But of course it was mercy! Some will cry. And some will also cry that we should have lost the war and that it was Arascus who should have won. No, I do not say this to be overly negative and pessimistic, I genuinely pose the question of whether it was mercy. The Great War was the first conflict of this scale. Typically what happened in previous conflicts after my men would heal injured troops is that the healed would go home and sit out the rest of the war.
The Great War was nothing like the previous conflict. Men who should have died were healed. Men who were healed were released from their soldier’s vows. And men returned to their homes. That is how it should have gone anyway.
Men did not return to their homes, men returned back to their camps. I noticed a year after signing of the Mutual Healing Agreement that Kassandora’s Legions were suddenly far more aggressive and far more willing to take heavy casualties in battle. In the first year, every battle was rather cautious from Arascus’ side. Whereas we did have grand assaults on fortresses, with Tourai being the first White Pantheon stronghold-city to fall, the Legions would either strike fast, blow the gates and rush in or retreat. When Maisara or Fortia would arrive with the Paladins or Guardians to intercept a Legion, Kassandora would swiftly order a full retreat. In the first year, our biggest victories were from surrounding and capturing surrendering divisions that were left behind only to delay us.
I still don’t know whether that caution was real, or whether it was bait. We did honestly think that the healing agreements would serve the White Pantheon more than they would serve Arascus’ Legions. I did at least. I know Fortia and Maisara did not. I don’t know about Allasaria. It is my own fault that I was more concerned with the management of our troops directly than with grand strategy.
I was wrong. Maisara and Fortia were correct. The numerical superiority of our own armies did not matter. We ended up taking more casualties because of the brutality of Arascus’ Legions anyway. Sorcerers and beastmen ripped our soldiers apart and their men were taught how to kill rather than how to fight. The most common wound I came across after that agreement was signed was a strike to the head that split the skull, a throat slit or a heart stabbed. They fought to kill.
My thoughts, now that the Great War is a hundred years gone, have now settled. I feel like a fool because I was played, but also I did not perform a mercy. My healing was nothing good and nothing noble. I did not fail myself as a person but I failed my title. Kavaa could have fought in that war a thousand times over and nothing would have changed.
But the Goddess of Health should have stayed out. All healing did was keep the Great War alive.
- Excerpt from the autobiography “A Doctor’s Account of the Great War.” Written by Goddess Kavaa, of Health.
Ten thousand things to do and not enough time to do even a tenth of them. Not even a tenth of tenth frankly. Arascus wanted to inspect the situation in Lubska. Olonia had her pet project of making a land of Gods, a new Olympiada for the Empire, but the nation itself had been pulled away from the Rancais front. The Lubskan element of the Imperial Army had been put on building fortifications along its many bridges and more than a hundred thousand men were cartographical the entire land. Locations were being chosen for minefields, civilian airports were being expanded with hangars, every city was having a massive metro excavated along with massive skyscrapers whose construction was aided by magicians. Lubska was entering a golden age.
And Lubska was militarizing for a long and gruelling defensive war. The hangars would be used for Imperial Airforce planes, the metros were having granaries and freezers filled with food along with massive halls for the populations of cities to enter. The skyscrapers would be for magical shields. The three new Colleges of Magic in the nation places of education second, mage barracks first. Complete with everything, from catalyst forges to gemstone stores.
Arascus kept a brisk pace as he walked from one palace in Hallin to another. He had just met with the landed aristocracy of Doschia. Now, it was time to meet with the industrialists and leaders of the various conglomerates that powered this nation’s industry. The aristocracy were much easier to deal with, they wanted to be paid in honour and prestige, these men would want money. And the Empire was beginning to strain its own economy with the reckless spending. All around him were the huge buildings of Hallin, each one six floors tall. New skyscrapers were being built here too. Already one had risen in the centre and a whole chain of them was being built in a long line. The metro here was being expanded too. One of the lanes of the huge main road that stretched from the statue of Saksma holding her greatsword to the edge of the city had an entire lane dedicated only to construction vehicles.
