Now, I wish to rename this book or start another as the title no longer fits. I am no longer spectating the Surface War, or maybe I am and my mind is just too small to comprehend that I gaze upon the grandest warmachine to ever exist upon Arda. My journey with Maisara and Alice into the Empire has been nothing like I expected. We knew somewhat that the Empire would not be a dysfunctional state of course, their own propaganda assures the world of that and all Divines of pre-Worldbreaking Breed know that Arascus is not particularly tyrannical in his rulership.

  Yet it is also nothing how I expected it to be. Here I walk as Fortia, Goddess of the White Pantheon, with Maisara by my side, into their cities. Of course, I did not expect to be greeted with cheers, in fact, I thought it would be the opposite. That we would be spat upon and harassed and chased away the moment we showed our faces in these lands. Yet the most we have received is distrustful gazes from windows high up.

  We move during the day. During the morning, the factory shifts changeover and the streets are full for an hour. The crowds settle after a while, and then they disappear. They do mobilization differently than we did. There is less overt pieces calling for war, although they are still here in the form of a poster or mural. Maisara called it a “silent mobilization”, I have to agree with the description. Luxury shops are largely closed down, restaurants only operate for the two hours after factory changeover, there is a noticeable feeling that the city is empty. It is obviously not, for most homes have at least one light turned on when day retreats into night. Information about the war is so easy to acquire that it is almost not worth acquiring. Every city we pass through has a stone mural etched with the names of soldiers who have given their lives already. Several times, we saw artisans adding more to them. Most of them are from the Second Expedition, a few from the Imperial Fleet, some more from the Arikan garrisons.

  Imperial Propaganda does talk of the Surface War, yet it does not inundate the public sphere as we expected. For every poster that calls for volunteering, there is a poster of a new movie. For every news segment about a battle, there is a segment praising factory workers. Employment is almost full, today, as we were walking to the next of Leona’s hideouts, I saw the Mayor of Itzburg along with the local Divine of the town, Mishka, personally hand out medals to the employees of the local ammunition plant. It is a baffling way of life, somehow the mentality of the man in the trench who discusses his favourite drink yet is in a battlefield has been transferred to the civilian population.

  The front is far from Doschia yet the war is everywhere and seemingly nowhere. It is much like the background in the painting, always there, but never prominent.

  - Excerpt from “Spectator of the Surface War”, written by Goddess Fortia, of Peace.

  Iliyal looked over the Bridge Report. It was a nightmarish little piece of paper that had been plaguing his mind for the past few weeks. The Empire north of him was busy celebrating the victory in the underground, the Strategic Council was busy running meetings, a few of the idiots have even proposed victory parades on their surface to give the people something to celebrate.

  Iliyal gave them nothing to celebrate because they had achieved precisely nothing worth celebrating. Northern Arika evacuations had been evacuated, or as much as was possible to evacuate by transport and logistics vessels which weren’t being used by Callaghan. On one hand, Iliyal was sure it would go down into the history books. There were days when the Empire was taking in tens of thousands of those fleeing the advancing Ashfront. Less than a third of Northern Arika, excluding Khmet, had been moved over the ocean, maybe some ten million souls had made it to safety. Another few million would have crossed into Khmet, maybe some made it down the western shore of Arika. It had been the grandest and most successful evacuation in all Ardan history.

  It had left some forty five million souls still stranded in Arika. In towns and villages and cities that did not have docks. What happened to them, whether they were hidden in basements, whether they were trekking underneath ashen skies, whether they were fighting against demons now, Iliyal had no clue. The assumption was that they were all dead. They would be working with that. Survivors would be a welcome surprise but no unsubstantiated hopes would be given to the Empire.

  Two days ago, Iliyal had drawn the line on evacuations when Ashen Skies reached the very west of Arika. The coast from there was close enough that Esberia could be seen without binoculars. The Eparika was a few days away from being closed to all but submarines, unless it was proven that the larger vessels could cross the Ashfront. And the call on that would need to be given only when it was needed. The war had not gotten to such a state where such recklessness could be justified. Making the call was easy. Sinking the fleet for the sake of information gathering would send the wrong message to the Empire, civilian population and the soldiery both.

