November 3, 2152
Emory woke up to a combination of alarms going off and vibrations from the link stone on her side table. She sat up stiffly with a glare in her eyes and a frown on her face. With a couple taps on her wrist, the alarm was silenced but still flashed across the screens. Then she picked up the stone and closed her eyes.
"Lady Supreme, I had a vision," Shanna said quietly.
"It's the Apleem, isn't it?" Emory groggily replied, "I just woke up to an alert from Jask that they were approaching."
Shanna hesitated, "It's more than that, milady. I saw you fighting a spider woman with long, blond hair and a mechanical arm. You won, but you were still crying. I think something bad is going to happen."
"A mechanical arm? I've never met anyone like that before," Emory raised an eyebrow, "What about the rest of the battle? Did you see any of the enemies?"
"I saw lots of corpses, human, Mantoan, and Uthid. They covered the battlefield behind your fight with the Laxtros," Shanna whispered.
"So then, it's just as we feared," Emory winced, "Thank you for the information, Shanna. Did you have anything else to report?"
Shanna sighed, "No, ma'am. I will let you know if I have any more visions." With that, the call ended, leaving Emory with a pit in her stomach. She sent a message to all the leaders as well as Shepherd and Cath to meet her at the teleportation pad in half an hour, ready for battle. Afterwards, she took a shower and got ready for the day, donning all her armor and her gauntlets. When she got done, she made her way glumly to the pad. On the way, she ran into Gwen, Shepherd, Tana, and Tethys who walked with her the rest of the way where everyone else had already assembled.
"I've brought you all together because the Apleem have made their move," Emory announced, "Jask alerted me this morning that they are roughly two days out from Temia and Vostea. Furthermore, Lady Shanna from the Council of Witches has alerted me that the army consists of mostly Uthid, as we expected. I will send a message for the outposts to switch to landmines as we planned; as of yesterday, we had about eight hundred cannons made. Tomorrow, I will pick up all the supplies and distribute them accordingly. While we're gone, Cath will be in charge of this outpost while Galle remains in charge of Bustrun. Any questions before we head out?"
They all had various reactions including sullen faces, clenched fists, and rosy cheeks, but everyone shook their heads at the question. With that in mind, Gatrie, Gwen, Sam, and Tethys stood on the teleport pad and waved goodbye before disappearing in a flash of light. Then Emory, Innes, Nephenee, Shepherd, and Tethys walked onto the teleport pad and locked hands. Cath waved goodbye as the rest also disappeared in a flash of light. When they rematerialized, Shepherd collapsed to one knee and began gagging.
"Since I teleported with you all when I arrived, I didn't think I would get motion sick. But moving light-years in mere moments is a little shocking," Shepherd admitted as he regained his composure and stood back up. If it would not have been for the seriousness of the situation, the group probably would have had a little bit of a laugh.
Emory sent Nephenee to go get Clarine while everyone else moved to the entrance of the outpost. They surveyed the scene, which still had scars from the last battle, as Emory explained the general format of the army. Unlike last time when the fighting took place relatively close to the base, they would stay a little further away. This time, Emory mixed the weapon users with the hand-to-hand combatants but still left the ranged fighters behind the front lines. Luckily, the land surrounding the outpost slowly sloped downwards away from them which gave the ranged group in the back a line-of-sight advantage on the enemy. To improve this advantage, Emory transformed her Arcane magik into Earth magik and created a mound nearly ten feet high around the base for them to stand on.
Once Clarine and Nephenee arrived, Emory split up the group into individuals, giving each of them one sixth of the circle to support. Unlike last time, Emory would start the ranged attacks from her position at the front of her section of the army. That way, she could stay with the group as the enemy approached and instantly change her combat style. Each of them would command about one and a half million troops while the remaining few hundred thousand ranged troops would stay in the back. The couple thousand Witches and Elandrian would defend the base itself from the outer walls as a last line of defense against any Apleem that snuck through the army.
After explaining the plan to them, they headed back into the base to make emergency packs for the soldiers. Shepherd leaned over to Emory as they were walking. "You've done a good job creating a strategy for this big of a force," Shepherd praised her quietly, "I'm quite surprised given you were only a student a few months ago before we even taught basic combat strategy."
Emory shrugged, "It's not the same, but before all this mess, I played a lot of battle games. The techniques I learned from them translated surprisingly well when we had our first encounter with the Apleem."
"That's quite lucky then," Shepherd said calmly, "Maybe our officers should play those games as well for battle preparation after we finish this conflict. What you've shown here is on par with some of our top strategists."
