Chapter 1009 — "Miracle"

The World Serpent and the Iron Scepter, the armored train on escort duty, raced along parallel tracks. The two war machines had already left the plains behind and, minutes earlier, entered the hill country near the Shadow Marsh — a chain of low, rolling mountains swept past the carriage windows, and the light of the sky grew dimmer than before.

Ma Qi came to the window and saw that the sky within reach of his eyes was wholly shrouded in iron-gray cloud; a feeble sunlight barely pierced the layer, kindling somewhere deep in the overcast a faint and unsettling pallor. Beyond the glass the cold wind howled, and in the distance snow and dust were caught up by it, forming a drifting, turbid curtain, and beyond that curtain there was no sign of human life.

This was a typical no-man's-land of the northern frontier; desolate scenes of this kind were common enough here.

And this cloud-shrouded weather had been common enough in recent days as well.

Yet a vague unease lingered in Ma Qi's heart and would not be shaken off. He could not say what its source was, but the experience he had scraped together on battlefields had taught him never to casually set aside such things as "intuition" — he had always followed the ideas of the great scholar Falman of the First Dynasty of Ansus, and that scholar had once said: behind every intuition lie clues overlooked by the surface consciousness.

This unease could not have arisen from nothing. Something discordant must have happened nearby that he had not yet noticed, but his subconscious had already registered the danger — his years of accumulated experience of life and death were now raising the alarm from within his subconscious.

"General," the adjutant beside him noticed Ma Qi's gloomy expression, which seemed especially abnormal after a smoothly executed military mission, "has something happened?"

"Has aerial reconnaissance found anything?" Ma Qi asked with a frown. "Any word from the ground scouts?"

The adjutant was taken aback, not understanding why his commander should suddenly ask about this now, but he answered at once: "We made contact five minutes ago — all normal. We have already entered the long-range artillery cover zone of Highland 18; the Typhonians took a beating here once before, so they shouldn't be foolish enough to try the same trick again."

Then he paused, and went on: "Also, the dragoons just sent word that the cloud layer is thickening, which is already affecting visual reconnaissance, so they are descending."

"Clouds..." Ma Qi unconsciously repeated the word, his gaze falling once more on the thick overcast above. Suddenly the shape and color of those clouds seemed strange to him, unlike anything natural, and his vigilance shot to its peak. "Something feels wrong... Tell the dragoons to watch for movement in the clouds — the Typhonians may use the cloud cover to launch an air raid!"

The adjutant's eyes widened slightly. He first carried out the order swiftly, then returned to Ma Qi with a trace of doubt: "Is that possible, sir? Even under cloud cover, flying mages and gryphons should be no match for the dragoons..."

Ma Qi did not answer. He only stared at the sky outside. In that iron-gray overcast, snow had already begun to fall, and within a scant dozen seconds the falling flakes multiplied and thickened rapidly; the wind shrieking past the carriage windows grew fiercer, and a word flashed through Ma Qi's mind like lightning — blizzard.

In that instant a thought came to him, absurd and chilling at once: in the northern regions in winter, wind and snow are ordinary things — but what if the Typhonians had used some mighty miracle to manufacture a blizzard by hand?

What if this blizzard was not merely a blizzard?

"Sir!" a technical soldier suddenly reported loudly from nearby. "The onboard mana sensors have failed! All sensors are being interfered with!"

"Contact the Shadow Marsh base and request air support from the dragoon special-operations echelon," Ma Qi ordered without hesitation. "We may be in trouble!"

...

The wind howled beyond the shield, a high-altitude current so cold and violent that even high-tier powerhouses would flinch from it, carrying ice crystals sharp as blades; thick clouds rolled in every direction like silt too dense to dissolve, and with each surge came a faint, half-heard hissing and moaning — an environment in which humans could scarcely survive, where even sturdy military gryphons could hardly fly. Yet Clement felt none of the pressure or harm of this foul weather; on the contrary, at the very source of the blizzard he felt as though he were bathed in a spring breeze.

The hundred-odd battle mages flying at his side, and the still greater number of gryphon riders, seemed just as at ease.

The terrible wind and cold seemed to veer around these Typhonians of their own accord, and the almost tangible resistance in the clouds did not hinder them in the least. Clement flew through the gale and the dense cloud, and the cloud did not block his sight; rather, like a pair of extra eyes, it let him see everything within and beyond it with perfect clarity.

He dropped a little lower and gazed from the edge of the cloud at the Cecil flying machines prowling in the distance, while from the corner of his eye he looked down upon the armored trains running across the land. Endless mana surged around him; he felt that every breath he drew replenished his strength — a sensation he had never known in decades of life as a mage.

This was one of the God of War's miracle rites — the Myriad Host in the Storm.

As a mage, Clement did not know the details of the War God's sect well, but as a polymath he at least knew these famous miracle rites and the religious lore behind them. Among the accounts of the War God's many great deeds, one chapter describes the deity's form and actions thus: He marched in the storm, and the wicked beheld Him in terror and saw only a giant standing in the storm, clad in gray armor. This giant was invisible to common eyes; only the omnipresent storm was His cloak and banner, and warriors followed that banner, and in the storm were granted inexhaustible strength and three lives, and at last won a victory foreordained.

Now these mages and gryphon riders flying through the blizzard, preparing to carry out their air raid, were the "warriors" of the parable.

Clement drew a deep breath, felt the surging mana within him, and activated the transmission spell: "Spread out the formation, divide into squads as planned, close on those flying machines — take out those damned machines first, and the Cecil mobile fortresses will be easy to deal with!"

The battle mages and gryphon riders in the clouds swiftly began to carry out their commander's order, closing in mixed squads toward the flying machines that were so perfectly clear in their sight, and by now the blizzard had fully taken shape.

...

Within the howling gale, the churning cloud and mist, and the curtain of snow and vapor, visibility was dropping fast. Such foul weather had already begun to hamper the dragoons' flight, and to counter the worsening conditions the flying machines on patrol switched on additional environmental protection one after another.

Shields denser and heavier than usual blazed up around each craft; the power spines hummed, diverting more energy into the protection and stabilization systems; the "dragon wings" on either side of the conical hulls folded back slightly, and additional rune arrays lit along the edges of the wing structures. Stronger wind blessings and elemental affinity spells were attached to these vast steel machines, and under the temporary enchantments the craft that had been buffeted by the air currents gradually steadied.