Notes : Chapter 439 has been written and added to the queue !
Ahahahahah. Okay. So for those who aren't on discord, after months (years really) of trying to get an appointment with an allergist, I got one ! Someone cancelled for, well, today, and I was able to snag up the time slot.
They told me I had to cancel it because I had taken anti-allergy meds sunday to stop from suffocating.
Needless to say, I am absolutely INCANDESCENT. But I had no choice. So now maybe, MAYBE I'll get another appointment in august. They're supposed to call me if I'm up high enough on the waiting list and someone else cancels. Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath.
At least I managed to get microsoft office to work on my new PC. After two hours of it shitting itself over licenses and constantly bugging out.
On a lighter note, Sunday we will have the new Special.
The only teaser I believe needed for it is the first part of its chapter header :
June 19, 2161
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Chapter 437
Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire
Simulation Six
"You know that name means." Said Alexandra.
It wasn't a question.
"I got some inkling. It was easier to dismiss as a coincidence before...." He waved his hand, encompassing the simulation. The assassin opened his eyes, and met hers. "Hoeth is the name of the God of Light in the religion here."
"It is." The dungeon core's voice was flat.
"...You're a naval officer. You know what that 'Dawn of the Flames' the Church can't shut up about was, don't you?"
Alexandra's lips quirked up slightly.
Yes, she did. She'd realized what it was the second Emilia had told her about it.
"It's orbital bombardment. I'm...familiar with the concept."
"So you are." He simply stared at her for a few seconds, before doing another one of his strange eye-contact nods. "Very well. I have told you the essentials. If you would do me the honor of returning it?"
She smiled, and leaned down.
He didn't have the same reaction as the others when she spoke her name.
They had feared her.
He didn't.
His vitals went insane. Had he been outside of the simulation he might have flatlined.
Instead his implants went into emergency shutdown and he crashed out of the simulation.
"I'll see you when you wake up." Said the dungeon core, before hopping out.
She needed to talk to Ghost. And Emilia.
Now.
*****
"That...complicates things." Said Ghost as Alexandra paced back and forth.
She'd been tempted. Sorely tempted to leave Emilia out of this discussion and instead hammer it out with her other self before sharing it with anyone.
But Emilia knew all of her secrets now. She'd been Emilia and Emilia had been her. Their relationships was beyond this kind of petty paranoia now.
Besides. In pure pragmatic terms, Emilia was the only expert on the Gods and Alcheryos' history and culture in general that she had.
"To say the least." Said Alexandra. "This takes everything that has happened from an unlikely cascade of events to...what? Some grand master plan?"
"Not necessarily." Ghost leaned back against the command center's holographic projector. "If anything...you remember the guys that saved you? When you were being sacrificed."
Alexandra nodded. Golden warriors, wreathed in light.
"I do. You're thinking that they were...agents of the God of Light?"
"The God of Fire's Custodians are always described as golden warriors, wreathed in flames. We thought it was a figure of style, or you hadn't seen the fire, and who had rescued you were Custodians of the Flame. After all, they cleaned up the area and the Order with extreme prejudice, and then sent Emilia. But what if it wasn't? What if it was agents of that Hoeth?"
"Why intervene now? If he sent us..." Alexandra closed her mouth as she processed it. "Oh. You're saying he had no control of what was about to happen, but keeping an eye out. When I sent the distress signal..."
"He went in to protect his investment.
"I'd ask 'why us', but what we've accomplished would answer that readily." Alexandra gazed at Emilia, who was staying silent. "Honey?"
"The Gods...It was never mentioned that they had done anything with Terra." Said Emilia. "Nor that they even had the interest." She shook her head. "I know...know that a lot of what I've been taught was a lie, but I'm starting to wonder what was real."
Alexandra put a hand on her girlfriend's shoulder, and smiled reassuringly.
"We'll figure it out. Though...with this, I have an important question, and I'm going to need you and Glitch to start digging in the archives for the answer."
"I could use something to help with. I've been feeling..."
"A bit more secondary now that I have a dozen AIs handling everything?"
The advisor chuckled.
"Basically. Though I do keep you on track."
"A worthy task." Said Ghost, before smiling as they both glared at her.
"Anyway." Said Alexandra. "My question is simple. Did extradimensionals start appearing before, or after the Gods showed up?"
There was a long silence.
