Chapter 080: Twilight War [part 01]

Leria and Firewing obviously stormed in right maybe two seconds later, while the earth still shook. They were about to leap at our weird guests, but I managed to stop them with a gesture. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen if they fought, but probably nothing nice.

“What was that?” I asked the warrior, who seemed pretty knowledgeable about… everything, I guess.

“There is a powerful defensive magic surrounding the Hold. Presence of Yhrezerach further reinforces them.” The warrior smiled almost cheerfully. “They shielded you from the nearby explosion.”

“Explosion?!” Firewing asked first.

“Well, you remember the magical construct you saw in the Black Woods? That one belonging to the Old Empire?” Warrior calmly began his explanation. “Unfortunately, the archdaemon that you left to rampage throughout the woods has managed to accidentally damage it during a fight with the local adventurer’s guild suppression squad. This led to…”

“...explosion.” His companion said, interrupting him.

“Well, technically it was a sudden discharge of magic power that could no longer be contained by the failing mana container. But yeah, essentially an explosion.” He gave me an almost apologetic smile.” Equivalent to 2,5 megatonnes of TNT. The nature of the anomaly contained a lot of explosion, but the remnants of it…”

Oh. My. God. Magical fallout was even worse than radiation. And if the shockwave hit the mountain we were in with this degree of strength… well, the Ambryxis walls (strengthened by the Ambryxis-the deity himself) should have withstood it, but the areas around them…

“It has also an another effect.” The warrior continued. “The Old Empire planned to use this power to alter the weather and bring all manners of mean storms and other natural disasters upon the New Gods forces. This explosion still had remnants of that spells on it. It has successfully burned out the Avalanche’s artifact that was causing local winters to become so… unreasonable. I expect the weather to temporarily go into a rather summer-like state, and only within several months it will stabilize.”

Great. So it looks like after several devastating floods caused by rapid melting of snow the roads will be passable again. That explains his claim that the Twilight War just started.

***

It was a weird war. We were essentially imprisoned in the Hold, tirelessly training in the preparation of the final confrontation. In the so-called meantime, Crow regularly updated us with the new information about the course of war.

Imperium managed to surprise the Tyranny and Northern Aevaria with speed of its mobilization - but it was, in turn, surprised by the sudden start of the war. It immediately issued the order of full mobilization to all of its vassal states on Aeveria. It also immediately moved in with their fleet. Northern Aevaria didn’t expect a thing and their fleet was pretty much annihilated. Then they proceed to raid devastating raids against the North Aevarian coasts. Remnants of the Kingdom’ fleet were scattered and stopped being a threat.

Imperium also fully mobilized their Fifth Military District. Even before the devastating floods stopped, the contact with Vanvyra’ revolutionaries was established, and the local lesser nations and city-states were subjugated without any sort of organized resistance. At least several were actually happy that the Imperium marched in and simply changed the banners, issued several new laws (and changed some old ones) and signed a treaty making them a part of the Imperium of Kynevia. While chuckling maniacally about the new markets that just opened for their commerce.

Two weeks later most of the roads were passable. That’s when the Imperium went all-out. Two imperial divisions supported by three assault brigades and three warmachine legions left the Fifth District and launched an open offensive towards Ambryxis through the Bronze Gate. Several attempts to hinder their advancement ended with massacres of epic proportions.

Three days later, both Inrithian Church and Khardic Church issued proclamations of their respective holy wars (Crusade and War of Symphony) against the Northern Aevaria. The inrithian Kingdom of Vala Kasythia (weirdly, with no relation to Empire of Kasythia) and the khardic Holy Kingdom of Vassyria began organizing a suitable response to the call.

Seven days later, the magic barrier surrounding the Anaetalia province of the Northern Aevaria dropped down. According to the Kingdom’s leadership expectations, armies of the undead left the province right after that. Exactly opposite to the Kingdom’s leadership expectation, they were hostile to the Northern Aevarian’s assets and were followed by forces of the Hlla’s revolutionaries. She was no longer pretending to still be a blood elf. Instead she rode in the front of her armies, taking full advantage of the inhuman strength and speed that she received after Shadow’ transformed her into an vampire lord.

