He hemorrhaged by the seams of his severed arm, forming a cross-shaped pool of coagulated blood behind him, mind barely able to recall the world he was standing—or rather—laying in. He could only listlessly stare skyward, the early setting sun looking to be far more beautiful than he ever recalled—some inexplicable reason that escaped his mind's tongue.
Voices, they continued to ramble on words he couldn't comprehend, tinnitus invading his sense of hearing. Tears, they dripped onto his cheek from above as rain would to the world below it. His half-lidded eyes, deluded with blurry aspirations, also couldn't make out anything clear. His blessed yet accursed eyes did not aid him in his endeavour, as the lack of Chakra enamored him more to complacency.
Naruto...
He couldn't even speak the name from his mouth, lost days running through his mind in loops, all filled with both pain, sorrow, and at times; even joy. Nostalgia and adrenaline eased him of the aching sting of the material world, but nothing else. If he were branded a fool of a revolutionary, a revenge-filled mass of illogic, then Sasuke Uchiha would bear those titles.
If— by how many years, decades, centuries, and by prayers held deep in his heart—peace was achieved in the Shinobi World by Naruto, he hoped it would last. He lived through many regrets, this would be one of them. Ah, was he now thinking of whatever could have changed if he were in the past? What pitiful ramblings he held in his mind.
He knew if he closed his eyes, his life would cease to be then and there. The people around him, even if he couldn't hear their voices, were asking, begging for him to stay. He didn't deserve it, especially with what he had committed himself to. Still, it couldn't end just yet, not with the state of the world as it was.
Sasuke's hand instinctively moved, knowing that there was one last thing to accomplish. It forced his friend's own into the rat hand seal alongside his own, both the sun and moon intertwining at their palms. He could feel the shock of his friend, surprise most likely evident upon his features, but wordlessly, he cycled the last remaining bits of his Chakra, to end the false dreams of the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
There. It was done.
His eyes drifted slowly as if brought by a wave—and brought by a wave it was—just by an impermanent one confessed only as exhaustion. The shouts, although tumultuous and heart-wrenching, started to fade away completely. Ruptured eardrums bore no need to hear them anymore, as all was left in hands that paved a path far different from his own.
By then, nothing remained in his mind.
***
Sasuke awoke abruptly. The dull roar of smog-choked wind and the rasp of his own breathing.
Ash blanketed everything. It fell like snow, light and thick, rendering the ruined city in shades of gray. Burnt-out buildings stood like hollowed bones, their innards spilled across stone streets now cracked from artillery bombardment. He stood in the center of it all, half-slumped against a cold wall, and for a moment, just a moment, he wondered if he was truly dead as he should be.
The pain was telling him otherwise. It was a constant stream of a sharp blade digging into his body, further accentuated by the absence of his left arm. The throb still pulsed through where it should've been, a debt fulfilled ever since the battle occurring in the Valley of the End. He clenched his remaining hand, regaining sense of it.
His situation was... particular. This wasn't the battlefield he collapsed on. The sky was bruised and blotted out by smoke with no trace of Chakra lingering in the air, a signature that should have denoted himself in his own world. The horrid stench of what smelled like gunpowder(?), seared flesh, and scorched steel all came together in a nauseating display.
Heaving upward, Sasuke gritted his teeth and stumbled forward.
Above, distant silhouettes moved behind shattered windows, soldiers from what he could tell, armed with weapons that didn't match the standards of the Five Great Shinobi Countries. Elsewhere, strange runes were etched into some stones and metallic objects, which weren't fūinjutsu from what he could sense.
While walking with no sense of where he was, the sounds of drums could be heard in the distance. It started to grow louder and louder, forming a rhythm that matched steps which were rumbling through the earth. Those drums called for war, and those hounds stepping in unison with one another were forming a march, carried by that very war.
His closed eye holding the Rinnegan broke open. Across the broken city walls in the distance, just beyond the valley filled with waste, he could tell that an army—armies, plural—were approaching. From what he could make out with his bolstered ocular perception, floating banners marked by emblems he had never seen before were held up along with lances and spears.
"...What the hell is this place?" Sasuke muttered under his breath, coarse and rough, feeling dehydrated. There was... Far. Too. Much. Ash.
He turned his gaze toward the city's heart, or rather, what remained of it. There reflected in his Rinnegna was a crater, wide and incinerated most likely by constant fusillades, with black ulcers stretching from its center like the scars of a burned-out organ. Where something monumental should have been, remained nothing. It was the most probable reason for why ash and soot filled the streets.
Danger started to encroach on his senses, coursing an uncomfortable feeling down his spine. Hundreds, thousands, if not more, were approaching with each step of their march. There was an opposite, but definitely not equal force, opposing them at the moment. Those war drums... Sasuke could hear them, and they continued to produce that damnable, irate sound that pounded his skull.
