At the midpoint between Urubandar and Alatishad, the Battle of the Setarab River began. From high above, Mirian watched as the first skirmishes broke out.
The villages and farmland along the Setarab were burning well before the Akanans came into range, having been evacuated days before and spellfire charges detonated in the most critical places. More important than denying them grain—most of the fields weren’t ready for harvest—this created a smoke screen that would blow west with the prevailing winds, obscuring the vision of the advancing force.
In the center, Akanan skiffs sortied out to try and bomb what people had started calling “the Ominian’s Army.” Persaman woodworkers and painters had created hundreds of decoy positions. Spellbombs fell on those empty positions first, while disciplined Zhighuan infantry sheltered, waiting for the approach.
Akana had assumed dominance of the air; they had the Ominian’s Army beat in both number and quality of their airships.
Mirian and Zhuan, then, had seized the ground, relying on the widespread expertise of crystal magic in Zhighua. Teams of geomancers and crystal mages had first created the trenches, support structures, and reinforced buildings needed for the leyline regulator in Mayat Shadr. That had been done for months, with only a few high-myr mages being needed to finish growing the primary conduit crystals. Mirian had known she was being tracked, but Zhuan had eliminated all vestiges of the Akanan spy network in her home country. That allowed her to develop and deploy capabilities in secret. Once the Akanan buildup in Urubandar had been confirmed—a trivial thing to spot with so many ships heading to Urubandar—entire regiments of arcanists had burrowed beneath the earth, creating miles of reinforced tunnels and bunkers. The labor and expertise required for this undertaking had been everywhere; mining had been one of the foremost economic activities for Persama for centuries. Professor Holvatti, Mirian’s old Geomorphology teacher, had entire shelves full of geologic maps of the region.
The Zhighuan fire teams waited until the Akanan skiffs were almost directly above them and the Akanan spellcarts had moved into range before arcanists removed the camouflaged stone plugs of the bunkers and the artillery opened up.
Mirian hoped that Gabriel’s spies had enjoyed her “we won’t be using ambushes” line.
Shield engines blazed to life as spellfire shells burst across the sky and explosions shook the ground, kicking up dust and sending the Akanans to cover. Mirian shifted the kinds of light her array of lens spells were picking up to better see through the dust and smoke. At least two skiffs’ shields were overwhelmed and fell from the sky, burning, while the rest retreated. The advancing infantry were forced to find cover—which was sparse enough in the river valley.
The Zhighuan teams would fire from their position for a few minutes, then plug the hole back up while marusaurs with silence spells around their ears dragged the artillery through narrow tunnels to a new firing position. The tunnels on the initial line of contact were sparse, but still contained enough firepower to threaten troop movements. The further east the Akanans made it, the more and more they’d find—and not just near the Setarab, but spread across rocky hills, canyon-cut lands, and jagged spires. The area near Mahatan was already full of caves, as Gabriel knew from their search for the Gate, and the southern desert near the Jiandzhi was full of plunging canyons and treacherous cliffs.
The easiest terrain was through the Setarab River Basin—but if the Akanans concentrated their forces to punch through without securing their flanks, they’d have a nightmarish time trying to take Alatishad while the army bled from both flanks.
And if all went to plan, the Akanan offensive was on a timer: they only had so much fuel. If they deviated north to try to seize fossilized myrvite quarries, they’d be delaying their offensive and getting mired in terrain conducive to guerrilla forces and ambushes; their logistics would find no rest. If they refused to be diverted, they’d start having to make hard choices about whether spellcarts, shields, or skiffs got fuel.
It could have been bloodless, she thought regretfully. But if war was how they saved Enteria, then Liuan and Gabriel would learn just how good Mirian had gotten at it.
There was the problem of the dreadnoughts; using the leyline repulsors, they could stay aloft and powered without foss. If Liuan got them close enough to Mahatan, Mirian and Ceiba Yan had a surprise they could deploy. Likely, though, she’d figured out what had happened near Tlaxhuaco and wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. However, if she refused to take Mahatan, that left a fortified city that limited how far north the Akanans could move and kept a dagger aimed at their flank.
