The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]
Chapter 292 – A Hundred Across One

There were many ways that stress worked. Kassandora liked to think that she knew all of them, but one pattern that never failed to disappoint was the lead up. Every single time, she would descend to the edges of madness during preparation. And then, once everything was ready and set up, the stress all went away. It simply vanished into thin air. Kassandora was sure it wasn’t a healthy mentality to have, but she wasn’t the Goddess of Health for a reason.

She looked at her map of the world and her grin grew. From Raptor One to Olephia, from the Imperial Navy to Iliyal Tremari, everything had a beautiful place in her orchestra. Every was thought out, every had been planned out. Even the proud Goddess of Light had been thought of; There was only one thing that Allasaria could do, because it would be exactly what Kassandora would do in her position.

All she had to do at that point was simply watch the show.

Anassa saw Fer once again launch herself at Maisara. Her sister became a momentary blur of golden hair and ivory claw as Maisara once again dropped her axe to parry. Fer stopped at the last moment, turned, tore one of the Paladins next to her in half and backed away, bathing herself and the dark mud around her in blood. Anassa supposed she should get to work too, Neneria wasn’t going to protect herself after all.

One of the Anassas nearby turned and looked up at the sky as the rest spread out. An Anassa by Neneria enclosed herself and her sister in a red shield of crimson energies, yet another Anassa raised her hands as she took a step forwards. Forwards, towards the horizon, where yet a different incarnation of Anassa had spotted the sun’s glint reflecting off silver metal. Paladins were coming close, and Anassa was in no mood to let them get within earshot of Neneria, much less shooting distance.

They had a vanguard of men armed with greatswords and tower shields on their backs. And behind them were the real danger that Anassa was here to protect against. The men with swords weren’t a danger, but Iliyal had given reports of White Pantheon firearms on his front, so Kassandora had said they needed a sister who was able to block bullets here. Otherwise, Fer could have been sent alone.

The Anassa above that group looked down at the men. The men stopped. One man in heavy steel plate, presumably their captain, barked an order. Greatswords fell forwards as if they were spears and the men behind them spread out to a loose formation. A quarter of them remained stationary and picked up their rifles. Or started to at the very least.

Anassa had seen the various different models of rifle that Kassandora’s army used. She had seen the models that Iliyal was sending back from Lubska, the native Kirinyaan models, and she remembered the ancient muskets that appeared near the conclusion of the Great War. And frankly, once you saw one, you saw them all. It was just a tube that fired a piece of metal, whether it fired close or far, whether it fired lots of pieces or one at a time, whether it fired quickly or whether it needed to be loaded after one shot. It all paled under the glory of the world’s finest art.

The Anassa right above that group snapped her fingers and a crimson ball appeared in her hand. One man even managed to put his finger on the trigger as that ball exploded into a thousand different needles. They shot upwards, they fell straight down. Each one pierced a neck or a chest, and then scrambled the insides. When they disappeared and the corpses fell, the tiny wounds they left released only a thin stream of blood.

That specific Anassa started looking around as another Anassa pushed her hands up. A shield covered the first one and then it swept upwards, catching every single artillery shell as it came down. The blue sky was momentarily peppered by explosions that Anassa didn’t bother to watch. An Anassa to the south had spotted another group of soldiers. These weren’t Paladins, they wore dark colours that tried to fade into the mud although each man held his rifle awkwardly high, as if trying to make sure that the mud would not clog the gun’s internals. It was that glinting of the metal that had revealed them in the first place.

Anassa took a step, Anassa crossed a mile in an instant, and Anassa snapped her finger. She supposed she could have killed them individually but frankly, she may have missed one. There was no reason to not be sure that a job was finished. A pillar of crimson sorcery descended from the sky. It instantly vaporized the men, and it vaporized a crater into the dirt.

Two more Anassas got to work as two more Anassas from high above spotted targets. One closed the distance between her and a plane. The plane crumpled as it was hit by a red ball that heeded the flicking of Anassa’s fingertip. The other saw a truck in the distance that was letting men out. An Anassa had to take to two steps to get to that truck. She stood above the Paladins. She saw one man look up in horror, she saw another drop his rifle in acceptance. And Anassa snapped her fingers. The truck, the men and the ground around them was erased from existence by the red paint of sorcery that covered everything.

And Anassa did not stop, not even for a moment. When there were this many of her in existence, it didn’t matter whether one or two of the Anassas sat down, they were a hundred, but they were one. When one got scratched by a bullet, they all did, when one felt the heat of an explosion, they all did. When the mud flung up by Fer and Maisara brawling dirtied one of them, they were all dirtied and when an Anassa that wasn’t doing anything particularly important in the air cleaned herself with sorcery, they were all cleaned.

Mid-way through the day, Anassa realised this would take far longer than they had expected. Neneria, even if it was a million souls in the area, should be showing signs of stopping by now. Yet when the Anassa closest to the Goddess of Death turned to look at her, Neneria was not settling down whatsoever. In fact, if the woman in the black dress was doing anything, it was only getting more and more frantic. The inpour of energy around Neneria, shaped like an hourglass with her at the thinnest point, grew larger and larger. Those sickly greens became bone-pale and then blinding white.

And even the Anassa closest made sure to put some distance between herself and Neneria. She would never admit it out loud, but she did not need to discover what or if anything happened when a person still living touched those energies.

