Ultimatum
“I will transfer military supreme command to you. If that is the only path to survival, then I am prepared to cooperate. But you must promise me this: that you will do everything in your power to keep the people of the Fibron Empire from dying.”
Princess Brainy had made her decision. If the ship was already sinking, she would rather hand the helm to someone else. I accepted her proposal without hesitation.
“I will do everything within my power to make it so.”
Princess Brainy pressed a single plaque into my hand.
“In wartime, should an emergency arise in which the emperor cannot issue commands himself—or a situation of equivalent gravity—all military supreme command is to be transferred to the bearer of this plaque. Of course, a complete stranger simply holding the plaque will not command instant obedience. That is why I will take the field myself as well. You will hold full command; I will stand behind you and lend my authority. You need not worry on that account.”
“If you are willing to go that far, I could ask for nothing more.”
I bowed formally to the princess and offered a proper greeting, then turned and started for the door.
“I am coming with you.”
Even though she had already given me the plaque, she trotted after me on her small feet. Outside, I felt the eyes of the Imperial Knight Commander and several knights upon me. Before anyone could even ask why the princess had come out, she made her proclamation to them all.
“From this moment forward, McDeras here holds supreme command over every national force of the Fibron Empire and will direct the battlefield. Therefore the Imperial Knights—and every last one of you—will obey this man’s words without question!”
The princess had spoken, yet immediate opposition flared.
Pltain, Commander of the Fibron Imperial Knights, locked eyes with me and roared.
“What have you done to Her Highness?!”
Coercion—or mental domination through magic—either was a reasonable suspicion. From everyone else’s perspective the princess had just committed an act of pure madness. The more a nation teetered on the brink, the more critical the holder of supreme command became. To transfer that authority, even temporarily, to another person… the absence of coercion or mind control would have been the truly absurd explanation.
But the princess stepped forward, different from before, and declared with regal force:
“I have been neither threatened nor dominated by mind magic. The Imperial Mage Corps can confirm as much; examine me as thoroughly as you wish.”
“I… I would never dare cast something so base as a mental appraisal spell upon Her Highness’s person.”
Commander Pltain dropped to one knee, flustered. I found nothing offensive in his reaction. It was the only proper response. Had he simply said, “You have transferred supreme command? Then I shall follow you henceforth,” that would have been the truly alien reply.
Yet once the princess’s firm voice began to ring out, every objection died away.
“If you trust and follow me, then I ask that you respect my decision without further argument. The Fibron Empire has already been defeated by the Caelon Empire on nearly every front! Our knights’ corpses have been desecrated, our few remaining Saintesses abducted, and innocent civilians slaughtered by Caelon knights without even the chance to resist. I watched the Caelon Empire trample every last scrap of the laws of war—and I could do nothing.”
Princess Brainy tore the crown from her head and cast it aside as she cried out.
“I am the heart of the Fibron Empire—the one who must succeed my father and protect the people. I admit my own incompetence. Had I been even a little more capable, we would never have been driven into such a corner. Once you admit a failing, you must correct it. I have kept this secret from you all, but I possess the ability to discern the truth of any words a person speaks. This man is, without the slightest doubt, the Fibron Empire’s sole salvation and final hope. So just this once—please respect my choice without a word of protest.”
She could have crushed them with force, yet instead she cast aside the throne itself and appealed with raw sincerity. Whether her heart had reached them or not, every knight sank to one knee before the girl and shouted:
“We shall obey Your Majesty’s command!”
It had not been brief, but the hierarchy was now perfectly settled. From this moment I held legal authority to command every battlefield of the Fibron Empire as I saw fit. I turned at once to Imperial Knight Commander Pltain.
“If you have a compiled report of how many knights and mages are deployed across the continent and on which fronts, bring it to me immediately.”
Commander Pltain no longer hesitated; he delivered the most critical war intelligence straight into my hands. Looking at the map, I saw points moving in real time—clearly under some form of magic.
