The Greatest Sin

An air assault by mages over the centre mountains. Then pull back. Establish and secure supply lines through that treacherous terrain with magicians, at the same time push west and south with Maisara’s armies. Encircle Kirinyaa from that direction and drive them back. Attacking cities directly would bog them down, much easier to simply starve them out, Then Fortia’s Guardians would land on the coast. Kassandora’s armies were not to be faced, they would be starved in the central prairies of Kirinyaa.

This wasn’t a war of conquest, it was a war of humiliation. Kassandora’s reputation would be destroyed totally. There would be no more heroic tales about the Goddess of War, she will return back to her little cage to sit out the rest of time.

Fortia smiled to herself as she prepared to explain the plan to the White Pantheon. War-plan Peacekeeper, that sounded like a good name.

“Are you sure about that?” Kavaa asked, Kassandora turned around and was already off, walking towards the central armoury Iniri had grown for the men. There were a few amount, trees that had been twisted out of the ground into unnatural shapes, expanded to make walls. A few had roofs of planks, the others merely thick canopies of hedges.

“Sure about my plan?” Kassandora asked. She turned a corner several Clerics stood up and saluted. Kassandora ignored them as her dark boots devoured the distance. “I am never sure.” Kavaa rolled her eyes as she quickened her pace. That was a classic line from her. “But I would have not proposed it if I could think of a better one. So it’s what we have.” Kassandora made some wordless sound of mirth. “It’s worthless anyway, plans are indispensable, but the moment fighting starts they become worthless. That’s why I didn’t get into more detail. The situation will change the moment we see how Fortia moves, but that’s the general idea, we lure them south and then we cut off the supply routes.”

“I didn’t mean that.” Kavaa said as she slowed her pace. Kassandora did too, Kavaa still had to take three for each of Kass’ two. More men saluted past her. “I meant…” Both Goddesses ignored them as they trailed through the tents. A plane landed from above, Fer roared in the distance, more beastmen coming in then. They had taken more a month sailing the ocean in container ships. Now in Kirinyaa, they could finally be revealed.

“Are you stupid?” Kassandora asked. “I genuinely ask now, I’m not trying to be offensive Kavaa.” What a question.

“Excuse me?”

“Have you not seen this is what we’ve been preparing for since the start?”

Kavaa sighed. It was obvious that they were heading for this, but it was… It was almost surreal. It was one thing to actually forge a blade and a different entirely to see it cut a man down. “I did.”

“I lie a lot.” Kassandora said flatly. “But in this, I have never lied once. We win once they are all dead.” She turned down a road. Tarmac that had been hastily poured out to be used by trucks. Two were in the distance unloading ammunition into the armoury. A great structure, Iniri had added her own little touch to it. A tree was sprouting from the side and giving shade to a team of Kassandora’s soldiers sitting around a campfire and hand-loading magazines.

“Have you lied to me, ever?” Kavaa asked.

“More than once.” Kassandora replied flatly. “It’s not an excuse, it is simply how I am.” Kavaa shook her head. Maisara was proud of never having told a fib but talking to her made you feel as if she was still somehow worming her sweet words into your mind. Kassandora admitted it frankly and Kavaa couldn’t think of a single she had distrusted something the Goddess of War said.

“Like when?” Kavaa asked coldly.

“On the mountain, I said I had Maisara and Fortia in my grasp.” Kassandora said. “I didn’t, I had them coming to me and asking me what to do but they were stubborn and argumentative, they wanted a method on how to kill Allasaria. Allasaria had come to me too for advice.” She shrugged. “You all know me, I don’t feel bad about it, I wouldn’t have come to talk to myself.”

“So it’s just luck that we ended up with you and not them?” Kavaa asked.

“Luck or fate, call it whatever you want. You three were better than those two, and I had no chance with Allasaria. So I got Maisara and Fortia out and gave you your opening.” Kassandora kept up the pace as they neared the armoury. The men looked up, one tried to hide his cigarette, the others simply stood up, saluted and then sat back down once Kassandora dismissed them.

“That simple?” Kavaa asked. It wasn’t a satisfying reason whatsoever.

“Why must it be complicated?” Kassandora asked. “If a man kills another, then his brother comes for revenge, that is also simple. The simpler the reason the better it is. You can poke holes in elongated reasoning, you can’t change the fact I prefer you to Maisara and Fortia.” Kassandora shrugged, and stopped and looked down at Kavaa. “It is what it is.” Those red eyes had nothing in them, not a hint of warmth or annoyance or anger. “Come, there’s munitions to inspect.” There were more roars in the distance, from Fer then followed by other beastmen. Anassa appeared in the air, looked around and then disappeared.

