Second Civilized Region. Capital of the Leifor Empire.

  Outer roadstead of Leiforia City. Coastal defense fort "Eastern Fang".

  The morning boded no trouble. Two moons slowly melted away in the pearlescent predawn haze, reluctantly giving way to a pale, cold sun. The capital of the fifth Superpower was waking up. In the port, fishermen mended their nets with jests, stevedores were already lazily rolling barrels of this year's vintage wine, and on the crenellated walls of the majestic "Eastern" and "Western" forts—whose granite bastions had for centuries been considered the keys to the Empire's heart—sleepy sentries in handsome uniforms yawned, leaning carelessly on their magic muskets.

  This world was old, understandable, and safe. No one had dared to attack Leifor for three hundred years.

  The world changed at exactly 05:48 AM. Forever.

  Out of the gray, layered sea mist, at a distance where one could usually barely distinguish the mastheads of the largest merchant clippers, a shadow emerged. But this was not a ship. It was a moving island, forged of dark, riveted steel.

  The super-dreadnoughtAtlastarof the Imperial Gra-Valkas Navy came to a halt at a distance of 28 kilometers from the coastline. The giant, with a standard displacement of 64,000 tons (and a full load of 72,000), possessing not a single sail, belched from its massive canted funnel a column of thick, greasy anthracite smoke. This black trail rose to the clouds, appearing to defile the very purity of the magical sky.

  Its Main Battery turrets stirred into motion. Nine monstrous 460-millimeter guns slowly, with the low, bone-chilling hum of hydraulic drives and electric motors, traversed toward the still-sleeping city. Around it, like a school of predatory sharks around a leviathan, heavy cruisers and destroyers arranged themselves into an air defense formation—predatory, angular, soulless machines of war, devoid of all elegance, but perfect in their functionality.

  This was not an invasion. It was the legal procedure of carrying out a death sentence.

  On the battle bridge of theAtlastar, located within the armored citadel, a sterile, air-conditioned silence reigned. It was broken only by the soft rustle of paper, the hum of ventilation, and crisp, dry reports. Here it smelled not of the sea, but of heated insulation and metal.

  Captain Luxtal did not look at the city through binoculars. There was no need. He looked at the tactical plotting table and the meteorological reports.

  "Wind—Northeast, six meters per second. Humidity—seventy percent. Air temperature at shell apogee—minus ten, at water level—plus twelve," the Central Fire Control Station officer uttered in a monotone voice, devoid of all expression. "Data entered into the mechanical ballistic computer. Planetary rotation correction accounted for. Elevation angle calculated."

  "Spotter in position?" Luxtal asked briefly, adjusting the impeccably white collar of his tunic.

  "Reconnaissance floatplane online. Visual contact with targets confirmed. Grid 4-A: coastal battery of Fort 'Eastern'. Target status: zero activity. Garrison at morning assembly on the parade ground. Guns covered. Air defense absent."

  Luxtal looked at the stopwatch. The garrison was still at morning assembly on the parade ground, guns covered. They hadn't changed the disposition since the reconnaissance floatplane had confirmed visual contact forty minutes ago.

  He allowed himself one observation, spoken to no one in particular.

  "They've had forty minutes."

  He raised his hand.

  "Time. Open fire. Shell type—High-Explosive, instantaneous impact fuze. Full broadside salvo."

  At 06:00:00, the dreadnought shuddered as if it had struck a rock.

  The synchronous firing of the nine main caliber guns generated a muzzle blast of such monstrous force that it depressed the ocean surface around the ship's hull a meter down, instantly boiling the water within a hundred-meter radius and raising a wall of spray.

  Nine shells, each weighing almost one and a half tons, shattered the sound barrier as they exited the barrels.

  BO-O-O-OOM!

  The sound of the shot arrived late. The shells, accelerated to 800 meters per second, soared into the stratosphere, rising to an altitude of over 10 kilometers, to plunge down upon the enemy from there in a steep parabola. In flight, they emitted a sound resembling the scream of a thousand dying souls—the shriek of rent air, which would become the anthem of the apocalypse for Leiforia.

  28 kilometers to the east. The walls of Fort "Eastern Fang."

  The fortress Commandant, an old, distinguished general with a gray mustache, interrupted his inspection of the guard. He felt a strange vibration in the ground, and then saw, far out at sea on the very horizon, strange, soundless flashes resembling heat lightning.

  He brought a gold-adorned spyglass to his failing eyes, trying to discern the source of that strange black smoke marring the morning landscape.