He was caught in a siege, trapped in a city stripped of defense, lacking crucial information, and unable to make head or tail of where he was. But, his Chakra, and his eyes, the Rinnegan; he still possessed them, even if lacking a limb. The faculties of power he developed over his long and arduous years were still available.
The Rinnegan shone brighter as he took a breath, letting his mind ease itself. Right after, Sasuke burst forward with prodigious speeds as per the Body Flicker Technique, making his way across the ruins, the screaming gale accompanying him as he did so.
It would be best for him to leave, or to further assess the situation and come up with a general idea of what to do. That should have been the case, but in the midst of the proverbial echoes of explosions and distant clashing of blades, he heard a choked grasp amongst the rubble.
His legs faltered to a slower degree, sandals scraping across the ground as he came to a halt. He turned to where he heard the sound, seeing somebody. Said somebody could hardly be made out of the clinkers and residue cover them, but he could tell it was a woman, with two horns atop her head, but one broken.
"Who's there?" she croaked. "Please! Don't take me—"
She was blind, crawling across the ground, nails broken off with dried blood, the soot-covered street providing hardly any guiding principles for her sense of touch. In one of her cradled arms was—a scene making Sasuke widen his eyes in tremors of anger—was a charred baby encased in dusted debris.
Why did he understand her language?
The horned woman flinched violently as Sasuke knelt beside her. Her body was trembling, barely clothed in torn rags, skin burned from heat and coated in excess grime. He didn't speak a word, lips curved downward in a frown, pupils imperceptibly quaking.
He saw it, those bodies laid strewn across the street with rivers of blood leaking out. Majority were unwitting victims of a preordained scheme, whether they be children or babies, a slaughter bleeding into genocide. Sasuke Uchiha, the last of his kind, stood as the lone survivor amongst them.
He broke out of his stupor, raising his hand, and the woman's breath hitched when it touched her shoulder.
"What happened?" Sasuke whispered in their language, already knowing the answer to his inquiry.
The horned woman continued to remble, but perhaps due to his lowered voice, didn't take him as an enemy. Then her lips opened. "...Kazdel's gone. Isn't it?" Her breath stilted, choking tears.
He said nothing, fingers almost clenching, taking all the strength possible to not do so with his lone arm.
Her white eyes filled with nothing but ash turned vaguely in his direction. "The drums... they're coming. T-they'll kill us all.... The Furnace is... broken... why...? Why...?!" Her voice morphed into hysteria. Eventually, she broke off into a coughing fit, before it quelled. "...Please, just kill me before they get here."
He rose to his feet. "I won't."
"...Why?" she asked, voice cracking.
He didn't reply, turning toward where the distant gates ought to be, his clear vision outlined a path between the warring armies. Within a singular moment, his body flickered into thin black static, reinvigorated with a misbegotten emotion he hadn't ever abandoned.
***
Thunderous reverberations filled the air as water would to a cup. There were screams resounding alongside them in an almost orchestral manner, as bodies fell one by one in large masses. Weapons, ranging from blades to artillery, had been armed, industrializing death on a scale never seen before.
The scent of gore wafted in the air, leaving any squeamish man unfit for battle to reel over and vomit bile, before being struck dead due to their dereliction. Armor scraps laid ridden across the floor alongside weapons stabbing into the pulverized ground, crosses growing by the second as unwitting soldier's gravestones.
Soldiers lined the front, while Arts Casters and artillery lined the back, formations held as the genesis of their strength and bastion, a battle of attrition held at both sides. Some charged with reckless abandon, some were filled with will-destroying despair, while some knew the parse all too well. Yon the gaping maw of war, their lives had begun to be feasted upon.
Armed soldiers of bore lances in their iron-clad visage, gigantic heaping pieces of technology serving as exoskeletal frames for the pilots, and golden-cladded knights of pristine aureate Arts stood at the frontlines.
Underneath all the blanket of destruction rivaling even a Catastrophe, a lone figure cloaked himself amongst the rubble and corpses, moving across with unrivaled precision and stealth. Only when it had traversed the chaos and found itself in a spot where neither side could spot it, but still enough to be at the focal point of the battle, did it stop.
Sasuke Uchiha released breath as he peered over to drink in the sights of warfare once more.
He had stepped outside the confines of the Shinobi war, drenched in deific Chakra and oceans of blood, and found himself in yet another battlefield. A sense of delirium nearly corrupted him, but he quelled the feeling, keeping at least a modicum of control despite the baffling situation. Any and all matters that related to his previous activities had been quashed for the moment, survival instinct begotten by years of conditioning. It only took a second.
