Siren's Elegy Volume 1: Orphans of Ashen Earth

Chapter 57: Duty and Resolve

October 11, 4021 11:08 [Lahab Mutajamid Desert]

Silent and motionless, Akula peered through a sliver in the pile of corpses he lay beneath to keep warm. The sands had frozen over, the machinations of Levante turning the arid landscape into an unforgiving tundra. Winds blew curtains of snow over the land, further terraforming the desert into a pristine hellscape. The bodies of its victims lay blanketed just beneath the surface.

The conflict had progressed over the course of the week, with hardly a moment's respite for soldiers on both sides, and the casualties continuing to mount without an end in sight. Hart had alluded to a quick conclusion to the war, but the longer they struggled, the more futile it seemed. Taking into consideration that the forces of Yuèliàng did eventually overwhelm Levante, their victory would be pyrrhic, the losses too great to warrant the operation's designation a success.

Akula grimaced, gnashing his teeth. He knew neither army would surrender; their plight wouldn't end until one side had been completely eradicated. The hubris of their leaders was too great for them to consider the lives of their men as anything more than trivialities and necessary sacrifices.

Mobile fortresses released hordes of Machina onto the battlefield, continually replenishing their ranks as they were felled by Homunculi. The Lancers tore paths through the sea of enemies Levante loosed on them, pulling apart the fortresses and taking aim at the fleet of airships carrying Levante's premier division of soldiers.

These ships had been given the moniker of Cataclysms by their enemies, for they marked the end of those who bore witness to their arrival. They carried Stormcloaks, soldiers that harnessed the element of ice, bending nature to their will in the same vein as the Hyenas did with Shakti. However, they did so through the technological ingenuity of their engineers, donning suits of bionic white armor that could supercool the very air around them.

The Stormcloaks descended upon the battlefield from the Cataclysms, their ivory capes fluttering in the gale brought on by the sudden shift in weather. They slayed Homunculi and Yuèliàngian soldiers in droves, releasing frozen beams from their palms or simply cutting them down to size with blades of ice.

The bloodshed that ensued seeped deep into the snow until the patches of red dotting the battlefield became a blanket of crimson across the tundra.

Akula dug out of the side of the corpse pile he had continued to lay beneath as a Stormcloak took aim at it in a morbid fit of boredom.

He bolted towards the Stormcloak, driving a pike of frozen blood through the bottom of his chin before the Levantan had a chance to react. The Stormcloak's tongue burst as blood flowed out of his mouth and trickled from his nostrils. His eyes rolled back as the pike pierced his brain, breaking through the skull cap and jutting out of the top of his head like a small antenna.

Akula flexed his fingers, surprised. There was no need to crystallize the blood he used; the sheer cold did half the work for him. All he needed to do was mold any weapon to his liking and let the temperature take care of the rest. He was not worried about running out of material to shape either; there was an endless supply of it lying in wait for him to use.

He stared at the three monolithic airships lingering in the air. They had yet to make a move outside of dropping explosives on unsuspecting Homunculi below.

"What are they planning?" he muttered to himself.

He searched for cover again, hiding behind an overturned Crawler. It twitched slightly; the mechanisms had been destroyed and the systems completely fried.

Akula was on his own; his communications had ceased to function upon the advent of the winter storm. The communication devices had been designed to withstand severe weather conditions, including freezing temperatures, however, they had underestimated the measures Levante and its allies were willing to take in order to protect their countries. At the expense of their ground troops, they had bombarded the land with projectiles well below sustainable temperatures, essentially glaciating the area.