At the same time, Sir Adalbert stands at the edge of the Shattered Plains, bordering the Holy Kingdom of Rans.
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The air was thick with acrid stench of burning mana and iron. Above him, the heavens writhed and clouds made way for rain, barely washing down the stench of blood laying over the battlefield like a thick blanket.
His gaze stares off into the distance, the skies that loom over the horizon.
With agonising slowness, a huge floating cathedral approached. Its obsidian and chasmalite spires wreathed in golden sigils like jagged teeth, its shadowy underbelly emitting the occasional winged creature, a paladin of some sort.
Adalbert had never seen such a thing before. Not only was there a floating island supported by some kind of divine magic, hailed as the Novum Divinum; behind it, he could count on his fingers enormous constructs, called the Aegis Colossus. They were hunking artificial platforms sized like a titan, a golem, manned by soldiers and operated by magicians. Their size, nearly 50 heads tall and seemingly metallic in composition, shook Silvale's troop morale to their very core.
This composition was... unprecedented. He was aware of the existence of Seraphines and Cherubines, winged paladins and child-sized variants thereof, but this.. was bad. The battle would be brutal, and they might lose. The Rans' Church has been researching well, it seems.
Now it is time for war.
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He adjusted the gauntlet on his left arm, whose surface is etched and engraved with dormant runes and sigils for protection and combat. The relic, originally retrieved from a tomb much older than even the Silvale Queendom itself, established a thousand years prior, has been enchanted by the best court-magician in the continent, the sorceratrice under Asria, Brynhilde. Her capabilities and skill, second in the world only to Freya, her master, are awe-inspiring and have secured Silvale's protection.. for the longest time.
That being said, the gauntlet clearly hummed, glowing in anticipation.
"They think us heretics? Let them see heresy. Today...", Adalbert said while extending his arm and speaking to the troops at the very front, "they shall die by our blade! It is blade against faith, my soldiers, my brothers! Fight for the sake of the Queen, your family, your children!"
Just overhead, a seraphine shrieked by, its wings fluttering in the wind. It strafed by. He could catch a little glimpse at this one in particular: unlike the regular ones, it seemed to have.. six wings. The floating cathedral, the Novum Divinum, seemed to approach with hefty speed. It covered such a large distance in that short amount of time? It would be incredibly difficult to fight against it, if they use long-range attacks...
The seraphine spoke, its voice echoing through the heads of the soldiers. "Yield your weapons, children of the light. You shall be spared, just like your family and next of kin. If you do not lay down your weaponry.. Aria shall cast judgement, her ray of light, on every single one of you. What is your answer, Silvale's children?"
Adalbert shook his head, the soldiers tustling. One of them spoke up. "We will rip your wings from that skinny, filthy body of yours!", while others shouted from the top of their lungs, "your faith is cheaper than my blade, you winged wimp!"
"That is it, then.", the seraphine exclaimed, letting out a sigh, before flying back to the Novum Divinum.
Adalbert, with all his strength, shouted as loud as he could muster:
"Come on, then! We shall be victorious!"
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Not long after the seraphine departed, the floating cathedral stopped in place, hovering over a tiny little village. It was evacuated much earlier, thankfully. The gargantuan, clockwork cathedral hummed and emanated a divine aura. It seemed to... prepare for something.
Adalbert instructed the mages to cast destructive spells at the fortress in order to bring it down, however.. it wasn't very effective against its potent shield. The suffix "Aegis" comes to mind, again. Soon after their attack, the Novum Divinum lost altitude, seemingly about to crash into the ground, burying the village beneath it.
An enormous shockwave rolled through the surrounding area, unrooting trees left and right. Did they ground the cathedral?
Nobody knew, and even less expected was the rumbling that followed.
Within the blink of an eye, gigantic spires, legs, began digging itself into the ground. There were six. They were then able to lift the entire island and cathedral.. and with each step, trees and life underneath was crushed.
A walking cathedral, a moving fortress, on six legs.. and behind it, the colossus constructs drew closer, despite being slower.
The first wave of seraphines descended, clad in their ivory and golden armour. Spears crackled with divine energy, lances impaled soldiers wherever one would look. Despite their air-borne advantage, Silvale's troops prevailed majestically, knowing their weaknesses quite well.
Adalbert's blade, dubbed the Vespertine, sang a song of bone and blood, cleaving through their ranks. Usually, soldiers would hesitate to kill the cherubines with their child-like appearances, being supporting and healing attachments to the drones of seraphine swarms, but he would not falter in the eye of such petty trickery. Moving forward, he would instruct each soldier to fix their gaze on one, and one thing only.
Each of his strikes released bursts of violence, the gauntlet would devour the sanctified shields of the winged soldiers, a blood-curdling cry shrieking across the battlefield, drowned in blood and sacrilege.
