May 1st, 629

“The Scourge is in sight, Commander!”

“Very good.”

I nodded at General Gaffney’s shout, standing atop the Superheavy Command Tank as it barreled toward our objective. In line with us were hundreds of other tanks and thousands of troops.

The song was maintaining. Perhaps it rose an octave, but it did not shift in intensity.

There would be nothing outside of expectations here.

I spoke into my Aerial.

“Second Regiment, begin your flank.”

There was a response, then a few seconds before a chunk of our army split off. Comprised of gunships hovering overhead and medium tanks, 2nd Regiment throttled forward at nearly double our speed, no longer held back by the pace of the Superheavy Tanks.

We were closing the distance between us and the remnant Scourge army. They still numbered in the hundreds of thousands, but such a large army couldn’t run forever. They were currently stationary, surrounding a Nest for sustenance. All around them were clouds of spores and thick biomat.

The lands were barren red, not a tree or animal in sight for hundreds of miles. We were pushing toward not just the Scourge army, but their establishments and infrastructure.

We were the front line, the map actively redrawing with our advance.

I muttered, my exosuit filtering the air and my voice reaching nobody's ears.

“Antares, soften them up.”

A few seconds after, a squadron of jets buzzed past overhead, shooting toward the army. Bays opened, and then bombs dropped.

They tore away before the bombs could hit the ground, massive explosions blowing apart the nest as they flew away for resupply and reruns. With Umara’s new mobile supply teleporters, those planes only needed to fly over our supply trucks to retrieve fresh payloads. Granted, those supply trucks could be considered mobile warehouses themselves, stationed in the rear and guarded heavily.

After those explosions went off, I looked up toward a sequential cluster of large planes several thousand feet up in the sky. Sticking out from their sides were large bore cannons and rapid fire autocannons, the planes tilted down and already aimed at their target.

An artillery battery with wings, the lineup started their barrage right on time. Bright tracer streaks flew through the atmosphere and detonated on impact. With more precision, they could hit the dense clusters of monsters and break up biological structures in the nest. Autocannons started sweeping through, shredding behemoths and larger monsters with pinpoint aim and guided munitions.

The escort squadrons around those gunships started speeding up as the Scourge recovered from the sudden attack. Winged monsters started rising to the sky, only to be met with an advance barrage of gunfire and missiles from the planes, and anti-air from ground units.

The other troops started to swarm, first spreading out and away from the attacks, then turning toward our advance. As the Royals got their bearing and gave out their telepathic commands, the monstrous mass began its stampede straight toward us.

But we were a metal wall, and with an all-com from the General, the tanks took aim.

“Fire.”

The word went out, and cannons erupted with rows of fire. Explosions shook my exosuit with visceral intensity, my audio systems dampening with every shot.

I could see the shells as they flew, making impact with detonations of shrapnel and fire. The front line of monsters was eviscerated and yet more stampeded over them. One was replaced with ten, every hundred usurped by a thousand.

Turrets from helicopters went to rapid fire, more tracers joining the gunships. I could sense the autoloaders in the tanks around me moving at maximum speed. With recent modifications adding supply and skipper teleporters, their fire rates had tripled. Gone were handloading breeches. Skipper teleporters could simply pop a new shell into a breech after an autoloader removed the spent shell and shut the housing. At their fastest, they could fire every half second.

The soldiers behind their turrets on tanks, trucks, and APCs clamped down their triggers and filled the air with simmering projectiles packed with mana and enchantments. I could feel their righteous fury fill our collective Aura, a building scream of hatred that drowned the mustering charge of the Scourge.

The tanks came to a halt and established their lines. The flanking forces reduced their speeds once in position, slowing to a crawl while lighting up the side of the Scourge army.

After that, it was a simple slaughter. I lifted Totenstahl within the metal hands of my exosuit and fired, releasing a barrage of burning lead, the barrel a soft glowing red. Yet for the first time, my gunfire was drowned by the surrounding combat. No longer did I stand out on this stage, but that in itself was an applause, proof of my success.

I had made an army better than anything I could be alone.

Close to a million monsters had been engaged, and yet before even a single monster could get within a mile, nearly a hundred thousand had been obliterated. More were following as the distance closed, soldiers jumping out of their transports and deploying barriers.

The tanks acted as hardpoints, knights lining up behind deployable metal barricades enchanted with reinforcement and shields. They sprang to life, sealing the gaps between the tanks as they hunkered.

The Scourge continued charging, and soon slammed against the barricades with the force of thousands.

They raved as they clawed over the metal, shields flaring as poisonous magic flew from within the monstrous ranks. Knights met the beasts with spears and swords, employing the strength that they had always been meant to use. Warlocks behind them, wielding standard issue Foci better than anything they had acquired from the Kingdom, slung their own spells over the heads of their shields and into the local hordes.

