April 27th, 629

  I let out a long breath within the command center, my eyes closed as the tides shifted.

  My brows raised, my mind filled with the Auric world around me. The Scourge, their intent, their hostility, their raving madness and demonic eagerness. I could feel it all crash against the Line, bearing down on every soldier.

  I could feel the dormant confidence of my soldiers, their lack of fear and abundance of trust in each other. They were a cohesive whole.

  “Can you feel it General?”

  “What, sir?”

  “The ebb and flow of the world. The cries of the Scourge, the silent intent of our troops, the clash of their dichotomy. I can hear the symphony of their collectives. Can you hear it? The rising intensity of our resonance?”

  “...I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir.”

  General Gaffney looked at me weirdly, a sigh escaping my lips.

  “That means you need to sound the alarm, General. Muster the soldiers. The enemy is about to move.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He was placid as he punched in a few commands. Soon after, an alarm rang through the entire Line.

  My troops stirred, the intensity rising with the introduction of violins and trumpets. I could feel the Scourge respond in its faint way, cymbals and rattlers echoing from dark corners.

  They manned their stations, their anxiety rising. Turrets oriented at the blizzard. Not a single monster was in front of the Line. The enemy was hidden, incoming, but waiting.

  Alarms wailed simultaneously in rear bases miles away. From behind the Line there were tubas and flutes that sang with promises of support. From the runways scrambled jets and planes stocked full with ordnance that rumbled like gongs.

  The shields, now pushing 200% load despite being pulled in and sparking with broken runes of mana, creaked like an unsteady wooden bridge unable to hold the weight of the conflict above it.

  The collection of sounds and visuals flickered through my mind, including the ones still silent. I could feel their presence, their unsung potential, waiting for their opportunity.

  It would come soon.

  Soon, one of the sensors started blaring. Seismic charts started fluctuating, and underground detectors threw alerts of monster approach.

  The ground was showing a seismic magnitude equivalent to a 3.0 earthquake. It was more heard than felt.

  But more concerning was what happened next.

  Mines started blowing, underground charges throwing dirt into the air as they were tripped. The explosions started within the blizzard, each one sending an alert when it blew. But soon they got closer, within half a mile and continuing forward.

  Underground scans soon came up, and we saw what was coming from underneath.

  Massive worms chewed through the ground, sliding forward through the mines, but not unimpeded. They slowed down as they got closer and the mines got denser. Each one blew a hole in whatever monster was underneath, but they continued anyway.

  Soon, not even a quarter mile away from the wall, they stopped.

  Then the ground exploded open, massive tunnels 300 feet in diameter being exposed on the surface.

  And out they charged.

  Thousands of monsters raved through the holes, of which there were dozens across several miles through no man’s land. The turrets opened fire only seconds after the first monsters came through, all of them focusing fire on those openings.

  Thousands of monsters tried to flood through, all of them denied. Their corpses were soon used to plug the holes, but more pushed through with sheer strength, blowing corpses aside.

  Then the larger, more armored enemies came. They tanked shots and charged forward, trying to create a path. While they managed to survive just a few dozen more feet, other turrets never stopped firing at the exits themselves. Their efforts were denied, but they weren’t alone.

  The seismic activity continued to rise, and before long, the source exposed itself.

  Those massive, armored behemoths blew through the blizzard, marching straight toward the walls. Alarms blared as signals were sent to deployable units, Brigadiers being tasked with leaving the safety of the wall to engage personally and bring down those behemoths.

  With them was the main army. Tens of thousands across miles flooded forward as if they were an unstoppable tide. They likened themselves to a tsunami. They were a mass of bone and flesh, their combat power worth nothing, their durability the only thing that brought value to the ones behind them. They weren’t meant to reach the walls. They were meant to die to our furious response so that others may attempt to even scratch the surface of the Line.

  Heavy cannons aimed and fired. Artillery started coming down from the skies, and planes swooped in to drop their payloads. Jets screamed from above as aerial enemies appeared like locusts from the blizzard, flooding toward the top of the wall where anti air opened up with impunity.

  It was early in the morning, the sun barely beginning to rise, and explosions were the symphony that graced the start of this wonderful day.

  They lit up the atmosphere and cratered the ground amidst corpses. The collective Aura of the Scourge bore down on the Line, and this time, the intelligence behind it was fatally serious. Unlike the army that overran Sronghold Charlie, unable to be contested, this army, double the size and containing much greater concentrations of strength, knew that it would have to sacrifice if it wanted even the mere chance to bring down this Line.

