Truth had become something of a connoisseur in the fields of dissociation, alienation, persistent feelings of unreality and a general sense of the inherent wrongness of the world. He could, with remarkable particularity, specify whether he was the source of the alienation, or the situation he found himself in. Difficulty arose, however, when the oppressive absurdity came from both without and within. Where do you draw the line?

“Thrush, have you been on many battlefields? Outside of Hell, I mean.”

“Oh yes, Great One. So many. One of my kind finds employment, enjoyment and enrichment in equal measure in such places.” Thrush sounded almost wistful.

“Is this normal, then?”

“Forgive me, Dread Magus, this little bird has a bird’s wit. To what do you refer?”

Truth waved his hand at the road, the mountain, the forests and the sky. Aside from the road being a lot more torn up and the sky having a remarkably high number of spellbirds and golems zipping about, it was more or less what he remembered this area looking like before the war started.

It hadn’t been anything particularly interesting then either. Just… mountains. Taller and steeper than the mountains further south. There had been some pretty great views of forest filled valleys and swooping slopes. A number of charming snow-capped peaks, even in summer. There were even a few resort towns.

You might not think of vacationing in an area best known for mining and heavy industrial factories, but those views really were that beautiful. There was some decent hiking. Combined with hunting in the deep woods, fishing the mountain streams, skiing in the winter, the occasional hot springs resort- the mountains of Northern Jeon were not entirely bleak.

Truth had seen the advertising fliers in hotel lobbies and ads on scry. There were nice things up here. Not right this second, what with the massive war and volcanic eruption, but generally. It was pleasant in a bland sort of way, when not being grim and industrial. They were still on the Onis side of the border, but it should be basically the same. Mountains didn’t care where the border was.

And it was still fine, more or less. Ignoring the sky. It wasn’t a nightmare of clashing armies, burning spells, exploding golems, maddened beastcrafted horrors shredding all too fragile human bodies, and other atrocities he usually associated with the term “front line.”

“I guess I’m confused by the lack of anything really resembling combat or the results of combat.”

“Oh.” Thrush thought about that. “I see. Your combat experience has been mostly small scale battles. Individual combat or battles against squad sized enemies?”

“Roughly.” He shrugged. He didn’t really know how many troops they threw at him when he was kidnapping Sally the Shattervoid Girl. Enough that it killed him.

“I think it’s a question of scale. I mean no offense, Almighty Theurge-”

“Sorry, Almighty what? I tend to tune out the honorifics at this point, but I don’t think I had ever heard that one before.”

“It is the privilege of the mighty to disdain the efforts of their lessers. A theurge is one who performs miracles and persuades gods and demons to labor on their behalf.”

Truth nodded.

“Alright, I’ll give full marks for that one. Carry on with your critique of humanity.”

Thrush pruned its inky feathers. It had always done a rather good job pretending to be a thrush, in Truth’s opinion, and it seemed that constant exposure to Truth was only improving the imp’s abilities. It no longer just looked like a demon pretending to be a small black bird. It looked like an actual thrush. The shine on its feathers was right. Truth could pick out the individual vanes and the subtle textures that rippled the sleek surface of them. He could see the micro-movements of the head, the tiny shifts of balance he associated with actual birds.

Thrush was becoming more real right along with him. He’d have to find out what it took for a demon to grow from an imp to a stronger being.

“I am so grateful!” The Imp even sounded mostly sincere. Definitely getting stronger. “Scale is hard for humans, in that your imagination is limited to things measured against yourself. You might understand, intellectually, that three-hundred-thousand troops is a lot, and that the border of Jeon and Onis is long, but you cannot situate the two together properly. Three hundred thousand is a lot. It should fill up almost anything.”

“Alright?”

“The border of Jeon and Onis, in this little bird’s recollection, exceeds one thousand, four hundred kilometers.”

“Sounds right?”

“Put another way, that’s two hundred fourteen soldiers per kilometer, scattered over mountains. Much less dense. Depending on the terrain, you could easily fail to find them without careful looking.”

“And of course, they aren’t evenly distributed.” Truth nodded.

“In fact, they are scattered some tens of kilometers deep along a ragged line, called generally “the front.” The tiny bird nodded.

Truth visualized a map of Jeon in his mind. The border with Onis was actually a little under three times as wide as most of the rest of the peninsula. The country really widened up this far north. He frowned. It really widened up. And Jeon’s army, even with conscription, just wasn’t that big.

