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| === Chapter 5 - ??? ===
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| "They did it!"
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| Kaede had been savoring her Maultasche dumplings for dinner when the Majordomo Karsten walked in. With a graceful bow, he had offered a paper bearing the latest dispatch from the front to Pascal, who had took only one glance before rushing up in excitement.
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| His sudden exclamation had brought an instant pause across the dining room. It was the moment they had been waiting for, and Kaede could hear the jubilation of victory within his every ecstatic word:
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| "This afternoon, the Weichsel main force, under the command of His Majesty the King, caught up to the retreating Skagen army near the village of Siikajoki. After bloody combat, our forces were able to pivot around the Northmen's flank and inflict upon them a resounding defeat!"
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| "A toast, to His Majesty King Leopold!" the young armiger, Sir Robert, called out from mid-table as he raised his wineglass in cheer.
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| "Hail the Black Dragon!"
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| Kaede cringed as she followed along and drank a sip of the white wine herself. High culture or not, she found the taste of fermented grapes absolutely detestable.
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| Meanwhile, after putting down his own glass, Pascal returned to announcing the remainder of the news:
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| "Estimates claim that the Northmen lost six thousand with another eight thousand captured, including their commander: Jarl Eyvindur Sigmundsen..."
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| "They actually managed to take the commander alive?" Sylviane spoke with astounded disbelief.
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| "He had probably been wounded or even knocked out first," Pascal surmised; for a Northmen commander of such high ranking to surrender was unheard of.
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| ''Fourteen thousand -- that's nearly three-quarters of their army,'' Kaede thought. Her mind's eye painted yet another, even more massive battlefield, its fresh snow sown with corpses and dyed crimson with blood.
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| The Skagen army hadn't just been defeated. It had been destroyed, annihilated; its shattered remnants cut down by an opponent's absolute superiority in cavalry before they could escape.
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| "What about our casualties?" she asked next.
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| "Six thousand -- also still an estimate."
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| Even in defeat the Northmen could exact a bloody toll upon the victors. It was further proof of just how tough their warriors were.
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| "I shall return a message in person, Karsten," Pascal kindly addressed the yeoman Majordomo, whose responsibility for the estate's ''Farspeak'' communications made magical talent a requirement for his job. "Also me, Sylv, Sir Robert, Lady Elspeth, and Lady Mari shall head out first thing tomorrow morning for an audience with His Majesty. Please arrange meals at the appropriate hour for the others if we do not return on time."
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| "Very good, Your Grace," the plump, square-faced Majordomo replied before excusing himself with another bow of professional courtesy.
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| "What about me?" Kaede asked, feeling somewhat left out by her absence on the delegation list.
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| But the stare that Pascal returned spoke as though the answer were obvious:
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| "You are my familiar. ''Of course'' you are coming along with me."
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| <nowiki>----- * * * -----</nowiki>
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| The trip itself involved a chain of four teleportation jumps that left Kaede almost ready to vomit. It certainly didn't help that her meager hours of sleep last night further compounded her sleep deprivation. The transit spells then sent her senses through a repeated cycle of physical sublimation and being flushed down an ethereal whirlpool, which gave a whole new meaning to the concept of 'travel sickness'.
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| ''I am never going to get used to that...''
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| "Kaede are you alright?" the Princess reached over to hold the smaller girl's shoulders as Kaede's pale cheeks sucked in deep breathes of cold, icy air.
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| "Yeah, just... give me a moment."
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| They had arrived near a teleportation beacon placed inside the Weichsel army encampment, though it was still outside the inner camp fortifications. The availability of teleportation magic added a whole new dimension to special operations, as commandos could literally appear out of thin air to wreck havoc within a military base.
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| Fixed fortifications, such as castles or cities, were typically built over ley lines in order to tap their power for ''Lockdown'' and other defensive wards. But natural mana, not processed ether, flowed across the spiritual ley lines that stretched across the land. Without a soul to refine it, mana lacked the malleability of ether that allowed them to simply be injected into a supernatural spell effect as fuel.
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| Hyperion's answer to this was the 'Projection Foci', a type of enchanted devices built specifically for its deployment locale. Attuned to the ley lines it tapped by design, it used the magical pressure from the mana stream to directly energize the depleted ether cycling through wide-area spell fields. In a sense, it powered spell effects in much the same way that a steam engine used combustible fuel to create mechanical torque.
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| But armies in the field had no such blessing. Mages had to expend their own ether reserves to maintain defensive wards, which limited both their scale and duration. The prevalence of Aura Magic in the Trinitian states further compounded this issue, as they simply lacked the magical storage capacity that runestones offered to Runic Magic users.
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| As a result, even an army encampment that protected the King -- the most vulnerable single point of failure for a Monarchy State -- fielded only a modest, well-warded 'inner camp'. Checkpoints were set up within the encampment itself, while the outer camp was segmented into individual sectors based on battalions.
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| "Alright," Kaede inhaled one last deep breath before she stood up straight. "Let's go."
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| The successful Imperial Legionary Organization Structure formed the basis of almost every army on the Hyperion continent. It offered a flexible military hierarchy based on two core units: the Company, or Centuria as the Imperials called it, consisted of roughly 160 men and formed the basic ''tactical'' unit for swift battlefield maneuvering; meanwhile, a Battalion (or Cohort) of 500 consisted of two combat companies plus a logistics company to establish the basic ''strategic'' unit in military operations. This meant that every battalion deployed into the field was capable of self-supply and therefore responsible for maintaining the security of its own encampment -- or in this case, their sector within a larger camp.
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| The advantages were obvious: in a world fraught with magic assisted infiltration and insertion attacks, compartmentalized sectors within a military camp allowed the army to maintain order and repulse surprise assaults. Furthermore, it distributed the supply stockpile for better risk management, as the food, water, and ammunition was the true Achilles' Heel that could make or break an army before combat ever started.
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| The downside was that Pascal's group had to pass through repeated security checks on their way to the King's inner camp. The most elaborate of these included aura signature scans matched against magically verifiable documents, which made Kaede wonder just how much more troublesome meeting the King would be if one was but a magic-less commoner who lacked that 'unique magical aura' of their own.
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| "Thank you, Your Grace. You may pass," the Black Eagles commander of the final checkpoint said with a curt, expressionless nod.
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| Kaede shivered as Pascal led them past two armored guards and into the austere-looking expandable cabin that the King resided in. Here, away from the protection of his Black Dragon Castle, the King's bodyguards donned gothic half-plate armor coated in pitch black. With faces concealed by sallet helmets, their mere presence emanated a sinister aura that matched the nickname soldiers bestowed upon them: the 'Blackguards'.
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| It was yet another sign of the dichotomy in the Black Eagles' role. On one hand they were uniformed investigators, resident spies, and counter-intelligence officers who served as the eyes and ears of the King; on the other, they were faceless killers who would strike down anyone deemed a threat to the security of the state.
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