  Suddenly, the air filled with a rising whistle. Implausible. Coming not from the sea, but straight from the zenith, from beneath the clouds.

  "What is that... thunder? In an absolutely clear sky?" he asked his adjutant in bewilderment, craning his head upward. "Or are dragons roaring?"

  The answer was death.

  The shells fromAtlastar'smain battery fell almost vertically, at an angle of 50–60 degrees. They didn't need to penetrate the thick granite walls of the bastions, designed for direct hits from sea-level cannonballs. They simply stepped over them. They struck from above, into the unprotected courtyards, barracks, and the powder magazines that were poorly shielded from overhead attacks.

  The fort's magical defense activated. The air above the bastions thickened and flashed violet — a barrier that had deflected cannonballs for three hundred years without showing a crack.

  It held for approximately four-tenths of a second.

  The mana-crystals in the fort's dungeons overloaded from the backlash and detonated simultaneously. The barrier vanished.

  The shells arrived.

  The earth didn't just shudder—it jumped.

  The explosion was of such force that the granite blocks of the bastions, each weighing several tons, were tossed into the air like pebbles in the surf. A giant, oily-black fireball with a crimson core swelled over the cape, devouring the oxygen.

  The shockwave, visible to the naked eye as a distortion in the air, swept over the harbor, obliterating port structures and blowing out windows five kilometers deep into the city. Fort "Eastern," the pride of the Empire's engineers, ceased to exist. In its place remained only a smoking, vitrified crater filling with seawater.

  "Correction: straddle complete. Target destroyed. Shift fire. Grid 4-B. Fort 'Western'," the voice of the artillery officer onAtlastarwas frighteningly mundane.

  Thus began the methodical, assembly-line work of dismantling the capital's defenses. No rage, no heroism. Just external ballistics. By noon, all coastal batteries had been turned into rubble. Then came the turn of the Admiralty, whose high tower collapsed, raising a cloud of dust. Then—the barracks of the Elite Royal Guard.

  Panic erupted in Leiforia. Crowds of maddened people rushed through the narrow streets, trampling one another, trying to escape the "heavenly fire" from which there was no salvation behind any walls. Priests in the temples cried out to the gods, but the heavens answered only with the whistle of falling death.

  But the most terrible and majestic spectacle in its senselessness occurred at 3:00 PM.

  The Admiral of the Royal Fleet, unable to bear the shame of inaction while watching the death of the city, gave the order. Out of the smoke-choked harbor, threading through the debris, came the remnants of the Empire's pride—thirty of the best 100-gun sailing ships of the line.

  "Raise all sails! Activate the 'Tears of the Wind God' to emergency power! Full pressure! We will close distance and board them, or die like warriors!" screamed the Admiral, standing on the flagship's bridge, his blade drawn.

  They sailed beautifully. In a perfect wake formation, snow-white sails against the black sky of the burning capital, with golden pennants fluttering. It was an attack from the past. An attack of honor against technology.

  The super-dreadnoughtAtlastardidn't even bother wasting main battery shells on them. The escort squadron—Hercules-class heavy cruisers—entered the battle.

  "Range eighteen thousand. Group targets, low speed, dense formation. Armor... wood, class one," reported the Gra-Valkan cruiser gunner with a note of professional contempt and even boredom. "High-explosive. Rapid fire."

  For the crews of the 1940s-era cruisers, this was like target practice against towing shields.

  The 203-millimeter shells, possessing monstrous destructive power against unarmored targets, entered the high wooden sides of the sailing ships with a howl. The fuses triggered inside.

  The effect was nightmarish. The wood didn't just break—it exploded, turning into millions of razor-sharp splinters that acted like shrapnel, mowing down gun crews more terribly than any metal. Masts fell, crushing decks and dragging hundreds of sailors down in tangled rigging. Powder magazines detonated, spewing fountains of fire into the sky. The Leiforian ships didn't sink—they simply disintegrated.

  The entire fleet of a great superpower, built over decades, ceased to exist in forty minutes without firing a single return shot. The sea in the bay turned crimson from blood and the setting sun reflecting in the oily film.

  The sky above the capital, Leiforia. 16:30.

  Having realized that the fleet at sea was destroyed and the forts turned into rubble, the Emperor of Leifor made a final, desperate bet. It was a bet not on strategy, but on pure valor.

  Obscuring the pre-sunset sun with hundreds of leathery wings, the entire Royal Aerial Armada rose into the sky: about three hundred and fifty elite knight-riders on heavy assault wyverns. The flower of the nation. The best noble families.

  "If we cannot reach them with cannons, we will burn their iron ship with Dragon Fire! Enter the 'dead zone' above the masts! Glory to Leifor!"

