As glorious as the conclusion of the battle may have been, this hard-earned victory had only one aim: to retreat from the area affected by the "Freeze" and return to the dome of light surrounding the main base.
And there it was, as all eyes saw it for the first time: light, brilliant and eternal, warding off the darkness of the outer chaos and protecting civilization from corruption.
"I thought I was dreaming when I saw it too, but this is truly a miracle." Adam spoke, his voice cracking with emotion, his skin brightening despite the blood, dirt, and the rough time he had endured. Behind him, almost 200 faces bore the same expressions and were in the same state as his.
He was helping Kave walk, as the latter's body was badly wrecked. But the words he said weren't directed just to Kave, but to almost everyone in his close proximity, including most Earthling recruits, Professor Hendrick and his privateering students, and finally, the two alien sisters who were detained by the Solarium despite their "selfless" attempt at aid.
Kahori dragged a medical sled, assisted by an Earthling trooper who was formerly a student of Professor Hendrick. On the sled was her sister, Samara, who was still out cold. In her mind, she was suppressing a great deal of surprise, despite fully understanding that this human military was by no means simple.
But her greatest shock was the armored warrior who faced the Lesser Jotnar (Bigfoot) and brought a brutal demise to it and its horde—a most violent execution with no remorse or consideration for what once were the kinsmen of this world's race. That warrior possessed a power comparable to, if not exceeding, that of an Elden Lord, yet lacked the grace she witnessed in Lord Kaimu's martial style.
To what fate she was driven after getting surrounded by the blades of those humans, she was not sure. But the protests of the professor and many of the Earthlings assured their survival, especially since Vindicator Clay had called off the hostilities towards her and her sister, only to place them under arrest for violating the agreement and directly interfering with Solarium business.
Kahori was an envoy, used to all the convoluted terms of bureaucracy, and she immediately understood that Adam Clay was giving her the best among many bad options, with a clear hint of goodwill, since he had assigned Professor Hendrick's privateers to take her as a prisoner until she would be called for interrogation.
Aside from all that, once she was brought to the base uphill, she felt the buzz of a thousand human contraptions, the flow of endless power, and the glow of a pure flame amidst a maze of metal and stone—a civilization still pushing through despite death looming in every corner.
The humans were messy builders, organized still, but incredibly frugal with space. She had witnessed it all over her visits to the cities of the human world, but these places were all deserted and badly maintained, and she had seen worse across different worlds. But in a place where humanity had actually managed to rebuild, it was a feeling new to her, and she felt quite squeezed in.
The Alfari were used to space and vast distances, especially in their homeworld where only a little of their kin still dwelled. It was possible that a family would live in a valley, and the neighboring one would live on the mountain next to it, and that would be considered too close.
More still, many of the humans who seemed non-combatant were packed into the open spaces between these buildings, trying to get closer to the tower of the white flame, as warmth would increase with every step in its direction.
Just as Adam said, that White Flame was a miracle by all standards. Every time the Jotnar would call the Freeze, the Alfari would go through immense trouble to block it with primitive Rune Shields that were simple enough not to be considered technology, all by pouring a massive amount of mental power directly into massive rune arrays.
Kahori knew that this wasn't something as simple as "all technology dies when facing the Freeze," since the Freeze itself was a power that opposed mental energy and any sort of thermal power.
But this barrier, this white flame force, felt like something very high and lofty for those humans to possess. It didn't fit their general vibe to be a flame-worshipping cultu
re, despite all the sun disks and solar patterns adorning shoulders and banners alike. Kahori was also sensitive to the darkness hiding right beneath it, and those humans felt just as cold as this darkness, if not colder.
The thought terrified her in one way and amazed her in another. She watched families reunite, and others receive news about their fallen friends and family.
Then it all unfolded so quickly. Adam Clay was standing amidst the crowd, chanting a dangerous rhetoric about a world that once was and a world that was now; about aliens, mutants, and nothing but darkness; about the war that would come tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. He said the Gobzkin would come with the summer, the Jotnar with the winter, the Dragons from the sky, and the Krants from the sea.
He said many things, but after he was done, his Lieutenant, the blonde, one-armed woman, chanted after him, putting her mechanical arm back to show that the Freeze couldn't stop the light of Sol Imperius, and that it never bothered his paladins who bore the flame in their hearts. Even though the darkness was immense and vast, light was eternal and holy, and no son of man must stray from that light that bore this holy flame.
When she was done, Kahori got a closer picture than ever before about the nature of this certain breed of humans and how dangerously their emotions shifted. They may have lost a hundred soldiers in the previous battle, but now they have gained almost everyone who hadn't been willing to fight before.
Before she got confined in a tight, dark space with her sister, she was joined by the silent Sage Hendrick, who came to nurse Samara with fewer questions and a quieter attitude than most of the times she had stayed with him.
