Chapter 1012 — The Forward Gear

Boundless magic surged around him; channeled through the spell models, it became brilliant light and heat. Every vein and nerve in his body turned into a blazing wellspring in that process, as though molten lava were churning among his organs and flesh. Cremont felt that he was already burning—everything in his sight warped and twisted in the searing heat, dissolving into some strange white-hot vision, and he could not help but think of the magic conduits he had observed in the arcane laboratory before they burned out... If those conduits had been alive, would they have seen this very same sight in the final instant before their destruction?

In the tenth of a second that followed, Cremont seemed to hear a crisp "snap" from the depths of his soul. Every sense he possessed was abruptly raised to a new height, as though the whole world lay beneath his gaze; he saw with perfect clarity the course of every wisp of magic around him, the vast, ceaselessly surging energies within that war machine, and even the fierce battle in the sky behind him—through the power of the miracle, he had broken through to Legend.

Then the immense explosion devoured everything.

Cremont's final consciousness became an echo within a transmission spell, piercing the violent blizzard, crossing the long battlefield, and projecting directly to distant Winter Fort—

"Careful! Palin! They have dragons!!"

……

The blast was so violent that it tore a visible gash through the blizzard itself; the clouds of steam pouring from the cooling grilles of the armored train's carriages were instantly scattered by the shockwave. Ma Qi, just about to board the Iron Scepter, was startled by the earth-shaking din; he turned toward the source of the sound and saw only a small mushroom cloud rising from the tail of the World Serpent.

From the tactical carriage onward, half the train's carriages were swept up in the great explosion, and the rampaging magical energy that followed poured into the power spine, detonating the remaining carriages one after another.

The self-destruct devices installed within the Iron Throne alone could never have produced such an effect.

"Is that some kind of Typhonian weapon?" the adjutant beside him said in astonishment. "Some kind of superbomb? Why would they only bring it out now?"

"...It was a self-detonation, sir, I saw it," a staff officer said, swallowing hard. "I saw a mage fall from the sky—probably a mage; behind him was nothing but overgrown tentacles and tumors..."

Ma Qi said nothing, only gazing toward the rising mushroom cloud. After a few seconds he gave a slight nod in that direction, then turned and boarded the armored train behind him.

Fireballs and thunderbolts intertwined in the blizzard; in the overcast sky, the airborne forces of Typhon and Cecil still fought to the death, and on the earth below, the World Serpent—that vast engine of war—had finally come to a halt on the shattered railway, while the other armored train howled through the snow, smoke, and wreckage, racing on toward the Shadow Marshes.

The damage-control teams had already extinguished the fires within the armored train; the dense anti-air fire carried by the Iron Scepter thundered once more, and the net of fire woven from magic-crystal shells and high-energy beams reaped the surviving attackers in the sky. Dragons and flying machines threaded through the clouds, further compressing the space in which the battlemages and gryphon riders could operate—and all of it seemed a painted scroll in which time and era had fallen into disorder—

And that scroll had reached its final stroke.

The commander's death had not caused the Typhonian aerial force to collapse entirely; those gryphon riders of unwavering morale still carried out their assigned mission with undiminished fervor, and the surviving battlemages were still squeezing out humanity's last reserves of potential in pursuit of greater gains. They had noticed that one of the two armored trains had been destroyed—and it was the infamous main battle car—while the other was scarred and trailing billowing smoke. In a sense, they had already achieved their intended objective—but at a cost beyond all expectation.

They no longer had the strength to destroy the other, nor to withdraw from this terrible battlefield.

The dragoon craft, earlier forced to leave the airspace after heavy losses, returned once more to the combat zone; shielded by the dragons, these tireless flying machines began to slaughter the gryphon riders and battlemages who had for the most part exhausted their "miracles." The wreckage of men and gryphons fell from the sky like rain, swiftly buried and swallowed by the blizzard.

A battlemage halted in the clouds; gasping for breath, he raised his head and looked around, and suddenly realized that this battlefield in the sky had grown empty.

The comrades who had once threaded densely through the cloud layer were now reduced to a sparse three or five battle echelons, and nearly all of them were ad hoc formations; the most fanatical gryphon riders had been the first to approach annihilation, and now only a handful of knights, twisted and mutated beyond all semblance of humanity, still charged the dragons wheeling through the clouds. The roars and explosions from every direction gradually faded, and the anti-air fire from the ground had ceased at some unknowable moment.

A low, majestic roar suddenly sounded nearby, carrying a power that shook the heart and soul. The battlemage mustered his last strength into a defensive stance, and in the next second he saw a colossal shape burst from the thick clouds beside him—a black dragon clad in armor from head to tail, its great wings and talons cased in steel, a fearsome ram-horn mounted on its lower jaw. Though the missile launchers slung along both flanks of the dragon's body had been destroyed in the fighting, the battlemage knew that at this distance the dreadful creature could take his life with talons and breath alone.

It was time to give his all for the Empire.

The battlemage steeled himself for death, yet the black dragon only hovered before him, holding him in silent standoff, the distant mist and snowstorm mirrored in its great eyes. The confrontation, which stretched his nerves nearly to the breaking point, lasted a few seconds; then the black dragon suddenly nodded to him—and whether it was illusion or not, there seemed to be a trace of approval in that nod—before the master of the sky abruptly spread its wings, shot upward in the blink of an eye, and raced deep into the clouds.

The dragons were withdrawing.

The battlemage blinked, as though unable to believe what had happened. After a moment of bewilderment he looked around, and only then realized that every last gryphon rider had been wiped out.

The Cecilian flying machines had withdrawn, the dragons had withdrawn, that armored train had withdrawn; across the land of the mountain region lay wreckage of every kind—human, gryphon, machine... Billowing smoke and lingering flames rose and churned among the ruins, but all were visibly dying out, and the blizzard was gradually devouring it all.

On the 35th day of the Month of Mist, Year 2 of Cecil, above the Winter Wolf Fort defense line, the first large-scale aerial battle in recorded human history drew to a close.

……

Palin Winterfort entered the assembly hall—now utterly devoid of life—with a squad of mage guards and national knights. The stench of blood that struck his nostrils and the grotesque scene that met his eyes made him frown, and drew stifled gasps from some of the retainers beside him.