With renewed clarity, Sasuke activated his Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, Chakra wells now somehow filled to a state where combat was applicable. Though, it was still meager by his standards, but it would make do. The two orbs, velvet and crimson, scanned through the battlefield, observation only inspiring the vision of bodies being hacked or chopped apart. It filled him with anger watching the slaughter play, neither sides in the right or wrong, most likely commandeered by political forces far above the ladder.
The same song and dance, but this time, in a different tune—
Somebody had grabbed his leg in the midst of his contemplations, Sasuke turning around to stare at who had grabbed it, ready to vivisect them by drawing his Sword of Kusanagi... somehow in his possession. He held the thought of an action back as he saw a horned man in armor more prominent in the west, bleeding with an arm lost just like himself, calling to him in that same foreign language he somehow understood.
Though garbled, the words were just coherent enough for him to hear. He was telling him to run, perhaps the man mistaking him for an ally or friend at the last minutes before his death. Sasuke saw it in his eyes, the hurt and despondency of seeing countless death, experiencing unending loss as the world continued to batter him down.
The black-haired Shinobi thinned his lips at the sight, watching the last beams of light reflected in the Kazdelian soldier's eyes vanquish themselves. Despite the now-dead-man's mutterings no longer reaching his ears, all the other cacophonous noises continued to pierce way like a sharp kunai.
"Do not break formation, these scum won't grant any reprieve...!"
"Kazdel will not fall again—!"
"Reestablish the Cannibalism Rituals—!"
"W-where are the Nachzehrers—?!"
"Find and aid His Majesty! The King needs assistance—!"
"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts—!"
"The Gesatzswächters have reinstated the Golden Barrier again—!"
Sasuke half-muted their words, but kept the strange terminologies in mind. He turned his attention elsewhere, sensing and attempting to make sense of everything he was witnessing concurrently.
No remnants of Chakra lingered in the air, and whatever power the denizens were channeling did not utilize it. If anything, his Rinnegan registered something alien, especially with the distinct rock and shard-like protrusions and lesions hidden underneath clothing and armor; some shown directly on exposed skin.
Their usages most likely still wasn't far too different from Ninjutsu, but—
"Who are you?!"
A voice directed itself to him, making Sasuke turn his head to see a blade predictably pointed between his eyes. It was from one of those Kazdelian soldiers fighting for the country known as Kazdel.
The soldier looked alarmed when gauging him. "Y-you aren't one of our kind!"
"...So?" Sasuke bemusedly responded, watching a small squadron behind tense up with their blades, taking notice of his presence. He was behind their lines, after all.
Sasuke's hand did not yet reach for his blade, but the pressure of conflict threatened to explode in his face. The soldier before him didn't back down, his wary eyes shifting from Sasuke's strange attire to his crimson eyes. The soldiers behind him shuffled into a more offensive posture, ready to attack him.
"He must be with those Victorian, Leithanian, and Gaulish dogs!" a younger one hissed consecutively from behind, his voice cracking under the weight of adrenaline.
Sasuke didn't respond, his only hand still rested on Kusanagi. Confrontation was inevitable, and by the looks of it, the people of Kazdel didn't take kindly to people who didn't bear their features, very likely aided by the fact they were in times of turmoil.
The soldier opened his mouth to say something more, likely an ultimatum for his fate, but it didn't form. Something else lurked, causing the ground to tremble and the earth to groan. It was heavy in its advance, a patterned step that made the squadron of Kazdelian soldiers focused on him to freeze in fear.
One of them at his front instinctively turned his head, and Sasuke did the same, eyes narrowing as he turned to face the direction of the quaking. The booming sound ended with its final, heavy step, and now it was in front of them, sending heaps of debris flying and producing a wind which fluttered the Uchiha's hair.
A geyser of steam erupted from a crag in the ruined battlefield, hissing upward with a poltergeist's wail. And then, parting the fog of war like a god crafted from brass, a hulking beast of steel stood before him with steam emitted from its body in vast amounts, and grand armaments fitted to its form.
It was a colossal monolith gleaming bronze and lined gold, Sasuke meeting the glow of its mechanical eye.
The Kazdelian soldiers screamed in trepidation, forgetting Sasuke's presence entirely.
"S-Steam Knight! Take co—!"
"Defensive Arts, now—!"
"We don't have—!"
Not even a brief lapse in time was given as it reared its hefty pile bunker back in a fierce jabbing motion, hydraulics and cogs locking into place. Pistons provided its force, and joints its technique, a grandiose execution of Arts fortifying the mechanical muscle underneath its armored plating.
A rupturing sound occurred as sound bent to its forward motion. The brutish and robust instrument was just about to make its mark on the unmoving black-haired man and the people around him, but right then and there, Sasuke's body flickered.