  This was the last, hysterical order transmitted via magic crystal to the knights' helmets.

  These were the bravest men of their time. Trained for years, linked by mental bonds with their beasts, clad inMithrilarmor enchanted to deflect arrows and musket balls. Their logic was simple and, in its own way, correct for their world: one ship, no matter how huge, cannot shoot in all directions simultaneously. If five hundred dragons dive at once, at least a hundred will break through. And burn the crew on the decks.

  They were wrong. They did not know the meaning ofanti-aircraft fire density.

  Atlastar Bridge.

  Captain Luxtal was not yawning. War was a job to him, and he took it seriously. He stood by the air defense radar scope. The green sweep was literally clogged with dots.

  "Group target. Azimuth 0-9-0. Range ten kilometers. Altitude — two thousand. Approaching in a dense 'wave'. Quantity... exceeds single target tracking limit. Estimate — about three hundred fifty," reported the air defense officer, his voice tense but clear.

  Luxtal nodded.

  "Understood. They hope to overwhelm our targeting channels with numbers." He turned to the gunners. "Activate AA Protocol 'Steel Hedgehog'. Unlimited expenditure of radar-fused shells authorized for dual-purpose guns. Establish a barrage curtain at three thousand meters. 25-millimeter autocannons — fire for effect without command, free hunt in sector."

  A moment later, the steel leviathan turned into an active volcano.

  Twelve twin 127mm dual-purpose turrets traversed almost vertically. Behind them, rotating in their tubs, one hundred fifty-two barrels of 25mm AA autocannons came to life.

  "FIRE!"

  The sky above the ship ceased to be transparent.

  The 127-millimeter guns, working like clockwork, ejected shell after shell. The radar-fused shells didn't require a direct hit on the wyverns. Their miniature radars detected the reflected signal from the biomass and detonated the warhead five to ten meters from the target.

  The air filled with thousands of explosions. Black, greasy clouds of shrapnel instantly blocked out the horizon.

  The wyverns flew into this wall at full speed — 350 kilometers per hour.

  Heavy fragments of hardened steel, flying at supersonic speeds, ignored mithril and scales. They worked like a blender. Dragons, having lost wings, with heads torn off, with guts spilling out, fell down by the dozens, knocking down their kin flying behind them on the way. Blast waves broke fragile wing bones. A rain of blood and chunks of flesh fell into the sea, dyeing the water red.

  But the knights kept flying. Those who broke through the wall of distant fire, maddened by rage, entered the kill zone of the small-caliber anti-aircraft artillery.

  And here they were met by a "buzzsaw."

  Quad and triple mounts created a dense net of tracers. The roar was such that eardrums burst even under helmets. Wyverns are not airplanes; they are animals. The deafening noise, flashes, and smell of blood drove the beasts mad. Animal terror proved stronger than the mental link with the riders.

  The wyverns went out of control. They shied away from the tracers, threw riders into the sea, bit into each other in panic, or simply froze in the air trying to turn — and instantly turned into sieves.

  "Port side! Breakthrough group! Range five hundred!"

  "Visual! Mounts three and four — suppress!"

  Long bursts tore the lead dragon to pieces. Its burning carcass crashed into the water a hundred meters from the dreadnought's side. That was the closest approach record.

  In twenty minutes, the sky over Leiforia was cleansed.

  The cannonade ceased as suddenly as it had begun. In the ensuing silence, only the hiss of overheating gun hydraulics and the splash of waves could be heard.

  Not a single dragon fireball touched the deck.

  Five hundred elite knights, the flower of the nation, simply ceased to exist, littering the surface of the bay with a carpet of dead its path toward the harbor, shaking the ash of a whole civilization's burned hopes off its armor.

  "Airspace clear," the radar operator's voice sounded hollow, as if he were speaking from underwater. The adrenaline was fading, leaving only ringing fatigue. "No active magic signatures detected. Group and single targets absent. Complete calm within a fifty-kilometer radius."

  Captain Luxtal, whose tunic remained impeccably white even in this hell of powder soot, nodded slowly. He looked at the smoking barrels of the AA guns on deck, at the soot-blackened water overboard.

  "Coastal batteries suppressed. Fleet destroyed. Aviation wiped out. City gates kicked in," he stated facts without a shadow of emotion.

  He picked up the long-range comms handset connected to the encryptor.

  "Task Force 'Bravo'. Path is clear. Corridor clean. Begin Phase Two."

  He set down the handset and looked at the tactical tablet. Phase Two was not his operation. His work was done. The landing force commander would handle the rest.

