Flames of War Across the Sky

Klaas Brauner was the first to spot the trails.

At the time, he and his men had just moved a stone out from before the plow. He bent at the waist and stretched his cramped muscles, feeling every vertebra in his spine burn like a live coal.

Just then, he looked up at the searing metal shapes in the summer sky and caught sight of them—hundreds of trails tore through the air, plunging downward as sharply as lightning ripping across the heavens.

Before long, the spreading cloud trails had dimmed the sunlight.

Everyone working in the fields stopped what they were doing and watched what was coming.

War was descending upon Querlret.

Querlret was a town a hundred and twenty kilometers from Tyre. It was utterly unremarkable, surrounded by farms that produced vast quantities of vegetables to feed Tyre. A railway ran through the town, but it had ceased operations after the war began.

Brauner traced the paths of those cloud trails. They should not land on his farm, nor on Nastuma's.

But they would not be far away either. Besides, those things kept coming down without pause. Their sheer numbers would render distance meaningless.

"Get everyone back inside the house."

He told his foreman, Randytrick.

"Shut the livestock pens, hand out the weapons, and wait for me here."

"Yes, Colonel."

Colonel—

He had been away from that identity for twenty years, and Randytrick had left soldiering behind for nearly as long.

The last war they and their comrades had fought had been in Uhu, the Imperium's former western province. After surviving it, they had been allowed to retire and received the rewards due to them in Querlret.

Though Brauner no longer managed his men according to military rank, some deeply ingrained habits were hard to erase, and war had