It is only after the Great War has finished and I sit here, only after I have the recovered documents from Imperial officers that I can sit and truly analyse Imperial military policy. Whereas they have a crucial foundation in the Arascan Hierarchy and organisation that the Tri-World Alliance lacked that should be replicated, it was not just that. Arascus’ orders, as absolute as they were, turned out to be rare. Kassandora’s likewise. The amount of autonomy given to each Legion is still staggering to me. Generals were supplied, they would know what they had to achieve, they would know of coming resource shortages and issues with supply lines, and they would be allowed to act in whatever methods they saw fit as long as they followed Arascus’ basic creed of wartime ethics.

The Erdely region, for example, possessed no frontline. The Fourth Legion had been assigned to it, under the command of General Tibor Relio. Whereas most documents have been destroyed, it has become clear that it was Relio and not Baalka of Disease that was responsible for their inception. The Goddess may have facilitated them, but it was Relio’s mind that thought up of the idea. Compare this tactic to the Eight Legion, led by Iliyal Tremali, which relied on static defences in the summer, then would break up and disappear into the snows to raid us. Every summer, Tremali would give up ground in some fashion, every winter, his forces would make a raiding offensive. The White Pantheon armies to Northern Epa would not be defeated in combat but by the weather itself. The Sassaran Legion became such a headache that even their defeat has left questions to be answered. Fer of Beasthood has escaped, along with a sizable portion of her beastmen. The overwhelming forces brought in to quell simply were not capable of catching up to groups numbering less than a hundred warriors at a time.

Adaptability is the word that should be used. For every part that the Empire was grand, it was two parts adaptable. The tactics and strategies developed where cohesive, and they were unique, fit to the situation presented. And to be able to replicate this, I cannot say how. Order strategies are descended from more than a millennia of tradition. The Empire may be a fresh bureaucracy, but they have shown how well they fare in the Great War. Anyone who looks upon the Great War and declares that there is nothing worth learning should be removed from office for there are obviously blind. Kassandora Of War fosters innovation, she has always done so, she will always do so.

Even I, as the Goddess of Peace, recognize this. She is too precious of an asset to throw away.

There may come a time when Arda shall upon her once again.

- “Kassandora Deliberations”, a vote within the White Pantheon on whether the Goddess of War should be executed or imprisoned. This stance was taken by Goddess Fortia, of Peace.

Iliyal around a table in the central strategy council. A room well-lit and inglorious. No great paintings hung on the wall for they had been replaced by monitors and screens keeping track of progress, no statues, no alcohol, just coffee and water, nothing of the like. It was as if Iliyal was back in the Great War. And in some regards, it felt glorious. He looked over the map of Northern Arika and Southern Epa. Lines to indicate the three frontlines. Then more An emergency meeting had been declared with Olonia’s newest communication.

And so Iliyal watched everyone line up. The elves he had been grooming into commanders sat together in a trio. Beryon for the western front, Menith for the southern Rilian, Aryon for the eastern. Director Arecles to represent the War College of Arcadia for Elassa had not bestowed a rank of Archmage onto anyone yet. Trosk for internal affairs. Malam and Helenna both attended through screens. Their jobs were too important to be recalled specifically for attending and both had been willing to make themselves test subjects in how well a virtual meeting could be ran.

“Where is Arascus?” Malam asked as everyone was sitting down. She was sitting in some dark room with no door. Every few moments, SIS soldiers would appear in that doorway as they moved from one side to the other.

“The UNN is inept.” Iliyal answered back. “They had trouble with the fuel, it is fixed now. He will be in Doschia at night. All the planes stationed in the UNN are returning. A strategic bomber will carry the Emperor and Kavaa back. Tomorrow morning meeting, he’ll be here.” Iliyal looked around at the room. No one was mentioning the Raptor issue. When they gained sentience, Iliyal did not know. But they had and now they were a flight-risk in themselves. The birds were so temperamental that they refused test flights. The engines simply would not spark when ignition was pressed. Engineering teams had no answer on what to do.

“Ahh.” Malam said. “Classic.”

“I’ll sum it up so we can move on, they’re fucking incompetent. We have something to discuss.” Iliyal replied and Malam burst out in laughter. Even when smiling, the colourless-white hair and the pitch-black eyes obviously made some of the civilian officials look away in discomfort. “Now, two things, the transmission from the One-Seventeenth and Esberia.” Iliyal looked around the room. “Trosk, Esberia first.”

