The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]

Kassandora stared at the open wound that split the Sassara, still leaking its filthy writhing blood onto Arda. The ICDT towers had cameras on them, satellites that passed over the area were constantly updating one of the large screens on the wall with a stream of fresh images. It had to be a dozen miles long, easily the length of any of the Empire’s grandest cities. There were ruins there too, no longer standing but the squares, hexagons and flat geometry were obvious signs of constructions which must have been wiped away by the nuclear strike.

“Goddess.” One of the captains asked nervously, standing up from his station and taking off his cap. “I know…” He trailed off. Behind him, the screens updated again, the first waves of transport were going to hit soon, strategic bombers before them, a set of nukes further south, Arascus and Elassa would be out of the blast range.

“Speak.” The satellite image changed again, an archdemon was coming through. Large enough for its massive red mass to be made out clearly even from space. A red pimple on the black ocean that was already reaching forth with its tendrils to try and secure another foothold upon Arda.

“I know the Emperor and Goddess Elassa are there, but should we not send reinforcements?” Another fresh shot from their eyes in space. A plate of gold that blocked out the whole centre of the rift.

Arascus stood in the air and stared down at the writhing horde as Elassa began her incantation in ancient tongues reserved purely for magicians. He gave her a section of space, enough so that the woman wouldn’t slap her arm against him even though he served as the main barrier between the Goddess of Magic and the filth below her. Another hand appeared on the edge of the rift, the Archdemon was going to be climbing out. He had seen it before.

Kassandora leaned forward to mutter into her microphone. “Launch everything.”

“Kill the demon.” Arascus said. “Then split the ash, we’re holding until Mors arrives.” Arascus cast his hands in the air, above him, the endless plates of gold that illuminated Arda’s beautiful dawn began to unsheathe the God of Pride’s never-ending arsenal. Every weapon in all history ever forged slid out. Glistening spear and twinkling halberd that illuminated in the morning light; sword short, sword long, sword curved and great and sword known as falchion or scimitar or sabre, made a ceiling of steel stalactites. Axe and hammer and lance and pike slid out, vibrating with the energy Arascus channelled into them.

Anassa felt the shift immediately as her plane made a sharp turn and began to accelerate.

Knight Julius paused for one second as the rest of his team moved to intercept with the warriors from the four nearby towers the opening of a valley. Rifles were already unleashing every round they had as mages began channelling their defensive barriers in preparation for the rains. The rain of magic that would come from the glowing star that was Elassa right in the centre of the rift, the rain of steel that shivered and glistened, and the rain of diamonds from ash being transmuted. Across the rift, he saw an ICDT tower finish its pulsing buildup of energy, the crystal on its peak sparked bright for a moment, and then released a rolling wave that caught onto another, and another, and another, and the ash that was already spilling and threatening to swallow Arascus and Elassa started to sparkle.

Admiral Callaghan saluted the sight of another tower carving a trail of flame across the light-blue azure of dawn. “Godspeed.”

Arascus plunged his arms forwards as Elassa released her buildup of energy. Steel soared downwards, skewering into the horde, embellishing them with new spines of silver. Severing limb from limb, plunging straight into the backs of demons, through the flames that they had started to conjure to try and shield themselves from his rain. His eyes passed over the teams of hundreds of Knights that were coming in to intercept the openings and the rest that were clambering out from the massive rift.

First Strategic Bomber Squadron, “Excelsior” approaches the rift.

“Back to your hell demon.” Elassa said as she finished charging her spell. Without a communion to pull power from, it would be difficult to unleash a Worldbreaking, the only real way for her to even consider harming a monster the size of a mountain. But she did not need to summon the meteors showers that had once terrorized Arda when the sky was giving her an endless source of ammunition. The towers that were active around the rift pulsed again and the ash that was returning, from the edges of the storms that suddenly found itself with a hole and from above, where it was falling from space, formed into white diamonds. Elassa collected those diamonds, smashed them together, supercharged them with mana from her glowing body, and sent them straight into the archdemon as it strained, cracking the ground, toppling another dozen towers through the very shifting of the ground.