Of Asurya’ bloodline. Probably the Mashka’s ‘Family’, judging from he skills.. She simply leapt at enemies and began slaughtering them one by one, the sheer amount of blood in the air being enough to accelerate her regeneration, act like a potent drug and make her stamina essentially endless. She even sucked enough blood to ignore the Shimmer’s curse on the vampires, so she was doing it in the daylight as well.

According to the first reports, she managed to exterminate the Unmakers’ leadership and then simply seized the control of the armies of undead. Limited one (most of them were still roaming Anaetalia), but enough to expand her numbers many times over. She used the cover of the magic barrier to reforge her revolutionaries into a well-organized (and almost fanatically loyal) army extremely quickly. She started before we showed up. And now was happy using that to her advantage.

Northern Aevaria immediately mobilized its army. The heir to the throne - a Chosen One of the Tyrant - went out to meet the new threat. The battle raged for three days and ended only when the prince found out that the opposing army simply wasn’t there - he fought an armies of undead supported by forced conscripts of the seized provinces of the Northern Aevaria that his opponent threw at him more than willing to waste all of them if needed. Actual army of Hlla’s simply circumnavigated the prince’ army and began laying waste to its rear.

Around that time, the forces of the Imperial Army surprised everyone in the Dragonspine Mountains by ignoring Ambryxis and entering the wastes beside it. I’ve met their commanding general (and his Von Osten sidekick) and led them to the Aether Gate, which allowed them to reach the Northern Aevaria and defend the rear of the Hlla’s army by securing the Kingdom-Tyranny border.

The wasteland surrounding the Hold was going to take decades to heal. And that’s if the Imperium seizes the region and invests money in it. Otherwise the whole land will probably collapse into a magical anomaly. Nothing grew there as it should.

Second imperial army departed from the Fifth District, this time including a brigade from the 1st. Imperial Division (they actually were here, I could scarcely believe that), two additional infantry divisions, two assault brigades, two warmachine legions. Their mission was to secure the whole region.

Soon the prince had to terminate his search for Hlla. The Saltrock Mountains finally moved.

Vaera had it easy. Imperium planned the final elimination of the dragonbrides’ threat for a while. The wars and the ongoing mobilization of other tribes in the mountain made the dragonbrides to assemble at special meeting. When that happened, Imperium attacked. I have no idea where they found so many High Dragons that they could hire to do the deed, but they succeeded in it. Enough of the non-dragonbrides saw their priestesses being violently murdered by dragons (the country bumpkins couldn’t tell a wyvern from a dragon, much less a high dragon from a dragon) to cause a major theological problems.

Then Vaera marched onto the mountain elf’ domains as a head of an army of outcasts, announcing himself as a ‘the only rightful dragonbride’ that was ‘cast away’ after ‘she’ discovered that the dragonbrides are actually corrupted and didn’t care about the ‘will of the dragon’. Unbelievably, majority of the mountain elves bought it. The remnants attempted an assasination (failed one) that led to an open civil war.

With mountain elves out of the way, all other tribes of the Saltrock Mountains amassed a massive warhost. Goblins, orcs, sharptalons, humans, kobolds and so on, all marching under a single banner.

The orgy of violence that erupted throughout the eastern provinces of the Kingdom was epic. The prince immediately hurried east, with Hlla’s forces in pursuit. He managed to decimate the tribes during three consecutive battles, only to turn back and almost catch Hlla’s unaware. She was forced to retreat… and adopted a scorched earth tactic during that.

The number of the Kingdom’s officials that began switching sides grew with every failed attempt of the prince to take Hlla’s down. It stopped for a second when he was massacring the tribes, but then the situation started deteriorating again.

Then Tyranny began to move.

***

Just as seemingly countless ships of the Tyranny and Imperium began fighting over the seas surrounding Aevaria, the Ashkar finished first step of its mobilization on the continent. Two main armies departed - one towards Northern Aevaria, and one towards the Ambryxis. Both went beyond one hundred thousand soldiers.

