Arc 2 Chapter 6
The following day I gather those that will follow me towards our allies. Since we will be engaged in open combat it was decided that our best healer and fighter will go there. In short me. I am torn inside, sure I can defend this half of our people. But the others are out of reach. It would come to this either way. I can't be everywhere.
When everyone is gathered we move out. We will need a whole day of walking to go around the enemy camp and reach the bridge. But since only a few of us can be on the move all day we will need one and a half to reach our destination. Still we are a lot faster than our enemies, if they don't use cars or other vehicles that is.
We only take provisions for two days with us, so our luggage is rather light. We speed across the land, always using the terrain to take cover. Meanwhile I sometimes rise to the sky while bending the light around me. When I reach a certain hight I regain my sight by letting the light hit my eyes again. I scan the area for scouts and return to the ground. We are safe right now. It seems our actions in the past days made them give up on scouting. There was nobody round except us.
When we finally reached the bridge we were enthusiastically greeted by our allies. I was directed to the commando tent. It is the biggest tent in the whole camp. When I enter I instantly understand why that is necessary. Every country that is part of the army has multiple representatives here. Overall fifty people are crowded in this area. I hope that they have at least elected a general for the upcoming battle and don't intend to split their forces, just to not loose their control over them.
“I greet you all. As announced we come to strengthen your defences. We will need a list of all squads and send one of us with every squad or bigger unit, we should also manage it in a way that the front lines will get a higher density of manipulators.” I say after I entered. “Your reinforcements are very welcome Oliver. I am chancellor David, the spokesman in wartimes of our alliance. In the name of all our allies I greet and invite your people to our alliance.” The man in the biggest chair replies. What a cliché. “I thank you for your welcome, but I will have to decline your invitation. We don't plan to be a permanent military force, only the enemy which would hunt and kill us forever brought us to war.” I say according to the will of the whole council. We don't need more land or resources. We just need peace.
“A strange thing to say if you are as powerful as some of my council claim. I guess your way of growing stronger doesn't work without realizing the worth of live and an increased disdain of taking it. I heard and saw many monks that lived by a similar principle.” he responds, “I think a friendly relationship and trade will be enough for us.” That is a huge burden taken from my shoulders. I don't want to end this conflict just to be drawn into the next.
“Although I would like to see a demonstration of your powers myself, but I guess it isn't the right time for that right now. I will have the list you asked for, with the information where to find the respective squad leader, prepared at the end of our meeting. Right now we try to discuss how to proceed with the battle.” he continues. “I don't need that list, I will fight in the front lines. Please send it to my people for me, they will need some time to get acquainted with the people, to recognize who to protect. We don't want friendly fire in the heat of the battle.” I reply. “Alright. We will now proceed with our discussion.” he says.
We discuss for hours. The formations, the possible encounters and a lot of what if-plans. All the while the different countries try to get a bigger part of the prestige. This bartering with human lives disgust me, but I myself seem to be part of the problem. My demonstration of power dismissed their fears and made them more confident of their victory. They also try to involve me in their game and schemes. They try but don't succeed. I don't make or take any promises, nor do I show any interest in the honour of battle. There is no point in arguing with those that never saw the battlefield. Maybe I should just remind them of the horrors of the not so distant apocalypse?
Night has fallen long ago when I finally leave the suffocating tent. I return to the fires of my people and learn that a lot of them spend their time with their new teammates. Which is good news. Seems like they are quickly accepted and made some new friends. I just hope they won't regret getting close to them when death already awaits at our doors. It is certain that some of us will die, we are here to save as many as we can, but we aren't almighty. After checking that all our needs are met, I go to the bridge where we will soon shed blood. We have a lot of scouts out there, we don't want to give them the advantage of a surprise night raid.
