DAY ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-THREE
SILESIAN INTERNATIONAL EXCLUSION ZONE, SILESIA, POLAND
Assistant Director Celesta is a study in contrast.
Though of a small posture, she carries herself with the dignity and grandeur her title calls for, each movement a monument to hubris and unbroken spirit. She indeed bears little height save for that of her place in the Coalition's military hierarchy — a position second only to the Undersecretary General herself. Her step is quick and steady; her heavy shoes hit the ground with a firm kind of strength, and her voice is like thunder: sudden and unpleasant, as if it belonged to an irritated child, and not to an occult veteran of many a battle.
Her dark purple hair, stricken with the occasional gray strand, does nothing to compliment the blues of her uniform — nor does it feel like a matching fit to the long saber sheathed near her waist. It is a strange kind of dichotomy, the modern fibres clashing against the ceremonial weapon, a tool more symbolic in the hands of a wizard and military officer than of any practical use. But it nevertheless remains, as both a mark of power and an implicit symbol — of what, though, who can really say anymore.
Even her attire carries with it the disparity inherent to her character. The clean, almost new uniform of Field Marshall feels quite at odds with the body that bears it, scars and burns on each of her limbs giving more the image of a determined warrior than of a bureaucrat. Certainly, the eyepatch covering wounds won in wars long since fought only reinforces that feeling.
Yes, Celesta is a woman of contradictions — but not today. Not here, and not now. Today, she is of a single mind: her army will triumph, no matter the cost. The Coalition demands it. History demands it.
Her face twists in a nasty grimace as her hand falls upon the still-hidden saber, and she clears her throat.
"Laura Szulc and Adam Miller of the Global Occult Coalition," she thunders across the clearing, her voice carried between the tents and military vehicles. "You have not fought well."
The eyes of the two things that were once soldiers, kneeling before her with their hands tied behind their backs, shoot up to meet her own. They are hardly older than twenty, their faces and hands still barely scratched by what little combat they've seen. Although they are young, they are scared. They are trembling.
Good.
She will make an example out of them.
"You have both stood accused and been found guilty of jeopardizing the Coalition's peace mission in Silesia by assiting local terrorists and withholding information from your superiors. By your negligence you have conspired with the enemy to threaten not only your colleagues but also global peace at large, explicitly acting against the Coalition's Third Mission of Protection."
She pauses to lower herself to their level, the metal of her weapon clanking against the wood of the platform, and she skews her head. Something almost like a self-satisfied grin decorates it.
"Do you deny this?"
Of course, their crime is but an afterthought — that younger soldiers often let civilians be is nothing new, but it nevertheless is not what she has ordered. In times of peace, an army can gain much from independent thought, but it is war, and it is a war Celesta does not intend to lose because a couple of morons barely older than the weapons they carry had thought they can afford humanity amidst chaos. She has no choice, even if she wanted to: there must be a verdict, and there must be a show.
The man struggles against the rope, ready to open his mouth to curse her out and promise he'll deliver justice unto Celesta and everyone she's ever wronged but then the other woman looks at him, the gesture pregnant with exhaustion. Celesta almost grimaces. She had hoped for a scene, but with at least one of them knowing their future depends fully on her sentence, she will have to do with what she was given.
The two prisoners fall silent, and look at the ground.
"Very well." She stands back up, and eyes the gathered. They are all tired and dirty, all some fifteen hundred of them, and she has their sole and undivided attention. She can see that they all want to go home — but she can also see that they trust the word she's given: that they will get to see that home come tomorrow, once their campaign ends and at last Katowice is liberated.
She takes a deep breath, and looks at the sun rising in the distance. For a moment, the rays coming through the skyscrapers and city blocks blind her, and in that moment she is again baptised, for it means a new day has come — and with it, the beginning of the last day of her war. She no longer needs to wait for all the Witch Slayers and hired guns that the Polish government has thrown at them in a pathetic attempt at shifting the struggle towards their own control.
She grins. They could hope all right, but it is her that the world at large has entrusted the liberation of Silesia from its spirit — and she will see it through, whatever it takes.
For a brief second, the sunlight refracts off of the thaumic barrier around the city, and her smile falters. By god would she have that city raised to the ground with her atomic blooms if she could — but even the barrier won't save them from her wrath. Even all the magic gathered in each last of those pesky little vermin won't—
And then the moment is over and the sun shines dully again upon a weary world, and her lungs are empty. She gathers her composure and turns her gaze back to the prisoners before her, once again touching the hilt of her weapon — a habit as old as it is meaningless.
She gathers all of her might and then says, in a voice so loud and determined that it sounds like gunfire: "You are then hereby officially discharged without honors and barred from serving the Coalition's cause until your death and well into whatever may remain after." The words hit them like whips. "You are stripped of all honors befalling a Coalition soldier and marked as a traitor to your own kind."
They look like they want to open their mouths.
"Such is my verdict."
In one swift motion, she unsheathes the blade and takes a swing.
When she puts it back against the platform beneath her, the two patches giving the soldiers their former names and titles fall onto the ground, cut right from their uniforms.
The two open their eyes, still shaking, and then take deep breaths, in desperate recognition that they are still alive. Celesta's face twists in disgust.
"Now get out of my sight before I have you shipped to the South Pole."
She does not give them the dignity of watching their former brothers in arms take them and lead them towards the nearest vehicle; she merely walks away, her hand again playing with the cold, uneven handle of the saber. She only stops walking once she is out on the outskirts of the camp, her vision of Katowice unobstructed by anything except for the growing suburban cancer that has taken a hold upon it in the last few decades.
God, if only they were still under Veil. She could have had this whole thing over in under a week. She—
"It is ready, general," a sudden voice interrupts that particular train of thought, and she is returned, faced by a sergeant in her ranks.
Celesta raises an eyebrow, putting her hands behind her back.
"All of it, I mean, general," the soldier nods nervously. "The Witch Slayers have confirmed that they are on standby, as has A.R.G.U.S. Miss al Fine has given us her green light as well."
Celesta nods as well. "Excellent. Notify the squad leaders that they are to ready their men. We march out in fifteen minutes.
"Tell them that my previous order stands:" she says, clapping her hands and turning away from Katowice, "go get me the Silesian.
"Go get me that little rat, and let's finish this in time for sunset."
To all of his enemies, Ry'hle Kiera is but a roach.
As pest to be trampled with the boots of the righteous, to them he is little more than vermin — a nuisance that remains against their will but that for all of its stubbornness is, at the end of the day, sentenced to the same faith as all the others who defy history. It isn't even that they hate him — though some like the lunatic fortified inside the Saucer most certainly do — as much as it is that he simply disgusts them. A working man for an age and people that are no longer needed, no longer relevant; a dusty relic stored in an attic that is to be inevitably sold out once grandma dies and the pretend-empathy is no longer needed.
He skitters around basements and corridors and metro tunnels and, when the moon is darkest, right under the noses of all those who have besieged his home — right under their petty pretense of morality. He walks and hides in the only places where they cannot see and he thrives in the only places where they cannot reach. He is a phantom, a ghost — wearing his overalls, to them he is more creature than man, more myth than person, more symbol than warrior.
But for all of his vices, Kiera is most certainly not a roach — though with how he's surviving, he certainly wouldn't blame anyone for seeing him as such. Holed up in a crumbling basement beneath a crumbling building, he lights up a cigarette. The smoke taints his dirty mustache, and he takes a deep, long breath once the cloud falls down and his lips burn, tainted by the nicotine.
He looks around the remaining survivors. There are fifty of them, now; there used to be more.
They're an ill-made family, but amidst a ruined city they all have to make do — though he has to admit, the ones of them that stay armed do look out of place amidst the single mothers and fathers and parents holding up their children, amidst all the beaten and bruised orphans of the city once known as Katowice. Though a makeshift fire burns between them, the group gathered in a circle, the flames do not reflect off of their eyes. Their drive has long since gone out.
There is a quiet cry as one of the kids reminds its mother of its hunger, the sound of its tired voice echoing against the cold concrete and unbroken by all the dirty rags hanging around their abode.
Kiera sighs again, then rolls up his sleeve to glance at his watch. Its face has long since been broken by debris and gunfire, but the hands nevertheless keep moving: tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. It's six ten, and in five minutes the sun ought to come back up again — and with it the Coalition and the Witch Slayers and everyone else that has come to his city like flies to feast on its rapidly rotting, concrete carcass. He is no idiot — he's seen the news and knows what today will bring for his cause, lest they not act.
Indeed: lest they not act.
He looks at the few men that have followed him here into this shelter, and without saying anything they nod at each other.
At once they all stand up, still trying not to wake the kids up with their boots and helmets and guns clinging against the seats and ceilings and floors, and they pull out their coms and let the rest of their own know: it is on.
Kiera takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. Behind his eyelids there is a fire burning, a kind of might he has always known in his heart but could not make real until the Insurgency has come and through their failure given all of his people the talent to wield the arcane. He sees it now, amidst the darkness. Though the fire's fuel is running out and will soon be depleted it remains regardless, ready to warm his men and give them the last shred of hope.
They have chosen him as his symbol, all those months ago, and there are days when he fears that he has let them all down. He knows they were aware their cry for freedom was a desperate plea that would most likely never see the light of day when they put him up as the leader of their resistance, of their separatism, but he still thinks he could've done more. Maybe if he too wasn't such an idealist fool he would have seen that their cause is a lost one the second it all went up in flames, that little Insurgent shit usurping their cause. Maybe he would have persuaded the Coalition and the Witch Slayers and the Poles that theirs is a cause worth at least listening to.
But oh well — it's no use now. They see him as a cockroach regardless. It would have only brought him and his people shame, only lowered them to a new nadir of humanity hitherto unseen by any minority for over fifty years.
But they forget one thing, all those who do view him as that disgusting little pest — roaches survive. Roaches endure. Roaches persist where man falls and they thrive amidst the rubble that buries everyone else. Even when one of them dies, the rest remain, and a single boot will not ever have might enough to stomp them all to death.
When he opens his eyes again, the flame is no longer only there in his mind — it is burning brightly upon his open palm. His men nod back and ready their guns. So it is on indeed: all the remaining freedomfighting cells, of real Silesian freedomfighting cells — they are on standby, ready to enact their final desperate plan to get to the shit that calls himself New Engineer before all the others and maybe — just maybe — get themselves a slither of a seat at the negotiation table when it's all over.
By god how he'd wish they could take them all on, first rooting out the fascist parasite that has stolen their fight and then all the others who've come here to declare scorched earth on their home under the pretense of fighting the Insurgency. He wishes that even with all their new might they were more than just tired and broken and poor old folk without a home and certainly without much strength. But the world isn't so.
Still: he'll do what he can. He'll do what he must, with what little remains.
He grabs his own gun from the cold floor, the rifle spiced up with so many black market augments so as to barely resemble the old paratech thing they had bought, and exchanges one last glance with his men, ready to—
A sudden explosion splits the silence, blasting right through their door and into their shelter. There are runes glowing where the entry stood, Kiera notices as a ringing mighter than his own determination blasts inside his skull, and through the smoke and thunder come in men. They are carrying weapons far greater than their own and are led by a wizard, a smirking little shit, the blue tint of the breach magic still dangling at the end of his fingertips.
Kiera tries to stand up, but the wizard whistles and the ringing intensifies, nailing him and all of his compatriots to the floor.
"Well there you are, Mr. Kiera," the wizard says, coming up toward him and lowering himself right to his level. "I was beginning to fear you might've skittered away from your little city.
