“It’s gotten really peaceful recently, hasn’t it?” Aziz muttered.

“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing, though.” Marie adjusted her uniform and looked at the soldiers of the First Aerial, who were tugging on wagons and chattering. “It’s nice that we haven’t been attacked for the past two weeks.”

“Only us, though,” Aziz replied. “Everyone’s wondering if we struck a deal with the demons to let us pass unharmed, but…”

Marie laughed. “Come on, surely they know better than that.”

“Didn’t stop them from accusing us about being traitors, though.” Aziz chuckled and thought back to the convoys of the other nations. Each and every one of them had been attacked at some point in time, an experience that the First Aerial had somehow escaped. Of course, that meant that the soldiers of the other nations would ambush them nearly every trip.

If not for the fact that they kept and maintained their records, Aziz would have forgotten how many times ambushes occurred. Most galling of all, however, was how the convoys of the other nations would point at them and ask stupid questions about how they were never attacked by the demons or something.

To be honest, Aziz was beginning to feel that being attacked by the demons was far better than being ambushed. The First Aerial had buried around two thousand desperate soldiers in the past two weeks, but the enemy weren’t showing any signs of backing off despite so many failures.

Aziz and Marie had gotten tired of doing the same damn thing over and over, so they decided to set off in advance. From how the ambushes were meticulously laid, it was obvious that they had been preplanned a day or two in advance. By showing up earlier than predicted, the First Aerial would be able to get past these ambushers with absurd ease.

For one, lookouts wouldn’t be posted or on alert until it was too late, by which point it would be foolish to even try attacking such a convoy.

More importantly, the First Aerial had no desire to kill anyone from the Five Lands. Simply making it such that their attempt to ambush them was completely useless would suit his men’s goal entirely.

“When will this black dome lift anyway?” Marie muttered. “If we could fly, things would be a lot easier.”

“If we could fly, this war would have been over weeks ago,” Aziz replied. “We wouldn’t be watching men and women huddle around our supply train and beg for food.”

“We are indeed fortunate in this regard,” Marie noted. “This can probably be a treatise on the importance of maintaining supply lines. The forward camps aren’t all that far away from the landbridge, but they’ve already been starved and depleted of any will to fight. And we’re now facing ambushes from our nominal allies.”

“Still seems unbelievable. How long has it been? How many weeks have we been stalled at the front without any battle?” Aziz felt fatigue feel him up. “We haven’t made an inch of progress at all, save for the initial crossing.”

Marie nodded. “It’s funny, really. If a thesis made its way into my hands with this set of events as the background, I would have thought the author to be nuts. The main body has been immobilised, the camps are nothing more than flimsy fences and rocks, and they’re all starving and stuck out there. This entire thing sounds ridiculous, and it should be ridiculous, but there we are.”

“Well played by the demons, I guess.” Aziz eyed the black dome gloomily. “Now the War Council is tearing itself apart.”

“They can’t take a step forward, since the Lords and Paragons don’t want to put themselves at risk. Nor can they take a step back, since they’ve invested so much for this invasion.” Marie shook her head. “They’re in a pitiful state. And we’re bleeding resources so quickly too.”

“Serves them right,” Aziz muttered. “Minister Pauline should have taken our advice; it’s not like we can’t tear down the Southern Assembly. Ark City alone could probably tear the Assembly a new orifice or two. We’ve already started to kill each other off too. There’s no hope for unity now.”

“We’ve been working overtime too. On a personal basis, it would be nice to withdraw too. What happened to my paperwork-filled life?”

“Destroyed by the demons,” Aziz replied dryly. “Should we just exaggerate the conditions at the front?”

“Yes, we should certainly tell the truth about what’s going on there, my dear colonel.” Marie nodded to herself. “Starvation, even more starvation, hordes of unusable equipment, low morale, desertions, insubordination…did I miss out anything?”

“Insomnia,” Aziz added. “None of the soldiers at the front have been able to sleep.”

“Right.” Marie shook her head. “What else do we have? And if this fails, what should we do next?”

“Well, we could attempt to overthr—”

“Military officers trying to run a nation is a recipe for disaster, so no,” said Marie. “Just no. Let the State Council do their job.”

“They could start by actually noting that their goals for this invasion failed catastrophically.” Aziz crossed his arms. “I know and understand where Pauline’s coming from, but at this rate, we’ll kill ourselves. Supplying this much food and not doing anything substantial with it is insane.”

“I know.” The marshal sighed, before looking at the soldiers. “But this war is not something we can end on our own.”

“Whatever the demons are planning, they should hurry up,” Aziz grumbled. “Maybe they intend on forcing a truce or—"

Aziz stopped his words and looked up, as a horrible presence pressed down upon the world. It wasn’t just one such presence either; there were over fifty such presences, each of them making themselves known to the world. Each and every one of them was radiating a power that brooked no disobedience, and the urge to prostrate began to infiltrate his conscious mind.

“The demons…are making a move?” Aziz felt his skin crawl. With this many Demigods, they could probably sweep the Five Lands and crush them all. He didn’t even want to talk about the demon Exemplars, the equivalent of the Five Lands’ Paragons, that accompanied this massive show of force.

“Well,” Marie began, her words a broken, quivering alto, “at least your wish is granted…”

“I was just kidding! Why does this keep happening to me?”