The question to whether Divines can be killed is not one of ‘if’ but rather one of ‘how’. There is no such thing as an unkillable Divine. Even those who are unbelievably tough cannot survive a beheading. Some situations are handled from start onwards. We inspect what we are working with, we then analyse that goal, we then take steps to achieving the goal. But grand strategies work better when they are planned backwards. We have a concrete end goal, we enable a situation which leads into that goal. We then see what leads to that situation. And we work backwards until we get to a point where we can begin taking concrete steps.

Here, the end goal is the separation of a Divine’s head from their body.

A single human has no chance whatsoever at being able to perform this feat. A dozen do not either. Ten thousand would struggle, yet at that scale, is it impossible? If it takes a hundred mortals to get a scratch on a Divine, then that shows we are not working against impossibility. Instead, we are negotiating the price of blood that will be paid down.

Blood will be paid of course, but it is through overwhelming firepower, through sheer force, through shock and through awe that we will get to a point when the price of a Divine’s life will not be measured in millions or thousands but hundreds or tens.

Humanity does have certain advantages when facing Divinity. A Divine is irreplaceable; a human is not. A Divine will never sacrifice their own life; a human will see it as an act of honour. A Divine can grow exhausted and weak; all Humanity has an endless reserve of energy to draw from.

Although each Divine may be an island and each human may be a drop of water, it is not unheard of for the ocean to swallow lands.

- Excerpt from “Steel and Sorcery”, written by Goddess Kassandora, of War.

Anarchia looked up at the sky and flexed her neck. A V-Shape of a dozen arrowheads was coming from the north. Another one was coming from west, this one fifteen black planes that were like silhouettes against the bright blue sky. Behind each one was the white string of condensation that planes always painted across the sky.

So the Empire had finally struck. Anarchia stood in the town square of Ordeaux, all around her great blocks that were massive structures of sandstone. A fire raged to the north, across the square where the sorcerers had escaped to. A crowd of people was running away from the flames as her heroes got to work on trying to contain flames. Buildings were demolished and fires were stamped out, one man carried a huge shipping container from the river. He hovered a dozen feet in the air, and then threw the metal box at the fire. It exploded in a shower of water.

More of her men were working clearing the survivors from the collapsed hotel building. Anarchia had needed to enter when she felt her men dying. Now though? There were bigger problems to attend to. Anarchia squinted and used her Divine eyesight to see make out the fine details on the planes approaching from the north. They were huge jets with the wings built into the body and two square engines in the rear. A set of flaps opened on each plane, the Goddess realised was watching bomb bays open.

Anarchia gave up on the chase against the sorcerers. When she had stolen Fer’s strength, she realised that the best way to use power was not to question it but to trust herself. Well, now it was time to see how much she actually did trust herself. Anarchia twisted and cracked her neck as she stretched and channelled the energy of the sorcerers.

Red sorcery flashed around her.

There we go.

“Bring me a camera on Ordeaux, I want to see the fight!” Iliyal shouted across his bunker.

Corporal Aaron Black angled his helicopter to the side as he raised the volume in his headphones to drown out the whirring of the blades above him, the rocking guitar solo got slightly louder. To the north, the bombing run had started. To the west, the planes were a half-minute away. The moment the first set finished, the second set would start. The Corporal sat holding the control stick between his legs with the co-pilot next to him. Four different screens displayed various camera views the co-pilot was using his own set of controls to angle a camera on the bottom of the vehicle. “We have someone coming. Seven o-clock down.” The co-pilot suddenly said and Corporal Black pressed a button to flick through cameras. There was indeed a man coming, although the monochrome of the screen displayed him only a white silhouette against a grey background.

“I’m pulling her up.” A lever was pulled, the helicopter levelled out and started to rise straight into the air. Oxygen hissed as the machine’s electronics automatically flooded the cockpit with fresh oxygen. The second helicopter from the INS Resolution was beginning to circle around the city, even higher than Black’s was.

“Keep it steady.” The co-pilot added.

“I am.” Black replied as he held the helicopter steady raised the altitude even more. The underside camera showed that the flying man had stopped the chase. They made it high enough then, that was good. The corporal wasn’t willing to risk losing traction on the blades. “How’s the view? You found her?”

“Two seconds…” Something click and the display in Corporal Black’s helmet flashed a message in the top left corner: Lock-on Achieved. Corporal Black flicked through the camera displays once again until he got to the one the co-pilot was using. It was centred directly on Ordeaux’s town square with a huge figure in the middle of the screen.

There was only one divine it could be at this point. The camera became unfocused and blurry as the ground around the Goddess cracked. Cobblestones shot upwards into the air. Corporal Black pulled his helicopter into a sideways dive immediately when he realised those stones were moving.

Iliyal watched through the camera feed of Skyseer One. Intuition and caution had proved correct. They had been correct not to deploy Anassa to hunt her down. Anarchia could in fact steal sorcery.

“Sparrow One is evading, it’s reporting anti-air fire!” One of the twenty crewmembers on the bridge of the INS Resolution shouted as Captain Eveson stood in front of his captain’s chair. He wasn’t even paying attention to the scurrying sailors, instead his vision was fixed directly on the set of bombers coming in from the north. “Sparrow Two is evading too! They’re launching rocks into the air!”

“Input last known coordinates!” Eveson’s voice boomed across the bridge as he stroked his smooth chin. The Allian Bombers began their bombardment. Some of them would be carrying the new laser-guided munitions from Iboud, others would be relying on the old reliable bombs used in Kirinyaa and in Epa. They began to drop one after the other in a sequence as if they were steel dominos.

