Liuan stood at the bow of the Might of Liberty, the ship high enough in altitude that several crew members had become sick from it, looking through layers of lens spell provided by one of her mage attendants. She was trying to keep a handle on her emotions. Trying not to grab the nearest sorcerer and shake them and ask them if they saw what she was seeing, ask them to explain. Beneath her heavy robes, she was clenching her fists, and she hoped Cearsia and her Sorcerer Elite guards couldn’t see how tight her jaw was.
Dawn was just beginning to lighten the horizon. In the shadows of the desert, it sat there in an oasis of light.
The leyline regulator was fully active. Even from over a hundred miles away, she could see the glow of the primary conduit crystals and the soft light emitted by the myrvite gardens on the outer perimeter.
She glanced at Marshal Cearsia. If she asked her, the grand marshal would tell her that the soldiers were exhausted. But after centuries of needing not to rush, suddenly there wasn’t time. Mirian had left a Gate open somewhere to hurry Divir’s descent. Her astronomers had already noted the small moon had begun to slowly crawl towards Enteria. The world had ended hundreds and hundreds of times. She just needed one more apocalypse, and then she’d be free of the meddling influence of the other time travelers.
She needed that leyline regulator destroyed.
But her mind couldn’t stop running over the question.
How?
She’d put as much military pressure as she could on Baracuel. She’d flattened Cairnmouth, bombed Palendurio, ravaged the coast and not just destroyed factories, but forced them to produce for the war effort specifically so they couldn’t produce the parts this leyline regulator needed. Trade routes couldn’t have gone along the eastern seas—the storms were too intense. There’d been a brief period where her warships couldn’t blockade Urubandar, but Gabriel had been there reporting little movement of goods and then she had occupied the city. The Zhighuan Gate was in the wilderness, surrounded by the most deadly myrvites on Enteria, and going through the Jiandzhi. She’d forced Mirian into battle time and time again, keeping her too tied up to work on the regulator. And most importantly, she’d denied them every possible resource from Akana. All the most sophisticated factories, all the advanced artifice—they’d gotten none of it.
How?
But not only had she built the regulator, she’d rebuilt the damn city. Gabriel had assumed the operation had to be smaller than usual because security was tight enough his agents weren’t reporting back, but he’d been wrong—it was ten times what it had been in some of their practice sessions. Entire cities in Baracuel and Zhighua had to have been emptied.
How!?
There was enough movement of people to kick up dust clouds in two places: east of the regulator, and west. To the east, she could see winding columns of people. Evacuating the city.
To the west, people moving in tight formations. Defenders. Except your army is behind me, Mirian. I’ll crush them.
“Order the airships ahead of the army. Full speed. If we can land artillery shots on those regulator crystals, we can break the whole thing.”
Marshal Cearsia stiffened. Her eyes were red, probably from that lack of sleep. “I feel it is my duty to tell you that without ground support to suppress their anti-air guns, the airships and your own personage will be vulnerable.”
Even after all this time, she dares lecture me, Liuan thought. “Give the orders.”
“Yes, Sacred One,” the marshal said. She left for the bridge.
The Might of Liberty began its descent an hour later, joining the rest of the fleet. Below, the ragged columns of spellcarts continued to wind towards the regulator. Several hundred more had broken down as they journeyed across the desert, skirmishing all the while, but she still had an army’s worth. Enough for her purposes.
Above them, the three dreadnoughts and the hundred or so remaining air skiffs moved ahead of that column in formation.
***
Professor Iliya Torres surveyed the staging grounds. She tended not to feel strong emotions about anything, but even she was feeling the apprehension. The normally unflappable Song Jei was fidgeting. The last time Song had been that nervous was when she was interviewing Archmage Luspire to see if she’d be brought on to the Divine Monument project.
The last of the Ominian’s Army pilots who’d made the journey from Alatishad were being carried away from their craft on stretchers, having collapsed just after landing. They’d flown without rest since their flight from the city, having engaged in multiple skirmishes on their journey here. Unlike the Akanan airships, they’d needed to stop to refuel twice at depots on their way, but there’d been no qualified crew to replace the ones that had departed. It was because of a flawed design; Baracueli airships wasted too much foss on kinetic energy for stabilizing the wings. Mirian had shared a page of near-indecipherable notes on the subject with her, and as soon as Torres had gotten word that the leyline regulator was complete, she’d begun working with the arcanists to retrofit the airship skiffs that had been left to guard the project.
