Arascus has proposed something to me. It is a scheme so revolutionary it cannot be called a scheme. A project so monumental it cannot be called a project. An idea so bold it cannot be called a mere idea. I know that he has gone to see you Fortia of Peace, as he has gone to see Maisara of Order. If what he proposed to me, he proposed to you, then I see his ambition is not the righteous utopia he wishes to pretend it but cementing of hierarchy.

  I have my own thoughts on it, although those are best left out of text. I propose for a discussion for our ancient domicile, Olympiada. It would be best to leave Arascus out of such meetings for the man will manage to spin his delusions of dominion into a lover’s embrace, we all know his way with words. Nevertheless, I know that such talk is mere empty words. I will give you one thing: the certainty that I have already turned him down. And I will give you another.

  I wish to talk of Pantheon.

  - Goddess Allasaria’s, of Light’s, letter to Goddess Fortia, of Peace. Frequently presented as the first document that would lay the foundation of the White Pantheon.

  General Damian Sokolowski stood and smoked as he looked over situation room. He wondered if Iliyal had it as good as him, most likely not. The elf was managing three entire theatres and a navy to go with it. If they next time they met, he turned out bald, then Sokolowski would just shake hands and say he understood. Right now though, as Damian Sokolowski leaned in back in the seat of his bunker, he felt as if he had the entire world in his grasp.

  So he sat as his various minions marched about and coordinated the grandest strategy yet. Tartarus had extended all the way to Ekkerson’s mountains already, it had almost swallowed Ibya, the Ashfront was once again reaching over the ocean, coming on thicker now apparently, from what the discussion in high-command spoke about. It was advancing everywhere. Even Ekkerson had started to recall his forces after a monumental horde of some two-hundred thousand had simply outlasted Imperial stockpiles of ammunition. Even the SIS was reporting an increase in crossing attempts. Malam had proposed the stopping of refugee ships into the Empire so that her secret police could catch up.

  A retreat everywhere, but it would not happen in the Ashlands. One satellite map tracked the extent of Ashen Skies, it had breached some three-hundred miles in a straight line, heading straight for the bottom of the Kirinyaan Central Mountains. Ekkerson would be overwhelmed if they were allowed to encircle him like that. “Fire in ten!” Sokolowski shouted. Every face in the concrete room, illuminated almost entirely by the monitors which showed live camera feed, fell silent as one man, the radio operator for the first team, began a countdown.

  All the checks had been done. All the mages were in position. The route had been picked out. It had been declared a no-go zone for the civilians, although Sokolowski did not particularly care if any of the local banditry got caught up in the fury of Arda’s tamed winds. There were a grand many names for the system: The Atmospheric Battering Ram, the Wrath of the Ashlands, the Thousand-Mile-Wind, there were too many titles to list. Damian Sokolowski popped open a bottle of whiskey as he watched all the monitors in his situation room. A grand many names, but there was only one that would go into the history books.

  Sokolowski’s Sledgehammer.

  It was time to swing.

  There is an issue in magical culture…

  “It’s go time.” Zacharius clicked his tongue as the local captain transmitted the order from central command. The magician’s black coat waved in the winds that raced up the Arikan coastline, he stood to the entrance to the Double-Line Range. Just a few days ago, magicians had still been extending the valley in the north. He had been one of them in fact, just a final adjustment to get even more speed running through the valley. Small teams of mages were set up every dozen or so miles throughout the entire valley, they should be casting their shields and manipulating the air already.

  “Go time!” Zacharius shouted and raised his staff into the air. He had the entrance, the hardest job of moving the greatest amount of air that he could manage. It wasn’t a case of building up speed yet. Sokolowski had personally explained the job to him. This wasn’t firing the gun, nor was it launching the spear forward, it was simply loading as much ammunition into the atmospheric catapult as could be managed.

  “Communion!” Zacharius shouted. “On me!” Behind him, twelve younger mages raised their staves in unison, each one aimed at their collective senior. The gemstones grew blue, Zacharius felt their combined strength march through him. He twisted his staff underneath the blue sky of the coast. That power was manipulated, sharpened, hardened, made into a knife’s edge. He twisted it, curled it through his body in ways that the younger students could not manage, and finally released.

  And ahead of him, for a moment, the ocean slowed down. Its waves began to fizzle out and then conglomerate towards battlemage Zacharius. The flags stabbed into the ground dropped for a moment, then picked up, all pointed to the entrance of the Double-Line. Mountains tall and grey and uncrossable, they may as well have been two massive walls that were ripped out of the ground, straight cliffs in the middle as to swallow as much air as possible and not let it escape.

  Zacharius felt his dark hair and robes wave in the wind. He pulled in more and more. More, until it was all he could.

  So it began.

  Wind speeds: 8 miles per hour.

  …for the more we try to turn magic into art, the more we become mere theatre sideshows…

  “Sledgehammer approaching! Commune!” Mage Mary raised her staff into the air, the white crystal shining brightly towards the sky. It was still bright blue here, the Double Line had done well to block the Ashland’s native ashstorms from going further east.

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  “Commune!” She shouted. “Now and on me!” Behind her, eight mages raised their staves. They stood in the very middle of the Double-Line’s valley. From each direction, a mage aimed their instrument as their teacher, and Mary raised her shining staff into the sky as if it was a lighthouse or a beacon. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and caught the wind.

  Aeromancy was her talent, she had been taught in it back when Grand Arcadia was in fact Grand. She had been there to witness Anassa’s escape, she had seen the college re-adopt the Red and Purple banner of Worldbreaking. She had watched as the Imperial Red, White and Black was hung up. Maybe a Mary of the past would have taken issue, but the Mary of today saw another world try to choke her precious Arda with its soot.

