Young Flame

With the constant rolling thunder thrumming through the air, it isn’t difficult to locate the battle.

As we soar toward the sound of war, I consider why exactly my first reaction is to approach, rather than avoid, the battlefield. It’s not as if I want to get involved in some war between the heqet, so really we should just continue on as we have been and find the first isle in the chain. We are heading into a region called the Warring Isles, and considering the heqet’s infamy for aggression, it is hardly a surprise that there is war… though coming across one now is earlier than expected.

We really don’t need to go out of our way to cross through their battle. It won’t do us any favours getting stuck between factions. But despite the lack of reason, I find myself rocketing toward war. A mixture of curiosity in how the heqet fight, and the disturbingly powerful cannon-blasts that ring over the waters tug at my hand, leading me forward.

Leal is visibly uncomfortable at the sound rolling over us, but she doesn’t complain.

“Solvei, let’s only look,” she says. “Please?”

I nod. Not that I planned on joining in a war I have no stake in.

When the battle finally comes into sight over the horizon, I almost mistake it for an island. A black island, but a solid whole none-the-less. It is only with the reconstructed eye of the sharpest sighted bird I’ve discovered that I can see the individual ships that blend into dark mass so far away.

There are thousands. Ships with dark hulls, masts, and sails move along the waters as one. Countless subdued flashes of light blink from each vessel; cannons firing upon a target as of yet unseen.

Each vessel is similar, but never quite the same. The dark wood curves softly along the length of the ships, before twisting to a point at each end. No bend is identical though. The ships differ in length, height and width, but their design is similar enough to pin each as heqet vessels.

The closer we fly, the more their numbers appear. They paint the ocean black with their tar-soaked sails. As I watch, dozens of ships suddenly explode in splinters. Water blasts everywhere for hundreds of metres. The sound hits. A rapid peppering of inexplicably loud cannon-fire.

Instead of stopping, the blasts of water trail to the side, obliterating many more. When the artillery ceases, nothing but broken fragments remain of a hundred wooden ships.

The origin of the mass death comes into sight. It begins with the highest point: the ship’s bridge. As we fly, more of the ship comes into view… then more… and even more. This is nothing like the heqet ships filling the waters all around it. The sleek grey of steel takes up the centrepiece of the war. A ship of familiar design, but so much larger. So large in fact, that it is nearly comparable to the chthonic’s cubic vessels… only this one is moving.

The Henosis.

“A battleship?” Leal squeaks.

She sits in my flames with her own lens of air enhancing her sight. Obviously, she has seen the same thing I have.

“Battleship?” I repeat. She says it like a title, but isn’t every ship decked for war a battleship?

“It’s a Henosis battleship. I’d only heard about them in rumour. Weren’t able to capture any when they invaded us; only their destroyers.”

So it’s a type of ship? Compared with what the ursu have, this is twice as long, but infinitely more intimidating. Between the four massive, building-sized cannons and dozens of smaller ones, the rain of lead never stops. Wherever it aims, heqet ships sink.

I eventually fly close enough to get a full picture of the battle. Even flying as high as I am, there are still ships spreading to the horizon in each direction. The Henosis battleship isn’t alone; fifteen of those ships New Vetus now has, destroyers, and four other ships at a size half between the other types, though with far fewer cannons.

Surprisingly, despite the Henosis’ obvious firepower superiority, they are the ones that are surrounded. The heqet’s wooden vessels fill the ocean all around, but they aren’t fleeing. The heqet, in their flimsy timber paddleboats, are on the offence.

A dozen of the tar-soaked ships ahead of me fire their own cannons; the small, side-mounted guns fire all at once. Out of the hundred projectiles that fly through the air, only one comes anywhere close to one of the massive steel vessels, and that bounces off the destroyer with only the slightest dent.

The heqet may have superior numbers — thousands to each of Henosis’ one — but despite that advantage, they are so absolutely overwhelmed on the technological playing field. A thick iron projectile rips through the mast of one ship, only to shatter the hulls of two more behind it. The occurrence only an example of the uncountable devastation laying waste around us.

The Henosis only has a fleet of twenty ships, and yet they fill the sky with steel. Each cannon fires shell after shell, flattening the sea with their constant, eruptive shockwaves. Only a single, relatively tiny cannon-barrel at the far front of the battleship remains unmoving. The rest never rest.

There are so many heqet vessels, but they’ll achieve nothing. Their ships are fragile and their weapons ineffective. What could they hope to achieve that they continue to sail into the maw of death? Already, each ship has to coast through a graveyard of floating debris and corpses; the closer they get, the more their own kin’s deaths obstruct their movement.

I know I said I would keep out of it, but this isn’t just the heqet’s battle. This is the Henosis. I’ve not forgotten what they did to the áed. How they killed my mother. What they did to me. I may not have chased them down in some unfocused, vengeful rage, but that doesn’t mean I have forgiven them. They dare slaughter those so hopelessly inferior to them?

In a single moment, like a spark lighting centzon’s oil, my fire snaps across the sky. My blaze roars with power. No, I roar. The staggering inferno scorches the sky as I reach for the nearest Henosis destroyer. The metal chunk I’d been carrying already incinerated and consumed to empower my fire.

