The Greatest Sin

Anassa hovered over the empty campsite. Once again the White Pantheon army had left before she got to them. Kassandora had good information, and men obviously had been here. She clicked her tongue and stepped to return to Zalewski’s north-east army. Half a dozen miles were cleared in one step. Nothing again. This was like facing Leona.

In the distance, unseen by Anassa, was a pair of men with binoculars. They wrote down a message and sent it before burying themselves back under the desert sand. ‘Anassa is growing irritated, Fortia’s plan is working.’

Olephia raised her head from her drawing as her two maids entered her tent. It was a small thing, Olephia did not demand much, she just wanted some privacy to be allowed to retreat into her own thoughts. There was no bed, but there was a table, a stack of plain paper. Pencils, both coloured and black granite, lay neatly organised there. And then a chest of clothes for Olephia, although she was wearing only a loose green shirt and skirt, standard colours to fit in with the rest of the troops.

Olephia’s maids, Adia and Nia, were both native Kirinyaan girls found by Helenna and assigned by Kassandora. Olephia didn’t think much of them, they were rather quiet girls who didn’t speak much. Both had volunteered for the military after the Melukal disaster, both had no work experience in the past, both were in their early twenties, both were intimidated to be such close contact to the Goddess who had taken down the Caretaker. Frankly, they would have been carbon copies of each other save not for the fact Adia was much taller than Nia.

Nia was holding a note. Her dark cheeks flushed into a bright red as Olephia stood up. Both girls had received a drawing of themselves from her already. Now she was drawing the three of them together. Olephia pointed at the note. “It says.” Nia began hurriedly, then she cleared her throat. “It’s battle orders.”

Olephia let out a deep breath. These came through every other day. She took the note and scanned it herself. Line Three needs reinforcements. Zerus and Sceo have appeared. To be engaged immediately. Many thanks Olephia, General Ekkerson. Olephia smiled as read it and left her room, the two maids could reorganise her pencils. She always grew fond of Kassandora’s generals, they were the sort of men who would write to Olephia as if she was just any other Divine.

Olephia left her tent and looked out over Ekkerson’s army. They had gotten to the front just in time to stop a push from Zerus and Sceo over the desert. One battle, Olephia had already ended. With her here though, the front had stopped entirely. Ekkerson could not push North because Zerus and Sceo were two, and Olephia was one. One attempt had been made, Ekkerson pushed ten miles into the empty Badlands in one location and was pushed ten miles in two other areas. After that, the battlelines settled down.

Camps had been put up, all close enough to Olephia’s place for her to assist in a matter of minutes. If they had a faster Divine, or multiple, then the lines would be spread out, but there was only one main route down western Kirinyaa. To the east, the mountains were in the distance, to the west was more Badlands, and then the creeping Jungle. Both armies avoided getting too close to that.

Kassandora had given her own tactics to counter Sceo and Zerus. Huge steel hedgehogs had been delivered from CR, ‘Central Requisitions’, the name Kassandora had assigned to the huge supply depot south of the central mountain range. CR sent a pair of huge, ugly machines and several dozen trucks filled with steel beams taken from construction sites. The two machines would bend the beams into arches, engineers would weld them together, and they would be dropped off on the sides of bases to create barriers.

It wouldn’t stop troops passing, but it would break formations. More importantly, Sceo’s winds wouldn’t move them and Zerus’ lightning had even less effect. Barbed wire had been tried for one day. Then Sceo had come in and killed a hundred troops with a hurricane of wires before Olephia got there to chase her away.

A small amount of rifles had arrived too, although Ekkerson was very obviously on the bottom of the food chain, Sokolowski and Zalewski got the large meals from CR, Ekkerson got the scraps. It was enough guns to secure locations, to outfit a few dedicated teams of mage-hunters and to pester Zerus and Sceo enough as to stop them from wading into Ekkerson’s camps untouched.

But it wasn’t enough for major assaults. Olephia’s retinue organised themselves immediately. They were all Clerics from a north Epan order. An area where people lived a long time, they specialised in treating cancer. It was odd to have a retinue, she never had one in the past. The general rule Arascus had established for mortals was that a week in the company of Chaos equalled a decade lost in lifespan. Olephia looked around at the two hundred men in their silver armours. No one here had a gun, although no one needed to be armed when they were camping out within earshot of Olephia. They saluted as Olephia started to hum.

Red lightning arced across the sky. Storms clouds formed overhead. Winds picked up. Not Sceo’s organised blasts but crazed breezes that would snake and turn and whip clothes in all directions.

Olephia hummed louder, she gave the men below her one final glance. They had started to march in the same direction as she did. In the past, she would have only been brought in to secure crucial battles, although those rarely took place because of Leona’s foresight. Mainly her job had been to level cities. Now though, she fought on the front. Her retinue was only there to heal anyone on her own side that had been touched by her curse.

The frontline was only twenty minutes away. Olephia’s hum dimmed what was left of the battle. A few men still brawling, a rearguard. Fortia’s Guardians in their gleaming gold-bronze armour, armed with tower shield and spear were brawling with Kavaa’s Clerics. The Clerics obviously had the upper hand at this point, but from the bodies around the hedgehogs, the scene was reversed.

For every man that had fallen in the gold, at least three lay in green and silver. Some cut, some stabbed, most charred black. Zerus’ lightning then. Olephia looked around at situation. About two hundred Guardians were retreating back over the desert. She filled her lungs.

“Die.”

And the men died. The one word found a weak chain in the air, and it brought a particle to collapse. Two hundred men retreating in a column, and now two hundred men caught in an ball of bright, white light. When it finally dispersed into a relatively small mushroom cloud, there was no trace of life left. Not even the armour remained behind them, only sand that had been seared into dirty black glass.

Olephia dimmed her hum as she came close to the frontline. The sound hit them then, then the winds. Men were knocked down. Tents flew away in the wind, some steel hedgehogs were moved about. And then silence as everyone turned to watch Olephia.

The dark clouds gave way to the blue desert sky, the only blemish in the air was the remains of that explosion. The men would take iodine today, and her retinue would be kept busy for a few hours. The Clerics surrounding the Guardians that made up the rearguard gave them some distance, and the Guardians threw guard their weapons and raised their arms as they surrendered. Some people from her own side cheered. But it was obviously a forced cheer. They won nothing, even with Olephia here, they had at best taken equal casualties, most likely worse. She’d know by the end of the day when one of the maids would bring her the captain’s battle report.

But now, she had to see the captain herself. Her boots touched the sand as the Clerics got to putting the surrendered Guardians in cuffs. Kassie would be happy at least, live Guardians were an excellent negotiation tool. She brought out the little notebook she always kept in her pocket and a pencil. A few soldiers knew sign-language, Olephia herself did, but it was simply unfeasible to teach everyone in Kassandora’s army sign on the off-chance they may be on the same field as the Goddess of Chaos. Arascus had taught her to write, and she was proud of her own calligraphy. Immediately, men started running to her. Everyone in Ekkerson’s army knew how to react to her. Most of them saluted, one man stepped forwards as Olephia handed him the note.

Take me to the commander of this section. The man read the note quickly, then saluted.

“Captain Keitel, reporting. I am the commander of this section.” Olephia looked him up and down, she was slightly taller than Kassandora. That supposedly was tall among Divines but she only dealt with her own sisters, there she was only average height. If Kavaa, Helenna and Iniri had joined forces with them and brought the average down, she would have been on the lower end of things. The man before her reached to her stomach and no further.

He stood in armour, obviously he had been injured in the battle, the silver was splattered with blood and had a piercing through in the chest. But the skin below it was pink and unblemished, untanned unlike the man’s face, so he had just been healed. He had a bony face, lean and muscled and his head was shaved. Olephia supposed he would do, soldiers rarely looked as handsome in real life as they did in propaganda. She quickly wrote a message down for him.

Zerus was here, yes? The man nodded, then saluted again. Olephia rolled her eyes and slapped the man’s gesture away. She wrote more. When did he leave?