It became but a macabre theater of gore, where Adalbert's soldiers faltered and fought, their slain comrades having throats slit, arms cut, intestines splatter and colour the shattered plains a crimson colour. Devastating his troop's morale even further was the fact that, due to the Divinum's curious magic sphere projecting weird aura around it, any fallen soldier inside its radius would be.. resurrected. In a gruesome, disgusting way, Adalbert's slain comrades began lurching upright, their ribcages and skulls cracked open, with nothing but divine glow animating them to move forward, weapons clutched in their lifeless, cold hands. Entrails slithered within and out of these dead men like puppeteered vines.
They were the Fallen, Aria's Redeemed, as the seraphines, priests and cherubines would shout and sing throughout battle, praising the support force now beckoning for their call, to aid them in battle, with no mind to think but go against the heretic enemy of the church.
Adalbert could, as his eyes wouldn't lie, see the truth inside the truth. The Church of Rans, who once worshipped purely Aria, has become an abomination, disguising the malice and experimentation as good will of the Goddess and her sanctioned gospel.
Even more, wherever he laid his eyes upon, the further into the battle field they got, the more often he would see weird, spider-like creatures; no, puppets. They wore outfits of nuns, but looked.. gross, like an arachnid was crawling out of their ribcage, which split into six spear-like appendages. They skittered across the ground and attacked from behind. With a sharp eye, one could notice fine, white, nearly invisible thread that was moving them.
It took him a while to follow the threads, but he could figure out where they were coming from:
A weird-looking priestess, her robe fused with marionette strings which burrowed into her wrists, would manipulate these saintess puppets. With each twitch of their slender fingers, she sent puppets and commandeered Aria's Redeemed skittering forward, the puppets' joints snapping in most unnatural angles. One of the redeemed, a boy no older than sixteen, lunged at Adalbert with the shattered lance of a dying seraphine, his throat still weeping from his recent death.
Out of pity, the veteran put an end to his demise, slaying the child and releasing him from the grip of the cathedral's sacrilegious magics. They were most foul in their ways. Not only were they using the dead, engineering soldiers to take the appearance of angels, and manipulating puppets in non-human ways, but they forged devilish machines to wage war for them.
It was truly infuriating to witness, and he felt powerless, seeing the walking cathedral and fortress move, enemies pouring in and out of it in numbers that seemed endless.
He noticed, though, that the Marionette Hierophant, controlling the puppets, acted like a local commander for the church's soldiers - under the orders of the six-winged Seraphine, named Gaul.
Fighting his way through the seraphines, cherubines, puppets, the fallen, and finally getting close-up to the hierophant, he snarled at her. "Damn your art," with malice. "I will put an end to your machinations, show you the heresy you proclaim."
His gauntlet roared to life, sigils blazing crimson as he slammed it into the earth, shaking the ground beneath the marionette hierophant. With his fist splitting the earth, a starless void of ice erupted in jagged waves, freezing puppets and the Redeemed, their throats and hearts aching for the painful relief of death, still. The priestess was staggered, unable to remain standing, but managed to evade the ice. She shrieked, her strings snapping like an over-tuned harp wire, as Vespertine cleaved itself through her bones, opening a path through her stomach.
Adalbert's vision blurred, and he spat out blood, the metallic taste filling his mouth and covering his tongue. He looked around himself, enemies disoriented and unable to coordinate any further, and sighed a breath of relief. "We march forward! Target the marionette hierophants. Without them, their troops are a bunch of puppets!"
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Earlier, he devised a plan to take out the cathedral from inside - if it was possible. The path to the Novum Divinum's underbelly yawned open, but it was hard to get to without being encircled.
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After Adalbert took out the marionette hierophant, the ground began shaking once more, the cathedral grinding to a halt. It's underside, now a gaping hole, spat out two creatures of the same stature: a twin-couple of Goliaths, heaving themselves free from the dirt, bodies armoured in sigil-steel and weapons in hand. Each step of theirs stirred the earth, and their chest, their hearts exposed, glowed throughout the battlefield, illuminating the bloodbath as night drew closer.
These.. seemed to be the shock troops, the veteran surmised. They were twice the size of a human, and looked bulky. He wouldn't have much of a chance fighting them alone, with the battlefield being such a symphony of chaos. Though that'd offer a chance: if he can pull them apart, Adalbert could finish both off, one by one. Through the cacophony of screams, clashing steel, and the silent, but deadly hum of divine magic and sanctified death, Adalbert stood admist carnage, his enchanted gauntlet sputtering with the bare remnants of Brynhilde's enchantments, her very best.