  The Sledgehammer was caught. A furious blast of air at a ridiculously high pressure. Where it not for her manipulation, the lot of them would have been blown off their feet and sent tumbling down to the ground already. Mary waved her staff and pushed and dragged and pulled and tightened the flowing torrent of raw atmosphere right above her head.

  She gave it her all, from herself and from the combined power of her students. Until they were ready to drop, and then some.

  Wind speeds: 65 miles per hour.

  …magic is an art, true, but it is an art such as war. War, like magic, are both artful tools to be wielded…

  Battlemage Olhus raised his staff upon receiving the Sledgehammer warning. His mages were already in communion, things were moving too fast now to be caught unprepared. He channelled their power through him and aimed at the flare that had just been shot off in the distance. That was the next team. Everyone before had just been teachers and novices, no one important, they had the easy job. Simply pull the wind into the Double-Line and then speed it up and up and up until it roared with all the fury of a record-smashing hurricane.

  But here, the Double-Line ended. It was truly a man-made range. There was no gradual transition to hills or rolling terrain. On one side, there were mountains that flooded the valley between in shadow, on the other, sat Arika’s Ashlands. The remains of the Jungle, a land flat and devastated. The constant winds rolling throughout it were being kept away from the Sledgehammer’s path by individual aeromancers, and the ground had been smoothed by its own weather. Where once sat dried out river basins and valleys now was just a flat plane, as if the Gods themselves had decided to level this part of the world for rebuilding into something new.

  Olhus smiled to himself as he thought on it. He supposed that the Divines were in fact responsible for the Ashlands. It was Elassa who had cracked the continent after all.

  The Sledgehammer passed over him, and Olhus sent it towards the flare.

  Wind speeds: 353 miles per hour.

  …one may marvel at a tool’s artisanry or its forging…

  “Sledgehammer incoming, keep it steady and ahead. Towards the flare.” Battlemage Naro stood in the empty lands of the Ashlands, the closest observation squad was miles ahead. He didn’t need the warning frankly, the Sledgehammer was visible at this point. From the south west it came, a great moving spear of ash and mud and dirt and every other material that was torn up off the surface of Arda and caught in the path of its most magnificent weapon.

  Naro felt the power of the communion roll into him and found the flare in the distance, towards the north-east. He grabbed and tore towards the winds, to hurry them up even further. Sokolowski had wanted everything that could be given, the grandest display of non-Divine magic cast on this world since Worldbreaking.

  Naro swung his staff over his head, the power of eight more battlemages surging through him. Magic surged from his heart, through his body, through the rare wood of his instrument and spiralled out of the catalyst. He raised the Sledgehammer again, just slightly, so that it would not rip them apart, and he sent it flying. The clear diamond on its end began to glow until it was painful to look at.

  Naro could not take his eyes away.

  Wind speeds: 411 miles per hour.

  …but the true test of a tool is how well it serves a function…

  “Sledgehammer incoming. We’ve shift the designated path one degree south.” High Mage Elron, one of the few who Elassa had given the title to and who was responsible for managing entire brigades of mages that protected the Peacekeeping forces in the Ashlands from its ferocious storms, raised his staff into the air. Only six were by his side for the communion. Only six would be enough. More weren’t needed, they would only be channelling and guiding the Sledgehammer and the better one got, the more they realised at how simple this magic was.

  Truly an excellent display. Elassa would be proud of them. Damn proud of them. The very essence of her teachings, not to take something and make it into a show, but to show something that needed no words or flare for it to be seen.

  When the Sledgehammer carved a valley out around the mages, it hid the sky with its debris. The very ground shook and ruptured and cracked as winds that nature could not produce bounced along and devoured it. The howls were so loud that Elron’s ears popped and hissed.

  He gave it more.

  Wind speeds: 505 miles an hour.

  …in that, magic is the greatest tool humanity is blessed with…

  Private Kanetai, of the 297th Ausan Infantry, stood up. So did the rest of the Division. They did not bother watching the approaching Ashfront anymore, nor looking up at their sky slowly turn grey as soot began to discolour it. No. From their hill, far from the approach of Sokolowski’s superweapon, they watched a valley open up in the Ashlands. Land that had once been cursed Jungle had been reduced to a thick ash, rains and storms had battered it down into a substance almost as thick as cement. There had been talk that none of them would live to see the day when all of Arika had finally been cleaned up from the Jungle’s remains. That would be a job for their children to do and for their children’s children to finish.

  Yet now, Private Kanetai stood and watched the ground reveal itself as if an invisible snake, an eraser of dirt, a scythe of a titan, a snowplough as fast as lightning, was sprinting straight through it. The thick layer of ash was simply ripped out of the ground in one smooth motion. The dirt below it followed. A new channel for a river was being carved out faster in the distance faster a man could flick a pencil across a sheet of paper. And above it, a black mass of dirt being shot across the ground as if it was a moving wall of material.

  In the distance, one final group of mages, a whole twenty of them, revealed themselves through the glow of their staves and wands and crystals they had sewn into their clothes. They made the final adjustment, the valley being carved into the ground tightened as it was contained, it slowly tilted one way, then arced back in the other direction as if it was being sprayed from side to side. Its winds never got any cleaner. Not even as it made impact.

  Wind speeds: 583 miles per hour.

  Sokolowski’s Sledgehammer smashes into the Ashfront.

  …greater than any art, from forever, to now, for forever.

  - Preface to the Introduction of the (Imperial) War College of Arcadia, written by Goddess Elassa, of Magic.

  Damian Sokolowski finally sipped the taunting glass of whiskey in silent celebration as every watched the monitor. He typed out a text to Ekkerson: “Your southern flank is secure.” And he savoured that taste of whiskey as his eyes went to the cameras that had just been pointed at the Tartarian Ashfront: Victory had never tasted so sweet.

  Nothing remained.