When she asked him about her situation with the military and their xenophobic policies, the Professor assured her that Adam Clay would usually adopt their views for the sake of managing them, and that they were far too busy to deal with them, now that almost every person capable of fighting was on training duty.
There was no time for funerals, he added, his voice low with sadness and disappointment. From what he shared, he had lost a student during the fight.
It was difficult to process tragedy when one had done all they could to ensure it wouldn't happen again. But for technology to fail humans in the time they needed it most, even the kindhearted professor was trying to figure out how to eliminate an enemy that could be the most dangerous thing that had ever come out of the Rifts.
The two sisters may have stepped into this fight to save this sage, whom they valued as an asset with immense value. But now, Kahori made out the resolve to study this race from close by.
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He opened his eyes and looked at the screen before him once again, his chest aching and senses disoriented after napping on his chair while leaning on the holo table.
During that torturous nap, the room he was in never quieted down, with the endless buzz of officers and operators working their utmost to keep track of the situation surrounding the base.
It had been 17 hours since the battle ended, and up to this point, the Neanders had never retreated. No… the Jotnar.
Adam's eyes shifted to the report made by the operators supporting Team Ajax, which was leading the investigation about the nature of the enemy and had met with Professor Hendrick and the two Alfari individuals who had come to his rescue.
Elena and the other Sergeants wanted to drag in the two Alfari sisters and interrogate them for every last bit of information they could get, but the attacks of the Jotnar never ceased, and they were all called to the front not long after. For that, Adam coordinated with Professor Hendrick to get as much information as possible from the alien sisters. Ajax would be leading the scouting beyond the defenses when the time came, so he was given the task.
The report entailed many points, including the nature of what Kahori called the Children of Jotnar: individuals who were kidnapped by the Jotnar Invaders and taken into the Rift, subjected to the brutal Freeze and many other phenomena until something from within changed, and that's when they became primitive and feral.
Then there was the Freeze, the phenomenon that had almost wiped out Adam's forces in the previous battle. Kahori's statement described it as a violent sorcery capable of disturbing certain types of energies, such as Mental and Thermal. For it to be possible, what she called a "True Jotnar" should be the one evoking such a sorcery at the expense of a great blood sacrifice. Once this sorcery took effect, most opposing technologies that relied on thermal energies like fire and electricity died down, and even the mental energy that was required to operate the runes would be greatly disturbed.
As for the principle behind the Freeze, Kahori stated that it was Sorcery and there should be no understandable principle behind it. Ajax stated in the report that neither his nor Professor Hendrick's attempts to make Kahori explain it had met with any fruition, as the Alfari Envoy seemed to firmly believe that this kind of thing wouldn't be explained even if she tried to.
This kind of report would have sent Adam into a fit of rage and caused him to go interrogate the damned alien himself, but those Children of Jotnar soon returned with numbers and started rushing uphill past the borders of the Holy Furnace's light to rush the defense lines. However, the Blazer Turrets all worked at once, and they were annihilated in seconds, again and again and again.
The defenders kept mounting the turrets on strict rotation, but the base's overpopulation was becoming a glaring issue, as almost all 2,000 civilians were now uphill. On the plus side, almost all adults and adolescents were applying for military recruitment. On the downside, supplies were running low, fast.
The base had enough blazers and power cells to keep the defense active, but the offense needed a new plan of action, and the most immediate one was to find the source of the Freeze and eliminate it.
Without any other alternative, Captain Creed would be the one doing the deed since he could ignite his Atenite Cradle to ward off the Freeze. However, since he would still need support from the whole military, Adam gave the green light for all functioning factories to produce firearms and ballistic ammunition en masse for the coming assault.
After all, offense was the best defense, and he needed all the lost ground to be regained in order to regain morale. After all, the loss was immense, and with no reinforcement in sight, Adam knew he had to do this as strongly as he could before any new variable ruined his plans, and the dead 110 soldiers were weighing heavily on his soul.
That aside, Kave was still injured and recovering; Qasim was critically injured; and Flint was injured too after getting stomped over by the Bigfoot, yet the Urdman cockroach was recovering the fastest.
However, the true MVP of the last battle was neither him, nor Captain Creed, nor any of the brave souls who fought on the front. It was the unsung Script Nun, Sister Solana, who still resisted the urge to lose her consciousness when the Freeze hit, and dragged herself back to base in order to pray in the Holy Furnace without leaving for a second. Due to her earnest prayer, the range of the Holy Flame was slowly expanding and gaining more power, now large enough to reach the outskirts of the now-abandoned civilian base.
If he could, Adam would earnestly join her in prayer, but no matter how many others he sent to pray in her stead, they couldn't even withstand the power of the Holy Furnace, let alone maintain the growth of its aura. Only Captain Creed was someone with strong enough faith to replace Solana, but his battlefield was at the front, and hers was at the Furnace.
Only two summons were essentially carrying this operation on their shoulders, and Adam had to make all the right decisions to support the two, hoping the coming clash with the Jotnar wouldn't be the end of everything he had built.
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