"Gods, look how tall they are! The scouts weren't exaggerating when they said the towers touched the very sky itself!"
Those were General Pertus Zu Kobalt's first words upon crossing the Gate, marveling at the towers that stretched as far as the eye could see. Towers of glass that reached into the sky like fingers grasping towards the heavens. Though the awe he felt was somewhat undercut by the irritating sunlight reflecting into his eyes. Oh well, he supposed that he'd get a better look later. Preferably when the sun was a tad lower.
And look at how much metal was around him! Metal poles, metal carriages, metal birds flying high above, even the barbarians taken prisoner so far had bits of metal on their persons. True, a good deal more around him was made of smooth stone, and there were buildings of glass as far as the eye could see, but it was strangely the metal that stood out to him the most.
Still, the reports understated the sheer immensity of this city. His wyvern riders reported they could see no end to the city's sprawl from atop their mounts. He could hardly imagine what the walls for a city so grand would be like. He had been riding for twenty minutes at full gallop and he had yet to hit a wall or divide of any kind.
This was no city. It was a megalopolis as the scholars and philosophers would describe them.
Dismounting his horse amongst the controlled chaos of a hastily established forward camp, his men raced back and forth laying the groundwork for a command post. A process made infinitely slower by the presence of so many metal carriages along the roads that the workers had to work around for the moment. Dead and dying barbarians were dragged out of the way to clear up space. Some camp followers were already striping the dead of all they had before tossing them into makeshift piles.
Pertus frowned at the act. He knew he had been quite clear to all those coming through the Gate.
Any man found looting the dead or taking the wares left behind by fleeing merchants before the immediate area could be secured were to be flogged. While not legionaries themselves, their actions could encourage the less reputable among the auxiliaries or the weak-willed among the legions that orders were merely suggestions to follow.
Waving over a nearby centurion he directed him to have that collection of camp followers flogged as an example to the others.
Pertus refused to have his advance falter because some weak-willed men saw something shiny or took a liking to a barbarian woman and needed to take his time with her before returning to the front. There would be time enough for such indulgences, but they will not happen in the middle of battle.
As the camp followers were dragged away, pleading their innocence at the top of their lungs, his gaze shifted to the wounded taken to healers who were just now arriving in large numbers.
The general frowned as he looked at the collection of legionaries limping their way to them. One held his arm while his shield had visible holes in it, no bigger than pebbles. Another walked behind him, supported by his comrades, a hand against his stomach as if his belly were about to fall out.
He'd heard about those sorts of things. In the opening moments of the invasion his vanguard encountered a handful of barbarian wizards who used small, metal wands with handles on the end to kill several of his men before being cut down themselves. They still laid beside the mages, his men too scared to move the wands from where they fell out of an overabundance of caution in case a curse befell them for touching a barbarian wizard's tools.
Once the situation was more static, or at least the battle lines were, he'd have Godasen and his cabal of mages look them over.
But beyond that his forces have encountered no real pushback in the couple of hours they have been here. He was already hearing the mummering of troops questioning if the city was even defended at all. They cut down dozens of barbarians, hundreds maybe, if in the opening moments, yet no one (bar the wizards who were already here) met their advance and the dead started to pile up. And the ones they captured so far were so meek and submissive, one good wrap on the back of the head was enough to cow them. This is expected in women and children, but grown men?
It had gotten to the point where he even heard one of his centurions wonder aloud if these barbarians were even smart enough to fight.
Fools. Pertus knew better.
When he first arrived in the colonies for his first command they said the Lizardfolk of the jungles were mere beasts. Simply plan your actions if you were facing a horde of wolves, he remembered a legate telling him.
That same legate was, a short time later, ripped to shreds when his forces got surrounded by a war party of the lizardfolk while on a punitive expedition and cut down to a man, their corpses hammered into the trees along the jungle's edge as a warning to others.
There was no such thing as 'too stupid' to fight. Merely different ways and means of fighting.
As if to prove his fears correct, reports were already starting to come in that his demi-human auxiliaries and vanguard units were starting an assault upon a nearby bastion the barbarians were using for shelter. True, its architecture was strange according to the accounts and didn't match the style of the towers around them, but stone walls were stone walls.
What a conundrum.
Pertus could, if he were so inclined, pull on the proverbial 'leash' on the demi-human forces and have the fortification encircled and isolated rather than letting them waste their lives trying to assault a stronghold, but such a move would take time. The time spent dispatching a courier to the one in charge of the demi-humans, the time for the minder to reestablish control in the heat of battle, and the time needed to encircle the structure in the first place.
And in all that time the barbarians would be allowed to fortify themselves further. Gods forbid if a tunnel network connected it to other currently unknown bastions, allowing the defenders to pool their strength without exposing themselves to attack.
No, for now it was better to just let the more bestial demi-humans do what they wished for the moment. Regardless of what happens, he benefits. If they breach the stronghold and slaughter the defenders to the last man, then the problem will solve itself and they will be deployed elsewhere. If they breached the walls but get slaughtered by the defenders, or fail entirely, then their blood will be an acceptable price to pay for information on how these barbarians fight.
The most important thing for now was that he needed to push as far and as fast as he could before a true defensive line could be established against him. Urban fighting always favors the defender, and without knowing the means by which these barbarians fight, he can hardly blindly assault them.
In the midst of his musings he noticed the standard of Italica held by a collection of men beside one of the buildings; a storefront of some kind. Inside was the Count of Italica himself, looking at something Pertus couldn't see from this angle. Curious, Pertus approached the Count, passing the guards and careful to avoid as much broken glass littering the ground as he could before reaching the nobleman.
"Remarkable craftsmanship," Court Formal noticed the general's arrival and showed off a golden necklace with a ruby attached to the chain. "How much do you think this would be worth? A hundred, maybe two hundred, denarii?"
"Already talking of coin?"
"Simple curiosity," the Count explained, looking at his own reflection within the jewel. "If possible, I'm interested in taking several of these jewelers into my service. I have no doubt my daughters would love these sorts of trinkets."
"Certain of victory, my lord?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Not to the degree as some," the Count shook his head, gesturing beyond the perimeter. "The way they are talking would make one think the battle is already over and our standard was being raised all across the city. Are they deaf to the sounds of war horns in the distance?"
"Is that all they are saying?"
"I heard some talking of the value the slaves will bring," the Count motioned to a small line of men, women and children being led through the Gate in chains. "I would say that while they don't look well built for menial labor, perhaps more domestic pursuits are their forte."
Truthfully, Pertus's biggest concern was the strangeness of the whole engagement thus far, beyond the obvious. He was assaulting a city, a megalopolis, from within said city. Even when he takes the city, he'll be under siege before long.
How do you besiege a city where a magical portal allows for constant reinforcement and resupply for the defender that is completely beyond the capability of the besieger to disrupt?
By that logic, how does one break a siege where the besieger is in the midst of their home territory and can constantly bring in their own reinforcements and supplies to extend the siege indefinitely?
It might devolve into simply brute forcing their way through. Pertus fully expects the first wave to fail. As will the second, and the third, and the fourth after it. But if one feeds enough meat into any battle, they'll eventually win. Still, even the more bestial demi-humans aren't that dim-witted to keep charging to their deaths.
