The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]

Demonic Aristocracy is akin to our Divinity. They may very well all be biological children of Emperor Leonifer, or they may treat it as a rank. Whereas the Tartarians don’t hesitate to answer our questions about how their hierarchy in one way, it seems that the greatest issue is a language difference. On Arda, what we consider “family” is largely intuitive. Two men, unrelated, can call themselves brothers and everyone knows what it means. For the Tartarians in the diplomatic corps assigned to the White Pantheon, it seems that their “families”, if they even understand the concept, change on a monthly basis.

Whereas language differences are obviously going to be an issue, it is foolish to try and blame everything on that fact. They deciphered our tongue before we deciphered theirs, we do not run into these hiccups when discussing military strategy or in diplomatic meetings. Rather, it is entirely once we start heading to the personal and the cultural that our differences diverge far from each other.

Whereas they do have a word for love, it is obvious that what is their “love” and what is our “love” are completely different things. It could be because they have no word for “hatred”, Malam’s existence baffles them entirely. They say that it is one thing to have a disdain for another, but to allow that disdain to flourish into obsession is something that seemingly does not happen in their lands. Of course, I highly doubt it, but we do not have Malam here to explain her own demesne. Likewise, whilst they have such a thing as “war”, it is very obviously not an Ardan meaning of “war”. It was not until Kassandora surrounded and annihilated their first force that they seemed to realise that what we were doing here was not a game of skill but rather an existential fight.

And once that happened, it seemed that we lost them. I remember being asked by Asmodeus on why, if I am willing to sign off on countless assassinations against them, I do not seem to hate the Divines following Arascus. And how is it we can not see the hypocrisy in such actions, we talk of extermination Arascus’ mindset from this world, yet we cannot help but respect him. I could not answer for the question was utterly baffling, compare it to a dragon for example? We obviously wish to get rid of the great beasts, yet we have to respect their strength. It is because of the latter that the former must happen.

This is how I know they come from a sick world that has never truly tested them. These creatures possess no such thing as loyalty, nor love, nor honour, nor respect. They are mercenaries for material, no more than that.

- From the autobiography: “Roses, Blades & Blood”, written by Goddess Helenna, of Love.

Corporal Klauss pulled out another cigarette as the Coyote transport crossed the hill. His reconnaissance team was to check on one of the garrison defence lines that had been established to try and hold Legion back. Supposedly, they had heavy armour support, artillery had been pulled from the reinforcements to Esberia as well. And they were supposed to catch Legion, intercept and test it. And that was that. Nowhere in the handbook was it written that they were try to defeat it.

Klauss knew what that meant. It was effectively a Divine. What sort of Divine, he did not know, the book just talked of an army. The Coyote crested the hill and came to a stop. “Sir.” Private Muller said, from the back, Schmidt and Hoffman both leaned to see through the window. It was a picturesque field of sorts, the grass, what remained of it, was green. The sky, tinted just slightly grey, was blue enough. There were trees in the distance, a nearby town that did not burn. Another vehicle pulled up on the hill opposite them. Another Coyote 4x4, heavy for off-road, with a machine-gun mounted on the top. But between them lay what they had been looking for.

Klauss did not comment. There was no need to comment on remains of a battlefield they were watching. Crows sat on the ground, pecking at countless demonic bodies that lay strew in a long line, maybe a mile long. More than a pile long. They only got thicker as they got to the trenches. Left behind, they were all nude and strewn with bullet holes. A few had been killed by explosion, it looked like the Imperial defence had set up landmines. The black armour that was unsalvageable, bent entirely out of shape or torn into irrecoverable shreds, had been left behind in scattered piles.

And the trench was empty. Human bodies and vehicles with the hatches torn open lay scattered. Some had been caught, the lines in the mud indicated a few must have gotten away. They went onto the tarmac of the nearby road and then disappeared. Nothing save for the crows pecking at carcass move on that dirty field.

To say that the defence line had been destroyed was an understatement, it was not destroyed, it had been wiped away entirely.