  I felt chills down my spine, a mysterious sense of Deja Vu flooding my mind as if it were a divine message. I could see what was happening, could see every moving part as if I were the cogs of the machine. I felt omniscient, my ears filled with the orchestra of wrath and righteous fury, my eyes covered by the light of fire and purification, my tongue blessed with the taste of blistering smoke and poisonous blood, my skin caressed with the touch of bone spurs and soft metal.

  When I regained myself, I was atop the hardpoint, staring out at the battlefield, at the blizzard, at the skies above.

  I was looking beyond it all, gazing at that golden barrier in the distance, watching it approach me like the Sovereign within the blizzard.

  My lungs took in the breath of the exhilaration and adrenaline that my soldiers let out with every scream and roar, and I exhaled the satisfaction of clairvoyance.

  “It’s… glorious. Chief Ironheart, it’s time.”

  “You’re the conductor.”

  He muttered from behind me, my eyes tearing away from the Great Barrier. He smiled at me, the two of us staring at each other. I felt like I could see through him. That was my own naivety and delusion.

  “That feeling, Sir Cooper. What you just bathed in, that magnificent satisfaction and brain tingling sensation of… absolution. That’s what I’m about to acquire for myself. I trained for decades to become a Sovereign. I waited for nearly as long for this moment. The moment that I would acquire my first kill as a being on the Horizon. The moment that I would kill another Sovereign, and would officially earn my title as a True Sovereign. Today, the world will know my name, as it will know your success against the largest army the Kingdom has ever been faced with.”

  I listened to him, and nodded. Then I stepped to the side, waving toward the blizzard.

  “They’ve delivered themselves. You can go hunt. I will take care of the rest.”

  “Indeed you will.”

  Chief Ironheart Raven stepped forward toward the edge. In his hands appeared two longswords, both of them bulkier than any sword I had ever seen before, with enough weight that I could feel their displacement by the way they shifted the atmosphere.

  He stepped to the edge, and then launched himself into the blizzard with a jump that dented the entire hardpoint.

  I waited, watching the blizzard, the armies below leaving my focus as I felt the void that was Ironheart’s Aura grow.

  It threatened to consume my thoughts, threatened to turn my consciousness to Nothing, overriding my understanding of life and being.

  Yet I maintained my focus on it anyway.

  It wasn’t long before I felt the first clash. Then I saw it, a sword strike that split the blizzard in two.

  Ironheart was exposed, before him the other Sovereign, a Royal with so many layers of runes between him and Ironheart that I could barely make out its figure.

  The first strike passed in an instant. I wouldn’t have been able to see Ironheart move if I hadn’t dilated my perception of time. My Sparks ran into overdrive, catching every little movement, every adjustment of Vigor and Mana.

  I watched, and I intended to learn.

  Ironheart drove his swords down, shattering the barrier of runes and magic. His vigor launched forward, taking the form of the void, consuming all that got in its way.

  But it was overwhelmed. The Royal launched thousands of poisonous bolts of magic at the blades. The void had its fill, and they were dispersed.

  Ironheart continued in his unrelenting attacks. Slice after slice, he engaged his technique and closed the distance, to the Royal, unleashing so much vigor that my eyes burned with the sight of it. All of it was focused solely on the Royal, not a single sliver of Vigor going to waste.

  It was scarily efficient. Sovereigns were known for their sheer, world rending power. The power contained within a single slice of the King of Anarchy’s blade was enough to create a literal tsunami of earth from miles away. It was power previously incomprehensible to my mind. I couldn’t even gaze upon Anarchy at that time without soon turning to Umara and attempting to kill her as if it was a mercy.

  It was power that placed a being in the realm of gods. Normally, people would equate that with larger scales. This Royal was the perfect example. A blizzard miles around, a literal walking natural disaster.

  But with Ironheart, the case was different. It was the opposite. All of his power, all of that world shattering might, was concentrated into two blades. It didn’t expand and exert itself. It contracted and consumed.

  That void within him got stronger. It ate my very vision, devoured my hearing, eliminated my taste. At some point, I started seeing in monochrome, my retinas blotting like they would if I stared into the sun.

  But I continued watching. I didn’t look away.

  I could feel my awareness expanding as a consequence.

