“Embracing death is true liberty for men. The idea of ‘to live’ is nothing but a counterproductive farce to his interests that would prevent him from biting back. Removing all shackles of fear is the only way to trump the arcane. Fear of reckless, deadly technology would hold him back. Fear of war and blood would hold him back. Fear of crimes to achieve liberation would hold him back. And so would fear of death. But without these fears, men can bite back.”

- Excerpt from ‘The Technocrat’s Playbook Against the Arcane’, published in August 2024.

+++

South of Nordia

A Lieplatzan infantryman trudged alone on the darkened nights of a broken town. The town was now nothing but a nonexistent memory for Lieplatz, for the Orlish Air Force and their artillery corps reduced it into nothing but rubble. The Lieplatzan soldier looked up at one of the destroyed remnants of what must have been an armored column of Lieplatzan tanks.

All of them had been long seemingly abandoned, alongside the town’s defenders. HMLVs, APCs, and broken civilian vehicles that the Lieplatzan military used littered the streets. He kneeled down to inspect one of the corpses on the road.

A Lieplatzan officer, half burned. Nay, in fact, most of the corpses and surroundings were burnt.

“Should have listened to me, Lieutenant,” the Lieplatzan soldier muttered. “You tried to shoot me. Now look at you.”

He stood up and laughed at himself. “Look at all of you!” He shouted. “Look! You’re all fucken’ dead! You’re all goners. I’m a deserter, huh? Well, I’m alive you goddamned fools.”

He kept laughing at those around him. “I’m alive, and none of you are. I’m alive.” He continued. Indeed, much like a madman, he repeated those same words again and again as if it were some cruel comedy. “I’m alive.”

He soon stopped and sat down on the side of a half-burnt HMLV. The vehicle was originally painted winter white. Last night, he remembered it as a good vehicle, fresh out of the Lieplatzan Army’s war stocks. He was assigned to that same vehicle, with his new brothers, after conscription.

Like him, all of them were hesitant in this fight. The revolution meant less and less to many of them. They were doing nothing to improve men’s standing in society. They were doing nothing to improve anything. Nothing at all. Nay, they were simply used as a suppression tool to any dissidents.

That had been what the revolution meant for the Army since the second coup. It wasn’t like the time when the Lieplatzan Provisional Council ruled. Nay, they were all gang-pressed to be thugs against the people of Lieplatz, especially her women.

Then, that same Junta asked them to fight back against their Orlish brothers. He had heard many times that many said they would not even fire a bullet at the same men they died with side by side on the fields of West Vaeyox. Yet they were all soldiers. They stood by their post until the end.

He was not the same. Somehow, he managed to slip away. Somehow, he managed to find himself in the woods after mulling about everything. Somehow, for a few hours, he was a deserter.

And in that timeframe, he slept the night after watching ordnance fall on the village. He could still see the sky-high white smoke. He could still see the severe burns in the town. He could still see those men running away, as the white cloud cooked them well done.

Now, there wes none of them left. Perhaps there was. He did see many vehicles leave and retreat from the town. But looking at the devastation around him, it was safe to assume that his unit was as good as dead. None of them were left. They were goners. Unlike him who still stood around like a sore thumb.

A deserter who survived the carnage.

I can’t believe I was this ridiculously lucky.

He stood up, slinging his rifle to himself. The town was, as one could expect, completely devoid of life. Many homes were turned into nothing but cinders. The glass doors of a local convenience store, to him, looked almost blackened. He tried breaking in but stopped himself when he realized the damned thing was stuck.

He was a bit hungry already. He didn’t really manage to nab many supplies when he deserted, and so, when he felt his stomach growl, he began searching around in the abandoned vehicles. But all of them were hard to get into. Some were open, and he checked inside, but most of those inside were burned.

“Damn it,” he said. “Damn it.”

The lone soldier continued on through the town’s road. That was when he heard the sounds of engines roaring. He stood like a statue on the road, as an Orlish tank appeared and turned toward him. Multiple Orlish soldiers, all in their winter white Kevlar gear, also walked, dropped, and began aiming their rifles at him.

He raised his hand after dropping his rifle.

“I surrender!” He said. “I surrender!”

The Orlish soldiers ahead of him didn’t lower their guns. He attempted to move forward to them, shouting the same words over and over again. Yet they didn’t budge. By the time he was merely a few meters from them, he heard someone shout.

“Protection Corps!” the soldier shouted. He looked back at his coat. He looted it from one of those officers, as it made him feel less cold. He didn’t understand what the Orlish soldier meant by that. He was a part of the Arm—

A shot flew right into his neck. He fell down on the floor, as he choked on his own blood. Why, he asked. Why did they shoot him?

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

He didn’t know. He didn’t understand. Yet he could not say anything as his vision disappeared.

He was a part of the Army.

He was not one of them.

Yet…

He laughed at himself.

He merely wanted to feel a little warmer.

How stupid.

+++

West Orland

Amelie woke up in a cold sweat.

Damn it. Damn it. She told herself, as she held her head. It was those same damned nightmares again. Something about men hanging women as a form of revenge. Gas attacks. Revenge.

Revenge.

