Truth lay on a tree branch. It wasn’t very comfortable, but he wasn’t paying attention to that fact. He was just… there. Being there. He was playing the fool. He was being loud, and obviously provoking. He was relying on the terror and paranoia of others to trigger a proxy war. This was a low percentage play. A smart person didn’t rely on the emotions of others. They made things happen on their schedule. This was dumb. He was being dumb. Which fits playing the fool, but maybe too much? He didn’t know. It just sucked all the way around.

Was he depressed? Truth didn’t know. Maybe it was just exhaustion. Spiritual, more than physical these days. The endless refinement of his body had made physical exhaustion a real challenge. But the mental struggle wore on him.

It was the cop he used as a mouthpiece. And the guys he just fed to tigers. And a lot of other people, actually, now that he was letting himself think about it. Especially Nevile. It was just so shitty to be shitty to people when you know the game is rigged. That you are still picking cards off the same stacked deck. Even if you are hoping to kill the dealer at the end of the game, you are still playing along. Still working over the suckers who didn’t spot the con.

Telling yourself that it was necessary. That this was just how the world was. This was reality.

What a joke.

Would it be worse if the terrible things he did were successful, proving that this was, in fact necessary and this was, in fact reality- or if they didn’t work because the whole premise was phony?

That would be an awful lot of dead people just to prove a philosophical point.

He just needed to stop for a while. Take a few days or weeks. Just process all the insanity. He didn’t have time for that. The clock was ticking, fast and loud. So he would just hang out on this tree branch for a while and not try to think about anything much. Try not to worry about the damage he knew he was accumulating.

Truth was roughly north of the Great White Mountain. He could see the peak from his tree branch. There was a fair amount of air traffic around it, now. Lots of talisman devices, lots of spell birds and summoned beasts. He could imagine all the Jeon conscripts squaring off against all the Onis conscripts. Neither really wanting to be there, both juiced up on all the nationalist rhetoric their officers could cram into their ears.

Both very aware that, be it in conscripts or regulars, Onis outnumbered Jeon more than ten to one. And both very, very aware that their numbers were meaningless when the high levels were fighting. Ten thousand conscripts, or a working from a Level Seven combat mage not concerned about taking prisoners? It didn’t qualify as a fight.

Truth looked blankly up into the sky, letting the tree branches flick over his vision. The army didn’t explain much about what to do when high levels kicked off, just basics like “If things are coming at you, any degree of “underground” is better than being on the surface.” The PMC was a bit more forthcoming.

It was after he got back from his recuperation on the Star of Mercy hospital ship. There was a video in the training library at the PMC, where a high level Starbrite mage had essentially hijacked a rainstorm. The enemy was dug in? No problem. He turned the water into acid, and once that had started eating through clothes and armor, added a little extra something to the water. Tiny demonic parasites, immune to the acid, that crawled in through the open wounds and festered. The results were agonizing. The final outcome was predictable.

Or there was that Senior who ripped through four ammo boxes for a heavy needler, launched straight up, tagged each needle with a bane spell, a hunting spell, enlarge and Graeme’s Arrow. He THEN cast a tanglefoot spell that covered almost two square kilometers and held it for the fraction of a second the needles needed to find their prey. Total elapsed time- two seconds. Total casualties, one thousand three hundred. No enemy survivors.

Firestorms, those were popular. Large scale summonings were both popular and, depending on what was being summoned, illegal. Beastcrafting and golems were expensive ways to wage war, but they were a lot more durable and reparable than summons. Couldn’t banish a golem, for one thing.

That was the core of most army’s large scale tactics, as Truth understood it. You had your conscripts out front as trigger pullers and targets to draw fire. The hope was that the enemy spent their best attacks on your worst, but most numerous, troops. Then you had your core of regulars kick off the wide area spells, run golems, summon swarms- basically become force multiplying nightmares.

And if the enemy chose not to engage your conscripts? A Level Three might sweep the floor with a dozen Level One’s, but probably couldn’t stop eight thousand needles coming at them all at the same time. Army needlers had a big magazine and a high rate of fire for just such a reason. Unless, of course, that Level Three was in the PMC. Quantity may have a quality all of its own, but only up to a point.

You had to mop up the conscripts. You just wanted to do it as cheaply as possible. So you deployed large scale tactical spells. You funneled them into a valley and folded the earth over them. You created a firestorm on the plains. You summoned, picking an example completely at random, several billion insect demons. That would certainly tie down a lot of conscripts! It would tie down a lot of your mid levels too, while your few, expensive, high level combat effectives stood on the border looking scary and swearing to kill until the skies turned red.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Once you understood the doctrine, it was easy to follow the chain of events. The breakthrough from Hell might have been a natural disaster, but coming just when they discovered a secret Jeon research base right on, or even over, their border? One covered with deeply unnatural, never seen before monstrosities? When everyone and their pet lizard knew that Starbrite had kidnapped a Shattervoid princess?

The soldiers were… Truth didn’t know what to call it. Showing off? Launching morale attacks? He could see mages on spell birds, kilometers up and away in the air, swooping past. Making tiny incursions across the border. Coming within centimeters of hitting their opposite numbers charging out to confront them.

Truth watched them dive, swoop, loop (and what a sphincter clenching experience that must be standing on top of a summoned bird) and flare their wings. Spellbirds, in all their talisman bedecked glory, hovered and fluttered along the border. They might not be as fast as the summons, but they were covered in weapons. A force multiplier- A Level Two pilot could decimate a squad of ground based Level One’s and Twos with almost casual ease.

Unless the squad on the ground was led by one Sergeant Truth Medici, Starbrite PMC, C-8-L, late of this parish. Then one man and one needler was all you needed to wipe out a squad of spell birds.

The mock fights were taking place kilometers away. By the time he saw what had happened, the birds would already have moved. And he only had the Major’s personal sidearm. Usual effective range, less than a hundred meters. Recommended use range, less than twenty. Actual range was, of course, much longer. Kilometers, in fact, but it would have all the stopping power of a falling pine needle at that range.

You could enhance that range with spells, sure, but how accurate were you going to be? Could you even aim that far? How would you lead your shot on something speeding up and slowing down erratically?

Truth pulled out the needler. Load Graeme’s Arrow. He felt the spell bucking and struggling as the System crammed it into his empty spell slot. Truth turned his attention inward. The spells weren’t alive, nor were they conscious, exactly. But their creator’s intention lived on in them. Truth tried to communicate his intent to the spell. Tried to impress on it the exhausted murderousness of his idea.

It seemed to work. The spell settled down. Truth looked over at a Jeon regular on a summoned beast, four wings flapping hard for the border. He stood proud, uniform sharp, ceremonial saber pointing towards the enemy. The Onis airwing met him with two flying serpents, each with a sword pointing regular on their back. They all looked very fierce, as they very carefully did not hit each other.

Truth waited, needler rock steady in his hand. Waiting for Incisive to tell him the moment to strike. Waiting. Waiting-

Graeme’s Arrow picked up the needle, whipping it through the air far faster than the needler could manage on its own. The soldiers separated, then looped around, passed each other within inches, separated and moved back. Then closed again.

The needle caught the Jeon flier a moment before he would have made his pass against the two soldiers from Onis. At the ragged edge of its range, even with Grame’s Arrow, it plinked off his helmet harmlessly. It was enough to make him blink, and for just a moment, flinch. His strong summoned beast smashed directly into the two flying serpents. All fell down. Directly onto the Great White Mountain.

A lot of things started happening all at once. From either side of the border, sirens started blaring. Blizzards of birds took off, flying platforms went up, spell arrays, summoning arrays, sacrificial arrays, Golem launchers started deploying, conscripts were screamed into position, told to stand to, to dig in, that “This is it, Boys, This is WAR!”

Sirens screamed the alert, as the mountain seemed to shiver and boil. Things were moving on it, enormous things, knocking over trees. Truth could see the trails of their passing from kilometers away. Wards shimmered and snapped into place over the mountain too- enormous things. Impossible things. Truth would never have thought an entire mountain could be covered in wards.

Starbrite had always been so much more than he could imagine. He was just a little rat, staring up. Trying to understand the means and majesty of the king of the world.

The spells started deploying. Explosions ripped apart the air, flattening the trees on the mountains, filling valleys. Erasing lives. They weren’t all targeting the mountain either- the spells smashed into the soldier’s lines, ripping apart bases and airfields. Trying to disrupt summons.

Enormous demons, things with three heads and six arms, each hand holding a bane or a suffering, manifested over the battlefield. Truth could see into the distance- they weren’t all going for the battlefield. Some were marching into the interior. Cutting off supply lines. “Pacifying” civilians. There weren’t many cities in the mountains between Jeon and Onis. Not many people at all, comparatively. But there were some. A few million, perhaps.

Just a few million, out of the billions on this world. And it’s not like they were targets. Most of them should probably live. Negligible, in the grand scheme of things. A necessary sacrifice for the greater good. The rats had to be fed. They were already starving. Regrettable necessities would remain both regrettable and necessary, given the current and projected emergency conditions.

Truth was numb. He didn’t know he was crying, as he watched the spell birds tear each other apart. As angels seared the life from the land, eliminating human and infernal contamination with equal contempt. As demons proliferated, bursting out of the bodies of seventeen year old conscripts. Conscripts who had to be cleared out as economically as possible, and what was more economical than turning them against their fellows?

Standing above it all was the Great White Mountain. Its shields shuddered under constant magical assault. Spears of molten stone launched from arrays the size of houses, the volcano’s lava moving under Starbright’s command. Smashing through summons and fortifications with equal ease.

It took less than ten minutes to reduce wooded mountains into a fiery hell. Everyone knew this was just the beginning. The warm up. It would get so much worse than this.

Truth watched in horror as the rats fed on each other without mercy. Without hesitation. Without regret.