The Occupied Territories, planet Maramanakama, the Capital city Tolina, the Dukhym district.

The Occupied Territories, planet Maramanakama, the Capital city Tolina, the Dukhym district.

9:53 Local Planetary Time.

Explosions raged as rebels struck with fury attacks made of fire, wind, water, their intended targets.

The city's maran resistance cell ambushed the local Imperial patrol, or rather they had done a reasonable first volley against them, for after the element of surprise wore off, the Imperial units quickly got over their initial shock and confusion and counterattacked.

First by raising their shields and immediately activating the earth spells within them, raising the ground around themselves and shaping it to form a protective wall to block any more attacks.

After that the Imperial troops then launched a volley of their own against the interlopers.

In that instance the battle changed from a successful strike on the ambushed to a slaughter of the ambushers.

After the first counter-volley struck this group of Maran resistance fighters they slowly, but surely, started falling one by one to the might of the Empire.

For no matter how much the hated their overlords, and how much heart they put into summoning the elements and combining their powers for victory, formation and discipline was what won battles.

A great explosion smashed against, shook, and reshaped the rooftop where their leader Ahmaianos stood along with his fellow rebel fighters.

He lost his balance, fell back from the shockwave, hitting his head, losing consciousness from the impact, but after a moment of pitch darkness he opened his eyes to his new surroundings.

Realizing that nothing else could be done today and that the tide was quickly turning against them, Ahmaianos gave the order to retreat, but after he shouted his order he received no reply, in fact he heard nothing except the noise of the enemy bombardment.

A chill went down his spine, as for a moment the shock of him realizing what has just happened caused his mind to block all sounds around him, making him hear nothing but silence, even the thunderous pounding of the imperial attacks were not perceived by him as the rebel leader came to grips with his surroundings and his situation.

He looked to his left and right and realized that he was the last survivor of his squad.

The others had all fallen or rather had been burned, crushed or sliced apart by the enemy's attack, leaving nothing but body parts rather than bodies behind.

As the shock reached its apex, from inside his heart anger filled him at seeing his friends death, his blood was up, his hearing returned!

Ahmaianos quickly retreated even farther away from the edge of the rooftop and jumped across its edge, landing on the neighboring building.

From there he continued his journey across rooftops until he managed to flank the enemy from behind.

The resistance leader, and last survivor of his team, peered over the edge to look down at the Imperials who were still firing at where his squad had fallen.

He aimed an arrow with his crossbow at one of the attackers and fired the weapon at the soldier that seemed to be the commander of this group.

Energy glowed from both the crystals inside the bow and within the arrow as both were charged with spells, their runes lighting up, ancient letters and numbers danced across them proclaiming the dominance of the power of magic over nature itself, as in that moment, the maran rebel launched the arrow.

During its swift flight trough the air the arrow gathered the water vapors from the atmosphere around its flight path, as it did so the runes danced once more, their glow drew the water, who joined them in its dance and formed itself around the arrow, encasing it in a vortex of liquid, all done with the swiftness of an eagle and the grace of a sparrow.

When it neared its target another pulse of magic came from the runes on the arrow, creating a bright light of pure energy that flowed through the body of water around it, bringing the swiftest, harshest cold to the dance, enveloping the vortex.

When the second wave finished its journey from core to tip it fizzled out of existence as it hit the end of the once small arrow, then growing vortex of water, now a great pillar of ice and frost that struck the imperial commander with full force.

The blow was a hard one, but it did not do as much damage as one would expect, the shape of the armor deflected the blow from its design and the way it was build and assembled, the padding inside cushioned the force of impact and not a width of frost struck true on the Imperials body, for one does not earn an empire without mastering war, or properly equipping ones soldier.

The weapon struck with the fury of winter, but winter could not break the empire, but it did leave its mark.

For the fraction of the force of the ice arrow that was felt by the imperial officer, was enough to make him collapse to the ground from its impact and when the arrow impacted the ground near the imperial an explosion of ice and snow shot all around it, making the officer's lungs nearly freeze and hitting with all its might the soldiers around him, burying some in dark shell of ice and cold.

