Chapter 309

Ytakan Scrublands, Archduchy of Rebirth

Darthar-Asaria trade route

Alexandra leaned forward on the table, covered in terrain charts and force deployment plans as she looked critically at the fortifications littering the landscape.

With the free trader's story and the blackbird's position, they could extrapolate the enemy's movement speed, and they didn't have much time. Which meant that they had to build what was most time-efficient, in terms of tactical value.

This was hampered by the fact that they still had no idea what they were facing. Alexandra had learned all of the self sustaining monsters the UDC had deployed, and she could make some educated guesses about force composition, but that was it. Besides, they might also have carried normal monsters, simply going for a suicide play, to take out her army and delay her long enough for Asaria to fall.

Well, hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Rim's people had found them a good place to make her stand at least. A gigantic, overgrown array of fields, once part of an equally massive farm. No other terrain features to speak of, which was to her advantage when she could make her own in preparation for the enemy's arrival. And very importantly, no solid cover. When one had guns and the other side didn't, it was a very, very important part.

The fortifications being built were simple. Most were aimed at what she knew she'd have to face: airships. Gun pits for her howitzers, who didn't need line of sight to work their magic, though she had built some ways that they could be reconfigured for direct fire on the ground in a pinch, and entrenched strongpoints for machinegun nests and field guns, who were sure to draw their fair share of fire.

No trenches however. They'd be a poor shield against melee foes, besides which she was certain to have artillery superiority. If she didn't, they'd be so overwhelmed this would be an exercise in futility anyway. They simply weren't worth the effort to make.

Foxholes were another matter, to house support weapons that couldn't fit into the strongpoints, or who she didn't want to put there. Rocket launchers, some mortars, and some tripod mounted grenade machineguns, a low tech variant of the one her power armored Praetorian Guard used like a normal gun, too short ranged to be viable in a static position but hellish if it could be moved with the flow of the battle.

All that meant that her infantry simply had nowhere to go, but onto the plain itself.

So it was that she was assembling fifty thousand golems for a field battle. Military wisdom on Earth would have held that they should be dispersed. But instead she kept them in relatively tight formations. They weren't musketeers, shoulder to shoulder, but any commander of the second world war or beyond worth their salt would have had an aneurysm seeing them.

But formation level wards and shields could change a lot, besides which she'd actually welcome having the other side focus on them. Shoot the juicy golems with the bolt action rifles while the entrenched machineguns rip you to pieces, yes please. And keeping them tight allowed them to mass their fire onto a single target, something she was dreading she would need. The things the UDC had used to win its first war...

She physically shuddered. They were not to be underestimated, though at least there was solace in the fact that the originals had been disposed of. She would be facing fresh variants, not essence engorged abominations who had feasted on a hundred battlefields.

Of course, that didn't prevent a few elder monsters from being slipped in, but...all of this had been done in the utmost secret, using dilapidated, dormant husks. The truly powerful monsters, the abominations that were worth entire battalions in their own right, had been watched equally carefully as the pristine armored airships.

Her eyes flicked to a group of people approaching her field command post. It wasn't a tent this time, she hadn't bothered, simply putting the So Much For Subtlety above her for protection and shade.

"Hail, your grace." Said Alexandra as Manson Estogan, the duke of Sarth, climbed the small artificial hill that housed a trio of field guns which she had set up shop on. It was a good vantage point, allowing her to see and be seen.

"Hail, lady Crystal." Despite his advanced age, he managed the climb with aplomb. "I wished to talk to you about troop deployments. My men have not yet received their formation for the battle."

"Oh. That's simple your grace. They won't be part of it."

There was a pause.

"You...I must have misheard you, lady Crystal."

"You haven't, your grace. This isn't your fight. Yours or your men's. You will sit this one out. The UDC's here for me. And me alone."

The duke looked at her, before closing the distance with remarkable swiftness.

"You cannot be serious." He simply said, and she shrugged.

"I am. Let's face it, your gr-"

"For the love of the Gods, drop the fucking honorifics, call me by my name or not at all."

"Right. Well, Manson, let's face it, my troops are almost the entirety of our effective combat power. Leaving your men out doesn't impede me much."

"Bullshit. We equal your number. My men don't have your golems' discipline, true. But they have creativity to spare, and essence blesses them."

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"And my golems are tireless, immune to battleshock, drilled to literal perfection on every weapon I have, not to mention better equipped." She shook her head as the duke opened his mouth." Yes, I know I have rearmed you, but even you have to recognize that my own troops remain better equipped than yours, even if only on the armor department."

"I concede this point." Finally said the duke, and Alexandra gave him a sharp look.

He was mad. That much she'd expected. But not because he was denied glory or had his honor impugned. He seemed more...

"You don't want to have us face this alone?"

"It is as you said to the archduchess. We are allies. What kind of duke, what kind of man, would I be if I stood back while you headed into battle, while you fought our wars by our side without blinking?" He shook his head. "Come hell and high water, we're with you lady Crystal."

"Do you troops think similarly?"