Imperium opened another front on the Ashkar continent, whipping the Freedom of Diret - the sole remaining nation there that refused to fail under Tyranny’s boot no matter what - into action. It also sent around 150 000 soldiers (TEN FUCKING DIVISIONS plus assault brigades and warmachine legions) to support the fifty thousand of absolutely zealous badass motherfuckers that the Freedom fielded. It was a diversionary tactic on a scale achievable only by the superpowers. The Tyranny’s situation deteriorated further when the Eagle Federation opened their own war, seizing the handful of Isles that Ashkar took from it during their last war, and landing their own army on the Ashkar’s homeland territory.

It was, however, of little consequence to the Aevarian’s theater. Northern Imperial Army met the 10th Army Group of the Tyranny of Ahkar head-on in a series of heated clashes all over Anaetalia. Finally, the imperials pulled out from the province, using the remaining undead hordes as temporary deterrent. Tyranny pushed forward - relentless, unforgiving and supremely fucking stupid, as their forces were dropping like flies due to the collapsing logistics.

By that time, both the forces of the Seventh North-Aevarian Crusade and the Nineteenth War of Symphony over the Dragonspine Mountains (the length of the official names hurt) also began reaching the frontlines. The Vala Kasythian knights - supported by seven hundreds of imperial knights - initiated a massive cavalry raid throughout the already pillaged eastern provinces of the Kingdom. They carried a lot of surplus weaponry, quickly doubling their numbers by arming freed slaves and organizing them into new units to get revenge for their past treatment.

The prince attempted to stop them, but he didn’t expect that the crusade would ally itself with the previously defeated barbarians .The effect was the so-called Battle over the Red River - name came from the fact that according to several accounts, there was so much blood of the Kingdom’s defenders in it that the water changed colour. The battle raged for an entire day, until finally the charge of four thousand knights broke the lines of the slave-soldiers of the Tyranny.

The prince of the Northern Aevaria died, impaled upon the lance of a young knight from Vala Kasythia under the name of Kassir Vaenar. Which, after the battle, was announced as the newest Chosen One of Inri. With the army of the Northern Aevaria scattered, one of the fronts seemed to be closed for good.

That’s when the war entered whole new level.

***

Most people believed that the tale about Ymrir the Black, the founder of the Northern Aevaria, returning to aid his kingdom in its darkest hour to be merely a myth. After all, the kingdom was in a lot of shitstorms in the past, and he never showed up. Unfortunately, this time the massacre over the Red River seemed to be a bit too much. Or Tyrant was just super pissed off after losing the prince. Needless to say, Ymrir showed up.

We felt that all the way down the map in the Hold. The effect on those in Northern Aevaria had to be… substantial. Ymrir began the game by literally forcing everyone in the capital to kneel before him and pretty much give themselves (in body and soul) to him. Then he immediately fielded another army (although much smaller than the first one).

Hlla narrowly managed to escape after he annihilated half of her army. Kassir Vaenar and his crusaders decided to move back a bit and rethink options.

Unfortunately, one manifestation of a demigod opened new level of warfare. Especially as Ymrir was accompanied by an honour guard of elite Tyrant’s daemons and by a small army of lesser creatures serving the god of tyranny. The first ones to take advantage of that were the tribes of Saltrock Mountains.

Khrrzzshyraz was - according to all witnesses - a towering man of almost unbelievable proportions that put all but most tenacious bodybuilders of Earth to shame, wearing a ragtag tribal clothing… created from skin of demigods and archdaemons he bested. He emerged from the the holy grove of the Rage-worshipping tribes of the Saltrock Mountains. His promises of carnage and pillage that would be remembered forever met with overwhelming response. After all, when the firstborn son of your god offers to make your dreams come true, who would say no?

Soon he descended from the mountains. He was followed by his personal harem, composed of 99 notable female warriors from all historical periods and species that he personally defeated and ‘conquered’ after they became a part of Rage’s afterlife, the Fields of Blood. Which, supposedly, was one of the greatest possible honour as he (just as his father) took only the best of the best. Just as his first sister took the best of the best of the males. Fields of Blood were weird.