The pile bunker slammed at where he was, rumbling the ground and reverberating an earthquake. Spiderweb cracks appeared, both allies and foe alike losing their balance as it spread, lifting the ground as if they were platforms.
Steam continued to swell from its body, as the mechanized suit had come to discover that, instead of blood and viscera flying about and making the soon-to-be carcass unrecognizable, it was splinters of wood. Realization struck the pilot inside the coffin, that it had crushed a log rather than a man.
Yet as the hour of folly came to their mind, the knight of steam and steel had found a glint passing through its neck. In that moment, the light of its eyes peering through its helmet had started to flicker off and on as it started to slide off, before a multiplicity of slashes could be seen ebbing with unknown, but still rapid intervals.
Those who were once distracted by the fight for their survival could only spare a second to glance at what had occurred, shock and hysteria becoming prominent, especially for those who had fought alongside the hulking behemoth. In response, commands were given, formations were shifted, and the enemy side found themselves an opportunity to initiate a charge.
However, it would never come to fruition as an unimaginable sense of bloodlust permeated the vicinity. The troops sided the gigantic mech no longer fared well, as their eyes widened, mouth gaping as if stuck in an illusion. A flicker of the same slashes which severed their most prized soldier had started to emit once again, pirouetting through their formation as a zephyr would by nature's breath.
In tandem with it, a flash of ebony lightning coursed through the scene, the chirping resonance of a thousand birds singing the funeral song for entire platoons in its path, severing and bursting bodies.
The variables dedicated to fulfilling the qualifications of platoon soon stretched to battalions, as the troops with lances and swords were blown and torn apart at lightning-quick speeds, unable to resist the condemning thunders of Indra.
The Kazdelian soldiers could only watch on in confusion and shock.
***
Sasuke broke through formations with the same ease as knife cutting through butter. He was in enemy lines, surrounded by disoriented troops and the same mechanical beasts—though in larger proportions—as the one he had recently eviscerated.
Clicking his tongue, he extended the stump of his missing arm as he activated the Asura Path of the Rinnegan, mechanical whirrs being heard as a miniaturized launcher with segmented missiles clusters materialized in its place.
They ejected before the piloted machines or troops could aim their weapons his way, leaving a trail of thermal stardust in its wake. His first targets were the Steam Knights, the missiles detonating the moment they made contact with hypersonic kinetic kill forces, leaving large craters to form around, and collateral in unacceptable numbers to rise.
Afterward, his segmented missile launcher platform snapped into a multi-stage column laser cannon that whirled, shooting an azure beam which he dragged through the scene, tremendous spherical explosions erupting wherever it traveled en masse.
Soon, after his attack, he detached the mechanical limb and let it clank to the ground, the construct of Chakra dematerializing as he assessed the scenery once more.
Neither side is right.
Smoke surrounded him as a circumfix would, and yet it did nothing to block his unabridged analysis. Thousands upon thousands of troops were still fighting, the wasteland-turned-battlefield bound to bear no respite for the coming days as the war raged impermissibly.
Why did he choose a side?
Sasuke clenched his fist, eyes blank and lacking any light. Exhaustion, no longer physical by some miracle, but instead one benching on purely mental strain, started to fill him once more.
Is he choosing a side?
Waves of energy which weren't Chakra were barrelling their way toward him from behind the smoke, With narrowed eyes, he leapt out of the way with onyx lightning at the hems of his body, watching a sizable explosion arise a vermillion pillar from where had once stood, circumference massive in size.
...He was uncertain.
Hatred bloomed at the situation, and he was forced this time to let it free. Stuck in an unknown land and in a foreign war which he knew naught of, Sasuke knew to rely on the only thing he was familiar with at the moment—aside from war—which was to kill. To maim as a Shinobi should, a cog of a warmachine stuck between well-oiled components, the same dreaded system he so despised.
Should he brand himself an enemy to both sides?
The thought was tantalizing, to fulfill the prophecy he had set for himself in the foreseeable future, to initiate the revolution which would dismantle egregious systems and set him as the world's common enemy; a method to reunite a world separated by barriers and prejudice.
No...
Shaking his head, Sasuke came to a crucial decision. He didn't desire to see war occur any longer, and decided to bar himself from committing to such plans. For now, he would repel the forces attacking Kazdel, the home of the so-called Sarkaz as he heard from across the battlefield.
Then, he would decide what to do next.
***
Private Alric Vane of the 3rd Victorian Armored Infantry Division had seen many horrors since the campaign began. He had seen a man lose his mind from a Sarkaz-instated ritual back in the eastern pass to Kazdel, watched as a group of Spire Casters lost an Arts skirmish against Nachzehrers, and thus leading to total annihilation of their squadron. He had even survived a Gaulish Originium-Reactive Munition barrage during the night of their treacherous three days, just barely.
However, now...?