“Esberia has requested Imperial protection Grand Marshal.” Trosk said.

“We accept of course.” Helenna said.

“Of course.” Iliyal said. He turned to Beryon. The elf sat up straighter, black uniform like the rest of them, with a tall cap and crested into a peak. “Beryon, have you reviewed the Lightning Digs?”

“I have.” The elf replied, his voice steady even as Iliyal sent a piercing gaze into him.

“You have the green light.”

And that was Esberia done.

Victory at any cost.

Admiral Callaghan sat on the bridge of the Imperial flagship, the INS Kassandora. His crew and staff officers walked around the flat digital map on the ground, they chattered amongst themselves. They gave updates to ashen skies, although it had appeared on the map already, tracked by satellite imagery. When Iliyal Tremali had told him to fight as he wished, he had been overwhelmed. The elf had personally admitted to not being skilled in naval doctrine and to try anything and everything, that any idea, no matter how farcical, should be tested out. Better now than later Iliyal had said.

So Admiral Callaghan watched the little arrows slowly move across the coastal map of Northern Ibya. Kassandora may have been the Goddess of War but precious few wars had been naval in the past. And those that had were with ships of wood rather than ships of steel. Ships powered by sail and oar, rather than ships powered by diesel and electricity. Ships that had archers and rams, not ships that had cannons and missiles.

The slate was clean, it was Callaghan’s to write. So he would write it. What he could, he had based off the ground doctrine. Caravans were supply ships, light cruisers and destroyers made for their patrols. Armies became fleets. Naval vessels would operate under the same doctrine and tactics that independent artillery divisions in the land forces used. At least until Callaghan could think of a better way to use them.

The first fleet would meet the ashfront near Turt. The second fleet was assigned to Anghazi. The third would support Orripoli. The first would join with the third to assist with the defence and take as many of them out as possible. The rest of the ships were split into smaller squadrons, those would prowl the seas. Submarine wolfpacks, once built to counter Alanktydan sea dominance had been assigned in teams of four. The rest…

Well, Admiral Callaghan would not be surprised if his ships became bunkers and frontlines to assist Rilian cities. The images from Arika had prepared them and they had almost crushed morale. If the men did not have families back home, then Callaghan was sure they would mutiny. But they had family in Epa, each and every single one of them. And each and every single one of them would be the first line of defence against another world. Captain Elson, the man in charge of communications, suddenly looked up from his computer screen. “Fleet Admiral. There’s a call from the Emperor’s Hand. He requests to speak to you directly.”

“Send him over.” Callaghan declared.

“Admiral, this is Iliyal Tremali speaking.” Admiral Callaghan would recognise the voice anywhere. The elf on the other side took a sigh and slowed down. “Have you seen the images from the One-Seventeenth?” The images of the desert being devoured by clouds of grey and black that stretched from the east to the west, every commander had received them so that they could brace themselves.

“I have.” Who hadn’t?

“Admiral, the information I will give you will be crucial, do not let your fear dissuade you.” And that was how Callaghan knew whatever he was about to hear would be utterly terrible. Never, not once in his life, had he heard an Imperial commander give a word of warning before giving information.

Callaghan took a dozen seconds to steel himself for he was about to hear. “Understood.”

“Ashen skies have been reclassified. The update to Imperial maps will come today. There’s an ashfront and there’s ashen skies proper. Admiral, the ashfront is the terrifying section. Ashen skies themselves seem relatively unchanged, the freak weather is contained only to the ashfront. We expect castles and heavy fortifications will be able to withstand the ashfront as long as it does not idle.”

Immediately, Callaghan’s mind went to work. Submarines could be sent underneath the waters then to scout it out. They may even be potentially able to surface and take images. “Understood.”

“Under your command are floating fortresses. Smaller vessels will be unable to hold but heavy cruisers from the Zawitz model and larger are expected to withstand. If the situation calls for it, you will be expected towards, into and through the ashfront. It lasts for just over twenty minutes. At full speed and going straight into it, you should clear it in five.”

Victory unlike any ever seen before.