"Oh but how grateful I am that you remain the same old you." He smirks again and before Kiera can tell him that his Coalition can eat shit, the wizard turns back towards his men, signalling them something Kiera cannot make out, and the back of his uniform betrays the symbol of an eye.
Ah. So he's one of A.R.G.U.S.' dogs, Kiera thinks through falling eyelids and clenched teeth, and though yet another insult forms at the tip of his tongue before he can mutter it out in righteous fury the wizard whistles once more and Kiera falls into deep, deep sleep.
The New Engineer is the greatest martyr mankind has ever birthed.
History has certainly seen others like him, but none like him. They have suffered all, Galileo and Joan and Shek, but none had paid a price like him. None have suffered as much, seen as much tragedy befall those whom they've loved. Christ the old fool might've come close, but even his divinity, his might was granted to him by birth alone — but the Engineer had to fight for his own. Tooth and nail and knife and gun, he climbed where he is through blood and sweat and pain, so much pain.
He takes a shaking breath, the only respite he dares take from his work, and continues typing.
They have betrayed him all, he now sees, each ally he has suffered for, each man he's risen through the ranks for to save from the depravity and madness the world had nailed through to their skulls. He had offered them respite from the only other cure they have had which was then usurped by that putrid fucking ape, that, that parasite, that…
He grabs his head, each thought pulsing with the spores of his Engine, his blood infested with a clarity of purpose he hasn't felt since they brought him up on a different continent and in a different time and in a different culture, one which valued strength and manhood and dignity and God, it valued God — and one that never let them down and never let them be hurt and never let them change, it never did, always nurturing and caring for each of its kids and securing their existence and a future for their children, and it—
His eyes are moving rapidly, each glance falling upon a different mask, upon a different side — first the stadium, the inside of the ruined Saucer falling down upon his shoulders like the weight of an Atlasian firmament, he himself not given the right to shrug; then the men, his own men, gathered in uniforms and with guns in their hands and with wavering faces under a rising sun, its light breaking through the cracks in the ceiling above what had once been a playing field; and at last his Engine — his attempt at recreating its perfection — its fungal sprouts growing taller and taller, always leaping higher and higher like a forest, like a family, their spores poisoning the air with clarity and purpose and chance, oh such beautiful chance, and—
He is the Engineer, no matter what others under his sigil may yet claim, and he is of the Insurgency. He is the Insurgency. He is the movement. He is freedom, liberation — he is son of God as dictated through his words and actions and— and he will suffer just like his brother nailed to a cross, betrayed by his closest for all of man to see, and— and—
And he takes a deep breath, gasping for air as if drowning, and then he coughs: he coughs until each last bit of that putrid fungus is out of his lungs and he can think straight once more.
He is shaking, but a sudden clarity comes upon him, and with it comes a headache — it hurts, by God it hurts, but it feels real. It is real. He takes another breath.
At last the machine in front of him stops moving, the fungal capacitors and vine cables finishing their job, and the screen displays a result. He expects the same one he has seen hundreds of times, all promises that his men will perish no matter what come sunset, but he is caught off guard: the machine promises a chance. A slither of one, anyway — a narrow pathway which he and his men may still walk to win against the Coalition and the Poles and indeed against those of the Silesians who still remain stubborn and refuse to yield to his dictate.
His heart starts beating again, and he barely believes it.
He has been betrayed by all those who promised him help — by society, by his own men, and then at last by those deplorable Ravens, no matter what they say and no matter what his followers may believe — and in his heart of hearts he has accepted the inevitability of failure. He had simply wanted to go out in a pyre grand enough to scorch all who opposed him with it. But now — now things have changed.
Now, there is a chance. However slim, however close to zero 0.5% of success might be — it exists. And if it exists, it can be exploited.
If it can be exploited, it can be turned into a weapon.
He takes another deep breath as he fills with lungs with clean air, typing the commands into the machine and begging it to show him how.
Captain Anna Świtoń is a bastard — and just like all bastards, she is persistent.
She's an old witch and an even meaner bitch, the bitterness in her character only partially caused by the many years in service to capital, and many years more in service to war. From Soviet Afghanistan through the Congo, aflame to an insurgent Sahel, she's been everywhere and seen it all. Indeed: in more than a century that she has remained part of the struggle, she has come to the conclusion that by and large war persists no matter the circumstances and certainly no matter the man. The ultimate trade, for all of its horror, survives — but such is life.
Some would say that it has rendered her cold, distant, each of the cybernetic replacements for her own faltering limbs only furthering her connection with the fellow man. Others would point out that she has become a traitor to each virtue she had once held dear, the old freedom fighter nowhere to be seen in the cadence of the disillusioned old businesswoman.
But both of them would be wrong — and worse yet, they'd be fools. For Świtoń has remained that which she has always been, even through the cynisism that has sprouted in her soul after the Second World War: a warrior, through and through, right to the bitter end.
A bitter end that, she fears, has come for her at last.
She brushes those thoughts aside as she enters the old military vehicle marked with the eye sigil of A.R.G.U.S., but the seeds of doubt nevertheless remain strong: the stairs leading up into the heavy transporter, tailored more to holding produce than men, only remind her of the memories she has lived through with the old thing — as do her knees, still aching under the weight of more than a hundred years despite the metal and fibers in their bones and muscles.
She closes her eyes, mutters a thought for strength to a god she hasn't believed in since Warsaw had fallen a century prior, and walks through into the vehicle, right where her duty lies.
When she enters, she no longer reeks of doubt. She is again herself, again Captain Świtoń, leader of A.R.G.U.S.' Occult Division and hired veteran, here to aid the Polish forces with taming the insurgent Silesia.
Like a hunter searching for prey, her glass eyes immediately fall to the seats in the vehicle's back, ignoring the driver in front, instead focusing solely on her target.
And just like that, there he is.
Ry'hle Kiera looks paler and thinner than she had expected. He's tied to the seats that would normally be occupied by one of her own brothers in arms, magic-grounding manacles snapped around his wrists and some crystal fiber binding his legs and arms to the rest of the structure. She's obviously seen many a victim of war and many more of hunger, but the image strikes her regardless; for a brief second, she thinks he can see that she didn't expect the situation has gotten quite that dire. She reclaims her composure just a moment later, but scolds herself in her head regardless — she cannot afford that, as she fears, she has lost her edge.
Still: she clears her throat, waves to the man in front to continue driving, and sits next to Kiera. He gives her a tired look but says nothing, so she crosses her legs and unpockets a pack of cigarettes. She puts one between her lips, kindling a flame at its end with two of her fingertips, and extends her hand towards Kiera's, offering him another.
"It's good stuff," she says in a voice as close to approximating friendliness as she can muster. She brings up the packet and shows him the branding, the Космос letters still standing strong despite their age. "Not like the faggotry they have you making these days."
He raises an eyebrow, but accepts the gesture regardless. She gives him a spark, and he takes a deep breath, letting out the smoke. "You can't good cop me into helping you, you know," he finally says, his tone almost as tired as hers. "I'm not an idiot."
She lets out her own white cloud. "And neither am I, Kiera. I do not take you for one, either: quite the opposite."
He stares at her blankly. She skews her head, slightly furrowing her brows, and throws the still-incandescent smoke to the ground, the flame dying before it reaches the cold steel.
"No, I certainly do not take you for a fool, which is exactly why I'm here." She puts her hands together and leans forward. "I want to make you a deal, Kiera. A good deal. The best you're ever going to get from those old shits in Warsaw, in any case. The best you're going to get from the Coalition, too."
She leaves out the part where she stands to officially represent neither organization, of course, because it doesn't matter: all that does is that her intent gets carried through. She wants him to see that she's tired, now, wants him to think that she wants this done as soon as possible. He is right, of course, for she does want all these things — but above all else, she wants his compliance. It'll be step one out of two; certainly closer to proper peace than that purple-haired idiot the Coalition has running their army has ever come.
He considers for a while. "Hmm. Which is why you go to me, an old coal miner."
"I thought we already established neither of us is a moron here." She pauses, letting the old vehicle around them rattle against the ruined streets of Katowice. "We both know you're more than that, Kiera. You're a symbol. A hero. Your people look up to you." She lets the words sink in again. "They need you.
"And so do we, you see. We might bring hell to the doorsteep of that little shit in the Saucer all we want, but without your help, the fire will always be burning. A spark will always be there, buried amidst your people, just waiting for another pyre. And we don't much like burns, do we?" She leans closer, letting a brief fire come to life in her eyes, channeling each of the atrocities she has seen in her time right to the front of her mind.
He meets her gaze head on, then spits on the floor. "You really are full of yourself, you know that?"
She stares him down, then stands up. She inhales sharply. "Very well. If you don't want to end this now, I certainly hope you'll enjoy dealing with the courts and the show they'll put you on before you sign your own surrender regardless." She does not turn to face him as she walks towards the driver. "But don't say I didn't warn you."
With a heavy thump, once outside Kiera's hearing — or so she hopes, believing all the rattle and spurting of the engines to be more than enough to do the trick — she falls on the seat next to the man driving, and sighs.
He doesn't say anything; he gives her a look but then turns back to face the road in front of him.
For a brief moment, she dissociates from the gunfire and falling buildings in the distance, from the road paved for their own travel by many a soldiers that have already gone in, and really thinks.
She had expected Kiera would be a pain in the ass, but she had also hoped that he'd be reasonable. She knows that he knows that the neither the Polish Government nor the Coalition will offer him this kindness, once they get to him. Whoever gets to the heart of the Insurgent cancer in the Saucer and takes down the self-proclaimed New Engineer within will be dealing the cards, but whoever has the man behind the freedom movement in the first place will be the one with the ace in the hole. He might be right in saying he's little more than a coal miner in body, but in spirit he's a symbol the people calling for Silesia's independence have chosen as their head — and for as long as he stands, so will they.
She sighs again, and lets her irrilite fingers flow through the artificial gray hair.
When she breathes again, a sudden weight comes upon her shoulders, and she no longer feels the lightness all the implants have given her over the years. She feels old. Older, certainly, than she felt when the conflict has started. When she got the call she felt ecstatic, almost, happy that she will once again be back in her element, a craft seldom needed in the decades since the fall of the Veil. But now — after but half a year in the grime and dust and blood — she is no longer certain.
Years ago, she would have taken a finger off of Kiera for each hour he hadn't signed the Polish government's mandate — that Silesia is a permanent part of Poland, and that all efforts to grant it sovereignty under Silesia United shall be withheld for the sake of common peace. He'd be branded a traitor by his own ilk, of course, but he'd get to live — and Świtoń would get time enough to win the race against that amateur Coalition brat into the Saucer, taking the victory before the UN can come in with their own borders and rules, despite their own facsimile of cooperation.
But times have changed. There are rules now, and a public to face — all instruments she has avoided for all of her professional life. Best she can do is let him sit stiff in the back like that, hoping that maybe he'll come to his senses. But she is not a fool — she knows how it'll end.
Hope dies last, and all that.
She sighs again. Yes, this will be her final war. She was wrong to ever believe otherwise — to believe that maybe this could spark a return to form. A stupid, old witch. Let's at least get this done properly, she thinks, already turning her attention away from the prisoner and towards the Saucer, looming in the distance — towards the only place that can guarantee them at least partial victory, now.
Yes, that it will — she suddenly knows what must be done. Kiera will come later. Now is the time to burn out like a proper fire, before time finds her smoldering like a dying ember.
She blinks twice and is again connected to the world, and the sounds come crashing into her ears again — and at least partially, she feels alive.
She smiles a tired smile, and looks at her driver. "Get me General Drzyzgewska on the line," she shouts over the engine. "There's been a change of plans."
