The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]

The expectation was that you came to Arda and you thought that because Arascus had not conquered the world yet, that they would not throw everything at you. No, look at the Arascan War. It was the only time in their history when rival powers did not foam at the mouth and stood side by side. Everyone knew you would not find allies there. Everyone knew that a war against the Empire was a war between worlds. The only stipulation was that it was not official, we all know they received endless volunteers from their neighbouring nations.

No one will ever make a move on the Empire as long as they are fighting a war against you. No one will ever spit on Arascus when he fighting you. If there was anything to take out of the First Arascan War, it was that the Ardans are so full of hate they turn it inwards. They have incarnated a Goddess of that vile emotion and you think they will be reasoned with! What fault of logic brought about this madness?! No, we learned it back then even when we were helping them. The Ardan dream is not millennia of peace, they do not know what peace truly is. The Ardan dream is millennia of war, justified and righteous.

And Tartarus gave them that justified, righteous war. Now we can only hope that Allasaria is correct, and that they are only looking to reclaim their world, although Arda will never be the cage it was. The First Arascan War was the assistance of other worlds. The Second Arascan War was the interference of them. You have taught them a lesson we all know they will not forget: We are not creatures of mythology that exist outside of their realms. We are creatures with our own worlds, in a shared universe, with our shared goals. They need a reason for progress. Well, it was given. Your attack on that world is the reason that they will inscribe into their histories.

The Conclaves lean towards the notion that the thousand years of Pantheon Peace have been wiped away. The Ardans did not just need to forget war, they needed to have it wiped out of their very genetic code. It was not enough to resign it to the annals of history, it had to be put into the realms of myth; far too grand to even be considered possible! And now, their mythology shall be built on the backs on a war against your cursed realm that tried to drown them in ash!

Well done Leonifer. You have done the one thing they could never accomplish.

You have successfully given Arda the reason for uniting.

- Letter from the Conclaves of Paraideisius to Emperor Leonifer, of Tartarus.

Irinika stood on board an Albatross Strategic Bomber as the plane passed over Ashen Skies. Reinforcement duty was always the best one, it meant that she was only dropped into combat when there was something to actually do. Something thousands of miles away to the east, where the orange glow of dawn was already starting its caress of Arda, Anassa would be sitting on a similar plane, watching over a completely different sight.

The crew in the back of the Albatross, all strapped in with black suits and heavy helmets, tied to the ceiling by thick cables which made a mess on the floor, moved out of her way as the Goddess of Darkness peered through one of the circular windows the Albatross. Outside, under the wing of the massive aeroplane, three engines on each wing, flying so high that the air was not breathable here, passed the nuclear arsenal of the Empire.

Lines dashed across the writhing black duvet which had tried to choke Arda with its ash. Red and orange lines, fashioned of flames and revealing the grey missiles that twinkled against the moon’s glow like gemstones thrown at a supersonic speed. The nuclear greatsword that would excise western Arika and anything left under it in the hellfire of Arda’s greatest weapon.

Irinika watched one of the weapons, far to the north, begin a meandering arc towards the ground. A turn that started gentle, and then got sharper and sharper until the massive bolt of steel was hurtling straight down towards the ground. For a brief instant, not even a full-second, the bolt disappeared beneath the cloud-cover of ashen skies. And a moment later, the clouds were lit up by the heat of a false sun that blazed its life away as quickly as she could blink.

Like the ground rupturing in the presence of a mole burying out, ashen skies shifted and hurled and ripped apart, torn to shreds in the fires of a atoms tearing apart. In that location, in another. In a third. As more rockets appeared over the horizon in the north, scarring the starry night sky with the flames of their jets. The pilots voice came over the speaker. “Nuclear strikes below us, prepare for turbulence.”

Irinika watched Ashen Skies light up with orange and red and yellow all under her, and then watched them crack and tear from a thousand different places. They were sending the apocalypse back to sender, and they were paying back with interest. And further down south, she could just about make out the sight of fire and explosions on the ground. The west Arikan forces had started their advance.

