In the old days of Santara, before the Tionghoa, the preternatural arts was the supreme weapon of war. From the fire magic, unmatched in its destructive powers, to the light magic, allowing people to survive but the most grievous of wounds, Yakobinian armies needed magic to unleash their full potential. Even the Isildur, the mightiest weapon in Santara, is a magic sword.

But the Tionghoa came and changed the equation with their technology. From cannons to medicine, the Tionghoa had brought things which were once the sole domain of the preternatural arts.

Of course, Tionghoa technology could not match the full power of the preternatural arts. The most potent Tionghoa medicine had less healing power than the average light mage, and even the weakest fire mage could summon up fireballs that pack as much punch as a cannonball.

But what technology lacked in pure power, it made up in efficiency. While it takes years, if not decades, of study for a mage to master his art, the average person can be trained to use basic medicine or cannon in just a few days. And let’s not get to the arquebus which the average person can simply pick up and shoot with. The closest magical equivalent to that would be the wind magic, which took years of practice to get the basics right.

Efficiency, not raw power, was how the Tionghoa was able to conquer Santara. If they needed raw power, the Dragon Emperor and his kin would have gotten personally involved. But they didn’t, except for in Leste.

Pardon the scratches and scribbles, I’m really getting ahead of myself. Let us move on…

My point in all this is that the average Tionghoa soldier was not at all mighty. What the Empire had was efficiency: they had more men to throw, and their weapons were more easily accessible to the common man. But because of that, their tactics were also predictable.

This brings us to the Siege of Khmer. It was for the first time ever that the colonial capital was put under siege. It had been attacked before, but what we pulled off was unheard of.

So, what did the Tionghoa do in response? Throw men at us in the hopes of breaking our siege. And to be fair, it was not a bad idea. We were in enemy territory, outnumbered and outgunned. What kept us from being surrounded, overwhelmed, and killed were our fortifications.

At first, the attacks were small. Some sorties from Khmer, and light attacks from the Borobudur Army. We exchanged fires, the Tionghoa with their muskets and us with our bows (and some muskets too). As expected, we had the better of the skirmish thanks to our walls and towers. After losing men by the dozens, the Tionghoa withdrew.

The men celebrated these little victories. Not me, though. I knew they were just testing our defenses. If they really wanted to break through our fortifications, they would have brought in the cannons.

After those brief skirmishes, there was a lull in the fighting. It must have lasted for a few weeks. The men soon became restless. I was too, I wondered what the Tionghoa had in store for us. I knew they could not have waited for too long. Every day the Tionghoa tarried, they risked the starvation of the Khmerians.

We were actually relieved when the cannons finally fired. Now it was time to fight. Now we know what El Shaddai had in store for our future.

Unlike their first attack, this time the Tionghoa really meant to break through our lines of contravallation. They chose two spots on our defenses to attack: both of them in the east, separated by about a mile.

From atop Paradisa’s pegasus, I saw for myself the Tionghoa army just east of our position. They looked like a horde of ants, ready to consume us. I called upon not just the Dunadinians and the Puncakians, but also the Paloeans on the other side of our zone of control. By the time we were done with our repositioning, there were barely any men on the western side of the siege, just enough to hold off any potential sorties from Khmer.

However, the Tionghoa was not about to wait for us to redeploy. The Tionghoa were an ingenious people; they had identified two weak spots in our fortifications in the east. Because of the uneven terrain and a giant rock, the builders did not completely wall off those spots. And somehow, the Paloean earth mages had missed them too (I’d like to think they were being lazy, there was no way they would be this petty given the situation).

The lack of walls in those spots led the Tionghoa to attack them both. I will be honest, I felt out of my element at the time. This was perhaps the first battle in which I had to defend against cannons. I fought a defensive battle back in Nanmadol, but the Nodians didn’t have any cannons. To make things worse, the Tionghoa also launched a sortie from Khmer.

I had to decide where to put Tian Tian’s cannon crew. I knew I couldn’t have them face the enemy from Borobudur as they would be heavily outnumbered by their Tionghoa counterparts and be destroyed. Instead, I had the cannon crew face the sortie from Khmer.

Now I can hear some readers asking, “how can our cannons attack the enemy given our fortifications?” That is a good question, and the answer was found in the Paloean earth mages who raised up the earth under Tian Tian’s cannon crewmen, giving them the elevation needed to fire beyond our walls.

Speaking of cannons…

The enemy cannons from Khmer were nowhere near as numerous. More importantly, they had fewer men advancing on us. This allowed us to send our own sortie. Most of them were airborne Puncakians, but we also sent Arphaxad and the Riders of Dun-a-din to sally out from our position.