Dust and smoke kicked up along a vast front stretching miles as hour by hour the advancing army came into contact with the defenders. Clearly, Akanan signals were adequately developed. The later Akanan companies were already deployed for battle, with shield engines deployed to cover advanced teams while they grabbed footholds using geomancers to cut out trenches and shape stone barriers for infantry and guns to shelter under. Meanwhile, the four dreadnoughts took a high altitude position and started bombarding anywhere diviners had marked as a gun site.
Ideally, all the firing teams had already readjusted positions, and the earthshaker shells would merely collapse empty passages, but Mirian knew better than to think every team had executed their missions flawlessly. There were always casualties. Always death.
And the Ominian weeps for it all.
Mirian felt the urge to join the battle, but knew it would be foolish. If she plunged headlong into the Akanans, she could wreak havoc, smash the local forces, and cause a rout—but risked an ambush by the archmage company and the Sorcerer Elite. Her raids across the Rift Sea had once again sapped her aura, and she needed to regenerate enough mana over the coming days that she could implement any emergency measure she needed at any time. If her aura was depleted, she could no longer implement the Mahatan or Luamin contingencies.
And, while plunging headlong into a battle in one area might feel cathartic, but it could allow a catastrophic breakthrough in another. The command and control infrastructure the Ominian’s Army had was lacking; they didn’t have the remote voice relays or trained mage staff that the Akanans had. Each regiment had communications capabilities linked to adjacent regiments, but while that kept the brigade cohesive, each brigade was essentially blind to the larger strategic picture.
To correct this, Mirian had invented and deployed several devices that could pick up on a type of long-wavelength light and shift them back into visible color signals—the long-wavelength light was the same she’d used in distance divination on her first trip to Luamin—but obviously most artificers and glyph inks were still tied up in the production of the leyline regulator. Only a few devices were deployed, and even fewer arcanists had been trained in longwave directed light spells. That long wavelength color-signal spell also only moved properly through the air, meaning a mage had to expose themself on a hill to send a message off or risk it not getting through. Unless they had a shifting-device of their own, they also wouldn’t be able to have two-way communication. It was one of the innumerable technical problems that Mirian was sure she could have solved had Xecatl’s condition not necessitated haste.
Mirian’s solution was to levitate a few miles up from the battlefield and be the center of both observation and communication. If the Akanans wanted to sortie out into heavy artillery fire to confront her, they were more than welcome to try.
Below, the battlefield glittered with lightning and cinders. Even looking at different parts of the spectra wasn’t enough to prevent the occlusion of parts of the battlefield. Still, she could see major movements. Far to the north, she could make out Akanan spellcarts trying to move through a relatively flat piece of the desert. She checked her map to remind herself of brigade names and color signals.
“Forty-second brigade, mechanized enemy advancing south of your position. Quick infantry attack on their flank to support Forty-fourth,” she sent out. Likely, an impetuous Akanan commander thought he could begin a flanking maneuver that might lead to encirclement. Akanan doctrine used infrared divination and standard glyph checks to help locate infantry, but Zhuan’s rifles were using non-standard glyph arrays and infrared struggled with the amount of cover and heat present in the Persaman desert. The commander had driven their spellcarts right past her hidden infantry. As the first spellcarts encountered the illusion-covered anti-vehicle trench, they came under fire from rifle and mortar fire to their north.
Her attention shifted to the far south, where the Akanans were attempting to move through the easiest route in the rocky terrain. They were coming under fire from artillery that had pre-sighted areas to bombard. The twisting canyons and extreme verticality of that area would make spellcarts nearly useless. Any infantry battle would be even, and that position was far enough away from the dreadnoughts that the Akanans would have to commit levitation-capable sorcerers or skiffs, both of which she could easily see and respond to. Right now, it seemed both armies were holding their elite units in reserve, ready to respond to a crisis.
That crisis would most likely erupt along the Setarab River itself. The flat farmland made ideal ground for advancing anything with wheels, and Marshal Cearsia had clearly expected that with air support, units in the center could break through and then encircle the rest of her army.
Too predictable. Mirian had honestly thought she would perform better. To be fair, though, Cearsia had studied Mirian for a few months.
Mirian had known her opponent for a century.