The day continued like that. Fer had wiped out the group of Paladins around Maisara and now the two Goddesses were locked and circling each other. Anassa did not bother to interrupt or help. Fer would shout if help was needed and frankly, Anassa was growing tired. Where before, groups of soldiers would not even cross the horizon before a copy of Anassa annihilated them, now, there were a dozen already in sight, each one with a pair of Anassas assigned to them to block their gunfire.

Anassa would make her rounds, she would stalk out past her shields, she would annihilate a group of Paladins or UNN soldiers with a dirty blast of energy, unfocused and untamed, a simple release of the magical powers within her, and then she would quickly return before any bullets caught her. In the skies, an entire team of a dozen incarnations of the Goddess in red was tasked with chasing UNN jets away. A few were dropping bombs, but none of them dared come close enough to actually hit anyone of worth.

And below those skirmishers, another set of independent Anassas were working in the unison of their shared consciousness: each one unique and individual, yet each one part of the same whole. The shield above had grown thin. No longer could she discolour the entire sky, from horizon to horizon purple, although the setting sun had already done that. Instead she created a net over the sky that was a half-spell, ready to be activated at a moment’s notice, but not so draining as creating a huge shield would be.

Anassa turned raised her hands and prepared yet another net. She breathed heavily. She narrowed her eyes, a dozen other Anassas were all working their own shields, then another dozen were flicking from position to position as they raised their hands to intercept planes. Every now and then, an Anassa would raise her hand, a crimson line would burst from it, as if an artist had just flicked red paint across reality.

Sometimes, she would catch an enemy plane. That smear of sorcerous paint would tear through the jet’s body like a knife slicing through air, there wouldn’t be even a hint of resistance. The thin red line of crimson would disappear and leave a thick smear of black smoke which tarnished the blue sky like spilled tar. And sometimes, she would miss. The white jet would turn just in time, it would pull up, it would flick its wings, and it would get out of range just before Anassa could react.

And down on the ground, Anassa saw Fer and Maisara still exchanging blow after blow. They would suddenly close the gap between themselves, Of Beasthood or Of Order would initiate, they would enter a cautious dance, each one perfectly aware of their own power and of their opponents. A single blow could end it, but neither Fer nor Maisara were in a desperate situation to try and end it in a single blow. An Anassa in the distance raised her hands, snapped her fingers, and a dozen Paladins underneath her disappeared in a column of crimson light.

And the Anassas casting their nets spread their arms out as the thin slivers of sorcery in the air expanded. The net became a sheet and Anassa held her breath. It was much harder to breath now, this many incarnations at the same time was truly tiring.

Her eyes tracked the black shells of artillery appearing from other the horizon. She poured more power into the barrier as her own heartbeat thumped in her ears. A dozen other Anassas all turned to assist. And once again, a blanket of flames and metal fragments and explosions threatened to bring itself down upon Anassa and Neneria. Anassa saw one of her shields crack, felt her stomach turn as she expelled yet more power, and two Anassas disappeared. They had killed all the Paladins down on the ground below them anyway.

The flames lasted for a few moments but with only air to devour, they quickly starved themselves out. Anassa dropped the shield, finally took a breath. She heard explosions again.

But not from over the horizon, from the east, where the ocean was. This Anassa kept watch over the skies, a dozen other Anassas moved to chase off the White Pantheon jets again, yet another several Anassas returned to force the Paladins on the ground back, each one enclosed within a crimson egg-like shell that blocked the rifle of the men below. And one Anassa, close to Neneria, turned to see what made that sound.

Two black jets, their tips painted yellow to resemble a beak, with four tremendous engines each, shot across the sky. They pulled up. Their rear cargo doors opened. Anassa saw two teams of fifteen jump from each plane. And then two teams of fifteen again.

Sixty small dots, high up in the sky now painted purple by the setting sun. Sixty black uniforms, like hornets that had just burst from their nest. The two Raptor jets arced into the sky as they made a full circle. And those tiny hornets descended faster, none of them had a parachute, but Anassa already knew not a single one of them would be harmed in the fall. She could feel their energies. A dozen Anassas disappeared as she took a breath and wiped the sweat off her brow.

The men in the air descended, no doubt Kassandora had already informed them of the situation, because each one moved with far too much surety. They stalled their fall, they spread out like flies. And from sixty black dots in the sky came sixty beams of sorcerous energies that cut swathes through the approaching forces and ravines into the dirty mud of the landscape.

Neneria closed her own eyes to watch the battle through the souls around her. She silently asked the damned souls that had been drafted as to why this was taking so long and she listened to the reply. It wasn’t words, it was simply images, as if that specific soul had recorded its existence as a video that now Neneria could watch.

A ghost turned, ensnared by Neneria’s heart, and began a march. And like the lead sheep leading the flock, another ghost would turn. Too far from Neneria but too close to its compatriots, who heard the Goddess of the Damned. And they would march too. And others would see those. And the march continued.

Neneria took a deep breath as she opened her heart as wide as she possibly could.

From the southernmost point to the northern tip of the UNN’s coastline, every soul that had lost its body during Continent Cracking got news of Neneria. They all began a slow march. Neneria tried to count but it was in vain. More and more were coming by the moment. The very least she could do was make an estimate.

Six million.

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