General Zalewski stood on top of an aged Lynx tank that had served and served in the Ashlands since he had started. “This is general Zalewski of the West Arikan Corps.” He said into the radio. “To all units, advance until we touch sand and then advance some more.” He heard the cheer from his troops, morale had risen when the new toys from Epa had finally started being delivered. Tanks and vehicles that had served in Epa, and then in the underground of the Second Expedition, with fresh troops that were well used to the darkness.

And now, he could feel the shift in the air and it wasn’t only from the amount of gunpowder that had been burned away in the past hour. The Tartarians had refused to push over the Ashlands thanks to Sokolowski and his sledgehammer, but they had dug in. Their own trench lines had formed, underground molehills and ridgelines had been fashioned by shovel and magic to redirect, if not stop, the tremendous power of the wind.

But ridgelines and molehills were speedbumps and roadsigns. The issue in any counter-attack had always been that Tartarus had an endless spread of troops, and that they could endlessly send their fodder to trade Imperial ammunition for their lives, more often than not, it Imperial ammunition would be the first to run dry. More rockets and artillery shells flew overhead. Ahead, the tanks were already beginning to spread out, digging long trenches in the ash as they turned, raised their barrels and began direct shelling in line with the artillery.

He was not securing ground here, he knew he wasn’t. He was just another section of the front that Tartarus had to contend with. Another pinprick in the giant. Another hole in their ship. For they were countless, but countless was not infinite. An estimated million could crawl through the rift every day. And if he took ten thousand from another, then he was doing his job. If he took a hundred thousand, then things were going better than expected. And if today’s daily million descended upon him, then they could not descend upon another, and that was the job well done.

From the east, he saw missiles flying in the sky. Not the ground launched rockets that had arrived to service his artillery but the huge air-torpedoes launched from the rear of ships. They split into four, then into four again at the very zenith of the sky. A hundred different light bugs which carved trails of fire into the Ashen Skies’ very final night.

Aliana took a step into Arika’s Ashlands after her namesake had thundered onto the beach, every cannon on it blazing. The graveyard of countless that the Jungle had taken, the graveyard of the Jungle itself, the location where a continent had been cracked open. And now to become the graveyard of those that threatened her precious Arda.

The guns of the Aliana thundered as Aliana herself withdrew her bow, her steel armour dirtying in ash that was either Ardan or Tartarian, although it was all ash to her. From her sides, the division’s worth of troops on board her ship began to descend. A pair of tanks armed with dozers first, to clear the way for the infantry that would hold this location, prepare a landing spot for proper transport, and advance once dawn indicated that the ICDTs had made landfall north of them.

Tartarus’ Ashfront blazed in the horizon further there. It was already seeming to buckle and curl inwards on itself, although the nuclear strikes should be making impact right now, the ICDTs towers would be hitting soon, if not already. But between them and the Ashfront stood a line of demons. Black armour that melded them into a silhouette, a jagged line of spike and spear and cleaver. The wings of greater demons, succubi and incubi already in the air. Their own cursed fires, off-coloured and tinged with purples, circling like vipers around them. The Greater Demons that were her main target, the troops could handle the swarm, she was here to make sure that none of those could reach to start splitting through the armour.

Aliana unslung the bow from her shoulder and jumped down, skipping the ramp of her ship. Behind her, everyone of those minor turrets were already rotating as the main battery set a heart-beat of a pace for the battle. She pulled out an arrow from her back, a new design she had tested back in her home country. Tipped with an explosive powerful, but far too fragile to be mounted into a bullet.

The arrow landed in her shaft as her eyes picked out the first-barn sized silhouette. Loose. The bow hurled and twanged and rattled in her grip, a moment later, one of the black silhouettes was hit by an explosion. It fell backwards over the advancing swarm as naval bombardment came in from the ships in the wave-less grey sludge that was the Central Arika Sea.

And the world began to rumbling. From the countless boots in the north, from the roar of artillery and their explosions, from the vehicles scrambling to draft a beachhead to this shore and the infantry that was already digging in. From the worldshaking impacts of towers and nuclear missiles further over the northern horizon, but most of all, from the east. Where Sokolowski’s Sledgehammer had already existed the double-line range and was preparing for speeds it had never seen before.