Whereas Lubska was preparing hard defences, Doschia was preparing to serve as the arsenal of the Empire. Its position in the very centre of Epa was one and the fact it had already standing heavy industry which simply demanded to be re-tooled. In a way, the Lubskan issue of defence was the easiest to solve. The country simply had to be fortified. Doschia on the other hand was not a simple case of building defences, fortifying cities and expanding logistic lines. Doschia was the heart of Epa. For every drop of blood it pumped, it needed to consume another. Massive railways, eight tracks running parallel to each other were currently devouring the mountains in the south of the country as they made their way into Rilia. Huge warehouses were being filled with refined steel that had nowhere to go and entire hills of ore straight from the lands Kirinyaa had reclaimed from the jungle were rising out of the ground near towns.
Arascus turned down a street were a series of Doschian Imperial Youth were on parade. Young boys, anywhere from eight to twelve, and more than a thousand of them marching through the street in their uniforms. At the front, they waved the Imperial and the Doschian flags. A crowd had assembled to watch them and police closed off the street. Arascus couldn’t delay the meeting anymore, he took a step and raised himself into the air as he started to float upwards through his own natural magic.
Doschia was the greatest of problems in Epa right now, but that was why he took to tending to the situation here. Unlike Rancais, which simply had to be reclaimed, an industry capable of sustaining a massive war was simply impossible to raise out of the ground with a snap of one’s fingers. Even if the construction of factories could be sped up with magic, machinists had to be trained, designers needed time, engineers went through delays. It was the way of things.
Rancais though was a simple issue. Anarchia had been killed, her followers could no longer grow in power, Kassie had sent a letter that they discovered how to recover Fer’s stolen strength. Malam was working with the Special Imperial Service on cleaning up any of the rodents that the army would leave. It was a peacekeeping operation, any Divine could manage it. He just happened to have the ones who were the very best at crushing a country. Paida, Saksma and Agrita were also there, fighting on the front and supporting were they could. Paida would have to be there for the Battle of Aris in order to unite the population behind Imperial forces, but that one command was the most Arascus had intervened.
Allia was not in a good position either. The country had recovered for now but the fundamental situation had not changed. Arascus had only managed to scare off Alanktyda through the razing of Uriamel. If Allasaria should return, which she would eventually, there was nothing that would be keeping Alanktyda from breaking the agreement to support Imperial shipping. Arascus had underestimated just how wealthy the undersea kingdoms actually were, they couldn’t be bought out only because two small sectors of their economy and Arascus’ happened to intertwine. Currently, they were sending troops to the UNN in order to help with the clean-up from Continent Cracking.
Arascus slowly raised into the air. He was nowhere near as fast as the other Divines who could fly. The Imperial Youth turned to salute towards him, the citizens all clamoured and started to beat bravoes for the Emperor of their Empire. Arascus gave them one wave and turned away. In the west of Hallin, two dozen mages were flying around the air like a small swarm of flies. Cranes and trucks and diggers and bulldozers were scurrying along the ground, with a horde of builders that scampered all around them. A new factory was being raised from the surface of the world. Quite literally, the trucks had brought steel and concrete and the other materials needed for the structure itself and the mages were dragging it all into place as if it was a puzzle. The builders were here to furnish the inside, install the electricity, plumbing, doors and windows.
The UNN was an other issue. The Empire had started to send ships to support in the clean up without asking Ciria in the first place. Arascus knew she would decline if he asked whether she wanted help anyway. Arascus thought about what could be done over there. With the God of Industry and the Goddess of Civilization, the country had not reclaimed the territory washed away by the flood of Continent Cracking, it had simply moved its industry and cities. Ciria could raise an entire city block out of the ground in a matter of minutes, Halkus could power an entire factory complex or a megaport simply through his own presence.
With them, Arascus had no plan yet. The UNN was like Guguo and Ihon and Pichqasuyu, all were lands were if things turned out perfectly, then these nations would be part of Imperial territory before Allasaria came back with the help of Tartarus and Paraideisius. But Arascus was but one God. He knew that given enough time, all could be swayed, but he simply did not have the time.
