Chaos.

Complete and utter stupidity.

Hasperus frowned as he watched the comedy unfold before him upon the distant battlefield, his cavalry in shambles, his plans shredded and scattered to the four winds.

“Enough,” he growled. “I’ve seen enough”.

He waved his hand toward the two mages that had been sustaining the viewing pool, a floating distortion of space that had allowed him to view the current operation and its progress without having to risk his safety by approaching the area in person. The manifestation briefly shimmering before it faded away upon the mages ceasing their efforts.

As he turned, he closed his eyes, momentarily losing himself to the day’s pleasant weather as he delayed thinking of what was occurring but an hour’s walk from the camp that served as his current headquarters for this operation, the sounds of the nearby battle drifting in on the wind.

His ears could discern the screams of people, some from those fleeing in terror, some from the dying; It was a dark testament to his experience in war that he could easily tell the difference.

The personal guard of this region’s recognised families were a sad joke that had dragged his forces into their farce of an attack as they had descended upon the foreigner’s encampment. A tragic comedy that had just turned him from being one of the most well-regarded high-generals of the defenders of humanity into a laughing stock.

The initial ride on the enemy had been to standard, riding towards the temporary shantytown of the foreigner’s caravan in broad formation as had been planned, but instead of turning away before reaching the inner heart of their encampment, the house-guards had turned inward, assumedly chasing the easy glory that they would attain from cutting down the defenceless, fleeing masses. The inevitable clash between them and the real cavalry who could follow orders had led to a mess of epic proportions as mounted riders ran into each other, experienced men and women sent flying from their animals as the creatures beneath them came to a sudden halt, the body on top not given the same treatment as motion forced them to continue moving forward.

Many would be dead from what had just occurred. Good men, competent soldiers. Hard to replace and even harder to make up for their loss in the current mission.

It was his own fault, really. He had placed the local forces on the outer edge of the formation himself, the logic being that the untested house-guards and their beasts would be slower in both speed and reaction. Their untested forces would have been slow to proceed according to his plan once the initial charge was over, their mounts exhausted, their turn backwards leaving them easy targets for the enemy’s counter-attack.

While the local faction’s forces were far from being irreplaceable and the added effect of nocking their masters down a peg or two more than ample reason to have not planned for their survival, the inevitable backlash against both him and the military itself would have cost him far more in both influence and reputation than was worth the fleeting emotional payoff that would have resulted from letting them be culled.

But seeing what had just unfolded had him regretting that decision; The idiotic blundering of those fools would have him hurting even more after all was said and done; for years to come, even.

The cavalry of all forces had been fully briefed multiple times before this mission began, their forces meant to have descended upon the crowds fleeing towards the centre of the encampment, then, like waves breaking against to the shore, the actual name of the military manoeuvre, they were supposed to split, two halves that should have turned away to the sides before they came in reach of the foreigner’s gathered forces, using the compressed mass of refugees as a wall against any retaliatory strike from the enemy’s casters, to then retreat back beyond the range of any far-reaching spells before gathering back up to await further orders to attack depending on what would have happened next.

Instead, what he saw was a display of supreme incompetence, clear sign that the quality of the local forces was little better than a quickly assembled mob of ignorant peasants. Ill-disciplined rabble adorned in fancy uniforms and quality equipment that would have served better if it had been sent to the military instead of wasted on meaningless pageantry.

He breathed in slowly, the crisp morning air helping him to calm his mind.

In full honesty, not that he would include it in his official report, later on, an oversight on his part had further complicated matters. Like waves against the shore had been based on the assumption that said shore was made of sand, not a patch of jagged rocks. The rocks, in this case, being the small town that had sprung up overnight where the foreigners had temporarily settled in. A collection of poorly erected tents and cheap wagons that had turned the open field that would have normally been the ideal environment for a cavalry charge into an urbanised death-zone. An assembly of winding, maze-like streets, many of which lead to sudden dead ends that were often proved to be more literal in their name than not to the poor soldiers that had little choice but to move down them as their neighbours and momentum trapped them in their course forward.

It was a cursed blessing that many of his people in the centre of the charge had been spared from that end as a scattering of ropes, cloth, and leather had tripped their mounts as they made first contact with the settlement, the poor soldiers on top sent flying into the refugees abandoned belongings as they were flung from their mounts.

The animals were, for the most part, lost, their muscles torn, legs broken, and necks snapped from the fall, with some of their riders sharing the same unfortunate fate. But not all. They would be of little use in the fight from here on out, of course, their mounts no longer available, but that was acceptable; Animals, even trained ones, were far easier to replace than experienced soldiers.

On paper, the cost of a military-grade mount was often the same if not a little more than training a rider to acceptable standards, but a rider unmounted was still capable of serving as a soldier, an animal unmounted was just target practice.

About a third of his now unmounted forces remained, the house guards faring far worse, not that their well-being concerned him. An amount that should have been far worse, but, for some reason, few of the enemy’s forces had chosen to retaliate. Those few being the younger-looking of their forces from what he had seen, young men and woman spurred on by boiling blood rather than sound reason, untested children yelling and screaming insults as they sent off their quickly cast spells that went flying in random directions, many nearly hitting their own people, if they considered the refugees their own, that is; few of the spells being capable of reaching his forces, fewer yet having even been aimed.

Though that was not to say that the enemy had not acted. Somehow, they had been able to target the mage circles amongst his forces, using some sort of ability to cause mass spell-collapse amongst their ranks.