"What in the name of the King is that?!" he screamed, as a Steam Knight be toppled like a child's toy under the force of a blast he couldn't even detect.
"I don't know, I don't know!" A soldier with plated armor and a cloak over his shoulders screamed in reply, ducking under the trenches they had dug around.
A figure streaked across the battlefield, a blur made of black lightning and malice, draped in smoke providing them indiscernible features. They conjured weapons from nothing, whether it be explosive devices moving at ungodly speeds, or... or whatever was firing those—what he could only assume as—thermal lasers.
Vane scrambled to know if Kazdel had any such armaments, or if Leithanien possessed such advanced Arts Units, or even if Victoria could send such an immense salvo of barrages from a single man operating it.
More voices echoed from afar as he scrambled through his mind.
"Hold the line, hold the line—!"
"These devils—!"
"How did they—?!"
"We need to push forward, damn it! Do something you fucks—!"
"Focus artillery on that bastard, do it fast, DO IT FAST—!"
Vane's own conglomerate of comrade-in-arms had attempted to fire Arts-tipped bolts and arrows, to hail the target with gunfire and incendiary bolts. But before the trigger could even be pulled—
Another beam erased the formation three trenches ahead. Then came the missiles, renewed in their relentless assault, producing explosions far larger than its projectile size. They weren't like anything the engineers or Thaumaturgic Corps had ever dreamed of handing to a single troop to operate, it would be a logistical disaster.
So why... Why were they with the bloody devils?!
Segmented shells screeched through, slamming into the chests of Steam Knights that had been thought invulnerable. One exploded mid-air, raining molten gears onto nearby squads. Another shattered on impact, except instead of debris, it sent out a pulse of pure, condensed pressure that folded the knight in on itself like paper.
The Gesatzswächters, Spire Casters, and Gaulish Swordsmen were spared no less than the Steam Knights, needles of pure lightning stabbing through them at speeds unreactable to. Then, a pulse of spherical lightning emitted, lighting up the entire battlefield as it consumed battalions once more.
Realization started to dawn on him that the coalition, all against the shared enemy, was losing.
By the time Vane realized the horror wasn't over, he saw the man—that thing—drop what looked like an arm of machinery, metal clanging against rock, exhaust trailing behind like the vapor emitted from a funeral pyre.
Did that madman abandon his weaponry?!
An officer beside him muttered a prayer in shock, a medic behind him cried out that her Healing Arts had been exhausted, and some believed they had been caught in an illusion of Sarkaz Witchcraft, watching their formation crumple by the second.
Realization had come to some of them that perhaps the Doomsday Prophet, their leader, had led them all to death like mindless sheep.
Those eyes, drenched in both red and purple, flickered continuously in his view as Vane attempted to regain a semblance of control, watching even Steam Knights continuously be torn apart.
Then, something stabbed into the dirt beside his trench, making him and his squadron's breath stilt. In its lonesome was a Higashinese kunai, and he only knew so from a small line from a book he had read. A tag inscribed with multiple symbols he couldn't understand was attached to the kunai's circular pommel, but when he saw it glow, his world filled with light...
Vane realized it was an explosive. By then, his name had already been written upon a list of casualties.
***
The soil no longer bore life, filled with limbs and ash, for the aftermath of days of battle had taken its toll on the decrepit land.
The Doomsday Prophet walked through it all, dust clinging to her hooded cloak, blood staining the edges of her blade where it had split open a Kazdelian officer's ribcage minutes prior. Her boots crushed a piece of molten armor underfoot, producing a hissing sound, but she ignored it.
A gigantic rock-like hulking beast of three meters trailed behind her, its triple-jawed form hunched low, stalking the battlefield like an apex predator. The low glint of crimson could be seen from where its head was.
She looked up, seeing the congregation of Nachzehrers led by the Nachzehrer King float in the skies, the ghoulish lord with an overbearing stature illuminating the sky with a sickly-deep viridescent energy. The Originium Altars have been set up, feeding him strength beyond reckoning.
The Withered Court is repelling the Victorian army aided by Gaul... She thought, scrutinizing potential plans to repel their defense.
Off to the sides, she could feel the rumbling of worn and torn Victorian warships traverse the land through terrestrial maneuvers, crushing corpses, and firing off endless rounds. The Doomsday Prophet knew that they would not last long, ready to buckle under the strain that has been afflicting them since the crusade had begun.
The Gesatzswächters... She narrowed her aways as her eyes turned elsewhere, moving through countless corpses and Sarkaz rallying themselves over new inspiration. They are being annihilated by the second. Their Golden Melody is dying out, and their Golden Barrier has been... utterly vanquished.