  Still though, it needed to be done eventually. When the landbridge finally connected, then it could be tested. That would justify the call to action. Iliyal closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. It could… It could not be reasoned with in another manner. The Empire worked because it had a reputation to uphold. If everything worked out, it would be a victory to propagandize but the risk could not be taken.

  The elf leaned back in his seat and sighed heavily as he looked around the office in the villa that Agrita had all but forced on him. This was the one room which didn’t have some section of the army of assistants that lived in these halls. Clerks and operators and officers that were constantly analysing supply lines and maps and drafting plans of grand strategy rather than giving immediate analysis of battles. And, by the far the most important objective of this building, was to discuss and figure out strategies which could work against the Ashfront.

  Olephia could open it for a minute but Olephia left a nuclear reactor’s worth of radiation each time she spoke. Each word effectively created a temporary no-man’s land, and that was nothing to say of the fact atmospheric sensors through south eastern Epa were starting to detect stay radiation in the area. If the entire continent had to be irradiated to win the war, then it would be but Olephia could not destroy the sky by herself. Anassa had more success, since the woman could just erase the ash using her sorcery to wipe reality away. That was save for the fact that she could for a few hours and then needed to take a rest when such large atmospheric manipulation was going on. Ashen Skies would quickly reclaim what was lost during that.

  Iboud’s ashjet project was not progressing either. Today, magicians would be heading towards them after the engineering teams finally threw in the towel and declared it borderline impossible. A dense enough filter for the microscopic particles had too little airflow to lift the jet. Upgrading the blades of the fan themselves would make them so heavy that they ripped themselves apart under their own pressure.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  So Iliyal had retreated to the office to draw up his own plans in silence. Bunkers would be expanded underground, as General Ekkerson had done in Kirinyaa. Cities would be provided their own shields, as Sokolowski’s Sledgehammer had shown that enough airflow could stall the advance of the blanket that was threatening to drown out Arda. Plans were being drawn out to make smaller-scale versions of that wonder-weapon in Epa, but this continent was simply too dense. It would require the clearing of towns and villages and all winds would have to be directed towards the sea.

  An idea had recently drifted up the ranks to Iliyal, testing was being done of the viability. Mages had been sent into submarines and they were trying to shift rock and ground whilst still within the machine. Hopefully, they would be able to bring down the landbridges being constructed from underneath the surface. That was the most hope they had for averting conflict on the Epan mainland.

  And there was Elassa too, although getting an answer from Elassa was borderline impossible. The Bureau of Magic had all but given up on tracking the Goddess’ progress. Were it not for Helenna’s existence, then Iliyal would only know that she had sequestered herself in Arcadia. Apparently the woman was running her own experiments to tear down Ashen Skies. Iliyal didn’t mind or care about her. The Empire had a thousand different projects running concurrently. Whoever came first managed to get a reward, Malam and her SIS were the dirty police that made sure no one sabotaged another.

  So Iliyal sat and stared at his empty wooden table. There was bottle in the desk, although the elf had resigned himself to a small sip here and there. It was pure alcoholism but now that a pair of clerics were permanently assigned to his manor, there was no need to worry for his liver. He sighed as his mind raced through plans once again. They settled back into bunker digging and supply lines. Tunnels would need to be established for trucks. Maybe the railways could be enclosed by a shell…

  Kassandora had taught of thinking patterns and he realised the issue. Every idea subconsciously strayed towards the notion that the fighting would take place on the Epan mainland itself. In the form of Ashen Skies, there was an effective wall that Tartarus could safely push forwards. Anything attempt to breach it was a farce. It simply would not happen with the technology or the magic they possessed.

  So Iliyal sat and thought, the ideas in his mind becoming snakes that ate their own tails as they grew and forever curled and twisted. The fighting had to take place in Epa. In Epa, the Empire could reinforce, they could test the Ashfront with armoured vehicles and Divines. They could… And on it went, the sun behind Iliyal slowly crawled to its zenith, and then began to saunter down towards the horizon as another day passed. Since yesterday, the sky was slowly turning from its bright blue into a paler shade. Still blue and clean, but just slightly tinged with greyness. On the coast, the atmosphere was becoming cloudy with no clouds, a sign of how filth Tartarus had poured into the atmosphere.