Up there amidst the morning breeze, Celesta is like a conductor, her band standing restless to start the play.
There is a harrowing silence in the field before her, broken only by the regular sounds of boots hitting the ground, once in a while joined by the thumps of mechs joining their terrestrial brethren in the march. There are thousands of them, Celesta can see from atop her own tank, and they are like soldiers of god: clean and beautiful and righteous.
She smiles a wide grin as she lets the wind blow through her hair, and again turns her sight towards the giant mechs.
She has always had a fondness for U-HECs, their orange suits. Though the five-meter-tall orange steel goliaths are by no means of tactical use in most situations, they most definitely strike an image. With the guns and flamethrowers they carry strapped to their arms, as wide as two men, they walk like glorious giants, their approach more akin to that of a force of nature than of a weapon. She does not think they will do tremendously well in the closed off space of what remains of Katowice, but that does not matter — they are here to put on a show, a certain appearance to the outside world.
The many tanks and armored vehicles that surround the few dozen U-HECs look bad to the median bread eater — but a mech? A weapon as finely tuned to war as this? It's not a symbol of savagery and butchery; it's the herald of a civilized kind of warfare, of a warfare moral and seemingly calculated enough for the modern man to look at, deep down in his heart think it truly a marvelous piece of engineering, and go back to his daily troubles, ready to say that the war is yet another tragedy they could not prevent even if they tried.
Yes, the U-HECs are most definitely good press — but they are also terrifying. During her long life Celesta has known many brave men. She truly doubts their bowels would hold when faced by those things.
She takes a deep breath, and as the tanks and mechs line up around the thaumic border of the dome cutting off the outside world from Katowice, she opens her eyes.
Her army stands ready before her, so many thousands of them, each in a fine line right before the shimmering magic barrier. The U-HECs stand first, then tanks, then the armored vehicles, and then at last the poor bastards who were found by war during their enlistment. If she fell to the pressure of the Poles and the Witch Hunters and A.R.G.U.S., there'd be maybe half of them standing here, the rest of her dogs scattered around skirmishes that wouldn't mean anything. Scattered around stupid battles and cooperations with all the others that they agreed upon, but battles from which Celesta has pulled most of them out and left only a handful to maintain the illusion of unity.
It is her war, and it will be her victory — and it will be absolute.
So she raises her arms, and begins to sing.
As the words come pouring out of her they hear a song the world has not heard since the fires ate away at a Europe split by the Sixth Occult War almost two centuries prior. She sings and sings, the tune and intonation and sound just like Undersecretary General Da Capo al Fine had taught her so long ago, and the barrier's shimmer starts to tremble. It first shakes, then gurgles, and at last boils.
Celesta moves her hand in one final motion and as her voice reaches a crescendo around the place where her men are standing the barrier snaps.
At once, they all start moving forward.
Celesta's own tank, piloted by her most trusted men, also starts its movement. Slowly but surely it makes its way closer, ever closer to the Saucer looming in the distance, and though from up in its tower she is a target she cares little, for any bullet that may try and reach her would first have to go through her and her own arcane muscle.
That, and she likes the view.
She lets the sun and the wind and the air again take her whole as her men begin the last of their acts of war, running to the left and the right and indeed forward like ants storming a corpse.
There are explosions far away, there where her soldiers have already reached but where her tank has not yet rolled, and she can hear gunfire and arcane fire and regular old fire light up their way. There are screams and curses and buildings collapsing but there are also corpses, more of them wearing red than blue, and that is all she needs. A vehicle explodes from a makeshift device blossoming into plants and thorns and sometimes even into light; a man yelps as his head is split open by a bullet faster than thought fired from one of the skyscrapers, his death avenged not two seconds later by those who witness his last breath; a whole battalion is disappeared as their outlines form permanent shadows and their companions scream as their guts explode, turning into pudding the second they touch the pavement.
There is fire and there is fury — and there is fear and there is death.
The column marches forward.
For for as long as it advanced, its arms spreading like disease throughout the roads and pathways opening from the main road and the many other streets they have already liberated, the machine goes on. And for as long as the machine goes on, its gears nicely greased up by the blood and sweat, it is good enough for Celesta.
They march on and they march on for hours more, each minute getting her and her men closer towards the destination awaiting at the end of the road. It is only a matter of time before they reach it, their arrival as inevitable as everything else in this campaign, but Celesta still furrows her brows. She had hoped it would be quicker, despite all the flats felled and all the Insurgents laying down on the cold concrete without the dignity of burial. She knows it's all nonsense of course, but part of her fears that they will be too late — that, when they get to that barricaded stadium they will already see the stupid A.R.G.U.S. witch hanging the New Engineer by his balls.
Celesta shakes her head, and takes a deep breath. She once again re-assures herself that it's nonsense speaking: she has already made sure that the forces loyal more to the Polish Government than the United Nations could not possibly have the manpower to make it through before them. She promised them men but she has only left a fraction of the pledged soldiers. She's diverted them towards her own cause the second her allies in all but truth have begun their own engagements. Just as directed by her Undersecretary General, she's made the war hers truly, ensuring that all is in her hands in the hour when it matters the most.
She does not think they know yet, all of the others, for the only brilliance among them is the sun reflecting off of their stupid goddamned helmets, but the fear still remains. That that stupid witch and her idiot little government dogs have found a way regardless, that they've seen through her and al Fine's plans and that as Celesta and her own ilk are here bleeding out on the streets the others are already procuring a surrender — a surrender to themselves, one that will guarantee her Coalition will have little say in the world that will come to be — and that they are already—
She exhales sharply, letting the chilly air exit her lungs, and she counts to six.
As if on instinct, her hand falls upon her saber again, and she is calm once more. It is nonsense, just like she's said — she is Celesta and she will triumph, just like she always has. She does still wonder when the time will come that they'll notice, but it's now more curiosity than concern; either way, it would not change the tides of war. All the pieces have already fallen into place.
Tout ira bien.
She opens her eyes again, ready to greet the city with the kind of attitude expected of a leader, but the first thing she sees almost mortifies her.
Right out there at the edge of her vision, in a block her men are marching down, a small Fae family is looking out of a window, the mother and children scared out of their minds. They are trembling.
Celesta's mind flares with rage as a memory comes back to her.
They have failed here. God damn it they have failed her — she has told them to get her the Silesian and amidst all of the chaos she had forgotten about that little brat. She had forgotten about the fact the idiots she'sd once personally given the ranks of captain and colonel and lieutenant had told her that when they arrived he was already gone, his bunker ransacked and his men similarly disappeared, and that there was nothing they could do because each other location was empty and—
She grabs her head with her hands and shouts out a curse word in a language that hasn't been spoken in two millenia. She is thankful that none of her soldiers notice her stupid rage, but she lets it out again regardless: fuck, fuck, fuck! What bastards, what incompetent bastards! God.
God.
She wanted it done professionally, but if she can't have that shit's signature alongside that of the New Engineer, so be it. She doesn't need it. She has all the might in the world that could ever be necessary to liberate this city, and Kiera's signature and approval does nothing: his consent means nothing.
Still: she lets herself shout at the top of her lungs, unsheathing the saber and letting thunder ripple around her figure.
The sound makes her men turn back, those of them that are not immediately busy with life and death, and when they notice her standing atop the tank, lightning dancing around the weapon and her eyes and her arms they raise their own guns and scream out in newfound determination. They scream and they shout and then they walk again, this time harder, this time sure that what they do is right and that by god will history vindicate them.
Good.
Celesta smiles, almost amused.
In their eyes, she can see, the city is already barren and its ashes buried.
If he still had fight left in him, the long road would break Kiera.
With each bump on the road he prays is just rubble the vehicle moves up and then down, throwing his already beaten bones against the hard seats and floor. They've at least given him the dignity of sitting him up right, the bastards that had tied him up when he was out, but it does little to alleviate the pain. The vehicle still digs into what little remains of him, each little thing only ringing out a dull echo of the spell they put upon him.
God, the ringing. He really does wish he had his hands free to at least grab that balding head of his. Though whatever it was that that wizard has put upon him to first stun and then knock him out has long since lost most of its grip, he still thinks he can feel that sharp white noise each time his mobile prison engages what remains of the roads of Katowice.
He'd complain, he really would — he'd look at the shit that still drives the thing long after the witch has gone and he'd shout at him and tell him all that he thinks about his people — but the fire isn't there. It was fading before, and it is now gone.
Man was not meant to fight like this, for this long — not for five months, and most definitely not for a lifetime. He is tired, and though in the morning the sparks were still there, he just cannot do it anymore.
It isn't that it hurts, though it most certainly does; it's more a tired disappointment than fear, than sadness. He has spent most of his life fighting for the cause, and to see it so broken, so stolen and so abused, it just… it weighs down upon his shoulders, however tough from his job they might have gotten over the years, almost with strength enough to bury him.
He stares blankly at the empty row of seats before him, and lets go.
There should be anger stirring in his heart, but he cannot muster it anymore. He's failed them, he suddenly realizes. He's failed them all — each and every single person who's ever entrusted him to be a leader, to be the face and hands of their revolution. They put their faith in him and they bound their fate to his own and there he is — at the back of a truck of a hired gun, hauled along like cattle, like cargo. What a grand man he must look like, amidst the dirt and sweat and grime. What a symbol they must think of him.
What a tremendous joke.
Well. Some less cynical part of him says that they'll somehow make do, all those who dared call themselves Silesians. It most certainly isn't the first time they've been let down, is it. It's their national export at this point, all throughout the century – disappointment and dismay. What a sad excuse for a movement, what a sad excuse for a people.
So he sits there like that, uncaring and undaring, surrendering to the will of the vehicle, and says nothing.
He does not know how quickly but time definitely passes as he remains still, remains unmoving: he can hear it in the way the sounds of the outside shift, whatever part of them gets through to him through the roaring of the engine. The screams and explosions are far more scarce now, only occasionally piercing the morning air.
He is unsure whether that is good.
He truly does hope that whatever death, whatever destruction he can hear, that it's all just the Insurgents and the Witch Hunters and maybe the Coalition if he's lucky. But above all else he's a pragmatic man — he knows that amongst those bleeding out there's also his folk, those whom he's given hope and whom him and his men have given the go ahead to. He wishes that he could take it all back, that he could tell them it's no use, but the deed is already done and he's sure they've already taken up their arms and tried, where they could, gunning down whichever of the invaders they could get their hands on.
Well. It is not that he could blame them, either way — the fire is in their blood. They were born into this, born into the fight, enlisted right from their first breath and first cry. They are stupid, the lot of them, but they are kids yearning for purpose, yearning for identity. He would have done the same at their age — hell, he would have done the same today, were it still morning.
He knows he can't stop the wheel of history. He just wishes it didn't break all the kids beneath it.
He thinks about them all again, each leader of each cell, and for the first time in years whispers a prayer, begging for them all to be all right.
He lets out the last word, and a sudden realization comes upon him: this is stupid. This is all so incomprehensibly stupid: he's tied up here all right, but how fucking old is he to be putting on this routine? How long will he stay like this, wallowing uselessly to a nonexistent audience? He puts his head up as he grunts in frustration, and realizes that he has truly been stupid: there will be time yet to mourn, but it is not now. When — if, he corrects himself in his head — all is rubble and all hope is lost, that's when he'll sit and drink. Now, though, there is a war yet to be won.
The sudden anger lets him out of his stupor, and he props himself back up.
When they come — and they will come for him, he knows, because they will need somebody to drag before all the cameras when the battle is won — he will greet them with defiance, just as he always has. If he is to go down, he will make each day that those shits have to deal with him a pain in the ass.