From what she could see, strange onyx lightning coursed incessantly all about the Leithanian section. The Gesatzswächters, unrivaled in their Arts and leading the Spire Casters were being torn apart by the strange phenomenon, and she could distinctly see a figure move across from where she stood.
In fact, enormous explosions surpassing what a fully-armed warship was capable of, continued to be made by that very silhouette. They were an unknown variable, and they continued to shift the tides, decimating legions upon legions with each dash and turn.
Her hand gripping her sword tightened. Steam Knights were incinerated in an instant,and from what she saw of the Gaulish Swordsmen, their own souls were emancipated from their vessels before their own flesh had realized such a thing.
Some Sarkaz soldiers have even halted their own advance, not knowing what this force aiding them even was, content out of fear to remain on the defensive line.
Eventually, she came to a full stop due to a cracked kunai embedding itself into the soil beside her by a stray throw. She examined it, and knew it was of Higashinese craft, furthering a complex emotion inside of herself.
This doesn't add up.
She turned up, a forlorn countenance making its way. Despite the manpower, despite the coalition formed, they would lose completely and utterly at this rate. The only thing holding the morale of the Victorian, Gaulish, and Leithanian forces were the relentless warships, but even they would need to restore and reload ammunition soon.
...The corpse of the Sarkaz King. I need to find it. A shadow casted over her eyes from her hooded cloak, calculations running rampant in her mind as she traced the path of Yliš' chariot after he had been unceremoniously killed, fruitlessly acting as directional bait.
When she attempted to make haste with the monstrous companion by her side, she finally saw the shape of the thing—man—laying waste to the innumerable and near-indomitable coalition. He sported black hair, with a gray high-collared shirt parted at the chest, a purple rope belt over a waist sash, black arm guards and gauntlets, open-toed sandals, and very dark blue trousers.
His eyes were glowing in the smoke, unnatural and beyond anything she had seen before. The Doomsday Prophet knew she would have to walk through the path close to the absurd man, and so she advanced toward the epicenter without fear. The corpse of the King of Sarkaz, the Black Crown.
"Mon2tr," she commanded flatly, watching the crystalline construct of destruction open its mouth, firing off a green beam in front of her, incinerating corpses and providing a smokescreen cover; temporarily.
She dashed through it, cutting through with her sword wherever her instincts commanded, severing the lifeline of Sarkaz soldiers who stood in her way, stepping over armored corpses which lined every single part of the wasted lands.
Rounds from the Victorian landships seemed to have received commands to focus on the black-haired man wreaking havoc, and that provided her the greatest opportunity to move. However, when the smokescreen she caused cleared—
She widened her eyes, seeing a flash of amethyst from the corner of her eye. When she gave a sideways glance, she saw the figure of a purple skeletal construct with horns be made from the black-haired interloper, before the same-colored skin wrapped around it, and then thick armor.
The rounds from the warships slammed into it, liberating the ground and leaving grotesque craters. What was horrific to many however, was that the gigantic and transparent armored being was untainted by any signs of impairment or damage. In its right hand held a burning black flame that never ceased, and in its right arm was a mounted crossbow of the same transparent mauve color.
It raised its arm holding the mounted crossbow alit with those very flames, before firing it off toward the landship. She turned around and saw them make their mark with incomprehensible speeds, ripping through them like paper, before exploding and leaving a gigantic mushroom cloud of smoke to form.
The hope of the coalition had been stamped out then and there.
***
Sarkaz Praetorian Guards spearheaded by Theresis moved through the battlefield. Through the Gaulish section, the Victorian Steam Knights, and the Leithanian Casters, none were spared by his blade. A line of blood was drawn as they continued to keep a clear out through the insanity that was war, seeking for their king, Yliš, but the search had been to no avail.
"...The landships!" The surprised voice of Theresis' sister, Theresa, was heard, attracting the attention of the group.
True to her words, they watched as the land traversal units, once imposing in size and nearly invincible, were blown to smithereens completely and thoroughly. Black flames coursed as pillars into the sky, sending off a heat which they felt even from the large distance they were at, as if the sun had descended. Instead of a bright radiancy, it was a quelling dim.
"That...!" A Praetorian Guard called out. "What is that?!" Their awed voice leaked out of their helmet as Theresis and everybody else followed his gaze.
Across a breadth was the armored visage of an undeniable existence. It emanated a strange power that didn't feel like any sort of Arts, leaving the squadron to briefly contemplate hastily to determine whatever it was. In the end, they couldn't paste any sort of designation to the apparition.
"Why? Why does he fight for us?" Theresa asked, the weary and battleworn Sarkaz rallied beside them sharing the same confused sentiment. "None who are Sarkaz would fight for us, and yet..." Her voice drew out. "His strength, it allows him to act with boundless certainty."
