Herald of Steel



In much contrast to Cambyses's wish for the enemy to waste time continuing to destroy something that was of significantly less value to her, as soon as she had thought such, much to her horror she began to notice a large number of torches appear from underneath the overgrowth, moving away from the iron mines, and slowly headed up, straight towards her

'The enemy has started moving!' Cambyses immediately understood.

But soon noticed that the mass of torches inexplicably had decided to divide itself, and then suddenly one of the groups diverted its course to head in the opposite direction, which was where the cement crushing plant was situated.

Yes, the lights that Perseus noticed were from that place, which ran 24/7 to crush the cement clinkers.

And seeing Perseus divert part of his army to attack there, for a while Cambyses was a bit confused.

Clearly, the enemy knew they were here, as one-half of the army was still moving steadily towards them, so she could not understand what the enemy had to gain by splitting its forces and attacking a relatively useless place.

'Do they wish to attack the city from that side? A two-pronged attack!' Cambyses was at first a bit alarmed at the thought.

But quickly dismissed that idea.

Because in the end, she saw no point in that.

Though it was indeed possible to attack via that route too, that place looped back to the western side of the city anyway, so in her mind, Cambyses felt it would be much faster to simply attack the manor using the straightforward route that ran directly from the iron mines to the manor.

The detour only worked to give her more time to build up her defense.

'Perhaps the enemy thinks that place is really important. Or that part of the army's leader got himself lost,' Hence unable to think of a good reason, and unable to picture the scenery Perseus faced with the two lights, Cambyses shrugged her shoulders and came to this erroneous conclusion.

To her, there seemed to be no point in wasting her brain cells trying to figure out why the enemy had done such as mistake.

Whatever the reason why, it was very good news for her as it basically halved the amount of enemies she would have to face.

So she could only cheer seeing roughly half the enemy move more and more away from her.

'Oh! I should send a contingent there just to be sure,' But once her brief elation was over, Cambyses was still prudent enough to make a note to cut off that enemy detachment's route just to cover all bases.

But as she was about to make that mental note permanent,

*Boom*, an ear-splitting boom rocked her ears, making her so scared that she involuntarily ducked her head below the window to take cover, covering her ears as hard as she could as she did.

To her it seemed that the entire earth had split open, and an overwhelming surge of fear washed over her like it had never done before.

She wanted to do nothing more than just run away from this room where she was all alone and dash to places where there were other people.

'No! I can't do that. I need to see what it was!' But the strong girl quickly picked up the courage to stand her feet down and not buckle.

Given the situation, she had to know.

So, after the loud bang died down and an uncomfortable silence started to reign, the brave girl very slowly and cautiously surfaced her head above the window panel and very furtively started to scan her head around.

She first thought it was a loud thunder booming across the night sky.

But that was unlikely given the clear weather.

So the next, much more fearful thing that came to her mind was the enemy deploying some kind of fearful weapon.

But that absurd thought so quickly went away as Cambyses thought there was no way any human could wield such power and if they really would, they would have used it long ago.

"What the fuck was that?" Cambyses swore loudly in a shaken voice as she tried to find what caused it.

But that inquisitive thought was quickly replaced by a horrific scenery seeing which Cambyses could not help but mutter, "Oh, the gods!"

Because right in front of her, the iron mines now seemed to be truly on fire, as much of the things which had yet to catch fire were now burning like firewood, including many of the nearby, while much of the surroundings around the mine itself had become flattered.

Even from where Cambyses would see dismembered and destroyed parts of humans, which now did not seem to resemble so human.

"Ho…H….how!" Cambyses would not help but gasp as her eyes bulged out.

This seemed to be the work of the gods.

Though in reality, it was just that given the ongoing war, one of the coal houses was not being properly maintained, meaning a large amount of coal had become stored up in there without it being properly cooled with water or proper ventilation to let the gases out.

And so once the fire spread….the methane formed from the decomposing of coal somehow ignited, and …well the rest is history.

Burning coal flee up into the night sky and then rained down like a meteor shower, igniting anything and everything it landed on, creating a spectacular show that Cambyses missed.

While the resulting shockwave created a storm of shrapnel that turned anyone close enough into unrecognizable mincemeat and ruptured the eardrums of many less fortunate buggers.

But Cambyses or anyone for that matter did not understand this.

And seeing this macabre sight, the superstitious and religious devout Cambyses actually let out an almost manic cry of pleasure, heartily laughing out,

"Haha, the gods….the gods are with us! This is divine punishment by the gods. Hahaha, serves them right!"

This burning scenery of the scorched would be burned into Cambyses's memory for all her life, and affect her growth in many ways, as this very moment was what served to convince her that Alexander from truly divine, for the act before her could have been only done by the gods themselves.

And according to her, it was done to save their chosen champion's city from certain destruction.

And this belief was quickly reinforced when she noticed the two masses of torches immediately stop after this loud bang and shortly after many individual lights began to turn back towards the mines, as it was only natural Perseus and Leosydas would send some men to check what the hell happened, or even more men to do by themselves.

Which bought even more time for Cambyses.

So feeling elated at seeing the enemy stop, and thinking she had seen enough, the now 'blessed with witnessing a heavenly miracle' Cambyses felt transformed and so left the room to oversee the overall defense of the manor with a confident gait.

Though she might have changed her newly found status of 'god's consort' if she had stayed a bit longer, as right after she left, Perseus's army began to slowly move again, straight towards her, as he gave the following inspiring speech to his men,

"Whatever has happened at the back has happened. Even if the gods have descended, it matters to us not. solders!"

"For our destination is forward."

"March men! March quickly! The gods have created for us a golden opportunity… so march!"

Perseus repeatedly said the same word, urging his soldiers to not be distracted and to move as quickly as possible.

The loud bang had indeed made the entire army stop subconsciously, as many men appeared dazed and confused, while some panicked after seeing the 'stars fall from the skies'.

These were most of the ones that ran, as evidenced by Cambyses from above.

But Perseus did not care what was occurring behind him.

The king had become almost like a bull, only able to see red or in his case whatever the place that light was shining from.

And in order to do that as fast as possible, he had even completely given up on secrecy and made his soldiers light almost all the torches they had so that they could see better and march quicker.

Because he reasoned quite accurately that it would take some time for the garrisons to wake up, get dressed and equipped, report to their unit, have their commanders show up, and then have them lead them all the way here from another part of the city.

So Perseus believed if he could match faster, he will be able to reach his destination before the reinforcements could.

And so he urged his me to not back, but run forward.

And with their king's command, the long veteran soldiers in their bulky phalanx formation mostly discarded all other thoughts and ignored the few deserters, and slowly resumed their match upward.

Which meant Cambyses did not nearly have as much time as she thought she did.

But Cambyses did not know, and so as she descended down she began to patrol the hallways searching for Mean as her next task.

It was so that she could rescind her evacuation order, and also in the meantime wake up anyone who was still uninformed of the situation.

And fortunately for her, it did not take long to find her target, as she was in front of the main door and seemed to be actually in some kind of heated discussion.