"I think we'll have to do a lot of retraining after this conflict. Clearly, the Collective has quite a few holes that need patching," Emory mused critically.
"Yes, you're right," Shepherd grumbled, "We have much to learn about life in the bigger picture of the galaxy. It was hubris to think we were at the forefront of life in our little part of the galaxy. But how could we know? After all, the Mantoan were the first group we met, and they were forty-one light-years away."
As they arrived at the supply depot, they unboxed the remaining supplies from the Elandrian and the analogs the last wave of humans brought with them. Luckily, after the last time they fought the Apleem and built these emergency kits, Innes and Nephenee had commissioned a machine to automate the process. So this time, instead of filling bags by hand, they only had to set up the machine and fill the hoppers with the ingredients. Bags flew off the line at blazing speeds, doing the work hundreds of times faster than before. While the machine was going, Innes and Nephenee helped Emory make a list of people that would help them plant the landmines tomorrow. It was a small group in comparison to the size of the army as a whole, but given they would only have two hundred mines, it didn't need to be a large group. In fact, since there would be no training exercises tomorrow, all of the people selected were Witches who had been leading training groups.
Even with the machine making the emergency bags, it was still late in the afternoon before it finished. Everyone except for Emory set up stations to hand out the bags while Emory herself went back outside the camp. In all of her research about the Transformation spell, she had learned a lot about the Seal spell which she could do thanks to her Arcane sphere being level four. This spell allowed the caster to imbue an area or object with their magik temporarily instead of the Glyph spell that imbued something permanently. Though, the length of time the Seal spell lasted depended on the amount of magik a person used to cast it, and since Emory had unlimited magik, she could have a Seal spell that would last for quite a long time. So, she did magik on a scale only she could do and implanted nine Seals of Chaos magik that surrounded the whole outpost like a massive moat. This way, no matter which angle the Apleem approached from, they would have to walk through a mile of Chaos magik. It was the optimum location for such spells because the humans would most likely not cross into this territory, but the Apleem in the front of this area would be in range of the cannons and ranged battalions. The best part was it left no visible marking on the soil, so the enemy wouldn't even know they were walking through a trap.
When Emory finished, she was a little worn out, not from using so much magik but from using a lot of stamina. She teleported back to the base just after nightfall and explained what she had done to the rest of the leaders. No one knew how much help the seals would be, but every little bit moved the needle farther in their favor. The group split up shortly after that to try and rest for the upcoming days. Instead of sleeping in the barracks, Emory moved a bed to the roof of one of the barracks which provided her with an excellent vantage point to watch over the entire outpost. She wanted to watch the area with her own eyes, but more than that, she wanted to breathe fresh air and to be unconfined by the structure's walls. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but just as she was drifting away, she started to have a terrible vision of the upcoming battle.
Jahn and Murdock stood side by side on a command deck, covered head to toe in black and gold armor. Two onyx lances clung to Jahn's back and two oversized scimitars hung around his waist while a morningstar dangled from Murdock's waist and a tower shield covered his wings. Both of them looked uncomfortable, not because of the armor or even the mission but because they weren't used to working together so closely. Jahn scurried down from the platform as Murdock continued pressing buttons on a holographic screen.
Jahn cleared his throat, "Are you ready for tomorrow? I know there's a good chance we won't encounter her tomorrow, but still, we are landing tomorrow."
"You know my predecessor met his end against these humans in the last confrontation," Murdock's tongue clicked against his teeth, "It was the first and only time he ever went into the field. I know I'm stronger than he was, and yet I can't help but be anxious."
"I think Selena just overestimated this girl and got taken advantage of because of that. If she was really as big of a threat as the reports say, Petrine would have fought her when they attacked Facility Three," Jahn scoffed.
"That's just it," Murdock scowled, "Those facilities are built to withstand a massive amount of damage. And this girl did it, tore the whole thing down."
Jahn huffed, "She wasn't alone. She must have had help from those knife-ears. Even so, I could destroy one of those facilities myself if I pushed myself. All of our losses so far have been due to chance or overestimation. Besides, our attacking force this time is five million of my men and three million of yours. We've analyzed the human's technological abilities, and there's no way they have enough troops this time. Their luck has run out."
"I hope you're right," Murdock grimaced, "And if you're wrong, I hope I don't survive. Petrine will kill us if we return as losers."
"You worry too much. Everything is going according to plan," Jahn grumbled as he walked out to a viewing deck. From the platform, he could see a planet covered in light green and blue coming into view. Then he glanced at the radar which showed the horde of ships approaching the planet in the distance.