Tian Tian’s cannons had blown apart much of the advancing Khmerians, allowing Arphaxad and his riders to charge in from the flanks, taking out the musketeers with little casualties. Unfortunately for us, enemy cannons had greatly damaged our walls. But Puncakian men and women swooped down on their rides, piercing Tionghoa crewmen with their lances. And soon, they went into a bloodlust, fighting not just the cannon crew but also the nearby swordsmen. They would have gotten bogged down by the enemy, but thankfully the Dunadinian cavalry charged in time to save their Puncakian allies.

So much for the Khmerian sortie.

But while what I described above was happening, the Borobudur Tionghoa continued to attack our line of contravallation. We had no cannons of our own to counter, so the Tionghoa was free to fire with impunity. And thanks to the enemy’s huge army, we could not sally out lest we be destroyed.

It took some time, but the Tionghoa cannons finally breached a spot on the walls. There was now an opening in our defenses. But only a few minutes passed when the other spot was also breached. Even worse, the impact of the cannons were stronger and our walls flimsier than we thought. Just a minute later, the walls between the breaches fell like a line of Do-Mi-No blocks.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

The number of men we lost in just that minute was… uncountable. And all of a sudden, there was a mile of opening for the Tionghoa attackers.

Furthermore readers, keep in mind that all this was happening while the sortie from Khmer was happening.

At this point, the horde of Tionghoa marched in. But at this point, King Aron fell upon that opening. He raised up the Isildur, the magic sword glowing blood red, and he spoke, “Men of Santara, Sons of Yakob… who will fight for me?”

The response from the men was a resounding cheer. I myself yelled from the top of my lungs… and coughed afterwards.

The men moved quickly. Swordsmen and foot-lancers quickly covered the gap, just in time for the Tionghoa’s charge. We were outnumbered, but we were ready. Dunadinians and Paloeans stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to die for all Santara, our rivalries and grudges put aside, if only for the moment.

Tionghoa cavalrymen were the first to have crashed into the line, followed by the swordsmen. But our men held our ground, and with Lord Aron right in the thick of the fighting, they would fight to the last man. Also, they were not alone…

From the walls and towers that remained standing, archers and musketeers fired. With the Tionghoa now converging upon this opening, there was a blob of soldiers trying to force their way into our zone of control. Our mages made full use of this opportunity: Inferna and Kochba with their fire magic roasted a chunk of the enemy. Livia too did her part with her dark magic, causing chaos by generating a black hole in the middle of Tionghoa ranks.

Our wounded continued to grow in numbers. But Paradisa, showing courage all too characteristic of her people, flew into that frontline on her pegasus. And her light magic kept scores of our men fighting.

As for me, I had a special mission. Given the Tionghoa’s numbers, simply defending was not an option. They had the reserves to keep up their attacks until we were too tired to fight. We had to sally out, and it was the best time for us to do so given the Tionghoa attack.

The troops that sallied out were made up of Drusus, me (as a passenger on his wyvern), and a squad of Puncakian flyers. Our mission was to strike the Tionghoa rearguard, which include their cannons.

With Drusus at the lead, our squadron flew through the sky with lightning-fast speed. We made sure to fly at high altitude; with the Tionghoa forces focusing on trying to break through our main force, we were able to get behind enemy lines inconspicuously.

The Tionghoa general, Wen Tao was amongst the cannon crew. The poor guy did not know what hit him until it was too late. Drusus was the first to attack. His wyvern dove towards the Tionghoa general. The warrior without equal would have struck the general dead right then and there if I hadn’t instructed him beforehand. Instead, he shifted his wyvern, allowing me to strike Wen Tao’s face with the butt of my pistol and knock him out cold.

Meanwhile, the Puncakian mercenaries also charged down upon the other soldiers. The crewmen quickly abandoned their siege engines to save their lives. We did this with the other cannon crews. With most of the Tionghoa trying to break into our position, we were able to wreak havoc unopposed.

And once we cleared out the cannons, we flew back to our zone of control.

By the time we were finished, General Wen Tao had woken up. As expected, the coward was panicked by the destruction we had caused. He immediately ordered his troops to abandon their attack on our fortifications.

We had bought ourselves time, but not victory. That night, the Paloean earth mages were hard at work to raise the earth to cover the breach that the Tionghoa cannons had made. But there was simply not enough time and the “walls” they made were woefully short, even with the builders working all night. We simply did not have the time.

