Iliyal picked up a radio as he took a breath. Was he really about to sidestep one of the Daughter-Goddesses? And Malam at that? He didn’t have a damn clue on how she would react, normally when he saw something, he would suggest it to Goddess Kassandora and she would weigh the suggesting before discussing it with her siblings.

But then he saw it now, and he knew that Malam would tell him that Paida would be able to handle it. Yet that was wrong. Paida was a child stepping into a bear’s cave. All Malam had done is scratched the bear to wake it up.

Paida looked over the most magnificent city in the whole world. If all the capitals of the world were to be fashioned onto a crown, then Aris would be the grand jewel in the very centre. The city blocks stood five or six floors tall, all fashioned out of a limestone that became known as Aris stone simply because it made up the city. In the north-west, a collection of skyscrapers jutted up where the city’s largest business had their office. The roads were all straight, but none of them were of any noticeable length, instead being like a mismatched spiderweb that attempted to order its silk, but grossly failed at the attempt.

The city stretched out over hills, with grand cathedrals to the Divines, with great bridges crawling over the rivers. With a central island in the middle of the city. The various palaces of government were here too, from the presidential palace to the parliament to the various buildings for each governmental department. Each one a structure that would have been a centrepiece in any other city, but in Aris, they were merely part of the decor.

Paida blinked the wetness away from her eyes as she took a step forwards. This was her judgement and her failure for giving the reigns of Rancais to others when she knew she could have done better. There was no reason why a nation with a Divine incarnation should be leading itself during a time of war. What trust was there? Paida had managed the Republic’s politics for centuries, politicians came to her in times of crisis, they came when an issue needed to pushed through or when some reform needed to be stopped.

Because at the end of the day, there was none who knew Rancais better than Paida. She looked at the smoke rising in countless towers upwards from the city. The blockades that were being built by the insurrections, the black and red flags hanging from buildings and towers. And Paida gripped her sword. The city of the world’s desire had been reduced to a shadow of its former self, the buildings that were like golden sand now creaked and wept in coats of grey. They cried out to the sound of smashing glass and flames. Cars littered the streets.

The most magnificent city in the world, now reduced to this.

“Aryon.” Paida said. “Alinth.” Those were the two elves that Iliyal had assigned her with. They knew there would be a battle here, so unlike Saksma’s or Olonia’s divisions, Paida’s divisions were pulled directly from veterans that had been through the thickest fighting on the front. The Goddess herself had thought it was overkill to bring such elites with her, but she wasn’t going to argue with Iliyal on such matters. Frankly, she liked the elf, he stayed out of her life but he wasn’t so distant as to simply be an outsider. If he could give advice, he did, but where he knew that he couldn’t, he simply, respectfully, declined to comment. “I want you two to lead the assault, I’m sure you’re able to sort it out amongst yourselves.”

The two elves stood in black coats, they blinked at each other, and then they looked up at the Goddess that was almost half-again their height. “You don’t want to lead?” Alinth asked. He seemed to take charge amongst these two.

“I have no need to lead. Rancais is my field, but I assume you two know the men better than I do.” Paida said as she watched her holy Aris and had to blink a tear away again. They would do a better job than her, and she was here to simply bear the weight and responsibility of this attack. She would do so, it was sanctioned by her of course, but they would do the commanding. Sometimes, things were so important that such concepts as the ego and the self took second place.

The elves started immediately talking amongst themselves. Splitting the supporting armoured companies the directions they would take. Aryon would circle around the city towards the north as Alinth plunge in. They would link up, then work backwards, clearing out city block after city block. It was a fine plan, Paida would have not come up with anything better in such a short span of time. “I have one to ask Goddess Paida.” Alinth said and Paida finally pulled her eyes away from the city and towards the elf. He stood there, in a black officer’s coat that hung past his knees. A rifle was slung over his back, a radio on his belt.

Behind him, the huge Doschian made tanks. Great beasts of steel that looked like rolling bricks, with angular turrets and mounted machine guns on top, each one crewed by a man hidden behind a shield of bullet-proof plastic. Armoured personnel carriers too, those were much like the tanks, but wheeled and with rapid-fire autocannons mounted on their turrets instead of the great building-destroyers. Paida pulled her eyes away from the army and towards the elf. “What?”

“We won’t hold back.” The elf said. Immediately, she knew what the man was talking about.

“I don’t expect you to.” Paida said as she turned back to the city and rubbed the hilt of her blade. “It shouldn’t have gotten to this point in the first place. Rancais has grown a cancer that we now must amputate, I have nothing else to say on the matter Alinth. Such is the nature of leadership.” There would be no joy taken in this battle, yet neither would Paida run from it. She wasn’t happy that her own countrymen needed to die, but her own countrymen wished to destroy themselves.

Paida had to grab this nation by the horns and force it onto the ground before it walked off the cliff. That was all that needed to be done. “Very well. Thank you.” Alinth said as he picked up the radio. “Company One and Company Two. Followed me. Tanks Squadrons One through to Four are assigned to Companies One and Two. Company Three is to provide backline support…” Paida filtered the man out as she steadied herself and started a march into Aris.

