Black Magus

Geri.

***

Each of us had different ways of handling war. Not ways of coping with the horrors or whatever. Our curses, boons, deals, or what have you got rid of such things. What I meant was how we conducted ourselves during war. Including the separation of work and play. The ways of handling the downtime and the thrill of combat. Coupled with the transitions between. My brother saw fit to stop drinking during times of war. His ability to burn off the alcohol within him aside, the withdrawals he convinced himself to have led to him being agitated and always itching for battle. I spent the time fantasizing about the loot I'd acquire from my runs. As did Reina and the other undying fiends.

Regardless of the methods, they all worked. The mind was a powerful thing, after all. But only one of our minds was something beyond comprehension. Only Iris and her pack of augmented beings had the most powerful minds. And only Iris had the most unsettling way of handling war. The augmented ones referred to it as a 'program.' I saw it as a different persona. She was known to all as a cheerful and goofy girl like her adoptive mother. Yet, a powerful and intelligent being who took nothing seriously like her adoptive father. But only when her irises were blue. When her irises were red, Iris acted like the killing machine she was reborn as. She maimed, brutalized, and killed with no remorse, restraint, disgust, or glee. Only a cold drive to destroy every threat in the vicinity with the utmost efficiency.

Her eyes would return to their blue hue the moment the last enemy fell. At which time, she'd laugh and giggle her way off the battlefield, leaving the loot to her clan. That was the least of it, though. In a way, that was no different from us winter werewolves seeing no distinction between battle and play. Unlike the rest of us, though, she had other 'programs.' Different personas. More switches.

How many was the question of the century.

As far as we were aware, there were at least two others. If she used one to build things was up for debate. The other, however, was something we winter wolves referred to as 'Pack Mode.' Granted, she performed the role of a general whenever her irises turned black, but General Mode didn't quite describe the feeling such a small frame imposed on us. In that mode, Iris became like a stern mother who would accept nothing less than what she knew her children could put out. Until now, we were lucky to only hear that voice through transmissions and echoing voice boxes. Now that we were going on the offensive, however, she gathered every ranger in the war room for a briefing.

Among us was Turr, the Astral Uplifter, as well as the fourteen members of Redd's pod, several summer wolves, all the winter wolves, and one of Iris' own. He was an elf with multi-colored eyes and a body that could shift height, weight, skin tone, facial structure, and more at will. One Gaheris Rainer. She treated him no differently than the rest of us, however. Her bulbous black irises shifted between us all, giving us the minds to stand with disciplined focus before her.

"You are rangers." She declared, pacing across the room. "In the Legions, that means you are intelligence specialists on top of being masters of reconnaissance. You are the vanguard as we explore new realms, disconnected from support as you chart both the cities and the wilds for those who follow. In war, in this Troupe- in our Legion, that means you are the first to strike. Personnel. Infrastructure. Anything deemed important, you will strike from a distance. You will destroy them with swiftness and you will leave before our enemies knew what hit them. In other cases, you may shape the battlefield for those who will fight on it in due time. At most, you will conduct light raids. Expect these things throughout our journey. Both in and outside of the Darkroom. For the next month, however." She trailed off to place five pins on the map, placed just beyond the borders of the War Fields.

"This month's priority is to secure five sites," she then said. "One to the north, overlooking the sea. Two to the west, near roads and dwarven settlements too close to our borders for comfort. The same goes for the two near the goblins to the east. Now take these." With a careless toss, Iris sent twenty-one crystal earrings skittering across the table.

Standing aside for the time being, I studied the crew as they gathered their devices and put them on, linking the trailing string to their voice boxes, trying to match faces with names and abilities until I could delay no longer. When I finally put the earpiece in, I expected some words to appear in my vision as I experienced before, but the only thing to greet me was Iris' grainy voice buzzing loudly in my ear.

"While I can see what Gaheris sees, it's voice-only for the rest of you. Keep the channel clear. Check in every hour. Stay on the lookout for anything that stands out. Geri, what is your plan?"

Although I wasn't one for much planning, I approached the map with brief hesitation to point out the southernmost dock. "We'll stage at Port Curdenweld and head counter-clockwise around the border. First, we'll scout. Then we'll make priorities based on what we see, aiming to keep high and out of sight."

"So be it. Radio in when you leave the line." She nodded, then held her eyes closed for a long moment to do whatever needed doing for them to shift back to blue. "Bye!" she beamed, squeezing my hand one good time before waving us off.

Unsure if to respond casually or formally, I simply nodded and led my troops on a light jog through the forest. We arrived in Delphilios Court within a few minutes and took a few Meeps down to the port to take inventory of our gear- crude weapons, mostly, and more crude projectiles made from compressed boulders, salvaged cannonballs, and heavy pieces of scrap. Most of them went inside a small storage dome. All we left on our persons were the obligatory tools of the trade plus a long and short-range weapon. And with a word to Iris, we were off, darting from tree to colossal tree until we arrived at the river basin and turned towards the west.

We spotted our first point of interest naught an hour later; a dwarven tower peaking above a tri-crown of hills just a few dozen kilometers past the War Field's gates. After calling it in, Gaheris marked it on his mental map and continued, taking flight above the road stretching from the tower's outer walls to the northwest and came upon a proper outpost some eighty kilometers up the road. Before I could call it in this time, however, Iris chimed in to tell us of our proximity to the first site of our first observation post. Our task then was to mark a suitable location within the hills just beyond the wire for Blude's team to build up at a later time. In the meantime, we returned to base to update the map with priority targets for later seizure or destruction.