I sit down on the middle of the bridge contemplating our nature, which only let us resolve a misunderstanding through force and death. It won't be the first time it happens and I fear that it won't be the last time. Should we really give humanity our techniques? Give them more force? In our small community we led everybody on a peaceful way, we scanned their soul and learned of their problems before giving them power. We corrected arrogance and anger issues, we showed them the horrors of death, they learned of the feelings of the dying. Our ways are strict and well controlled. We never handled our powers as something that is simply useful, we oriented our lives on it and a peaceful way of living, even if it meant deceiving everyone around us. Sure we kill if we must. But we never initiated the aggressions. Tomorrow we again will fight to protect our and the lives of those that are dear to us. I don't sleep this night. I watch the stars fade away and the sun rise. There in the dawn they come. The camp arose long ago alarmed by the scouts.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The battle will begin soon. I rise and walk towards their front to greet the enemy and try to end it without more bloodshed. Thinking along the lines “Those that never try will never succeed.”. The hope dies with the first bullets that fly towards me. Their foolish nature merely angers me, why can't they even consider peace. Why is bloodlust all that fills their eyes? Why does only fear of death fill me? Not my own death, but the fear for all those lost lives and souls.
At least I should fill them with fear! Take away their lust for death and carnage and replace it with fear. Not the fear for the safety of their loved ones or even strangers, but the selfish fear for their own lives. That at least I will teach them to understand! I don't need to draw my weapons, their time is long over. I simply reach out and with a wave of soulmist I fling at them I stun them. A hundred of them collapse, I severed their spinal cord, their weak soul can't resist mine.
Each of them carried a rifle and a knife for close combat. I pick them up with my soul and fling them at their comrades, embedding them in one of their respective eyes. Like a rock would slow and break a rivers stream I stop their advance, making their flanks easy targets for our artillery. A column of cars moves towards my direction, they have mounted guns and move in a wide formation, bypassing their own troops.
They won't move far. I pick up the explosives the dead had and bombard them with them. The survivors quickly flee. The battle finally escalates. Both sides are now in range to open fire effectively. At least one side could. New Eden's troops fall like stalks in front of the scythe. Meanwhile my people protect their allies. We don't seem to have lost anybody yet, but we can't stop a nearly infinite stream of bullets.
A storm of bullets hits at my location. I catch them and begin to rotate them around me, creating a vortex of shrapnel with me in the centre. The flying pieces of metal tear through metal, armour and flesh, while I move deeper into the enemy's army. The air around me drops in temperature while I steadily pour energy into the projectiles. Meanwhile I convert some of the mass from a handful of metal pieces into pure energy, I use it to slowly create a bomb, I compress more and more air into it. The air heats up through the pressure and begins to emit light.
Surrounded by enemies I drop my vortex and focus on a protective field around me. Then I let my miniature wannabe sun explode, it didn't reach the point of core fusion yet, but it is still destructive enough. The once chilly air now roasts the humans around me, the shock wave kills everything in a one hundred meter radius around me. I don't know how many it got, but there are still many left. I once again lunge into the battle.
I slaughter ceaselessly for a whole day. There are so many of them. If they just would focus on me they could easily destroy my body, but luckily they couldn't, they couldn't pack enough people or fire power in the space around me to reach me. And of course I denied their every attempt to do so. They soon learned to evacuate the area I am in, but I too noticed it and used their tactic against them, manoeuvring them into traps they would have easily avoided. I ain't their only enemy.
When we finally outnumber them they begin to retreat, I also saw that some cars fled, which seemed to have their military leaders in them. Since their order was abruptly destroyed. Finally this ridiculous bloodshed came to a halt. They simply tried to overrun us with sheer numbers. No fancy tactics, no position fighting in small groups. Just a suicidal rush. What madness. My presence alone was enough to break their wave. They couldn't even attempt to rush over the bridge. We expected a lot of hard to deal with tactics, a prolonged fight where we would besiege each other and use my people in their back to whittle them down. But they came and got slaughtered.
There are a lot of questions. Why? Were they that confident? And if so was their advantage in numbers the reason of said confidence? Or do they have a trump card? Once again I have a bad feeling about their missing leader. What could he plan to do?
I jump into the river to quickly cleanse myself of the guts and blood of my enemies. A disgusting stench of blood and death lingers over the once peaceful river bank. After my quick bath I make my way to the commando tent. Silence follows me as I walk. Every conversation comes to a halt when I walk past. I guess what they saw created an impression of a monster in human skin. In my skin. A monster that craves death and slaughter. Sure I wanted to inflict fear into my enemies thoughts and I surely succeeded, judging by their actions to evade me and their hasted retreat.
I finally reach my destination.