Chương 229: Chapter 302 - Breakout

Grand Marshal Cearsia understood that modern Akanan doctrine recommended commissioned officers lead from the rear. However, the nice thing about being the head of the military was that she was now at the top of the chain of command. She could finally put aside the parts of Akanan doctrine that were stupid. The front was where a true leader belonged. She could better see and respond to any developing situation. It also inspired the soldiers and sailors at her command.

Therefore, when the newly commissioned Prophet's Prosperity finished its trials, Cearsia boarded the ship and positioned it at the head of the Akanan fleet. The Prophet Liuan had denied her request to have the airship dreadnoughts escort them until they were fully retrofitted and joined by the new pair that were in production.

She disagreed with the Prophet over both that decision and her decision to station so many forces east of Ferrabridge on the chance that one of the false prophets attempted to seize a strategic objective, but she would do her duty. It had rankled her when that Prophet had implied she had any doubts to her loyalty to God and Akana. If she really did know Cearsia, then she should know her loyalty was absolute, and she had never faltered in her commitment to her duty.

If Liuan had any doubts of that, she should ask Medius Luspire. Grand Marshal Cearsia took one last look across the fleet from the upper deck. Alongside her flagship sailed the Ominian's Benediction and Vadrian's Mercy. All three hulls had orichalcum incorporated into the plating, an engineering feat that had apparently taken the new Prophet a great deal of time to perfect. The other new ships had orichalcum reinforcements in several key places, and many of the older ships had been retrofitted.

Why the RID had kept such a miracle metal a secret so long made no sense to her. At least the Prophet was setting that right. She looked back, just barely making out the rear admiral's ship at the back of the column. The Akanan ships would be sailing in three parallel lines, with battleships protecting the frigates, corvettes, transports, and myrvite destroyers in the middle. The formation looked good. The Prophet Liuan had assured Cearsia the weather would cooperate. It was a stirring sight.

Dozens of grand ships, each with pristine hulls and armaments glittering in the sun. Along Mercanton, tens of thousands of people had packed the streets along the coast and were waving banners with the blue and white double-headed eagle of Akana, shouting and cheering. A worthy sendoff. Cearsia strode back onto the bridge. Her communications officer said, "Grand Marshal, all ships have signaled. The fleet is ready to depart." Her intelligence officer, a promising young man named Troytin, piped up next.

"Coastal defenses have spotted no movement on the Baracueli coast. Reports of the leviathans' position haven't changed; they're still circling off the coast of Vadriach City." The Church of the Ominian liaison, one of the newly promoted Speakers of the Prophet, spoke up next.

"All priests are aboard and ready. May the Ominian's will be done." There was little more to say. The preparations had been made. The crews had been briefed. The gunners had been trained; firing exercises had taken place over the past week. Cearsia nodded at her communications officer who hit a glyph switch.

"All ships depart. Commence Operation Prophet's Truth."

The leviathans attacked that night. The prior coordinated attacks had proven they were intelligent creatures. Fragmented reports from the dozens of Akanan ships that had been sunk by them before all ships had been withdrawn to the safety of the coast had shown they understood tactics. However, Cearsia thought, they had some catching up to do on warfare.

"The Ominian's Benediction reports two more hits. Priests report the target is crippled and dying. Retrieval teams are en route." She surveyed the illusionary map. Divination teams were using a combination of sound triangulation, light divination, and harpoons with tracking glyphs to pinpoint the location of each leviathan, while priests monitored their health through celestial magic. Spell engines were even able to calculate firing solutions, giving the Akanan navy's guns increased fire rates and accuracy.

All that information was then sent back to command, where she could rapidly assess it. She watched as another glowing red leviathan on the illusion map turned orange, indicating it had been badly wounded.

"Good. Continue the attack," she said. She wasn't needed on the bridge. Her admirals had everything under control. Cearsia headed out to the deck. Spell engines weren't perfect; she wanted to confirm that the map matched the terrain, so to speak. She also wanted to see her victory with her own eyes. The smell of blood and seawater filled her as she inhaled the night air. The scattered clouds above them flickered like there was a storm, but the flash and thunder was from the dozens of huge battleship turrets.

She watched the muzzle flashes going up and down the line as the unbroken Akanan formation continued forward. No parade or cheering crowd could match the glorious sound of those guns. The noise suppression spell by Cearsia's ears flared up as her own flagship's guns cracked out, the flash revealing the crew. Spotters looked out with her, while divination teams continued to track the leviathans with their spell engines.