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  Ironheart swung his blades, one after the other, chaining into perfect form and technique. There wasn’t a moment of rest for the Royal. So much mana was pouring off of it and into the surroundings that the blizzard, after a mere minute, was retracted. The shields nearly exploded as they pushed outward with the relief in pressure, blasting away the snow and revealing the armies for a dozen miles back.

  It revealed the millions monsters that were marching toward us. They were a literal sea, their armies extending beyond our sight. I quickly got audible alerts. The counts and estimations updated in real time, sensors nearly exploding as the signatures were measured, no longer hampered by the blizzard.

  What we initially thought was 1.8 million monsters was turning out to be over 4 million.

  I smiled, and then started cackling, my laughs drowned out by the explosions amping up another magnitude.

  My soldiers started delivering their justice by the power of insanity. No longer was this a rational battle of efficiency and distribution. It was now a furious fight to see who could light themselves aflame faster and cast their power into the monsters before them.

  At this moment though, I cared not. I had made my preparations, I had trained my generals, I had supplied them with enough firepower to evaporate a sea, and I had terraformed the world to mount their defence.

  They would not fail, even against double or triple the foes.

  I had surpassed numbers and fodder. By the might of my technology, I had turned the Scourge into a mere statistic and calculated my victory.

  Ironheart flashed across the land. Each step took him whatever distance he needed it to, as if distance was no longer a concept that had any meaning. The Royal moved with tangible amounts of Mana that obscured my senses with its mere existence. It was not just fluid, but solid, like a real object, and through its manipulation the Royal was able to manifest certain properties in that Mana that blocked and evaporated Ironheart’s attacks.

  Their power was virtually endless, and it was not without its effects on the surroundings.

  Their battle plowed through no man’s land. Lingering energy shot across the ground and gouged trenches in the planet. Some were sent toward the wall, thankfully nothing more than collateral, and yet it still dented what had effectively become a cliff made of metal. Not even a few dozen feet of material reinforced with layers and saturations of earth mana was able to resist the might of collateral damage from Sovereigns.

  They flickered across the land, and my eyes followed from my vantage point. Ironheart’s swords were conduits for his released power, which took on both tangible and conceptual form. He had surpassed the bounds of what Knights knew as Coalescence, a step above mere Emission. His Vigor took on both external form as well as specialized properties. Though after becoming a Sovereign, nay, after breaching the Great Barrier, those properties had gained the Conceptual.

  That was the void of his Aura. It wasn’t mere consumption. It was Nullification. It turned something into nothing, cancelling it out and removing it from reality. It turned his power into a negative in a universe where existence was a positive.

  His power was immutable. That much I was able to surmise, but of course, the true secrets of such power were unknowable to me. It was still a realm I couldn’t touch on. Yet.

  The battle didn’t end quickly. On the contrary, I stared and barely blinked at all for over an hour. I stared so intently that I was just about blind after that hour had passed.

  I could barely see the explosions happening across the battlefield. The fiery rage was unseen, and yet I continued to look because I had ceased to see through the lens of light.

  It was the conceptual that was blinding me, and yet it only opened the eyes of my mind to its influence. I saw the battle between Ironheart and the Royal not in terms of movements and strikes, but in terms of power and effect. I didn’t see Ironheart’s void eat the magic of the Royal, I saw an exchange of forces between reality and nothing. It exploded in my mind with blinding flashes of magical data. There was always information to be found, no matter the form it took.

  I saw the Royal learn through time how poorly it could handle Ironheart’s void. The Royal utilized the forces of nature like a proper warlock, its elements tainted with monstrous power. Its power was erratic, unfocused. Clearly meant for large scale battles, the Royal was at a disadvantage when facing someone like Ironheart.

  But that’s all it was, a mere disadvantage. The spells that Royal cast still ripped apart the world in an attempt to take Ironheart with them. Spatial magic had evacuated all air from the surroundings, the two of them fighting in a vacuum. Ironheart was faced with constant pressure and attacks from all sides. The Royal had him in a domain that extended for miles, going wherever the Royal went, Ironheart unable to escape it.

  He wasn’t able to avoid most of the attacks. They all slammed into his armor of Vigor and Void, shattering against his defences like glass. But there were always more. A thousand more every minute.

  The display of magical prowess was harrowing. Its capabilities had already been far greater than any natural disaster. Month after month that Sovereign had battered the Line with its blizzard, warping the very climate, miles of power and magic exerting force all hours of every day. It was nothing more than passive magic.