“MACH ONE CONFIRMED! HOLD AND THROW!” Someone shouted to the mages of Sokolowski’s army were nothing like the mages of Arcadia, the latter had come in the fine combat dress of the war college, the former were in fatigues that were ripped and torn and dirtied by the year they had spent channelling the Sledgehammer. Battlemage Anton, who had seen Rilia and Esberia, had now been resigned to being nothing more than a communion battery for one of Sokolowski’s own.

But when he felt the rumbling of the world, the shift in air-pressure, the ground begin to give way, all vain ideas that because he had a badge of Arcadia left his mind. Sokolowski’s teams of mages stood on the tops of the local hills, drawn up by magic. They weaved spells simple, although weaves that Anton had never seen before. The air twisted and curled in sideways tornados, and then it simply waited.

The air pressure tightened again until it got hard to breath and Anton felt his skin be pinched in every location at once. His hands shook as he channelled more power to the mage that Sokolowski had assigned them to. The booms came a moment later, constant, and he saw the ripple in the air come from the south. A wall of solid wind, coming so quickly even the dust and ash and rocks and everything else it found on the way struggled to keep up.

Behind it was a valley clean cut out of the ground, without a single jagged edged, as the countryside was illuminated by another group of magicians that were tasked with simply angling the furious winds now, although each team gave it a little speed. Almost fifty lights glinted in the distance as the ultimate group to Anton’s began to spark with magical power. “PUSHING TO NINE HUNDRED!” Someone else shouted. “IT WILL COME FAST! GRAB AND THROW!”

And then, the channelled superstorm was hurling on its line towards them. Angled slightly, pushing the air to be so hard it almost felt drowning. Anton felt his magic be used by the communion, channelled into a funnel, slightly curved once again. And suddenly, it shifted as the sledgehammer came over them. It lasted for no more than a few seconds and Anton was already left red-faced at the end of it. He couldn’t even tell how many winds had gone through that magic. He opened his eyes and saw the mile-valley, perfectly smooth, that had been ripped out of the ground not even a hundred feet from them.

And he turned north, to watch the sledgehammer from behind as the air pressure suddenly began loosening. His ears popped once, then twice. They had hurled Sokolowski’s sledgehammer, supersonic and shattering, further north. General Ekkerson watched it from his antworks in the Kirinyaan Central Mountains. The wall of wind crashed and left small, smouldering hurricanes which peeled off, thrown away as another band of air peeled away.

Reports came through his screen, the mountains in the south were shattering under the level of winds, cameras were cutting out, although not before they caught a final image of the Tartarian plague disappearing. They were being torn apart by the air itself as much as by the debris in the winds. Up north it travelled, losing its power as the magicians in the Double-Line Range prepared for another strike. This one would be slower, and would come be curled to assist the sea landing and General Zalewski’s forces.

But further north-east, where the rays of the sun were beginning to touch and warm up Arda. The Goddess of Death had her arms raised, souls already primed and ready, as she came across yet another Tartarian horde. Neneria’s wave spilled forwards out of the Goddess of Death. A mass of souls that had been conscripted to the Dead Legion, no longer were they arranged troops of Imperial soldiers that had fallen behind her but the drowned dead of the casualties after Continent Cracking. They wove through the Tartarian Horde as fires tried to repel them back.

Curling flames impacted against them, soul-power smashing into soul-power, although for once, it was Tartarus that found itself facing the endless horde. The pale grey-green souls of Neneria’s Dead Legion clawed and rolled over each other, their hands and jaws phasing through armour to strike directly into the hearts of demonic legionnaires. Greater demons were swallowed in serpents of bodies that rose as columns out of the ground, and then closed their jaws over them. Knights on spectral winged horses chased down the flying demons. The ghost of Atis stood by Neneria’s side, his bow notched with an arrow, although the God of the Hunt as a bodyguard was a matter of prestige. There was no need for him to even fire as the silent tsunami rolled onwards.

She would push north, through all of Khmet, until she came across the wasteland left behind the nuclear strike which encircled and wiped out reinforcements to that strike. But as she did, she saw the ash rupture upwards, thrown twice as high as the tallest mountain on this world. The ICDT towers were beginning to hit.

Iliyal looked through the drone images of the disposable machines that had been sent ahead, over Khmet’s grandest cities to inspect the damage. “I can’t believe you’re checking this shit in a battle.” He rolled his eyes, what exactly was he supposed to do in a battle once it started? He was but a man, and Kavaa was but a Goddess of Health, and neither of them were the walking catastrophes that were the grandest of Divinity which possessed magic.