A tank came to a stop next to Paida. It had caught up to her, the turret turned, aimed slightly upwards, and then the huge metal juggernaut slid backwards as it fired. Paida heard… nothing exactly. Her Divine eyes could just about make out the shell hurtling forwards, and then she saw a thoroughly underwhelming explosion. It was a cloud of grey dust and shrapnel rather than a heroic burst of flame.

And Paida’s hearing returned as her ears restitched themselves. She had been shocked by the deafening sensation once, and that was only because she hadn’t anticipated it back then. Now though? She knew that the hearing of a Divine simply wasn’t made to take something as loud as a modern gun at full volume. She turned her walk into a jog, and then into a sprint.

In a few moments, the Goddess of Rancais separated from her own ranks as she raced towards the insurrectionists of Aris. She felt a bullet bounce off her armour, then another. Maybe thirty? Forty? She knew she was a large target. Fer had said it, dodging was impossible, it was only through sheer speed and overwhelming the opponent could she hope to avoid damage.

Paida’s heavy boot pressed into the ground, her calf fell low, her knee turned, and then she sprung upwards in a somersault. Paida looked down at the men underneath her, with mismatched rifles and grenades in boxes by their sides. One man was trying to reload a mortar, he would have to go first. Paida landed behind the barrier and swung her sword in a circle. Two more men had been trying to drag someone who had been knocked unconscious by the tank shell. Her sword tasted some resistance and she knew she had just beheaded someone. Paida stepped forwards, turning her blade and bring it back around in a swing. The man crewing the mortar fell, his body split at the chest into two.

The building next to Paida exploded as the tanks kept up their shelling. The yellow limestone rubble swallowed the two that had been playing at medics. Paida stood up, turned, and saw a team of half a dozen ready their rifles and aim at her. She was about to dash forwards when the sounds of an engine filled her ears and one of the wheeled personnel carriers burst over the rubble, its turret swinging around. It shot a two dozen times and each shell punched a head-sized hole into one of the men. The rear doors of the vehicle swung open, and a team of soldiers in ECCLA uniforms burst out. “GO GO GO! SECURE THIS ROAD!”

Paida turned and then immediately jumped behind the APC when she saw the line of men at the end of the road. Just because she was a Goddess didn’t mean she was immortal, and she wasn’t about to test out whether her regeneration could handle what looked to be a hundred men.

The Goddess of Rancais didn’t need to. Crawling through the barrier rather than over it, one of the huge Doschian tanks caught up to the vanguard squad. It parked itself there and a hail of gunfire sparked off the behemoth’s frontal armour. The tank returned its own roar, a single great drum that once again deafened Paida for a moment. In the few seconds it took her to recover, she looked around the APC and towards the barricade. The men had fallen, a few were picking themselves back up and now there was a huge crater in the road.

Paida wasted no time. It was either her blade that would taste blood, or her men would be tasting their own. She kept low to the ground, always making sure to have a point of contact on the surface from which she could manoeuvre or suddenly change her angle of attack. She kept herself low, like a prowling jaguar, as her boots devoured the distance between herself and that line of men. The tank fired again, the APC raced to follow and support Paida, and gunfire erupted from the nearby streets.

Paida smashed through the barrier, her sword cutting three men down in a single swing. They wore no great markers of allegiance save for the red armbands over their casual, everyday clothes. Anarchia’s men then. Paida had suspected it before. They tried to fire on Paida, a few even managed to score a few hits on the solid inch of steel that the woman carried over her body as armour, but with the APC, the support from the tank’s machine gun, and the men who had now secured firing positions behind cars on the street or windows on the second or third floor, the line of defenders fell quickly.

No speech was given, no order was relayed, Paida knew what she was here to do. She stood up straight, looked down an intersection, and saw a gunfight between her own soldiers and Anarchia’s men. Two teams, both huddled behind cars parked on the street, both releasing bursts of suppressive gunfire towards the other teams.

Paida set off in a sprint, sliding down the middle of the street as the end, before crushing one of the vehicles as she jumped over it and landed in between the men. With a Goddess in their midst, and a Goddess that knew that how to fight, they fell quickly.

So it went, Paida would stay around Alinth’s command team, returning to the elf when she ran out of enemies to kill. The fighting got thicker the further into Aris they pressed and the elf started to set up safe-zones around the city where wounded could be taken to or where engineers could repair vehicles. Paida would stay in the shadows of those great buildings, making sure to stalk and hiding as much as a Divine that stood twice the height of a man could, rather than waltzing down the centre of roads.

She would burst through walls. She would knock cars onto their sides to create cover for her own men and she would smash through enemy defences. She would cut men down by the dozen. The situation grew almost repetitive, with no change until Paida found herself directly supporting Alinth’s team as they advanced through a major intersection. A tank was ahead of them and the Goddess was only here to make sure that any flanking attacks would be swiftly repelled.