“Guns calibrated! Missiles locking on!” Another man shouted.

“Delay on the missiles! Engineers are manually opening the locks!” Eveson didn’t bother to wait, he had half expected everything to break down when this was the Resolution’s virgin voyage. The goal was simple, the Goddess would be drowned in overwhelming force. Iliyal had explained the strategy, they weren’t here to grind her down with thousands of tiny blows. They were here to behead her in one clean slice.

But as Captain Eveson was about to give the order, he saw tiny black spots colour the sky as they launched from Ordeaux. A rain of iron loaded with napalm and gunpowder that was the executioner’s blow for Ordeaux. The first bomb hit the north of the city. A great cloud of dust went up, a building toppled, Ordeaux began to scream, fires spread out, the second bomb hit, the third. More flames. More dust, a heavy fog of concrete dust swept over the city from the north.

And Ordeaux struck back.

A thousand different stones shot up from the city’s square. More projectiles flew out from other locations in the city. It was no anti-air missile nor flak shell, instead it was car doors thrown into the sky. A sign post. Rocks and roof tiles. Individual bricks thrown as fast as bullets. Captain Eveson saw one of the Resolution’s helicopters be struck. There was no ball of fire but the machine lost control. It started smoking and then plummeted to the ground like a meteorite. A building hid the explosion. “Sparrow Two reports a hit!”

Iliyal watched one of the bombers on the screen take a hit. A signpost had it impaled its wing like a javelin. The plane began a nosedive into ground. Below it, Ordeaux burned.

Captain Eveson could not peel his eyes away from the control panel at the top. It was the missile’s manual locks. Below it was the bridge’s enormous window. Through it, he saw Ordeaux strike back at the bombers that were hammering into it. It was as if someone had cast a pale, off-coloured smokescreen over the city. Its northern district had been thoroughly annihilated and for every bomb that was thrown away by a superhero’s throw or intercepted by a piece of debris launched from the ground, three managed to strike.

Four red lights left.

A second bomber from the Allian squad was hit. This time it had been struck by a buckshot of brick. The bombs still on the plane exploded into a great ball of flame. The arrowhead formation split apart as the other bombers started to turn and escape from the explosion. There was no wreckage left to plummet to the ground, instead the was torn apart by the force of its own munitions from within. A segment of its wing the bird to its side. This one caught fine and immediately spun into a downwards spiral.

Three red lights left.

A team of superheroes launched into the sky and proceeded to give chase to Sparrow One as the helicopter angled itself to escape. It pulled as high as possible and flew over the ocean. A set of bombs were launched from several of the planes, they turned and twisted in mid-air and aimed specifically for a target in the centre of the city. A swarm of masonry intercepted two of them. One of the radio operators by Captain Eveson’s side shouted to no one in particular. “Sparrow One requests support!”

“All secondary batteries have permission to fire.”

Two red lights left.

The INS Resolution opened fire with its AA guns as Sparrow One made a final evasive roll. The trio of flying men that were pursuing it were submerged in blacks clouds that were immediately pockmarked by the heavy automatic guns that served as the Resolution’s final lines of defence. And three bodies, or rather what remained of them, fell into the blue ocean and were swallowed up by thoroughly disappointed waves. The radio operator shouted again. “Sparrow One sends its thanks!”

One red light left.

Ordeaux roared as the laser-guided bombs exploded in its very centre. A huge pillar of dust immediately shot up out of the city. It reached the height of a skyscraper, dwarfing over the entire city as the first bomber squad broke formation. The timing had been perfect, immediately the second squad followed up and began to drop its own payloads. Captain Eveson pulled his eyes away from the city in the distance and to the ceiling.

No red lights left.

“FIRE!”

The INS Resolution roared and shook. Its four guns fired one after the other. Four massive shells screamed through the air as the ship recoiled. The whistling of rockets setting off turned from a low rumble into a high-pitched whistle as they launched out of their pods and into the air. The missiles appeared through the window, fly high and straight at the city, pinpointing for the location which the two Sparrow helicopters had marked as the last spot Anarchia was seen.

Shell from naval gun, then guided bomb, then cruise missile after cruise missile. It all struck Anarchia’s location until the Goddess was hidden by a layer of smoke. A few people in the control room cheered. Iliyal did not.

“Do you think it will collapse?” Lyca asked Edmonton as he saw dust come from the ceiling. All thoughts of getting out of the city had been abandoned when they realised bombs were dropping. The best thing to do now would be to wait the bombing run out and then get away in the chaos and confusion rather than risk escape now. They couldn’t be fast anyway, Eliza and Fleur were still out of the fight. So the two men had found the closest building that led underground and took shelter there. It was a large car park with some twenty or so other people scattered about in small groups of fours or fives.

Edmonton snapped his fingers and the air around him condensed to water. It formed a pillar, the spread out to hold up the ceiling. “Not anymore.” Edmonton said. The two men turned to the other people in the car park.

“Magic.” Lyca shouted. Surely the word must be similar enough, right? Magic was magic.

“La Magie.” A man said as if he knew what it was. “Merci.” Lyca and Edmonton both raised an eyebrow at each other.

“Did he just ask for mercy?” Lyca said.

“I think that means thank you.”

Iliyal waited for the smoke to clear. The guillotine had dropped but the guillotine was only the method. The music would stop when Iliyal saw heads roll.