"Although much of our Fatherland's glorious legacy has been lost due to the ravages of the Inquisition in the 14th century, there remain traces of the magic developed by our ancestors if one knows where to look.

Using modern methods and technologies, I believe that this lost knowledge could be reconstituted, and entire branches of magecraft lost to us because of the barbarism and ignorance that once swept the entire continent restored.

In this paper, I will discuss not only the methods by which this might be accomplished, but the potential uses of such recovered spells, based on the fragments that have reached us across the ages. Finally, I will demonstrate the proposed methodology, using records from the Academy's library, accessed for this purpose thanks to the generous authorization of Major Lergen."

Introduction of the dissertation 'On the Possible Applications of Elder Magic in Warfare', by Cadet Tanya Degurechaff, Imperial Military Academy, April 1923

"… Also, regardless of her academic and martial prowess, one must not forget Degurechaff's extreme youth. Though it may be dishonorable to say so, I believe that sending such a young child to the battlefield would be a far worse stain on the Empire's honor. One must also consider the optics of such a deployment : should our enemies learn that we sent a nine-years old girl to the frontlines, God alone knows what their propaganda machine would be able to make out of it !"

Letter from Major Lergen agreeing to Cadet Tanya Degurechaff's transfer to a research division rather than to the flying mage corps, answering to a query by a high-ranking Imperial noble regarding her dissertation's possible applications, June 1923.

"With the war against the Legadonian Entente and the Francois Republic now in full swing, it is our belief that all resources of the Empire should be used in the most efficient manner possible.

To this end, following the latest reports of Division Y, it is our suggestion that Tanya Degurechaff be promoted to the rank of Major. We believe that this will give her the authority required to manage the rest of the personalities involved in Division Y's operations, since apparently this young girl both has a better head on her shoulders than the so-called academic elites of Berun, but also a better grip on the practical realities of management."

Excerpt from a memo at the Staff Headquarters of the Imperial Army, September 1923 (approved).

"November 10th, 1923.

Well, the last few months have certainly been interesting, no one can argue otherwise. I freely admit that I was sceptical when Major Degurechaff was put in charge of our research … No, that's a lie. I was outraged that such a young girl – a child ! – had been given authority over me and my colleagues. Sure, her magical prowess was off the chart, and no one would have called her an idiot after reading that dissertation of hers, but a man has his pride !

I am not so prideful, however, as to not recognize when I am wrong. Major Degurechaff is a true genius, possessed of a vision that reaches far beyond what any of us thought possible. The Denkmaschine she suggested has been a tremendous success, and we are ready to begin testing of the first reconstructed rituals. All we're waiting for are the supplies we need, as well as the proper lunar phase and … well, the test subjects.

The Major has assured me that she has contacted our military overseers about procuring suitable specimens. I confess I am … less than enthusiastic about that particular aspect of our research, but I recognize its necessity, and I know better than to argue in front of her. Her eyes … they don't look like those of a little girl at all. Hell, sometimes they hardly look human at all. But then, I guess she'd have to be cold in order to lead the kind of research we are undertaking here."

Excerpt from the personal diary of one of the researchers at Division Y.

From : Brigadier General Hans von Zettour

To : Major Tanya Degurechaff

Subject : Dacian deployment order

Date : September 25th, 1924

Major,

Yesterday at approximately 8:00 AM, the Dacian Army crossed the border between the Empire and the Grand Duchy and launched an invasion of the Empire. Approximately 600,000 men have been deployed. Faced with such overwhelming numbers, the border garrison has retreated, leaving the Dacians an open path to the Empire's heartlands.

With the worsening situation on the western and northern fronts, it will take us a minimum of four weeks to mobilize the 17th army and send it there, during which time the Dacians will ravage the Imperial countryside. Before withdrawing, the border garrison noted that the Dacians seem to lack a supply train suitable to their needs, leading us to believe they intent to forage for food.

To prevent this defilement of the Empire's territories, you are officially ordered to mobilize any and all assets of Division Y required to slow the Dacian army and safeguard the region.

For the Fatherland.

From : Major Tanya Degurechaff

To : Brigadier General Hans von Zettour

Subject : Orders received

Date : September 25th, 1924

Your orders are received and acknowledged. We have begun preparations for the deployment of Projekt K against the Dacian army.

For the Fatherland.

From : Major Tanya Degurechaff

To : Brigadier General Hans von Zettour

Subject : Deployment results

Date : September 30th, 1924

Brigadier General,

It is my pleasure to report that the deployment of Projekt K succeeded beyond our expectations, with no less than six instances of the Projekt being manifested.