"Well that's fucking terrifying." Finally said Ghost, her face pale.
"No, it's logical. If one of the Gods made it to Earth, and sent us here, it means they know how this whole shitshow works. Which implies that either they researched the ever living hell out of it, enough for the assassination to have a reasonable chance of working, or they caused it in the first place. So let's get to digging. Because I think we finally have enough data to start tugging at the strands of this mess of a tapestry in earnest."
*****
Alexandra had other things on her mind right now. But unfortunately, there were some things she simply couldn't delegate. Like this particular meeting, in a field just outside the deserted siege fortifications encircling a ruined city.
So she stepped forward, and shook the hand of the heavily armored man, the hologram on her ambassador golem glitching as its metallic hands met an equally metallic gauntlet. His armor still had traces of its gilding, but it was now battered and worn, though it looked positively pristine compared to his wife's. Both, however, had their outer coatings stripped away, revealing the glint of adamantium underneath.
Given the fact that the man himself was no warrior, it had probably been loaned to someone else during the war.
"Your majesty. It's a pleasure to meet you at last." Said the dungeon core, and Elker Umbrar, third of his name, smiled. The King of the Asarian Kingdom had looked like he'd aged five years during the civil war, and rejuvenated at least five since the Empire was founded and its resources began to flow into rebuilding the Kingdom.
"Well, 'meet' is relative, I suppose. Nevertheless, it is good to see you as something else than an image in the mirror." He extended his hand towards the tall valkyrie by his side. "You need no introduction to my wife, of course."
Alexandra dipped her head.
"Of course not. Greetings your Majesty."
"Greetings, minister. Or should I call you lady?"
"General would be preferable. Lady general at most." She'd wanted to have herself just get a military rank, but unfortunately they needed to emphasize the dungeon cores' position as nobility of the Empire. Plus 'high general' sounded weird and marshalls were field commanders in what she had envisioned.
"Of course, lady general." The Queen's eyes twinkled, and Alexandra found a smile tugging at the edge of her lips, despite the circumstances.
They both hated protocol. They both knew the other did too. Which made this deliberate teasing.
"Why thank you, your majesty, grandmistress of the knigh order of the Trailing Comets, true protector of-"
The Queen raised her hands in surrender, and Alexandra stopped.
"Your point has been made!" They exchanged genuine smiles. The King was simply watching the exchange curiously. "It's good to see you, truly. And your army."
"Given what has happened these last few months, I would have been surprised by the opposite."
The King shook his head.
"It's not just that." He said, adjusting his armor briefly. Though he was an adept politician and left the military strategy to his wife, he had been an adventurer once, and Alexandra had to remind herself that just because he looked somewhat out of place in the armor didn't mean he couldn't use it if push came to shove. "The Sapphire Kingdom is a potent threat, and the news that the UDC has crossed the border has unsettled many hearts. Your army arriving, materializes the promise of the Empire's protection from our enemies in the North."
"I hope the amount of troops does not disappoint. Reinforcements are on the way, but the First Army has taken quite the beating, and dispersed a lot of forces to secure the East."
The King let out a small laugh. Almost a giggle.
"You could have come with two golems armed with sticks and stones, it would still have been enough. Your army obliterated Sunrise's, who almost took the city. Besides." He gestured at the troops behind her, who were forming up into a parade formation from their marching columns. The only units that had fully finished forming up were the armored columns and the recon battalion, both of which had formed the vanguard. They weren't expecting trouble per se, but given the fact that the entire area had been enemy territory a few months ago and the UDC wasn't above dirty tricks, it would have been stupid not to take some precautions. "You only need your Mackies."
"True." You would think that the reputation of her mechs would have diminished after the guild had wrecked so many, but it had actually grown. First, because they'd actually taken a fair amount of beating from Old World weapons before going down, though that was more from the guild targeting the wrong systems at first. Second, she had gotten them all back online and shipped out in a week. "Luckily, I've brought a bit more than that."
The 'bit more' being the ten thousand golems, sixty thousand human soldiers, the tanks and entire artillery park of her old army. Plus ten thousand or so cultists. It was hard to keep an accurate count, as more were always trying to sign up, and they were constantly being used and diverted to other places.
There was also a fair few civilians accompanying the army. They were kind of a mish-mash of what one could call camp followers, refugees, and a gigantic construction company.