And after his harem, entire retinues of his children and grandchildren marched (did he come to fight a war or was it Fields of Blood’ version of family trip?!), together with choice selection of the bloodfields’ Dead. And pretty much every able-bodied inhabitant of the Saltrock Mountains. Entire army moved by the promises of pillage and murder, and by the Khrrzzshyraz’ vow that he would add Ymrir’s skin to his collection of trophies.

Crusader army decided to get the fuck out of their way with every single liberated slave they could. They moved south, allowing Ymrir and Khrrzzshyraz to battle it out. Hlla did the same. Can’t say I blame them.

In the meantime, the 10th Army Group managed to catch the retreating North Imperial Army, its casualties mostly replenished. The NIA fought like crazy. However, the armored fist of their warmachine legions crumbled after hitting the flesh of the enemy one times too much. Soon after that assault brigades that secured the flanks were scattered and decimated. Finally, the central formation began being pushed back and slowly but mercilessly their line was pummelled into nothingness.

Then another demigod joined the war. Envyll the Dragon. Second son of the first emperor of Kynevia. He - as most historical warlords of the Imperium that remained morally ‘neutral’ or even upright - ended up as one of the Dukes of the Border Duchies. The small sliver of the Heavens that serves as their border defenses against the Black Pantheon incursions. There, they could forever battle between each other (returning to live soon after), and do not bother the more ‘peaceful’ Dead with their antics.

He emerged from bloodsoaked hill behind the Ashkarian lines as a tall warrior clad in exquisite chainmail riding on the horse black as midnight. Both the armor and the horse had their own separate myths - that’s how overpowered Envyll was. And he wasn’t alone. Thousands of soldiers emerged from the hill behind him, forming ranks in a fashion that was almost beyond the word ‘discipline’. Spearmen, swordsmen, bowmen, knights, sorcerers...

Armies of the Border Duchies were almost exclusively formed of the Dead. All of them volunteers. After all, what warrior wouldn’t want to spend a few years out of their eternity serving under all those legendary generals that he heard tales about? Somebody had to defend the Heavens from the daemonic incursions, after all. And they did it so good that to this day not a single servant of the Black Pantheon ever reached the Heavens proper.

It was the worst possible enemy for the forces of Tyranny. That enemy felt no fatigue. Their morale was maxed - and nothing could change that. Their equipment was crafted by finest craftsmen of the High Forge, the Hammer’s afterlife. Their general was a strategic and tactical genius that preserved the Imperium during the chaotic transitional period following Falon the Conqueror mysterious demise.

To call the rest of that battle a massacre would be an understatement of the century. Merely few thousands ashkarians managed to flee, the massacre overwhelming even their mental conditioning to loyalty and lack of self-preservation instinct. The estimation of the ashkarian casualties in that battle reached 100 000, making it one of the bloodiest battles of this age.

We wanted to immediately march towards Ambryxis. After all, Yhrezerach showing up right now would be… significantly less shocking. Especially once Hlla’ and the crusaders got their own equally powerful creatures. Hlla got visited by her own ancestor, the primeval vampire Asurya. And Inri… sent his Chosen One one of the Archshepherds (essentially ‘our’ world archangels) as help. The battle raged over the Northern Aevaria, on the scale almost unimaginable even to the locals.

Yhrezerach, however, simply shook his head. He was waiting for something. I could now understood what felt weird during our old war council. He knew all our plans were for nothing. He knew what was coming. Or at least elements of that.

Southern Imperial Army began laying siege to Ambryxis. The walls held until the Tyranny’s reinforcements (the 12th Army Group) reached the area. Another bloody battles. People from the western provinces of former Dukedom of Ambryxis (that the Tyranny now seized) began fleeing towards the Imperium-controlled zone.

At this point, Envyll departed from the Northern Imperial Army and moved west, overwhelming and destroying any potential settlements that could be as staging ground for another Tyranny offensive towards the Northern Aevaria. He didn’t forget about taking a handpicked cadre of Imperial Religion’ best engineers from the Heavens, so no fortification stood for long against his host. Fortresses were garrisoned by daemons and the Dead of the White Pantheon. Cities were razed to the ground, citizens carefully separated into those still salvageable… and those that were mercy-killed (lack of soul was surprisingly common among the Tyranny’s population). Villages, mines and so on, the basis of economy that was also required to supply marching armies with resources, were essentially wiped out.