That meant they had ten newer craft with more efficient spell engines, new spells they could deploy, and enhanced maneuverability. The rest were older craft that had survived the war up until this point—some forty airships. According to the reports, that meant they were outnumbered two-to-one, and that wasn’t counting the dreadnoughts. It also wasn’t counting the Sorcerer Elite and Archmage Company who, even after taking substantial casualties from the breakthrough, were estimated to outnumber the Prophet’s Guard by three to one. Word had it the Akanan advance would be on them in another six hours, and even that time was only possible because of the heroic delaying action of both the Prophet’s Guard and the sacrifice of defenders along the route.
Zhuan Li and her escort landed a moment later, levitating down amid a gaggle of colonels and arcanists. Iliya could hear fragments of the conversation carried on the wind.
“…just spotted the fleet moving in advance of their ground forces,” she heard an officer saying in Gulwenen.
She looked at Jei.
“How long?” came Zhuan’s stern tone.
“Without a delaying action? Two hours at most.”
Zhuan’s eyes glanced back towards Mayat Shadr, then settled on them. She strode over, robe flapping in the desert wind. “Iliya, are your craft ready?”
A chill ran through Iliya as she looked into the dark glow of Zhuan’s eyes. Every time they met, there was a surreality to how familiar the Zhighuan Prophet was with her. It was one thing for Mirian to know her; she’d known Mirian as a student. She hadn’t known Zhuan before the crisis, though, but Zhuan knew her. Knew everything about her—her history, her family, the limits of her artifice knowledge, her career in the Baracueli Army, even her interpersonal conflict with her fellow professors at Torrviol Academy. It unnerved her to her core.
But she could manage her emotions, even if it took her a moment to respond. “Yes, Zhuan,” she said. She didn’t use her religious titles. She wondered if the time traveler had ever asked her about it, and she’d ever explained that she didn’t believe the Elder Gods were any such thing, just beings so much more advanced than them that people interpreted them as such. The Zhuan Li that Song had known might have even agreed with her—but what did a century of being worshiped do to one’s view of the world? Did she now believe she was a messenger of the Ominian? Or was it just a tool she was wielding out of convenience? Iliya, for all that she had had helped direct the artifice production here, had spent months looking over the schematics of the device and still couldn’t fully comprehend its function. There was a deep suspicion buried in her.
Yet, she had gone along with it. Song trusted her old friend. Song trusted Mirian. And she trusted Song.
Zhuan levitated up to get a better look at the staging area. “We need pilots, and we need them now. First Praetorian Trinea, have those able take another round of mana elixirs. Conduct a raid on the Akanan advanced force. Iliya, most of our pilots are recovering. Please take command of one of the craft. I will rush the preparation of the defenses here. Our reinforcements are almost here, but they need that delay. ” Then, by a trick of the wind, Iliya heard her low whisper as the time traveler glanced up at the empty sky. She could barely make out the words, but it sounded like she said, “Hurry back, my love.”
But that couldn’t be right.
As word spread of the new operation, the staging grounds became even more of a bedlam. People were running in every direction, spellcarts rapidly delivering new fuel to the skiffs, new crews and replacement pilots trying to figure out where they were assigned, all as geomancers were working on expanding the outer fortifications and companies were continuing to organize the defense.
Soon enough Iliya had her crew boarding the skiff. They made quick introductions. Iliya had already worked with the chief artificer she’d been assigned, and knew she was competent. She recognized the communications officer from somewhere. The rest were strangers.
First Praetorian Trinea joined her deck, making her vessel the command craft. As the artificers went through their glyph checks, Trinea talked to the captains with remote speech spells by the railing. The rest of them waited. All the while, Song was looking west. They could make out the dreadnoughts moving ever closer.
“She told me that during the loops, I didn’t hesitate to sacrifice myself,” Song told Iliya. “Then she told me not to do it this time. I thought I might not have to worry about that. That we might be safe. There wasn’t supposed to be a war.”
“Stay behind. You’ve done more than enough,” Iliya said.
Song shook her head. “I can’t.” This time, her gaze settled on the south where the distant mountains of the Jiandzhi lay, the hazy green on them looking out of place amidst the stretches of pale desert.
She was thinking about her sister, Bao, Iliya knew. Even Iliya hadn’t known she had a sister until the crisis started and she’d told her what had happened when they were children. The guilt still ate at her. At first, Iliya had told Song to let the emotion go. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Iliya’s short but notable career in the Baracueli military had been characterized by a patriotism for her country, though not as fervent as that of Eskier’s. The more Baracueli refugees she’d seen fleeing the war, the more that anger had intensified. She’d poured herself into the project.
Then she’d seen the Persamans also fighting for their families, for their country. The refugees from Urubandar had joined those from Cairnmouth. She’d been there when one of her artifice assistants had broken down from worry about his relatives in Alatishad. She’d been there when another woman who had made it there from Urubandar had talked about her husband being shot in the streets. She’d seen the blank stares of children who had escaped the fighting—but not soon enough. Maybe if more people felt guilt like Song, they wouldn’t be capable of such horrors.
That was why they needed to fight. And that’s why when Song stayed aboard the skiff, she didn’t argue with her.
Only a half-hour after Zhuan’s landing, Praetorian Trinea gave the order and Iliya Torres found herself at the controls of a rising airship. She took in the view—the blooming vegetation all around the city, and the city, once in ruins, that was still emptying out as crowds of workers streamed east. A few miles out, last-minute trenches were being dug, broad enough that the incoming spellcarts couldn’t just drive over them with a short force bridge. There were also workers quickly digging pits and building facsimile artillery out of excess construction materials from the city. If even a single artillery shot was wasted on those decoys, it would be worth it. It was a mad frenzy below, especially now, knowing the Akanans were trying to hasten their arrival.
It was Song who drew her attention to the south. “Dust cloud,” she said.
Trinea put up a lens spell. “That’s our reinforcements.”
“You don’t sound happy about it,” Iliya noted.
“I’m not. But both Prophets have vouched for them.”
That seemed to be the end of the discussion. Iliya hated smalltalk, but as they flew, she felt the urge to say something just to steady her nerves. Flying in a straight line didn’t exactly require her attention, so it left her mind to wander and think of all the ways something could go wrong. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Song put a steady hand on her shoulder, and Iliya remembered to breathe.
“What bothered me most about her head injury wasn’t that it happened. It was how senseless it was,” Song said.
That helped. If they were going to die, they were going to die for something worth dying for. She looked back at the leyline regulator. It was a marvel. We helped build that, she thought to herself. Jei had overseen the conduits. She’d overseen the main sequences. If it worked, it would save Enteria.
As they grew closer, they began to make out the skiffs, and Trinea broadcast to the fleet.
“You know standard doctrine, but these are not standard combat circumstances. With no ground artillery to worry about, we’re in new territory. Zhuan’s direction is that all craft are to keep beneath the dreadnoughts. Try to keep moving, and stay about two to five hundred meters away from the dreadnoughts, circling them during attack runs. Yes, below the dreadnoughts is where most of the guns are, but their own orichalcum plating obscures all divination, not just ours, and crew won’t be able to directly see or attack craft from the decks. Keeping in that range also will either discourage enemy craft from firing or cause them to hit their own dreadnoughts.
“Keep tight in your formations. Chief artificers, keep close monitoring on glyphs and conduits on those engines. If two shields fail, withdraw until they’re repaired, but keep the pressure on. Smoke technicians, make sure you keep those veils up. A clear battlefield gives the advantage to the enemy. Communications officers, keep in contact with your wing. Response times need to be snappy. As soon as reserves are low—both foss and mana—send your signals. We want to withdraw, not rout. They’ll need us for the next part of the battle, too.”
Iliya’s knuckles whitened as she clutched the steering device. She hoped the enhanced maneuverability was going to be enough to keep them alive.
The Akanan dreadnoughts were in a triangle formation. Her eyes kept locking on the lead ship, the Might of Liberty. Liuan Var’s command ship. Perhaps Marshal Cearsia was looking out at them from the bridge right now. If they could take out that ship, they might be able to end the war.
It was a tempting thought. It made her palms sweaty. Or maybe that was just the nerves.
Ahead, the Akanan skiffs were moving into their own formations.
Iliya brought her skiff up, as was the plan. Around her, the Ominian’s army airships rose with her.
“Veil shots!” Trinea ordered.
The forward cannons fired long arching shots that traveled towards the Akanan formation. Each canister exploded into smoke—one of Sefora Seneca’s contributions to the defense—with some strange formulation of chemicals producing a thick haze that spread across the sky as it burned.
Trinea didn’t need to order the next part of the maneuver. As soon as the Akanan sight lines were obstructed, they dove down. Each lead skiff’s utility spell engine put up ground camouflage spells above them, projecting an image of the ground beneath them in a square. It wouldn’t fool anyone for long, and it wouldn’t fool divination, but it would give them just a bit longer to close with the Akanans before they attacked from an unexpected direction.
Iliya clenched her jaw, eyes peering up as they approached the smoke clouds. Above, she saw the forms of Akanan skiffs in the smoke.
“All formations, fire at will!”
The Battle of Mayat Shadr had begun.