Kavaa sighed heavily as Kassandora turned. She liked the woman, she remembered when Arascus said Kassandora liked her back. But… Arascus’ words echoed in her mind again: ‘She’s hard to like.’ Kavaa supposed that was true. She didn’t knew of Kassandora, she knew the fables and tales from the Great War, and those before, she knew of Allasaria’s history with her, but she didn’t know the Kassandora. “Are you always like this?”

“Like what?” Kassandora asked then tutted. “I’m always working if that’s what you mean.”

“So cold?”

“Am I cold?” Kassandora shrugged. “I am what I am. I think I’m an open book myself, I can read myself easily.” Kavaa rolled her eyes as they stopped before the doors of the armoury. It was two solid chunks of wood that retracted for them. The wood simply moved and curled to let them in, no hinges and no mechanism.

“We all do Kass.” Kavaa tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “I know myself.”

“I think I know you too.” Kassandora said as she stopped. The guards in side saluted. “Get back to work, keep unloading, how much ammunition has come?”

“The warehouses are now at half a million rounds.” One man reported immediately. Kassandora only replied with a nod as they went deeper into the structure. Anassa’s lamps hung, or rather floated, in the air. Simple balls of sorcery that cast a bright light somewhat tinted red.

“Do you know me?” Kavaa asked. She was curious as to the impression she gave off. In the White Pantheon, she’d be simply called weak or back-up or something along those lines. Kassandora would probably say the same, it was true. Kavaa wasn’t particularly strong.

Kassandora said nothing like that. “You have an obvious inferiority complex. You pretend you’re cold but it’s because you don’t trust easily. Iniri and Helenna both would give their lives up for you, so I assume you’re quite friendly once people get to know you. You appreciate mortals more than other Divines, you’re loyal and you crave respect. Not the Allasaria or Maisara type of people bowing to you, but the respect my sisters have for me.”

Kavaa blinked in shock. She grabbed her silver hair and smoothed out her uniform. Kassandora wasn’t wrong, but… it would have been offensive if anyone else said. Kassandora merely phrased it as a doctor would tell patient they’re about to die. Flatly, and without any emotion. Coming from her, it didn’t seem like an opinion, it was a diagnosis. “I…” Kavaa struggled to get a word out. “I didn’t expect that.” And what she didn’t expect the most was the lack of judgement in Kassandora’s voice.

“I’ve trained millions throughout my life. I have to know how to understand people.” Kassandora said flatly as she stared at the weaponry on the walls. She shouted to one of the mortals. “How many rifles do we have now?”

“Fifty thousand Goddess!” A voice responded from behind a cabinet.

“All new small-arms factories are to produce ammunition from now on!” Kassandora said. “And start cutting rifle production, retool half of the production sites for ammo.” Kassandora looked to Kavaa and raised an eyebrow as if Kavaa was supposed to question her decision. Kavaa merely shrugged, this wasn’t her field. “Anything else you want to ask?”

“I’m not going to ask you to spill your heart out to me.”

“My heart exists to pump blood. I wouldn’t do that because then I’d die.” Kassandora said as she took one rifle off the wall. “My troops will be equipped first, then your Clerics. The Kirinyaan military will be last.”

“You don’t plan to outfit all of them?” Kavaa asked. Kassandora plucked a rifle from the stand and held it in one hand. It was comically small in her hands. She pulled the trigger: Click. And again. Click, Click, Click.

“Four bullets just like that.” Kassandora said, then flicked the safety to full auto. She held the trigger down for two seconds. “Thirty bullets.” She took out the empty magazine and pushed it back in. Three seconds she held the trigger. “Sixty.” And again. “Ninety.” Then again. “One-twenty. In less than a minute, we’ve just used up a hundred and twenty rounds. There’s fifty thousand of these and half a million rounds stocked up right now. That’s only a ten rounds a man. When we run out.” She threw the gun in a spin and grabbed the barrel, then gave it a few swings through the air. “It’s barely a club.”

“Oh.” Kavaa hadn’t thought of that but when phrased like that, it was obvious.

“Oh indeed. We had the same problem in the past with arrows and cannonballs. Ammunition disappears faster than alcohol.” Kassandora put the gun back onto its stand, pulled out a piece of paper and started scrawling something quickly in her pretty hand-writing. Red pen, same as always. Kavaa watched her finish, then they found the store master. “Written order. Wave it around when people ask, hassle Arascus if someone’s not complying.”

“Understood Goddess!” The man took the slip and carefully put it into the inside of his coat pocket. And Kassandora turned to leave. Quick inspection. Kavaa always made sure to take an hour to talk to her men when she ran through her own storerooms, to see how they were feeling and what the morale situation looked like.