  He turned to the damage control officer.

  "Full ammunition inventory. Report expenditure against expected projections. I want numbers before the escort squadron completes its turn."

  And only now, when a single steel colossus had single-handedly broken the spine of an entire Superpower's defense, did the sea horizon cease to be empty.

  Out of the evening mist that had previously concealed their presence, silhouettes began to emerge, the sight of which would make any sailor's heart clench.

  It was the main armada of the Gra-Valkas Imperial Fleet.

  Three heavy aircraft carriers, each carrying death for an entire region. Dozens of angular, functionally ugly landing transports, their holds packed with tanks and infantry. Huge, pot-bellied tankers full of oil.

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  The sea became crowded. Hundreds of propellers frothed the water.

  The carriers turned into the wind.

  Signal lights flashed on their decks.

  With a low, bass hum resembling a swarm of giant hornets, flights of "Sirius" dive-bombers rose into the sky. This time their hardpoints were loaded not with anti-ship bombs, but with heavy high-explosives for work on concrete and stone.

  They passed over Atlastar', and rushed toward the burning capital.

  Now that there were no defenders left in the sky, the bombing turned into methodical, cold, textbook work.

  They didn't waste bombs on the wooden slums of the poor — those would burn on their own when the firestorm rose. Gra-Valkas pilots "took out" the city surgically, square by square.

  Life Support Nodes.

  A flight of "Sirius" bombers dived on the ancient Roman-style aqueducts supplying water from the mountains to the city of a million people.

  BOOM!

  The central arches collapsed. Millions of liters of water rushed not into pipes, but onto the city outskirts, sweeping away shacks, while the city itself instantly went dry. There was nothing left to fight the fires with.

  The next target became the giant, spell-guarded granaries and food warehouses of the Port District.

  Phosphorous bombs turned the food reserves for the entire country for the winter into inedible ash in ten minutes.

  Gra-Valkas coldly, like an experienced butcher, cut the veins and tendons of the defending city. Logistics collapsed instantly. The army was left without food, hospitals without water and magic, and the population without hope.

  Leiforia wasn't just destroyed. It was bled dry, dehydrated, and brought to its knees even before the first infantry boot touched its cobblestones.

  The coast of the Empire's capital, the city of Leiforia.

  When the thick, stifling dust from the ruthless naval bombardment began to slowly settle, revealing the disfigured, blackened skeleton of the city to the eye, it was not rescue vessels that began to moor at the destroyed docks, but the heralds of the final end. Pushing aside charred wreckage of masts and the bloated corpses of harbor defenders with their prows, the ugly, wide flat-bottomed barges and specialized tank landing ships of the Gra-Valkas Imperial Fleet approached the shore.

  They bore no flags of parley. They bore only steel.

  With a heavy, grinding metallic clang that made the surviving defenders on the shore feel their teeth ache and their stomachs turn cold, the massive bow ramps of these ships crashed down onto the cracked granite embankments. That sound rang out like the falling of a coffin lid.

  Leiforian militiamen—simple townsfolk, dockworkers, and the few surviving guardsmen—clutching flintlock muskets, halberds, and bottles of alchemical fire in sweaty hands slippery with fear, froze. With superstitious, paralyzing horror, they stared into the dark, fuel-oil-and-damp-smelling bellies of these steel whales.

  Something growled inside. Low and guttural at first, and then the roar became deafening, making the pavement vibrate.

  Out of the darkness of the holds, shrouded in clouds of blue-gray, stinking exhaust from low-octane diesel, crawled the monsters of a new era. Not beasts, but machines. Angular, painted in utilitarian dirty-gray-green camouflage, covered in rivets and mud.

  These were the medium tanks of the Gra-Valkas Empire—25-ton steel beasts. Clanking their steel tracks against the ancient, noble stone of the embankment, striking sparks and crumbling the curbs, they rolled out onto the shore slowly, with mechanical inevitability. Their turrets with short 75-millimeter barrels and coaxial machine guns rotated busily, searching for targets in the smoke. Commanders, sticking out of hatches in their headsets, barked commands into microphones, completely ignoring the pathetic chain of defenders.

  Behind the armor, hiding behind steel sides and moving from cover to cover in short, professional dashes, assault infantry came ashore. Soldiers in mouse-gray greatcoats, whose faces were gray and indifferent, as if they were walking to a shift at a factory. They were draped with heavy pouches, with ribbed grenades on long wooden handles hanging from their belts. On their heads were characteristic deep steel helmets with "ears," completely covering the back of the head and making their silhouettes look inhuman.