  What the Royal showed now was power capable of ripping apart the Line without resistance. The world bent to its power, all of it focused solely on Ironheart.

  Their clashes ruined the landscape, sliced the Line, created new landmarks, eradicated hills and carved ravines.

  Albeit not overly significant, by mere collateral the two of them slaughtered several hundred thousand monsters in the surroundings.

  They also killed dozens of my soldiers with the damage to the Line. None of my turrets were installed close to each other, but their devastation was just too great.

  The first deaths of Iron Legion since the Line was established occurred at their hands. Already within expectations, yet no easier to see.

  Hour after hour I continued to watch, and they continued to battle. The Royal’s disadvantage grew with every minute. Ironheart placed so much concentrated pressure on it that from the beginning, even I knew the gap couldn’t be overcome.

  I had seen the Royal attempt to escape several times, knowing it wasn’t a good fit against Ironheart. But the void was just as effective on spatial magic as it was anything else. There was nowhere the Royal could run to, forcing it into a desperate struggle.

  The devastation around them grew, not helped by the sheer amount of ordnance my Iron Legion was distributing. Turrets never stopped firing, artillery was at this point random yet still fully effective, and bombs rained from the sky like a torrential rain. What had turned to an afternoon day was blotted out by planes engaging in runs without end and aerial monsters being cut down by incessant anti air.

  With their sheer number, the monsters couldn’t be held back forever. When afternoon turned to evening, their endless tide reached the base of the wall. When that happened, new openings were used by the troops to drop explosives and alchemical agents. Fire flooded the piles of flesh, creating hills of corpses that buried their kin alive.

  Knights and warlocks were dispatched to the damaged sections of the wall to hold back anything that tried to slip through. At the same time, more behemoths made their way toward the wall from the rear of the Scourge lines, charging with reckless abandon in an attempt to punch more openings in our defences. They were met with missiles and bombs, oftentimes catching no small amount of artillery shells.

  The Brigadiers previously assigned to attack those behemoths were retasked to meet more Scourge Royals in head on battle. Many Royals came from aerial mounts that dropped them on top of the wall while others simply crossed no man’s land so they could enter the openings.

  With advanced sensors, they were all spotted. None managed to slip past and wreak havoc, but there were still plenty of them.

  The high end battles were still a weak point of Iron Legion. We didn’t have the sheer numbers of Brigadiers and Marshals. But we did have quality. Better armor, better weapons, better support. High Authority ordnance was used like candy in order to weaken or attempt to outright kill Authority 10 and 11 Royals. Even if they didn’t die though, it often put them at enough of a disadvantage that allowed my own Brigadiers and Marshals to dispatch them with greater ease.

  A single Marshal and Brigadier could be stretched to handle multiple enemies of equal strength. Not to mention, they had been engaging in active battles these past few years, not idle like they once were in the Kingdom’s military. They were sharp and ready for what came.

  Evening of the first day passed. Night attempted to bring darkness upon the battlefield and was rebuffed by the rage of fire and the deployment of light flares.

  The battle simply continued. Ironheart continued to dominate his opponent with visceral intensity that could be felt for miles, but that Sovereign proved resilient. Compared to others, Ironheart could be considered new on the stage. His combat prowess increased by the hour, improving and adjusting. By comparison though, the Royal was a veteran. Although not more powerful, it was more experienced in what it meant to fight against another Sovereign, which Ironheart lacked.

  This was his first battle against another Sovereign. If he was only trying to make it run, then the battle would have ended after a handful of hours. But he was trying to kill it, which was significantly more difficult.

  Night became day once more, the morning sun peeking over the horizon and removing the need for light flares.

  The battle continued to rage without end. By this point, most Royals within the Scourge’s armies were killed, and the ones yet to be handled, those hiding in the rear lines, were being hunted by Sector 4 units like my Desert Eagles. There was now little threat to my troops still within the wall, and in just that day, around half of the Scourge’s force had been utterly eradicated.

  No man’s land was completely filled with corpses, little of the ground visible within a quarter mile. Massive behemoth corpses acted like natural walls and the lakes of blood that soaked the flesh of their former hosts created a moat that was difficult for most monsters to traverse quickly.

  The tide was slowed, muddied, and the turrets took advantage of that. They continued to fire without end, inexhaustible supplies of Crystals constantly entering their ammo belts. Reserves of everything except earth crystals were still stable.

  Morning turned to afternoon, and Ironheart was still fighting that Royal.