“Legion casualties have been observed, there are no Imperial survivors.” Kassandora held the report for a moment, it got into more details but the important part had been said already. There were no Imperial survivors, that was part of the pattern, Legion never left survivors in the first place. If anyone had remained, that meant they had won.

If there was no one left, it means that everything Corporal Klauss described as a casualty could barely be classified as a scratch.

“Look at them.” Sergeant Richter said. The Doschian troops had been diverted to counter the entity known as Legion. They had received handbooks written by Kassandora on how to engage, when to retreat, updates were still coming in. Apparently, there was no point engaging unless a force ten to one was mustered. Why, Richter did not exactly understand. But he was a sergeant, questions were for generals, he was just to hear answers and follow them to the letter.

And besides, standing on a hill and simply reporting on enemy troop movements was an easy job. The small team stood, one of the men squatted down on the grass. The Coyote they had been using to track Legion and its army were moving north. They had come across a river. Not particularly wide, but wide enough, not particularly deep, but deep enough. Engineers were stationed at the nearby bridges, rigging them to blow. Richter’s team was only here so that they knew which piece of infrastructure they were to destroy. Legion and its army kept on marching forwards towards the rushing blue river, a deep blue, more vibrant than the cloudless sky above them. The sun hit overhead. “They’re not slowing down.” Private Wolf said.

“They’ll hit the shore and then turn along the river probably.” Richter said. Probably, although he had learned in the Second Expedition that probably meant little in this world. Probably, they had magicians with them that would make a way to cross. They had to have trick up their sleeve, it was enough that the defence-line strategy had been recalled and every trench dug was to be abandoned because there was no point. The order came from high up as well, how high, no one seemed to know but high-up was the general answer.

The army kept on marching until it hit the water. Richter raised his binoculars to get a closer look. The demons in the front were naked, they did not even have guns. Spread out in a criss-cross with distance between them… Oh. Minesweepers. “Minesweepers.” Richter said and pointed to the loose collection of troops at the front. Behind them marched a square formation of troops that managed to keep rank and file even with such large a number. Then another. And another. Easily more than five thousand of them, spread out across miles. More kept on appearing from behind the hill.

“I thought so.” Wolf said as he stared. “There’s a lot.”

“There fucking is.” Richter said.

“Still though…” Wolf trailed off. “I mean, we should be able to taken them.” Richter agreed in his mind, verbally though, he couldn’t bring himself to say it. If the leadership had decided not to engage, it was because something was up. He had seen the Second Expedition gun down hordes of them, in the open air, with artillery, even if they numbered ten thousand they shouldn’t be a threat.

The first demon entered the water. That did demand words. “What the fuck are they doing?” Richter asked.

“I don’t know.” And another demon marched into the water. And another. And then they started lying down. The lead block of troops spread out. That was obviously securing a perimeter. But a perimeter was secured with masses. Not with the outer ranks turning, taking a few steps forward and then simply keep watch. More naked demons began to march into the water. “Don’t tell me they’re fucking crossing it.”

“They’ve lost it.” Richter said. “They’ve gone mad.” They were drowning themselves, walking over their own bodies, to and try what. Ten. A hundred. Two. Until a bridge wide enough for that block to march on was beginning to form. A bridge constructed out of their own dead.

That was Richter caught it. At least a thousand demons lay in that river, and the block had not changed whatsoever. It should have shrunk. It was still the same exact size. He put the binoculars up to his eyes again and watched them step over each other. Another body fell, another stepped forward onto it. His gaze when across the grass field to the inside of that block. There it was, fifty demons, standing in a line, spitting on the ground in perfect synchronicity, as if they were doing it to the march of a tune he couldn’t hear. It was silent here, the birds squawked overhead, the other blocks still marched, although the only drums were their feet. The Coyote’s engine behind Richter’s team hummed slowly.