  In their hands, they held neither noble spears nor swords, but short, blued barrels of automatic weapons, ready to spew streams of lead at a speed inaccessible to any archer. They shouted no battle cries. They silently, methodically took positions, taking aim at windows and barricades, preparing to clear the city block by block.

  The land phase of annihilation had begun.

  Capital, Leiforia. The Square of the Three Kings.

  General of the Royal Guard, CountDorian, decided to make his last, decisive stand in the very heart of the capital, right at the foot of the ancient walls that remembered the founding of the Empire. It was a wide, open space in front of the Imperial Palace, paved with stone polished by centuries—the ideal place for classic linear tactics, which had been taught in the best military academies of Leifor for the last two hundred years and which had never failed... until today.

  The Count acted according to the textbook written in the blood of his glorious ancestors. He lined up his regiments—ten thousand guardsmen, the flower of the nation, the best sons of the aristocracy, who from birth had prepared to die for the Emperor—into impeccable, geometrically precise, dense squares.

  Through the periscope, the light was strange — the smoke had broken up enough that the sun was reflecting off their bayonets and gold epaulettes. Bright blue uniforms. Parade dress, Steiner noted. They had dressed for this. Which had broken through the smoke. A forest of fixed bayonets gleamed like a sea of steel. Above their heads, flapping in the wind, proud silk banners with the coats of arms of provinces fluttered. In the front row, forming a living bastion, stood battle mages in gray robes, raising their staffs, ready to create fireballs.

  Dorian believed in honor. He believed in iron discipline. And he devoutly, fanatically believed in the superiority of magic over any machines.

  "Not one step back!" his voice, amplified by theLoudspeakerspell, rolled like a booming echo over the frozen square. "We will meet them chest-on! We will crush them with numbers, magic, and courage! Show these soulless, clanking mechanisms what the spirit of Leifor is worth! For the Emperor! Stand to the death!"

  He drew his family rapier, saluting the as-yet-unseen enemy. Thousands of throats merged in a single cry that rattled the windows in the palace.

  The advance tank battalion of the Imperial Gra-Valkas Army, grinding steel tracks on historic cobblestones and indifferently crushing carts abandoned by merchants, rolled out of the dark maw of the central avenue. The tanks stopped at the end of the square. The distance to the dense, motionless ranks of the guard was exactly 800 meters.

  The battalion commander, Ober-LieutenantSteiner, pressed his eyes to the rubber cups of the commander's periscope. He stared for several seconds at the living, undulating wall of people in bright, carnival rags. He wiped the eyepieces, not believing his own eyes. It looked like a historical reenactment, not war.

  "'Center', this is 'Armor-1'. Visual contact. The enemy... has formed into a dense square. I repeat: a solid wall of infantry. On open terrain with clear lines of fire. No camouflage, no cover, standing at full height, shoulder to shoulder. Are they... are they idiots?"

  "'Armor-1', cut the poetry," the radio responded indifferently through the crackle of static interference with the Colonel's voice. "Mission remains the same. Clear sector 'Palace'. Destroy manpower obstructing advancement. Proceed according to total suppression protocol."

  Steiner sighed. He almost felt sorry for these fools.

  "Copy that. Battalion, attention! Load high-explosive. Fuses—instant action. Gunners—aim for center of mass. Rapid fire on concentrations!"

  "Fire!"

  A synchronous salvo of thirty 75-millimeter tank guns tore the air apart with a dry, vicious, whipping bark.

  Shell casings fell with a clatter onto the floors of the combat vehicles.

  The shells flew into the dense, warm, living mass of people.

  BOOM! BANG! CRACK!

  High-explosive detonations in closed ranks produced the effect of an industrial meat grinder. Each burst mowed down circles ten to fifteen meters in diameter, instantly turning elite soldiers, fathers of families, and someone's sons into bloody mince, shreds of blue uniforms, and bone meal. People were tossed into the air like rag dolls, with torn-off limbs. The perfect geometric squares instantly disintegrated, leaving smoking, screaming bald spots filled with bodies on the square.

  "Mages! Hold the line! Close the gaps! Heal the wounded!" screamed Count Dorian frantically, his face splattered with someone else's blood. He didn't understand what was happening. Why wasn't magic working? Why was the enemy striking so far and so hard without engaging in honest combat?

  Steiner watched the periscope for three seconds. The formation had already ceased to exist as a tactical unit. Continuing with main guns at this range was burning ammunition for no military purpose.

  "Cease tank gun fire. Engage the 'saws.' Support infantry — suppress survivors."