Agrita stood, hands behind her back as she stood on a cliff on Rilia’s most southern coast. Beautiful waters, always warm, always vivid, light blue and turquoise. Teeming with birds and dolphins and whales and sharks and fish and every else that had come. But deep they weren’t and everyone knew that. A mountain would be able to saunter across those waters in the span of a day if not less.

When Iliyal had told her to be wary of an initial push, she had expected the Empire to deploy anti-air. Maybe ships. Not… Not whatever it was doing right now. She had seen the trenches and bunkers hastily scrambled together during the Epan War, when Fortia had stepped onto Agrita’s shores with her army. That had been digging in. There were even fortification efforts back then, cities would have walls hastily erected around them. Anything to stop the Guardian’s onslaught.

This though?

The full might of the Empire had come down to terraform the Rilian shoreline. Northern Rilia was getting bunkers, southern Rancais was getting trenches and new roads. The eastern front would have Arcadia as a beachhead against apocalypse. And here? In southern Rilia?

Agrita watched a team of mages from the Imperial Magical War College of Rilia. Another two hundred magicians had been brought in from Arcadia. From Kaczaw in Lubska. From Hallin in Doschia. The sorcerers had been massed. Agrita looked over the ocean as it bumbled and roared. Waves crashed against cliffs that had once been torn rock, now smoothed down and reinforced with steel beams to stop them from crashing down. Trains were working around the clock, bringing raw metals and then tipping them onto the flattened ground. The only pieces of armour that had not been taken underground by the Second Expedition were being towed or driven into position: great artillery that looked like ancient phalanx formations Agrita had once read about in history books.

Islands rose out of the water. At first, Olonia didn’t know what they were planning on building. No one had informed. Now, she could tell they massive spears as if the ocean itself was raising a spearwall of black basalt. On the beaches themselves, the Imperial Penal Legion worked. They dug up the sand with shovels and loaded mines into position.

And castles rose out of the cliffs and the stones. Mages in Imperial black and white uniforms, long coats on them all, stood in communion as they copied each other’s motions. Staves and wands, their tips glowing shining with the light of pure magic forced the metal from the trains and bent or moulded it into shape. It started to glow and smoke and weld together under the power of their supernatural flames and it made castle wall and tower, crenulation and trench, tank ditch and huge craters from which mortar squads could operate out of.

Once, Olonia had read that the Great War had taken so long because wherever an Imperial army marched, they would be in a fortified position. They either sieged castles or they were being sieged. She had always thought it was simply paraphrasing to call Kassandora genius. Now, she realised how mistaken that was. Two days it had taken them and already there wasn’t a tree in sight. Two days and stationary guns were being fixed into place.

Two days and the mountains to the north were being tunnelled into. Their, the Empire was placing the same weapons that had killed the Goddess of Anarchia. Agrita did not know what they were, but she knew they were going underground, into huge bunkers to cover them from the ashfront. Power transformers were being connected, every power station in Rilia was to be working at almost capacity to charge them, from the grandest nuclear plant to the dirtiest coal burner.

And even then, she heard news that engineers were already half way through Rancais, dragging power lines from Rancais’ own electricity grid and their tremendous network of nuclear plants. Agrita stared at her unrecognizable coastline and she turned south.

She had thought she had seen the Empire get serious during the Anarchia Crisis.

That had been mere play compared to this.

What exactly was coming?

Victory to smite notions of defeat away from history.

Andres, Rafael and Mateo all hid underneath a push as another patrol passed by. Any thoughts that the soldiers who were coming marching down here would stop for the night had passed once they started turning on flashlights. The three young boys, no older than thirteen, all crawled towards the edge of the bush to get a better look at this glorious Empire they had heard of.

This glorious Empire that was supposed to protect their precious Esberia. The sound of construction vehicles working in the distance was only getting louder. “There!” Rafael pointed, although it was impossible to miss. A pair of diggers were quickly tearing a trench into the ground, a bulldozer behind them with an angled blade pushed the rubble to the side. Then came trucks that poured tarmarc. A roller behind them. Men on the ground walked, illuminated by the headlights of yet more vehicles behind them. Every minute, they would stop and fire would race along the black tar. Each time it was a huge explosion that raced along the ground like a snake. “What do you think that is?” Rafael asked.

“They’re drying the tarmac.” Mateo said. Andres nodded, his friend’s father was a builder. He would know.

