The smell of burning fuel and rotting flesh was nauseatingly intense, all around Hiron the sound of battle shook the streets and collapsed entire skyscrapers. Soldiers that served the Ravan Nobles raided stores and homes, murdering anyone that they encountered. Most of them wore the same fitted black armor with red markings, but the commanders displayed extra heavy armor with cycloptic visors and reversed colors (red with black markings).

Some of the horrific events occurring at the time involved civilians vomiting blood and other fluids due to radiation poisoning, CG officers and lieutenants being brutally interrogated and children crying while tightly gripping their half dead parents. There were hover tanks and military transport vehicles patrolling the streets alongside mastodonic battalions. A couple of kilometers above the city, massive airships blockaded the area with swarms of gunships, fighters, bombers and attack aerospace craft.

The Noble Elites had just recently arrived to fend off the raiding forces. Like their enemies, they were also armed to the teeth. Despite their efforts, the most effective defense was the presence of Exilus and his men. He had brought out all of the stops in order to end the battle as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Standing beside him was a beauty framed in flowing hair of deep purple. Commander Jade was an officer as notable for her unwavering loyalty as she was for her unique mane. The rare mutation made her easy to pick out in a melee, which incidentally assisted the process of commanding from the battlefield.

“Dear Gods, what have they done?!” Exilus asked himself, his shock readily apparent in his tone and expression. “Jade, have your troops split up and scout the south, east and west sectors. I’ve got the north,” he ordered.

Charging towards the enemy, his helmet shrouded itself over his head, producing a blue glow from its visor. Exilus unsheathed Ion and cut through a score of troops with a single mighty swipe, armor and flesh alike suffering mortal damage. With edges of plasma, Ion cut through the warriors easily as Exilus waded into the hundreds charging him. Some of the Elites that followed in the wake of his one-man vanguard used their jump packs to leap over buildings and rain fire on the battalions from above, assisting in carving a path for the main force to follow.

Not holding back, Exilus drew on the deep well of energy within himself. As he summoned the power, lightning began to crawl across his form. Thick arcs of nearly blinding light jumped between his body and the exposed metal of ruined buildings as the deep, insidious hum and rasp of wild electricity bored into the senses of the enemies surrounding him.

He was calling on a powerful ancestral gift, using an innate ability to draw on both internal and external sources in order to overcharge his body. This was something common to both Cobaltions and Azuranites, though the capacity varied greatly from individual to individual.

Not too far away, Jade had begun her own assault. She gathered energies with a twirl of her hand, forming them into a lithe and wieldy smallsword. Only a few enemy troops were present to slow her attack; her conservative but deadly thrusts left them choking on their own blood.

Jade had probed into a thin point of the Ravan line. With this opening, she knew she could wreak havoc on them from the inside. Leaving the majority of her troops under command of a Major, she singled out four of her elite soldiers and stabbed towards the heart of the city.

The Ravans had it locked down tight at the city square. There were tanks at the end of every block, and the sky above was shrouded by the presence of the flagship Evercrimson. Directly in the middle of a clustered battalion was the Field Commander, Emerion Tygon. The man was branding the same armor as typical of a Ravan Commander, except for a blue marking that symbolized his rank. He had tactical command of the forces in Hiron, and he wasn’t going to let the Everians soil his progress. Emerion was a veteran of many battles, and was an old, experienced combatant. Unfortunately for him, there was a crippling flaw in his strategy; Exilus was serving as a distraction. This was significant because he was the most renowned of the opponents, and seventy-five percent of Tygon’s ground forces were tasked with fighting him. Meanwhile, clever Jade was preparing an ambush.

“What an idiot…he’s leaving himself exposed to our entire invasion force! If I wanted to, I could just order the fleet to erase him!” Emerion exclaimed in incredulity at the tactical blunder. “Reves forbid he attempts to rush me,” he thought to himself.

Suddenly, thousands of soldiers were either incinerated or thrown hundreds of feet in the air by a blast of crackling energy. Streaks of lightning burned through flesh and arced out to buildings all around. A bolt of energy would have struck Tygon himself, had he not dodged it.

Just a few hundred meters away, Exilus was cleaving through ground troops and heavily-armored tanks alike. This wasn’t an ordinary man – it couldn’t be. Those were tanks that could withstand most airstrikes, but they were being sliced apart by a man with a sword.

“Do something, you fools!” the High Army Leader screamed, almost fearing for his own safety. Within a few seconds the entire barricade had been destroyed and Exilus stood a mere twenty feet in front of Emerion’s command post. Regaining his composure, he signaled for his guards to stand down.

“I’d like to congratulate you for making it this far,” Emerion started, “but you’re caught in my web, little fly.”

Exilus smiled at his opponent’s overconfident comment, he know the outcome was truly in his favor.

“Kill him,” Tygon ordered to his shock troops as they moved in on their target.

On the rooftops above, Jade got into position. Ordering her teammates via hand signals, she sprung the trap. The seemingly captured Everian officers attacked their captors and shot them down, followed by Jade herself joining in with her forces. Emerion called in several airstrikes, but Exilus was already on it. He charged himself just enough to outspeed the attack craft and cut through them one at a time. Calling for his legion’s AA tanks to take out the remaining aircraft, he charged his power to the point where the entire city was quaking from it.

Launching himself towards Emerion at high speed, he hit him with a left hook so hard that his helmet shattered to pieces. Getting back up, the Ravan Commander spat out a spray of deep red blood. His hair was a fading silver and his left eye was missing, covered with a ghostly scar. He gave Exilus a look of hatred and malice as he began charging his own pale blue energy.

The two warriors surged towards each other, colliding with a fiery exchange of blows. There was static and stray lightning flying across the vicinity, incinerating buildings, vehicles and soldiers. While Field Commander Tygon was certainly a fearsome opponent, he was no match for Exilus. Being much faster, Exilus was able to foresee Emerion’s every attack, and counter accordingly.

With a punch that shattered ribs and ruptured organs, Exilus ended the quick duel. Coughing up even more blood, Tygon fell to the ground.

“Damn it, not now,” he said to himself through gritted teeth. “All Ravan forces across Hiron, stand down,” was his last order. His lieutenants looked especially surprised, mostly due to the fact that their leader was so incompetent.

One of the lieutenants stepped forward, shaking his head in disappointment at the sight of his broken superior.

“You have no right to be called a Commander. I’m disgusted,” he spat. Looking up at Exilus, he removed his helmet. His hair was medium length and parted, a borderline purple. His eyes were wine red.

“Greetings, Exilus of the Everian Guild. I am Miran Ravan.”

Jade and her squadron walked up to join Exilus, weapons drawn. It was a very tense moment.

“I think we’ve done enough here, it’s time to leave,” Miran concluded. With that, the Ravan forces began to recede. Airships flew off, tanks reversed and the last soldiers climbed aboard military transports.

“So much for a real battle,” Jade added in a disappointed tone.

“This is very bad, Jade. They won’t stop here, it’s going to get worse, a lot worse,” Exilus stated. With that, they ordered the CG to help out affected families and escort them away from the city.

A facade, a false front. It was just beginning

Original work by Patrick Gaffney 2017. Edited by nullfather 2017.