May 2nd, 629

“Well, they’ll certainly multiply the size of our infantry.”

General Gaffney muttered while looking over lists of units in our army.

Finding a place for the Flickers to fall into hadn’t been that difficult. Unfortunately it also wasn’t as simple as telling them to follow along. They couldn’t be commanded like troops could, but more importantly, their numbers dwarfed our infantry.

There were around 28 thousand Flickers and Paragons in the force that Salypta led. Given that the majority of our force was armored, they were around triple the size of our infantry.

It was a good bolster to our close combat ranks though. In the last battle, troops had deployed barriers between the tanks and fought from those, ensuring that we didn’t allow the Scourge to pierce through our line. However, we had taken more casualties. Not many, but enough to help my Generals understand the reality of what we were pushing to do.

We didn’t have a large hands-on fighting force. But with these Flickers, we would change that. It was part of why I wasn’t very opposed to them joining us. They weren’t necessarily expendable, but they also weren’t my own troops. If they wanted to help us and suffer the brunt of close combat with the Scourge, I wasn’t going to stop them. And if they failed to integrate and got hurt or killed by our ordnance, then it was simply negligence on their part. I wasn’t the one who had invited them and while I would help preserve them as I did my own troops, I also wasn’t going to kid myself and say that we would cooperate without conflict.

Flickers and beasts fought differently from a systematic machine like Iron Legion. They didn’t understand the nature of our armament, not to mention that they didn’t possess the intelligence humans did anyway. That, combined with the unforgiving nature of our weapons meant that mistakes would be paid for in death.

It would be up to their leaders, the Paragons, to shepherd them and keep them in line. After Salypta showed up to the camp, I had made that fact abundantly clear to her.

I hadn’t beat around the bush either. Salypta had brought their best fighting force of Flickers and Paragons, but by extension that meant they were veterans. They had adapted to their own fighting style, and were unlikely to change unless forced. You couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks that wasn’t willing to bend. I didn’t hesitate to help Salypta understand the consequences for stepping out of line, or allowing her army to do so. It wasn’t even about rules either. It was simply what would happen should they go against the tactics of my army.

My eyes stared at the table map before me. On it was a full overview of the territories beyond our Line and Scourge establishments. They had made their mark on the landscape while we were defending, that much was made clear. Thankfully we had worked on decimating the fog of war during our defence. Reconnaissance had constantly been carried out, planes capturing pictures and video of anything interesting they saw across the entirety of the continent’s northern regions.

Iron Legion was currently occupying the most western portions of the front line, and we needed to move east. To the most northeast corner of the continent was the Scourge’s land bridge that they used to cross over from the Pillars of Creation. The land bridge wasn’t large, and it was clear that it also wasn’t the most convenient to cross. But it was enough with the biological logistics the Scourge employed. I had seen plenty of Gargantuan Intestines, and the one at that crossing was the largest one yet. It nearly filled the land bridge by itself, being miles upon miles wide.

It was the only thing making influxes of millions of monsters possible. The Scourge never stopped pouring through it, only limited by its diameter like a pipe. Still, they went as far as terraforming the bridge, the intestine growing wider as they did. Over the past couple years it had doubled in size. Given more time it would double again.

At some point, the Scourge’s flow through that bridge would be unstoppable. They had an entire continent all to themselves that they used to supply fresh troops. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there were tens of billions of monsters waiting over there. That was a more pessimistic outlook on their counts, but even my optimistic thoughts gave them a minimum of a few billion, with more combat capable monsters than the entire population of humanity.

Iron Legion was on the path to oblivion by most metrics. My plan was to ascend north before heading east, annihilating everything in our path. Every nest, every Nexus, every city, every army. We would destroy them all, scorching the earth in our wake and driving the Scourge back all the way to the land bridge.

Of course, I knew I wouldn’t get what I wanted. I wouldn’t be allowed to shore up new defensive lines on the exit of the land bridge, and I wouldn’t be allowed to annihilate that intestine. The symphony said so. My read on the world dictated that I had already done too much. As soon as we had stepped away from the Line to go on the offensive, I had stepped down an irreversible path that all but guaranteed Iron Legion’s end.

I could have maintained my hold. I could have stayed at the Line, bolstered our defenses further, and simply sat there. That would have maintained my spot as Iron Legion’s commander, and it would have kept the army together. I would simply do as I had always done.

