Chapter 528: The Clash Between Minds
Nation states, especially modern ones, love to spread their historical heroic tales through various mediums of information to her citizens for many purposes, but the most important one out of them is to help her citizens gain their cultural confidence, consolidate the people together giving them a common cultural identity to be able to proudly declare themselves as the people of the state instead of classifying themselves according to their various ethnicities and races which in the end might shake the country’s foundations and cause it to split apart, a frequent ending for large empires that were once strong in the world.
Due to these reasons, heroes are almost one of the most critical factors if one wants to create a new country or build it up from the ashes. And it is no doubt that the best kind of heroes that can be used to solidify national focus and identity is their war heroes. Which is the same for Antonius, the moment when he and his troopers decide to storm into the blazing city, their image shall be casted in the memories of the citizens of Ioannina forever. From today onwards, Antonius and his army has become the hero, the icon, the deity and the image of bravery in these citizens’ eyes. The tales of a great army sacrificing themselves to save a city that they came to conquer, an act that has never been seen or heard by anyone in this era, a will to sacrifice unseen in the armies of this era.
The action of Antonius shall be described in folklores and tales of the citizens to their kids and grandchildren in many years to come until the end of time.
But for now, Antonius found himself stuck in a serious dilemma; surely, he did not consider the sheer size of the fire when he led his troops here with nothing but water buckets. There is literally almost nothing in these ages to stop a fire of this size, the only advantage they have is that gigantic lake beside the city but surely there is no way to magically suck up the water in the lake and pour them onto the fire. Normally in hazardous man-made city fires like this, there are not many things humans can do except for evacuating the human lives and valuables as fast as possible.
In these cases, the city shall get burnt down entirely, like what happened to the city of Rome in the pagan emperor Nero’s times. The citizens shall then either move away to their new homes or put in efforts to rebuild their homes from what is left of it.
Although the adrenaline rush in these men has made them temporarily forget about the scorching pain of the fire on their bare skins and the grizzling sight of the fumes engulfing the buildings one after another before them, they shall soon realise about what a monster they are fighting with and back off. No one wants to die for sure, at least not like this throwing their lives away worthlessly. Alexios became agitated and attempted to rush into the city too to find Antonius and give him an order to pull the troops out of the city before they suffer even more loses, but before he could leave, he got pulled back by Apostolos, who mentioned.
"There is no need to act Master Alexios, the situation here is going in our favour."
Alexios is shocked, he waved his hands before Apostolos’ eyes wandering if the old man has finally gone blind and pointed out to the later that there is a fire eating up the entire city.
"There is no need to worry, Master Alexios. It is beneficial for us if more troopers sacrifice themselves today in the fire, oh yes, maybe it shall be a little bit more trouble for you, since you shall need to compensate their city states, monarchs or families of their loses."
This statement shocked Alexios even further.
"Well, Master Alexios, the more soldiers who died today in the city, the more shall the people of Ioannina remember our sacrifices, and the more they shall moan and worship our lord in the future ensuring that they shall stay loyal for generations, you see, it is just like a game, whereby you have this rule of the more lives you have lost, the higher the points or war score you have when it comes to the negotiation tables..."
"But I must remind you Apostolos, that this is not a game!" Alexios exclaimed. "They are lives! Fresh human lives! Don’t you have a little bit of sympathy for them? Where is your morale dimensions?"
"Oh, my dear Alexios, since when do we have such luxury to have such thing called a morale dimension as politicians? They are not even Romans, and we all know the real purpose of their visit, to plunder gold! So why can’t we use this excellent opportunity to purge them from this land, and ensure that they are no longer of a threat?"
Alexios is utterly shocked beyond words, he is displeased and even disgusted by the speech of his colleague, and so he went away without saying a thing.
The situation is becoming pretty desperate as he fires continues to escalate, now spreading to almost half of the city alongside with the vegetations outside the walls, there are even some citizens and troopers finding themselves getting trapped in the collapsed buildings and are now yelling for help while choking in the smoke. The fight against fire seemed to be a mission impossible for Antonius and his crew.
"God help us!" Numerous people started crying in despair facing this kind of situation and battle they have never faced before, with some already preparing to flee from the spot.
However, what the fire fighters do not realise, or do not know is that the hot air from the burning city is slowly starting to create an atmospheric instability, giving the surrounding air a pushing force making them move up raising into the atmospheric level creating an updraft. While as the surrounding air rises it shall eventually cool down with the moisture, condensing into water droplets and eventually turning into cumulonimbus flammagenitus clouds.
As the fire continues burning, more and more air and ashes are sent into the atmosphere creating even more clouds, and just as Antonius’ men reached a breaking point, the density and mass of these water droplets in the cloud has too reached a breaking point. Antonius is still filling up his bucket from the boiling lake water when he suddenly felt this coolness on his face, he looked up at the skies in awe, then did he realise that from the blossomed clouds, came water droplets that are like flower petals bringing in a surge of fresh air onto his face.
The rain droplets came small initially, then in no time it turned violent like stones kissing Antonius’ dried skins, the height of the sky gave these rain droplets a high speed that when it came pounding onto Antonius’ face it almost felt like rocks. But Antonius does not feel any pain, not at all, for the only emotion he feels now is joy, overjoyed actually, surprised by the gift from the sky.
With the aid of the downpour, the menacing fire that still seemed to be invincible just a few minutes before now growled angrily in powerlessness before it slowly died down accompanied by the rain of death. The fire that troubled a city almost killing off an army is now ceased to existence.
The troopers and citizens of Ioannina that are still running around with their water buckets could not believe what they have just saw with their own naked eyes as they stood rooted to the ground soaked drenched wet in the rain. Even for the people that are standing a far like Apostolos and Alexios had their jaws dropped as they have no idea on how this happened.
A glimpse of suspicion flashed through Apostolos’ eyes as he looked at the heavy downpour and Alexios running around like a kid yelling in the rain, he started questioning himself, does Antonius really has the favour of God, why did God decide to help him? Is it true that Antonius has the true mandate? This rain cannot be explained by any of the experience he has gained in his last fifty plus years of age, if it cannot be explained, then it must be the work of God.
Thousands of citizens and troopers flooded to the side of the Caesar, dancing and cheering in sheer joy. Never has they been so desperate in their life before, and the contrast from a while ago to now is too significant relieving everyone standing here from the threat of death. In their eyes, Antonius is now hereby their greatest and only life saver, even in the eyes of the clergies, because from how they look at things, their new lord must have gained the likings of God, if not that rain just now cannot be explained.
