The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]
Chapter 307 – Battle of Ponte Dell’Nicodemo

At the end of the day, rulership can be reduced down to only one real quality it needs to possess. Regardless of thinking or moral constraints or methods or means or whatever else vain intellectuals like to aggrandize themselves with.

Success.

Excerpt from ‘A Guide to Rulership’, written by Malam, Goddess of Hatred.

Alianna stood on the edge of a cliff as she overlooked the Ponte Dell’Nicodemo, a bridge that stood over a dry ravine, it connected two mountains. Ancient and made of sandstone, with plenty of cover and now filled with smoking wreckages of vehicles. Months ago, it was once a sight to see on the main Rilian North-South highway. Now, it was a chokepoint for both Epan and White Pantheon forces. The Rilian government had declared it far too important to destroy and likewise White Pantheon artillery would avoid directly shelling the structure. After all, if it collapsed, it would severe this route until it was rebuilt.

So both sides fought for it in close quarters. Aliana had spent the past two weeks here. She watched two Doschian tanks on her side on the field. They had special ammunition, just great shells of steel that punched holes in enemy vehicles without exploding. A full division of Rilian engineers were supporting the forces, and the seventeenth mountaineer brigade was the main unit that had been tasked with making sure bodies were flowing to keep the White Pantheon meat-grinder stuck.

Another day, another attack. Aliana let loose an arrow from her bow and saw a man drop. An officer in gold plate, one of Fortia’s Guardians. The small white shawl around his neck marked him as a captain. She saw the team around him go to the ground and then a burst of suppressive fire be unleashed in her general direction. One bullet scratched her arm, another hit her shoulder, Aliana merely grit her teeth and pushed them out through her natural regeneration. Fer had given her a lot, but one of the best things she had learned from that Goddess was the ability to withstand pain. These bullets practically tickled compared to Fer breaking her bones and then Kavaa healing her.

Aliana pulled another arrow from her quiver as a Rilian APC, a stunty thing, tall with a turret on top rolled forwards and laid down a hail of lead across the Ponte Dell’Nicodemo. The Guardians dived down to seek cover behind the wreckage of one of their tanks. And the APC started to reverse as a missile suddenly blasted out of the woods on the other side of the ravine. It barely missed the vehicle and exploded on the rock of the mountain behind it.

Aliana looked around, as sharp as her eyes were, she couldn’t pick out the men camouflaged in the middle of woods like that. She drew her bow and then turned when the whir of helicopter blades from the south hit her ears. A White Pantheon chopper, the troops called it a SkyReaper model. Painted in bronze, with a heavy autocannon and missiles hanging from small wings on either side.

Aliana took aim and let the arrow fly. In the past, she would have held her aim for a moment and steadied her hand. Iliyal’s ridiculous training of those logs on ropes had taught her to trust her instincts. She watched the arrow penetrate the glass of the cockpit, the pilot was impaled to his seat, the chopper started to spin. And it went up in a great fireball that exploded on the side of the ravine.

Aliana turned again and saw a figure in the sky. A man in a shawl of white lined with blue. He was devilishly fast. She had seen Divines here before though, minor ones that didn’t fly admittedly, but Divines none the less. She had even managed to fell four of them. Aliana loosed her arrow, she watched it fly as her hand worked like a blur to hook another behind her bowstring.

Honestly, Aliana was impressed with her aim. At this distance and with the speed of that Divine, she had not expected to hit. But she would, she knew by the time the bolt crossed her half the distance. It was almost too easy, as if the figure wasn’t even trying to dodge.

A bolt of lightning shot from the cloudless blue sky and turned her arrow into dust.

And immediately Aliana dodged to the side. The minor Divines, she had not bothered to learn the names of. But the brigade-killers, as the troops on the ground had come to call them, she did. Sceo and Zerus and Alkom, White Pantheon members of the highest rank.

