his weapon as they slowly made their way towards him out of curiosity. They did not care that they were in a warzone, or that several of them were dead or heavily injured, aside from those who were clearly inhabitants of the Bellum Empire.
“The Curse of the Ascent. Your bodies were not made to withstand this world. Yet they dragged you up here, rotting you against your will. And you don’t even know that yourself.”
Operational Conductor correctly identified that it was not caused by the Blood Festival’s organ-harvests, but rather by their physical ascension into the Epiderma Layer.
“It is all normal to you after you’ve been bred for generations without knowing what the skies look like.”
The distant explosions and the grueling festival music bellowed through the 20 square kilometer complex that was the Heart of the City. His coat partially opened, revealing a neck was swollen till pink, and transparent like a slime.
His chest was much the same, and one could find a cartoonish love-heart in the place where his heart would be. It functioned all the same. In truth, he was part Impuritas but was lucky enough to not be considered one, despite his Curse.
“… I can only give you this mercy. Forgive me. But this is all I can do for you.”