He has thought before that all the kids that went out with their guns were in over their heads, but he now comes to remember that the fight is in his own blood, too: it has been there longer than they have been alive, and he will not let it die out. Not here and not now — if the fuckers want to break him, it will take more than this. It will take more than they have strength at their disposal even if he has to walk to his own grave to—
The vehicle comes to a sudden halt, and the inertia throws him first forward and then back up, his head banging against the hard seat.
When he opens his eyes again, he can feel blood dripping down his nose and onto his pants. He stares at it intently, as if in disbelief that he can actually still bleed, that he's still alive. He looks down at his hands, tied down with the manacles, and then at the blood, now falling onto his fingertips.
Drip, drip, drip.
A sudden realization dawns upon him.
Drip, drip, drip.
The fight is in his blood indeed.
He almost laughs as the red taints his fingertips. He has never been a man of the occult, even after the Insurgency spread the arcane onto every man in Silesia by chance, but now he can feel the heart in his chest pounding — and he pours all of his will into his fingertips. The handcuffs are blocking his magic, he is well aware, but they only bind his organism — not that which is outside it.
And here, surrounded by all of the ambient magic those Insurgent idiots have released when their ritual failed, he does not need anything more.
He lets himself breathe, and then in one swift thought pours all of his devotion and all of his frustration and all of his anger and all of his rage right into those drops as they fall.
And just like that, they answer his call.
One by one they turn into boiling smoke that eats at his fingertips, he realizes as he screams in pain, but quickly moves his wrists so that the manacles fall victim to his newfound talent instead of his palms.
The manacles become undone.
With his hands free he unties his legs and stands up, and before the soldier can grab his gun, alarmed by all the screaming, half of the vehicle is already hidden by smoke, its outlines eating away at the cold steel.
The soldier does not notice Kiera stand up and come towards him — and he most certainly does not notice him pick up the soldier's gun and walk out of the vehicle towards the high sun, ready to finally finish what he had started.
The machine comes to life once more, and the spores start to sing.
They move and they grow and they vibrate and then, at last, when the beryllium-bronze circuitry is shaking with power, they hum – and with each note and with each word comes a release, a vision.
And with each vision comes a future.
The seeds fall upon the dusty floor as the light pierces the ceiling once more, and as the sun comes full into view its light refracts off of the spores like a pilgrim crossing the mist, and only then does the New Engineer realize how thick the mantle chokes him. It is everywhere, that scarlet little rot, beholden to every molecule of oxygen still left inside the putrid stadium. It is there and it is dancing on the wind, each movement another wave of nausea up his eyes and up his nose.
His hands shaking, he types a command in a language he no longer understands, and the fungal mist shimmers with the kind of electricity that has nothing to do with current and magnetism.
He takes a trembling breath, and his eyes roll back.
And then he sees it all.
At once he is plunged into a darkness primordial enough to be mistaken for God and when he sees — when he truly and fully sees, unburdened by logic or morals or indeed by reason — a brilliant tree of light sprouts before him, its roots more similar to fungi than wood. It sprouts forward and forward, each branch growing from but a single stem, a single path that had taken him where he and all of his men are now.
He tries not to look at it but it burns too bright, the scar in body and mind and soul too deep and old to ignore, and he again remembers. He remembers the New World and the star-spangled loins from which he was born, his story but a brick in the road paved by progress and civilization. He remembers his father's fists and his teacher's ruler and then, in a flash of white pain, he remembers the screams of his officer. He remembers the eagle nailed like Christ the Saviour to a pentagon inside a star, and he remembers what they did to others and what they did to him once he was no longer useful, no longer obedient to their cowardice, and he remembers the disgrace and his escape to the old continent and the shape of a gun forever imprinted in his palm, and the burning rage of disgrace, and—
And he—
He looks away before it consumes him again. He is a new man now and he bears a new purpose — one that shall outshine the might and glory of his former masters. One that will burn bright long after he is gone.
With his chin brought up in defiance, he looks upon the tree before him, and at once Knows without knowing.
The futures explode again like a star becoming undone and each possibility, each movement and each outcome pour into him like song and hatred pour into a broken man. They shine with a promise of tomorrow, some of them, but most end right here and now — a dull kind of grey that looks like cancer upon the branches, eating the tree and its chance of growing in the future.
His eyes more rapidly, darting, in search of the light, of any slither of hope he may yet find. He can see the branches where he makes it out and wins like the man he was always supposed to be shining bright, but he has to find where they are hiding. He grabs the dull grey of his own demise and rips each branch with the kind of might offered only by self-righteousness — and then at last he sees them.
Buried beneath the probable lay the omens, the paths walking so close to miracles to be thought of as barely more than fiction. He looks at them regardless.
In the first the Raven never betrays him and indeed arrives as it had promised and they ravage and loot and burn together, the bird upon his shoulder a rightful sign of his similarities to its own master, and when the time comes and the spoils are divided he hears how they have come to their senses and how there's more money to be made here than with their own mistress, and they stare together at the burning cerulean banners amidst the smoke of a new state — his own state, a free state — rising, and before he can give thought to the words of the Raven—
—he turns his eyes away, knowing that the Raven is gone and will never return. He looks at another branch, this time promising camaraderie: a path for a different world and for a different man, one where he brings the weakness the people of Silesia so cherish into their life with the might of revolution. But it is not glorious and brilliant and true — it is a revolution of the jews and the faggots, a serpent coiling around his own vision of utopia, and—
—and then another catches his eye, another branch burning far brighter than any of the others. It shares not the fickleness and their frailty, but it stands as a strong and mighty root rivaling in its stability the trunk from which the tree had grown. In it he sees himself awake once more, awaiting his final judgment as two storms come barging into his last abode, his fortress upon a shining hill. It is the two witches, he sees, brought here by ambition and rightful anger — and in their eyes he can see a hatred for him rivalled only by their own shared disgust at each other. They fall upon him but before they reach him their own fire scorches them both, and he emerges victorious, and—
And before the vision can burn his eyelids with the shape of it destiny his own human mind was never meant to see he falls back, now Understanding and Knowing, and he again takes a deep breath and falls out of his chair, sent hurdling towards the hard floor.
By the time he reaches it, he once again feels pain.
In one swift motion the sun passes under a cloud again and the fungal shroud falls too, the air and his mind clear once more. Breathing heavily, he looks upon the machine, its twisting cables more plant than machine, and he pants. He pants until he regains his composure.
Then, he smiles.
The smile turns into a grin and then into relieved laughter, his own eyes in disbelief that the thing he cobbled together from what little he stole from the man who dares to call himself Engineer even slightly rivals the might of the actual Engine. He laughs, genuinely shocked to see that it has given him what he had hoped it would — that it had given him an actual chance. That it wasn't just an error.
That it wasn't just a bad dream; that his vision may come to pass.
Slowly — very slowly — he stands up, exchanging glances with his men who by now have seen so much they no longer worry about the trances and indeed about his facsimile of the Engine. He nods with the kind of certainty they have not seen in months, and their faces light up with the same kind of greed and determination he had seen when he hired them.
Come, his eyes tell them, for there is hope still.
Come, and let me show you.
The anger boiling inside Świtoń is almost enough to make her feel young again.
"Where is he?!" she shouts at the top of her lungs as she barges into the makeshift outpost, her body practically shaking with rage despite all of the augments. Her eyes fall upon the nearest man she can hold responsible with the kind of cadence normally reserved for a leopard noticing a sickly zebra. "WHERE IS HE?"
The man gulps, and before he can open his mouth, Świtoń slaps him with the open palm of her metal hand. Were she half a century younger, he would already be laying there as a pile of dust.
The man spits out a broken tooth through his bruised lips, but nevertheless salutes her, face on with a blank stare. She can still see the fear rising in his eyes. "I— He escaped us, Captain, we—"
She raises his hands again and he flinches, but she holds herself back as she merely points a sharp irrilite finger at that idiot's forehead.
"You monkey. You stupid fucking monkey." The grimace splitting her face looks almost uglier than the scars around it. "We had him. We had him right in the palm of our hands, and you let him go."
The man looks like he wants to say something again, but she interrupts him before he can make her see red once more: "We could've had this fucking thing over in two hours with a double signature but no, that would've been too good. Too clean your you fucking idiots, wouldn't it? Huh?!"
For a few seconds she just stands there, breathing as heavily as a running engine, and she lets her steam literally blow out of the exhausts mounted near her calves. When she calms down, she looks at the soldier standing next to the idiot she's just hit.
"And the man who let him go? Where is he?"
That one retains a bit more composure. "Dead, we believe, Captain."
She rolls her eyes, but this time the gesture is more tired than angry. "You believe. Great." She waves her hand and starts pacing around the room. "Anyone else got any more interesting theories they'd like to share?
"No? That's great. Really great," she says when the silence rises up to meet her. She sighs loud enough for her lungs to be mistaken for the breaks of a car, and then puts her hands together. "Know this: for now, we continue fighting. We have a goal. But when this is over, I swear to fucking god I will have each of you held responsible for the disaster that this is.
"You are all dismiss—"
"Actually, Captain…" one of the new faces — the ones she can't quite recognize, she suddenly realizes — holds up his hand, trembling. "There is one more thing."
She eyes him heavily. "Speak."
"Our reports from the northern frontlines tell us that the Coalition, they've, ah…"
"Spit it out!"
"…They abandoned us, Captain."
A sudden weight falls on her shoulders. "…What?"
"Most of the promised units — the ones they said they'd give us to help with the offensive — they're nowhere to be found, Captain. Maybe one tenth of what we were promised has backed our men up, and we—"
Within an instant, Świtoń realizes what has happened. It dawns upon her light lighting.
Those fucking bastards.
Without as much as a word she picks up her pace and leaves her men behind, again barging through the doors with strength enough to break them apart. Those fucking bastards. She knew they shouldn't trust them and indeed gave no thought to ever putting her faith in them, but for that purple-haired cunt to ever so brazenly betray their illusion of unity? Świtoń scoffs, genuinely almost impressed with the kind of vanity necessary for such a move. Those fucking bastards.
She has underestimated Celesta and her pettiness, she suddenly realizes, but that was her own mistake — and it's a mistake she'll never make again. Now, there will be fire and there will be blood: she will see to it personally.
With a step heavy enough to crush concrete she leaves the building and the idiots occupying it far behind, so far behind that she soon finds herself no longer inside the A.R.G.U.S.-liberated safezone. So far that, right there two blocks away, she can see the frontlines and she can most definitely see the Saucer. Though her own men are there too, firing upon the Insurgent defences, she does not pay them attention: they have failed her twice tonight, and they won't do it again.
She cannot have her last war tainted by defeat because of those goddamned idiots. She cannot end her career on such an embarrassment.
She looks at the situation and at once reaches a verdict: no more bullshit, and no more playing nice. This ends here and now.
If they don't want a stable transfer of power, one at least playing pretend with civility, then they will have her.
She takes a breath deep enough to feel it in her veins and at last the power comes back to her, all of the magic crackling in the air of Silesia focusing first into thoughts and then into will. It sparkles at the end of her metal fingertips, the might running through her heart and right into her soul, and when she opens her eyes again she once more feels right in her element.
She lunges forward, beyond the lines of safety and right into battle, and she releases all of the pent up power that has been building inside her.
By all means, this is stupid — but the frustration has pushed her way past reason. She does not care she is commanding officer and that there is a chain of command, a chain of orders. Right now, she is Anna Świtoń, witch, and she lets it all go.
With just a flicker of her hands, the pavement beneath her comes alive.