“Why did you join Arascus?” Kavaa asked quietly as they stepped out into sunlight. A pair of helicopters were landing in the distance. Engineers on the other side of the road were having an argument about Binturongs. Kassandora stopped and sighed as she looked down at her boots.

“It’s a long story.” Kassandora said flatly as she turned to move. “Airfield next, come.”

“Sorry if I’m prying.” Kavaa replied, it was the first time she had seen Kassandora dodge a question like that. Well, it was good to see that the woman had her own secrets. She was the untouchable Goddess of War, but it was good to see a little humanity in tha…

“It’s simply a long story.” Kassandora said flatly. “You’re not prying, the past is the past.”

“But you don’t want to talk about it?” Kavaa asked. She hoped… she didn’t know. On one hand, she wanted to know, on the other, she hoped Kassandora wouldn’t tell her.

But Kassandora did. “I formed a decade after Allasaria. In Sythia, during one of their wars.” Kavaa almost tripped over herself as Kassandora launched into it. “There, we led them to survival, victory after victory, flowers and parades in the street for both of us. Women would ask me to touch their children to bless them.” Kavaa saw Kassandora smile to herself as she recounted the tale. “But Sythia disappeared during worldbreaking, you incarnated at the end of that era, didn’t you?”

“I did.” Kavaa said. When the modern continents had been constructed. Worldbreaking wasn’t a war so to say, it was merely mages running rampant led by countless mad Divines all vying for power. Kavaa suspected that was why her healing caused so much pain, it hadn’t been a gentle age.

“Allasaria eventually settled down. She found a country to run, as most of us did back then.” Kassandora shrugged. “And I could not. We walked down separate ways. I was merely a mercenary, respected, but…” Kassandora shrugged. “Not loved I suppose, it was that simple. I’d walk into towns, people would turn their heads, kings and queens would bow and beg, armies would march under me, but it wasn’t the same.”

Kavaa didn’t know if she wanted Kassandora to stop or not. “I was like that, fighting under banners for centuries.” Kassandora smiled. “I repelled Fer’s first incursion, and second, and third. The black and white war, when Allasaria and Irinika fought, I led Allasaria’s armies then. I don’t know, did I like it?” Kassandora asked the air as she kicked a stone.

“Sorry for prying.” Kavaa said.

“It is what it is.” Kassandora replied. “It’s ancient history. Eventually, I became this.” Kassandora extended her arms out to either side.

“What do you mean by that?”

“How I am now.” Kassandora said. “Arascus once called me a workaholic, I remember being proud of that. I do my job because no one else will do it. I became the best at it, back then, Fortia was a better general than me, Maisara too. But they slowed down and I did not. They formed started kingdoms, I merely kept rolling in the mud.” Kavaa took a breath.

“I see.”

“I don’t know if you do.” Kassandora said. “The final century before the Great War, Arascus approached me. I’m the last daughter, the newest one even though I’m older than most of them. Do you know what he said to me?”

“What?”

“Give War a chance.” Kavaa never saw Kassandora smile like that as she repeated those words. “That’s what he said to me. Since Worldbreaking, I had never sworn to a banner, but I swore to his. He gave War a chance, it’s a debt I can’t repay ever. It was the first time someone saw the Kassandora and not the Goddess of War.” Kassandora smiled to herself as she kicked another stone. “So I serve, not out of obligation, but because I like it here. We’re losing to be honest, I have little hope for winning this conflict. But I’m still here, and I’m going to give it everything I have.”

“Do you love him?” Kavaa asked. Kassandora shrugged.

“I suppose I do.” She replied. “He has his faults, as all of us do, but it’s easy to look past them.” Kassandora blinked, her cheeks going red. “It’s more a bond, not like Helenna’s love, or how mortals-“ Kavaa’s laugh interrupted her.

“I understood Kass. I understood.” She said and took Kassandora’s hand. The Goddess of War didn’t pull it back as they walked to the airfield. “Are the others like this?”

“Some.” Kassandora said with a sigh. “They’re not my stories to tell. Don’t ask Anassa about hers though, she’s prickly about it.” Kavaa nodded and smiled as she didn’t know what it was, but the little talk quelled her thoughts. She hadn’t expected it, but she was glad she had pestered Kassandora about them. That little flame inside her, wanting to attach itself to Arascus’ blazing inferno, set alight inside her again. She didn’t put it out this time.

Fer smiled as she kept watched Kassandora and Kavaa walk towards the airfield, her ears jumping up and down, she had caught all of that conversation. Neneria absolutely needed to hear the good news: Little Kassie finally made a friend.