And they watched. And they crawled. And a flash light fell upon them. The three boys, covered in dried dirt and dust and twigs, looked up at a soldier. He stood in a loose shirt, the buttons undone. Even in this late autumn, Esberian nights were hot. A canister hung off his belt, a pistol on the other side. He had a backpack and a rifle slung next to it. And he stared at them with shocked green eyes.

“Shit.” The man muttered as he looked at them. His hand went to his chest and pulled off one a radio. He clicked it and held it to his mouth. “Private Smith, second squad, second platoon, third division. We have some locals here, it’s just kids. I’ll need a translator.”

Andres looked at him, eyes amused. He turned his head to the side and the man held out a hand. “No hablo.” He turned to the side to show off the two flags on his arm. The Imperial Red-White-Black, below it the Allian blue-white-red pattern. Below it, on his arm, was a blood type: A-. “Allian.” He pointed to himself. “No hablo.” He repeated as if Andres was stupid.

“I know Allian.” Andres said and the man blinked in surprise. The radio fell from his hand.

“You know Allian?” He sounded shocked.

“We learn it in school.”

“Confirmed Private, translator ready. Blue flare us.”

That seemed to awake the soldier. He fumbled the radio back into his hand as it bounced around on the coiled rubber. “No need.” He said. “They know Allian.”

“Understood.” The radio replied. “Send them off as protocol.” The soldier finally managed to hook it back onto his vest.

“What are you doing here?” He asked.

“We’re watching.” Andres said. Miguel and Mateo both made sorry faces as the three of them tried to look apologetic.

Private Smith pointed behind them, up a hill. His tone was entirely polite even as he held the strap of his rifle to stop it sliding down his shoulder. The other hand was raised and he pointed to a hill far behind them. “Where are your parents?”

“We snuck out.” The man sighed as if disappointed. “We want to watch though!” Andres said.

Private Smith pointed to a hill behind them. “Do you know what a military restricted area is?” He asked and then answered his question even though Andres knew. “It’s a place where only soldiers are allowed.” He leaned closer. “That hill over there, if you get there, you can watch. Do you have a phone?”

Andres brought out his smartphone to show it off. No one had rung yet, but he had told his mother he was going out to his friends. “Then run off and tell your parents where you are. They’ll be worried.” He clapped his hands. “Well? Go on.” Andres looked to his friends, both of them looked as if they were in shock. It was one thing to argue back with mum on who stole biscuits. It was another when a man in Imperial black, with a rifle on his back and a pistol on his belt, said it. And so they turned and ran. Through bushes, irrelevant of how many times they got scraped or how many times they tripped, no matter how heavily they were breathing. They ran as fast as they could, the sooner they got there, the sooner they could watch.

Andres collapsed onto the hill, he burst out in laughter. His pair of friends laughed with him. And then the laughter stopped when they saw the progress made. Eyes grew wide. The first set of road layers had passed them by already. Now, it was just a line of tarmac trucks, their huge holds constantly turning to keep the material from setting. Another unit was approaching, the same thing, they laid another road. Already, concrete barrier were being installed. A truck had brought them, a crane was unloading them and soldiers shimmied the huge blocks into position.

Amazing.

Victory with all that can be given, with nothing left behind.

Olephia looked down at the chasm below her. Dust fell from above. The world shook once again, a glance up confirmed that the roots were regrowing. Iniri was still holding. Her oaks had wrapped themselves into a twisting, folded cloth of wood that creaked and bent and regrew through flames. It rumbled and twisted as it absorbed the impact of a nuclear detonation. It burst turned brown and died as radiation shot through it, and it devoured its own material to sustain the growth of fresh, strong and healthy trees.

“Clear.”

And once again, for just a moment, a sun opened up in the depths of the world. The heatwave came up, the force, the radiation. Olephia stood through it all, her own power would not touch her. She had tried it long ago. The Goddess of Chaos stared down at the bubbling black mass. And so deeper they went. The pattern was set not. They had gotten deep enough that the waves hitting Iniri were weaker. It wasn’t the heat that was terrifying, it was the shockwaves and the radiation. With three miles distance though, they Olephia could be play faster and looser.

“Cleaning.”

An explosion thrice as large came from this one. The syllables ramped up exponentially. One sound may only one meaning, but combine two and you got something greater than its parts. Olephia felt the chain reaction below as atom cracked and split apart and cracked again. Thrice the distance covered. She looked up. Iniri’s networks of roots set alight once again. It regrew. It shattered as the impact hit it. It regrew. It twisted and cracked. It regrew.

Olephia smiled to herself. She knew the woman had it in. She looked back down at the bubbling poisoned waters that safeguarded the world-core. Her lips twisted, her mouth opened. She said another word. “Away.”

Another star appeared yet again in Klavdiv’s surface. So the long dig to the centre of the world continued.

Victory in its truest, non-negotiable sense.

Anton raised his hands as he stood in formation and embraced communion. It was his turn now. The entire class was taking turns training on how to command formation magic. He raised his stands and the staff in his hand. The sapphire on its tip began to glow blue. Before, he would have never thought of being asked to manipulate clouds with his magic. That had always been the demesne of aeromancers and of those trained in weather patterns.

Now, every class was running through these exercises day-by-day. After all, they should, magicians would be the frontline against Tartarus’ freak weather. The fields north of Arcadia had been ripped of its flora. Places that had once been gardens or fields to sit and read a book, or put an arm around a friend, now were smattered mud. Swamps in places, charred ground in the other, canyons past that. It was a battlefield with the clearest sky of blue.

The clearest sky of blue that turned dark in a few moments. Lightning cracked overhead as the best students summoned a storm. A storm that rumbled through the sky, that sent dust flying up into the air, that picked up speed. In the span of a minute, a small hurricane had been conjured. A hurricane sent off, charged with energies, and aimed directly at Anton and his class. From its centre, a winds coil and reached down as they carved yet another trench into the crowd.

“Begin!” One of the teachers shouted. Anton had not bothered learning their names. This new regimen saw him assigned a new educator twice a day.

Anton raised his hands as he felt the power of thirty channel into and through him. Thirty under one will, thirty under one direction, thirty to be used as one. He looked at that hurricane coming down upon them. Imperial Clerics, ready to heal, grumbled about the winds putting out their cigarettes. Two teachers stood by their side as they watched their class learn how to tear down ashen skies. Anton opened his eyes and saw the world in a way he had never seen it before.

Every drop of water was within his reach. The atmosphere practically began to shine. He looked at that hurricane coming down upon them. It spun, the winds were beginning to pick up dust one again. Anton pointed his staff at it and chanted one of the most basic incantations he had ever been taught. Just as the teachers said, show-magic was complicated and flashy. Killing was easy. Tearing something down was even simpler. It was a matter of power, not a matter of finesse.

In one moment, the hurricane spun. In the next, its winds seized as it froze in the air. A second later and it halved in size. Once, then again. Its winds that had once carried dust now became dirty waters suspended in the air by Anton. A great grey tower of liquid still that reached up to the sky as if it was a skyscraper. And in the next moment, he let it collapse.

It splashed down on the ground without any cheer and any fanfare. The waters streamed along the trenches and made small lakes, or drained into the local swamp. Pyromancers would be taught here soon, on how to dry out flooded lands in matters of moments.

One of the teachers shouted from behind. “Good! Next!”

Victory unifying.

General Ekkerson looked over an environment he knew all too well. The Kirinyaan Central Mountain stood around him as he organized men. Old tunnels from the White Pantheon’s failed invasion of Kirinyaa would be reused, old tactics would be reused too. It was impossible to move large armies through here unless one of the few roads were taken. Those few pathways would prove to be Tartarus’ doom.

It mattered little whether they were fighting demons or the White Pantheon. A bridge collapsing would take all with it. Landslides would do the same. Avalanches would come from above to crush them. Kirinyaan mining companies had been drafted to prepare demolishing the mountains. They were planting explosive on peaks or in cliffs. Everything would be controlled by short-wave radio, they would not be risking wires being cut by the freak weather of Tartarus’ corruption. Artillery would be hidden underground, tunnel networks were being expanded by the miners too, assisted by Imperial engineering corps. Ekkerson had been lucky enough to avoid the First and the Second Expeditions which were to recover the Dwarves underkingdom. He had no clue how they looked but frankly, he was sure that if a dwarf saw the veins he had carved into stone, he would get a pat on the back.