Ever since she had forced them to show her what was truly happening, she had been nothing short of horrified. She had puked hard alone during the night after that meeting. And now, she was seeing those same images, hunting her.

“I just…” she breathed out. “Hah…calm down, Amelie…calm down.”

She told herself those same words softly. “They won’t do the same to you…they won’t get you.”

She laughed. “They won’t…right?”

Briefly, the image of that young noblewoman, hanged for ‘treason against all men’ that was shown to her last night, she could see her face instead.

She gulped and smiled tensely.

“Surely not.”

An hour later, Amelie left her chambers to start her day. It was as standard as any, with the staff greeting her politely, the endless waves of officials and nobles who wanted to meet her, only for her to, as usual, turn them down for “urgent matters”, and of course, William and Nia arguing with each other.

“Oh, there we go again,” William said. “The OAF this and that. Come on, they’re doing what they can.”

“I’m just saying, they should probably do it faster. Can you really not talk to the General?”

“As if General Albrecht can do anything more, erm, she’s here.”

“Oh,” Nia turned to face Amelie. “Well, you look…unfort—”

“You look like shit,” William, as blunt as ever, without any regard for a lady’s feelings, said without tack. “Bad sleep?”

Amelie rolled her eyes. “What did I even expect? Yeah, I suppose I did.”

“Big eyebugs,” Nia muttered, and Amelie turned back to her.

‘’Is it really that bad?” Amelie asked before William cleared his throat.

“Anyway, the two of you, we got another meetup with the General Staff in a few hours,” William said. “They’re now close to encircling Nordia.”

Amelie breathed out in relief. “Finally…it’s been ages. Damn, I need a good cup of tea before this.”

“The situation on the ground is still deteriorating though,” Nia said, almost tensely. “We’ve been barely rescuing any noblewomen. It’s like…they’ve been cleansed.”

“As expected,” William said. “The Junta is really efficient at exterminating them. I wanna spit out the bad news for the two of you, but, then again, it’s bad news.”

“Spit it out, please, William,” Amelie said. “Let us hear it.”

“You sure.”

“I’m not that faint-hearted.”

“Those eyebugs suggest otherwise.”

Amelie frowned, almost like a petulant young girl in denial. “It doesn’t! I swear.”

William wasn’t convinced, but he sighed.

“The air in the OAF is clear. No one’s expecting we’ll reach those camps in time. It’s probably already liquidated even.”

The way he said that completely dropped Amelie’s mood even lower. “No, impossible. They couldn’t have hunted all of them.”

“Easy to say when you’re not the one on the ground. Our troops are barely finding any woman with nobility standing higher than Arcana. Except for their corpses.”

Amelie fumed. “This pessimism wouldn’t help us in our goals to rescue them. We just need to move faster. We’ll find them and get them back. We’ll rescue them. Those that survived.”

“I love your optimism, I really do, I believe it’s your greatest virtue,” William said. “But the thing is, reality begs otherwise. The situation on the ground ain’t pretty, and our troops aren’t stupid. They know what’s happening.”

Both Amelie and Nia looked at each other before Amelie frowned further. “Look, those claims aren’t confirmed. We have to remain open to the possibility that none of that happened.”

“And we have to remain open to the possibility that we are just sending our men to a reckless charge to rescue ghosts,” William said. “Eight thousand OAF servicemen are already dead after just a few days. Yes, nowhere near to what we suffered in the capital. But the scale doesn’t matter, Amelie. I know you know that.”

Amelie’s eyes widened in shame. Since this campaign started, she had been overlooking the casualties that the OAF had been taking. She had been so used to battling the Federalists and suffering mountains of casualties, that the ones happening in Lieplatz barely fazed her. It was as if those losses of lives now meant nothing to her.

All because she had ‘seen worse’.

But I rarely even saw those dead. She told herself. I just sat back at the bunker, ordering them to fight from my air-conditioned room and cushioned chair.

“I…” Amelie said, almost cutting herself in shame. “I know, and I’m…I’m sorry, this isn’t how I’m supposed to treat this. How hypocritical, I’m now starting to treat men as statistics too…”

“Look, I’m also not saying that we should abandon all efforts,” William said. “The troops on the ground can see the atrocities themselves. They’ve been fighting harder and driving harder north since then. They are out for blood and justice too. But that doesn’t mean we have to remove all safety protocols and rush them headfirst in a possibly empty chase just to get more of them into their deaths.”

“But…but we can’t possibly…time is of the essence. Each moment we have not reached those camps, and…and…”

“Our troops, last night, moved without sleep, Amelie,” William said. “They pushed through the battlefield without an ounce of sleep, in order to follow through with your orders to reach Nordia faster. We lost the equivalent of a brigade or two in just a few hours since then.”

“How can the Lieplatzans still even resist?” Amelie asked. “They’ve seen our overwhelming force. They’ve seen how they’re fighting for nothing but monsters. Why can’t they just…surrender and, end all of it?”

“I can’t answer that and you know that, Amelie,” William replied. “All I know is that they won’t. Perhaps to spite the strongest woman in the world. Perhaps to defend their buddies. Perhaps they want to support the Junta’s brazen slaughter. But what I do know is that if we rush headfirst…more of our boys will die.”