The tension in the mountains bordering the Quarth Kingdom was palpable, thick with the smell of unburnt black powder and the cold scent of high-altitude air. This remote, loyal territory had been transformed into the staging ground for a revolution, and Colonel Vance, the Army Ranger veteran, stood ready to witness the spectacular success of Operation: Trojan Horse. The time for the Proxy War had arrived, and Prince Colin, now embodying the authority vested in him by Emperor Maximilian, was poised to strike.
The decision of where to strike first was critical. Colin's forces, while benefiting from Scorpian training in discipline and the use of the new muskets and Napoleonic cannons, were still vastly outnumbered by the regional garrisons loyal to his uncle and the nobility. A direct assault on the capital's Royal Palace—the seat of the usurper—would be emotionally satisfying but tactically foolish. The Palace would be heavily defended by the strongest retinues and the primary magical defense array. Max's doctrine of Order demanded efficiency and the elimination of the enemy's most critical capability.
Colin, now thoroughly schooled by Colonel Vance in the principles of kinetic warfare, chose the most strategic target: the Mage Academy. The academy was the heart of the nobility's power, the source of their mystical prestige, and the command center for their arcane defenses. Destroying it would not just cripple their military capability; it would shatter their ideological pretense of magical supremacy.
"The Palace can wait," Colin declared to Vance, tracing the lines of the capital's defenses on the map. "If we strike the Palace first, the mages will scatter into the countryside, ready to lead a protracted insurgency. If we strike the Mage Academy, we cut off the head of their defense and decapitate their religious faith in magic. The nobles will lose their primary strategic asset in a single afternoon."
Vance gave a curt nod of approval. "Correct, Prince. You hit the source of their power, not the symbol. The airships are ready for the initial deployment. We focus everything we have—every Napoleonic cannon—on the academy grounds. We turn their citadel of arcane learning into a crater."
The operation commenced just before dawn. The massive, unarmed Scorpian airships, the phased-out logistical haulers that represented the pinnacle of neutral conveyance, lifted silently out of the hidden valleys. Inside their cavernous holds were not men, but the artillery—the heavy Napoleonic cannons that represented the pure, brutal finality of kinetic warfare. These airships utilized their superior speed and silent propulsion to bypass all traditional land defenses, flying deep into hostile territory before anyone in the capital realized they were there.
The airships didn't land near the capital; they flew directly to the rugged, high mountains overlooking the city, dropping the cannons and Colonel Vance's elite Scorpian training crews onto secure, pre-selected sites. The ground crews, now comprised of Colin's fastest and most disciplined men, worked with frantic efficiency, positioning the cannons and stacking the barrels of black powder and heavy cannonballs. By the time the sun crested the horizon, illuminating the old, high walls of the Mage Academy, the artillery had achieved its perfect, unchallengeable position.
The Mage Academy was a fortress of traditional architecture, its walls thick, reinforced with ancient wards, and perpetually protected by several dozen senior mages who maintained a constantly flowing, localized Magic Shield. The nobles inside were secure in their belief that no medieval artillery could breach their defenses.
Colin, watching from a forward observation post, gave the signal. The first shot was not aimed at the Academy itself, but at a stone bridge leading from the Palace to the inner city. The cannonball, a heavy kinetic projectile, hit the bridge support with the force of a battering ram, collapsing the structure and signaling the start of the engagement.
Then, the full fury of the Scorpian-supplied artillery focused on the Mage Academy. The barrage was relentless and deafening. The Napoleonic cannons—crude but devastatingly effective—pounded the perimeter defenses. The senior mages, inside the academy, frantically channeled their arcane energy into reinforcing their Magic Shield. The shield held initially, deflecting the heavy iron balls into puffs of dust and displaced air.
Inside the Academy's command center, Archmage Veren, the powerful leader of the rebellion's arcane forces, laughed scornfully. "Fools! They use archaic siege engines! Our shield can handle five times this kinetic output! They waste their black powder!"
But the Scorpian strategy was not to breach the shield, but to overwhelm the mages maintaining it. The sheer, relentless rate of fire, dictated by the precise, disciplined training of Colonel Vance's men, was the true weapon. The musketeers, positioned on the mountain slopes to cover the artillery, did not engage the infantry; they fired constant, harassing volleys at the few mages supporting the shield from outside the main perimeter, forcing the senior mages inside to divert precious arcane energy.
After thirty minutes of continuous, thunderous shelling, Archmage Veren's face was pale with strain. "It's the rate of fire! They don't tire! They reload with inhuman speed! They are draining the primary convergence point!"
A subordinate mage, his eyes wide with fear, screamed as he fell back from the arcane controls. "We need more mages! The shield is flickering! It's too much kinetic energy over time!"
The Magic Shield, designed to withstand powerful but infrequent blows, was never designed to handle the continuous, synchronized, industrial application of kinetic force. With a blinding flash of energy, the shield collapsed, burning out the exhausted mages who had maintained it.
The immediate silence was followed by the sound of metal tearing through stone. The next cannonballs slammed into the academy's thick stone walls, turning them to rubble. The Scorpian-trained artillery crews shifted their fire to the central spire—the locus of the academy's magical power. With horrifying accuracy, the heavy balls punched through the spire, collapsing the structure. The Mage Academy, the proud symbol of the nobility's ancestral power, was reduced to a smoking, burning ruin in less than an hour.
The collapse was total. The political and social shock was immediate and decisive. The nobility, including Prince Colin's usurper uncle in the palace, watched the smoke rise, realizing with sickening dread that their core defense had been annihilated. Their military power—their countless powerful mages—was now leaderless and scattered, rendered irrelevant by simple iron and black powder, delivered with Scorpian discipline.
Colin, watching the smoke clear, turned to Vance. "The capital is broken, Colonel. We have achieved the objective."
Vance gave a curt nod. "The kinetic phase is complete, Prince. The rest is policing. The palace will surrender by nightfall. They have no arcane command structure left."
The Proxy War had been won by a devastating, surgical strike that proved the absolute superiority of Order and kinetics over chaotic arcane tradition. Quarth was now Colin's, and Emperor Maximilian had gained an iron grip on a crucial strategic asset within the very heart of the Kingdom Alliance, all without deploying a single soldier of the Empire of Scorpia