Unlike the foreigners who could cast their mock-magic without such fears thanks to their awakened power, even the best of true magic users ran the risk of their spells collapsing; A common occurrence that was both an unfortunate and expected risk in warfare, especially with the more complicated siege spells that required multiple mages to sync their abilities with each other. Even when they were far from actual combat, some would inevitably make a mistake, the result being the spell that they were trying to cast destabilizing, its powers let loose upon the circle casting it and any poor bastard that was unfortunate enough to be nearby when it happened.

Death, mutation, and sometimes far, far worse were often the results from such accidents.

He had long grown used to such things, but the rate at which they suddenly began to occur throughout the encirclement had increased beyond anything he had ever seen before; The southern side of the encirclement had reported that their mage circles had been taken out as they were casting, not even getting off a single shot before they were all wiped out; The wester segment then began to experience the same misfortune, soon after.

He had, of course, ordered all the mages to deliver a final, mass bombardment before retreating further away from their respective areas as soon as he had heard of what was happening, the mage’s military value being far too great to allow for their loss; A mere apprentice taking more than a decade to simply train and nearly twice that time in the actual field to achieve the experience that he demanded of such people. That, along with the high demand for them by the military as a whole, made the death of each one a loss that would take him decades to recover from.

He had several of his personal mages alongside the squad of high-mages that had been assigned to him for this mission try and search for the source of the attack, but without knowing what they were looking for and the understandable animosity from the enemies forces towards the magic users, their efforts only showed them visions of the foreigners from high-above, as if seen from the eye of a bird. Or so the high-mages had told him.

Why the hell had everything gone so wrong?

Hasperus kept his eyes shut, fearing that someone would see the look in them as he aimed his unseen gaze towards the large tent that he knew was off in the distance, the tent where the representatives of the region’s recognised families wined and dined while their forces fucked-up on the field beyond.

He forced himself to turn away, eyes finally opening, the sudden exposure to the light blinding him for but a moment.

Casting blame would achieve nothing; With his losses mounting his reputation would take a massive hit in the following days, a hit that would be further compounded as the fools in the tent inevitably tried to save face by laying the blame of their force’s incompetence solely upon him.

While the military were long since used to such behaviour, they relied heavily on the practice of give and take between them and the recognised families, using favour and reputation to gain supplies and new recruits in exchange for overlooking some minor crimes or the handing out meaningless titles even more meaningless heirs and the military would need to let them save face by punishing him if they wanted to continue that relationship.

It would, more than likely, only be a surface level affair, a public condemning of his failures alongside a token restriction of his allotment of the military’s supplies. But that token may very well be the feather that crippled the porter as he would need everything that he could get to help him recover from this disaster.

The military had deemed depriving the foreigners of a surge in their power and influence worth any cost, or so his orders had said, but those were merely words, the reality of the situation was that the enemy had delivered unto him a heavier blow than anything that they had thus far received, their actual adventurers having remained untouched after the first bombardment. While he had planned for such an event, the excess of forces he had marshalled being more than enough to deal with them the hard way, there was little point to crippling the enemy if he crippled his own forces in the process. The disabling of his legion having greater, far-reaching effect than merely wounding his pride or social status.

But he could not avoid that now, while most of his of available might still remained intact, his heavy hitters were now down and out and there was little choice in what he had to do next.

“Tolin,” he spoke.

“Yes, my general?” One of the mages that had been maintaining the vision spell inquired.

“Contact the rest of the wall and tell them to tighten the noose,” Hasperus commanded with much regret. Things were about to get extremely bloody for his people.

The general calmed himself with a breathing technique as he came to accept that today was not a good day for him.

It had not been a total loss for him, however. His foray into using monsters as front line troops had finally born fruit and had, at last, proved itself a viable option for military use.

The military had long known of the foreigner’s summoning class, for nearly three centuries now, in fact; People with the ability to use animals and monsters as he would use his soldiers, a feat that none amongst the magic users of the people could mimic to an effective degree, even on a small scale. Until today. It had been a pet project of his. Something the success of which would help to alleviate some of his current burdens, but not all as it had only been partial in how it had proved itself.

Animals were easily tamed, enough so that it could be done entirely through mundane methods rather than through the use of magic ones, though the use of the latter certainly proved the quicker of the two. But taming monsters proved itself another matter entirely as the beasts were often to foul a temper, too independent to refrain from turning on their handlers let alone following a given order. Until today.

The beasts, huge, hulking masses of muscle and anger that could take flight despite their size, had obeyed, which, by definition, proved his experiment a resounding success, enough to earn him much renown if he could repeat and pass the methods of doing so to the other legions. But though the beasts had obeyed their simple commands of attacking the enemy before them, they had set themselves upon the closest of targets available, the fleeing refugees. While it was his sad duty to deal with them as he would the real enemy, they were of little importance as actual targets and to truly have proved itself, his project had needed them to aim for the heart of the enemy’s forces. The military needed precision attacks against key targets, not blunt tools to throw against the rank and file; That was what foot soldiers were for, after all.

Not that shoring up and replacing the common soldier was entirely without merit, however, the more of his people that he could spare the better, but he had hoped that the beasts would have gone after the strongest, not the weakest. Alpha against alpha, as it were.

Perhaps it was something that could be devolved with more time. Something that he would most likely have a lot of in the near future as he served whatever punishment the high-command deemed fit to deliver unto him.

It was something, at least; though there was little doubt the mages would try to lay claim to most of the credit. But it was something.

A call raised itself out in the distance as the various commanders called for the soldiers of the line that had maintained an encirclement around the foreigner’s caravan to ready themselves, their march inwards would soon commence, and then their blood would dye the fields.

Hasperus looked up, the heat of the sun warming his old bones.

How had such a nice day turned into such a crap show?