"If you find more than a battalion's worth who doesn't share that opinion, I will be thoroughly amazed."

Alexandra blinked. He'd delivered that with assurance, and the not the arrogant kind that some officers used, thinking their men but meat puppets, slaves to their overlord's will.

"Interesting. Still, it does not change the equation."

"It does. How do you intend to prevent them from moving in?"

Alexandra closed her eyes.

"You can't be serious."

"I am deadly serious. What will you do? Shoot them? That would defeat the purpose. They'll march and form up no matter what you do."

Alexandra sighed.

"Unless I give them something to do." She smiled. "Fortunately, I do have something."

"And that is?"

"Holding the enemy in respect. As long as you are in the right spots, you will force the enemy to honor the threat...but they won't dare to attack first. If your men can hold their fire, no matter what happen, I can use you to pin a large force, one large enough they might not even have been able to take them down anyway."

"You wish to use us as human shields."

"More of an army in being. A threat they will have to keep reserves to address. And if that keeps entire units static, facing you for my artillery barrages?" She smiled, and it wasn't a particularly nice one. "Then all the better."

"If the situation goes sour, we will intervene."

His tone brokered no arguments, and she nodded.

"Let us hope it doesn't come to that then."

*****

Alexandra watched on the holographic projector as the fleet approached.

It seemed that after being detected, they had thrown caution to the wind. They were here faster than expected, meaning they had to still have been trying to move with some caution.

Unfortunately for them, they just hadn't been fast enough.

Alexandra's eyes narrowed as she saw the fleet come to a halt, and a single vessel moved forward.

Oh, here we go, she thought, as she ordered one of her raiders, that carried an ambassador golem, forward.

She recognized a negotiator when she saw one, and there was no way she was letting them get a closer look at her army. They probably already saw plenty with their sensors, but far from everything.

Time to have a talk with the UDC. Or what remained of it anyway.

Somehow, she doubted the conversation would be very constructive. Or pleasant.

*****

"Will she prevail?" Asked Gift as he gazed at the distant image. It was being cast through simple divination magic, and he was hardly the only one to be watching the unfolding battle.

No one would question him, or his right to do so. Words of his slaughter on Unification had reached the highest echelons of the isolationists, and both sides held their breath, to see which way he went.

So far he had held fast in the cause of the neutrals, aiding one side, then the other.

So far.

"She will. Our shard has hidden depths."

Gift would have laughed, but too many had fallen, and were about to fall for it to be funny.

Besides which, his mirth had died long ago, alongside the realization of what truly gripped Alcheryos, and the horrors the God of Fire was prepared to unleash for his cause.

"All shards do, from what you have told me."

"True."

Gift looked to his side, to the giant in golden armor.

The one he had truly patterned his own avatar after. A custodian of glittering magnificence...wreathed in light, not fire, his spear of hardened energy, not raging inferno.

"Hidden depths or no, her forces will be damaged. Will she truly be able to do what she came here to do?"

"Regardless of her victory, Sunrise will fall. Rook's plan will make certain of that. But I take your meaning. If she fails, the sentiment of...inevitability she has built will collapse. We cannot allow that. It will destroy her momentum."

"Shall I nudge fate once again?"

The custodian barked out a laugh.

"There is no such thing as 'fate'. There is no veil of the future, just possibilities. Even Nemesis could not defy this. And they defied plenty before they fell. No. Stay your hand. Our means are few, we must use them only when strictly necessary."

"What of the God of Fire?"

The custodian shook his head.

"He is a fool, and so are his minions. Remember their purpose?"

"'What lies below sleeps. It must not wake.'" Quoted the dungeon core. Like some of those that were born directly of divine hands, he had been given a purpose, a hand in the first stage of Alcheryos' endless cycles of rise and fall.

There was a reason most of those who had been his fellows were now buried inside their own depths, refusing to come out. Driven to isolation and madness by all they'd help unleash.

Or quietly disposed of when they had dared to question their purpose, and sought to break their chains.

The Custodians of the Flame no longer even talked to him. He was a well used tool they were afraid to break, in case they ever needed him.

And when they would, driven by fear and desperation, he would shatter in their hands at the worst possible moment, leaving them to be devoured by their own inferno.

"Precisely. Yet they remain blind. Blind to everything. To this world, to others, to other planes, to those that would rule them. Even here, under his vaunted guardians, he remains unaware of your freedom at my lord's hands, or that of Alexandra at her own. Our shard is a key, and she only needs to find the lock."

"Your god plays a dangerous game."

"On the contrary, he plays the safest one. Compared to the inevitability of entropy, the mere possibility of bypassing the annihilation of all is by far the surest of bets."

Gift looked back to the divination pool, a seemingly simple brazier, with water than burned within, bathing the room eldritch light.

"You serve a strange master."

"Stranger than you know."

"That I will accept as pure truth."

They simply gazed in companionable silence. They had know each other for millennia.

And they both contemplated the end of their long vigil. When chance and long planning, longer than both of their lives by unimaginable lengths, would finally bear fruit.

When finally the key turned. And everything would change forever.