Layers of metal, layers of shields, layers of firepower from all avenues and angles of attack. The Scourge could barely reach the tanks without being cut down to dregs, and those that did were met with primed blades and magic. Even as they swarmed the tanks, the turrets and cannons remained facing forward, launching their ordnance into the stampede where they would cause the most catastrophic damage. The monsters thought they just didn’t care about their own, or naively trusted that they wouldn’t reach them.

Until claws came down on feet of reinforced metal packed so full of magic and malice that they seared the poisonous magic within their bodies through nothing but touch.

Even the tougher ones that cared not for the layers of magic would find their claws cracking as they swung at the metal. It may have dented, may have even cratered under the most powerful of blows, but it never broke.

In the end, the monsters found themselves doing nothing but cosmetic damage before getting slaughtered by all manner of attack, whether Knight, Warlock, or turret fire from adjacent tanks.

I stood atop the Command Tank all the while, watching the battle, listening to the flow. Despite the fluctuations, the intensity never changed. It was constant and stable. I wasn’t concerned about surprises for I could see the notes hidden behind the screens of observation data and recon reports.

I could feel the tempo in the air, could hear it in the distance and within the anticipating minds of the Royals. This was just the first battle, one that merely finished what the Scourge had started. The symphony wouldn’t end here. No, the music would continue long after this battle.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

This time though, I would be the conductor. No longer did I react to my enemy. No longer did I prepare.

Everything I could’ve possibly done had been done. Every preparation, every study, every revelation and pluck of the world’s strings had been precisely for this very phase of my operation.

Euclid’s Anvil had ended some time ago. I didn’t have a name for what we were doing now because it simply didn’t matter to anyone around me.

I may have known this would happen. I may have predicted everything down to nearly the day. But that didn’t mean I had to expose my knowledge of the chords and times and pitches. I was not the only one listening to the symphony, and every string I had plucked had been heard.

But it was all by design. Now, my troops did not play my tune, but their own. They did not move by my guidance, they moved by the Generals’. They did not fight through my motivations, but by their own righteous retribution.

And yet my name was at the top of the score. My image was behind every story that has or will ever come out of these events and wars.

My right arm operated Totenstahl, firing controlled bursts at groups of monsters. My left arm raised after some time, my hand slowly moving beside my head before my fingers suddenly flicked, snatching a spike out of the air aimed straight for my helmet.

The spike, a note not unheard, was tossed to the side having served its purpose in the song of the universe. The source, nothing more than another corpse after taking a blast from a nearby 5 inch shell.

“I really am going crazy.”

I chuckled and felt the symphony lighten. As multiple hours passed, troops started settling and winding down despite the nonstop fight. Shields still flared and monsters still charged, but only some injuries were sustained, and not a single death was withstood. With there being extremely few high authority Royals still in the army, all those with any amount of strength were swiftly dispatched.

My smile widened after the monster army started getting sparse. With some commands, the entrenchment was disbanded and barricades lowered. Tanks started rolling forward once more, turrets still firing, but with more intentional accuracy.

Some monsters turned and ran right into the arms of the flanking force, others threw themselves at the tanks in a savage suicidal attempt to take something with them. None of them got any farther than the effective range of whatever blew them up.

Ten thousand by ten thousand, every monster was systematically slaughtered as the tanks rolled forward, gaining more ground. Gunships in the sky continued to fire endlessly at clusters of enemies, unable to be stopped. Winged enemies were easily brought down to the dirt after jets entered the fray, no longer able to pressure squadrons. They emptied their payloads without contention.

The nest was long obliterated, yet the surrounding atmosphere was still laced with spores and toxic gases. Combined with the biomat, the land touched by the Scourge was an ecological wasteland that I could hardly imagine turning back to normal even given centuries.

I glanced at the screens in my vision, handed directly to my mind through psychic connections with my Aerial.

An alert was being thrown from our sensors. Something was approaching from the rear, but it wasn’t Scourge. That much was impossible, and my mind quickly found the only other conclusion given the metrics coming from those underground detectors.

When a jet split off to get a direct view, I got a live feed of exactly what it was.

My smile widened a bit, my eyes snapping toward a lone Flicker flying toward me.

I put out my arm, the Owlykat landing on my metal forearm. I recognized his black fur and plumage that drank in the light, and his eyes so blue they were like fragments of the ocean.

“Daywisp. It’s been some time.”

“It has, John Cooper.”

A voice didn’t escape his fanged mouth. His words were more a suggestion of a voice made by Psyka, directly imparted to the mind rather than the senses.

“What brings you to this battlefield? Can I assume the army heading this way is your doing?”

“No. In this place, I am merely a messenger, given the task because of my connection with you in history. There is a much more powerful leader making their way here. She wishes to meet with you.”

“Very well then. I’ll hold my reservations until she arrives.”

“It should only be a quarter of a day.”

“Less if I head toward them.”