The next day, I thought we were done for. The Tionghoa resumed their attacks. Once again, enemy cannons bombarded our walls. Again, the attack came from both Khmer and Borobudur. We hunkered down for hours and could do nothing as our fortifications were getting battered. We would have sallied out, but we were in no shape to do so. Not even against the attackers from Khmer; they had brought in more men out of desperation to break through, and we couldn’t spare the men with the Borobudur Tionghoa banging on our doors.

Our worst nightmare finally came to be when the Tionghoa breached open the walls we had just rebuilt. It got even worse when our enemy made another breach, this one on our line of circumvallation (in other words, facing Khmer). And now, the enemy could launch a pincer attack on us.

Lord Aron would have given us a rousing speech about holding on until our dying breaths, for El Shaddai and the freedom to worship Him, but our spirits were not at all dampened by the impossible odds laid before us.

Our troops were organized haphazardly; we simply had no time to get in formation. The men mixed in with little regard for origins or arms; there was a unit consisted of Paloean foot-lancers and Tionghoa musketeers, Puncakian warrior maidens rode side-by-side on their pegasi with the Riders of Dun-a-din, Livia found herself amongst the earth mages, and many more examples I can think of. Right in the middle of our formation was King Aron – as long as he stood then we would not fall; he held the Sacred Sword Isildur in a protective stance, as his beloved Paradisa was right next to him. But I must say it was she who was protecting him.

All this was a tactician’s nightmare, and we would have been soundly crushed by the Tionghoa. When we saw the enemy advancing upon us, we were all ready to meet El Shaddai and make an accounting for ourselves. I know I was, despite my ignorance of Him.

But then I heard Inferna’s cry: “Up in the sky! We’re saved!”

And lo, I saw them. The noble wyvern knights of Leste had come to our rescue! Their numbers coupled with the size of their mounts made for a terrifying horde. The sky darkened as they blotted out the sun. And as I saw those serpentine creatures – black, red, and silver in color – I felt hope.

Everyone knew what they needed to do. Drusus flew first to join his fellow wyvern riders. Then, Inferna followed suit, Kochba riding as her passenger. As did Paradisa; this time, her beloved Aron was on her pegasus also. Further adding to the Lestean ranks were the Puncakian flyers.

The Lestean counterattack was quick and devastating. To be honest, I did not recall how our forces were divided in this particular battle. For one thing, I had little hand in it. But more importantly, it didn’t matter. The Tionghoa did not expect the arrival of the wyvern riders and was utterly unprepared. The Borobudur Tionghoa was routed quickly. They retreated in such a panic that they left their siege engines behind (again). They also left behind their high-ranking officers – not General Wen Tao, though.

On the other hand, the attackers from Khmer fought with fury, ready to fight until the last man. To be sure, they fought bravely, though the sight of musketeers trying to fight a wyvern in melee was pitiful, to say the least. The Khmerians had no chance, and they all died. Except for one, who survived only thanks to Paradisa’s light magic; his name was Xian De.

It was from this Tionghoa soldier that I learned the sordid state of Khmer. Our siege had been effective – all too effective – in starving the people in the colonial capital. With little to no food for the populace, the disparate races of Khmer fought amongst one another. Riots tore apart the kampungs and the Governor General was desperate to break the siege.

When I learned of this fact, I knew that we had secured victory in all but name. And my optimism was vindicated the next day.

Dear readers, I ask you to picture this image: King Aron of Dun-a-din sitting down, the seat his throne in all but name; to his left was his (soon-to-be) Queen, Paradisa; the silver-haired maiden leaning her head on the king’s shoulder. Meanwhile, the rest of us, including Kochba (no doubt seething with anger) formed a guard of honor for them.

Upon that background, Governor General Zheng Zhi of the Tionghoa Southern Holdings, alone amongst hostiles, marched his way to Lord Aron. The governor carried himself with poise and grace, until he came to face to face with Lord Aron and Lady Paradisa: he prostrated himself before the two. My lord was not pleased by this display.

“Stand up!” the King barked. “Only El Shaddai deserves such an adoration.”

Indeed, it was indiscrete for the governor to have done so. Even amongst the Tionghoa, the act of prostration is acceptable only to divinities (so called); and the only man upon which a Tionghoa can prostate himself to was none other than the Dragon Emperor.

When I saw the Governor General humiliate himself in front of Lord Aron, I truly thought that the troubles, my troubles, in the Santara Archipelago had ended, that it was all smooth sailing from here. But no readers, the troubles had just begun.