The next day saw us stage in Cloudwalde and leave out the western road. Almost immediately, Iris radioed in to have us mark the location of our second base a few hundred meters off the road. Again, we decided upon a hill nestled within a ring of trees some 18 kilometers from the nearest junction. After marking a dwarven settlement further down the road, we continued north around the rim of our territory.

For more than 160 kilometers, we saw nothing more than rolling hills and sprawling forests until a sudden break in the canopy opened our eyes to a veritable gold mine. It was a field of stone nestled between a fork in the road, on which warehouses and fields of armored vehicles sat lined in neat rows. A motor pool, Iris called it. But I saw it only for what it was. The origin point of those accursed vehicles the dwarves used to torment us. Just over an hour later at the northern shores, we discovered evidence that backed up that assumption- a naval base. One with a vast fleet of squat ships churning around the northern waters.

The third day saw us explore a peninsula overlooking the northern seas. With the landlocked sides of the landmass well inside our borders, it was midway across the bay from the dwarven naval base and even further from any goblin settlements to the east, making for a virtually empty land in terms of structure or occupational forces. Therein made for a day of planning, preparation, and review. For days, we molded the land in first the peninsula, then in the sites we'd been to already. Materials were stockpiled. Foundations were laid. Roads were paved. Blueprints were drawn. Simultaneously, attack plans were devised, pushing us to place orders for specialized projectiles and munitions for their execution.

The northern observation post, OP Prean, was formed by the end of the first week of the second month. And to man them, Leary sacrificed two individuals from his daily teams to keep tabs on the dwarven navy. By then, we had returned to scouting around the perimeter, pushing us deep into goblin territory, where we spotted many towns in the distant grasslands. But only one was relatively close to our northeastern borders. It sat just down the main trail leading into our land from the east. Thus, we planned to build an observation post hidden from view by the road and turn the open entry into a checkpoint.

In the following days, we scouted and surveyed the vast expanse to the east. Hilly and forested, the region was. A perfect place for us winter wolves. But the others among us didn't agree with the idea of fortifying it. Further south, however, the land evened out and form grasslands that stretched to the southern coast, but a few bouldered outcroppings or cliffs remained scattered throughout the area.

As we explored, we happened upon a small orc encampment nestled in the depths of a fairly large copse. It was so concealed we were sure we'd have missed it had we'd come upon the place from the south. As hidden as it was, however, it didn't have much prospects as a base. The rolling hills to the north put the place in a disadvantageous position and to top it off, much work needed to be done to grant a secure line of sight to the fields beyond. With that in mind, we marked the copse for destruction and highlighted a lone hill sitting close by for our last camp, then returned the following days to survey the rest of the southern coast and the waters beyond.

By the third week, our tasks were complete, rehearsals were done, and our equipment was staged. Thus, we returned to our scattered armories to gather our compressed stones, cannon balls, metal bolts, and anything else heavy enough to wreak havoc.

With our bags loaded, we took flight from the western gate to turn down the road branching due south. We darted from tree to tree for 60 or perhaps 70 kilometers, waiting until the road below began curving to the southeast before we stopped to split ourselves into two teams. Only a few with high explosives were among the first ten. On, they continued, past the dwarven settlement to form a ring high above the tower. Meanwhile, the rest of us scattered ourselves down the road at ten-kilometer increments.

"Fire when ready," Came Iris' call once we were in position.

"On my mark," I called to my team, trusting their munitions were being aimed high into the sky at the same moment as mine. "Launch!"

As we practiced, we launched the heaviest of our projectiles at high angles and turned without delay to dig into our oversized satchels to seize the next charge. Several seconds later, we were rearmed and sending more bolts, balls, and boulders flying at a slightly lower angle further down the road. A few seconds later, we launched a third volley at a relatively low angle, midway down our sectors. The last of our projectiles was sent with all of our might almost immediately after, chased by those who threw them.

I wish I could have seen it- the line of spontaneous destruction that appeared across 110 kilometers of land. But alas, I was part of the destruction. And once I made the call to scatter, all I could do was look upon the things I had made- a dwarven city with roads that led to fields of felled trees, stone, debris, and upturned dirt to both the north and south.

Our next target was the same day. The town further down the western road formed around a 'T' junction that trailed off to that armored division to the north. Again, we launched multiple projectiles at various arcs to have them land simultaneously, destroying all roads but that one that led to us. Rather than move on the following day, we remained in the skies for hours, providing overwatch for Freki and his band of barbarians in the now-isolated dwarven cities. Or, as I called it, assisting the hunt.

Rarely did we throw projectiles at large groups of attacking or fleeing enemies. More often than not, we were communicating where their prey was hiding or guiding them toward the devices they needed to destroy for the rest of them to move on. Rarely, one of us swooped in to assist or even rescue one of them before they met an untimely demise. For most of the time, though, we simply enjoyed the show.

Again, there was overwatch to be provided while Reina and Blude's teams arrived to clear the battlefield and unload building materials from their trucks. The latter was mostly collapsible barriers that sprung up into walls ready to be filled with the dirt upturned by the need for a bunker. They formed a perimeter atop the reinforced hill, with a modest network spreading beneath it within a day of tireless work. By the next day, a few more of Leary's squad had been sacrificed to man the new posts, liberating us to venture across the way to the eastern front. We still had fun there. Yet nothing noteworthy occurred. Walls, watchtowers, and warehouses were destroyed. Farms were burned and wells were poisoned. Then their wounds were left to fester until Freki and his boys decided to go in for the kill.

At least, that was the plan. As the days progressed- as Freki spun deeper into his placebo withdrawals- his troops cared less and less about collateral damage. A tendency or perhaps a preference that simply would not stand when it came time to assault the final dwarven bases.