He watched the fifty demons spit, and he saw a demon appear almost immediately in the air. The discharge instantly began to form arms, legs and scale up. By the time it reached the ground, it was a fully formed demon, a perfect copy that turned and marched to be yet another corpse in the crossing. They were, quite literally, spitting each other out. He finally realised it. Legion wasn’t a single Prince in the midst of that army, Legion was all of them. “It’s crossing the river.”

“Bolfech reports shutdown, prepare for power outages.” Victor sighed behind the mayor’s desk. Malam had promoted him to the position of temporary Mayor-Divine with her own authority. He was to manage Arseille whilst she ran and fixed its problems. If he didn’t want the job, then he had to organise his own elections or appoint someone who, after being blood-cell-tested, would be signed off on. The only stipulation was that the appointee had to be either military or SIS.

“Start rolling blackouts.” Victor stared at the desk, that had been cleaned of Deferre’s, or whatever it was that had been impersonating Benoite Deferre, blood. The carpet was still marked. Victor could not even sit down in the chair, he wasn’t a huge Divine by any criteria, but the chair and the desk was too small for him still.

“And the western fleet is setting sail.” That at least was another problem off his plate.

“First battery, firing.” Captain Rener stood on top of a hill as he watched Legion’s advance. Bolfech Nuclear Power Plant was only an hour’s march north. The engineers within it demanded another eight hours to complete stabilization of the fuel cells into making them inert. Legion had smashed through a defence line, that had bought barely ten minutes worth of time. The amount of soldiers expended had been too large. It took half an hour to cross a river by itself. It was only the fact that there were more rivers on the way that they managed to slow it down by another hour. Supposedly, mages were being called in from all the neighbouring city’s to simply levitate the fuel away. The sorcerers that had been sent there were carving up ravines in the terrain. And the artillery was to buy as much time as possible.

“Second battery, firing.” Rener listened to the reports as he stood on top of the hill. Besides him, four tanks slowly rumbled, their barrels aimed high for long distance shooting.

“Third battery, firing.” This time, Rener heard the shots firing, it was from behind him. A salvo of four guns.

“Fourth battery, firing.” Legion must have spotted Rener by now, he made no attempt at camouflage, and even if he wasn’t seen, then the massive tanks would have been. It was impossible not to. The fact Legion ignored them entirely was worse than if it just charged the mountains. It had a target, that target was obviously Bolfech at this point, and nothing else was important.

“Fifth battery, firing.” That was the last one. Twenty guns, all loaded with ammunition that had come from labs in northern Rilia. Gas weaponry, not to be deployed apart from the worst case scenario, never in urban terrain, nor in populated structures. But the order had come from high up, Captain Rener had learned of its existence the moment it was delivered to his unit.

The explosions came half a minute later. It wasn’t burst of flame or explosives, it was thuds in the dirt from stell shells that made huge pillars of dust and grass if they were rocks splashed into water. Rener watched through his binoculars, the cameras on the tanks would, as always, record. There hadn’t been a single battle Rener had participated in which did not demand a report of what worked and how.

The gas was invisible, its effects were not. Immediately, demons started dropping around the where the shells had hit. Legion stopped its advance, its soldiers looked around in confusion for a single instant. Eyes landed on Rener’s location, on a dozen other spots where he had placed scouts. That confirmed all of them had been seen. Rener watched them cough, keel over, grab at their own chests, and then realise was what happening.

A demon spat out another as it collapsed. Those still standing began to move, those on the ground used the very last of their strength to expel copies of themselves. They stood up. They fell. And the block, even as it stood within stinging, choking air, began to move once again. The ceaseless march towards Bolfech continued. Rener held his breath as he watched the horror. A demon spat on the ground, another demon materialized from that spit as the one behind it fell, and then that second spat out a third as it died. A fourth. A twentieth. When fifty of them lay on the ground, the gas had either been absorbed or carried away by the wind and the numbers were doubling once again. Each demon lived for long enough to spit out two.

And at that point, it was over. The numbers swelled in a matter of moments.

Legion spat itself through the poison gas.

They had bought what? A minute? Two? Not even.

They had bought a slight annoyance and temporary breaking of its formation.