Watching the battlefield from above, Russell looked calm, cool. In control. He gazed impassively at the bank of CV screens, watching information flow in from dozens of etherships and informants on the ground. He was the High-Commandant of this fleet, the first official fielding of the Revolution as a true military force.

No more surprise attacks on distant villages and the very weakest the shrouded had to offer. They weren’t banking on over a decade of setup to pull off a few isolated, albeit devastating, assaults. They had entered battle with little preparation and minimal outside assistance, and they were attacking some of the strongest shrouded alive.

It was the single most important thing the Revolution had done to date, and Russell was leading them all.

Needless to say, he was a nervous wreck.

When they’d started their assault, everything seemed perfect. Sure, they’d been called in over a week early, but all the setup and prep work was done a few days ago. All they had left on the schedule was to sit around and wait. The short notice had caused a few minor problems, mostly logistical. Some munitions hadn’t been loaded yet onto a few ships; perishable foodstuffs needed to be secured, that sort of thing.

It delayed them by a matter of minutes. No one was expecting this assault to last anything less than days, considering the strength of the shrouded involved. A few minutes was nothing. The Gateway Portal, the ultimate secret weapon of the Revolution, worked just as it had in the tests. Experiencing it personally had been magical and awesome in the truest sense of the word. Perfectly seamless travel across the breadth of the Starry Sea, amazing.

The entire armada took time to move through the Gateway, but the suppression field originating on the flagship Liberation blanketed the entire island below the second the magical breach in space was open. No shrouded would be coming up the greet them, especially not once the bombardment started.

Russell had firmly disagreed with that part of the plan. Most of the people on that island would be unshrouded, even if the distribution was more even than normal. A secret census taken during the preparation phase proved him right. Just over sixty percent of the people in the Tournament city were unshrouded. And they would be the first to die with an aerial bombardment.

This tactic also put their own agents at risk, actual members of the Revolution. How could it not? No matter what, agents stationed on the island were necessary for the preparation phase. They were dumping actual tons of munitions down onto the city; of course those brave souls could get caught up in the destruction.

Unfortunately, his and other dissenting voices had been overruled. This tactic had a much higher chance of successfully achieving their goals than a more measured, less overwhelmingly violent approach. Not for the first time, Russell mentally cursed out that kid, Travis. He’d been the one to come up with the idea and worked hard to pitch it to the rest of the war council.

Russell didn’t like Travis. He knew revolutionary zeal when he saw it, and that kid didn’t have an ounce of it. He was a ball of pure entitlement and ambition, driven solely by a desire to be important. And that was who they’d put in charge of this most crucial operation. Even Russell reported to him. It didn’t sit right with the High-Commandant.

Nevertheless, he had enough loyalty to the cause to follow through, even if he hated every moment of it. And the bombardment was a success. Of course, there were complications. Yes, the vast majority of shrouded couldn’t fly with formshift alone, but some could. Those that fit into that category automatically attacked upon seeing the armada.

None succeeded. Without aura, none of the shrouded could attack from a distance. Those that managed to make it to a ship through the hail of attacks could only ineffectually beat at the energy shields. Eventually, all fell.

But there was one spot of unexpectedly intense resistance. Somehow, several shrouded had managed to shake off the suppression field and were actively using aura. When the first reports came in, Russell had been sure that they were false. It had to be shrouded using unusual formshifts, adapting to the situation. That was all.

He was soon proven wrong when two of them, along with a massive bird monster of some kind, took the fight to the skies. Apparently, the dome of black chains protecting the arena the group had claimed as a base actually was aura in use.

That was unfortunate, but not unexpected. Shrouds were varied and esoteric; it wasn’t impossible to imagine one managing to find a way to worm past the suppression field. A group was more concerning, as it meant that immunity was transferable, but ultimately within the armada’s capabilities to handle.

It wasn’t long before that opinion was proven to be perhaps a little optimistic. He’d expected the two flying shrouded to fail quickly against the sheer weight of firepower bearing down on them, just like the others. It seems he had underestimated just how much of a difference aura made. That, or these particular shrouded were exceptionally skilled. Maybe both. Either way, they weren’t going down.

Despite diverting the local fleet to focus fire on the duo and their pet monster, the shrouded seemed somehow perfectly ready to deal with everything the etherships threw their way. One was producing clouds that readily absorbed every attack that hit them. Meanwhile, the other had taken on draconic traits and started attacking ships directly.

For a brief moment, Russell had held out hope that the energy shields would stop the shrouded. And for a brief moment, it did. Then they started breathing out molten metal that popped the energy shields like soap bubbles. The first few ships fell without anyone on the Liberation even understanding how this was happening.

It was almost uncanny. Every time a shield dropped, the crew of the ethership would report a massive drain on their ether generator as the cause of the failure. Moments later, the ship would go dark. The crew would stop responding to hails, and the communications would cut out. Then their scanners and anyone with a visual would report a mass of ice surrounding the dead ship before it fell to the ground.

Part of Russell had wanted to divert all his forces to take out this threat. They were the only real threat at the time, so why not? Logic and a hint of fear won out. After all, if these shrouded managed to throw off the suppression field, what was to say more wouldn’t? The active bombardment would pound any resistance into the dirt and stone.