I remain a core of white fire as I stretch with the cooler — yet still hot — yellow flames through the ship. In an instant, the destroyer is engulfed. Anything non-flammable melts under the intense heat, feeding me and inviting me to burn on, to spread further.

I so want to incinerate each of the albanic crew. They are a part of the problematic Empire. As soldiers, they will only continue to add to the nation’s power if left alive. But… no. I’ve already declared to myself after the countless deaths I’d inflicted in the last war that I would not be so indiscriminate. While they may be a part of Henosis, they do not hold any significant individual strength or influence.

Instead, I let each of them slip through the melting floors beneath them with only some second-degree burns across their bodies. I don’t spread anywhere near the water, so what remains of the ship is that which was submerged; it doesn’t stay afloat for long, sinking into the dark depths beneath the waves.

The only ones I incinerate without hesitation are the important-looking figures in the command-bridge. They all died before they even realised the yellow flames surrounding their enclosed — and surprisingly well protected — cabin turned white.

“Solvei!” Leal’s voice shouts.

It takes a moment to return my focus to the part of me still holding her in the air hundreds of metres from the sinking ship. I’m not exactly separate right now, but I cannot put my full focus in two places at once unless I want to experience a similar feeling as when I split in half. Dividing up my focus is fine, but moving it from one side of my inferno to the other when I’m spread out over such a distance takes time. Not much time, sure, but it isn’t instantaneous.

“Solvei, stop!” Leal pleads.

“But it’s the Henosis. Don’t you hate them as much as I do? Why should we leave them to slaughter as they wish?”

“I…” she struggles to respond. Her eyes flickering across the part of me swathed above the ocean where a destroyer once drifted. “I just don’t like watching you kill with such little hesitation.” Her voice is soft, but clear.

“Leal…” I sigh before spreading my fire to let her view the many albanics floating amongst the waves. “I’ve only killed the command crew. If you don’t like that, I can stop.”

She watches the hundreds treading water, but the sight doesn’t relieve her as much as I’d hoped. Leal glances first to the heqet ships, then the horizon beyond them. She doesn’t seem relieved. Sure, they’ll have to avoid the battle, but the water isn’t dangerous to the fleshy creatures; as long as they swim back to shore, they’ll be fine. The only way they’ll get themselves killed is if they decide to join the battle, and I care very little about their safety if they remain dedicated even without their ship.

Well, there’s also the possibility they’ll be hunted down by the heqet, but the way things are going, there won’t be enough left to bother a few floating albanic.

Leal finally realises I’m waiting for a response. Her eyes land on my flames, where they hover ready to strike at the nearest destroyer, but hold back for her approval.

“Solvei, I’m sorry. I know I’m being unreasonable.” Leal slumps. “Do what you think is best.”

As she says that, I know exactly where her thoughts travel. The elite. Surely for this much equipment, the Henosis have some enhanced warriors to fight off powerful individuals. Maybe not many, but if that battleship isn’t guarded by someone of at least a high Beith equivalent, I would be shocked.

Leal wants to ask me to spare them all, but she knows to do so would put me at unnecessary risk. I appreciate the sentiment, and for her, I will try to minimise deaths, even of the navy officers. But this is still the Henosis. It may not be my battle to fight, but I refuse to allow the Henosis to win.

I gather into a twirling inferno. A tornado of fire ready to tilt and blast over the nearest ship, but before I can, the first heqet ships finally reach a destroyer.

The encirclement has only grown tighter while I was talking to Leal. Despite taking countless losses, they have reached the outer destroyer in Henosis’ defensive stance.

A black ship’s sails are already torn to shreds, but the heqet — muscular beings with short limbs, large heads and unpleasant wart-abundant skin — take up oars. They pound away at the waters in unity as they crash into the side of the steel vessel. A dozen hooks rappel them to the larger ship, pulled taught before the heqet drop one after the other. Wood splinters and cracks under the rain of lead from bulwark mounted guns.

Each machine gun shreds through the ships trying to board with even greater ease than mermineae flesh back in the last war. A thousand rounds a minute. I don’t know if these are better than the ones the pact nation had, but the ships rapidly fall into debris, still tied to the side of the destroyer.

The first dozen heqet ships that hook themselves to the larger metal ship fall to the same fate, but the numbers soon overwhelm the Henosis defenders. They unload endless ammunition into the inferior ships, but they simply keep coming. In no time, heqet leap at the side of the destroyer and sink their axes into the hull. With grins spread across the entirety of their large heads — heads that transition into their torso without a neck to distinguish the separation — each heqet swung their pair of axes one after the other, allowing them to climb the sleek steel.

Where their cannons could barely scratch the metal, the heqet drive their weapons into the hull with powerful swings. Before the Henosis can react, hundreds of the slightly shorter greenish-brown skinned race sling aboard. Try as they might, the albanics are incompetent fighters in the face of these seafaring warriors. While sidearms fire, it cannot stop the onslaught. Axes swing and heads roll. A chorus of guttural laughter echoes as the heqet brutally butcher their foe.

The same happens on almost all the other destroyers.

I suddenly realise that the heqet aren’t so completely overwhelmed. Despite their advanced weapons, Henosis cannot stop this endless tide.