In one fell swoop, he commanded his soldiers - the most elite of them, too boot - to draw one of the goliath's attention, and pull him away from his twin, and then retreat, so he could use the magic within the gauntlet to destroy it.
Even though everything was chaos and war is hell, they listened to his orders, seeing that it was the only way for them to survive this hell heaven-sanctioned.
Once they drew it away sufficiently, Adalbert snapped his fingers, fixing his gauntlet, and casting the spell that would worsen the gauntlet's durability.
"You can only use it three times, Sir Adalbert. Use it wisely! Your life is more important than a mere gauntlet.", he recalled the words of the sorceratrice, Brynhilde, berating him to value his life more than that of the items he is given.
Though, that clashed with his mindset, wanting to serve the Empress and treasure her good will, the items she is giving him, beyond his mere service as a commander of their army.
Through the croaking chant he was giving, soldiers, left and right, screamt in pain and agony. Blood pooled below their feet, washing the grass a colour as crimson as hell's rivers.
He had done it.
The crackling air expanded, it took every soldier's breath that stood close; and in a single moment, a bright flash engulfed the single Goliath, a sphere of light, a ball of flame, expanded and shrunk in size immediately. The sound of the explosion shattered a soldier's ear drums, his ears now bleeding, but.. there was barely a trace of the Goliath left.
Truly powerful magic, they thought, in awe and fear at the might presented. The Goliath, that shattered skulls and broke bones of the soldiers with one attack, is decimated, reduced to ashes.
Alarmed, the other Goliath's attention was caught to its brother, now dead. It emitted a final shriek, which was cut off by the speedy explosion. The other, distraught, rushed over, trampling men wherever it stepped, with no regard for its own kin - the cherubines, seraphines, and the paladins.
A scream of agony terrified the battlefield. In the distance, the walking, towering behemoths approached quicker, pressuring Adalbert to resume his second chant. His voice.. was giving in, he only had one last chance. The gauntlet would break immediately after, he knew, instinctively.
The cathedral above loomed like a reminder to him that time was of the essence. With the sudden pressure he felt, Adalbert slightly botched the last part of the incantation, though the explosion still occurred where the other Goliath was located. As he was running, it only managed to remove half of his body - the upper left torso and arm. The pitiful creature, in immense pain, went berserk, flailing with its crucifix around and everywhere, killing friend and foe alike.
"I have to finish this.. and quickly..", Adalbert groaned, holding his side. He grabbed his sword, the Vespertine, and shouted for soldiers to hold it down, if possible.
A volley of arrows came upon the thrashing beast, keeping it in place for mere moments. That was enough for Adalbert to throw the Vespertine, which cleanly impaled the Goliath's skull, splitting it in two. It was dead.
The soldiers around him cheered for him. But deep down, he knew, this was a battle of attrition, and they were losing, quickly.
With that in mind, he commanded with precise and minute detail what had to happen from now on. One part of his troop would keep the way to the Cathedral open, it was a landing platform so to speak, leading into its innards. The other would be back at the forward base, and one other would go in - with him. One specific soldier, his advisor, he assigned the duty to call for reinforcements. Then, he went to finish this mission:
Destroy the Novum Divinum, stop their advance, and protect the Queen's lands.
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The Novum Divinum, of the Octapodes make with its eight stilting legs that deeply bore into the earth, had a strong, magic shield that projected divine energy of a unique signature throughout its dome. The cause, of course, was a colossal eye, formed by divine sigils, occasionally searing the battlefield, friend or foe, with divine flame. It was repentance, the priests shouted while dying and being revived through the Goddess' Eye.
Adalbert's breath came in ragged gasps. His left arm was a wreck from the explosion, which shattered the Goliaths, and destroyed the precious gauntlet. With his right, he clutched desperately the hilt of his Vespertine, with metal chipped from its once sharp blade.
"I can still fight.", he resolved himself, rallying behind him a small, but battle-hardened squad of soldiers under his command. "We will join you, Sir! This mission will not be our last."
"You have my respect, every single one of you. Thank you. We'll slay this foe, and if it'll be our last! Hail the Empress!", cheering and being met with a similar gesture, "Hail the Empress! Fight with Sir Adalbert!"
They cautiously moved forward, entering the landing ramp of the Novum Divinum. Dead paladins, seraphines, and injured cherubines piled as bodies all around. Some of them, trying to sing their prayers and heal chants, only croaked, their throats ripped open and their voices a hum of pain and suffering. Whenever they chanced upon a live cherubine, the soldiers showed it mercy enough to kill it; praying for them to find eternal peace in Limbo.
With Brynhilde's magic gone, Adalbert now could only rely on his swordsmanship and his magic sword, Vespertine, to destroy the cathedral.
Even if he didn't know its make-up or weaknesses, such a large structure was prone to failure, even if just mechanical, if critical parts were damaged.
