Blood Shaper-Chapter 40Book 6

Lines of soldiers crashed into an absolutely menacing of vampyr. Cindy wasn’t at the other locations to check her assumptions, but if there weren’t more vampyr here than any other ritual site she’d be incredibly surprised. Formations were slammed backward as the forwards lines collided with the enemy and reinforcements raced to relieve them and take the pressure off. Quasi-elites raced from spot to spot and engaged with stronger vampyr that menaced squads and lines. Blades flashed as men and women worked together in synchrony to tear down the monstrosities that would ravage the world. It all felt like a scene out of a history book. Well, maybe a historical fantasy.

Cindy didn’t remember a time when she wasn’t interested in history. People joked about how often men thought about the Roman Empire and Cindy always found that a bit sexist. She thought about the Roman Empire all the time too! History was like the perfect story, there was drama and intrigue, grand battles and heroic victories, and often the tales of men and women coming from nothing to remake the world entirely. Not only that but it was all true! To an extent, history is written by the winner and the people in power shape narratives to make themselves look better, but if you peeled back the bias and the skewing then you could find the real nuggets of truth hidden within the schist of cover ups and falsity.

The main thing that Cindy loved about history though, were the battles. Last stands, desperate charges, decisive victories based on skill or luck, the long slog through campaigns, she loved reading and learning about all sorts of battles and wars. But by the time her age had rolled around war had become boring. Not in a real sense, she knew she hadn’t been in battles or anything like that until she’d arrived in Torotia so she’d never wanted to say that the changes were bad in terms of saving lives and preventing catastrophes, but having most militaries be made up of mostly automated units was boring historically. There was nothing interesting in writing or learning about this force of robots and drones destroying this force of robots and drones and then one side surrendering because of the cost of robot parts. Again, she was totally on board for less true bloodshed, but it was boring.

Some distant part of her longed for the days of Spartan warriors holding back a Persian army that massively outnumbered them, of a massive armada being defeated by a freak storm and the courageous sailors of the navy being attacked taking advantage, or of Napoleon’s crushing victory at the Battle of Waterloo, only to have his dreams of empire destroyed by one wounded English soldier killing him with a final bullet. Conflict was a key part of human existence and taking that conflict and reducing it to a fight between people with joy sticks that would never see the emotions in each others eyes as they battled to the death felt like something was lost. Technology and the advancement of the Earth Cindy had come from was destroying the romance of what once was, and she didn’t enjoy that.

Smiling softly, she let that tiny romantic side of her have a moment of wistful whimsy before crushing it remorselessly. War sucked, any advantage that could be taken over the enemy should be taken, and any measure that could save lives while keeping victory in sight was worth taking. She would kill for a robot army with energy weapons and railguns at that moment. People, her people, were dying against monsters made from the corrupted essence of something from outside of her reality and if she could give them joysticks and drones to pilot she would in an instant. A boring, safe war was the best war possible outside of the fanciful and romantic, and it was her job to make this battle as boring as possible.

“Status on the guns?” She demanded of her aide.

Gundar replied immediately, “The field guns are loaded and ready. The trebuchets will be ready to fire momentarily.”

“Good.” She drew a pistol and brandished it at the enemy. “Fire.”

“Fire!” Gundar bellow and an instant later a series of cacophonous booms rolled across the battlefield as the field guns fired as close together as they could.

Cindy stared as shells landed among swarming vampyr and began exploding, sending out waves of shrapnel that scythed through monsters and created open fields of dead and wounded enemies among the milling tide of eldritch monstrosities. The System, whatever it’s goals were, didn’t want technology to advance beyond a certain limit. Testing the limits by giving complete amateurs with no connection to Outworlders the right base level of education to head in the direction of more advanced weapons and other technologies saw them still fail in the exact same way Cindy’s people did, meaning it wasn’t even a limit on Outworlder’s mucking up the speed and direction of progress here on Torotia but a true hard cap to what could be developed.

That wasn’t going to even slow Cindy down though. Guns were allowed which meant explosive shells were easily achieved. Making their outer shells that erupted into shrapnel entirely out of Kay’s blood made them even more deadly to the vampyr. The same could be said of the basic grenades that’d been made and the case shot that the field guns had in case they got rushed. Cindy’s goal was to make her new home’s version of the military industrial complex the most advanced one on Torotia. None of the technological limits or immediate System related ones were going to stop her. Bullets couldn’t be enchanted that well or that much because they were too small? Make them out of magical materials and skip the middle man. It was hard to increase the power of guns using Skills because the propulsion method wasn’t based on mana-infused bodies? Get better alchemists and make better powder. The limitations didn’t matter, all that mattered was being the best there was.

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“Trebuchets ready ma’am.”

“Fire.”

“Fire!”