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Technology was a hell of a force multiplier, but the basics of the basics of tactics were to concentrate your forces and spread out the enemy. If they tried to defend the whole border, they would be overrun fast. So what would he do if he was a cold blooded bastard like the Jeon bureaucrats or the average Starbrite line manager?

Fall back. Kick Onis in the teeth as hard as you can, make them pause, then fall back. Speed limited by how quickly you could burn every scrap of useful material, blow up every factory, blow up every dam, salt every field and poison every granary. Leave them nothing but horror and ruin. Don’t even evacuate the citizens. Definitely don’t evacuate the denizens. Shoot them if they try to flee. Make them Onis’ problem. Let them eat off Onis’ plate.

The peninsula narrowed sharply. There was a good sized city… Gamphe. Yeah. The peninsula narrowed just north of Gamphe. He would draw the battle line there, build the actual fortifications and strongpoints along the thin waist of the peninsula and give up the hundreds of kilometers north of there.

After all, those factories were only valuable now. In a few months? Useless. Millions of denizens? Well, those might be useful, but plenty more where they came from. And there was no good farmland up there. Just terrace farming. Difficult, expensive and inefficient. No great loss.

“I… don’t think I am a particularly good person, Thrush.”

“I respectfully disagree, Magus.”

“I think we have different criteria for what counts as “good.” But you know, even by my own atrocious standards, there are still people I can look down on as immoral. Fun.” Truth shook his head. “Well, while we have room to work, I might as well get a little practice in. Have the Iron Horse follow me.”

It was time to try out the Earth Folding Step. The System had memorized it and gotten it settled down in his fourth aperture. Brilliant gold and shining like tiny suns within him, his apertures were nurturing his spells. Time for his newest tenant to show its virtue.

Truth brought the spellform to mind, and for the first time since he swore his loyalty to Starbrite, he couldn’t form it.

System?

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Complexity? Oh! I think you mentioned this ages ago. The simplified spells. Part of why they were used is that they were easy to swap in and out.

<>

Let me take a look. The System brought up a static hallucination of the spell formation, along with a step by step guide to the casting process. It filled his entire field of vision.

I’m going to kill Merkovah.

<>

The Meditations, Incisive, and this?

<>

It’s a human mage that wrote Earth Folding Step. I guarantee it. Some ancient, impossibly powerful, senior had mastered the art of folding space and wrote down his understandings. But since he lacked the genius of Valentinian or Botis-

<>

Not enough body cultivation. Not enough cosmic energy. And I guarantee the core problem was not enough understanding of the spell.

Truth could feel the System agreeing with him.

<>

Truth looked down the valley. He was headed south, towards the front. Towards Jeon, and, he suspected, horror.

“Nevermind Thrush. Let’s get to it. Keep your eye out.”

“For what, oh Terror of the Land?”

“At this point? A ray of sunshine.”

A small convoy of wagons, perhaps a dozen, was rumbling down the road. Troop transports, he could see- armored just enough to stop a needler and Level Zero summons, but really built to haul troops from Point A to B with a maximum of speed and a minimum of cost. They were penned between the side of a mountain and a steep drop on the other side. Truth was stuck behind them. They just took up the whole road, and his wall riding trick wouldn’t work over such a long stretch.

There was a blur, so fast even Truth’s eyes barely caught it, and the first wagon exploded. He squeezed the brakes as hard as he could, feeling the wheels lock and slide forward. A swarm of birds swarmed up from the forest below, crashing into the wagons. Blowing up the wheels. Blowing holes in the thin armor. Flying through the thin armor and blowing up inside.

Troops were trying to dismount, moving like they were stuck in mud. The shock of the ambush was overwhelming. Birds would fly into the solders, exploding into clouds of shrapnel. Someone tried to shoot them, but they missed. The needles flew harmlessly over the valley, long after the person who fired them turned into a gorey mess on the mountainside.

The ambush was over in seconds. It began and ended before most of the soldiers understood that they were under attack. Truth looked down the slope. Somewhere below was a squad of Jeon regulars. You wouldn’t trust this job to conscripts. They got in place on a convoy route, waited for a target, and destroyed it.

Now… if he were them, what would he do? Flee, obviously. But he would also leave something nasty for the team who would have to clear out the sudden obstruction in the invasion route. He looked around carefully, but didn’t see anything. He shrugged. Mines in the face of the mountain would be his go-to. Kill a lot of people and destroy the road in the process. Double win.

He looked up at the uncairing heavens, heaved a sigh, and hopped off his iron horse. This bit was going to be a pain in the ass. It was necessary, though, so he would do it. If he didn’t want the world organized this way, he would just have to go and fix it.