It breaks and it moves and it flows like water, soon joined by all the rubble of the ruined buildings and streets around her, and it carries her forward like a great stream; it surrounds her like a storm, each particle orbiting around the center of her arcane mass, and just like bullets the ashes of Katowice form projectiles. Within an instant she becomes a living, breathing thing, more nature than man, and the brick and wood and stone and glass dance around her as if she was their campfire, their only light.
They dance and as if they were the organic arms she hasn't had since Rhodesia still stained the maps of the world and they reach out and meet her enemies, cutting their throats with broken windows and impaling their bodies with displaced beams. The weight of the hurricane falls down on Świtoń's whole body but she does not give — the rods of pure irrilite jam right into the nerves replaced with beryllium bronze wiring, and she endures. She endures and she walks forward, always forward, past all the Insurgents falling dead in her wake and right within the Saucer's reach.
Each bullet and missile coming her way falls through the hurricane and becomes undone, one painful sting at a time, until there are no more men left to fire.
The only thing separating her from that deplorable building is a flight of stairs, which she orders with but a thought to carry her upwards, towards the entrance into the stadium and right towards her promised prize.
The visual and auditory might of her spell makes her almost able to ignore the memories of the falling Warsaw, clinging by their similarity to the scene painted by her hurricane in the ruin left behind by her march.
The Coalition's approach is like death: terrifying, inevitable, and oh so unbearably slow.
Celesta sighs a breath of frustration from atop her tank as the hours come and go, each sixty minutes time she knows could be used elsewhere. They are doing good by every reasonable metric, with more than half the city in liberated part-ruin behind them, but it still does not feel good enough to quiet down the voices mocking her inside her head. The reports she gets should be similarly calming: A.R.G.U.S. and the Witch Slayers are woefully behind, playing catch with the same asset that Celesta has failed to procure instead of pushing forward. But the thoughts are anything but, and the slight shiver of worry always remains.
She inhales deeply, and repeats inside her head: they do not know yet. They do not know.
She gropes the end of her sword without noticing, and she turns to the subordinate standing next to her.
"How much more?" she asks, pointing towards the figure of the Saucer, looming closely before them, now fully obstructed by the buildings no longer standing between them and the structure.
For a moment, the man considers, reading something off of the screens built into the armor covering his forearm. He scratches his gray mustache, then taps the display thrice, and looks up back to meet her gaze. "Half a kilometer, General. Should be less than two hours at our current pace."
She nods, and turns back towards the horizon. The sun is almost setting by now — the crisp morning air has given way to the afternoon breeze, heavy with the wind and the cold and the waning sun. There are still at least a couple of hours left in the day, so by all means there should be nothing to worry about — even if the fight goes well into the evening, the Coalition will still be able fulfill its promise of freedom by sunrise. Silesia will be freed and their public face will stand untouched — but this is not what Celesta wants. Even if flawless, such execution would still leave room for A.R.G.U.S. catching up and taking them over in the race to the center, thus laying all of her plans to ruin.
It would embarass Celesta. It would embarass D.C. al Fine. It would embarass the Coalition.
This cannot come to pass.
Celesta considers for a moment far shorter than her rank and indeed her age would call for, and turns back to the man riding shotgun. She knows what can — no, what must — be done.
"Lieutenant," she says, "Tell the flanks that the time has come. We can afford no further distractions."
He looks at her, surprised but nevertheless amused — not out of disrespect, but something almost like satisfaction; the kind of look reserved for kids that get more presents on Christmas than they had expected. "Are you certain, General?"
She nods. "Most gravely."
He refuses the urge to raise his eyebrows, and instead smiles. With a swift movement he taps in the intended command, and at once all those who need to know are aware of what is required of them.
Celesta breathes in, closing her eyes and taking in the sulphur and smoke, baptised beneath a bleeding sun, and smiles alongside her second-in-command.
When she opens her eyes again, it is on.
From the outskirts of the town, right where the edges of their supply lines and where their support task forces remain, rise things. They look like drones and indeed are composed of the mechanical components one would expect to find in such a vehicle, but they are not animated by electricity. The movement of their rotors and the circuits showing them the path they are meant to take run on the arcane, a part of a wizard's will implanted right into their microchips — a method of encoding as expensive and difficult as it is impossible to intercept.
They rise, driven by pure magic, and though in the thaumically nascent environment of Silesia they tremble, they do not break. They do not give, and neither does the payload they carry hidden deep in their bellies.
They rise, slowly but terribly, like angels heralding armageddon — inevitable and preordained like fate itself, their black rotors breaking apart the smoke and cutting the cold midday air with each movement of their blades.
They rise, and not a minute later they reach their intended targets, city blocks marked as Insurgency-controlled and spread out around Celesta's path forward, towards her prized gift.
And then, the drones fall.
The second they reach the ground, brilliant pillars of light rise from the streets and right into the air. They first stand as but pure white but in mere seconds they blossom like flowers, passing through each color of the spectrum, splitting light and concrete and steel, melting everything except flesh that meets their touch. Their petals fall to the ground, burning with them the roads and the buildings, and before long the pillars are flowers, opening and unraveling in some grotesque mimicry of living, breathing things.
And they dance.
Upon the howling wind they spread and move, leaping like divinity at last released from their corporeal shells, shaking and laughing and mocking with the heat of their might and indeed the size of their strength. They grow and they grow and then again they explode into a billion rainbow-stained particles, each piece of the fallout a beautiful shard of armageddon touched by god, and the petals blossom too, flashes of white so bright so as to be mistaken for justice, and—
—and then, leaving nothing but a flat plane in their wake, they are gone.
And they are gorgeous.
Celesta does not know what they put inside those things — her education and indeed experience is related to magic, but nowhere near the field of thaumic engineering — but she does not need to to appreciate their beauty. They are the closest thing to the Casaba-Howizter thaumonuclear warheads that the Coalition was cleared to utilize, a last ditch effort reserved for one payload per city they were meant to liberate. A failsafe, in case things truly go south.
But things never went south, and Celesta never needed them — except now. Now that she knows there are no other options — on paper, of course — but to put them all to use so as to ensure that the final approach will be swift enough to be humane.
…Or so she'll tell the press, anyway; not that she'd care.
Now, fallen right before her, is most of what remains of Katowice, each of the blocks and neighborhoods still standing in her way leveled by the devices carried by the drones. All of the blocks that were interrupting them, that were making their march annoying enough to postpone her arrival at the Saucer, are gone. Reduced to a kind of primal integrity they lay, barren husks upon open foundations and bleeding ground. There's barely any ruin left in their place, the urban guts and blood of the city vaporized alongside its bones and flesh. In their wake—
She suddenly squints her eyes as the brilliance brought upon by the bombs dies down, and she notices something: not all the intended blocks were brought down like she had requested. Standing there, right on the horizon, is a single lonely building, trembling but still strong — almost as if it was untouched and unscatched.
Almost as if one of the drones did not start and did not land.
She turns to the other passenger. "What is that?" she asks, pointing to the structure with her sword, which is now unsheathed, brief sparks of thunder crackling at its end. She intones, "Why is it still there?"
The man looks similarly surprised and similarly disappointed and similarly shocked. He looks at the device mounted near his hand and with worry in his eyes turns back to face Celesta. "There has been an issue, General.
"One of the squads meant to fire the payload says something has taken their attention while they were priming the device. Something they say you would consider far more important."
"Well?" she asks through gritted teeth. "What is it?"
His eyes move rapidly between the lines as the messages come flooding in. "It… It appears that they are saying A.R.G.U.S… 'knows', General. Whatever that means."
She is Celesta. They will not have her.
Celesta's breath stops. "Are they sure?"
They will not make her.
"Most gravely," the man says, trying to lighten the situation, but when he looks at Celesta she is no longer there.
In one swift motion she lunges forward, right from the tank, and in that moment she ceases to be herself — with one arm and sword in hand outstretched towards the Saucer, she fires like thunder, she fires like lightning. Sparks come flying around her as she unleashes all of her pent up rage and anger and does what no commanding officer in the Coalition has done since the days of the Seventh Occult War — she joins the fray head on.
She is Celesta, and she will succeed.
She jumps forward, pulling all of her essence through the narrow pathway channelled forward by the lighting guided by her sword, and she pushes through. It makes her head echo with pain great enough to be mistaken for death but she jumps again and again, each time zapping forward like lightning.
Each time faster than sound, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake; she zaps forward and forward until she passes right through the building, the last piece of resistance left to her and her will, and though she is gasping for air in what could be called desperation she nevertheless pushes on.
She does not look back, but if she did she would notice the bodies laying in her wake. The rubble makes it impossible to see the color of their uniforms.
One and two, and before she can blink she is through and she is standing right before the Saucer.
One and two, and the sound catches up with the mayhem. The air ripples with a supersonic boom loud enough to deafen anyone within a hundred meters' radius, but Celesta similarly pays it no mind — all she remains focused on are the A.R.G.U.S. troops, advancing into the Saucer from the other side, scaling the stairs leading up to the building despite the bullets falling down like rain.
She at once gathers again all of her energy, and as flesh turns to lightning once more she shoots forward, right towards the promise of glory.
Like some wounded beast, Kiera runs and runs until his lungs give way to the weight of desperation — and then he runs a little bit more.
His life — the life of everyone who remains free in this city — depends on it.
He runs through the ruined streets and he runs through the toppled buildings, passing through each levelled flat and burnt home as if it wasn't even there. He wishes that he didn't have to, that he could stay and look and feel what they have done to his Katowice in the name of order — but he can't. He can't stop; not here, not now. He is the only thing separating what little remains of the city from sharing its fate with the rest of its tattered concrete body.
His run is not one of dignity; it's full of sharp breaths and tired pants and tears held back only by the adrenaline pumped right through his veins with each beat of that damned, furious heart. Tuhm-duhm, tuhm-duhm, tumh-duhm. Tap, tap, tap. His boots hit the cracked pavement as fire again erupts in the distance, and though his muscles burn and his brain screams he carries on, now again more symbol than worker, again more martyr than man.
And wherever he goes, the smoke follows.
Pouring right from his back like a muscle he hasn't known he had, it pours and it pours, each cloud of arcane energy but a concentrated composite of his will and of the ambient, shivering magic shimmering all around Silesia's air. It is still furious and thick and everpresent, but it is no longer deadly, no longer toxic to anything it touches. It lives and it breathes — like him, like his mind, like his surroundings — and it clouds him. It moves and rises and falls like the dust of the collapsed buildings, like the fallout of a landmine, like the air left behind by a thaumic cannon — and it covers him whole.
Kiera does not know, truly, how well the smoke masks him — or if indeed it masks him at all. All he knows is that amidst all that gray and white and black, he is to the Coalition soldiers and A.R.G.U.S. dogs and the Witch Slayers like light, like dust.
Like a cockroach.
He smiles a cynical grin, and then he runs some more.
He runs next to things he wished he'd never have to see: past orange giants burning men alive in their clothes and homes and havens; past gunfire faster than light splitting the skulls of men both cerulean and crimson, spilling their charred and frozen guts right on the pavements he's walked so many times; past life and death and dignity and shame, all unraveling beneath bombs falling and mines exploding and vehicles both great and small exchanging blows and shots and punches and charges. He runs, and though he wishes he could stay and break the neck of every gun-bearing bastard raping his city he knows he can't until he's reached the last place he knows he could be safe — the last place he knows can still turn the tide of history.
Still: it stabs his heart regardless, to see the place he'd lived in for so long reduced to rubble. Reduced to acceptable collateral for freedom and democracy and liberty, for history ended; reduced to a simple calculation, designating it a price for victory everyone but those actually concerned is willing to pay.