“I’m calling Iniri into Khmet centre. Baalka too.” He looked at Kavaa for a moment, then she had no reaction to the Goddess of Disease but it was always good to double-check with this lot. And around him, the armoured columns that had held Ainai for months, supplemented by a fresh reinforcements of Imperial Knights which weren’t tasked with riding towers, pushed onwards.

“What do you want me to do?” Kavaa asked. Behind the Goddess, grey-haired and armoured in her traditional silver and green, Iliyal caught the sight of Fer’s beastmen smashing into a group of demons under the light-blue sky of dawn. Bodies from both sides flew into the air as from the rear, the orchestra of artillery continued their shelling into the rear lines. The air force was making low sweeps, fighter jets that didn’t have the range to actually support the counter-attack onto the Sassara. They launched rockets from wing-mounted pods or dropped.

“Just keep everyone alive.” Iliyal’s eyes found the set of chained civilians, starving and skinny and devilishly pale. They looked as if they not seen the sun in weeks. And around them, demons flowed, in long lines as Iliyal’s army of Ainai exchanged their rounds from high-explosives to the more careful-armour piercing.

Kavaa lifted her arms up and even Iliyal felt the power of her bountiful health flow into him. Bone and muscle and bruise and cut he had taken in the past few weeks in the chaos of planning this part of the operation fixed itself with a burn that grew so hot he felt as if his heart was going to rip itself apart. “No one is allowed to die on my watch Iliyal.” Kavaa said. “Not you, not me, no one.”

Iliyal saw the effect immediately. A knight thrown high into the air, landing and bouncing off a tank, groaned and rolled onto his front as Kavaa’s power stole his Divine right to die. A minotaur caught in searing purple flames suddenly started to roar and outgrow the fire devouring him. A team of soldiers in a flipped truck that had been charred to ash started to get up. He clicked the radio. “Civilians spotted a mile north, Red Division, go get them.”

Red Division roared as the engines of its armoured personnel carriers came to life. The artillery wouldn’t hit them, planes had scouted the lines in advance, the civilians had just been kept in large batches near the vanguard, the fattest section of the Tartarian army which rode out to meet the Imperials. Iliyal narrowed his eyes as they went to the horizon. He saw the glint of an ICDT tower in the sky, flying south.

Olonia heard the rumble of ashen skies above her head as she disembarked from the transport ship that had breached the Ashfront. The Kassandora, the Hallin, the Aris, all the ships of Callaghan’s fleet had turned broadside and secured the beachhead for the troops. The Goddess of Lubska, in her suit of scalemail jumped into the ash and took a deep breath.

“It’s almost nostalgic.” Tanit landed by her side. Saksma and Paida had been assigned their own beachheads, but the bronze Goddess of Ibya had not been seen fit to command her own divisions yet. Tanks rolled off into the scorched terrain, soot and filth had been dislodged to reveal sand and rock native to Ibya. Troops, largely Ibyan volunteers that had escaped to the Empire, once again stepped back onto their motherland.

“Home Tanit.” Olonia said. “Home. I told you we’d be back.” She took a step forwards, the massive autocannon that was her sniper rifle was unslung from her shoulder and she hefted. “And now, we push as far south as we can. Just as they pushed us.” They got half-way up the beach when the rumble of the swirling apocalypse behind them was accentuated by another rumble. A different tune, one that only got louder as it moved.

“Do you hear the sound?” Tanit asked. And before Olonia could answer, the sky opened up. A tower pierced through ashen skies like a thick spearhead stabbing through boarskin. It plunged into the ground, sending the choking black miasma reeling back like some struck animal being hunted. Then more of the filthy mass from the ground, then Ibya’s own sand, buried and cold for over a year. Immediately, blue veins started to charge up on it, metal panels flew off, Imperial Knights in their glistening armoured jumped down from hidden compartments and the very top of the shot away its panels to reveal a massive, glistening crystal, as large as a car.