I could’ve bought myself more time. I could’ve continued to accumulate, to research, to improve my army even further beyond anything in this world.

But then I would’ve been playing like the pawn they wanted me to. I would have simply moved with the orchestra, both demonic and angelic. I would have played the tune they demanded of me like a court jester appeasing his king.

And the thought of doing so made me want to vomit.

Now I was playing my own score, a violent song of bloody metal and acidic smoke. I was pissing off every major player on stage and I was laughing every second that I ruined their harmonious music.

But the consequences would come, they certainly would. When they did, I would lack the power to resist.

Yet, perhaps that was the point. I had started Iron Legion, had disrupted the global powers with espionage, and continued to brew my plots all for the sake of change. I knew that the harmony had to be brutally slaughtered if I wanted humanity to survive.

So I suppose all this had been for the sake of providing another set of notes to follow, another tempo to flow into.

After Salypta was briefed and given my warnings, I allowed General Gaffney to start integrating them into our army. Across the course of two days they were divided between all of the units and provided leaders, building a chain of command. While the need for one was loose right now, every unit still needed direction.

Formations moved around, and units were divided. Some of the larger units split from the camp to continue their advance into enemy lines earlier than others, and with them moved their new Flicker reinforcements. It was a good way of enforcing the divisions.

All the while, the Flickers had feasted on the corpses that filled the land. It became abundantly clear that they didn’t like their food charred and minced together, but it was also free, so I heard nothing from Salypta.

Then, after the divisions had been made, the army was ready to move once more.

There was no more singular Scourge army to hunt down. The last battle had decimated the rest of them. Now, the Scourge was concentrated around their establishments, so those rightly became our new objectives.

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There were many nests, but not many cities. That meant we would divide Iron Legion across multiple fronts and hit the many hundreds of targets as we moved, one after the other.

I had my eyes on one target though. It would be the first stop that First Brigade made.

The ruins of Stronghold Charlie.

I intended to return to my old stomping grounds and recover what I had lost there. From there we would move toward the Treehouse and we would clear out the Nexus they had established there.

I would see many familiar faces and landmarks. It was a shame that I’d have to wipe off the map what hadn’t already been.

So, a few days after the Flickers had come and our battle ended, we set off toward our objective. Alongside us, the other Brigades steamrolled across the land to separate targets, some more toward the east, others near the coastline

As soon as we moved, I could hear the symphony shift. The world rippled with my actions, the final nail in the coffin being driven by my command.

And we marched, in my sight the people I had once lost to forces I hadn’t yet understood.

……

…

“He’s finally moving…”

Polly sighed at her desk in the Glass Desert, far from the moving front line. On her screen was the all-command for deployment that John had given.

She knew where his first target was. Stronghold Charlie had always been the gateway, the bulwark holding the most western portions of the front line together. He and the other Brigades would have to pass it if they wanted to reach the northern Scourge cities and nests near the coast.

In the back of her mind, she had always wondered if this day would ever come. She had been so focused on her job running Sector 4 that she hadn’t the mind to pay attention to the war as a whole. She certainly couldn’t see it like John did.

But she trusted him. Trusted that he would succeed. While she continued running black ops, raiding villages and towns and unlocking secret vaults, he was fighting one of history’s most cataclysmic battles.

And he had won. It was an absolute victory by any standard other than his. Now they would push farther.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about her old Stronghold being taken back. It would have to happen, but the knowledge that there was no more sentiment there was something that broke her heart every time she thought about it.

Everything had been ruined and destroyed. There was nothing left for them there. Nothing to be nostalgic about. Just memories of sorrow and hatred.

She didn’t lift her head to look, but she heard Jasmine crying after the all-com went out. The two were silent in their office. Polly wouldn’t let herself cry. Jasmine did enough of that for both of them.

“Polly?”

“Yes?”

Polly looked up, seeing Jasmine breaking down more.

“I miss them.”

Faces flickered through Polly’s mind with her words, images she shoved down just as fast as they came.

When she looked over, she spotted the emblem of the Snow Doves on Jasmine’s desk. That beautiful white dove flying through a pure blue sky brought back memories she didn’t want to let herself remember.

She closed her eyes and turned away.

“...I do too.”

She muttered, doing her best to hold together.