  The commander gave the signal. And the machine guns spoke.

  On tank turrets and from the shattered windows of neighboring buildings already occupied by Gra-Valkas rangers, general-purpose machine guns opened withering fire.

  For a soldier of the late 18th century accustomed to rare musket volleys, this sound was not shooting. It was the sound of the fabric of the universe itself being torn, a continuous, vibrating, high-pitched roar:

  TR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!

  1200 rounds per minute. Fifty barrels. Sixty thousand bullets per minute.

  A leaden rain rose over the square, creating a wall of death that was impossible to pass through.

  Leiforian guardsmen, the best marksmen of the continent, who prided themselves on being able to reload a musket in 20 seconds, didn't even have time to raise their weapons to their shoulders. They were absolutely, totally defenseless before this mechanical fury.

  They didn't fall one by one. They collapsed in whole ranks, like ripe wheat under a giant, invisible scythe. 7.92mm bullets with tungsten cores, fired with such density and kinetics, stitched through three or four people completely, ignoring mithril cuirasses, skin, and flesh. Blood sprayed in fountains, turning the pavement into a swamp.

  Proud, patriotic cries of "For the Emperor!" choked in brown foam and were replaced by inhuman screams of pain and animal, panic horror. The formation broke. Discipline evaporated. Men, maddened by the noise and the sight of their comrades' guts, threw down their muskets and tried to run.

  But there was nowhere to run. Those who turned their backs were coldly, methodically mowed down by fire—disciplined Gra-Valkas machine gunners simply shifted tracers without releasing the trigger, sweeping barrels like hoses, creating crossfire zones from which there was no exit. Ricochets off stones finished off those who tried to press themselves to the ground.

  It was all over in ten, maximum fifteen minutes.

  Ten thousand people. An entire generation of men.

  When the acrid, white gunpowder smoke, mixed with the thick, sickly-sweet smell of fresh blood and torn entrails, began to slowly dissipate over the square, a terrible picture was revealed to the tankers.

  This was not a victory. This was a slaughter. Mountains, literal barrows of bloody meat and bright rags littered the ancient pavement. A red, thick sea in which thousands of wounded floundered, wheezing and howling, slowly dying without help.

  Not a single survivor who could hold a weapon remained on their feet.

  Count Dorian lay face down in a dirty puddle, with a shot through his head, in an unnatural pose, still gripping his beautiful, but absolutely useless rapier.

  "Move out," Steiner commanded indifferently, trying not to look at the driver's monitors.

  The tanks, busily purring with diesel engines and releasing blue clouds of smoke into the sky, clanged gears and moved forward. They drove straight over the bodies, because bypassing this carpet of death was impossible. Heavy machines ground with their tracks what remained of the "flower of the nation," and the crunch of bones and breaking weapons under the treads was audible even through the roar of engines and headsets.

  The column, without slowing down, aimed its soot-stained barrels, still smoking from heat, at the golden gates of the Imperial Palace. The path was open.

  The Imperial Palace.

  Morning of the fifth day of the siege.

  The Imperial Palace of Leiforia, a thousand-year-old masterpiece of magical architecture with soaring spires, stained glass windows made of enchanted glass, and famous hanging gardens, now resembled a gnawed skeleton blackened by soot. Priceless crystal crumbled under the feet of the stormtroopers, the gardens were burnt out by napalm, and the white marble walls were pockmarked by shrapnel and large-caliber bullets.

  Gra-Valkas tanks—hundreds of steel machines with crosses on their turrets—surrounded the citadel in a tight ring, bumper to bumper, aiming their 75mm guns at the shattered gilded gates. Diesel exhaust mixed with the smell of burning.

  The dead silence that had settled after the night's cannonade was broken by an unnaturally loud voice, distorted by mechanics and metal. A half-track armored personnel carrier with loudspeakers on the roof clanked its tracks as it pulled up to the main gates. Beside it stepped out a negotiator—a Colonel of the Gra-Valkas Imperial Security Service, in an impeccable black tunic that seemed like sacrilege amidst the dust and filth of war.

  He brought the microphone to his lips, and the sound of his voice, amplified by electronics, bounced off the palace walls, penetrating every hall, every corridor, like a poisonous fog:

  "To the Emperor of Leifor and the remnants of the garrison! Listen closely. Your army is destroyed. Your fleet lies at the bottom of the ocean. The entire country is under the full military control of the Gra-Valkas Empire. Further resistance is senseless suicide that will only delay the inevitable."

  The pause was calculated to let the words sink into the walls.