  Non-essential evacuations then. That could be done. The Bureau of Internal Affairs would handle it. Jobs would be reassigned and bonuses given for moving north and away from southern Rilia. Something like that at least. That could… A knock on the door finally freed Iliyal from his mental prison. It would be a problem if it got to his office, or an unexpected situation. A message from a major Divine would have come to his private phone. “Come in!” Iliyal answered and thanked himself that he hadn’t taken too heavily to the whiskey. In came Captain Kwiatowski, the only Lubskan in the base. Iliyal tried to keep everything monolingual Rilian for ease of communication but the man spoke it well enough.

  The captain walked in his dark suit, did three formal steps from the door and saluted. “Sir, there’s a call for you.” Iliyal raised his hand to imitate the salute without standing up and answered.

  “Patch it through.”

  “It’s the satellite phone Sir. We can’t.” Oh? That was an unexpected situation indeed. The elf stood up, a full head taller than the human and walked around his desk.

  “Where from?”

  “Arika Sir.” Kwiatowski replied. “North Arika, we’re working on confirming the location now but the connection is spotty. It’s in the SCR. I just thought to tell you.”

  “You thought well.” Iliyal led off to the radio room. Finally something to do. He wondered how the Arikans had survived managed to crack the satellite codes. Maybe they found a working set of codes? But then a radar installation would be needed. And a generator. And that under Ashen Skies? Either they were the luckiest and most skilled group of civilian insurgents in the history of this planet or it was Imperial soldiers. Iliyal’s mind went to the obvious conclusion as he crossed one corridor. The throngs of soldiers moved stepped out of his way, these overfilled corridors were built to house hundreds of guests, not a full division of a thousand soldiers.

  It had to be the One Seventeenth and Olonia. A wooden door fit for the sheer decadence of this mansion was pushed open to reveal one of the radio rooms. SCR as the abbreviation went, Strategic Command Radio. There was no doubt a colourful colloquial for it, although the soldiers always made sure to never say it around Iliyal. And it was like any of the other dozen countless command centres in the Empire, all monitor and radio and one of the few places in the entire building where men were confined to chairs. The room saluted to him, Iliyal saluted back and saw the man holding the headset with the radio towards him. “For you Marshal! It’s Olonia!”

  Iliyal took it off him without another word and slid the volume down as he put them on. The point ears of elves were far too sensitive for such things and they had to be creased back for the headset to even fit. Even then, they popped out the back. “Tremali speaking.” Iliyal said, he tapped the microphone. “Do we have signal?”

  Someone shouted from the other side of the central radio. “There’s a delay! We’re trying to fix it!”

  Olonia’s voice through the other side. It was broken up, every second syllable was more electronic buzzing that actual letter and it was borderline incomprehensible. But it was a connection and underneath all that dancing of wavelength, there was the voice of a Goddess. “O... nia… Ven…Eenth… till… re…” Iliyal stared at Captain Kwiatowski.

  “We’re working on making it clearer but…” He said sheepishly. “Well, it’s weather interference.” The grand marshal of the Imperial military closed his eyes and sighed heavily. So it was weather interference, that was a battle that had proven itself long ago to be fruitless to fight.

  “Where are you?” Iliyal replied. He made a silent note in his mind to change Olonia’s designation from MIA to Alive. “Where are you?” He repeated and waited. These phones were usually slow on the connection, but they did have range as long as an Imperial satellite was above.

  “An…” The connection broke up. “Zi…” Iliyal blinked for a moment. Anzi? He turned around and stared at the map of Ibya with all its major cities on display. Maybe some men were stupid. He was not.

  “Search the map and find me any town with radar that has An and Zi in it!” Iliyal looked at the map as everyone turned. “That’s not fucking Anghazi!” That got them moving. It was better to be safe than sorry although just from memory, Iliyal didn’t think there’d be another location like that.

  The swords in his mind suddenly sparked against each other. He practically heard the thunderous roar of a decisive artillery impact during the battle. Olonia was in Anghazi. There was an ocean between them. He went back to the phone. “Olonia. Stay there. We’ll pick you up.”

  Scouting with the fleet was a tactic, but sending them into the Ashfront for the sake of scouting was like telling a man to stand before an avalanche to see how he would fair up. Callaghan would tear Iliyal’s head off his shoulders the moment he returned. It would be even worse they started losing cruisers. But sending them in to rescue a Goddess?

  That was a different thing entirely.