The camp follower part provided services to the human troops. Armies on Alcheryos were generally better managed than on Terra, and her logistics were top notch, even if a bit strained with supporting Myriu and the growth of the capital, so they weren't really there to plug the holes, but mostly they did things that soldiers wanted to have someone else do. Cooking, laundry, those sorts of things.
Of course there were other occupations, some of them illegal, others not, but that was the problem of the officers down the chain, who were used to those sorts of things and kept a lid on it with practiced ease.
The refugees were mostly former members of the slave army, and refused to leave the protection of her forces. Part of why she'd left a golem detachment at Myriu was to make sure not too many left, but there were some who weren't about to trust anything besides the shadows of the Mackies and the thunder of her guns. Given what they'd lived through, she could respect that. Most of those were currently either becoming camp followers or retraining into the last part, her construction unit.
When she'd gone North at first, she'd had the trade roads expanded alongside her path, turning the somewhat small one from Darthar to Asaria into a massive highway. Which she'd then proceeded to pound the ever living hell out of during the retreat. The construction crew had been fixing that, by deploying a fair few highly skilled specialists drawn from the slave army and Sarth, backed up by a large amount of manpower and her own golems with her AIs and engineering database.
They'd had to make haste, so the road wasn't as expanded as she would have liked, but that could be done later. What was important was that she'd cleared the road, made it safe by disarming her own booby traps, which had been done mostly by golems and a few of Rim's sappers from the twentieth heavy infantry, enabling supplies to flow on land much more easily, which was going to be crucial for supplying her ground forces, moving reinforcements, and rebuilding Asaria.
Speaking of...
She nodded towards the city in the distance.
"How goes the reconstruction?" Asked Alexandra.
"Slowly and fast simultaneously." Said the Queen. "I have put all hands on deck, I believe is the expression, to help get roofs over people's heads, but that means other things are lagging behind. Thankfully, Sunrise's siegeworks are free, as we told you, and relatively intact. Your army should be able to settle there for the duration of your stay."
"That's excellent, but there will need to be a more permanent base of operations. If only just to simplify logistics. On that front?"
The King grimaced.
"The airship docking towers are all gone, save for the royal palace's and the central district's. The warehouses and everything related to them in the city have also either been pillaged, burned to the ground, both, or repurposed as housing. Thankfully, a warehouse is not hard to make. Securing them to prevent pilfering will be harder however."
Alexandra nodded.
"My equipment is precisely inventoried." Not to mention all of her logistics facilities were under 24/7 guard by golems and sported various defenses. "But there's plenty of aid coming from the Empire, and it would be a shame if it went astray."
She could sympathize with desperate people trying to scrounge enough to feed their families, but that didn't mean she had to let them scrap pipes that would go in getting fresh water to thousands of their fellows. That wasn't even mentioning nobles and their grift. It was such an accepted part of life here, Allya had flat out explained to her one of the reasons to participate in the assembly of nobles was to get into a position to embezzle royal funds. They even budgeted with it in mind when sending funds for projects!
"We will figure it out." Said the Queen. "You won't be attending the reception tonight, correct?"
Alexandra smiled. She had been planning to before...well, everything happened.
Right now she was running on fumes, and she knew it. She wasn't the most patient woman at the best of times for the protocol bullshit and all the haute société cotillon crap. Today? She'd probably throw a noble through a wall at some point.
The worst part was she'd probably be applauded for it too.
"No, but I will send some of my people." Meaning her AIs. She smoothed her face into seriousness. "With what just happened in Rebirth..."
The implication was that the attack on the guild compound was a priority and on her mind. Which was true, though not in the way they would think.
"Of course." Said the queen. There was a twinge of envy in her voice as well. Clearly she wished she had an excuse to avoid attending. Or perhaps she simply wanted to handle military matters rather than rebuilding the Kingdom. She was, after all, de facto sidelined in the campaigns that were going to take place inside of her own Kingdom. Not that she had much of a choice, as the Crown's military forces were effectively shattered. "Enjoy your evening then."
Alexandra smiled, as if she didn't expect it to be hell.
"Thank you. I hope the festivities go well."
And if they didn't, well, her AIs could handle that. Subtlety wasn't exactly a social butterfly, but Glitch had inherited her talent for fobbing off people, and she'd yet to meet someone who didn't flinch when she pulled off her six armed thing.
Their leader and dungeon core had more pressing concerns to attend to.