"Whoever that may be," Theresis said in a gruff voice, eyes narrowing as it zeroed in the figure—non-Sarkaz—inside the armored being. "Whether he aids us in battle, his intentions are unknown." His gauntleted hand holding his black sword was gripped tighter.
Receiving only mumbles as response, Theresis shook his head. "Contact the scouts. The majority branches of Victoria, Gaul, and Leithanien have been vanquished." He raised his finger, pointing to the remaining troops off in the distance. "They are retreating. The barrier we set around Kazdel can be lifted, and efforts can be made to find His Majesty's whereabouts."
"What about that... butcher? What are we supposed to do with his presence?" A Praetorian Guard's voice trembled, watching the armored visage of the purple construct start peeling away, revealing a horn skeleton underneath. "My goodness..."
Theresis didn't know what to say, as he watched the lone figure walk through the battlefield with almost uncaring steps, trampling over corpses desecrated. Could he be uncaring? With the sheer amount of hatred emanating from his figure? While missing an entire arm?
He glanced around. None of the Sarkaz, neither the Nachzehrers, the Wendigos, the Banshees, nor even the Vampires were stepping past the invisible line that seemed to have formed between them and the mysterious stranger. Great silence overtook them all as ripped banners laid flying in the sky, no sounds of celebration from the apparently victorious force that was Kazdel.
Silently, Theresa had moved by his side, words escaping her. The number of dead bodies created a hill that the stranger traversed upward, and underneath those mounds, Theresis was sure—just as any Sarkaz would be—their King laid dead inside.
Then, on the other side of the hill, he bore witness to a second figure emerging from the mountainous corpses. A black-cloaked Feline figure with accents of faded verdant, and a crystalline monster of black rocks trailing behind her. She was opposite to the black-haired man who had torn the coalition asunder.
Theresis felt more footsteps appear from behind him, Sarkaz soldiers who fought tirelessly for their country appearing. Still without any fanfare, without the faintest crunch of charred gravel, he felt the presence of the sagely Nachzehrer King, the Sarkaz God of War appear not too far away, watching alongside them in silent contemplation. Death wafted from him.
The Great Banshee, Laqeramaline, followed moments later, with her Elegiac Court standing by her side. Her hands were folded over one another, and held within them was a bone flute. Her physiognomy underneath her black veil and silver hair bore a mourning one, observing the corpse-ladened hill with the two strangers rising to its peak.
Both monarchs said nothing as they reached the Sarkaz vanguard, their towering forms casting elongated shadows over Theresis, Theresa, and the blood-wet Praetorians. A few guards knelt instinctively. Others merely stood frozen, knuckles turned pale around their weapons. The first to give a wave of dismissal to them was the Great Banshee, then the Nachzehrer King, for formalities in the focal point of a war was unnecessary, even if it looked like victory—pyrrhic as it may be—was theirs.
Even then, it was incomplete. Not until one of those two figures atop the hill walked out the sole survivor. A non-Sarkaz who led their destruction and peril, and another non-Sarkaz who repelled the other.
It was a scenario escaping any of their understanding.
***
Sasuke Uchiha didn't know what he was doing. He could admit it, and he could say that without a shadow of a doubt, that his actions currently even for his own standards, were reckless and foolish.
Thousands of eyes were upon him and audacious actions. They were people of a completely different world with features he hadn't seen common back in his previous world, with abilities far removed from Chakra and Ninjutsu, and technology that was decades away from realization.
He walked atop corpses, noticing not too long ago that after the demolition of the strange ships traveling on land, did the enemy forces start to mount a retreat. It was also when he discovered that Kazdel, the name of this place, possessed two total walls encircling it.
He was standing inside the encirclement of the first one, but with the walls having been torn down, and buildings completely demolished in all their numbers—he hadn't been aware of the fact before.
The second wall, further in the epicenter of Kazdel, was damaged and cracked, but still persisting. By what he could tell, some of the forces of the non-Kazdelian side had leaked through its shattered gates, causing ruination on an unprecedented scale.
Shaking his head, he now stood at the peak of the corpses forming the hill. Sasuke could hear another pair of footsteps from the side opposite of him, seeing somebody with... cat ears, a large black cloak, and a strange... creature behind her. Creature...? Could it even be called such with its rock-like skin?
It didn't matter, he had seen the Ten Tails, a far more bizarre being.
Once they stood diametrically opposed, and after he stopped his own steps, so did the woman with cat ears. Underneath the hood obstructing her face, the Uchiha saw her eyes peering underneath it, a bitter cold threaded to form those emerald orbs.
Unmistakably, the leader.
"...Why?" she asked plainly, tone as unbreakable as metal. "Why did you help them?"
Sasuke didn't respond immediately. His gaze flicked across the battlefield wrought with ruin, blackened craters, and twisted bodies. The acrid smell of flesh was acerbic on his tongue and nose, the heat of still sizzling bodies—no longer from artillery but his own actions—piercing the environment.