The Dacian casualties are estimated at over 50% of their initial forces, with the remainder having broken ranks and fled back to the Grand Duchy or scattered in the countryside. Though most of them abandoned their weapons in their flight, not all did, and they should all be considered dangerous until apprehended.

I respectfully advise that the orders of the 17th Army be changed to capturing these remnants before they can threaten the local Imperial population, before marching on Dacia itself to capitalize on the shock caused by the loss of their army. The instances of Projekt K have been successfully recovered, and we believe there shouldn't be any long-term consequences of their deployment on Imperial soil.

Nevertheless, I would strongly advise against deploying Projekt K on the frontlines of the other conflicts in which the Fatherland is presently engaged. We were lucky on this occasion, in that no Imperial military assets were in range, but the confusion of the Rhine front, for instance, would all but ensure that friendlies would be exposed to Projekt K. Having witnessed first-hand what our new weapon is capable of, I'm certain that the impact on morale would overshadow any military gain.

We at Division Y will of course continue our work on the other Projekte.

For the Fatherland,

Major Degurechaff

INVADING DACIAN ARMY BEATEN BACK BY IMPERIAL WUNDERWAFFE !

After several days of fear across the nation following the announcement that the Duchy of Dacia had joined the cowardly Republic and Entente in their unjust and unprovoked war against our Empire, the spokespersons of the Ministry of War have announced that the Dacian incursion was successfully repelled.

While details are both scarce and classified, civilian experts had already made their worries about the Dacian invasion clear, as our noble Imperial soldiers were already occupied defending the Fatherland on two distant fronts, only their courage and the power of our extended rail network allowing them to hold the line. While none doubted that the Dacians would eventually be brought to heel by our superior might, there was no telling what ravages they might inflict on the Fatherland before being defeated.

However, thanks to the deployment of a top-secret weapon program, the entire Dacian army, estimated to count over half a million men, was put to flight without hours of breaching the Empire's sacrosanct borders ! Their command structure is believed to have been completely wiped out within moments of the first engagement with the mysterious Wunderwaffe, leading to the collapse of their formations and immediate flight from Imperial territory.

Already, thousands of fleeing Dacian troops have been captured by Imperial soldiers moving in the wake of the Wunderwaffe to secure the area. Meanwhile, our diplomats have sent messages to the Duchy of Dacia informing them of this total defeat and suggesting terms for the Duchy's surrender.

Truly, this is a glorious day for the Fatherland. With such mighty Wunderwaffen at our disposal, our victory in the Great War is only a matter of time !

Excerpt from the front-page of the Berun Post, October 2nd, 1924

"The goats … THE GOATS ! I can still hear them ! That hateful sound … They trampled us, they crushed us, they tore us apart !

Our guns did nothing ! NOTHING ! Specks of metal against mountains of black, writhing flesh … And the screams, the screams ! Half a million men, but we were ANTS ! Ants to be trampled by giants, nothing more !

All is lost, do you hear me ?! ALL IS LOST ! We have challenged the Devil, and he has sent his minions to destroy us all !"

Excerpt from the testimony of one of the Dacian survivors of the attempted invasion of the Empire by the Grand Duchy, October 4th, 1924

"To be blunt, we do not know what happened to the Dacian army.

Our previous intelligence efforts had told us that the Dacians didn't stand a chance against the Empire on their own, due to the lack of mechanization of their army. It was estimated that, while their invasion would eventually be stopped, the drain on manpower this would inflict on the Empire would be sufficient to turn the tide on the other fronts, or at least give the enemies of the Empire breathing space.

Instead, the Dacian army was annihilated within days of entering the Empire – and, as far as we can tell, it was effectively destroyed within a single engagement. While the Dacian forces were spread over a large area due to their numbers, they were still in close proximity, partially due to their lack of modern, long-range communication.

Most of the corpses are unrecognizable, and the survivors we have interrogated are delirious, often to the point of violence if pressed on what happened to them. I would suspect chemical weapons have addled their minds, except that the damage inflicted on the bodies of the dead doesn't look like anything that could have happened during panic.

The wildlife of the area seems to have been affected by whatever it is the Imperials did here. We observed animals of abnormal size and aggression, and even had to defend ourselves from attack on several occasions.

I recommend the Allied Kingdom mobilize any required resources in order to investigate this new weapon the Imperials have deployed against Dacia."

Excerpt from the report of Agent 404, Albion Secret Service, October 6th, 1924

October 10th, 1924 – Castle Schwartzstein – Division Y Headquarters

How did it all come to this ?!