Gun crews hurried back and forth with ammunition and cartridges, with two sorcerers being assigned to use spells to lift each shell into place. The low bellies of the scattered clouds flickered again with the light of the guns—and then again with the explosions. In the flashing light, Cearsia could make out the spines of five leviathans off the port. Fire and lightning crackled in the depths of the churning sea as shells plunged into the dark waters and detonated.

Water splashed high into the sky, the drops glimmering like stars as they reflected the deadly gunfire. All around the beasts, shells of every type rained down, some exploding near the surface, others timed to sink deep before detonating. The myrvites had been foolish enough to confront them while they were still in the Rift Sea; the waters were far too shallow for the leviathans to escape.

Blood and flesh aerosolized, wafting across the sea with the smell of smoke and the prickle of spell engine mana exhaust; it was an uncomfortable, acrid feeling, and Cearsia reveled in it. If the false prophet had really thought a few clever beasts would stand between her and the might of Akana, she was a fool. In the flickering light, she saw one of the injured leviathans drifting toward them, body pitted and riddled with gaping wounds. It trailed nacreous black ichor across the surface of the sea.

Some of its tentacles thrashed about, but it was dying. One of the corvettes was pulling alongside the crippled creature. On the bridge, fire control would be making sure there was a screen of depth charges going off between it and the other leviathans. Cearsia saw the priests of the Ominian aboard, chanting and praying. Behind them on the deck was a massive celestial repository.

By performing rites and blessing the soul of the creature, the Ominian would be granting them a great boon, one powerful enough to create adamantium. Annoyingly, the priests had to get close for the rites to work. That had made Cearsia suspicious, when Liuan had told her about that. It sounded like the well known exponential falloff of spell effectiveness that came from distance to a target. Why did the Ominian care if they got close?

But it wasn't her place to question the Church, and those idle thoughts were swept away by the cheers of the crew as the Prophet's Prosperity landed a direct hit on yet another leviathan. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Cearsia felt another discharge of mana. Farther up the line, she saw the blast of force from a leviathan's attack.

The huge force shields around the ship brightened, and the orichalcum reinforcement also helped disperse the attack. Return fire plunged into the sea creature, and Cearsia heard its pained roars echoing across the waves. She returned to the bridge.

"They're running!" one of the officers exclaimed.

"Swimming," another joked. The mood in the bridge was uncharacteristically light, though some of the levity evaporated as soon as they saw the Grand Marshal was back in the room.

"No changes to the operation. Break into the three pursuit formations. Hunt down as many as we can so we don't have to worry about them harassing our rear. Then we continue south." Communications officers immediately started signaling the rest of the fleet. Cearsia looked at the tally of losses. One frigate sunk, two myrvite destroyers and a battleship damaged enough they'd be out of action, but the rest was superficial enough that damage control teams had contained it.

Even with the intense mana draw, the new fossilized myrvite substitute was performing fantastically. Stores were still plenty high, and with the leviathans fleeing, shipping could resume along the coast which would further speed up both production and logistics. And, if the Prophet came through with her promise, they would gain powerful protections for their elite forces and the upcoming land invasion. It was an overwhelming victory. Cearsia allowed herself a thin smile.

The Akanan fleet would continue south to Tlaxhuaco. It was time to show those barbarians that they had better things to do than plot against Akana Praediar.

Emperor Xecatl watched through a farsight construct from atop the heights of Uxalak, and it was hard to say what hurt more: her body, or her grief. All around Uxalak, smoke poured into the sky. Warnings that the Akanans had broken through the leviathans had reached them late, and even then, they'd assumed the Akanans would be heading straight to Urubandar. Only signals from the outposts in the archipelago had given them notice, but that had been insufficient to prepare the whole coast.

The Akanan bombardment had caught Tlaxhuaco off guard. For years, their country had prepared for an Akana that sought to subjugate them. They had underprepared for an Akana that only wanted to watch them burn. At dawn, the first Akanan battleships had opened fire, staying around ten kilometers off the coast, well out of Ceiba Yan's range, and well beyond the range of their best spirit-constructs.

Their spirit-infused ballistae could barely reach them, and those shots did little against the layered Akanan shield engines. The Akanans had started with earthshaker shells, then quickly switched to fireburst shells. The first shots had tested Ceiba Yan's shields; a great misting shield of force had appeared around the core of Uxalak, and Xecatl's heart had soared to see the shells shatter against it. Then, gradually, the battleships had walked their shots out, finding the limits of the Sacred Tree.

Ceiba Yan had trouble working with glyphs to form true spells, and had trouble extending his spirit constructs and raw magic past the range of his diffuse aura. The nagual could help, but they didn't have the experience in Baracueli glyph magic. Only Xecatl and Mirian had enough experience to truly merge their auras effectively and use that to cast glyph-based magic, and the damage Xecatl had sustained from the last memory transfer had hollowed her out.