So he does the only thing he can, to dull the pain — he runs farther, always farther; and as he does, he starts to Hear.
The how or the why remain a mystery to him, but inside the smoke the echoes and the whispers and the explosions all come out different, come out strange. They are no longer the ambiance of the death and destruction unraveling around him — they are more specific. Benches creaking and breaking that sound like conversations picked from Coalition agents that couldn't possibly be this close, describing topics Kiera was most definitely not meant to hear; electric discharges to the tune of slurs and threats levelled by individual Insurgents, telling him right where and who betrayed them and how vulnerable they are left; steel draping concrete like pens drafting plans by men subservient to A.R.G.U.S. and the Polish government. All picked intentionally, with tremendous guidance, almost as if there was a mind behind them, a force and heartbeat he tapped into the second his arcane frequency matched with its own.
Almost as if the city itself, still unwilling to let go and die without a bang, was screaming bloody vengeance.
It screams and it screams, and Kiera drinks it all up, each terrible kilometer and broken city block at a time; he drinks right until the sparks in his neurons shiver to the same tune as those of the city, and the lines in his thoughts form the shape of Katowice, hollow but not yet dead, and then at long last he knows what he has to do.
What they all have to do.
When the whispers stop, the smoke suddenly clears and Kiera lets his legs stop in their tracks for what feels like the first time in eternity. He cannot carry on. He needs to rest for a second, each of his muscles is screaming, needs to—
At once the weight of his entire body falls on his knees and the fire burning in his heart spreads to his lungs. He doubles over, trying not to cough them out or indeed fall on the ground from his trembling legs, but before he can make the decades he's spent smoking look harmless he suddenly realizes that he knows where he is. That, though amidst all the rubble and missing segments, his legs did not guide him wrong — that for all of his aching muscles he is exactly where he needs to be.
He takes a deep breath, great and greedy enough to nearly make him throw up, and with a trembling step he walks over to what remains of the block.
It was a run down thing even before the Insurgence and even before the fall of the Veil, but it nevertheless still stands before him, sturdy in spite of the years and sturdy in spite of the bombs. It's dirty old plaster against rotting wood and brick, but it is there — and right now, Kiera needs nothing more.
He clears his throat and then bangs on the door with a rhythm they agreed upon when they were still young and still had hope in their hearts, when they first decided that they are sick of all the abuse by those who run their show, when they first gathered in the basement under this very block.
Kiera takes a deep breath, and prays that somebody answers.
The face that greets him when the door opens partially is nearly as tired and beaten as him. Still: a light shines in her eyes when she notices it's Kiera that's coming through. Something almost reminiscent of a smile comes upon her lips. "Thought you was dead."
"Thought so too, for a while. In the spirit, anyway." He points with his head inwards, towards the single shaky light illuminating the hallway behind the woman. "You alone, or did somebody else also make it through?"
She doesn't reply, instead first closing the door and then undoing all of the locks. For a while, they just stand there, looking at each other, and then they exchange handshakes and again they are alive, their hands once more determined and with maybe just a bit of hope.
They come downwards, towards the basement where it all began, in almost total silence. The relief that they are both still alive is more than they need.
They are met with maybe ten men, all armed with pathetic excuses for weapons and all just as exhausted as him but nevertheless still standing. Kiera at once recognizes them as leaders of the sub-groups he divided their cause into when the Insurgency took Katowice — those of the leaders who have made it this far into the effort, anyway.
Their heads move up first in shock, then in quiet whispers — and then at last in hope. But for all of their disbelief they do not utter a word, for he is Prometheus, and he is returned.
The floor is his, and so is the movement — and so is its hope.
He looks at them, steel in his eyes. "Come evening, those who have invaded us will triumph. One way or another, the Coalition and the Poles will drag the New Engineer out of the Saucer and hang him for all the world to see. I have seen their men fight — it is inevitable.
"The Insurgency is falling apart, each last of its hideouts — each of our homes — cut down like paper. But the Coalition and the Witch Hunters aren't any better — they each want to be the ones to pull the trigger, in the end, so that they can deal the cards however they like in the world to come. They aren't working together. Their leaders treat this all like a game. Still: they have more than enough firepower and determination to make it through and get that fucker today.
"But they don't have to do it alone. They don't have to make it in time at all.
"There aren't many of us left, but we know the city, and there is still time. Still time left enough to throw ourselves into the fight one last time and try — maybe stupidly but by god, try — to get this done at least partially on our terms and slit even part that fucker's throat ourselves.
"I know that this isn't what we agreed upon, when we first convened here. I know that this isn't anything like we'd hoped for, when we decided we need to be free. But it's something. What I'm asking you to do will not guarantee you the freedom you deserve and so desperately want — but it is a chance to live with yourself after today. To go out not with a whimper, but as the worst pain those assholes will ever feel. It is a way to finish this goddamned apocalypse with something at least resembling the shape of dignity.
"It is a way to have closure, and not live each of the rest of your days with the burden that you could've done something more."
"How do you know all this?" At long last through the prestige comes a voice questioning not out of cowardice but out of pain, out of exhaustion.
He looks at the inquiring with the kind of spark in his eye that needs no reassurance, then turns back towards the rest.
"Are you with me?"
They all exchange glances for what feels like eternity, silently tightening their grip on their weapons.
Then, one by one, they all stand up.
"Then let's give those fuckers hell."
Amidst the crumbling Saucer, the light of the Engine shines brighter than that of God.
It burns with a dull white right where the New Engineer's conscience should be, but it promises a salvation just as beautiful and absolute as the reason which it has replaced. Indeed: it tells him of things that are certain, he knows, of things that will come to pass if he just follows the divine design revealed to him by the machine — revealed to him by what little remains of the Insurgency's heart and soul.
He's but an apostle; he has no choice but to listen.
He types and he types into the thing which could be called a computer until he is sure of what must be done; reads to the sounds of tanks exploding and missiles being fired until he is certain — more certain than he is of his own existence — that he knows the steps by heart. That he knows the mission, that he is the mission.
The spores sing once more, and this time, he understands the words.
When he is certain that he has become one with the path, he takes a fist to the frame and breaks it, one terrible, bloody hit after another. His bones crack and his men scream, terrified at their leader deposing of what they see as their last salvation, but he calms them down, bringing up the pulp that used to be his left hand up to stop them. They try to speak, but it is already too late: the plan is set, and heaven is within reach.
The Engine explodes into a brilliant fungal cloud as the buds and seeds that fertilized its mycelium nerves become at last undone, no longer anchored by the central screen.
The cloud falls, and with it fall the spores: they scream when they meet the dim light around them, terrified of the sun and the fire and the truth, but they survive and persist and break upon the cold floor. The concrete and rubber at once blossoms, and the seeds sprout their fingers deep to meet the few of its brethren that have already broken free with the Engine's previous exploits. Though they have no soil and indeed no nutrients they still grow, fertilized only by the fate of their prophet as they fill his lungs, replacing each part of him that still knew decency with promises of victory.
And the New Engineer laughs. He falls to his knees and he laughs, knowing he has already won.
Before he can blink, before he can again breathe the air around him and take in each of its putrid spores, the whole hall that had once been a stadium turns into a shaking, crimson forest, its tall fungal sprouts engulfing everything and everyone that they can see.
He does not notice that the air is now more fungus than oxygen, but neither do his men: they too now See and Know. They exchange a pregnant look, the few lot of them that have remained with him until the bitter end, and they nod with the kind of understanding reserved for prophets, reserved for martyrs.
They nod again, and at once the cogs of history start to turn once more. Without a further word, they walk out beyond the hall, towards the entry to the Saucer, ready to play their part in redemption.
It isn't long until he is alone again, alone amidst the great forest, the trees inside it almost dense enough to cover the sun. He takes a deep breath, the iron stench of the fungi shooting up his nose, and he looks if they are ready. He looks at the light and shadow reflecting off of the heavy brown cloud hanging in the air, at the angles and pathways leading right through the forest and into infinity, and once the tree of possibilities branches out before him once more — now unconnected to the Engine but a mere observer, but standing in the hall — he is certain that all is finished. All is ready for his final play.
Amidst all the relief, he does not hear the gunfire raging outside his sanctum. All of his focus is spent on the realization he just needs for the witch to arrive, and his play will fall into motion with the kind of strength that cannot be held back.
He was foolish, he at once sees as another branch and another vision assure him of what would happen even if they originally succeeded, to ever even consider their old plan. That they had ever thought that granting their own kin the might stored inside the old Mab Carp, thinking it would be enough to topple down the way things are — they were stupid and they were blind. He knew that then, it all made sense to him: that if they all bore the might of a battlemage they could take Silesia and win within a week. But now — now that his eyes were opened by the loving hands of his Engine — now he knows that they were given no greater gift than their ritual backfiring and granting each blind Silesian a piece of their truth.
He had hoped that the fire his Insurgents would raise with their spark would be bright enough to burn each hand trying to put it out: but only now does he see that only amidst a ravaging, recalcitrant desolation can there be enough ashes to put them back into a new shape.
He smiles again, this time with a heart far lighter than before, and with a similarly weightless step he walks up towards the absent audience, right near the entry to the hall. He can see the corridor leading into the primary reception and farther out outside, but he pays it little attention — for as the fungi release their truth once more into the air, shaking their stems and moving their caps, his voice and his step remind him of something, and again the air trembles with anticipation of a future. Of a future revealed to him, in which his fire spreads far beyond the borders of his new kingdom and he is hailed and he is heiled and he is crowned as the vision and the voice of all that is yet to come, and—
And gunfire fires closer, this time too close for him to ignore, and at once his vision is broken. He is returned with the kind of clarity that makes a man tremble, and adrenaline shoots up his veins.
Standing before him is Ry'hle Kiera, the cockroach the New Engineer had thought had been stomped.
The cockroach is armed.
The gun he is holding in those shaking, dusty hands of his is pointed directly at the New Engineer, prophet of god. The shock that comes once the vision falls down and the barrel jammed right before his ribcage is great enough that he does not notice the black smoke, pouring from out of Kiera's back and burning the fungal cloud around them.
This was not part of the vision. He did not foresee this. This was not part of the plan, this—
"They will not sing songs for you," Kiera says before he puts his finger on the trigger, and two things happen at once.
One, the gun fires, the thaumic bolt coming out of it piercing the air before them both, pulverizing the atoms of helium and oxygen right into arcane dust, then into energy, and then back into their base forms, propelling the bullet forward; two, an explosion great enough to be mistaken for the sun collapses the upper side of the structure, throwing both men off the bullet's course and onto the ground, bruising them and for just a split second breaking their focus.
The bullet pierces a fungal tree behind the two, and as their eyes turn up towards the audience, towards the great burning hole, a raging storm comes through the thing which had once been a door, stepping right from the upper entrance, still far beyond the fungi's reach and right into the light.
The storm first curses, noticing the New Engineer, but then its eyes fall upon the present Kiera, and its sharp metal fangs turn to form a grin.
"What a lovely reunion," Anna Świtoń whistles, and snaps both of her wrists into combat position. "Shame it won't last long enough to matter."
The next words Świtoń speaks are not those of mockery — they are of power.
As a language constructed by the Witch-Engineers of Aph in a cave beneath the Tigris two millenia before Christ was nailed to the cross starts to flow from her lips, the ceiling begins to unravel. One steel beam and one kilogram of concrete after another, the cracks in the lantern located in its middle widen, then become undone, sharp light coming through each new hole like bullets ripping flesh.
The materials come and flow like water, joining the hurricane raging around Świtoń, and again she is the centerpoint of reality.