Proper motivation will be-
"My lords," a courier raced in, his hurried steps crackling against the glass, and knelt before Pertus. "My apologies, but our forward troops have encountered the enemy."
"Finally," Pertus nodded to himself while Count Formal dropped the gold chain back into the glass case he took it from. "Where?"
"The northern advance, my lord," the courier stated. "The fifth cohort is engaging a barbarian shield wall. Progress has slowed to a crawl in these narrow streets. The barbarians are armed with an assortment of maces and clubs, but they also seem to be using some form of… smoke to disorientate our forces."
"Smoke?" Pertus gestured to the courier to elaborate.
"I don't know what else to call it, my lord. The barbarians are throwing small metal cylinders into our lines that expel a white smoke. The men were saying that their eyes started to burn as the smoke blew over them."
"Burn?" the Count questioned, his expression growing grim.
"Ah… irritated I mean, my lord," the scout clarified. "It's not combustible, or at least it doesn't seem to ignite when a flame is exposed to it. But the others were yelling that the stuff makes their eyes burn as if something were thrown into them. Eyes watering, hard to breath, harder to see. It's making it impossible to advance further or push the line."
'Wonderful. Smokers,' Pertus mused to himself. "How many barbarians are in that line, approximately?"
"Seventy or so, my Lord, it's hard to tell with all the smoke."
"Then send word to the second wyvern corps to fly over and smash that shield wall from behind," the general ordered. "But make damned sure they know to stay clear of those metal birds in the air. Gods know we already have our own hands full just taking this city, no need to enrage the wildlife as well."
"Yes, my lord!" With a curt bow, the courier raced off.
"Smoke?" Colt raised an eyebrow to the general as the courier made his way to the wyvern riders.
"I've seen connections like it before," Pertus explained to the count, "the Zeinab people use poison smoke in a similar way, though they tend to use them with glass spheres rather than metal cylinders. The battlefield is already deadly enough without poisoned smoke blowing about in every direction."
"Agreed," the count nodded, having returned to fiddling with the gem in his hand. "I expect a long day ahead of us-"
A series of war horns blew around the makeshift staging area. An attack was coming.
Without delay, centurions started bellowing out orders to form up along the street, covering all avenues of attack so they would not be caught unaware by a flanking maneuver. Men dropped what they were doing to assemble while camp followers raced behind the establishing lines to stay clear of the battle. Pikes leveled out, testudos clanked into place, and missile troops readied to unleash a flurry upon the advancing foe.
Approaching the newly established line were a collection of… metal carriages and wagons?
They rolled forward, as space permitted, through unknown means. Atop them stood men in green clothes angling what looked like bolt throwers, yet he could see no bolts readied. More green men walked alongside the wagons and carriages, all of them carrying some sort of… crossbow? Staff? They held them as a crossbowman would hold his weapon, but they looked more like thin cylinders than staffs. They reminded him of the wizards from before in a way.
Battle would soon be joined. Yet this would not be the battle.
There were a few hundred men, maybe a thousand a most, approaching his line. Given the size of the attack, or lack thereof, this was no doubt a probing assault. Not a push to break the line, but to see how the legion responded. What else could they hope to achieve against a rapidly solidifying line of several thousand with mages, monsters, and beasts of war mixed in-between?
Still, he didn't like the look of those bolt throwers. At their current range, they could start punching through some of his ranks, breaking up his legion's formation, maybe even killing a few wyverns before they could ascend high enough.
He did not like that at all.
And it seemed the legate on the line agreed with him. Another horn blew and a wave of demi-humans charged forth in a loose formation. Their charge would either stall the barbarian advance or check it if they were-
RRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr
A deafening roar like a dozen horns rang out for all to hear. A shrill series of tones and caws that caused pain to flare up in Pertus's teeth. While he quickly covered his ears in a vain effort to escape the alien sound, a dead wyvern slammed into the side of the glass tower above him. Bloodied glass fragments rained down on him, shards digging into his skin as he tried to balance covering his ears and keeping the glass from cutting something important on his person. The count fared little better, taking refuge inside the structure again with his guards covering him with their shields.
Loud, almost rhythmic clicks, followed. The demi-human advance against the defenders ended in bloody silence. They did not break so much as it simply stopped when the last one fell to the ground, their flesh shredded apart.
Without pause, the unseen magic started to tear through his troop's ranks. Neither shield nor armor seemed to protect his troops. Like a hot knife through butter, it cut and sliced through rank upon rank with ungodly speed. His men died in their dozens. Every tick of the clock another group fell, corpses laying upon one another in bloodied piles.
As a legate attempted to command the legionaries, a loud crack preluded his head exploding in a shower of gore upon the men he was leading.
Another louder crack from somewhere above their lines (from a man perched inside a metal bird!) was followed by a centration's head exploding next, his body crumbling to the ground like so many others.
Order began to collapse as more and more men died in similar displays, to say nothing of the continued assault by the barbarians' magic.
Some men broke ranks and were ripped apart, some held their ground but died in fiery explosions. A few hid behind some of the abandoned metal carriages, their metal hides seemingly the only thing capable of providing some form of protection to his exposed forces. Even then, bits of metal were chipped away at and his men were still killed by these barbarians' unseen magic.
One crossbowman, one of many missile infantry who had taken refuge in the buildings beside the advancing barbarians, managed to get off a lucky bolt into the leg of one of the dismounted green men. The barbarian dropped his staff and let out a pained cry as he fell to one knee. The legionary was then shredded into little more than stringy meat moments later when the green man's comrades focused their magic upon him.
Other displays of futile resistance mirror similar results.
A legionary attempts to stab into the vest of a green man, but his blade failed to break through the material and he is killed where he stood.
A lance of cataphracts, returning to the camp after hearing the horns, wheeled around on their steeds to smash the line, their lances leveled. The only injuries they caused is from the corpses of their steeds smashing to the green men's lines from the momentum of their charge.
Leaping out from behind a metal carriage, a legionary sinks his blade into the exposed throat of a green man, only for him to be cut down moments later by his foe's vengeful comrades.
An imperial battlemage throws a fireball at the advance, setting a few barbarians on fire, but as some roll on the street to put out the flames the mage is singled out and rendered into little more than bloody pieces.
On and on it went. Petty resistance brutally crushed in a manner Pertus had never seen before.
Cracks.
Explosions.
Cracklings.
Blood.
Death.
Devastation.
Three legions….
A wyvern falls in battle to a metal bird in the sky, its body impaling itself upon a metal pole, the rider nowhere to be seen.
The demi-humans were the first to route, their handlers dead.
The men began to waver next, orderly retreats turning into stampedes as legionaries and auxiliaries alike trampled upon one another to escape the carnage.
Three… legions….
Some simply sobbed on the ground as the world became little more than a hail of unseen magic and death.
Explosions echo from the distance, implying a similar fate befalling his advanced forces.
With all this going on, did he even have three legions anymore?
Crack.
Bang.
Retreat.
He needed to bring some semblance of sanity to this retreat so they could at least fall back in the vague image of good order, lest they all be cut down as they ran.
"Sound the horns to fall back!" Pertus cried out to any who would hear him, "have the drums beat to retreat back to the Gate! Now!"
