The mud clawed at their boots as though the land itself were resisting their retreat, and the smoke lay so thick across the battlefield that even the shapes of men dissolved into shifting shadows at a distance, while the thunder of distant cannons never truly ceased, only rising and falling like some monstrous, patient heartbeat.
Sergei ran with his head low and his musket clutched tight against his chest, breath rasping in short, panicked bursts as the air burned his lungs with ash and sulphur, and every step carried the sickening certainty that the next second could be his last, cut short by a sound he would never hear.
"Do not stop, damn you, do not stop!" an officer screamed somewhere behind him, his voice already hoarse with desperation as the line folded inward upon itself under pressure that never seemed to ease.
To Sergei's left, a mage staggered forward, blood leaking from the corners of his eyes as he gathered what little strength he had left into one more spell, the glow trembling in his hands like a wounded star before he hurled it into the fog ahead, where it burst in a flash of fire that briefly revealed rows of dark silhouettes and the cold glint of metal.
"They are still there," someone shouted, terror cracking the words in half as another volley answered the spell, precision born from unseen distances, and men began to drop in jerking, graceless motions that felt far too quick and far too final.
Sergei ran past a body he did not recognise and realised, with a hollow shock, that he no longer tried to look at faces, because that was the surest way to lose his legs to grief and panic both.
'So this is how it feels,' he thought distantly, his mind grasping at anything that was not the sound of bullets tearing through flesh, 'Not heroic, not glorious, just small and frightened and very, very tired.'
Another man stumbled beside him, clutching at a wound in his side as blood soaked through his fingers. The wound began to heal, little by little, but without the directly radiation from the sun, and with the sun and Earth protecting him from the intense radiation from outside the Star system, the speed of recovery under the night sky was slow.
His eyes wide and unblinking as he whispered, "Mother, I want to go home," before a second shot snapped his head back and silenced him forever.
Sergei felt the world narrow to the pounding of his own heart and the burning in his chest as he ran, until the sound of a single distant crack rose above the rest, clean and detached, and in the same instant a heavy, blunt force struck him squarely in the ribs.
There was no great pain at first, only a shock that drove the breath from his lungs in a violent rush, and then a spreading warmth that felt terribly wrong as his legs gave out beneath him and he fell backward into the mud.
The sky filled his vision, vast and pale through the drifting smoke, and for a single strange moment it seemed impossibly calm compared to the ruin below it.
'So this is the end,' he thought as the noise of battle dulled and retreated, the world darkening at the edges as the warmth in his chest grew heavier.
"Musket down!" one of his fellow soldiers noticed Sergei had fallen. Instead of reaching over to help him to safety, the soldiers pulled out the musket from the rapidly colling hands of the dead Sergei, as the muskets were a tool just as important as the Magi each team had received, both being handed down to each team in equal quantities of a single unit per team.
From far above, the war no longer looked like men at all, but like tides of movement and flame carving through the land, dark columns advancing along roads and across fields with relentless certainty as towns fell in succession and the front lines crept steadily inward.
Supply routes stitched themselves deep into conquered territory, fortifications rose where farms had once stood, and the banners of occupation planted themselves again and again across the map of the Tsardom, until nearly a tenth of its lands lay under a single advancing shadow.
The push slowed only when distance began to stretch those columns thin, when soldiers were no longer shoulder to shoulder but scattered across long, hungry stretches of occupied ground, and the quiet between battles grew long enough for the defenders to breathe, to regroup, and to plan.
Weeks later, on a ridgeline overlooking a wide plain of trampled earth and shattered wagons, a Hohenzollern infantryman laughed as he wiped grime from his face, his uniform torn but his posture easy with confidence.
"Did you see them run today," he said, adjusting his bayonet with casual pride, "They barely fired a shot back."
Another soldier grinned as he leaned against a crate of ammunition, fatigue buried beneath triumph, "Give them another week and there will be nothing left to resist."
The sky was clear, the wind steady, and morale coursed through the ranks like electricity as they prepared for another routine advance, never noticing, at first, the unnatural shimmer on the distant horizon.
Then someone frowned and raised a hand, "Do you see that," he asked slowly, uncertainty creeping into his voice.
From the far edge of the field came a line of movement unlike anything they had faced before, wide wooden frames braced with dull sheets of metal that caught the sunlight in wavering flashes, each one carried by multiple figures whose outlines rippled with faint, distorted air.
"Shields?" a soldier muttered in disbelief as the line began to run.
The first volley roared in perfect unison, smoke bursting from the rifle line as bullets streaked forward and struck metal with ringing impacts that echoed strangely across the field, sparks flying wide but bodies behind the shields continuing to surge forward without slowing.
Behind the advancing wall, spell-light flared in disciplined rhythm as magi fed power into the charge, the heavy frames moving as though they weighed nothing at all.
"Reload, reload!" an officer shouted, his voice sharp with an edge of alarm that could no longer be hidden.
They fired again, and again the bullets skittered and screamed against metal, and then the distance vanished in a sudden rush of bodies and violence as the shield wall slammed into the forward line with crushing force.
Steel met flesh at arm's length, spells detonated among tightly packed ranks, and in less than a minute an entire squad of twenty was swallowed by the chaos, their formation torn apart as though it had never existed at all.
The confidence that had animated the advance shattered in waves as panic spread faster than orders, men falling back into one another while the counterattack rolled forward with brutal momentum.
Across the occupied territories, similar scenes unfolded as lines that had once advanced unopposed now buckled under sudden pressure, cut off from one another by distance and overextension, their strength diluted across too much conquered ground.
By the time reserves could be moved and cohesion restored, the defenders had already punched deep scars through the thinly held front, reclaiming roads, towns, and entire swathes of land in a matter of days.
From ridge to river, banners were torn down and replaced, forward camps burned under night assaults, and the great, confident advance that had once seemed unstoppable began to unravel under the weight of its own reach.
What had been seized swiftly was lost just as violently, and as the counteroffensive surged onward, the land itself once more became a contested graveyard, where neither side could claim certainty anymore, only the bitter knowledge that the war had truly entered its next, far bloodier phase.
Word Count: 1315 words
{AN: How is this? Don't worry, there won't be too much of the war that remains stagnant. We all know how ww1 went, essentially this would be the same, but with weaker military technology, and random magic that just helps along with technology here and there due to how weak the Rank 1 mages are compared to guns and other technology. An I don't intent of focussing too much on this particular two-party war, and instead on the much larger world war that will occur from this. lol}