The winds were picking up as dawn came over Kirinyaa once again. Another night where Ekkerson had gotten maybe three hours of sleep. He felt his body starting to flag. A crash-day would need to come soon. The chills of tiredness were coming soon but the operations had to be set. He lit up his cigarette and sipped his coffee as drones set off north-west. Small things that the Empire had plenty of, what was lost due to flying in ash would be written off as attrition and it was a good canary in the coal mines too.

Once the drones started crashing in the mountains and not the bleak Sassaran sands, then that meant the constant stream of helicopter transports bringing machinery, explosives and arms from Central Requisitions had to be put to a stop. A shadow came over him and Ekkerson looked up. Above him, a vulture with the wingspan of an entire flight was making its daily circle along the mountains. This monster was assigned to him, Sokolowski had three. He’d need them though, the man had the worse job definitely.

General Ekkerson buttoned up his coat and turned back to the cave that was the base camp. The transmission from the One-Seventeenth had confirmed what he was expecting. They merely had to hide underground under the ashfront passed and then they would fight under ashen skies. His men had faced the swarms of beasts from Uriamel that crawled out of the ocean. He had seen their great titan be felled by Arika’s guardian titans.

If Tartarus thought that the sky turning black would put fear into his men, then they were mistaken. These men had heard Ktulu’s scream and come back for more.

If need be, he would level every damn piece of jagged rock in these lands.

Victory total.

Generals Sokolowski and Zalewski looked over the map of the Ashlands once again. The name was apt, for Tartarian ash would meet Ardan ash. The ships had been handed over to an Admiral Nintz, who had commanded a fleet to assist in the rescue of survivors in the UNN. The great beasts had been split into three. The snake would take the western Ashlands. The crocodile was amphibious, it was only natural that it take Elassa’s Sea. The Lion was the fastest, the east was the largest and it would come to assist Ekkerson if he ever called for help.

Besides, Kassandora had always taught them to never expect that help was coming and that praying for Divine intervention was a strategy only for fools and martyrs. Sokolowski and Zalewski had no plans of becoming martyrs anytime soon. “It’s a good plan.” Zalewski said.

“I know.” Sokolowski said.

If there was one thing their combined armies had spares of, it was magicians. Iliyal had not asked for them back and no one was stupid enough to volunteer sending men back to Epa. The weather stations used to track ashstorms had long since established the general atmospheric currents created in the wake of Elassa shifting the continent. Mages in small teams had been organised. Preliminary tests had already proved the strategy could work, now it was just a case of scaling it up to a continental level. “We should put some on the waters.” Zalewski said. “Once Tartarus is upon us, we cancel the evacuations and station ships along the main currents.”

“That’s a good idea.” Sokolowski replied. He moved some of the ship counters from the evacuation box into the middle of the sea. Proper coordinates would be organised by men who had data. “In three days, the geomancers will be here.” The general placed a pin in the centre of the map. He drew a string between it and the one on the coast. The coast all the way to the south, to the proper, natural ocean and not the sea that had opened up when the continent shifted.

A mountain range was being pulled up there. Nothing grand, they weren’t towering peaks and they certainly weren’t stable enough to be dug into but it did not matter. The mountains were only there to serve as a channel for winds. Mages would be positioned there to rally those winds, to channel them along the ground, to reach speeds that had never been seen before.

They would leave in centre of the eastern Ashlands, and then they would be guided by small trios or pairs of magicians positioned in long throngs. They would twist. They would turn. They would be guided. And the air itself would become Sokolowski’s sledgehammer.

Tests had worked. The most powerful winds Arda ever had seen had been achieved yesterday. More than three-hundred miles an hour. It left utterly nothing in its wake, just a small valley. Even after being let go, the storm had travelled all the way to the Sassara. Satellite imagery confirmed it left black mark of ash fifty miles across the sands before it finally dispersed.

If the magicians would be able to keep up, then it may the cleanest front in the entire Surface War.

Sokolowski had no clue how they were handling things in Epa, or even what Ekkerson was doing in the east, but it didn’t matter. Here, there were no grand tricks or plans. A land created by magic would use magic on a scale never seen before since the Age of Worldbreaking.

Ashen skies would descend upon lands forged in ash.

And Arika’s Ashlands would meet them head on.

Victory annihilating.

- Excerpt from “The Philosophy of War”, written by Goddess Kassandora, of War.