Several horns blew, signaling a general retreat. Not that many could hear it over the sounds of carnage and mayhem. The back ranks seemed to be the only ones who heard the command, breaking their formations to quickly march back to the Gate. As for the rest…
Another wyvern smashed into the ground, its scaly hide riddled with bleeding holes.
A green man threw a rock between one of the last standing links of the testudo, shortly exploding right under their feet.
This position was lost.
"Lord Formal, we must fall back!" Pertus raced over to the Count, the man stared blankly at the carnage alongside his guards. The general shook him, "my lord!"
Formal blinked, his senses returned to him, and looked away from the devastation "…yes," he nodded in agreement, trying to ignore the maelstrom around him. "…yes, you are right, general. This battle is lost. But what of the wounded?"
"Anyone who isn't already with the healers at the main camp are lost," Pertus grimaced at the thought of leaving so many brave men to such a fate. But the line was almost broken, and he had many thousands more men to think about. "We need to draw in the battle line, concentrate our forces to break this… hellish advance before we're rolled back beyond the Gate entirely!"
"Damn it all," Colt Formal swore aloud as he and his retinue followed Pertus and his men out of the building's far exit, through a stretch of jagged glass. "How could this have happened?"
"If I knew that…" Pertus winced at the sight of the carnage, the wagons and carriages wheeling ever closer.
"What sort of devilry and black magic are we facing? This-"
CRACK!
"My lord!"
Pertus froze as his face was caked in Count Formal's gore, the man's torso torn open while his body thrown into the arms of one of his equally blood drenched retinue. The guards formed a hap dash schiltron to keep any further attack at bay.
For what good it did.
More cracks followed.
Pain flared in Pertus's chest before he even heard his armor groan under the force of an attack. Thrown unceremoniously onto his back, all the air kicked out of his lungs, he watched helplessly as one of the metal birds cut down another wyvern rider in seconds with the same unseen magic the barbarians were using against his troops.
As he laid there, the rest of the count's guards falling one after another, Pertus looked to the epicenter of the pain in his chest. Upon inspection, he saw a small pellet embedded into his plate, laying right above the part of his chest that was the epicenter of that unseen force that threw him to the ground.
Groaning as pain swelled across his abdomen he was now more than ever certain that his decision to enchant his chestplate with the most expensive protective magic he could find was well worth the cost.
Buuururr
That loud horn came from a metal… wagon? It was large enough to be a wagon dragged by a score of oxen, but it moved on its own through unseen power like the rest of the barbarians' things.
A small block of pikemen who had survived the assault until now, yet had not fallen back, swiveled to meet the thing's charge. Their polearms bent and broke upon the wagon's metal skin, while the men were then crushed beneath its mighty wheels or thrown asunder by the sheer mass of its charge. Crossbow bolts and javelins from men still hiding within the buildings bounced off its sides.
Slowing to a stop, men poured down the small ramp clad in green with bulky vests upon their chests in a similar vein to the ones marching beside the other wagons, each armed with the same staffs all the barbarians seemed to have. Even this close he could hardly see what was happening, feeling men crumpling to the ground with little bloodied holes in their armor as a whistling noise buzzed around them.
Wait…
He looked again at the pellet in his armor, no bigger than his finger.
Was that… it?
Three legions, the assorted might of nobles across the Italica province, and scores of demi-human auxiliaries, were being felled in a matter of minutes to… metal pellets shot from staffs?
How could things so small be so deadly?
Pertus had little time to rationalize his situation as some of the barbarians rushed over to him. Before he could even demand to know what they were doing to his forces, language barrier be damned, he was flipped onto his belly and held to the ground as they bound his hands together in metal shackles.
It was at that moment, the sight of his men scattering in every direction, dropping to the unseen magical assault, or being shackled similarly like himself, that Pertus knew that not only was the battle lost, but their foothold would soon follow.
As he was picked up and dragged into one of the metal wagons he knew it would only be a matter of time before word of this… catastrophe reached the fortifications around the Gate and from there Alnus Hill. The defenses would have to be strengthened a thousand times over to even have a chance of resisting this kind of magic. More trenches, more walls, more ballista, more catapults, more troops, more everything.
Look at him, being thrown into the back of a horseless carriage and still all he could think of was war.
Still, there might be a single silver line to the situation.
Off the top of his head, Pertus could note no fewer than five additional legions who could be quickly redeployed to aid in the defense of the Hill once word of this catastrophe reached Godasen and the others.
They will have to succeed where he failed.
At the very least, they will fare far better than his men did.
After all, while he might have failed, surely a force four times the size of this one, stationed in entrenched positions alongside siege engines, thick walls, and with the attackers forced through the narrow passage of the Gate, they would be more than enough force to keep these barbarians at bay, their unknown magics be damned.
If not, then what in the Gods name could possibly stop these men in green?
This is a fucking disaster.
"-and even with two months to build up our defenses, we only withstood the barbarian attack for a few days," Senator Godasen explained to the assembled senators. "While we checked their advance at first, it took only two days for us to be driven from the Hill completely. And then it took only a few more days for them to drive us from the field entirely."
"What was the size of this barbarian force?" Some senator I didn't know questioned.
"A few thousand at most, but-" Godasen was drowned out by a choir of jeering and rancorous outbursts from the gathered senators.
This was simply a fucking disaster.
Even before I took my seat in the Senate Chambers to hear from the sole surviving general from Alnus Hill I could tell this was going to be a fucking disaster. Both Stilicho and Victrix had shared with me all the information the Senate had been told in advance of this hearing from survivor testimonies. A tale of powerful spellcasters raining down fire across the battlefield, towers of glass and steel, entire cohorts dying to unseen powers as they lined up for battle, metal wagons rolling beside metal elephants with unholy energies, of an entire battlefield that became a feast for carrion.
With a casualty rate reaching sixty percent I can confidently say this whole expedition was a disaster.
And it only got worse when the force from the other side established their own foothold in Falmart.
"You lost Alnus Hill from a few thousand barbarians!"
"General Kobalt had ten legions under his command! How incompetent are you to falter against such a pitiful force?!"
"Did you order your men to fall upon their own blades rather than fight?!"
"Senators, my men were wiped out by the cohort!" Even banged and bruised as he was from the battle at Alnus, needing a cane to even stand before his colleagues, Godasen still seemed to have enough fight in him to stand his ground against the constant jeering and shouting. "I saw rank upon rank being ripped to shreds by powerful magic as they marched forward! They even used great rods of explosive fire against us! I only stand before you today because I and a group of battlemages raised a barrier to protect ourselves from one such rod and I still nearly died. Believe me when I say I have never seen such powerful magic."
I wince as the senators start shouting over one another again, trying to clear my head and make sense of what the man was describing. Strip away all the hyperbole of a pre-industrial individual society trying to make sense of industrial warfare and it becomes very easy to figure out what happened. The legions had marched into a major urban center on the other side only to get pushed back by local military forces, who then launched a counter invasion of Falmart to control the single crossing point between worlds.
No wonder men died by the tens of thousands. Even ignoring the 'explosive rods' that fell from the sky or 'metal animals' controlled by 'unseen magic', simply marching men into machine gun fire would have quite the devastating effect on one's manpower.