  "We give you exactly one hour for unconditional surrender. Come out with your hands raised, without weapons, through the main gates. In this case, we, as a civilized nation, guarantee life to you and your servants. In case of refusal or expiration of time, we will commence an assault for total annihilation using heavy artillery and flamethrowers. This is the final warning. The clock is ticking."

  Inside the Throne Room, a gray, grave-like gloom reigned. Light pierced only through ragged breaches in the high vault, where frightened birds that had flown inside darted about. The floor was littered with broken glass, fallen plaster, spent shell casings, and shreds of precious tapestries upon which monarchs had trodden for centuries.

  Amidst this destruction, on his massive golden throne, which had miraculously survived the bombardment, sat theEmperor. His ceremonial robe was torn and soaked with dust and dried blood, an abrasion from a stone impact glowed crimson on his forehead, but his posture remained impeccably straight.

  Around him, clutching halberds and the last charged magic blades, stood the "Immortal Hundred" in a semicircle—the last surviving guardsmen. Their faces were gray from fatigue and lack of sleep, their uniforms had turned into rags, but in their eyes burned the fanatical, doomed devotion of men who had already accepted death.

  They heard every word of the ultimatum coming from the street. And they looked at their sovereign.

  The Emperor slowly raised his head. He knew that this colonel outside the walls was not lying. They would all be killed. They would be ground into dust, just as the fleet was erased. But to surrender to barbarians who killed his people, to burn his honor for the sake of a few years of life in a cage—meant admitting that thousands of years of Leifor's great history were worth nothing.

  "They want to see us on our knees,"his voice was quiet, but in the dead silence of the hall, every word sounded hollow, like the strike of a funeral bell."They want to parade me in chains through the streets of my capital, like a wild beast in a circus. That will not happen."

  He looked at the Captain of the Guard, and the latter nodded silently, with deep, tragic understanding, lowering the dented visor of his helmet.

  The Emperor shifted his grip on the heavy scepter, as if it were a weapon of war, and, leaning on it, stood up. His shadow grew on the wall.

  "We will not surrender to barbarians,"he said quietly but firmly, looking at the massive closed doors behind which steel death waited.

  "We will die like kings."

  60 minutes later.

  The hand on the colonel's chronometer clicked. The hour was up.

  "Fire,"he dropped into the radio in a mundane tone.

  The tanks and field guns standing at point-blank range opened direct fire.

  BOOM! CRACK!

  Dozens of 75mm and 105mm high-explosive shells slammed into the palace fa?ade, blowing out windows, shattering ancient walls, and bringing marble columns and painted ceilings crashing down right onto the defenders' heads. The building shook, becoming shrouded in dust.

  Then, flying into the smoking breaches were not spells, but the ribbed cylinders of hand grenades and hissing smoke canisters.

  Gra-Valkan grenadier assault teams in gas masks—looking like monstrous insects with proboscises in the smoke—burst into the palace with submachine guns at the ready.

  The corridors filled with the dry crackle of automatic bursts, the ring of ricochets off marble, and the muzzle flashes in the dusty gloom. The guardsmen, blinded by gas and smoke, coughing up blood, tried to counterattack. They rushed into bayonet charges, trying to reach the enemy, but were gunned down at point-blank range by long, sweeping sprays of fire, denied even a single step closer. The magic of their last amulets flickered out under the hail of lead.

  When the stormtroopers blew out the heavy doors of the Throne Room with a directional charge of plastic explosives, time seemed to slow down.

  Through the settling dust, theEmperor, staggering from concussion, tried to rise from his throne. He lifted his ancestral sword. The blade flared with a faint blue light—the last spark of magic in this cursed, dying place.

  The monarch opened his mouth. He wanted to speak parting words. Words of curses upon the invaders. To leave with dignity, looking the enemy in the eye.

  The assault team officer who entered first didn't listen. He didn't salute. He didn't issue a challenge to a duel. Through the lenses of his gas mask, he saw before him not the monarch of an ancient dynasty, but simply "Target Number One"—an armed hostile in the kill zone.

  Coolly, almost lazily, he raised the barrel of his submachine gun.

  RAT-A-TAT-TAT!

  A short three-round burst struck the monarch in the chest. The amulet's force field didn't even trigger. The sparkling sword fell from his unclenched hand and rolled down the marble steps of the throne with a melodious ring. The Emperor collapsed backward into his chair, eyes wide open in final astonishment, staining the red velvet of the throne with bright scarlet arterial blood.

  No pathos. No grandeur. Just the work of an executioner on the assembly line of war.