Northern Imperial Army decide that it has absolutely no reason to remain in Anaetalia and simply returned through the Aether Gate. Can’t blame them, honestly. With raging demigods tearing the Northern Aevaria apart and Envyll launching solo campaign against the biggest regional threat to the continuous existence of the Kynevian Imperium, the best thing they could was to get out from view.

This also meant that the Imperial forces operating in Ambryxis region achieved a minor numerical superiority against the 12th Army Group. Within three weeks the last remaining combat-ready army of the Tyranny in the Dragonspine Mountains area ceased to exist.

The war between the Tyranny and the Imperium was far from over. Both sides had endless reserves. The sheer size of the territory of the Tyranny meant that it would take the Imperium YEARS to break its spine. Just as 12th and 10th Army Groups were wiped out (together with 3rd and 5th that were defeated by joint Imperial-Diretian armies, and 2nd that had a painful meeting with the Eagle Federation), two new Army Groups were already in training per one that was lost.

The Tyranny recoiled from initial, overwhelming assault. It was going to play it defensively. Its leadership was already aware that it lost the war - it was unlikely that it would succeed in restoring its pre-war position. However it was going to repeatedly throw men at the Imperium for another months of years, making sure that it wouldn’t go any further - and maybe even recover some of the ground.

That’s if they succeed in stopping Envyll’s rampage. Then again, I believe that after running out of alternative they’ll probably magically nuke him with his army. That is, if they possess an archhex powerful enough to stop a demigod in his peak condition. Time will tell.

However, with Tyranny making few steps back and Northern Aevaria essentially ceasing to exist as state (probably forever), the initial part of the Twilight War was won by the good guys. Pretty much entirety of the southern Dragonspine Mountains was seized by the Imperium. And it suppressed the local evil rather… intensively. With the communication being shit and the Crow obviously being biased towards the Imperium I had no idea of the exact scope of that, but there was a massive purge on-going. This time Imperium planned to seize entirety of the Dragonspine Mountains. And right at the start of that it wanted to wipe out the absolute worst people around that could possess a threat of the restoration of the old order in case the Tyranny succeeded somehow in restoring old borders.

That slave market we once visited with Simea? Deserted overnight. Owners of such establishment were disappearing with extreme speed. Everywhere. Ironically, entire cities surrendered without a shot to even a single imperial soldier, willingly letting the Imperium purge them like that. Why? Because the news were coming that the Vasyrrian army is coming, and this made the Imperium’s occupations the better option for most. The entire system of slave exploitation collapsing everywhere didn’t help the regional elites, as lynchings started happening.

Unfortunately, the Glitch sightings skyrocketed almost overnight. Tanks, augmented soldiers, cloned supersoldiers, even a freaking GAUSS RAILWAY GUN that leveled several villages (it couldn’t move, since it lacked rails) before local adventurers took it out. The amount of Glitch manifestation seemed to be reversely proportional to the distance from Ambryxis. Imperial Army operating in the region was busy suppressing their numerous manifestation as much as it was busy laying siege to Ambryxis and few remaining holdouts of the locals.

This place really is the center of the Twilight War. No idea why. Is the thing sealed under the city as important!?

In the meantime, the life thrives in the Hold. I’ve began making progress on the troublesome field of… Leria and Lena’s potential explosiveness. I’ve abandoned my… self-imposed isolation that I barely even noticed earlier. I kept to Simea and my quarters too much. She was trying to push me out in the free time, but I tended to avoid that. Instead, staying ‘home’ to read books or check things on our friendly Ambryxis’ adventurers guild ‘internet’ via my RPG system.

How the heck did I become a nerd after getting ‘isekai’d to a fantasy world?! It was supposed to work the other way. Nerd in our world, then alpha male in the fantasy world. Sigh.

Of course, it’s not like all I had to do was to go out, find a person in question and then choose the right dialogue bars to magically repair everything. It was a process. Long an ardurous. But… we’ve spent weeks confined in the Hold (save for my rare trips to meet with local commander of the Imperial Army when he needed some info about the area). Time was something we’ve had almost too much now.