“These points mark the positions of our knights and mages. Each large point represents roughly one hundred men.”
A rough count put the Fibron Empire’s meaningful combat strength at around seven hundred thousand.
“More remain than I expected.”
“We originally fielded one and a half million. After heavy losses we conscripted every able-bodied man who could still fight, bringing the total back to seven hundred thousand.”
Seven hundred thousand was by no means a small number. The problem was that the figure included ordinary civilians capable of combat, not solely professionally trained troops—rendering it an ambiguous strength at best.
“And the enemy’s numbers?”
“Two and a half million. Even counting only those with proper training, they number approximately two and a half million.”
I let out a long sigh. The sheer weight of that force was exactly why the Caelon Empire could get away with absurdities like their “Saintess allotment” policy. A fourfold disparity in strength. Exclude the untrained and the gap might exceed eight to one.
Now I understood why the princess had cried out to them with such bitter anguish.
“Casualties so far?”
“We have not yet completed a proper count… but the estimate stands at a minimum of three million.”
I nodded.
People often misunderstand. When war breaks out they assume the dead will mostly be soldiers—but that holds true only when the enemy observes even the barest humanitarian limits. In a war of indiscriminate massacre, the civilian death rate inevitably dwarfs the military one. A single trained knight can turn dozens of civilians into corpses, and a mage is all but unreachable to begin with.
Given that this was a world of magic, even greater losses would not have been strange. I myself had witnessed wars on far larger stages where the dead had defied any meaningful comparison.
Damage assessed, forces tallied—time to act.
“Pull every force currently holding the border regions back to the central zone.”
“…Impossible. Several fronts have already collapsed. Yield any more ground and the enemy will reach the civilian sectors in short order.”
“Detach the mages, have them cast large-scale warp magic, and concentrate every civilian into the central zone as well. Keep the people at our backs; we gather in one place and fight the war from there.”
“The risk is enormous. If the mages exhaust their mana on warps they will be unable to continue fighting. With such a disparity in strength already, wasting our mages in what amounts to battlefield withdrawal and then packing our forces into a single location is little better than suicide. Even now, with as many small-scale engagements as possible slowing their advance, we are barely holding. We will all die.”
“On the contrary—only if you stand inside my domain will any of you live.”
Princess Brainy looked at me, then issued her order to Pltain.
“Listen to McDeras.”
“…”
It was a strategy no one had ever heard of. One misstep and the Fibron Empire could vanish from history. Gathering every refugee into a single location was something you must never do—it was tantamount to begging the enemy to strike you down.
Unless, of course, you possessed the power to block every attack while simultaneously striking back.
Damn it…
Commander Pltain met the princess’s eyes. They burned with absolute certainty.
“Understood.”
In the end, Pltain carried out the order. He already knew the truth: continue as they were and every last soldier would be lost.
Every unit on the border withdrew in an instant. Masses of mages worked warp magic to gather the civilians into one place. Their mana reserves began to run dry, yet they obeyed without question.
The border regions fell, and no one moved to defend them again. After all, the enemy would soon turn back of their own accord.
Those who reached the central zone resumed the fight at once—but the situation naturally grew worse. Vast numbers of Caelon Empire troops were now concentrating on the center. McDeras hurriedly prepared something of his own.
What he handed over was a document that carried his will.
“Is there a way to deliver this to the emperor of the Caelon Empire?”
Princess Brainy shook her head.
“Nothing short of sending a person in person.”
She studied the document for a moment, then nodded. Written upon it was one final request for a ceasefire. Princess Brainy dispatched a diplomatic party to the battlefield; what returned were the corpses of those she had sent.
Every last shred of humanitarian consideration had been exhausted. He had even offered them the chance to end the war themselves. It was both a declaration of intent and the barest minimum of moral procedure.
All that remained was the exercise of force.
“We march to the battlefield. I will return your ordinary lives to you.”
The blood and corpses of countless people flooded the field. The closer he drew to that place, the more wildly McDeras’s crimson sphere began to thrash.