That, and diverting the bombardment would require calling for permission. It would diverge from the established mission parameters. The last thing Russell wanted was to let Travis stick his grubby little hands into this battle. The kid was incompetent; no two ways about it. At least, Russell thought so. No one else seemed to agree.

No, he’d only call up the chain if he absolutely had to.

In the meantime, he worked within the bounds of what the original parameters allowed. At the time, there was a spike in activity around the central meeting hall that drew his attention. The most powerful shrouded alive were there; it was easily of higher priority than a couple of anonymously capable shrouded. They had taken out a few ships, sure. But that was nothing compared to the size of the armada.

It was only once the first scheduled break in the bombardment was underway that his attention was called back. In moments, a minor problem slowly chipping at their weakest ships turned into an existential threat to the attack’s main objective.

The shrouded made their move during the withdrawal action as other ships moved in to relieve those fighting the pair. In minutes a few dozen ships were disabled and dropped out of the sky, somehow disappearing into the ground. The fleet control room on the Liberation went wild.

In a sudden blitz, nearly every ship that was originally deployed to an entire section of the city was just gone. It was only then that anyone started asking questions about where all those ships were going. A blunder, a massive oversight that should have been obvious if anyone had stopped to think about it.

The implications were outright terrifying, because no matter how much they went around the room, there was only one idea that made sense. The enemy shrouded had access to some version of teleportation or something similar to the Gateway Portal.

Russell would have been tearing his hair out over that alone. What were that shrouded’s actual capabilities? How long until they started bringing in shrouded from other islands? Fresh reinforcements, ready to fight. Could they teleport into this very room and slaughter them all?

But that wasn’t the only problem. The sudden clearance of ships revealed something that had somehow been missed up to that point. Down on the ground was an entire army of living corpses, undead, scouring the city and pulling survivors from the rubble.

That was bad. This assault was supposed to scour the island clean. Not a single shrouded was allowed to leave the island. Barring that, no one important enough to be believed could make it. The Revolution needed to obfuscate what happened here, for it all to fall into the fog of war and leave everyone guessing.

A large group, hundreds or thousands strong, would be too many corroborators to be dismissed. And that wasn’t even considering the possibility that the portal user could just ship them off the island right now. The army and its rescues were more of a threat than the two attacking the fleet.

There was one bright side to all this. Now that there was significant resistance, Russell considered an army to be significant; he could implement other planned contingencies. Once more, he could avoid calling Travis. Part of Russell was tempted to ignore the planned provisions and take control of the forces unilaterally. But no doubt Travis was watching right now. If he saw Russell completely ignoring the plan, he’d take command remotely.

Trying to avoid that catastrophe, Russell kept to the plan. However, he was going to utilize everything he could reasonably get away with. That meant the Ethermen. The Liberation was a massive vessel, unparalleled across the entire Starry Sea. Needless to say, they had a lot tucked away in here, just in case.

Russell couldn’t send out all the Ethermen. First of all, the guidelines specifically forbid it, and second of all, it was a tactically poor decision. The Liberation housed the suppression field and the ether generators necessary to power it. It was literally the single most important ship in the fleet. Stripping it off a large proportion of powerful defenses was foolish.

In total, Russell sent thirty thousand Ethermen. A single Etherman should easily slaughter a hundred to a thousand undead, and there were only roughly ten thousand undead. Overkill? Maybe. But he wasn’t about to take chances when dealing with the second-most significant pocket of resistance on the island.

The main meeting hall was still far more fearsome, but the Revolution had accounted for that and had forces already in place. The Revolution’s best and brightest had engineered counters to those whose shrouds were known, ways of nullifying the most dangerous among the five nations’ leadership.

This other group was a complete wildcard. Despite the leaders being objectively more threatening, Russell found himself more concerned by the smaller group of random unknowns.

His concerns were rapidly proven not only accurate, but woefully inadequate.

Undead were a rare type of monster, usually only appearing on continents already devoid of life and resources, the most inhospitable environments on the Starry Sea. Thus, not worth much attention. Russell’s knowledge of undead was limited at best. He had no idea some of them could fire bone javelins and reel in Ethermen like fish on a line. Or shoot blasts of sickly green energy that could instantly rot flesh and corrode metal.

His force of thirty thousand Ethermen suddenly seemed significantly less overwhelming when they were dropping by the dozen. Worse, A sudden report came in showing that the number of undead had increased past the original assessment. The undead army was growing.

Another kick in the teeth came with the sudden appearance of a flat plain of that green fire appearing above the undead army, followed by a dome of solid-looking bone surrounding them on three sides. Russell felt like he was going to go insane. But there was nothing to do but charge the gap. A few cursory probes by the forwardmost Ethermen showed that the green fire was as destructive as ever, and the bone was magically stronger than any mere calcium.

The final straw came when the first wave of Ethermen who rushed the opening were met with a barrage of flying weapons that struck with unerring precision. All were coated in that green fire and cut through the mechanical soldiers like a scythe through wheat, reaping them with almost comical ease.

“Oh, come on!” Russell stomped his foot, breaking his calm facade. “That’s just not fair!”

He had no idea how unfair things were about to get. He’d accidentally and unknowingly challenged an eons-old combat veteran looking for someone to try out his newly heightened power on.

The man never stood a chance.