Her hands, though hydraulic and reinforced with materials older than civilization, begin to tremble. The incredible weight of the Saucer's composites falls down on her soul and heart and lungs like a truck, but she does not give — though her brain is yelling at her like some panicked animal she endures, and in a motion fast enough to be missed if one blinked she moves her arms sideways, throwing it all towards the Insurgent standing beneath her in the yoke of the stadium.
The motion drives the air out of her lungs and nearly rips what little remains of her muscles, but she stands her ground. Some part of her that still remains rational tells her, fully confidently, that if she does something like this again a vein will rapture and flood her brain with the mixture of blood and oil circulating her body — that she is no longer thirty-three and that this isn't Warsaw.
She shrugs those concerns aside as she undoes the hood of her robe, already scanning the place for where the little Silesian roach could be.
All of this happens in less than a second.
Before she can think of her next move the torrent of rubble falls down upon the two men. At first they are too dumbfounded to react but in some primal instinct that breaks through their shellshock and the ringing in their ears they lunge away — away from each other and the attack. Kiera rolls, she sees, and misses most of it, his arm only scratched by one of the beams — but the Insurgent is slower. Though there is a clarity in his eyes that she did not expect bricks still hit him in the right knee and leg, worse than a bullet, smashing his flesh and breaking his bones.
He shouts a bloody scream that echoes throughout the stadium and curses at her in a dialect she can't quite hear but he does not give up — instead, he drags himself with sheer adrenaline and through insanity once again entering his bloodstream amidst the roots and branches of the fungal forest sprouting around him and beneath her.
She furrows her brows angrily, but does not give in to the provocation — he is wounded and he is lost. He cannot run and he most certainly cannot hide. Fate is on her side, and so is time. There is only one way that tonight can end.
Before she can continue her chase and jump into the fray, she turns her attention towards the Silesian. He is cursing too, grabbing his bleeding arm with his other hand, and though he is not a threat — the weapon he was carrying before was knocked out of his hands, nowhere to be seen — he still remains an asset. A most vital asset, and a gift from the universe she won't just give up.
She intones yet another invocation, and what remains of the floor around him gently flows upwards, then coils around him like a first tightening its grip, and before he can react he is surrounded as if in a cage. His head is out but his hands and legs most certainly aren't, immobilized by brick and silicone and concrete. He looks at her, murder in his eyes, and—
—and a bullet suddenly pierces her shoulder, cracking the irrilite bone connecting her limbs together like a hammer shatters glass.
She falls to one knee, yelping in pain and searching for the source in righteous fury, and amidst the giant fungi she suddenly notices the Insurgent, the Silesian's former rifle smoking in his hands, and before she can throw all of her might at him he again disappears between the trees.
She lets out a loud curse as she grabs her shoulder, forcing her body back into place with the kind of strength reserved for hydraulic presses, and she runs towards the edge of the balcony above the audience.
In one swift motion she jumps forward, towards the stadium's main field, letting her long robe fall behind and get carried by the howling wind.
She hits the ground with might enough to shatter concrete.
Slowly, almost trembling, she stands back on her knees, hearing each valve and lever that make up her legs physically depressurize from the impact. Her brain again shouts at her that she is an old fool and that, if she does not slow down, she is going to die here in this awful bloody ditch but she again brushes it aside as she starts to march on.
But the march isn't as fast as it was before, isn't as determined and heavy as it was when she roamed the city outside. The weight of the exoskeleton and each metal fiber strung between her muscles begins to fall on her arms and legs and heart, and she nearly loses her breath.
She blinks twice, trying her best to banish those thoughts away as her foot starts to drag on, and only as she finally focuses on the environment around her in a desperate attempt to think of anything else does the peculiarity of her particular predicament truly hit her. She has always known from vague intel and leaked inter-organizational files that the Insurgency's Engine and its many bastard sons were fungus-based — something from Druv'tuul, she thinks — but this here is most certainly a spectacle she didn't think the New Engineer capable of performing.
She narrows her eyes, already preparing her fingers to land the final blow the second that little shit shows up, and she begins to scan what has become of the Saucer. Her step is heavy and clicks upon the floor like metal hitting metal, so she does not bother with trying to be nimble or indeed quiet, but she thinks it better that the bastard knows she is coming for him. She likes that he's aware that her approach is inevitable and that he has lost, and that there is nothing that can still save him. Maybe desperation will drive him into reason, she hopes as yet another valve gives way to the weight of her age and battle — maybe it will make him come out of the forest and stop with the slow and pathetic and rustling excuse of an escape that he is mustering and that she can hear somewhere in the distance.
Focused only on her prey, she does not notice the trail of dark oil that she leaves in her wake. The thick brown spore cloud that engulfs the whole makes noticing anything around here difficult, she realizes as she slows her pace again, and for a second she takes a slow breath hoping it'll calm her down and sharpen her senses, and—
—and as some of the spores pass through the poison gas filter at the back of her throat, too little and too unassuming to register as a threat, her irises suddenly widen, and she starts to See.
At once the forest in front of her moves and changes, its shapes shifting into grotesque mockeries of hopes and dreams and visions. She feels her consciousness split from her own and she sees herself from third person, walking tens of different paths, tens of different possibilities all at once — ones in which she rips out his throat and ones in which he rips out hers; ones in which her head explodes from the arcane pressure she herself has built and ones in which she falls down, bodily exhausted to the point of death; ones in which she carries him out of the Saucer and into the light and she is hailed hero and victor and martyr and ones in which he slits her throat and carries her head for all of the world to see as he proclaims revolution and triumph and vengeance.
All of them branch out, all at once, bombarding her vision with tens upon tens of ways in which tonight can end, each spore and fungus trembling to the tune of prophecy still not made manifest, still possible, and—
As if on instinct, she puts her steel fingers inside her throat and taps thrice at the back of her neck. She throws up with what could be considered vomit only in the most platonic sense, widening her eyes as if poisoned, and she regains a most terrible kind of clarity.
In one swift motion she realizes what's going on, and thinks a command that shuts down all of her respiratory functions. She has five minutes left before she is forced again to suffer and witness this insanity again, but she does not need even half of the time she was given. She can already see that little shit trudging away just at the edge of her visions, some ten meters away maybe, and she furrows her brows and lunges forward with the last of her strength.
She never hears the explosion at the back of the Saucer, towards the other end of the arena, for this deep into the forest the cloud diludes the sound and it comes out as but a buzz she ignores through all of the blood rushing into her brain.
She outstretches her hand, crooking her finger to accommodate the throat of that red-wearing piece of shit, already thinking what she's going to make him do when she forces him to sign the surrender document stored neatly in a tube inside her left forearm. She grins a terrible smile of victory, pulling all of her remaining will right into her fingertips, and—
—and as a lightning bolt flashes between her and the New Engineer she feels her body bang against another, stopping her approach and sending her flying towards the ground.
When she gets back up, sweating and swearing, all the life drains out of her eyes.
Standing before her is Celesta, the little cunt, her purple hair turned curly from all of the voltage.
She is grinning.
"Thank you for showing me the way in, Captain," she says, mockingly. "But I'm afraid I will have to take it from here."
As lighting coils around the end of Celesta's fingertips, she sees the thunder reflected in the glass orbs mounted into Świtoń's skull, and she knows she has already won.
Still: she similarly sees that the old witch will not go without a fight, each of her hydraulic muscles and mechanical runes already priming up for the final move. She spits on the floor, oil and blood oozing out of her steel teeth, and meets Celesta head on.
"You fucking bitch," Świtoń mouths, crooking her fingers into combat position. "Who the hell do you think you are?"
Their gazes meet, and for a moment that weighs on all four of their shoulders, they are the centerpoint of reality. The New Engineer, crawling away right behind them in a pathetic attempt to get away, might just as well no longer exist: they are Celesta and Świtoń, and they are history, standing at a crossroads.
A vile kind of cynicism pours right into Celesta's already mocking grin. "I am your better, you old hag," she says in a tone calibrated to get a reaction. "I am who they sent to clean up the mess your masters have started, once they saw you're too old and demented to do it any good."
Świtoń does not disappoint: her face shaking with rage, she comes forward, each limb trembling with more than a century of struggle. She plants her foot firmly in the ground as she stops maybe centimeters before the general, and though the ankle in her left foot dislocates from all the pressure she does not scream: instead, she remains unbroken and points a sharp finger right at her opponent's face. "Try it. I dare you, try it, and you'll learn why they sent me in regardless, after learning you were deployed."
"Great," Celesta says, sneering right back at her. She is Celesta, and the day is hers. She can already see the fire of rage burning inside Świtoń, right past all of her rationality and years of experience. She pushes it ever so slightly more, knowing full well nothing else is needed for a full explosion: "Because then I'd have to bury you back into irrelevance, right where you belong."
And the domino falls right like she expected.
With a shriek furious and loud enough to be mistaken for the growl of a cornered beast Świtoń rips apart the floor around them and sends a wave of tiles and cables flying right into Celesta, but the general is ready. At once the lighting dancing around her hands coils into power, and two whips of pure thunder split all of the material, snapping against the air and floor. Celesta does not wait for the shock to settle into Świtoń's eyes; with a snap of her own fingers and a phrase more mathematical than it is arcane she sends forward a bolt great enough that it could kill a man ten times over.
All the lights around the Saucer flicker, then break, and as the glass falls towards the floor Świtoń intercepts it, forming it right into blades, pushing them all towards the lighting and towards Celesta. The discharge breaks upon the shattered glass, sending parts of it flying into the forest around them, and the glass falls farther until it reaches Celesta's lips, splitting the lower one with a cut that most definitely is not clean.
Instinctively, Celesta grabs her wounded face, losing a critical second that Świtoń instantly recognizes and uses as a window: the witch again smashes the structure beneath her, breaking through the shattered floor and right into the crawlspace, and though she yelps in pain from the ankle she still pushes her will forward, always forward. The materials form long blades near her own hands, and she slashes with them towards Celesta.
But the general has already regained her stance: she jumps, propelling herself upwards with a bolt of thunder exploding near her feet, and though part of the blades reaches her shoes, cutting some of her feet and legs, she escapes most of its reach. The forest around them most definitely doesn't, however — they are standing now in a circular clearing maybe ten meters in diameter, all cut up and smashed by their combat. They pay it no mind, but if the New Engineer was still around them he would most definitely already be dead.
But he isn't, and neither are they: painting heavily they exchange quick glances, murder in their eyes, and they rush at each other once more.
Again Świtoń is the first to act: she reaches deeper, deeper, deeper, and unearths the foundations of the Saucer itself, steel beams and trusses, pulling the rebar out of the concrete and moving upwards. It breaks the ground with blinding speed, Świtoń hoping it'll impale her opponent, but as Celesta jumps backwards she at once realizes her fatal mistake.
The general's grin widens as she sends a single volley of thunder in the structure's direction, driving it towards Świtoń and letting it carry the charge along all of its width.
Before Świtoń can react the truss jams into her chest; though it does not pierce her, the thunder immediately finds in her a better host, spreading throughout her metal skin and muscle and bone.
For a few seconds she thrashes in the air, each terrible moment frying more of her circuitry, and then at last the charge lets go and she is flung backwards.
She falls to the ground, smoky, and though her lungs are still moving up and down they are doing so only barely, pumping with each breath only enough air to sustain her brain, but not her limbs.
Slowly, very slowly, Celesta strolls towards her. "Like I said," she whispers, crouching closer towards Świtoń and touching her face with her own finger. "Back into history you go, you little shit."
And then she kicks the witch right in her metal ribcage, not enough strength left in the body to react, and wanders off into the distance, ready to end the war.