Honestly, this whole thing looked like a strange reflection of what the Aztecs must have thought upon seeing Spanish weapons for the first time in the 1500s. Only instead of primitive single shot rifles, it's a society that has at least reached the capacity to use fully automatic weapons and armored vehicles.
And knowing my luck, the people from the other side of the Gate are probably commies because of course they would be. Seems something Being X would arrange for to piss me off.
But even before Godesan finished his testimony, eventually just walking off to the side when senators just started shouting at each other rather than asking him anything, many of the men present seemed to have their own genius plan to deal with the 'barbarians'.
I can't help but roll my eyes every time I hear someone say that word about an industrialized state. Yes, I know 'barbarian' is meant as shorthand for 'people not of the Empire', but its connection with primitive and backwards is something that is hard to disassociate from the word.
Still, that hardly stopped them from claiming they knew the answer.
Attack!
Retreat!
Loss of revenue!
Hold the line!
Pray for the apostles' deliverance!
All these cries became even more incoherent as each new voice tried to talk over the other. A choir of noise kept bouncing off the marble floor and walls to make some strange echo effect.
"Can you imagine if the legions fought with as much vigor as the senators argued," Gaius whispered beside me. The sole member of my retinue to be allowed in with me since demi-humans, slave or free, were barred from entry while the Senate was in session. "Even an apostle would fall before such a foe."
"I still can't imagine how you still have your head with how you talk," I quip back, eyeing the senate guards spread throughout the chamber.
"If anyone can hear us over this, they deserve my head as a prize," as always, the eunuch joked about his own mortality, casually saying a few more curt insults before returning to his papers. I still can't understand how he can concentrate with all this noise.
Sighing, I cast an eye around to see what the few people I could recognize here were doing.
Stilicho was one of the few quiet militarists, such as he wasn't shouting for an immediate counter attack, seemingly deep in thought. His silence was mirrored by several others who looked to him for some type of 'queue' to proceed.
Victrix was busy with another senator seated a row above him. From my vantage point it looked like he was trying to make some arrangement with someone from another faction. The senator in question constantly looked over his shoulder as if the mere sight of being associated with a populist would ruin him.
And the Emperor? Quiet, contemplative even, looking over the senate from his throne with a pair of praetorians. Credit where it's due, he wasn't giving off the impression he was hardly sleeping the past few weeks, though if I looked hard enough, I could see the faint bags under his eyes. But maybe that's because I knew how heavy they looked beforehand. Regardless, he looked like he was just waiting for the senators to run out of breath, or lose their voices, before saying anything one way or the other.
Yet just as I was getting ready to get up and wait outside, a voice silenced all the others.
"Shame on you, shame on every one of you!" A new voice boomed from amongst the rumblings from the other side of the viewing gallery, drowning out all the others around it.
In a flash of movement, a red-haired man descended down to the senate floor waving a gem topped cane like a conductor of sorts. "Do you hear me? Shame on all of you! Are you men of the Empire or boys playing at statecraft? What is this cowardness I'm hearing? Retreat? Withdraw? Senators, an enemy stands before us, has spilled our blood, taken our land, and I hear talk of enduring this dishonor?"
"You are confusing caution for cowardness, Governor Sygarius," a senator countered, glaring at the man. "Perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to label us cowards if your lands were under threat?"
Right, Governor Syagrius, Selene's father. The man who probably (absolutely) arranged Kati's death, and would benefit greatly from a weakened centralized military, is trying to shame people into marching imperial forces into machine gun fire. How odd.
Not really, since a weakened one is easy to overthrow.
"My lands are always under threat, Senator," the Governor rebuked. Despite not being a member of the body a governorship seemed to impart enough authority to grandstand before the entire Senate. At least enough for the guards to not throw him out. "Or have you forgotten; Soissons is the bulwark against western intrusions. Every year my domains face untold amounts of sacking and pillaging from beastmen and all manner of uncivilized demi-humans. Perhaps you are not merely cowards but so squeamish to the sight of blood you'd rather shut yourself away than defend imperial land?"
"How dare you!" oh that got a senator angry, the balding man standing up and pointing an accusatory finger at the governor. "Do you think I'll sit here and be lectured to by some fool from a backwater such as yourself! A man who lets savages take his own daughter as a war prize because he couldn't fight off his own barbarian incursions?"
"Haha… I may have been away from court for some time, but 'war prize' is a strange way to refer to a queen," It was subtle, but I saw the governor's grip on his staff tightened and the edge of his smile twitch.
That's right, Selene said her older sister got married to a barbarian king. The tomboy prefaced the phrase by saying Asterix wasn't like the 'other' barbarians and was a 'noble barbarian' who understood rule of law. I don't think she realizes how patronizing that sounds.
"But beyond that," he continued, pointing his staff at the senator, "I do believe you will sit there and be lectured from me. Or perhaps you wish to be lectured to by my associate?" Sygarius pointed to the looming form of his dragon-scaled champion in the spectator's row. Even without his blade I had little doubt the man could snap the plump senator's neck like a twig. "Though fair warning, he's not as understanding as I am."
"Enough Governor," Marquise Casel finally intervened in the argument. Being the First Senator, the Marquise did have jurisdiction over the flow of conversation on the floor. I bet he waited until his fellow senator was sufficiently chastised before actually stopping the argument. "No matter what point you wish to make, threatening a member of the senate is a criminal offense."
"But my dear Marquise, I've made no threats," Clovis defended himself and feigned ignorance, "I merely offered him another conversation partner while advising him of the risks. It would be negligent for me to do otherwise."
"Naturally," Casel didn't even pretend to believe him.
"Why, Marquise, I-"
"Enough," the Emperor calmly, but firmly, stated. Raising one hand to call for silence in the chamber. One by one, the voices of the senators died down. "While your input is appreciated, governor, I would ask you to return to your seat for the time being. This is a matter for the Senate to debate, not you."
"But of course your Majesty," giving an overexaggerated bow, the red haired man made his way back to the spectator seats.
"Very well then," the Marquise looked to an aid, "we shall resume our discussion on the-"
"There is nothing more to discuss," the Emperor stated, interrupting the First Senator. Looked like he was tired with the back-and-forth childishness as I was. "I have heard your concerns, senators, governor, and through it all I have reached a simple conclusion: we must attack."
'Attack?' I could barely believe my ears. The same man who was sleepless from the deluge of reports citing how his military forces were annihilated now wants to attack? Again?
No. There was something more to this.
"Attack? Your Majesty, even if we were to counter attack, we simply don't have the manpower available for such an action," Casel argued over the murmurings of the Senate. "As you well know, Northmen raid along the northern shores, eastern horse lords' mass for attacks along our territories bordering the stepp, the colonies buckle under increasing demi-human assault, and as Governor Syagrius has pointed out we are even beset from the west. Simply put, the legions and troops in the Battle of Alnus represented the sum total of all our available forces. Unless your majesty is suggesting we pull our forces back along every front, abandoning our frontier territories to attack, there is simply no way we can muster a force sufficient enough to launch a counterattack against this new foe."
"How dare you," a senator interrupted, "his Majesty is-"
"You are correct Marquise Casel," The Emperor interrupted his own sycophant. "Given our recent setbacks, we lack the immediate means to counter these barbarians ourselves."
"The loss of tens of thousands is merely a setback, your majesty?"
"It is. Compared to inevitable victory, even costly defeats are simply setbacks," The Emperor argued, though I can tell a PR spin was incoming when I see it. The emperor stood up from his throne and looked to the assembled senators, "Senators, I ask you this: When our legions were smashed in the Northern Wars by the berserkers, did their loss herald the end of the Empire? When Telta was sacked by the very same horde, did the Empire fall? When Rolf Kingsblood himself reached Sadera's very gates, intent to put every man within to the sword and drag our women and children back to the frozen north in chains, did we give into fear?"
"No!" several senators shouted in response to the Emperor's questions. Just a few at first, but by the last question the reply came in a thunderous choir. By the last one, the 'no' boomed across the chamber.
"No, we did not," he affirmed the senators' answer. "We were battered, we were bloodied, but we never broke. We faced Kingsblood's horde just outside Sadera's gates. My own ancestor cut through the barbarian lines and took the Northman's head. Our Empire proved itself stronger than that savagery. And as it was before, so shall we again!"
"Then how will we deal with this… setback of thousands dead and legions wiped out," Casel, as opposed to many of his colleagues, was still unmoved by the Emperor's speech.
The emperor grinned, "As one! We shall defeat this foe, but we must do so united. For these barbarians are not simply an enemy to the Empire, but to every civilized person across all of Falmart. Therefore, we must meet them with the full might of Falmart united under one banner; our banner! I shall call upon our client and vassal states to march beside our forces against the foe upon Alnus Hill. Together, we shall drive these barbarians back through the Gate and protect our lands from any further aggression!"
The chamber erupted into cheers.
The Marquise said something to the Emperor, but I couldn't hear what it was over the noise. I could only see that the emperor found it amusing.
The session of the Senate ended shortly thereafter, with a sense of relief and anticipation in the air as the senators exited the chamber. That the 'war' was as good as won.
Hmmm. I knew better. The issue at hand wasn't 'how are we going to win' it was 'how horribly are we going to lose'. They could throw half a million men at the Gate, an industrialized and entrenched foe will sooner run out of ammo then get pushed out of their defenses from such an attack. That is assuming they only have machine guns and hold back on using other weapons like poison gas to break any assault.
But my mind always comes back to the question of how technologically advanced these 'barbarians' are. Are they simply 'Great War' era with rudimentary tanks, or a post-twenty first century force with laser guided missiles, or even some science fiction army with standard issue hand-held railguns?
But I had my way of finding out. After all, I didn't come to this meeting just to listen to a bunch of people be flabbergasted over industrial warfare.
"Senator Godasson!" I picked out the wounded mage from the crowds, the senators in-between making way as they saw who I was.
"Your Highness," the man appeared to try and give me a bow, but the pain in his gut seemingly made him stop halfway. "You honor me with your presence.
"I heard what you said in the meeting," I noticed him grimace at that, "I just want you to know I think you did everything you could, given the circumstances."
"I am honored to hear you think so."
"But I did also want to ask you something," now came the tricky part. How to ask a question in an innocent way?
"How may I serve you?"
"I wanted to know if you had any of those g-…magic wands you mentioned the barbarians had earlier," caught myself almost saying what they really were. I already knew he had a number of guns recovered from the initial battle on the other side of the Gate. 'Had' being the keyword, since most were given over to the Imperial enchanters for examination of how such 'sorcery' worked.
My real question is if he kept any for himself. How complicated they were would be a good baseline for what kind of industrial base the 'barbarians' had.
"Apologies, your highness, but what interest do you have in such things?"
Ah, a question I planned for ahead of time!
"After hearing about what happened, I thought that maybe I could offer my own observations to the discussion," I replied with all the finesse I practiced for.
My reply seems to have been the right call, the senator smiling at my words, "When you put it like that, Your Highness, I might just have something that interests you."
------
------
The senator led me to his personal estate with my retinue in tow, unnecessary pleasantries were exchanged as the man had his whole family meet with me before he brought me to a courtyard where he had laid out the unknown 'magical artifacts'. In a little patch of garden sat a collection of crates and tables.
"These are the wands I spoke of," the senator reached into a crate for a bundle of cloth. He unraveled the cloth and placed the metallic object on the table.
It took me less than a second to realize what they were.
"Though I have judged these objects to not be cursed, I must ask you to observe the most extreme care with these things," he advised me, placing yet another beside the first gun. "Many auxiliaries, and even a few legionaries proper, were wounded and even killed by these contraptions."
"Interesting," I feigned surprise, watching the man place a total of five guns on the table. Three semi-automatic handguns and two revolvers. The rest must have been given over to the enchanters. "What have you learned so far?"
"Through careful examination, and firsthand accounts, I have determined that this contraption was built to shoot out hot pellets of metal at extreme speeds from here," he tepidly tapped the handgun's barrel, "though small, I can assure you they can tear through flesh and metal like a hot knife through butter."
"Fascinating," I hope my acting was better than before, because it is hard to act surprised and interested with something so mundane to my eyes. Without a moment's hesitation, I grabbed one of the handguns, ignoring Godesan's whisper for me to be careful as I examined it.
First thing that stood out to me was that the safety was on. Good thing too, I've heard enough stories in my prior lives about kids playing with guns to know what could happen when you play around with these things.
"As I was saying, how this is done, I believe, is through an internally created form of alomancy," the mage continued his 'explanation'. "The mage channels his mana through this foci, where a transmutation-like change takes place within. It it then rushed out as hot metal and-"
Click.
Godasen's monologue stopped when he noticed I ejected the clip. Given the shade of pale he was getting, you'd think I'd just killed his kid and said he was next.
"How seamless," Gaius quipped as he leaned over my shoulder to see what I was doing, "I hardly even noticed the switch. And you've had these things for how long, senator?"
Ignoring Gaius's quips, there seemed to be no issue with the gun. Hell, there were actually three rounds still in the clip.
I slid the clip back in, flicked the safety off, and aimed at the nearby tree. It felt so weird holding a gun again after over a decade. Weird, but not uncomfortable. Like riding a bike again after years of it sitting in your garage, even if you don't exactly remember what to do, muscle memory takes over.
Granted that isn't a perfect analogy since this body's muscles have never held a firearm before, but I think it's the thought that counts.
My actions aiming the gun got the senator's immediate attention, "Your Highness, please be careful-"
BANG
BANG
BANG
The senator all but fell onto his back at the sound of the handgun, as if he thought the rounds would somehow hit him rather than the tree I was aiming for. Though given his apparent understanding of firearms, maybe he thought that could happen.
I tsked as I saw the bullet holes in the tree. All were clustered around a 'center' point, but none hit said center.
My aim was off, there was no other way that my shots were so dispersed given the distance I fired from. Guess a decade of civilian life would do that.
"Remarkable," Gaius mused aloud, looking at the gun then to the tree.
"Kind of loud, isn't it?" Cordelia mumbled with a frown, her hare ears twitching with every shot. Remus covering his wolf ears next to her. Guess better hearing is a double-edged sword in this regard.
I ignore the spectators and the wide-eyed looks from the assembled servants as I eject the empty clip onto the table and reach for another pistol. Checking it over, I noticed that this one had its safety 'off' and had only a single round left. What a nasty surprise for the ill-informed.
"H- How, Your Highness," Godasen questioned, looking at the gun dumbstruck. "I used every spell I knew, every enchantment I had at my disposal, and it remained inert to me."
"These aren't magical," I cut off the senator's rambling, quietly turning the safety on and putting the gun down.
"Pardon?"
"I said it's not magical," I repeated. "I didn't use magic to fire off those rounds, and I didn't sense a bit of magic when I fired them off. Ergo, if there is no magic being used, it's not magical."
"R-Rounds? Your Highness those… things are hardly spherical," he looked at the shell casings on the ground. "More to the point, how did you know how to use that thing so quickly? I have examined them for many days and I never-"
"I want you to have these pieces you brought from the other side of the Gate ready for transport to my villa," I brusquely command. While I hate pulling the 'my dad's your boss' card on principle alone, I am prepared to use it here if he puts up a fuss. I need more time to investigate these firearms.
Thankfully, it wasn't needed. The man looked at me, then to the guns, then back to me, before sighing. "As you command, Your Highness."
As some of the senator's men moved to get a wagon for transport, I fished around in the crates to see if anything more was in there. It was everything I expected. Some jewelry, more firearms, a handful of batons, but one thing stood out to me: a torn metal canister. If I had to guess, it must have been a smoke bomb or a flashbang grenade.
On closer examination, I caught a label on the side of the canister with a word that made my heart stop. It wasn't the word itself; a warning was the least one could expect on a smoke grenade, but it was how it was written.
Warning
It was in kanji.
That… complicated the situation. Given that this Being X, I have no doubt now that the nation the Empire attacked was either Japan, Akitsushima, or some other interpretation of the far east nation.
"Beautiful isn't it," Godasen spoke up, noticing what I was looking at. "I admit, one of the first things I plan to do is ask one of the slaves what it means once they learn our civilized language."
"…What?" My mind just stopped. Ask one of the slaves. Oh no…
"One of the barbarians," he clarified. "I didn't really see the point in keeping any of them myself, but my wife thought some of the women looked exotic so we kept one as a maidservant. Not a good one mind you, but hardly the worst I've ever seen. The language barrier is a bit of an issue, but I am confident she will learn. I am almost certain she is literate in their language, so I hope to put her to use for organizing my study when she finally grasps the basics of our language."
"You took slaves?" Oh… fuck me.
"A number, yes," the senator nodded.
Oh fuck…
"And that number would be?" I could feel my blood going cold.
"Just under a hundred from our headcount," the senator recalled. "Most were carted off a couple of months ago, just after General Kobalt's vanguard was defeated. The rest arrived in the capital with my main forces. Taken to market just after I entered the city."
Oh fuck…
"Would you like to see one of them?" he asked with a warm smile that seemed totally at odds with the severity of the situation.
I don't even remember what I said, my mind just processing how bad this could get, but I was quickly ushered into a sitting room within the estate. A few minutes later, a pair of maids entered the room. Both were dressed as maids, but one of them, the older of the two, looked far less 'acclimated' than the other.
Her physical appearance also gave her away. Asiatic look, black hair, brown eyes, beautiful enough, bearing the marks on her neck and below her lip. The lip cut looked old, years old, but the bruising on her neck was more recent.
Doesn't take a genius to know where that probably came from.
"Quite exotic, isn't she?" Godasen asked, gesturing to the woman. "Haven't gotten her to understand proper words yet, but I have caught her trying to read some books and-"
"Pardon me, senator, but I would like to try something," I didn't wait for the man's reply. Clearing my throat, I spoke my mother's tongue for the first time in almost thirty years. "Hello, can you understand me?"
Even as I internally wince at my own pronunciation, I saw the young woman react. A blink, then she looks me in the eye. Surprise clear on her face.
She clearly heard Japanese, but maybe it was incomprehensible due to my accent. I tried to speak clearer. "I said, do you-"
"Yes,"
she quickly replied, surprised. Her voice is raspy, either from crying or lack of use. "Y-Yes, I understand you."
"Your highness, what was that?" Godasen questioned.
"Speaking her language," I ignore further questions and focus on what I am going to say to her. "Hello ma'am, name is-"
"Where am I?"
the woman didn't let me even give her my name, her hands clamped down on my shoulders. Pretty sure the guards, both the senator's and my own, would have beaten this woman half to death for casually laying a hand on a royal if I hadn't raised a hand to signal them to stop. "Please, kid, you have to help me. I- I don't know where I am. These people took me and… and they… P-Please, I just want to go home."
"I can't imagine what you must have been through,"
it seemed like the most courteous thing to say. "I want to help you, to go home and back to your life. But to do that, I need you to answer all of my questions."
"I- I don't understand,"
the woman rambled, looking as if she was on the verge of a panic attack. "These people abducted me and my boyfriend and I…I don't know where he is!"
"Please calm down ma'am,"
given her current emotional state, I decided to start slow then go right on asking questions about her world. "My name is Tanya, what's yours?"
"I- I… Honoka,"
the woman replied, still anxious. "How do you know Japanese? No one else here understands me. No matter how much I-I…"
"Miss Honoka, I need you to answer some questions for me so I can help you,"
I try and phrase it in a way that won't upset her.
"Help me?" She perked up again at the phrase. "You mean… help me get home?"
"Hopefully," non-committal as replies go, but it seemed to have the desired effect of reducing her visible anxiety. "But like I said, I need you to answer some questions so I can better help you find your boyfriend and help the two of you return home. Please." I have genuinely no idea if I could do that. Assuming she dated someone of similar age, he was probably sent to a mine to be worked to death. But to get the answers I need, I need a conversation partner who is calm (or as calm as they can be under the circumstances) and lucid enough to answer my questions.
I needed to know more about her Japan.
The woman, after some momentary silence, nodded and agreed and answered my questions. Location, date, some basic history, nothing too invasive, yet still critical to figuring out what kind of Japan was beyond the Gate. I can only imagine the strange faces the guards or the senator were making as I conversed in a, quite literally, alien language with another person. I knew I would probably have to answer some awkward questions of my own after all this was done, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
At the end of the conversation, after seeing the woman off and instructing Godasen to keep me informed of her status, I reached one simple conclusion of the Empire's fate.
We were screwed.
------
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"Ah, Your Highness, in a rush I see," Gaius noted aloud as the Princess walked quickly out of the senator's estate. He and the others had been outside overseeing the exchange of the materials while she went to meet with the barbarian girl.
Whatever happened must have lit a fire in her highness.
"We're going," was all the princess stated as she approached the carriage, the bunny girl lifting the last of the crates up onto the wagon for transit. As Gaius approached the carriage, Remus close behind, her highness turned to the pair, "not you."
"I hope this isn't a roundabout way of telling me I am no longer needed," a harmless joke, though it appeared her highness was in no mood for it.
"You're going to the slave markets," her highness commanded, not acknowledging Cordelia entering the carriage beside her.
"I assume this is out of more than simple altruism?" They already hit their monthly quota for emancipation.
"You will find all the slaves that entered the markets in the past month that have the physical features listed," She handed him a sheet of parchment with a list of physical characteristics. Exotic ones at that.
"Did the servant say something that touched you?" Sob stories had hardly ever moved her highness beyond what she was already doing in the past. But the listed features seemed distinctive enough to only just not be a task akin to finding specific grains of sand on a beach.
"More like what she said is troubling me," she countered, rubbing her face. "Remember that incident a few years ago in the west, along the border? Three citizens were killed by some raiding force, do you remember what the Imperial response was?"
"I must confess I don't even know the event you're referring to," saying there were citizens killed along the border was like saying that water was wet, the sky was blue, or that Akushko had three whores for every man. To say otherwise would be an abnormal thing.
"For the crime of three citizens, the tribe was destroyed by the local garrison," her highness continued. "All one thousand of them, all for killing three people."
"Three citizens," Giaus corrected.
"And we just killed a number of citizens from the other side of that Gate and enslaved over one hundred of them," her words were concise and cold. Even the hare girl was listening. "If the roles were reversed, that being a barbarian force killed hundreds of citizens and enslaved another hundred, what would our response be?"
"Your Highness, the Empire is far larger than any tribe," he knew where she was going with this line of thinking.
"And yet we lost ten legions, nearly one hundred thousand men, and inflicted nearly no losses upon them in turn," she explained her reasoning. "Given those numbers, any military force would push forward and inflict punitive damages upon the foes they see as invaders. Not because they had to, but because they could. Just as the Imperial military would do."
Now that she phrased it like that it does make more sense as to her concern. And if said slaves were here, in the capital, and the barbarians learned this while also knowing they can seemingly smash aside armies like one would swat a fly… oh my, the Empire seems quite woefully ill-equipped for the coming conflict.
Ah, now he saw it. Not true altruism, but a sense of self-preservation mixed with the tiniest dash of altruism. The best kind as far as Gaius was concerned.
"So, am I to buy as many as I can?" He asked. Her highness's funds, while vast by normal standards, were still finite; and bunny warriors were expensive. Moreso when the buyer knew an interested buyer was around.
"Just note down where they are for now," he could hear her foot tapping against the carriage floor as she spoke, a tell she had when her mind was racing with a dozen and one thoughts. "Who bought them, who sold them, who owns them, have it all nicely organized. I think we'll be needing those documents in the near future."
Ah, a pace offering then.
"I will see to it right away, Your Highness," with a curt bow, he watched the carriage and wagon roll away with the princess and her other retainers in tow.
"So… to the markets then?" Remus questioned his mentor, still processing what was said to them.
"The markets," Gaius agreed. The pair made their way with all due haste. For his part, Gaius felt a spring in his step he hadn't felt in years.
After all, when one's life is on the line it's easy to forget the aches and pains in one's joints.
------
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Even under the darkness of a new moon, Majoran could see the battlefield clearly. Even after all he has seen, these invaders still show him something new every time he comes to blows against them. It would be refreshing, if it didn't result in the deaths of the majority of his men.
"Sir, sir!" a centurion raced to his side, catching his breath the man gave him a quick salute. "My Lord, the King of Elbe is…"
"Dead, no doubt about it," General Majoran sighed as he put down the spyglass. These barbarians had lit the night with their magic so even someone as far away as he was could see what was going on. The field was littered with corpses naturally.
The sight didn't even surprise him anymore.
The Lion was dead, by what manner even Majoran couldn't say. Torn to bits by fiery explosions? Ripped apart along the metal rope spooled out across the barbarian lines? Perhaps he was merely struck down by that unseen magic that killed most men who marched up that hill. The barbarians used so many strange and fantastical magics that he could hardly keep track of it.
Still, it was a shame. Of all the assembled client state nobles, only he seemed to take the threat of the barbarians seriously.
When the assembled leaders met, and Majoran laid out all the information his legions had gained on the barbarians, through the bloody crucible of defeat after defeat, he was mocked and ridiculed by said leaders.
None seemed to care that he commanded a depleted force of forty thousand, the broken remnants of what was left of the initial ten legions mixed with the minuscule amounts of manpower he could scrape up from border forts, local militias, and simple conscription. Nor did they take any of his warnings about unholy magic and metal creatures with any degree of seriousness.
No. All the others seemed to hear was 'the legion was bested by a few thousand barbarians'. They laughed and mocked the legion for hours on end.
Incidentally, the ones who laughed and mocked the loudest seemed to also be the ones who died first. Funny that.
But amidst all the jabs and mockery King Duran, the Lion of Elbe, sat across from him silent as the grave. He took each and every word the general said with the seriousness it deserved. A good man.
But Majoran's orders were clear. While he was to attack alongside the client states, he was to do his utmost to ensure said states suffered the brunt of the losses. If the client states knew just how weakened the Empire was in this region, that his force of forty thousand was all that remained of the legion in the area, they would inevitably revolt.
In that one respect, he succeeded: the client states would be reeling from the losses they had sustained from this battle for years to come. Sadly, his own forces were teetering on the brink of collapse.
The only 'victory' his men could claim was the successful retrieval of their standard from the battlefield. It cost three whole cohorts, men who used their bodies to cover the ones sent to recover the standard, but it was a victory.
Even victory is weighted in cohorts…
But that single 'victory' was hardly enough to maintain the integrity of his forces. Camp followers were deserting. Auxiliaries scattering. Even small groups of his own legionaries were skulking away from camp under the cover of darkness. Add in the new reports of brigands cropping up along the major roadways, looting everything they could get their hands on, and it didn't take a scholar to figure out where these bandits were coming from.
It was a damned disaster.
He watched with glassy eyes as another collection of fiery explosions lit up across the field. How many men did that just kill, he wondered. A hundred? A thousand?
The initial battle plan had been for his legion's forces, supplemented by what remained of the other allied kingdoms' forces, to march to the very edge of the barbarians' ranged capabilities. With torches in hand, it would be hard for the barbarians to miss such a force. And while they paid attention to his own force, King Duran and his men would skulk up the other side of the hill under the darkness of the new moon and launch a surprise attack against them.
But with the king dead, his attack turning into a complete route, what was Majoron to do?
Go back to camp, wait until morning, and launch yet another failed attack?
Was continuing this slaughter really the best course of action? He had just witnessed a force of over one hundred thousand men reduced to just under thirty thousand in a handful of days. While he wasn't soft by any means, such attrition made his stomach churn.
The sensible thing would be to withdraw while he still had any forces left to command and await new orders.
But if he left, he would be labeled as a coward for the rest of his days. His descendants mocked and ridiculed for generations to come for losing to 'mere' barbarians.
But if he stayed, he and all his men would die. Their deaths would weaken the Empire's hold over the region even more. Maybe even cause a complete collapse of Imperial control for the entire region. He had seen the ledgers; he knew how few men were left in this area. Add in these barbarians and the region would be out of reach for as long as they held Alnus Hill.
But if he withdrew and kept some of his forces intact, then maybe there could be the possibility of the Empire retaining some kind of control no matter how minuscule it might be.
It left him with two choices: his Honor or his Empire.
He did not fear death for he knew he would be welcomed into Emroy's embrace. But to die for nothing? To have not only his death, but the deaths of all who remained under his command, have no meaning? Or worse, to have their deaths lead to a worse fate for the Empire?
Honor or Empire?