If she hadn’t had dodged, she would have been fried on the spot. The lightning that hit the arrow shot forwards onto the rock she had been standing on. Aliana dodged again, low to the ground, making sure to always have a point of contact on which she could suddenly pivot. Iliyal had explained it, Fer had drilled the lesson in. Once she was in the air, there was no movement or dodge she could make. The tip of her boot curled around a rock, her hand caught a tiny crevice, she lunged to the side. Another blast of lightning came to hit the spot she had just been in.

Two more dodges, and Aliana was breathing heavily. She tried to see Zerus in the air, he had come close. As the God kept the pressure up on her, a blast of lightning came from the air and devoured the two Doschian tanks, both were left as smouldering wrecks, their hulls all charred as the Rilian mountaineers around them scattered.

Aliana didn’t even bother reaching for an arrow as she kept on dodging. The lightning kept chasing her like a rabid dog flailing around on the ground. It got closer and closer as Zerus started to predict her movements. It burned her clothes; it almost touched her bow. It came down.

And then the lightning stopped.

Aliana, breathing heavily, raced close to cover behind a rock and looked at Zerus. She grabbed one of the arrows that hadn’t spilled from her quiver in the mad attempts at dodging. And then Aliana herself stopped. A woman’s mocking voice sounded from above. “Have we resigned ourselves to our own inferiority Zerus?” And then a mad cackling. Aliana knew she shouldn’t, but she went against what Iliyal had taught her and lowered her bow. She narrowed her eyes, looked out over the sky, over the landscape. She saw nothing.

“If I’m so inferior, why hide yourself?” Zerus asked as that shield of lightning crackled around him. “Reveal yourself Sorceress!” The God shouted as a spiderweb of lightning expanded over the sky around him. It grew thicker, a blanket of blinding white light made the sky turn from a pleasant Rilian blue colour to a downright terrible white. Aliana had to avert her eyes from it.

And then the lightning was torn apart by shards of red sorcery. They exploded into crimson butterflies. The first flap of their tiny wings, each pattern woven to be unique and intricate, set them alight. The second incinerated into them crimson snow that finally melted away as it slowly fell towards the ground. Aliana felt her jaw drop open as she looked up at…

Honestly, Aliana had no clue what she was even looking up at. It was as if the sky that had just been blanketed in white lightning now became infused with a sheet of red which was being woven at Zerus. The God of Lightning moved as quickly as his title, flicking from position to position, so fast that Aliana did not even know if she ever even had a chance to land a single arrow onto him. He disappeared, he appeared, he disappeared again, appearing further in the distance.

A giant eye opened up in the sky. Another one, and another. As if the day had suddenly become night and all the stars had become eyes gazing down from the heavens. And that terrible tone once again rolled in like thunder from all directions at once, but no direction in particular. “I see you!”

Zerus became a dot in the distance, that small black dot shot out another cascade of electricity as if it was water being splashed across the world. And then Zerus disappeared, that black dot shot downwards, towards the horizon. And then disappeared. Once more lightning launched out of the ground, but when it disappeared, only silence swept in with the wind to replace it.

And Aliana stood here, gripping her bow as she looked over at the Rilian troops shake themselves out of awe. Fortia’s Guardians awoke first though, and they started to cut men down with gunfire. From behind trees and from behind rocks. The Rilian infantry crowded around the wreckage of vehicles that had been guarding the bridge, they dropped to the ground, they provided suppressive fire to stop the enemy advance.

Aliana was about to recover, hook another arrow into her bow, and knock down a helicopter which had appeared, but something else caught her eye. A woman in the air, a black silhouette against the bright blue sky. Aliana narrowed her eagle eyes as she tried to make out what exactly she was looking at. A woman in a black coat, with marvellous black hair, untouched by wind. With a face so gorgeous that it almost looked designed and sculpted, rather than grown by a real person. The edges of her uniform were lined in red and she had a cap on top of her head. She stood there like the general of an army overlooking her soldiers, with her hands clasped behind her back.