  The officer walked up to the body, squeamishly kicked the sacred sword aside so it wouldn't get in the way, and, pressing the button on his throat microphone, spoke in a hollow voice distorted by the membrane:

  "'Center', this is 'Assault-1'. Target 'Crown' liquidated. Visual confirmation positive. Resistance in sector suppressed. Palace under full control."

  By noon, over the smoking ruins, where for centuries the proud golden griffin on an azure background had flown, the standard of Gra-Valkas was slowly raised—a black imperial circle crossed by a white cross on a blood-red cloth.

  This flag promised no protection. It promised no prosperity.

  It promised power. Undivided and cruel.

  The Central Square of Leiforia.

  Thousands of survivors had been gathered on the intact, ash-covered cobblestones. Beaten, terrified, and covered in soot, the residents of the capital—who just yesterday were the proud subjects of a Superpower—were surrounded by a dense, impenetrable ring of infantry and armored vehicles. The black, predatory cooling jackets of machine guns stared at the crowd with unblinking eyes, while the gunners' fingers rested on the triggers, ready at any moment to begin a bloody harvest at the slightest sign of disobedience or panic.

  The Governor-General of the new territories climbed onto a platform hastily knocked together from boards of broken trade stalls. He was an elderly man in a field uniform, with a face hard and devoid of emotion, as if cast from concrete. He had no lavish retinue or heralds—only a microphone on a stand and two guards armed with automatic rifles.

  "Citizens of the former Empire,"his voice, amplified manifold by mechanics and distorted by speakers, rolled over the square, bouncing off the charred facades of the buildings. It was devoid of human intonation, grating like metal on glass."Hear the will of His Imperial Majesty Gralux."

  The crowd held its breath. The silence was such that one could hear the fire crackling in the ruins of the neighboring block.

  "'From this day forth and forevermore, the state entity known as the Empire of Leifor is dissolved and abolished. These lands transfer into the eternal and inalienable ownership of the Gra-Valkas Empire and shall henceforth be named Protectorate West-1. All property of the crown, trade guilds, and aristocracy is nationalized and transferred to the administration of the military authorities.'"

  The crowd murmured dully and fearfully—it was the sound of collective despair, the realization that their lives were over. But a short, sharp machine-gun burst into the air instantly restored dead silence. Hot shell casings fell, clinking against the stones.

  The Governor didn't even blink. He continued to read the list of new commandments:

  "For concealing weapons—execution by firing squad. For harboring former officials and mages—execution by firing squad. For sabotage at the workplace—execution by firing squad. For spreading false rumors—execution by firing squad. Order. Discipline. Labor. This is what we have brought you in exchange for your chaos, weakness, and false freedom. Any resistance is futile and will be punishable by death, not only for the guilty but also for their family. The Era of Barbarism is over."

  What followed was a demonstrative, barbarically pragmatic "cleansing of society." Right there in the square, using lampposts and the trees of the alley as gallows, the surviving ministers, generals, and representatives of the highest aristocracy who had been taken prisoner were executed.

  They were not dignified with the noble execution by beheading, to which they were accustomed and which they considered a privilege of the nobility. They were condemned to a shameful, agonizing death in a hemp noose, like common bandits or thieves.

  The ropes went taut. Bodies that had once ruled the fates of millions twitched in agony and fell still.

  They swayed in the wind against the backdrop of the burning city, black silhouettes against a gray sky, visibly demonstrating to all: the old laws no longer apply. The gods did not save their chosen ones. Magic did not protect them.

  The Fall of Leiforbecame not just a military victory of one country over another. It was a cruel object lesson for the entire New World. It took the Gra-Valkas military machine justfive days—exactly one hundred and twenty hours—to wipe off the face of the earth, digest, and spit out a Superpower whose history spanned hundreds of years and whose grandeur had seemed unshakable.

  On that day, ocean winds carried the ash of Leiforia far beyond the borders of the continent. And along with the ash flew rumors. Rumors of steel monsters crawling on land and fearing no fire. Of iron birds that fly faster than wyverns and burn cities from the heavens, knowing no fatigue. And of steel ships without sails, capable of destroying entire fleets from beyond the horizon with a single strike.

  These rumors sowed icy panic in the hearts of the rulers of the Second and First Civilizations, forcing kings to wake up in a cold sweat. The shadow of a new, terrible order, where only he who has stronger armor and a more powerful caliber survives, fell upon the map of the world.

  And the whole world, from the forests of Qua-Toyne to the shining towers of Runepolis and the glass skyscrapers of Moscow, holding its breath, waited for one thing:who will become the next victim?