I tuned into General Gaffney’s Aerial.

“General, I’m leaving to meet with potential reinforcements. Finish the fight, and set up camp.”

“Roger.”

A quick affirmative and I jumped off the tank, sending a message to the others. Umara was busy with the rest of the Desert Eagles annihilating the rear of the Scourge lines with the flanking force, but with a moment, she took to the sky and arrived by my side. Although she was getting to the point where she could simply teleport herself, until she broke the Great Barrier, rapid and frequent teleportation was too taxing to do with much more efficient alternatives.

I tasked a helicopter, which landed nearby and allowed us to board. Before long we were in the sky.

Some time later, we landed beside the moving Flicker force. Composed of miraculous beasts of chimeric combinations and Paragons of great power and renown, the force was a horde of color and excitement. Oddly enough, their symphony was muted. I had wondered why I couldn’t hear them coming. Their sounds were like whispers coming from so far away. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

After landing, I noticed a few beasts split off from the main pack. They turned toward us, a variety composing the group. I saw Lordbeasts and a Dragon, even a large Owlykat. Only Paragons.

I waited, Daywisp flapping off my shoulder and onto the back of the Lordbeast. The leader, a massive lion-like Paragon standing 8 feet tall on all fours and with a mane thicker than metal brushes, bristled with concealed yet regal power. The Vigor was palpable, exerting mental force in the form of sheer, projected might. It was a ruler for good reason, and I sensed great intelligence behind it.

Surprising, for a meatheaded beast. Still, what attracted my attention was the other Owlykat, from which I could feel nearly nothing.

The Lordbeast spoke first, her voice androgynous and physical, not mental.

“John Cooper. My name is Salypta, the head of this force. It is a pleasure to meet the leader of Iron Legion.”

“The pleasure is mine, Salypta. I take it that you’re here to join my fight?

“That is correct. We are here by the Seer’s command, who has foreseen your assault across the north of the continent. This force is composed of the most powerful and experienced warriors we could muster, and we intend to fight alongside you for the duration of your campaign.”

“A Seer, huh? I learn more and more every day.”

My smile didn’t go far. I knew that the sheet of this symphony was foreseen as I had guessed, but that didn’t mean I liked the feeling of being foretold.

I sighed internally and tried to rationalize how I’d play this out again. I had already done so when Daywisp showed up, but knowing there was a Seer changed things.

Chances are, if I was destined to be successful with Iron Legion alone, they wouldn’t have come. That they were here meant the Seer felt the necessity to send them anyway. So long as that leader had a modicum of intelligence, they wouldn’t send a fighting force that would only get in my way.

Something required their presence amidst my army. Even if it was as simple as reducing casualties, I was inclined to take the help.

But then again, how much I trusted the clairvoyance of a beastly Seer had to be questioned. Still, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt, for now.

After a second or so of thought, the Salypta looked at me with an odd gaze.

“I was told that you would understand why we were here, and that I wouldn’t have to convince you to let us join.”

“Those aren’t the exact words the Seer spoke to you, were they?”

“No, they are not. To be precise, I was told that there would be no resistance to our initial accompaniment, and that we would be allowed to stay should we prove our might.”

“Indeed. I’m starting to hate your Seer. Keep going the way you were and meet us at our camp. I will call for a guide to lead you. Now, what about your sustenance?”

“We feed on the corpses of hell. We feed on our enemies. Worry not for sustaining us.”

“How convenient.”

I nodded, boarding the helicopter after giving a goodbye and heading back to the battlefield. I also relayed a few messages, letting those who it concerned know about our new reinforcements.

At the same time, Umara looked at me weirdly.

“You agreed rather easily. Was it because of the Seer?”

“Yes. They saw something I have yet to know about. For now, I’m trusting in their judgment. Either way, high explosive shells are indiscriminate. If they get in the way, that’s their fault.”

“That’s true. Still. Hopefully we don’t actually need them.”

“Hopefully.”

I pondered, wondering what the Scourge still had in store for me.

At the same time, I wondered when the other big players would show themselves.

I had Chief Ironheart, but I had no doubt that Anarchy was still lingering around somewhere on the continent. My advance would not be without resistance from the highest forces and Ironheart couldn’t handle Anarchy alone. Anderson was the only one I knew of with that track record. It was a good thing I had him on speed dial.

This Seer all but confirmed that I wasn’t completely ready, though. I hoped they were wrong.

Then again, I doubted that even a Seer could predict what I had brewing in the background. Who knew what an animal could truly divine from the future? I hardly intended on letting them interfere with my symphony.

And as I expected, even as the flicker and paragon army charged toward the battlefield, there was little shift in the music of the universe. Maybe another instrument was added to the orchestra, a flute of natural imposition and order. But otherwise, the whole remained unchanged.

I sat back and closed my eyes during our trip back, harmonizing my mind with the beauty of reality’s melodious strings.