"You bore your blade against us, covering the Kazdelian's flanks, slaughtered our forces without hesitation, and you are not even of their kind. I ask you again, why?"
Sasuke let out a breath that wasn't quite a sigh. "I don't know who you are, and certainly not what you're babbling about with your question." He looked back toward the field, then at her. "All I see is you people, who just can't stop killing and waging war, now can you?"
"Do you believe yourself righteous?"
"No." He tilted his head, Sharingan gleaming faintly in the dim light. "I didn't come here to make myself righteous in any manner." He was the farthest from what could be considered righteous in any degree.
"You saved the Sarkaz today," she said, voice low and bitter. "The very thing that will herald the end of Terra. By all means, you've turned the wheel that brings the next calamity, resulting in death incomparable to the scale seen here."
"How can you be so sure?" Sasuke's eyes narrowed, an assumption and rationale he knew would be thrown. "Because these people, you think they're monsters?"
"I can tell you are blissfully unaware." She nodded toward the watching figures in the distance: The Nachzehrer King's looming shadow, the Great Banshee's mournful silence, and the lingering presence of two pink-haired Sarkaz. "Monsters, conquerors, you may think you fought for peace, but all you've done is grant those tyrants more time. Their ambition will burn stronger for the next centuries, ceaselessly, incinerating everything in their path."
Sasuke clenched his fist. "So the innocents, who never wished for this war of yours, you'd also brand as monsters and slaughter for this cause?"
"If to make civilization thrive," she coldly said, "then that is all a price I am willing to pay. I don't believe you understand."
"...Quit spouting nonsense, of course I can understand." He brought his head back with a sneer, chuckling, almost breaking out into laughter. "Your rationale is simply disgusting, that's all there is to it." His right hand extended, palm facing upward, crackles of lightning Chakra emitting the tune of a thousand chirping birds.
"Then words must have become meaningless now," the cat-eared woman dryly said, flicking her blade. No blood flew off of it, for the ichor of enemies she's slain had already coagulated ages ago. "Mon2tr," she called out at the end, the monster behind her roaring, raising its sharp claws toward Sasuke, an energized orb forming at its mouth.
The executed beam ripped through the air with a wail, ripping apart the corpses and ground in its path. Sasuke darted forward, the arcs of lightning in his hand flaring into a concentrated blade of lethality.. His figure blurred faster than the eye could track, and pierced straight through the black crystalline monster's attack. It drove into Mon2tr's body after severing its blast, the cry of thunder mixing in with the beast's last vestiges of sound.
Mon2tr released an agonized shriek, its rocky hide being ripped through with such ease, it didn't even crack. With a blinding flash, the construct erupted, chunks of crystalline shrapnel rained across the battlefield after it exploded into a million pieces. The detonation sent a shockwave that rocked the very hill of corpses they stood upon, dispersing a wave of scorched air.
The woman's expression didn't change. Even before the remnants of her shattered creature hit the ground, she lunged with her weapon already primed. Her blade and technique honed over millennia of killing came toward Sasuke with a vicious edge and precision only seen in surgeons. Sasuke watched her with his two eyes unabashedly.
Immediately, a clanging sound reverberated, for the steel met the edge of the punctual arrival of his drawn Kusanagi. Before the second strike could rebound from her, his blade surged again with lightning, sending a Chidori Stream and stunning the woman. Sasuke turned, driving his elbow into the woman's side and forcing her back, in a sporadic state, before sweeping his arm out and in front.
A palm was raised into her face with his only hand, speaking the words of his next attack.
"Shinra...!"
The sound of space distorting could be heard as the Doomsday Prophet widened her eyes. The Deva Path had been tapped into, and Sasuke would hold no quarter.
"Tensei...!"
In an instant, a titanic force erupted from the palm, a gravitational wave that blasted outward with the fury capable of collapsing a mountain. The ground fissured, forming chasms from the corpses. Bones, flesh, along with stones alike were hurled in the air without remorse. The cat-eared woman's eyes widened as she was caught in the expanding sphere, body unable to bear the force.
The pressure crushed what was left of the hillside, demolishing the battlefield evermore. Mon2tr's fragments were pulverized into dust, distorting the horizon as a forward crater was carved through the land, traveling as far as the eye could see. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of meters did the attack cover, the entire view which once stood before him...
...No longer existing. When the dust settled, nothing but a barren land dug in was the only thing that remained, all traces of the battlefield in that very area having vanished.
Sasuke lowered his hand, breathing slowly, and with his throat clogged with a bifrost cold. The Rinnegan and Sharingan were gleaming together, dancing as the only vibrant colors under the darkened, smog-filled sky.