The ships in port had burned first; they were all wooden hulled, and the fires that raged in them couldn't be put out. Black smoke veiled the city and hid the Akanan fleet. The outskirts of the city burned next. Earthshaker shells had first collapsed the buildings, trapping people inside, and then flameburst shells had set it all ablaze.

Nagual were working feverishly to work the spirit constructs to suppress the flames, while aqueduct crews moved to redirect water through the many channels running through the city and bucket brigades organized to assist. Over the course of the next few days, the bombardment had spread outward. The Akanans targeted the groves outside the city with kinetic burst shells, ripping apart thousand-year old trees. They'd set fire to dozens of gardens and farms that had been cultivated for centuries.

Tlaxhuaco was fortunate that the abundant rainfall had kept the jungles resilient to fire, but the devastation still broke her heart. Now, most ships were moving along the coast, simply bombarding villages. Many had been evacuated. Many hadn't. Already, the temples were filling up with injuries. Hundreds of people dead, and thousands more wounded. And of all the possible futures, this would be the one that lasted. And all she could do was watch.

Even with the healing from Mirian and Ceiba Yan at the start of the cycle, Xecatl's body still hurt everywhere. There were deep wounds in her soul, and her aura was in total turmoil. She could hardly cast, and without the ability to modulate her aura, she couldn't interface with spirit constructs at all. Her advisors and officials came and went, and she instructed them as best she could. She had great wisdom, but in all the cycles she'd seen, war had never come to Tlaxhuaco. There was so much death.

So much destruction. Is this what Mirian dealt with, seeing Baracuel burn? How did she manage? Liuan knew that the hybrid myrvite production was primarily being done under the shelter of the Sacred Tree. This attack had little hope of damaging the most critical parts of the leyline project. Instead, there was a waft of spite to the attack. There were monuments that were as old as trees breaking, great works of art burning, but it was the loss of life that cut her the most.

The grief engulfed her like a shadow, and her tears dropped down to mix with the soil. It didn't have to be this way. She'd forgiven Liuan. She'd thought she'd changed. Now, the lie had cut her to pieces. She could feel Ceiba Yan behind her. His great presence was a comfort, though she could sense he didn't understand. A tree would steal sunlight from another if it needed to, but when there was abundant sunlight for all, why would it bother? Akana had what it needed.

Liuan would have ruled over a great nation alongside trusted friends. Why wasn't that enough? There was a great sin at work, and Xecatl struggled to name it. It was more than the lies that Akana told to its people. It was more than Liuan's deception. It was more than the brutality and death. No, it was the consuming hunger that led to the other sins that was at the core of it. A desire for domination and power that could never be sated. It was a hunger that Xylatarvia Herself had condemned, and died fighting.

Liuan knew of Xylatarvia's body lying sprawled across the mountains. She knew of the Ominian's sacrifice. She had seen the Ominian's nightmare, that grand wall of fire that threatened Enteria. To spread her own fire like this was a blasphemy that could not be put into words. And yet, Liuan acted all the same. And Tlaxhuaco burned for it. Pillars of smoke rose in a hundred places across the landscape, and refugees continued to crowd into the city.

Along the coast, the nagual continued to fire ballista bolts in arcs across the sky, but most shots went wide, and none managed to penetrate the heavy shields around the Akanan battleships. That they were burning a great deal of fossilized myrvite and wasting expensive shells was little comfort to Xecatl. She would have rather seen her home safe. It was only the greater project that she held onto; knowledge that these deaths would not be in vain. She clutched her dream focus to her chest, and tried to keep calm.

Xecatl closed her eyes and reached out. Nothing. Mirian still wasn't in the dream. Or perhaps the tenuous connection was fading with time. She'd sent messages through the Gate below, but she hadn't heard back from Mirian or Zhuan. It made sense; if the Akanans were beginning their assault, this likely wasn't the only place they were attacking. Though the sheer number of ships off the coast worried her.

If they'd managed to simultaneously assault Baracuel while doing this, they were even more hopelessly outnumbered than Xecatl feared. A fire some three kilometers away faded as Ceiba Yan displaced the heat from it, smothering the flames. Another shell exploded against the Sacred Tree's diffuse shield, the explosion eaten up by fragmented force barriers. Xecatl moved to Ceiba Yan and touched her oldest friend. Hold on. Though she didn't know how much longer. Then she felt a change in Ceiba Yan's aura.

The excitement that came from rain after a drought. The satisfaction of bright sun. The feeling of old roots entwined. A moment later, a glowing figure shot up out of the shaft that led to the Uxalak Gate. Xecatl breathed out in relief. Mirian had arrived.