As the Akanan spellcarts rumbled forward along the river, they found the next surprise—sinkholes. Persaman aquamancers had worked with the same geomancer crews that had designed the defensive tunnels to create impediments to movement. They had used arcane means—supplemented by the Elder artifacts that could create a powerful acid—to dissolve or carve out large amounts of limestone in the area, leaving just enough of the surface layer intact that a spellcart passing over it would cause a collapse. Akanan divination teams constantly were on the lookout for buried spellbombs and arcane traps. They neglected to look for mundane caves. Those same caves would show up alongside the natural caves on detect cave style spells, making it more difficult to locate where Ominian Army forces were hiding.
Terrain modifications then helped funnel the Akanans into routes that the defenders could bombard. Akanan force bridge engines extended out about ten meters by default, so the sinkholes were given fifteen-meter diameters. Divination teams had a specific list of glyph sequences they searched for to locate the enemy, so warding devices specifically targeted those spells while workers had buried devices in random locations with those glyphs sequences so the Akanans were constantly getting false positives. Meanwhile, instructions had been smuggled into Urubandar informing sympathetic citizens how they might resist the Akanan occupation once the advance had begun. More and more problems would add up, increasing the amount of friction the Akanan Army encountered—until it ground to a halt.
Mirian noticed the rate of fire in the central front was going down.
“All rear artillery on the Setarab: continue firing into pre-sighted areas. Akanans are taking heavy losses,” she sent. If they were slowing their rate of fire because of the battlefield being obscured, that would help. Otherwise, it was a morale boost.
Her eyes continued to scan the battlefield. Despite the obstacles, the Akanans were still making progress, but only by relying heavily on shield engines. As those were either knocked out by repeated hits or foss depletion, they’d be forced to halt and take cover. Already, she could see places where desperate Akanan infantry, exposed to both shells and small arms fire, had hit the ground and were digging in with spades and spells. No amount of commands could prevent the primal survival instinct at work there. For all that the Akanans outnumbered the Ominian’s Army, most of their soldiers were fresh recruits with little training and no battlefield experience; such forces were poor at pushing the offensive, and that was showing now.
She repositioned a lens spell so it had a better view of the river. “Ninety-fifth brigade, two frigates supported by gunboats are moving up the river towards your position using an illusionary engine to screen approach; do not trust visuals.”
The dreadnoughts were laying down heavy fire a mile north of the Setarab. She could see Akanan skiffs assembling for a firing run. She glanced at her map. It should have been the 109th brigade there, but there’d been some sort of logistical problem and her notes were wrong. Now she couldn’t remember who was positioned there. She cursed her fallible memory and sent a signal anyways: “Enemy skiffs preparing near your position. Prepare anti-air fire along grid forty-four.”
As the hours went by, Mirian ordered more and more withdrawals, mostly from the center front. As evening fell, her eyes narrowed. The Akanan advance was slowing everywhere, but she could tell Cearsia had planned for an immediate breakthrough. The dreadnoughts were slowly drifting closer to the thick of the fighting, and one in particular was at least two miles ahead of the others. Multiple Akanan skiffs had withdrawn from their second raid, repelled by heavy fire, but they had regrouped, refueled, and were launching again.
She cast total camouflage and flew towards the area. If Cearsia or Liuan thought they could push their elite forces into the line of contact, Mirian was about to show them why that was a bad idea.
Below, two Akanan frigates continued to move upriver, flanked by gunboats. Above, the skiffs mirrored the advance, moving in formation with the dreadnought. The airships’ orichalcum plating glittered with the evening light, the mana-infused substance distorting the reflections in the strange way it always did. The Akanans had been marking targets for firing missions all morning. As their shells rained down across the now pitted battlefield, Mirian could only hope her own forces had withdrawn in time.
By now, most Akanans along the line of contact had burrowed into the ground, the infantry lying in shallow trenches or taking cover behind burned out spellcarts. As the Akanan dreadnought pushed past that line, a cheer went up in the Akanan lines. Small groups of infantry, emboldened by the show of force, began creeping forward, using the craters and churned earth as cover.
The battlefield thundered with the combined guns of the navy and airships. Mirian sent out quick divination spells, looking for hidden assets as she rapidly estimated firing ranges. With the other three dreadnoughts out of range and the attacking airship outside the covering fire of the forward artillery, Cearsia had made a fatal error. Always too aggressive, she thought.
Mirian needed a lot of mana for what she was about to do, and she wanted to minimize how much of it came from her aura. Fortunately, the fine marshal had provided her what she needed.
She swooped down, replacing her camouflage with black shield. Shouts of alarm echoed across the water. A flare went up.
First, the auramancers.
Mirian bound up her targets’ souls in siphons, then sent out a flurry of black line spells, shooting out what looked like inverted light across the deck of the frigate. Screams erupted as the auramancers aboard fell to the deck.
Next, the mana. The shields on the frigate could do nothing against soul magic, and what Church priests were aboard simply didn’t have the training to fight real necromancy. Mirian’s spells spilled across the crew as unstoppable as flood across the plains.
Mass binding.
Mass siphon.
Mass death.
The screams stopped. Souls and mana streamed up to her. An artillery shot darkened her shield—but too late. She had her mana.
Now, the shields.
She needed that frigate, and the shields would impede her force magic. The gunboats could drain that. One by one, she lifted the gunboats, using mass binding on the crews before hurling the boat into the frigate. One by one, the shields shattered, the engines powering them smoldering as their glyphs burnt and conduit crystals cracked open. More arcane energy flowed up to her. She couldn’t incorporate it into her aura, but she could use it.
There was a spell that Mirian had been practicing since even before the loop; she knew it as well as anyone. And the frigates hadn’t been properly retrofitted with new plating.
She cast lift object.
The Akanan frigate lifted into the air. There was the shriek and groan of steel as the hull experienced forces it was never meant to. The Setarab River thrashed with waves as the frigate rose.
All across the battlefield, soldiers froze in place, gaping at the sight. Those unlucky enough to be near Mirian were swept up in her death spells as she siphoned more and more mana from their soul energy—and the frigate continued to rise.
Mirian continued to maneuver through the air, interposing the solid steel of the frigate between her and the bulk of the Akanan fire. Flameburst and stormshatter shells erupted in the air around her, but most impacted the solid bulk of the ship, and her shield held the rest. Only as the frigate continued to rise in the air did the airships seem to realize what was about to happen. The skiffs banked and accelerated, but the bulky Akanan dreadnought couldn’t match their maneuverability or speed.
Soul energy burned around her like a pyre. For a moment, the nearby guns across the battlefield fell silent as tens of thousands of eyes turned to the sky in awe and horror.
With a heave of power, Mirian showed them what over 200 myr of spell power could do. Excess arcane power vented from her armor in a prismatic blaze, and so much energy was used in the spell that the force magic lifting the frigate let out wisps of violet and orange light too, the same color as the arcane eruptions.
The frigate arced through the air and smashed into the flying dreadnought.
The noise was cataclysmic—the thunder of two massive objects colliding, the screech of metal, and the aftershock of debris scattering across the battlefield. Only the Prophets present had heard its like with the leylines; to everyone else, the artillery they’d been hearing since the start of the day had been whispers before this. The Akanan dreadnought listed to one side, its nose tilting to the ground as hundreds of fires spewed chromatic sparks and billowing smoke. The steel hull of the frigate fell with it. There was another moment of silence across the battlefield as, together, the two ships plummeted from the sky.
But only for a moment. Then they smashed into the ground, and there was another cataclysmic roar as the earth shook. There were landslides all along the bank of the Setarab. Huge plumes of dirt spewed into the air.
Mirian was already withdrawing, returning to her vigil above the battlefield. In the center, there was a widespread retreat among the infantry. The remaining frigate below had turned its force engines to full reverse, and every gun was desperately firing airburst shells as they did.
When she looked behind her, her lens spells picked up roughly a hundred figures levitating in formation towards where she’d been, having deployed from the decks of two of the dreadnoughts. It was too far to see the glint of adamantium, but she knew they’d be wearing it. However, as their own divination picked up on her retreat, the Akanan mages came to a halt. They didn’t want to pursue her into a forest of her artillery any more than she wanted to fight them on such terms. The stalemate would return—for now.
As dusk fell across the battlefield, the flash of artillery resumed, lightning up the battlefield with beautiful arcs of lightning and blossoms of flame. None of it, though, outshone the dreadnought’s pyre as it continued to burn.