Before the march, Indra stood before his ragged army of twenty thousand commoners. He didn't look at his generals; he looked at a young farmer who had become a crowd favorite for his bravery.
"If you wore this crown," Indra asked, his voice cutting through the wind, "where would you strike first?"
The commoner wiped sweat from his brow and pointed a calloused finger. "The Mountains of Theta are a fortress, and the Weeling Province of Gamma is a gold mine. To break them, you must bleed them both."
Indra's lips curled into a rare, chilling smile. He turned to Supreme General Veda. "General, take your 'Warrior Society' and hold the bridge near the Theta border. Do not let them cross. Use your elite skills to launch constant guerilla strikes against their mountain passes."
Veda's face tightened. He realized Indra was isolating him. By sending the traitors to the mountains, Indra was forcing them to fight Theta's specialized archers in a meat-grinder of terrain while Indra took the "prize"—the Weeling Province—for himself. Veda had no choice but to obey, or reveal his treason too early.
The Siege of Weeling
While Veda was tied down in the rocky crags of the north, Indra and his commoner army swept into the lush plains of Weeling. They didn't encounter a wall of faceless soldiers, but the Gamma Empire's secret weapon: General Moon Gyu. She was a master of the Musi Vyuha (the Fist formation), a compact, hard-hitting style that utilized heavy shields and short swords.
The battle was a symphony of violence. Moon Gyu moved with a grace that rivaled Indra's own, her twin blades parrying his black spear with a precision that finally gave him a challenge. The commoners clashed with the professional Gamma legions, and for hours, the air was filled with the screams of men and the clang of steel. As the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in blood-orange hues, both forces retreated to catch their breath. The day was a stalemate.
The Night of Shadows and Light
Moon Gyu was clever. She knew commoners lacked the discipline of night watches. Under the cover of pitch darkness, she sent a strike force into Indra's camp. They moved like ghosts, slitting throats in the tents. By the time the alarm was raised, 1,000 commoners lay dead. The Gamma soldiers retreated to their base, laughing and boasting of their easy victory over "farmers."
But as they reached their own ramparts, the laughter died.
In the distance, a bright, unnatural beam of light began to glow from a nearby ridge. Indra had used the Darpana strategy—huge polished bronze mirrors used in ancient warfare to reflect and concentrate the light of the rising moon and hidden signal fires. It blinded the sentries, but it was merely a distraction.
As the Gamma soldiers squinted at the light, they smelled something sweet and heavy. Oil.
Indra had used the chaos of the night to send a tiny, specialized team to the Gamma rear. They hadn't attacked the soldiers; they had doused the massive granaries—the lifeblood of the million-man army—in resin and oil.
A single fire arrow, launched by Indra himself from a mile away with a heavy composite bow, streaked through the air like a falling star. It hit the central granary.
BOOM.
The explosion was catastrophic. The fire didn't just burn the grain; it spread to the nearby barracks where the soldiers were celebrating. The dry wood and stored oil turned the base into a furnace. 2,500 Gamma soldiers were incinerated in minutes, and the rest were left with no food to sustain a siege.
As the dusk of the next day rose, Indra stood on a hill, the glow of the enemy's burning supplies reflecting in his glass-like eyes. He had lost a thousand, but he had broken the enemy's stomach and their spirit.