Chapter 717 – Cloudbreaking
The Ardans proclaim that the Age of Monsters ended in a victory so grand, it secured the existence of the races of man for eternity upon the surface of the planet. It is also a unique age, completely delineated from the rest of their history because it is the only one of which the Divines speak about without any qualms. The Age of Tyranny, it can be reasoned, had inter-Divine and inter-human rivalries with their own conflict. Those are largely buried: forgotten, forgiven or simply avoided to not bring up past grievances. The Age of Heroes has a whole range of opinions about it, stemming from Fortia’s stance of the Great Cleansing, Maisara’s war against the Divine, Allasaria’s great lesson, Arascus apparently views it as a failed project although we obviously are unable to question him.
Yet the Age of Monsters is clean-cut. The monsters hid under the beds of children, they wandered into camps, they killed and stole and eventually, the monsters were wiped out. Helenna gave humanity the gift of love through which they were able to sense the presence of each other. Presumably, this allowed them to sense the lack of humanity within monsters. Malam gave humanity the gift of hate which overwhelmed their fear of the dark and let them wander into the long nights to catch their hunters. Eventually, the monsters were wiped from Arda’s surface.
There Ardans themselves do not bother to ponder the righteousness of their great crusade, although enough (may I state heroic in tone) records exist documenting the various kinds of beasts that were fought. Malam and Helenna even penned many of the archives themselves. They were shapeshifters, they were everywhere, they slept in the dark, they wandered around human camps, they were defeated when humanity prayed for salvation and spawned the various Divines of that era, many of which were wiped out during the Age of Heroes, although the two most notable survivors are Helenna and Malam. This counter-attack that is written about was a slow thing that lasted centuries presumably, the grave sites accidentally uncovered during the chaos of the Arascan War reveal the scale of the massacres.
Yet there has always been something unsettling to myself about it. The history, as it is written, does not add up in the slightest. Humanity lived in caves or tribes, magic and technology was primitive. Stone-working only came about during the Age of Tyranny.
Humanity, most likely allied with the early elves and dwarves and supported by Divinity, managed to cleanse the entire surface of Arda free of their hunters. An island would be one thing, likewise if the modern state existed along with professional armies, that would be another. The scale and duration of the conflict, enough that it is remembered as its own era, is what I see issue with.
There are many explanations one can make over this scenario yet there is one that I see no one make, yet that is the cleanest: the monsters that inhabited Arda were not as terrifying as they are made out to be.
Yet to voice this opinion on Arda is verboten, for it is the first victory that world has achieved. Yet without this explanation, and under the rules of the Ardans’ own logic, they fail at answering a more severe question. The monsters were everywhere, they were countless, and they hunted humanity for pleasure, sport and sustenance. If they were truly so terrible and unstoppable, then all the civilized races which make up Ardan societies now should have been killed before they even stepped out their cradle.
Why were they not?
- Archangel Ilahim’s Review of Arda written shortly after the Great War.
Fer sniffed the air, it had an odd smell in the back of Raptor One. At first, she had thought it some perfume or air freshener that the troops were using. Now though, after multiple jumps and after getting onboard in preparation for Operation Cloudbreaker, she was sure that the smell was not any sort of perfume. It was always around this aircraft and its sister plane only. She had gone around smelling the air throughout the base, no other location had such an odd aroma as this one. “Can you stop sniffing?” Maisara groaned.
“Why?” Fer asked, she glanced at Of Order and Of Peace both sitting on the large seats which had been installed for them. Fer had one too, but she couldn’t sit about here. All of them were armoured, Fortia in bronze, Maisara in silver, Fer in steel. All three suits were similar, Maisara’s and Fortia’s practically mirrors of one-another save for the colour change. Both with scale-mail skirts that hung high and cuirasses that protected the chest, stomach and looped over the shoulder. Ultimately, one did not need armour if they did not get hit in the first place and demons were far slower than the beasts of old. Fer could not handle scalemail, her fur would get caught in the gaps. Chain was the same, it had to be cloth lined with plate inlays and even then, she wasn’t particularly happy her father forced it on her.
She sniffed the air again. Maisara had a muted, bitter grumpiness about her. Fortia the cold smell of frozen mint that came about with deep thought. And the plane smelled of steel, titanium, jet-fuel and the spice of life that every creature had, that was almost always drowned out by emotion. Yet here, she could sense it. At this point, she was sure it was the plane itself and not either of the other two. If they weren’t flying above Esberia clothed in an ashen sky, she would knock a window out or punch the ceiling hard enough to dent it to see if it gave a reaction. “What are you even smelling?”
“I am going crazy.” Fer said.
Maisara chuckled, Fortia’s eyes narrowed at Fer. “You better not be.” Of Peace said.
“I can smell life here.” Fer looked around and sniffed again. “Proper life.”
“Well I’m here.” Maisara said with a wry smile. “And I am alive right now.”
“You smell of smug.” Fer said, then nodded to Fortia. “You smell of mint, I smell of honey and roses, as I always do.”
“What does smug smell of?” Maisara asked.
“Shit.” Fer replied. The three Goddesses looked at each other, Fortia cracked a smile first, then Maisara chuckled, then Fer laughed and the cabin shook as they went through turbulence.