And there was Kirinyaa, Ausa and the rest of Arika to manage. Things in Ausa had been delayed because the independence movements that the Empire would be able to exploit had proven far more cautious and careful than expected. Only now were things starting to heat up, and even then, it was all just legal, organized protests that gave no casus belli for Generals Zalewski and Sokolowski to intervene. At least the situation in Kirinyaa proper was going as expected. Whereas robots were not being built in mass yet, diggers produced in Epa were being sent over to scour the land that the rabid Jungle’s death had freed up. They were huge machine, each one the size of a city block and needing only a dozen men to operate. That had temporarily resolved Kirinyaa’s biggest issue which was the fact that it simply lacked the population needed to maintain such vast swathes of land.
Arascus looked down at the street. An old city block was being torn down to make way for another connection into the Hallin metro. Back in the past, the only underground that was worth taking note of were the dwarven Underkingdoms. Now? Arascus watched a digger scoop out another full bucketload of earth and dump it into the back of a truck. Well, they weren’t building the huge underground highways that the dwarves possessed, but there was no reason not to give every city in the Empire a metro that served as a bunker network.
There were the Underkingdoms too. Arascus sighed heavily as he turned away from the construction and towards the skyscraper in the distance. He supposed he could skip the front door and just go straight to the penthouse to meet with the industrialists. His thoughts travelled back to the dwarves. The world core needed to be unsealed and whatever portals Tartarus still had on Arda needed to be closed. Irinika was down there, from what was learned, she was singlehandedly responsible for holding a chokepoint for the past two centuries. Her duty should be relieved finally but if she held it for so long already, then another month or so would not hurt. It was downright terrible to frame it that way, but that was the truth.
There simply wasn’t enough time to do it all. Even a Divine, who did not need to eat or sleep and could constantly be ploughing forwards with the unending set of tasks simply did not have enough hours in the day.
Right now, Arascus simply had to trust that the whole system would run when he wasn’t there.
Kassandora and Malam would deal with Rancais. Anassa had been freed of Fer duty and was scouring Epa as she searched for new sorcerers. Fer herself would be safe with Kass. Neneria and Olephia were simply preparing for the oncoming war privately with little to do here. Iniri was helping with the harvests throughout Epa. Kavaa, Arascus knew, had been requested by Malam to assist with Rancais. Helenna was working on Divine Mass Manufacture.
And Arascus? Arascus sighed. He had the worst job of all.
Convincing countless legions of bureaucrats and entrepreneurs and aristocrats and industrialists and scientists and anyone even remotely of note that the Empire was right for them. If Kassandora was not as demanding as she was, if Malam was not as terrible, if Anassa was not a walking nightmare and if the others were competent even in the slightest manner, this job would not need to be done. The Empire would be able to run based off its own sheer size and that would be that.
Arascus got to the monolith of steel and glass in the north of Hallin. He looked up and slowly started to rise. This is where the White Pantheon failed because it let humanity forget that the Divines mattered and intervened. Divinity was not about setting a few ground rules here and there and then letting play humanity play free within the enclosure that had been set. Divinity, funnily enough, did not have a God-given right to walk this world. Divinity had to remind humanity it existed.
So Arascus had to do the reminding. Not for himself, but because of the Divines he had chosen as daughters. The Empire was not the single greatest example of statehood because it had Arascus’ sheer presence somehow elevated the country. It was the greatest land because Kassandora, the Goddess of War, led the armies. Because Malam, the Goddess of Hatred, led its special intelligence. Because Helenna, the Goddess of Love, led its propaganda. Because wherever one turned, a Divine was giving a push.
For a moment, Arascus heard Allasaria’s voice in his head. He heard the many arguments they had, he remembered how the Goddess of Light would talk of how Divinity could not show its strength lest it terrify humanity.
Arascus looked down at the penthouse. It was a helicopter pad and a heavy concrete roof. There was no pool or luxury apartment up here, the skyscrapers were specially built to house skyshields and anti-air guns.
He sighed and supposed that ultimately, him and Allasaria tried to do the same thing. That was to bridge the gap between Divinity and Humanity. It was simply that Allasaria’s idea was to stop Divinity’s advancement altogether, whereas Arascus’ was to bring drag Humanity kicking and screaming so that it could stand shoulder to shoulder with Gods.
He went towards the door.
This was the fourth meeting today and it wasn’t even midday yet. There were another ten to go.
Already eleven were booked for tomorrow.
Seven were two days ahead.