The exhaustion only kicks in once the adrenaline wears off, maybe five steps later: at once all the energy that she has spent comes down on her, and she nearly passes out. Nearly. She takes a deep breath, then another, then another, and then she stands back up, again beginning the walk leading towards the border of the clearing and into the faux-forest still hiding that Insurgent coward from his inevitable fate.
She is Celesta, and she will succeed.
She never notices the spores inhaled with each breath; what she does notice, though, is the trail in the dirt where the fungal trees meet the ground, left behind by the New Engineer's attempted escape.
She is Celesta, and fate is on her side.
She again grins, and fastens her pace, entering into the thicket and following the trail. She breathes deeply again, her lungs trying to catch their pace amidst all the action, and she starts walking faster and faster, each step another breath.
She is Celesta, and history turns in her favor.
She can already see it clearly before her eyes, how she grabs the New Engineer by his hand and forces him to sign her surrender, to declare her the great hero — how she walks out beyond the Saucer, a brilliant blue flag waving behind her, and she is crowned victor, her spot as D.C. al Fine's right hand only reinforced, and—
—and suddenly the vision changes, and she sees herself lying on the floor with her stomach spilled on the cold concrete, life fading out of her terrified eyes. A man in red stands above her with a gun in his hands and as he aims again, this time at her face, he pulls the trigger and—
—and she is buried beneath tons of rubble as the structure of the Saucer, compromised by their fight, falls upon her with the fury of a thousand bullets and she has no will left enough to defend herself and her bones shatter and skull splits and—
She shakes her head, letting out a terrified and furious yelp. For a split moment, clarity comes back to her. Her eyes start moving rapidly, terrified and in search of what could be causing this. She grabs her head with her hands, screaming as she feels the pressure build inside her skull once more, and when she brings her gaze up again she sees the New Engineer in the distance, maybe five meters before her, looking lifelessly as she struggles to regain her ground.
She straightens up and readies her magic, practically jumping towards the Insurgent, but then his figure flows and shifts into the tall posture of Undersecretary General Da Capo al Fine, standing before Celesta upon the witness stand, telling the whole world standing behind the cameras surrounding them that there is nobody to blame for all the damage but her. That it is Celesta who has ignored orders and ignored decency and ignored law, killing all those men and women by her own design and strategies. They exchange looks as Celesta raises her shackled hands, and there from al Fine comes not a single shred of regret, not a single bit of remorse: this is the price the Coalition has to pay for its control over Silesia and a grip on all of geopolitics, the price that the Coalition has to pay to regain face once the public inevitably finds out what has transpired and people march the streets in search of retribution, and Celesta is the one who will take its full weight.
It's just realpolitik, al Fine does not say but nevertheless signals as she straightens her posture, telling each of the journalists and judges and juries that had she regrets not seeing the monster that Celesta really was before, but that she is glad it is at least all over now that the New Engineer is dead and buried and we can finally put it all behind us as we settle our scores and come back into civility. And they all believe her — why wouldn't they — Celesta realizes in terror, and as she is stripped of all titles and humiliated and shipped off to the South Pole she—
Something in her mind breaks as the vision spills from her eyes into her mind and then right into her soul, and she shouts a scream bloody enough to shatter glass. She falls to the ground, delirium overcoming her, and she tries to get this nightmare out of her eyes but fails, and though she claws away at her face and thrashes around like a wild beast it refuses to go.
In some final, almost subconscious desperation, she again unravels as she runs out of the forest, then out of the main hall, and then out of the Saucer, away from the moribound Świtoń and the bleeding Insurgent and the hidden Silesian — away from the visions and insanity and the terrible promise of what will happen, if she decides to stay.
She never notices the New Engineer move out of his hideout, ecstatic disbelief falling upon his face in place of the previous insanity as he begins to laugh and laugh beneath the crumbling Saucer, victory practically given to him upon a silver plate.
Kiera only walks out of the fringes and towards the light once he is sure that the Coalition general has fled, and that this is no trick.
At first he does not believe it, thinking it some absurd strategy he's too tired to comprehend, but when five minutes pass and then five more come and go, he is certain that what has transpired was real, however unexpected and inexplicable.
He looks back at the concrete prison behind him, its walls burnt by his own smoke, and as cold determination settles in his face he comes into the clearing where the two wizards just clashed, ready to meet the other one and take her on, no matter the prize.
Though he does find her where expected, she isn't ready to fight him and she most definitely isn't ready to flee like her previous opponent — she is lying there on the floor, immobile, with the New Engineer mounted on top of her, his hands wrapped around the witch's throat. He is so focused on choking out what little remains of the air inside her artificial lungs that he does not notice Kiera — not when he is ten meters behind, not when he is five meters behind, and not even when he is right next to him, a brick in his hands and disgust on his face.
He only pays attention once Kiera drives the brick into his skull, sending him flying and gushing blood. Just to make sure he's focused on nothing else, though, Kiera then kicks him thrice, preventing the Insurgent from standing up and spitting into his face.
"Say it," Kiera shouts as he drives his fist into the Insurgent's face twice, then thrice. "Say it, you bastard."
"Wait! Wait!" the soldier screams, bringing his hands up in a desperate attempt at preventing the next hit from reaching him. For a second, he is successful — Kiera hesitates. "Wait!"
He is trying to buy himself time enough that the spores will come and do their job, filling up Kiera's lungs and driving him to similar insanity — insanity that will give the Insurgent the last chance he needs to bring victory into his own court. He knows Kiera cannot possibly be aware of what the fungi around him do, and by the time he will it will already be too late — he will already surrender to madness, and the Insurgent will be left alone to declare the siege repelled and his movement victorious.
What the New Engineer also doesn't know, however, is that the smoke pouring out of the Silesian's back is practically frying the air behind him. The only thing the old worker is inhaling is the scorched fumes that come from the destruction around him, his lungs more than used to the grime by all the decades of smoking.
The Insurgent's thoughts are running wild, and he starts to babble with all the remaining strength he can still muster: "Do you really think you can just get rid of me, huh?! You really think you can win, that you can become free and get the independence you need without my—"
Another fist shuts him up, then another. "Say. It."
"DO YOU REALLY THINK," he screams between the punches and the blood and broken teeth, "THAT YOU CAN GET WHAT YOU DESERVE WITHOUT MY PEOPLE AND MOVEME—"
"SAY IT!"
One, two, three, four, and the New Engineer's face is litte more than pulp. He is crying, the pathetic little thing, and he is barely breathing.
"SAY IT, YOU BASTARD!"
Kiera brings his fist up one final time. The Insurgent sobs out loud, a shaking breath making his chest shiver, and he brings his hands up again, almost vomiting. "I— I give up. I surr-surrender. Please. Please." Tears flow down his bruised cheek, and his hands start to tremble. "Please. I give up. Just… I give up."
He takes another deep breath, letting all of the sprouts untouched by Kiera's smoke enter his lungs, and he tries to see what else can be done now, what else he needs to do to win and kill the cockroach and—
—and as all the futures fold into one, Kiera raises his hand again. He grins a very, very ugly smile.
"Why thank you very much, you subhuman filth."
Before he can say anything more, the fury of the entire city falls on the New Engineer's face, and all goes dark.
On a hill overlooking a massacre, Karol Edelman stands witness to history.
He shouldn't be here at all. By all logic — both emotional and legal — his presence here is not only upsetting, but also dangerous. The Coalition has made it clear, those three days ago, that him and those from Manna that ride alongside him are not welcome in Silesia at large — and most definitely here and now, so near Katowice. They've told them that they are seizing their assets and indeed ordering them to de facto withdraw all help until the region can be re-stabilized; that they are to stay away from the city until the campaign is over.
But no help has ever been delivered with respect to obedience.
No change was ever done with respect to authority, either.
Not that Edelman thinks he can, truly, deliver change: he has served enough on the frontlines of change alongside Manna to have that particular youthful delusion beaten out of him by the full spectrum of the human condition. The man that he once was — one who truly in his heart of hearts lived convinced that there would be a true peace to end war in his lifetime, that with enough dedication and effort they could bring about the seeds of utopia when he was still alive — he is gone. But the man who wished to stand strong for others in spite of all the suffering isn't.
No, he most definitely is not gone — and he is sitting here and now, on a plastic chair alongside the few wayward bastards who have always shared his spirit, in a camp set up by their own in defiance of the Coalition, and he is hanging on. Barely if barely, for this late into the war he's tired and heartbroken, but he remains: sipping on a cold tea and staring intently at the horizon, looking at right where Katowice is, hanging around out there in the field because it's the only way to not feel guilty. The only way to not feel complicit, not feel like the rest of the world which lives on as if hell itself was not unraveling for their distant and forlorn brethren in a different corner of the world.
The Coalition might've taken away all of their equipment and taken away all their dignity, stripping them of the only duty they have known, but they have not taken away their humanity.
He has always taken pride in his resilience. Ever since he has joined up with Manna he's always had the stomach to endure all the proof of mankind's cruelty. He's never been happy with it, of course, but he always thought that if he met the cruelty face on it would at least feel sincere towards those whom he was helping. That if he took it right on and still believed in a better future he could maybe make part of that hope real.
But that was before, when he was still young and the sun shone brighter and he still hasn't grown jaded and cynical. After all these years — and especially now, now that he's remained on the frontlines of Silesia under the banner of Manna for so long — he is no longer so dead set in that doctrine. In truth, he no longer believes in it at all: he merely hangs on, doing that which he still can, even if he knows in the grand scheme of things it'll bring no true change.
He just wishes to see it through. It's the least he can do to honor those not lucky enough to be mere witnesses.
He sighs, exhausted deep in his bones, and looks at the city once more, and only then realizes truly just how tired he is.
Him and the others have sat there for hours by now, seeing pillars of smoke and fire and thunder grow above the besieged Katowice but below the arcane bubble surrounding it. They have bore witness from afar when the Coalition entered through and when the Witch Slayers brought down the great Insurgent cannons and when at last A.R.G.U.S. breached the Saucer. They have remained alert, hoping that they will see an end to it soon, all as the brilliant iridescent arcane flowers blossomed on the horizon — but the end has still been unwilling to come.
It has been hours since the forces of civility have reached the fortress of the New Engineer, and for all those long hours nothing has changed. There is still death to be heard, coming from Katowice — there is still blood spilled on the pavement, in what he presumes to be the Coalition silencing the very last pockets of resistance.
Edelman stares blankly into the distance.
He has not slept in over thirty hours, but the exhaustion is only setting in now, now that he knows the last cards have been dealt and the conclusion of the conflict is within reach. Now that he knows this is the last day that the world will watch and the last day when anyone outside will ever care.
Now that he realizes that even if he turned to see the Coalition's flag waving above the saucer, it would not change a single damned thing. Not really.
Perhaps driven by his age or perhaps by the late hour, Edelman slowly stands up. He puts down his cup and nods to his companions, then starts to walk towards the barracks.
For a split second, before he truly commits himself to leaving his fellows to continue watching without him, he stops in his tracks. He just stands there, staring at the darkness beyond the camp with his back turned towards the city, and he wonders if it would at all be proper. If it wouldn't be an insult to all those who have died behind him, to all those to whom this war is reality and not just headlines.
He stands there and wonders for a long while — and at long last, once he takes a deep breath and feels the cold evening air, he decides that it doesn't matter anyway.
He sighs, the weight on his shoulders heavier than it has ever been, and he sets his course towards his bed — the only place offering his thoughts a break from all the suffering.
He never notices the bubble around Katowice start to break, and then finally come down.