But it was the sight above that caused Olonia to stop. She had seen the Ashfront as it travelled up. The curtain of rolling burning hurricanes and red lightning that devoured all it could. But the tower had punctured apocalypse, and revealed a sky of light blue dawn “That’s dawn Tanit”. And now, she watched Arda’s steel javelins come back to hunt the beast. A hail of towers, some already descending to hit their own position, others flying further south. And between them, huge flocks of steel birds. The high-altitude bombers of the Empire, that could soar so high the dirt ash could not clog their engines.

“That’s the sun over Ibya.” Tanit whispered back. And as dawn rose over Ibya and its cold desert, night had already receded in fear of the Goddess of Chaos west of them, as Olephia led the counterattack to crack the fortress that the demons had been forging in Kirinyaa.

The Goddess of Chaos stood in her purple dress, carried by the artifacting of reality around her. Red lightning ripped through the sky and devoured the gravity trying to pull her down, and the flames that tried to eat her.

“For chaos descends.” Olephia began. “And all is brought to end.” Each. “Now rest little demons. Your fort is sent back.” She spread her arms out, lightning sprawling out around her. “Be. Unmade. Be. Destroyed.” Each word knocked another set of atoms, supercharged them, ruptured them, and brought about another sun on that exploded on Arda’s surface. Olephia stared at the fortress. “Suffer.” She paused and watched the next sun disappear, the massive mountain of steel cracked and suddenly lost one of its towers. “Annihilation.”

And there was no more castle, there was not even the black sky above. Olephia looked up to witness the missiles travelling down south. She tapped her radio. “Kass.” Careful now, not to say anything too long. “It is done.” Another nuclear explosion burst out.

Kassandora received the transmission from Olephia and marked off another point on her paper map. There was a digital one, but that one wasn’t real. Some things never changed. Some things needed to be done on paper, by her own hand, for them to be real. “Goddess Olephia confirms! The west is open! Prepare for landing!” Someone shouted in the blinking control room.

“Initiate north-west landings.” Kassandora send. “Give the green light to Admiral Sprance, he’s good to go.” She drew a line down on her map of Eparika where Sprance’s fleet should go, but her eyes back to the centre of the Sassara. And for once, she did look up at the digital screen.

The pair of Raptors with Arascus and Elassa on board were already circling the Sassara. Him and Elassa were there, and they had a hundred ICDT towers hurtling towards them. They were all tiny arrows on the massive screen, it breached all military doctrine, but it didn’t matter. They had already sent nukes to clear the local area, they were sending ten thousand knights and magicians, across those hundred towers, they would receive air support, then they would be dropping an army on parachutes, the air transport fleet was enroute too, although those planes would be landing to deploy more troops. Or crashing into the ash. Kassandora had written the planes themselves off the moment they set, goal was to get troops there.

“Send word to Arascus.” Kassandora said. “ICDT’s impacting in under a minute.”

Arascus watched ashen skies be ripped away from the surface of Arda, flowing ash as high as the raptors, and then took a deep breath as he stared at the kilometre-long rift across the sand and ash turned to black glass by nuclear hellfire. It had not even been an hour yet, and already the rift was bubbling and spilling over with ash that bubbled as whatever foul magics the demons were using tried to push it back into the atmosphere.

The hundred ICDT towers landed, they made final readjustments in flight, six were lost on impact, slamming directly into the cliffs of the ridge and then toppling downwards. The opening to Tartarus had been larger than predicted. He saw the massive hand of an archdemon reveal itself from that black mass. And he saw the channels and cliffs that the demons used to spill their endless hordes onto Arda.

Like writhing rivers of ants, as numerous as the drops of water in an ocean, screaming and shouting as they charged onto his precious Arda. One final salute, to Elassa, to the Raptors, to Kassandora, to every soldier in the Empire and, most importantly, to the Knights that had been thrown to the edge of hell so that they could buy an opening for the Empire to end this work.

Arascus stepped off the plane and into the air. Elassa, divinity’s comet, shot to his side, her armour, her jewels, her chains of crystal made her into a blinding lighthouse. She would contain the ash and push it back, just get rid of it in whatever way she could, whilst Arascus would deal with the troops. The God of Pride pulled his eyes away from the scar across Arda’s grandest desert and towards the north.

The sky opened up gold behind him. It was a grand sight.

But somewhere behind that northern horizon, a grander sight was coming.

The FPN-1 was coming.