As many as she could together, until they amalgamated into the size of a castle, a whirlwind of crystal circling around her, she sharpened the bottom to a point and tapped into the mana to curl its edges inwards, to make it unstable and dangerous. The sort of magic that when wielded would ensure a mage could only receive an expulsion or a promotion in Arcadia. Until a lighthouse that shined equally across all its jagged parts hovered in the air next to her. “Back to your hell, and never return to my world.” She flung it into the archdemon’s back.

Satellite Red-Star records what would be known as the Catalyst Bomb.

Arascus shielded his size as a bright explosion of pure, light-blue energy rippled up from the inside of the rift. He stared into the archdemons massive eyes as it made one final push and suddenly gasped. Fingers the size of towers lost their grip. The knights pushed onwards, his storm of steel moved its terrible gaze the centre of the rift to the edges, spreading out and hurling towards the massive swarms that were only being held back by the buckling lines of Knights he had personally trained.

Magic weaved in between the armoured warriors, mages that grabbing at the rain of diamonds coming from the sky and lobbing it towards the mass of demons, following Elassa’s example and supercharging their own explosions, or weaving their own beasts of flames that tore into endless spillage of Tartarus which tried to regain a foothold over Arda. The rocky ground of stone charred by nuclear hellfire split into cracks under the shaking of the Archdemon’s fall. And under a sound he recognised long from the Great War, a sound that Arda could only aspire to, but that had been called colloquially as the Tartarian Anthem. He glanced to the horizon and saw demons that must have come out their hole earlier. All around them, like wasps swarming back to protect their nest. Thousands? No. Probably more than a million.

“Tell the planes to accelerate.” Kassandora said. “Issue Code-Crimson.” Code-Crimson, to burn through fuel and engine and get to target as fast as possible, to know that they would be ejecting and getting picked up after the battle ended.

Knight Julius jumped away from a demon charging him, carried by the strength of the enchanted armour, a shadow overtook them. He glanced upwards at the massive six-engined bombers flying over them, their cargo bays already opened. From besides Arascus, a golden portal opened sideways to bring forth tower shield that slid out to cover Elassa as she recovered from the strike on the Archdemon and to cover his head.

And the steel rain began to fall, into the rift, into the ocean of ash that permanently lay half-way down its walls, where the archdemon had disappeared. Every few seconds, it would bubble with magic, send out another plume that would have gone into the atmosphere had the towers not caught it. And those plums would fall back down in a torrent of diamonds, sent back as Arda’s penultimate gift to Tartarus. The stone had already become a graveyard of blades and broken bodies, and Arascus called upon more steel. He would burn the entire armoury before he gave way here. And the world shook as the carpet bombing came in to assist and clear the ground.

The final ICDT tower, numbered two-zero-three-zero ‘New World Order’, crosses into Arika.

“Reinforcements are landing.” Arascus said to Elassa, although he doubted the Goddess of Magic was listening. The next set of planes were coming low to the ground, their engines already sputtering under the dust thrown up by the battle. Their landing gear broke immediately under impact although that had been expected. The planes came to harsh stops and were already blowing their doors open.

It was a whole army, complete with tanks and vehicles and infantry that disembarked as quickly as it could, and it would buy them how long? Arascus watched the apocalypse rebound back towards them, the demons on the edge of the horizon were close enough for him to strike now. They raced forwards on their burning steeds or with their hounds, all clawing and screaming, as their own mages prepared for a counter offensive back onto the Imperial fist that had slammed into the very heart of their Ardan invasion.

Second Strategic Bomber Squadron, “Superior” approaches the rift.