Counterweights swung down and tensioned arms released, throwing dozens of barrels into the air. Cindy watched those fly too, waiting for them to arrive at the exact part of their arc that they needed to. Guided by Skilled Artillerists, the barrels all traveled their designated trajectories perfectly and then, as one exploded. Driven downward by the shaped explosives, which were incredibly difficult to make with the magical version of black powder, gallons upon gallons of liquid blood sourced directly from the vampire King of Avalon’s veins rained down on the vampyr and they all began to melt.

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What Cindy was really wanting to watch were the “special” barrels and the blood rain cleared enough monstrosities out of the way for her to see one. Unlike it’s “regular” brethren it had landed directly on a vampyr, crushing it. A few heartbeats passed and then it began to shake and hiss as the timed enchantments mixed with precisely calibrated devices began to operate. From the seams of the wood that the barrel was made of, red gas began to spread at a rapid pace. Every vampyr that ran into the gas immediately began screeching and tearing at their skin as aerosolized blood coated their bodies that were tainted with and warped by eldritch corruption.

“Two regular barrels and one special barrel misfired ma’am.” Gundar reported. “That’s within specified tolerances.”

“Excellent. Fire plan one, then!”

“As you command.” He spun in place and began barking orders at her personal troops. “Fire plan one! Fire plan one! Field guns, focus on targets of opportunity, trebuchets go to full speed. I want this battlefield coated in out damn king’s blood!”

“Should I be threatened?”

Cindy turned her head to see Kay had walked up next to her. His tone of voice was joking as he obviously got what Gundar was saying, but his eyes were stone cold. Cindy didn’t say anything and after a long silence he glanced at her without moving his head. “Chemical weapons?”

“Technically? No. That is one hundred percent pure blood, sourced directly from you. We did extra testing just in case, and it has no noticeable effect on anything but vampyr.” She pointed at a pool of red liquid left by one of the regular barrels where only the stupidest or least conscious vampyr still made their way through and started to die. “It’s exactly what you do, just a few steps removed.”

“But it could be used for chemical weapons.”

“It could be. How much you want to bet that there are even more horrific things than our worlds have ever seen out there in the hands of alchemists and mages?”

“… Point.”

She turned to face him head on and let him see how serious she was. “I am completely aware of how things could go badly with the techniques and technologies I’m introducing and inducing into this world. Just like I’ve told you before, I am and will continue to do my utmost to make sure they are not abused.”

He stared back at her, his expression equally solemn. Eventually he nodded. “Thank you. I’m quite lucky to have you at my side.”

“Don’t start talking like some fantasy protagonist, you’re from Arizona.” She quipped back at him.

He cracked a smile at that. “Ha. Thanks.”

“No problem. Your gorgeous sweetheart who’s way out of your league isn’t here so someone has to keep you in check.”

They both turned back to watch the battle continue. With the help of Cindy’s artillery batteries and the munitions they used the vampyr were getting wrecked at every point and the coalition army, which skewed toward’s Avalon’s forces since Kay wanted people he could truly trust backing him up, began pushing faster and faster toward the center of the ruined capital city of Nelam. Cindy mused that she still didn’t know the name of the damn place, but let that go since even the ruins that were currently standing probably wouldn’t be around at the end of this. She noticed Kay clenching his hands repeatedly as he stared.

“Save your strength.” She told him. She pointed with her chin at the marching soldiers when he glanced at her questioningly. “You want to get in there and fight. Well you can’t. We all need you to go into the fight with the vampyr leader at peak form.”

“Oh, I know.” He turned hungry eyes on to the not so distant form of what had once been Nelam’s palace. “Part of my totally wants to be in there making sure our people don’t die. But you and everyone else have successfully beat it into my head that that isn’t my role. I’m just waiting to get my hands on whoever this vampyr leader is so I can end this.”

Edric Ravenhome sprinted toward them and skid to a halt in front of them. “The first few detachments have started to reach the ritual circle!”

Kay formed his normal suit of armor around him and a halberd began to grow between his palms. “Then we just need to-“

“Wait!” Ravenhome cut him off, shaking his head wildly. “There’s almost no resistance there. We managed to located a few of your saboteurs who said that the vampyr that seemed to be elite fighters all retreated into the palace. They’re likely holeing up with their ‘Great One’ inside.”

Kay stood still, staring at the palace for a long moment. Then he turned to look at Cindy. “Duchess.”

She bowed her head. “Your Majesty.”

“You’re in command. Wipe these abominations from the face of this planet and destroy that ritual circle.”

“As you will.”

He shot her a cross eyes look at that response but didn’t take the time to chastise her verbally, even when she smirked at him. Instead he just turned back to Edric. “Commander, get your team. Meet me and my Blood Guard forward from here. If there’s no elites at the circle for me to fight then there’s no reason we can’t assault the palace immediately.”