Honor or Empire?
…
Damn it all.
"Sound the retreat," he told his legate, handing he spyglass to a nearby servant. For whatever reason, Majoran assumed the legate would voice some manner of complaint. Of how this was dishonorable. How it would stain the legion's honor for generations to come.
Instead, the man nodded before rushing to spread word of the order. As horns billowed out the call for withdrawal, a palpable sense of relief filled the air as the men started their march back to camp. Though they would get little sleep, he would march out of this accursed battlefield before dawn even breaks.
Many more legionaries would die before this conflict was over.
But not tonight.
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If someone had told Hazama last year that he would lead an expeditionary force into a fantasy world following said world's invasion of Tokyo, he would have politely asked them to keep real world figures out of their fictional stories.
And yet, here he was.
Sitting in a prefab office going over an after-action report in another world.
"-we can confirm with certainty that the Imperial force has fully withdrawn from the area," Lieutenant Yanagida finished his report and took a seat. Behind the man was an overhead projection of the immediate area around their current position, Alnus if he recalled correctly. "And with the retreat of the other forces, I think it's safe to assume we have secured control over the Gate for the time being."
The Special Task Force assembled in the wake of the attack on Japan had two simple goals: secure the territory designated as the Special Region on the opposing side of the Gate and bring the people responsible for the unprovoked attack in Ginza to justice. While they had many officers of this Saderan Empire in custody already from their Ginza attack, the public demanded the ones who orchestrated it be brought to justice. Be it the Empire's military officials, its political leaders, even their emperor if it came down to it.
Still, he knew it was going to be more complicated than that even before taking into account the fantasy world with magic and monsters they were marching into.
"Sir, the Fourth Combat Unit is more than capable of chasing down any stragglers," Lt. Colonel Kengun spoke up. "If we don't, we might face another force like last time."
'Last time' being the First Battle for Alnus, when the expedition initially marched through the Gate to secure the Special Region side of it. Two months of buildup, two days of stalemate when the Imperials held off the initial JSDF advance, and five days of clean up after their fortifications were finally breached.
The biggest issue in that battle was how bottled up their own forces were. No air power to break up the fortifications, a constant hail of primitive munitions from all sides, and hidden pits wide enough to swallow an IFV whole were the biggest obstacles they faced. Progress was slow.
It wasn't until the Imperials seemingly ran out of munitions, having constantly fired upon them for two days straight, that the JSDF had their opening. After that, his men were able to actually dismount and the battle was seemingly over. Not that the fighting had stopped, but that the worst of it was over.
Five days later and the last of their fortifications being taken by storm, the Imperial army retreated.
A little over a month later, the Second Battle that they had just fought was far simpler: the enemy charged their lines and were easily beaten back by the JSDFs superior technology and equipment. So much so that Hazama knew his forces didn't even suffer a single casualty from all the battles. An unprecedented achievement when taking into account the enemy suffered casualties in the tens of thousands. The whole thing reminded the general of the European Western Front of the First World War, where men would race across no-man's land through heavy machine gun fire and suffer horrendous losses.
Only the foe they are facing is a pre-industrial medieval state with some magical irregulars.
"While I appreciate your enthusiasm, Lt. Colonel, I don't think that'll be necessary at the moment," Hazama replied to his subordinate. "The last time they broke off an attack it took almost a month and a half to launch another one. While I don't mean to downplay the situation, I believe we're safe for the time being from an imminent attack."
"Yes sir," Kengun accepted his reasoning.
"Sir, what about the other forces we saw alongside the Imperials?" Colonel Kamo questioned. "Do we know anything more about them?"
"Nothing concrete, but I have my theories," Hazama gestured to adjunct Yanagida to move to the next slide of the projection. "Given how distinctive many of these suits of armor look from the Imperial 'norm', I think it's safe to assume these are different nations entirely rather than variants of normal Imperial forces."
The image changed to a collection of images of various suits of armor and muddy banners lined up along the floor. Armaments were taken from the battlefield, some riddled with bullet holes while others were held together by duck tape on the inside. Each 'set' had little tags on the floor next to them to designate them.
"So, we're either dealing with one large nation with scores of puppet states, or a coalition of nations with the Empire as its leader?" Kamo thought aloud. "Just our luck."
"There is simply too much discrepancy in the designs for this to be one unified force," another officer, Major Higaki, agreed with Hazama. "One might be able to write off the distinct flags as regimental flags, or the armor as variants of normal Imperial troops like the General said, but add in such differing iconography on top of totally different color schemes and I can't think of anything else but an alliance of nations lined up against us."
"What could we have done to warrant a multinational response?" Kengun mused. "All we did was secure this side of the Gate to protect our own people."
"Perhaps alliance is too strong a word," Higaki corrected himself. "They could have been coerced through economic incentives, 'help us take the hill, or we'll embargo you'. Perhaps it's nothing more convoluted than them convincing everyone that we're the bad guys."
"Us?" Kamo was insulted by the insinuation. "We're hardly the slaving imperialists who butchered countless innocent civilians!"
"But they might not know that," Hazama noted, pointing his pen at the images of flags and armor. "The Empire had months to tell these people any number of things about us. Maybe that we're the slaving empire, that we're the real monsters. All these people would know for sure is that an imperial army marched through the Gate, and most of them didn't come back. Who's to say what happened to them, besides the Empire?"
With the General's words, Kamo's anger subsided and the man sighed, "when you put it like that sir…"
"The biggest issue is our lack of information of this world," Yaginda sighed to himself, rubbing the back of his neck. "We just don't know enough."
"But now that our position is secure as it is going to be for the time being, we ought to fix that," Hazama agreed with his adjunct. "Major Higaki."
"Sir," the major pushed up his glasses and straightened his posture.
"I want you to organize several recon groups to start exploring the Special Region in more detail," Hazama ordered.
"Anywhere in particular, sir?" The man took out a sheet of paper, noting several things down for later.
"For now, we'll start with the area just beyond our immediate vicinity for the moment," the general took a paper map the Intelligence Agency created with what information they gathered after the initial push against Alnus and what remains of maps they found from various imperial camps. It was obviously incomplete, with much of the area blacked out as 'Terra Incognita'.
To imagine he'd ever work with a map that had genuinely unexplored territory on it…
Taking a pen offered by Yanagida, Hazama made several large circles around the Alnus FOB. "Our initial forays should be close enough that we can evacuate our people should the worst come to pass, but further out than our recon teams have gone so far." He slid the map to Higaki, "more importantly, they'll doubtlessly make contact with the local population. It's imperative we establish friendly relations with them, both to facilitate future cooperation and to potentially refute any slander the Empire may have spread about us. I'll leave their makeup to your discretion."
"I'll see to it, sir," the major replied, making some notes on a stray piece of paper, he folded the map into his pocket.
"Good, anything else," Hazama glanced at the other officers with him, none raised an objection. "No? Then you're dismissed."
As his officers left, with Yanagida moving to follow them out, Hazama couldn't help but feel this mission was going to get far more complicated before it was over. He looked out a window, watching as the men went about their duties around the prefab buildings of the base.
Call it a gut feeling, but he felt that the JSDF had barely scratched the surface of what the Special Region had to offer.
Whether that was good or bad, only time will tell.