And Aliana watched the woman speak. She didn’t look to be shouting, and her voice didn’t originate from the figure. It came from above, seemingly as if the sky itself was speaking to them. “I am Anassa, Daughter-Goddess of Arascus. Goddess of Sorcery.” The woman took a pause, the sky turned crimson, she lifted her hands. “Caretaker of the greatest craft known to mankind! Gatekeeper of Divinity. You can not defeat me.” Aliana looked down as saw the battle on the bridge stop as soldiers looked up. Both members of the Rilian Army, the Rancais reinforcement and the Guardians of the White Pantheon, it was as if every soul on the ground had realised it was being spoken to by a higher being.

And Aliana realised it herself too. She had almost dropped her bow and was looking up in nothing but pure awe at the figure above them. And that figure kept on speaking. “I have taken an interest here, you may do nothing against me.”

Aliana heard fingers snap and she saw the sky open up with spikes of red. From clouds and from open air, razor thin spines plunged to the ground. They speared through a helicopter. The metal creaked, screamed, tore and ruptured apart. The rest of them, like the thin lines of a paint brush about to wash away the ugly mistake of an artist, dove straight into the Guardians of the White Pantheon.

In the blink of an eye, the battle was finished. The sky returned to its natural colours, all that remained of the enemy forces was the bodies that lay helplessly on the ground. The Rilian Army, their proud flag still waving at the end of the bridge, did not cheer or rejoice. They merely looked around, stunned. A few men started talking. One man collapsed onto the dried dirt.

Aliana couldn’t say anything. She turned to see if her retainers were still here, and she saw Anassa standing by her side. The Goddess of Sorcery, already tall, was made even taller by the heels and the cap. The coat lined with red edges that glinted in the sunlight as if it had only just now been perfectly cleaned. And that Goddess turned to Aliana. “Looks like I came just in time.”

Aliana blinked. She…

She had not even considered that Anassa had saved her. And then the Goddess of Allia looked out over the dead sprawled out across the bridge. She looked at Anassa again. This Pantheon Invasion had dragged on for a few months now, but…

Well, Aliana had seen her fair share of death and destruction. She had seen what happened to men who were in plane and helicopter crashes, she had walked by the shapeless remains of flesh when it had been destroyed by artillery. Even the simple things, she had seen men dead after they had been shot or stabbed.

But she had never seen something like this. This was a whole other level of power. The only thing she could compare it to was when she had trained against Fer in Erdely. That woman fought as if she had eyes in the back of her head and moved as if she had reflexes that were faster than the lightning which Zerus unleashed. And Anassa was somehow even more overwhelming than that. Iliyal’s words echoed in her head: ‘If we wanted competition, we would have just sent Anassa to end it like this’, and then the elf had snapped his fingers. Aliana sighed and shook her head. It was amazing and terrifying at the same time. “Thank you.” The Goddess said. “For saving me.” How many holes of gratitude had she dug for Arascus already, firstly through Iliyal, Kavaa and Fer training them, then through the very chance that Kassandora’s victory in Kirinyaa had scored against the Pantheon, which weakened their forces and gave the hope for Epan Separation to succeed in the first place. Then through Iliyal again, the elf’s command over the Epan military had brought them victory after victory. And now Anassa had just saved her life.

It was a list of debts that Aliana was not sure she would ever be able to pay off at this point. And she knew herself well enough to know that the sickly feeling within herself was her own pride wanting to throw up and reject the help. “Why did you come?” Aliana asked.

“There’s a storm coming over Epa.” Anassa said. “I’ve come here to make you’re alive to see it. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Agrita messaged me that she’s in danger.”

And as Aliana was looking at the Anassa to her left, another Anassa, a perfect copy of the woman, down to the same clothes and even the same perfume, stepped into her vision from the right. “Do you think that Divinity can’t multitask?”

Aliana looked from one Anassa to the other.

The woman had just called herself the Gatekeeper of Divinity. Frankly, Aliana could see it. She had assumed it vanity at first. But that power…

Aliana blinked in shock at what she was feeling. Not wounded pride. Instead, it was a far more disgusting emotion. Envy.