With that Ahmaianos, on the hottest day of summer, brought the fury of winter on the heads of his people's enemies.

A smile graced his lips as he saw the impact of his second ambush, but like winter, it was passing and fleeting in the face of spring.

And this was summer!

For it was not the first storm that these troops weathered trough.

The other members of the squad seeing what happened to their commander and their other fellow soldiers, immediately reacted.

The second highest ranking officer quickly took command and doing what he was trained to do and issued his orders, orders that were already half done by the troops, before he even started to issue them.

Trained, disciplined and battle forged as they were, the squad immediately shored up and reformed their lines, dug out their comrades, moved their wounded commander and fellow soldiers, to a rear position for healing, and they did it all at once and so fast that Ahmaianos at first had looked at a force that suffered a major blow, then he blinked and that squad seemed to disappear, to be replaced by a new one that had not suffered two heavy ambushes.

But rather it was a group of soldiers that were eager, and very, very happy, to repay him in kind for his 'hospitality' to them as 'guests' in his country.

The imperial squad looked to where the shot was fired from and quickly retaliated in kind with their own arrows.

Once more the energy from crystals lit up, once more runes danced, but this times it was ten times the number of Ahmaiano's attack, and after the volley was fired, the arrows which were from all the elements surged as the combined spells created a great synergy amongst them as they flew towards their target.

The fire arrows heated the air, helping the water make its way towards the ice arrows, the wind arrows blew mightily their own vortexes, which fuelled the fire arrows and helped the cold take route in the water.

And in turn between the heat and cold, between fire and ice, the air vortexes became stronger and stronger from this contrast until they were now small hurricanes.

A tidal wave, a raging inferno, and a the fury of the most savage monsoon made their target, as behind them the earth arrows came and grew, drawing the ground beneath them and forming great conic shaped walls behind the other 3 types of arrows, making sure than the full force of their impact would be concentrated solely on their target.

With that the power of the imperial volley jumped from ten times the one Ahmaianos unleashed to almost a hundred!

Having only a split second to react, Ahmaianos ducked and ran.

Not backwards, but forwards!

Jumping off the rooftop right before the imperial volley struck; as he fell downwards he immediately aimed his crossbow forward and shot it without an arrow in its string.

The energy released by the crossbow propelled him backwards straight through the window of the top storey building right as the volley hit the roof.

The force of the explosion shook the structure from its foundation to its top, what was left of it anyway.

Not just from the imperial numbers and indoctrination, but also from the Creed Magic, the imperial troops had struck with a blow that they all believed would annihilate anything and anyone on the roof.

Including the roof itself, their belief was strong enough that it became a reality thanks to Creed Magic and nothing remained of the roof as smoke and ash, frost and ice, wind and hurricane scars, along with massive boulders were the only thing that could be judged from peeing into the dust raised by the volley's impact.

Nothing could have survived that, that was what the imperial squad believed as they looked at the roof, they though it so strongly that it was a though powerful enough for creed magic.

But no creed is unbeatable.

"They're so many....and so powerful....." Ahmaianos said to himself between gasps for air as he continued his desperate jog for life and limb;

He had survived the explosion; the earth arrows directed the blast in such a way that most of it did not strike the floor bellow and unknowns to him, the intensity of the volley was so great that the Imperials did not see the moment in which he jumped of the roof.

But what little force of the impact that struck him, struck true and struck hard, for he was barely able to keep himself on his feet as he half-wobbled, half-dragged himself in a drunken, ready to collapse stupor trough the floor's corridor.

Once he reached the external fire escape he immediately descended trough it, it was lucky that the building he was one had a peculiar design, where the entrance and the fire escape were on opposite side of the building.

"Lucky?...….Yeah, a lucky taffing day indeed..." Ahmaianos though bitterly at this nightmare of a day, that saw him as the only survivor and many of his friends butchered.

After reaching the street Ahmaianos ran away from the building as fast as he could, until he could run no more and ducked into an alley.