Anassa blinked out of existence from her transport and high in the air above the rift. And she appeared into a field of carnage of towers about to get swarmed from behind. Her attention dropped to hole overspilling with bubbling ash in the centre. And then to the chaos around it. For a moment, she saw Arascus stood over the battlefield, in his gleaming silver armour that bounced away the flickers of dawn off it, silhouetted by a storm of steel. For a moment, he saw her. For a moment, they exchanged nods.

And Anassa disappeared, reappearing as an Anassa in front of one tower, already unleashing a flurry of crimson wires to cut the demons about to make contact with one tower. As another Anassa, channelling a huge barrier of devouring crimson that swallowed a blazing serpent prepared to hit another. A third Anassa, to rip through the lines of demonic sorcerers and flameseerers channelling yet another spell. A fourth and a fifth. Until the ground was laced by butterflies of her sorcery that collapsed into blades and ripped out of demons as lions, that themselves split into picturesque snowflakes which danced the light of day into a flurry of colours.

Squadron “Mors”, led by Captain Deferre aboard Dragon-One, bearing the FPN-1 Nene, approaches the rift.

“I’M OPENING IT!” Elassa screamed and screamed again. “I’M OPENING IT!” She channelled all her magic as Dragon-One began its descent to make sure that the FPN-1 travelled entirely through the rift. She pushed through as much as power as she could, defending her life was on Arascus right now, no attention to be spared. The theory had been tested, it should work. It was the most basic of spells. The air started to move around her, faster and faster until it became an invisible tornado, marked only by the diamonds it had caught up from the falling sky.

And then the tornado pushed downwards like a boring drill. The lake of ash that was slowly filling the began to spin into a whirlpool of all the monochromes, from the pure white of a snow to the pitch black of oil and all the grey in between. It shifted, it spun faster and faster as sweat burst out over Elassa’s head. But she channelled more, until that spin started to carry its own momentum and pushed the ash to the sides of the rift. Until her tornado bored a hole to another world. Until the line of sight was perfectly clear.

She looked down, and she saw Tartarus. It’s sky? It’s ceiling? It’s buildings maybe? Dark-red rock and blazing pyres, hanging from the bottom. Elassa blinked as she realised it was a hole at the floor. A massive hole, but perfectly circular like a proper portal. Widened to about a mile, with ash being… poured in? She held her arms out, the crystals in her armour and her dress straining under the sheer of magical flow they had to put forth from her body and into the material reality.

She held it, the ash around the edges of the crack spinning, carried away by the force of the hurricane. And then she saw the battle around her. Anassa had arrived, she had not even seen or felt her most favoured disciple get to the battle. Irinika must have gotten here too, the perfect black spheres crackling in the western horizon were always signs that the Goddess of Darkness was about. The cracked ICDT towers, half of them had already fallen over, some of them had even been ripped apart or melted down. The crashed planes and tanks and infantry and knights and magicians on the ground.

And the flames rolling in from all sides, cast by countless of Tartarus’ magicians, like searing tidal waves of orange and red and the unholy demonic purple. And upon those tidal waves rode their own magicians and their own constructs of blaze. Snakes and birds and javelins and all manners of conjurations that crashed down to sear away the Ardan immune system about to expel an illness from the planet.

They rose up, towards Squadron Mors, five massive bombers, Dragon-One flanked by two on each side. The FPN-1 on one, nuclear bombs on the other to destroy the virus bomb should a Divine not be present. She tried to reach, and she felt her hurricane shift and crumble before she regained control over it, and she glanced back towards Mors.

Dragon-One disappeared, swallowed by a burning serpent of flame.

Arascus did not even wait for an instant to pass when he saw the plane disappear. The call had to be made immediately. The FPN-1 could not be allowed to spread on this world. The Goddess of Magic was here to hold the ash back, but she was also their contingency for a failed drop. He turned around to the comet of blinding light that sat still in the air. “Arascus.” Elassa whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head; it wasn’t her fault. “Channel through Anassa, annihilate this entire area.”