JUDGEMENT PART ONE

Before us lay a sea of dunes, shimmering under a sky bleached white by a sun that offered no warmth, only a relentless, punishing heat.
Before us stood the entirety of Dietha's domain, but with us, was the combined might of the Imperium, two hundred thousand strong.
It was us, against the end of the world, and with a week left for me, it really felt like it.

Inside our command tent, a massive wooden table groaned under the weight of maps detailing the three-pronged assault that would, in theory, form a cage around Dietha's sanctum.
General Kaelyn gave the final briefing, his voice a gravelly certainty in the tense air.
The Elven fleet was in position.
Admiral Valenski's navy had established its blockade.
The First Company was ready to march.
All the pieces were on the board.

"The final phase commences at dawn," Tulote said. "The armies will begin the advance. But the Imperilati cannot hold out for the weeks it will take for us to reach them. They need relief now. We will be that relief."

Before we could finalize our own strike plan, Tulote held up a hand.

"There is one last gift from my father. Something I hoped we'd never need, but I suppose its all we have now."

He led us to a series of heavy, iron-bound chests at the back of the tent.
With a grunt, he threw open the lid of the first.
Inside, nestled in velvet lining, and this is what Tulote told me afterwards, was a suit of master-crafted power armour, forged from a dark, star-speckled alloy, the likes of which I have never seen.

"Project Chimera." Tulote explained.

"My father's last secret project. He believed that the day might come when a handful of champions would need the strength of an army. Each suit is a masterpiece of Terracane engineering and arcane science, designed to bond with its wielder and amplify their innate abilities to their absolute limit."

He revealed them one by one.
His own was a suit of regal, heavy plate, emblazoned with the Imperial sunburst, its servos humming with a sort of deep, earthy power.
Cassandra's was a sleek, form-fitting suit of midnight black.

"This is incredibly light, it's as though it has no weight to it. This is wonderful!" Cassandra remarked.

Xerta let out a low whistle as he revealed hers: a suit of pure unadorned dwarven pragmatism, all thick plates, reinforced joints, and powerful, exposed servos.

"Now this, this I can get behind!" Xerta exclaimed.

Then, Tulote opened the last chest.
My armour was a fusion of all their styles.
It was functional like Xerta's, yet posses an elegant, sweeping design like Cassandra's, and was marked with the subtle, regal authority of Tulote's.
Faint, silvery glyphs were etched into its surface, waiting to be filled with power.

Donning it was a strange experience.
The moment the final plate locked into place, I felt a connection.
The armour felt like an extension of my own body, anticipating my movements, responding to my will, in such a way that was grossly more fluid than traditional armour sets.
Especially the modern armour set I wore during my time in my country's navy.

The four relics Erton had given me hummed in their pouches at my belt, connecting to the suit's latent energy.
For the first time, I felt like the weapon Silus had always demanded I be.

-

"The armies will engage the horde in a full frontal assault. We will punch through enemy lines, reach the Imperilati, and break this siege from the inside out. This is the battle for OUR WORLD! Let's not keep the bastards waiting." Tulote declared.

We charged, five figures of immense power heading towards our final battle.

Tulote no longer needed to stomp to command the earth; the armour was bonded to his Terra Flow.
With a mere thought, great walls of rock and sand erupted before him, and his flaming sword, Flamma, now burned with the heat a star about to go supernova.

Cassandra was a blur, a phantom of shadow and steel moving too fast for the untrained eye to follow, her rapier complimenting her very well.

Xerta was a juggernaut.
The servos in her armour amplified her already prodigious strength tenfold.
Every swing of her hammer landed with the force of a cannonball, but not quite at the level of the Obsidian Maw, creating craters in the packed earth and sending demons flying like broken dolls.

"Come on, you ugly bastards!" she roared, her voice joyful and thunderous.

"Let's see if you can scratch this paint!"

And I finally understood.
The sword and my soul were one.

"Yes, boy! See the battle not as a series of threats, but a singular juggernaut to be outright DELETED! This is how a true heir of the Gladius fights!" Silus's voice cheered in my mind, filled with a wild, paternal pride.

I met the charge of an elite, twin-bladed demon champion.
In the past, I would have used my power to find a flaw and end it.
Now, I simply fought.
My new armour allowed me to channel Order seamlessly through my body and into the blade.
I parried the demon's first strike.
As our blades met, I sent a sharp, precise pulse of Order down the Gladius, not to shatter the demon's weapon, but to subtly warp the thread of its balance.

The demon stumbled, its footing suddenly unsure.
It was a barely perceptible falter, but in the heart of a duel, it was a fatal one.
My counterstrike was already in motion, the Gladius moving in a graceful, silver arc that found the gap in its neck armour.
The fight was over before the demon even understood why it had lost its footing.

I was no longer just reacting.
I was dictating the terms of every engagement.
I was surrounded, three hulking brutes closing in.
Furthermore, I spun, the Gladius held in a two-handed grip, and released a controlled, horizontal wave of pure Order.
It was a ripple in reality that momentarily disrupted the chaotic energy that animated the demons.
They froze for a single, crucial second, their movements sluggish, their minds confused.
It was all the time I needed.
Three quick, clean thrusts, and I was moving on.

We carved a bloody path through the heart of the horde.
Our target was the dark ring of elite demons surrounding the last bastion of Imperial resistance.
We could see them now - a small, circular barricade made of demonic corpses and shattered rock.
Upon it stood the Imperilati, their own power armour, a precursor to our own, scarred and dented.
They were a band of brothers and sisters surrounded by the damned.

We crashed into the demonic rear guard like a thunderbolt.
The five of us shattered their elite circle.
I saw the look of utter shock on the face of the Imperilati commander, a grizzled old warrior with a magnificent white beard, as we broke through his would-be executioners and formed a line beside him on the barricade.

"Lord Regent Tulote?" he bellowed over the din. "By the four! Is that you?" his voice cracking with disbelief.

"It is Commander! And we've brought the hero with us! The Imperium is here! Hold the line!" Tulote roared back, his flaming sword decapitating a demon that dared to scale the wall of corpses.

A cheer erupted from the Imperilati.

The battle for the breach became the focal point of the entire war.
I found myself at the centre of the defensive line, my enhanced perception allowing me to see the entire ebb and flow of the fight.

"Heavy brutes, left flank! They're trying to break through!" I yelled.

"On it!" Xerta would roar,

Her armoured form leapt from the barricade to meet their charge with the force of a landslide.

"Air support! Those winged shrieking things!"

Cassandra would become a flicker of shadow, her rapier finding the hearts of the flying demons before they could begin their dive.

A massive, ogre-like demon broke through, its club raised to crush me while I was engaged with another.
I reacted within a split of a split second and disintegrated them both.

The battle raged for hours.
Finally, with a great roar that echoed across the desert, the main line of the First Company broke through, their fresh numbers flooding into the breach we had held.

The demonic horde, leaderless and now caught between the Imperilati and the main army, broke off.
They scattered, fleeing into the desert wastes, pursued by the vengeful steel of the victorious Imperium.

I stood on a hill of corpses, the Gladius humming in my hand, my armour steaming in the heat.
The Imperilati were saved.

The old commander of the Imperilati approached me, his helmet removed.
His face was lined with weariness, but his eyes shone with a fierce, renewed light.

"Hero, my name is General  Tiberius. We have held this ground for three hundred and fifty-eight days, awaiting your arrival. You have honoured us."

"The honour is mine, General, but the war isn't over." I said, my voice cold and steady.

The celestial being had given me a year to save this world.
I looked at the sun hanging high in the sky.

I had six days left.