Lately, she couldn’t even find it in herself to be angry. Wrath was lost on her. It was things like this that only brought about sadness.

Perhaps it was because she knew that John was taking on all of that madness for them. She didn’t need to be angry. She just needed to support the people who were.

She would trust that he would bring her the solace she needed. That he would find retribution for those they had lost.

That was all she needed, and she would do her work to ensure he was taken care of in the dark.

……

…

“He’s moving. About damn time.”

Anderson walked into the office with that announcement, startling Valdemar, who was hunched over some paperwork.

“What? Why are you here?”

“I was bringing you a much-needed intelligence update. John Cooper has launched his assault. No need to thank me.”

“What about the battle he was fighting? There were millions of Scourge.”

“All handled. He killed every last one of them, including the Sovereign, and is now moving on the offensive.”

Valdemar went silent for several moments, staring as Anderson kicked his feet up onto his desk.

“...It was Ironheart.”

“Take you that long to figure it out?”

“I’m not Authority Twelve, if you haven’t noticed. Anyway, he’s going on the offensive. What’s his target?”

“Everything, probably.” 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

“It’s impossible for him to attack everything. He could never sustain that, at least not while moving faster than the Scourge can muster resistance.”

Valdemar pondered the implications of an all-out offensive. Iron Legion would get far, but they couldn’t go all the way. They would likely hit the battlefields the Templars currently held in control before meeting enough resistance to be stopped. The Scourge would keep sending more troops, not to mention the Corrupted standing in the way.

It wasn’t a matter of firepower either. Iron Legion simply didn’t have the logistics. Their planes were abundant, but even the Line had required dedicated train lines to supply the entire front. Now that they were leaving the comfort of their supply lines, they would be on a clock.

They would run out of food and ordnance before long, knowing their expenditures.

Or so Valdemar thought, until Anderson barked a laugh.

“Heh, don’t you worry, General. I don’t have the capacity to explain it at the moment so all you need to know is that he can, in fact, sustain it. You should ponder under the premise that his ordnance and supplies are infinite and that logistics are a non-factor.”

“...That’s also impossible. War itself is about logistics. I could understand if you said his resources are infinite. They certainly seem like it. But an offensive from where he stands is a logistical nightmare no matter what kind of technology he devised.”

“Now that’s just a lack of creativity on your part, you old dog. Look, I don’t care how you need to rationalize it. Just know that Iron Legion won’t stop because they ran out of food or ordnance. That’s all I got for you.”

Anderson said that before walking out, leaving Valdemar to stew in doubt.

If what he said was true, then Iron Legion could reach the land bridge. The Line and anything surrounding the Glass Desert had continued to be under an information lockdown so the Order still knew next to nothing about the technology they hid. And despite their best efforts trying to dig into Sawn Industries, they still didn’t know how John was managing to roll out the tech he did. It would take an entire organization just to do the research and development, let alone the production. It was impossible that John was doing even just the research side all by himself. He had people. Lots of very, very smart people backed by a colossal amount of resources.

And yet they couldn’t find even a hint of this secret organization, despite making themselves fairly infamous in the last year. Entire towns and villages being razed to the ground, along with hundreds of thousands of massacred Nephilim, had not gone unnoticed by the Order. Every intelligence community knew about what was happening, even though they didn’t know who was carrying it out.

That never stopped John’s name from appearing in their minds though. There was no doubt he was making moves of his own in the dark. They just couldn’t figure out how he would have developed such a powerful organization, completely unseen and unknown, wielding technology they couldn’t fathom.

Nobody wanted to believe he was the one who had done it, but given his building achievements, it soon may not even matter.

Valdemar knew the Kingdom would make its move on Iron Legion soon. This new offensive all but confirmed it would happen. Question was, how much damage would John do before they brought him down?

If he really was so capable, and if he really was going to roll those tanks all the way to the land bridge, then he needed to make preparations of his own. The battle lines would shift massively. He may even have to cooperate with the man.

That was not a thought he stomached easily. He had only met John once, but he had seen enough, even on his wedding day, to guess at the kind of man he was. And he was self aware enough to know that they would not mesh well.

Still, the results were what mattered.

Valdemar pushed aside his paperwork, scheduling a meeting with the Pope and beginning to draft battle plans.

The Templars would have to follow suit. Whether Iron Legion fell because of their hubris in the end was secondary to being able to secure the land bridge.