There was progress.

I almost choke on my food when Lena suddenly admitted that she has a bit of a problem with blood elf mental sculpt. It took her a long while to do that, and even then she barely managed to utter that.

We had a talk about that. Long one. We’ve discussed potential ways of fixing this problem. I’ve also asked her why she never tell anyone about it. It turned out that her feelings about both her slave status AND the sculpt… well, I think she felt about it like about rape. And judging from the number of people who for some reason do not report getting raped in our world… people rarely act rational about traumatic things.

She managed to force herself to speak only because of my initial meeting about that (the one with Yhrezerach guiding me) and our recent more often talks. She suddenly had an idea that I might be able to help her with my knowledge. About fucking time, if you ask me.

I wasn’t ready to suggest her to just… accept her trouble. Or, to be exact, she wasn’t ready to hear such an answer. I didn’t need Yhrezerach’s dismissive look and constant belittling of my social skills to figure that out. Instead I’ve (narrowly) managed to persuade her to search ‘proper’ help. After all, after we’ve ran through all the ideas I had, there was only option left.

I’ve managed to bring her to Firewing. No idea why the ‘Father’ showed up. He (and his wife) joined Yhrezerach in the short list of ghosts showing up from nowhere whenever something important happens in the Hold.

I have absolutely no idea if he truly is who he said he was. What’s worse, I don’t even know WHAT he is, as he seems to avoid the confines of the RPG system. I can’t appraise him. Both him and his wife seem to be able to interact with things on physical level. They could be projections. Good enough to transfer ‘touch’ as well. There are hexes of certain minor school of magic that can conjure illusions so ‘real’ that they can actually do stuff like that. There is an anomaly that was once summed up as ‘place where your hallucinations have sharp edges’.

But… it was a part of the Doom Magic. DFI never explained what was the creature that was the source of this anomaly. All the players ever saw was it’s tentacle, but there were indications that it was IMMENSELY powerful (this sole tentacle required adamantite-grade adventurers - and a number of them - to defeat it). And it was even weird even for the Doom Magic. But it was still ‘eldritch’. I, as an amalthian, should be able to feel it.

It’s hard to imagine how weird it was for me to have absolutely no idea what something was in that world. And I didn’t even knew where to start looking. And since I had no idea how strong they were, I just preferred to ignore the subject altogether and pretend they do not exist unless they tried to talk to me.

The talk quickly moved far above my ability to comprehend. I’m a sorcerer by trade. Relatively powerful one, but I lacked proper education of a mage. Firewing mastered that, and the Warrior… well, he seemed to surpass her at least on some fields. I felt like secondary school physics teacher watching a debate between world’s foremost physics on some super-deep implications of quantum physics or something. I recognized some words, even a lot of them, but beyond that? They spoke gibberish.

In the end, they seemed to have figured a way to at least mostly suppress the effects of the mental sculpt. Thus achieving what was thought to be impossible by local magicians. Of course, it was an absolute improvisation. And the whole ‘miracle’ was powered by mana siphoned off Yhrezerach (which, of course, showed up when he was needed, still in his childish form). But it seemed to have opened a whole new field of mind magic research.

And it worked. It required frequent recharging, but it could be done via any item with enough of Yhrezerach’s… scent on it. He just touched some random old Ardent Flame ring and instantly transformed into a grade one artifact and voila. Problem of recharge solved.

That guy is such a game breaker. I saw archmagicians and archdaemons leveling cities in search of grade one artifact and Yhrezerach just made it on the spot.

I… just stood there, not having anything to add. Lena seemed dazed for most of the time, and then… left. I wasn’t fully sure if she was past the crisis. People sometimes react weirdly to things. So I’ve decided to keep observing her for a while, just in case.

Leria remained painfully volatile and bitter once you got through her outer shell. She acted alright before her cadre of bodyguards and all the people in the Hold (she was a sort of a symbolic figure for the whole thing, and she was aware of the importance of morale), but in private… and even with my atrophied social skills I could see she had problems.

Then, things began happening.