Chapter 975 — Falling
Blade of Dawn · Page 4 of 4
"These officiants aren't mad—at least not entirely. They did these things according to doctrine. This is no riot..." An Luo said in a low voice. "This is a sacrifice to the God of War, declaring that the faction they serve has entered a state of war."
"A state of war!?" Her adjutant came up beside her, astonishment on his face. "War with whom!? Are these people going to raise a rebellion against the Empire?"
"The Oathbreaking War permits no sigils. This is no rebellion..."
An Luo got only halfway through her sentence.
Her mind raced back over the reports that had come from the homeland recently, swiftly piecing together the anomalies within the Church of the God of War and the balance of power along the borderlands of late—the intelligence she held was in truth scant, yet some wolfish instinct had already begun sounding alarms in her mind.
A terrible, hideous conjecture had suddenly taken shape in her head.
Something had gone wrong with the Church of the God of War; these officiants' deity had met with some trouble, and the faithful, thrown into agitation and fervor by it, would most want... to please their god.
But these officiants—already disarmed, ostensibly under protective observation but in truth interned in the camp—how were they to please their god?
That was hard for them to accomplish... but the worshippers of the God of War were not limited to them!
An Luo jerked her head up, and almost at the same moment, from the corner of her eye she caught sight of a mage in the night sky, flying swiftly toward them.
It was as though he had come expressly to confirm her dire conjecture.
A feeling welled up in An Luo's heart—the feeling of having grasped the crux of things, yet being powerless to turn the course of events. She still remembered when last she had felt this way: a rainy night on the Paramere Highlands.
The messenger mage landed before her.
"General!" the mage gasped, panic written across his face. "The Iron River Knight Order has mobilized without orders—their camp is empty! The last witnesses saw them massing on the plains far from the fortress, heading toward the Longwind defense line!"
A fall.
An Luo felt herself plunging into a vortex.
...
The Longwind Fortress Complex: a composite defense line with Longwind Keep at its heart, its skeleton formed by a series of blockhouses, sentry posts, railway junctions, and supply stations.
Since the day of its completion, it had never been tested by war.
It was now the eve of dawn. The stars in the sky had grown dimmer and more indistinct, and over the distant eastern hills a hazy radiance was rising, heralding the end of this cold night.
The knight order that had set out under cover of darkness had reached the end of the Kamanda Crossroads, the very edge of the Cecilians' defense perimeter.
Beneath a pitch-black visor, a pair of dark red eyes gazed at the far, heavy-black horizon, toward the Longwind defense line.
Behind this commander, the vast knight order had already formed into legion array, surging magic filling the entire resonance field.
Minutes later, the magical resonance reached its peak.
The commander raised his longsword high, and in the instant it swept down, the whole knight order began to accelerate slowly by waves, charging toward the distant horizon like a mighty tide that starts heavy and slow, then turns fierce.
The god required that all things return to their proper course.
The war of blood and fire was that course.
The Lord's servants cared not who would be victorious, cared not whether they themselves would be annihilated, cared not even what meaning this war could possibly hold.
In this moment, the war itself was the meaning.
A highly compressed, confined plasma carrying a terrifying energy reaction—the "thermal cone"—began to take shape above the knight order.