He stopped there for a moment to catch his breath and after wiping the sweat of his brown, he took out a flask from inside his coat pocket and took a big gulp of its content to calm his nerves, and as he was about to repeat the process movement from his right caught his eye and he quickly bolted and aimed his crossbow in that direction.

But after getting a good look at the 'enemy' he realized that what he saw was in fact a large window and it was his own reflection within it that had caught his eye a moment earlier.

He took several tentative steps towards it, and as he looked at the glass, Ahmaianos started to wonder.

"Who is that man with the long unkempt hair, with his unshaven face, dead inside eyes, and dirty skin? Who are you? You who drinks hard spirits like they are water, you with the weapon in your hand, with blood on your conscience? "

The thought echoed throughout his mind; Just how long had has it been since he looked at himself in the mirror? Truly looked at himself?

"Are you really me?�� he asked himself as he moved the fingers of his right palm towards the glass, to touch it, to confirm if the image was real and not just in his mind.

"Or maybe I just couldn't bear to look in the mirror, since I always knew what I'd see."

His hand was a hair's length away from touching the glass when a loud explosion jolted him out of his reverie and he quickly glued his back against the wall and raised his crossbow to once more look for the enemy.

"The Empire's on my tail, fire and brimstone everywhere as the whole block blows up and instead of running to safety I take the time to touch myself in the mirror...…I really am not suited for this…." he bitterly lamented to himself, as he carefully peered out of the exit from the alley.

After making sure that it was clear he continued towards a safe location, well as safe as it can be since a galactic superpower's army was here and searching for him.

Back on the rooftop a squad had been sent to take the now vacant roof, after a short but tense sweep, they quickly reported back to their command, after that a few minutes passed and they received the order to hold their position.

They all sat down to take a breather and have a meal, not the most hygienic thing to do with corpses all around you, but that was war for you.

This particular group of soldiers were a unit composed of different species, from different planets and they all had different forms, but they were all humanoid in shape and were in their first form.

"Looks like one of them got away ma'am." the corporal said to his sergeant.

"Bully for him then! This isn't battle, it's a slaughter!" the sergeant said to her squad.

"Well, the enemy's just irregulars and we're professional soldiers." one of the privates said as he was using a piece of destroyed rooftop as an impromptu table to prepare the squad's lunch.

"It's slaughter all right, but for us not them." the sergeant said and upon seeing the confused looks on her troopers face she added the following:

"The enemy is using this whole neighborhood as a fortress, why haven't we been given any siege equipment, like chariots, or artillery to level this place?"

"Well maybe HQ probably doesn't want to admit that the enemy has such a strong position within this city." the other private of the squad who was using a different fragment of the destroyed rooftop as an improvised chair replied.

"Then don't admit it and give me the kriffing heavy equipment then!" the sergeant added and got a good natured chuckle from her squad.

"But ma'am that would make us liars!" the trooper at the table said in mock outrage at the idea.

"Yeah! I mean we hunt down, capture, shoot and kill for a living, but heaven forbid we actually tell a lie, I mean that would taint our sinless nature!" the corporal added and another round of laughter came from the squad.

"At least if things got rough we do have some 'emergency fresh supplies'." The first trooper added and another round of laughter started

The sergeant, who up until now had been stoically silent, could not help herself anymore and joined them as well, her mouth moved to give way to some laughter, when a spear came out trough it.

While she fell to the ground, she managed to catch a glimpse of the enemy that had slayed her, and as her life was leaving the sergeant's body, she managed to witness the fate of her squad before her time was up.

The attacker moved fast, slashing away at the group of soldiers who did not have time to properly react to the situation.

It took only a few seconds and then the squad troopers were all dead.

Who were they, what was their life's story?

Would anyone remember them, cherish their memory?

That was something that war didn't know, nor did it cared, thus there they rested as the battle continued all around the district, in the name of war, of this insatiable force that looked on with indifference to the lives that were given to it as tribute for each moment of its existence, and only continuing to rage on as more meat was put in the grinder.