  I didn’t stop watching. I couldn’t. My eyes, now unable to see visible light, remained on their battle, remembering every detail no matter how overwhelming for my psyche.

  With every clash, with every minute and hour, I could see the Great Barrier come closer. With the fullfillment of everything I predicted would happen, I was reassured of my path.

  And through my observation of their battle, I eventually became able to read it. No longer was it random. Unlike others around my level that I could read and react to like a book, they were completely unfathomable.

  Until now.

  I saw Ironheart’s actions become thoughtless, and in that they became unknowable. The Royal was no longer able to try and predict like I would, nor could it read his Aura to glean his thoughts and patterns.

  He had entered another state of being, one wholly dedicated to the battle. He didn’t even have to think about what he wanted to do. His body led him, not his mind. Instincts honed over decades of battle guided his actions.

  And then, new knowledge of how his power interacted with other Sovereigns drove him to see the abilities it afforded him. He saw the path forward, and so he charged down it blindly, reaping all of its bountiful consequences.

  It was around noon of the second day that it finally cascaded.

  Ironheart’s advantages grew to a point where the Royal could no longer resist. From there, its downfall was exponential. Its injuries became wounds, which became mortal blows. Its power, despite not being drained, couldn’t even be used. Ironheart would react too fast, move too effectively. He was in a flow state that wouldn’t end until one of them died.

  As soon as I saw the cascade, I sent some signals to my generals.

  Then I continued watching as Ironheart dispatched that Royal.

  Every strike of the blade tore through its defenses, the Royal forced to block more than deflect, which consumed more mana. Backed into a corner, it hunkered down and started to bite back, uncaring of the expenditure it knew didn’t matter.

  The Mana in the atmosphere started going haywire. The winds moved like a hurricane and the ground shifted like a 9.0 earthquake. The Royal’s magic went wide scale once more, its focus on the Line, not on Ironheart.

  I sighed, and then I watched the attack fill the world around me.

  It extended for miles, a last ditch effort. I could see the infinite amount of three and four dimensional arrays that filled the world. I watched it construct tangible structures of fire, space, and earth.

  They all fused, not merely supplementing each other, but becoming something else entirely, as if they were creating a new element.

  And then I finally saw it. The Conceptual of the Sovereign Royal I had been facing for the past several months.

  The one that led to the death of my friends.

  Cataclysm.

  When the arrays activated, my mind went white, then shut itself off to the world. I wasn’t sure what happened after that, but the events were nearly instant.

  When I opened my mind’s eye once more, I saw Ironheart standing there with the Royal’s head, right in the middle of the battlefield.

  I also saw the wall, two large portions of it to my left and right completely missing, deleted from existence. Those blows carved two massive fissures deep into the planet, magma bubbling up from the cracks, initially explosive, then slowing to a flow.

  It must’ve killed a couple thousand of my troops with that single blow. Yet it could’ve been far worse. Thankfully Ironheart had killed it in time.

  The battle came to a standstill, soon resuming as everyone recovered. Artillery never stopped, and the remaining Scourge were stunned in place with their Sovereign dead.

  I estimated a bit less than a million remaining. It would be an easy cleanup.

  But something even I didn’t expect happened soon after.

  Every monster and Royal that remained regained themselves and promptly turned around to run away as fast as possible.

  Turrets continued to fire, and planes adjusted their bombing runs. Yet they still ran. Something about that pissed me off to no end.

  I held the orders I wanted to give, Ironheart appearing next to me with a step.

  “As agreed, I will keep the corpse.”

  “Of course.”

  “...Are you alright, Sir Cooper?”

  Ironheart frowned at me. I turned my head toward him, even though I couldn’t see him.

  He shook his head.

  “You blinded yourself watching the battle. Good thing it is temporary.”

  “Not an affliction of the eyes, then.”

  “Correct. It is of the mind. You were watching things you weren’t meant to understand yet. But that you could see it at all means you’re moving toward the Great Barrier.”

  “Yes, I am. Go ahead and rest, Chief Ironheart. We will handle the rest.”

  “Will you give chase?”

  I scanned him, seeing his battered body still glistening with unknowable arrays and runes of the ether.

  “I’m going to do more than give chase. But my soldiers need time to rest. We will prepare until then.”

  “Very well. Inform me should you need me. I have much to reflect on.”

  Ironheart left with those words, dropping into the wall.

  And I continued to watch the retreating monsters, their pitiful Aura weakening with every ounce of lost confidence.