One of the soldiers even suggested there might be a magic core powered this thing, which inspired him.
They entered the innards of the cathedral construct. Outside, the seraphines' and cherubines' hymns crescended, their voices but weaving a fancy tapestry painting divine wrath upon the heretics. The eye! "We have to find the eye's magic core," he bellowed, signalling to his soldiers to spread out and begin their search immediately. As they scrambled frantically, running through vast, lengty corridors of the Goddess Aria, dedicated to her worship, they noticed an eerie absence of enemy forces.. as if they weren't thinking about guarding the cathedral.
Rumbling weakened their shaky foothold, many men tumbled to the ground, but Adalbert stood fiercely against the might that shook the cathedral. It seemed to be getting up, he thought. They converged together, at an intersecting pair of corridor, right before entering a main hall, the cardinal's throne room and place of worship.
There was but a single person, kneeling in front of the altar, upon which emptiness took its seat. He said not a single word, but his attire definitely stood out. "A cardinal?", the seasoned veteran questioned the praying man. It was of no use. The man didn't move, or answer.
Drawing Vespertine, the cardinal began moving. His ends folding together, he stood and turned to face the squad of soldiers, led by Adalbert.
His voice, a deep growl, frightened those present when his lips moved. "It appears heretics have entered the throne of your Holiness, Goddess Aria. Do I have permission to exterminate these *filthy vermin*?"
Snarkily, Adalbert snapped back at him. "Your trickery is cheap, and you are no man of the Goddess, cardinal. No. You're a cheap imposter. I will end this, now."
Taking his steps one after the other, Adalbert approached the man with his sword drawn. Though the man, threatened by the powerful swordmaster, seemed to budge little, chuckling and laughing.
"Have you not thought of the possibility that this is a trap, Sir Adalbert?", he grinned. His tone was one of pure ecstasy. Adalbert's eyes widened in shock, telling his soldiers to disperse and run.
The cardinal, however, was faster. In one fell swoop, he extended his arm, and all his men, the entire squad, became but dust that speckled the throne room's ground. They were incinerated, leaving no trace of their valiant effort. They hadn't even had a moment to react.
"What is this cursed magic, you maniac?!", the man, distraught, screamt at the cardinal. In turn, his response was swift and devoid of words, chucking spell after spell at Adalbert, who could dodge them, his breathing growing haggard. He was exhausted. All the fighting up until now left him with little energy.
He had to go on the offensive, if he even wanted to have but a chance to win. Time seemed to stretch on forever. Adalbert dodged spells over and over, inching painfully close to the cardinal.
The goal was to get him in melee range. His sword needed to strike only once.
As a soldier blessed with might and wit, he knew how to win a fight such as this, but his body would barely follow his command. In a last ditch effort, he endured one of the cardinal's spells head-on, mangling his left arm completely and wounding him gravely, but he landed a hit.
The cardinal's stomach was split open, spilling out intestines and blood in vast amounts.
"H-How.. did you penetrate my divine shield?!", he coughed blood as both of them collapsed. "I.. guess.. cough.. I have no other choice."
"What do you mean?! Spit it out!", Adalbert grabbed the dying man by his collar, as the man pointed at the ceiling, Aria's Eye. The core of the Novum Divinum.
"Right below.. cough... our forces are fighting fiercely. This.. cough.. sacrifice is nothing.. if it takes you down, a high-ranking swordsmaster. Cough. Farewell, Goddess Aria..."
His last words were an incantation of short length. By the time Adlabert cut his throat to keep him from casting, it was already over- the eye, above him, twitched and grew and became small. Over and over. It seemed to overcharge and discharge mana, and would soon cause the entire Novum Divinum to collapse, levelling the shattered plains, and his entire army with it.
"You.. are maniacs. Going this far.. your goddess is a devil..", crawling to a balcony connected to the throne room, he whistled for his last falcon. His consciousness wallowed out and returned in fragments. He wavered, holding onto a tiny string of hope. That reinforcements would come. With that, he scribbled on paper:
To the Empress of Silvale,
we are dying. Their force is too powerful and full of trickery for us to face. Please send reinforcements.. and be warned of their numerous new creations.
To Baroness Reina,
They yearn for the blood of the Prophet. Warn Fia and Erica, please. The church has sent enemies after them. These creatures are cunning and full of magic, bereft of honor and religion.
The veteran of the skies soared and left Adalbert's visual periphery. "Look your fill, you zealots. The queen leaves no servant of hers alone. She will pluck that eye out..", he laughed raw and ragged.
With a loud boom, pieces of the cathedral began falling and hitting the ground. Countless dead piled up, screams of terror from those buried alive, and Adalbert's consciousness faded to black.