2022-06-19: A Savage Power
- Cutscene: A Savage Power
- Cast: Josephine Lovelace
- Where: The Outer Reaches of Sylvaland
- Date: June 19th 2022
- Summary: Akasha is deployed in Sylvaland, to devastating effect..
BGM: (Shoujo Kakumei Utena ~ Shinkichi Mitsumune - Possession) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty6RAftmsNI
Arunia Village has its troubles, much like any place does in this age. But of the villages counted among those as under the protection of Sylvaland, its troubles may well count as lesser: monsters, bandits. The occasional bad harvest. The first two, the knights of Sylvaland do their best to keep to a minimum, when they can. The last, though...
The growing clouds over the land as the sun slips below the horizon might be a promise of better things to come for Arunia. This spring has been a relatively dry one, and unless something changes soon, it bodes poorly for the harvest to come.
It becomes clear that it won't simply be a much-awaited rain, however. The gathering clouds are too heavy, too dark. Sparks jump between the thunderheads; low rumbling announces what is surely imminent.
The flash that leaps from the heavens is as the finger of God: what lightning has struck erupts into flame, the destruction announcing itself for miles with a rolling boom.
Nor is it the last bolt. They come down like a rain of knives, falling in a jagged like as the strikes grow ever closer to Arunia Village.
Flames take the countryside before long.
Flames take the village.
No normal storm could behave this way.
"That should about do it here. Call in the regulars, this is all theirs now."
So speaks one of the technicians among the support team up here in the hills overlooking Arunia. Arunia may well not exist by the time dawn breaks.
"Sure must be a pain in the ass," Josie drawls, her gaze on the flames in the distance. "Not getting' any further'n this.. Guess it's different than undirected strikes." She glances up, towards the heavens.
She might have already known that it wouldn't be visible from here. The sky is still heavy with the clouds Akasha had seeded in preparation for this deadly storm.
"Well, of course. It's way up there," one of the men packing up the equipment remarks, shaking his head. "It would be like trying to hit a bullseye on a target several miles away. The closer we can get to the target with the equipment, the more accurate it can be."
Josie shrugs absently. "Right you are," she says, as if this hadn't been explained to her before, and this is the first time she'd been privy to the knowledge of how they'd worked out how to force Akasha's power over the weather to ever more weaponized degrees. Some fine points aren't worth arguing over.
Her gaze now is on the burning village. Or rather, the flames where she knows the village to be. ...To have been. At this distance in the dark, she sees only the flames and the suggestion of the buildings they consume.
It would be death by a thousand cuts. One village, one town at a time -- Odessa would force Sylvaland to its knees. Only a total surrender would be accepted. With Sylvaland out of the running, then, it should become that much easier to fracture apart the remainder.
A small spark lights the dark much nearer at hand, a far cry from the lightning that had split heaven and earth. Josie smokes a cigarette as if it were her life raft, her gaze still on the fires consuming Arunia.
"Well," she remarks at last.
"Here's a how-de-do."