And then, all of a sudden, Alinth came to her with his phone in a hand. “It’s for you Goddess Paida.” Alinth said seriously. Paida lifted an eyebrow as she turned and looked down the street. A tank was slowly rolling along the road, the concrete cracking underneath it. From the top, the tank’s gunner was hidden behind a little shield as he manned the machine gun on top of the turret, swivelling it from side to side.

“Who is it?” Paida looked down at the elf. He was dirty and had a red bandage wrapped around his arm. The elf’s rifle was slung on his back, but he carried himself well.

“Field Marshal Tremali.” The elf held the phone for Paida to take.

Iliyal? Well, if the elf was calling, then it had to be urgent. Paida took the phone from Alinth’s hand, it was tiny in her own palm. “This is Paida speaking, what is it Iliyal?”

And Iliyal answered in such a flat and commanding tone that it made Paida’s heart sink. The fact he wasn’t panicking somehow made the entire thing worse. “Paida. I understand that you are pushing into Aris now. I will say this now to you, pull all of your troops out. You are walking into a trap Paida. Get out of there immediately. This is an order direct from me.” Paida blinked as she looked down at the elf, Alinth must have heard her, elves had supernatural hearing and even over the din of gunfire from the nearby streets, he should be able to pick out what the phone was saying.

But Alinth said nothing, wounded as he was, he stood, straight backed and black-uniformed as if he was patiently waiting for his parents to assign him today’s chores. Paida replied back to Iliyal. “What are you talking about?”

“Paida.” Iliyal said heavily and with a sigh. “Trust me on this, I have lived far longer than you. You are walking into a trap. I’m sending reinforcements to you already. They’ll be there soon. Pull out, reorganize, and don’t go deeper into the city.”

Paida had to pull the phone away from her ear in order to look at it and process what the elf just said. Did she trust him? Of course she did, the elf had trained her in combat, and in war-logic, and the way he had done it was a true imparting of skills. That alone had proved that even if he didn’t like her personally, he wouldn’t go against her. But… Paida looked around Aris, a team of a dozen men dressed in black and armed with rifles that obviously weren’t ECCLA standard issue appeared from the end of the road. The huge tank released a single round from its main cannon.

The single deafening beat of thunder ended as Alinth winced and moved his hands to rub his ears. Paida blinked, unable to hear anything, and then felt her ear-drums once again re-stitch themselves as they had done many times today. What remained of the men was only a cloud of smoke and body parts that had been flung onto the nearby buildings. Paida once again looked into the phone. “Are you sure we have to pull out?” Paida said.

Iliyal replied immediately. “Yes.”

“Alright, I’ll give the order and begin a general retreat.” Paida said.

Iliyal sighed with relief. “Good job. I thought I’d have to argue with you.” Paida rolled her eyes. Did the man think she was a little girl who always needed to be right? She knew sense when she saw it and she knew when to step aside and let someone else take charge. Iliyal had proven himself several times anyway.

Paida was about to turn when she saw a meteor drop from the sky. A black bolt of lightning that blasted upwards out from behind a nearby building, and then downwards onto the tank that was leading the way into Aris for Paida’s men. It went up in a great ball of flame, throwing the turret high up into the air and being submerged in a cloud of black smoke. “Iliyal?” Paida said it calmly as she steadied her breathing. No need to panic yet.

“What?” Iliyal asked.

Paida had to wait for the turret of the tank to finish its fall onto the roof of a building. It crashed into the tiles and sent a hundred of them crashing downwards in a storm of shattering slate. “I think your call was late.”

“Orderly retreat out of there.” Iliyal said. “If you can’t then hold.” And the elf dropped the call. Paida handed it back to Alinth and turned to see a figure emerge from the cloud of black smoke and the burning wreckage. Most surprisingly, it wasn’t a Divine, it was no taller than a man. A human then?

“Get behind me.” Paida said as Alinth took a step back and started waving his hands. Hand-signs being given out to the soldiers scattered in between cars and leaning out of door ways. Those that saw the elven general started to slowly pull back as they provided cover to each other.

Another bolt of black lightning. Another man crashed from the sky onto the ground, closer to Paida. A building toppled into the distance, a man with a hammer came sliding along the ground, overturning every vehicle nearby simply by the force of his movement. Two more crashes. And then another two. All human, yet all exhibiting such a terrible aura of power that Paida lost her confidence at being to out duel them individually. They were all obviously blessed. With what, how or why, Paida did not care, but humans should not be capable of such things. She thought of running. It didn’t even shame her to think of the action because she knew that not a single fibre in her body actually wanted to perform it. It had been a simple weighing of options, nothing more than that.

If she allowed them to get past her, there would be open season on the forward camp that was treating the wounded. Paida did not bother looking to Kassandora, to Kavaa, Fer or Iliyal for inspiration. Not even to her friends of Saksma and Olonia and Aliana and Agrita. There was only one thing she could do.

The Goddess of Rancais put one foot forwards, twisted to the side, raised her blade close to her face in both hands, and waited for them to come.

Iliyal looked at the phone and to the other men in the control room. He didn’t waste a single moment. “Send a message to Raptor Two to go as fast as possible. Supersonic flight over civilian areas is greenlit, I don’t care. Get Paida her help.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep