The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]
Chapter 402 – The Death Warrant of Ordeaux

No Mortal Can Kill A God. Never Happened. Never Will.

Yet Paramethus and Arascus stood side-by-side as they gave mortals the power to overwhelm Gods and Goddesses. The term ‘Hero’ was coined by Maisara. It slid onto the creations of those two Gods like a glove, yet they were not heroes. Arascus hates the word because it was rhetorical counterargument to an epoch his mind schemed up. For to be a hero is to ascend from humanity, to be a hero is to be better. A hero cannot be human, we did not allow it. Heroes killed Divines, humans did not. That was the difference. We could not allow the common man to think he was capable of rising up against the Divine hierarchy of the universe.

The saying was coined during Worldbreaking. No mortal can kill a God, Heroes had surpassed mortality and were greater than that. Arascus’ plans fell flat. He did not create an empire of superhumans, he created scattered idealists who were all generally benevolent, but no longer saw themselves as one with the common man. The threat of Heroism was defeated because we separated Heroism from humanity.

When Arascus met Kassandora, it was only the post-Heroism breeds like Kavaa and Elassa who did not see the threat. I myself, Maisara, Zerus, Fortia, Sceo, Theosius, we had all seen the damage that the Age of Heroes could do. We had assumed that without an Of Spirit, we would never come across another Divine who could make man match God.

Well, that is still true. Man cannot match Divinity. But can Mankind?

I wonder if I had never abandoned Kassandora, would she have ever meandered her way into Arascus’ arms to lead his crusade against Godhood? Kassandora’s theory of Scalable War had never been so grand and prideful as to think it could include Divinity. That changed when she met Arascus. War realised it had not been playing with mankind’s hidden ace: Divinity.

- Excerpt from Goddess Allasaria’s, Of Light’s, Private Diary.

Lyca stared up at Anarchia. The Goddess of Anarchy loomed over him as the fog of dust settled down. She carried no blade or weapon, no firearm in her hand, but those dark eyes of hers stared down at Lyca with cool, calculated hatred. His head only reached her hips, clothed in black, with a red shirt above it.

Lyca suddenly stopped caring about the world around him. There were heroes nearby, he could smell them, but that didn’t matter. Eliza was in his arms, Anarchia was almost brushing up on him. Fleur had just fainted. Edmonton was throwing her onto his shoulder. Something in Lyca said to run. Something in Lyca said to push onwards. Dust settled, Lyca saw a drop of sweat fall between him and Anarchia.

A single heartbeat passed.

All Hell was unleashed.

Lyca kicked back immediately, he didn’t bother making any motion to summon his sorcery. An unfinished red sword, a crimson drawing painted onto reality by an artist, opaque save for the sharp edges, launched into Anarchia. The sword, only the blade and without a handle or hilt, struck the Goddess and impaled into her as Lyca jumped backwards immediately. A massive blast of red light came from Edmonton, a pillar that reached up to the sky and engulfed Anarchia.

The Goddess lunged through the sorcery, her skin regenerating faster than Lyca and Edmonton could do damage. If he wasn’t in a backwards roll already, Anarchia’s closed fist would have struck him across the shoulder and probably knocked him out. He sent another spell into her, this time there wasn’t even time to picture the sorcery. A red square struck the Goddess in the forehead. It buried a centimetre into her skull, and then it disappeared.

“RUN!” Edmonton’s scream awoke Lyca from that confusion. He couldn’t believe what just happened. His sorcery had been drained as if he had just run out of energy. It wasn’t the feeling that Anassa created, where she simply ripped control from him, it was.. Lyca launched into the air as he stopped relying on sorcery and decided to focus on his magic instead. He followed Edmonton up into the hole they had fallen through. Lyca blasted away in a burst of flame, making sure to hold onto Eliza even though lost control. The heat created a draft underneath him, it blew the dust away as he landed on a higher floor. And then he jumped again and it took him twice as long to cover half the distance. The building crashed around him, dust once again filled his mouth, his ears began to ring and he looked backwards, down the hole he had just escaped through.

And then Lyca felt it. He saw Anarchia pointing a single finger at him, he saw her stare daggers with those brutally cold eyes, and he felt his powers wain.

Iliyal stood in the control room in Doschia’s capital city of Hallin. It was an old bunker, repurposed from the Epan War and now serving as the headquarters of all Imperial Military in Epa. At least for this engagement. It was almost odd. It was one thing to send off generals to faraway lands in order to do battle, it was another to command faraway battles from the safety of a bunker. A dozen computer screens all flickered as twice that amount of people ran about. Two radio operators stood by Iliyal’s side, both of them managing a hundred different speakers. A massive screen illuminated the room, it showcased a map of all Rancais in real time. The locations of individual brigades were reported as small boxes, along with the last time they sent a message to confirm their location.

On another screen was a live feed from Skyseer One, the plane that had been sent to monitor Crimson Team in Ordeaux. A building was falling down and Anarchia had made her move. Well, it was now or never. His voice was a calibrated resonance across the room. “Send the order to all troops, greenlight on Case Yellow.”

“RUN!” Edmonton shouted as he threw Fleur across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. “RUN LYCA! RUN!” He screamed again as they raced down the corridor. “SHE STOLE MY SORCERY LYCA!” Lyca tried blasting off into the air using sorcery and realised it barely threw him up. It was still there, but far, far weaker. Barely as powerful as when Anassa had first awakened the power within him.

“USE MAGIC!” Lyca shouted as the two men raced down the corridor. “USE MAGIC AND HOLD ONTO FLEUR!” They turned down a corridor. “NOT THE STAIRS!” The building shook again. Another wall collapsed into another cloud of white-grey dust and to the sound of screeching pipes being twisted. And then another of Anarchia’s superheroes burst out from the floor ahead of them. A man in a yellow jumpsuit, with a cape, with an eyepatch over his face and a scar running down his cheek. He raised his hands, Lyca had been in enough fights to know the man was getting into a striking posture.

He snapped his fingers and the man combusted in fire. Anarchia had weakened the sorcery, she had stalled the magic, but it was still more than enough to put someone like this down. The superhero began to scream as he lost control of his flight and slammed into a wall. Through he went, like a cannonball striking a house of straw. Lyca and Edmonton jumped over the hole he had made on his entry, turned down a corridor and were staring at the end of a corridor. It was doors on either side, and then a window which looked out over the town square. Edmonton must have noticed Lyca start to flag.

“DON’T SLOW DOWN, I’VE GOT IT!” Edmonton shouted and threw his hand forward. The bottom of his watch was glowing blue as water concentrated in the humid air. It formed a razor-thin barrier that was almost invisible to the naked eye. It slammed against the masonry and blew the entire wall out like a wrecking ball swinging from the inside of the building. Edmonton jumped out without so much as slowing down.

Lyca followed him out without a moment’s hesitation.

Iliyal watched a dozen different markers on the grand map before him. The elf stood in a black coat with his hands in his pockets as his eyes blinked from arrowhead to arrowhead. Beryon had not failed in preparing the air force. Twenty bombers were heading south from Allia, ready to drop on Ordeaux. Close Air Support had already hit the major transport links into the city; highway, railway and motorway had all been torn up by bombing. Bridges had been struck. Even major transformers near the city had been struck. Ordeaux, for the immediate while at least, had been wholly cut off from Rancais at large.

The rest of the frontline had started to move. Troops had crossed the border into Rancais and were advancing slowly through villages. As long as Skyseer One kept an eye on Anarchia, the other Gods and Goddesses could make their way through the country with impunity. What blessings these fools had been given would not matter when they were put up against the full force of Divines and the Imperial Military.

Lyca and Edmonton both soared through the air. The former rode a mad snake of flame through the air with Eliza sleeping in his arms, the latter carried by a cupped hand of water with Fleur on his back. People looked up at that them from the square. Some pointed, others gazed in awe. A few of Anarchia’s heroes launched from the ground and into the air. The Goddess herself emerged from the crumbling hotel. Lyca braced himself to lose strength, but he must have put enough distance between himself and her to be out of range of that power.

The two men flew upwards, then down as Anarchia’s heroes started to give chase. Lyca did not even bother blasting them away, instead he forced all his magic into a great wall of fire around him that would do the same of a smoke grenade. Both him and Edmonton landed on an empty street on the other side of the square as flames appeared all around Lyca. If these men called themselves heroes, he would make them choose. Contain the city’s fire or give chase to them. “RUN!” Lyca shouted.

And so the two men ran as fires spontaneously appeared around them. Around cars and through windows and on doors. The heat cracked stone and devoured cloth and plastic as the flames began to spread. Hopefully it was enough. Hopefully Anarchia had a soft heart that would make her try and save this city rather than give chase to them.

Iliyal watched as another two arrowheads appeared on his map. These had yellow dashes running through them and they were accelerating so quickly that they would hit Ordeaux at the same as the bomber teams from Allia and from Rilia. It would line up perfectly with the arrival of the INS Resolution and the INS Judge. Those ships had sailed far ahead of the main fleet and would be there to shell Ordeaux.

Men in the control room had started to bark messages between each other. The frontline had come across the initial villages, military police was being sent in along with sniffer dogs and Clerics. Malam would go too, she wasn’t doing much out here, but her nose and taste for magic may serve with sniffing out blessings. Maybe. Iliyal was only guessing and Arascus had liked the idea. They would push further to secure more ground but the entire plan relied on killing Anarchia in Ordeaux.

If the Goddess stole strength from Divines, then no Divines would be sent. Iliyal had done it before, it would be done again. But it would not consist of subterfuge or finding an opening or through sheer luck. Finally, it would be as had happened back during the Great War. He would hold Anarchia’s head under the water until she finally choked and life left her body.

Until endless Imperial blood and overwhelming Imperial firepower finally drowned her.

Lyca looked up at the sky with Eliza in his arms. All the movement in the city seemed to come to a pause for a single moment save for the roaring flames that were engulfing an entire district of the city. People heard it first, although it wasn’t difficult to see either. From the north, a dozen black, V-Shaped arrowheads in the sky. From the east, another fifteen. They flew in a line, their engines as loud as a storm even though the air hot summer air was still.

Anarchia’s followers looked up. Men who had been chasing Lyca gave up and launched into the air. Others drew their rifles and pointed them up. Others still retreated back into the buildings. Lyca squinted as the planes in the air. Maybe the Anarchians didn’t know what they were looking at, but he had seen these in Kirinyaa. Not on this exact type of plane, the ones in the past had been smaller. Flaps opened on the plane’s undersides.

Bomb bays.

Captain Herbert Eveson of the INS Resolution put down his binoculars as he stood on the balcony of the ship’s control tower. In the distance, the horizon became jagged, a section of it was the unmistaken marks of an urban area. The tall towers with their flat roofs. There was only one thing that it could be: Ordeaux. His first-mate, Lieutenant Henry Anningham, rushed out onto the balcony. “Helicopters have sight on Anarchia. She’s in the town square engaged with Crimson Team.”

From ahead of Captain Eveson, the creaking of the two massive turrets, both dual-barrelled, coming to life started to sound. From behind the control tower came the screeching of steel against steel and piston: the missile launch-tubes being slid open. The captain gave his order.

“Turn broadside, drop anchor and open fire.”