“Touche.” Maisara replied. “You got me.” Fer turned around and looked through the window so that she could watch the ground, or rather the lack of it, outside. They had crossed into Esberia about thirty minutes ago. Before that, at they had been passing over white, snow-clad fields and cities that blazed with life. Now, dawn was rising in the east only to illuminate a surface that cared not for the sun. All swirling ash, it and morphed, like pale clouds of grey light twirling in a tub of black paint. Now, they must have been passing over the frontline, Fer saw small puffs of cloud erupt from the black carpet and caught the glint of shells as they arced and dived back down to disappear under whatever was happening there. The blanket was total, even in a plane, she should have been able to hear the explosions but when her ears twisted and tuned out the roaring noise of the jets and Captain Douglas engaging in his insane conversation with himself, all that she found was the constant, rumbling din of a storm that never passed from all directions.
The sun rose to once again its own height, painting the sky in all the shades of dawn’s reds and yellows and oranges when Raptor One suddenly made a sharp turn. Maisara and Fortia finally looked out the window. “Are we dropping through the ash?” Maisara asked, staring out the window as the plane began to obviously circle above the location. There was no fighting here, nor any artillery shells piercing the carpet. “No.” Fer said.
“We could do it.” Maisara said.
Fer decided not to bother with teasing for once. “The landbridge is barely a mile wide.” She looked through the window at ashen skies. “Tell me where the sea begins?”
It was a stupid question and it didn’t deserve an answer, but the point was driven home. Kassie had thought of it. The tower’s impact made a shockwave that temporarily pushed back ashen skies, they would be dropping moments after it. Fer had expected that Maisara would be the one to know the plan’s reasoning, of all people. If anything, she should be able to work it out. The lack of an answer was confirmation enough that she understood. “So what do we do now?” Fortia asked.
“We wait.” Fer replied.
They were not waiting for long. It came over the horizon. A glowing spear that had been hurled across the continent by rocket engines that had long since detached. The point sleek and sharp and terribly long, more like a spear than a pyramid, designed to be driven into the ground like a splinter for the world. A second appeared trailing behind it, aimed slightly further north. Then a third. A fourth. Seven. Ten. Eighteen massive cargo ship-sized javelins drawing long trails of clouds, left behind by the trailing flames from their engines. Enough to clean all of Esberia, to give the Imperial Military the reprieve it needed to find, isolate and target the ash-spewers that were in the country right now.
Fer, Fortia and Maisara all went to the windows as Raptor One slowed down its flight and shifted as if on interception course with the southernmost tower that sailed across ocean of the sky. The northern tower hit first, it had the sharpest angle. Its rear engines gave one final blast of flame, then the structure hurtled forwards as it detached from its propulsion system. The point shifted to aim down and the three Divines gave stared in wonder at the technological marvel they were seeing.
And then they stared in wonder as they watched ashen skies be flicked upwards like a carpet. That world-shaking crash, which sounded like an eruption of a volcano, Fer was sure she would even be able to hear with human ears. Ashen skies were ripped upwards and curled outwards and onto themselves, the splash of a mountain being dropped into the ocean save that the ocean was black and grey and floated in the sky.
Another tower detached its engines and disappeared over the northern horizon. Fer saw the pillar of dust rise higher than any mountain in this world, and then she felt Raptor One twist, angle sharply in one direction, then back in another and slid backwards, only managing to catch onto the final handle in the ceiling of the aircraft. Fortia held onto her seat and grabbed onto Maisara to stop them from falling over the plane accelerated through the sound barrier. Fer looked through the window and saw them catch up to an ICDT tower: Cloudbreaker in huge red letters written on its side.
Cloudbreaker disengaged its rear rocket, it tumbled down to disappear into the putrid darkness below them, and the Cloudbreaker itself angled downwards. Smoothly at first, then ever sharpening until it, for a single instant, it was aimed perfectly straight down.
Their own pillar of ash rose high enough to scrape the edge of Arda’s atmosphere, then collapsed outwards as the sheer force of the missile tore yet another hole in the carpet of ashen skies. A tidal wave of black rode out in all directions as the kinetic force of the tower pushed away the ash. Wind hissed passed them as Raptor’s One cabin depressurized, its rear doors began to open.
Fer had thought she was listening to a storm before, but the first crack to the outside revealed the scale of the noise. If Fer condensed a thousand thunderstorms to roar over each other, they would still be quieter than fury of Arda retaking her own skies. Her grip tightened on that hold, she held her breath and looked over the edge.
The landbridge was straight below them, the tower had aimed for the country’s natural coastline. It landed as a stopgap, right landmass that had been pulled to serve as a passing point for Tartarian forces met landmass that had sat there since Wordlbreaking.
Fer tried to think of something to say as she turned around, the claws on her feet digging into the steel of Raptor One’s cargo bay so that she could let go of the pipe above. Behind her, the ICDT tower began to charge up a pulse of blue energies along its entire body.
Fortia and Maisara didn’t need to be prompted to return the fistbump this time. “Don’t drop on me.” Of Beasthood took a step back, held her arms out, the wind biting at her body and whipping at her hair, and then fell backwards off the plane.