“About twenty to twenty-five minutes ago.”  Olephia took a deep breath. There were times she wished she could speak without causing chaos, and this was one of them.

Who gave the code-purple to fetch me?

“I did Goddess.” Keitel replied. Olephia had suspected that, she was already writing a note down.

Arrange everyone who was in the room with you when you gave it. The man stared at the note, then looked up at Olephia, then looked at the note again.

“I apologize, but there were some thirty people there. Zerus caught us off guard, we weren’t prepared for him. I wasn’t keeping track of everyone...” His voice trailed off as he looked at Olephia’s face. Olephia turned around and sighed. An atomic explosion went off in the distance. She felt better now, sighing really did help. She quickly scrawled more.

Captain Keitel. Thank you for your time. Continue with your duties. Next time you call a code-purple. Make sure you keep an eye out for everyone who is in the room. Understood?

“Yes Goddess, I understand!” The man saluted again. Olephia rolled her eyes and held in a sigh, she took a step, then stopped. She turned around and looked at Keitel. The fellow was still saluting to her. Kassandora, Malam, Fer. Those three would be able to figure this out. Kassandora was busy. Malam was lost still. Fer was in the east. Wonderful.

She took a step back to Keitel and looked over him. Arascus and Malam had both taught her wordplay. Arascus used to read to her in the past. She started writing: You may have a spy… Her writing trailed off. If there was a spy, then alerting Keitel would most likely alert the spy. The man didn’t even know who was in the room with him and he could be one for all intents and purposes. Olephia flipped a page. Are you an ex-Cleric?

“I am Goddess.”

And what do you think of Kavaa joining Arascus? The man read the note, then looked up at Olephia. He took a deep breath, for once, his voice sounded normal.

“When I was a child, my mother fell ill. We petitioned the Pantheon, a Paladin and a Divine turned us away at the gates. Then, one day, a cleric appeared at our door. He just turned up out of nowhere. Every doctor had said it was impossible, he did the impossible.” He took a pause. Olephia quickly wrote him a message.

Be blunt, do not worry, you will not offend me. The man read it and didn’t take time to prepare a reply this time.

“To be blunt, the fact my brothers and sisters have parents is because of Goddess Kavaa. I would not question her even if she had exterminated the entire White Pantheon when she freed Goddess Kassandora.” Olephia nodded and patted the man’s shoulder. That sort of bile was hard to fake. It didn’t make him innocent entirely, but it certainly sent him to the bottom of the list of suspects.

Thank you for telling me. Olephia replied with a note. I’ll give Kavaa your thanks. The man stared at the message and it once. Twice. His eyes were entirely focused on the page as he re-read that final line, he sounded as if Olephia had just asked for his hand in marriage, beyond awed.

“Thank you. Goddess Olephia.” Olephia smiled down at him as she turned to her retinue. They had crossed the distance. Normal men would not have done it that fast, but these were blessed by Kavaa and by Kassandora. Inhuman health and inhuman willpower. A run like that in full armour was as easy for them as getting out of bed.

Standard cleaning procedure. Olephia wrote back. My retinue will assist in healing. The captured Guardians are also to be cleansed. Kassandora wants them alive. Keitel nodded as Olephia turned and started to walk away.

There was very obviously a spy about. Maybe multiple. Maybe on all the fronts. It was simply impossible, beyond impossible, for Zerus and Sceo to be this aware of where Olephia was at all times. It… Olephia started to hum and raise into the air. There would be another battle somewhere else on the front today. And another code-purple would be sent out. And when Olephia got there, it would only be clean-up duty. Ekkerson’s army was slowly being bled out.

When she got her hands on whoever it was, they would not be cleansed with hellfire, they would learn exactly how slowly chaos could kill. And they would serve as a lesson for any other fool brave enough to toy with her like this. It was farcical. She was Olephia. She was the most feared of all Divines, there was no one even close to her. She was the Goddess of Chaos. And some damn mortal was spying on her!

Frankly, it was as if Leona was alive! If Fer and Neneria didn’t both vouch for her death, Olephia would assume that she still was!

What a joke!