I could, of course, point straight at where it had started : with me writing that damnable dissertation one year ago. But I had written that paper while suffering from sleep deprivation due to pushing myself in order to get the good grades and recommendations that would get me a nice, safe posting at the rear. Even after my post-exam collapse and recovery, I had been confident that no one could possibly take it seriously.

I mean, mysterious ancient magics which could be used to crush a truly modern army ? Only a complete moron would have thought that could happen in real life ! Sure, the mage orb had revolutionized how magic was employed in warfare, but there was a world of difference between that and somehow creating superweapons from the scraps of knowledge that had survived the Inquisition's purges centuries ago.

Still, when my assignment to Division Y had come, I had been ecstatic. Sure, it wasn't the safe, rear posting at the Staff Headquarters I had been hoping for, but spending my career doing what I was certain would amount to little more than archaeological and anthropological research was a lot better than actually being shot at. In fact, it was even safer, since it was always possible for the general staff to end up being put on trial if we lost the war, while people working in research programs were more likely to be discreetly hired by the victors. Even once the methodology I had proposed in my paper was shown not to work, if I could make myself sufficiently useful to the rest of the team, then I would be safe. Division Y's stated purpose pretty much required it to have at least one magically-gifted individual on board, if only to test whatever spells the rest of the team put together.

Except that it had worked.

The methodology I had proposed had worked. With the team of crackpot academics and half-mad magical researchers that had been thrown together to form Division Y, we had actually been able to build a giant magical computer from linked orbs that had then reconstructed long-lost spells from scratch using pattern recognition algorithms taken from a dissected search spell.

Or at least that's what we had told the brass. In truth, I wasn't certain that we weren't actually creating entirely new spells, like someone with a basic and faulty understanding of Latin trying to translate Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars and somehow ending up with an award-worthy cooking recipe.

Of course, that wasn't the worst of it. Even the fact that the spells we had 're-discovered' did in fact have military applications wasn't that bad. No, the problem was that all of them were something straight out of the works of HP Lovecraft, the (in)famous author from my original world. Which, beyond the mind-shattering cosmic implications, had much more immediate consequences.

The moment I had realized what we were working on, I had trebled security protocols and restricted access to the Denkmaschine, as those lunatics under my nominal command had called the primitive computer we had assembled. I didn't know what a computer keeping Mythos rituals in its memory banks could do if left in the hands of mad scientists, but I knew it wouldn't be anything good.

Later, I had expected my requests for human test subjects to be rejected out of hand – I had even prepared for the possibility that I'd be blamed for such blatantly inhumane requests and taken steps to cover myself accordingly. I had been brutally clear as to the possibility of failure in my letters, and had phrased even the best possible outcomes in coldly rational terms. I had been sure that it would be rejected out of hand, which would 'force' me to abandon these avenues of research and try to set Division Y on a less potentially-apocalyptic course.

Instead, we'd gotten the first batch of death row prisoners within two weeks. Even later, when I had asked for the bodies of dead Imperial soldiers, my request had been granted with a speed that had genuinely impressed the part of me that had worked in bureaucracy for so long.

I was almost certain Being X was involved in this whole mess. Nothing else could explain how well my crackpot theory had worked. I had to give the bastard points for perseverance : I'd thought myself safe from his influence once I had managed to get a posting away from the frontlines, but he'd still found a way to mess with me. And I had to admit, as ways to make someone desperate enough to pray any god willing to listen for help, introducing them to the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos certainly was an effective one.

It wouldn't work on me, though. Yet even so, I could admit to myself that recent events had shaken me.

Projekt K, [Kinder], had been horrifying to watch in action. It had taken every bit of my experience from my former life at keeping a poker face no matter what to avoid starting screaming in horror as the Children of the Horned Goat we had summoned had torn the Dacian army to pieces. And even then, by the time I had managed to regain enough composure that I could trust myself to do anything but maintain my flying spell and get to work on banishing the six eldritch horrors we had brought into being, the ground had been littered with corpses. And sure, they had been enemy soldiers who had been invading my country unprovoked, but no one deserved to die like that. More to the point, there might not be any international treaties forbidding what we'd done, but it was still guaranteed to be prosecuted as a war crime if the war ended in anything less than total Imperial victory.

Upon our return to Castle Schwartzstein, I had immediately locked away the Flute of the Dark Mother that we had created and which I had used to perform the deployment of Projekt K. That damnable artefact now rested in one of the most secure vaults in the worlds, the combination of which was known only to myself. I was hoping that my after-action report would be enough to convince the brass that deploying that particular Projekt again would be a terrible mistake.

Of course, I knew they wouldn't be moved by something as irrational as the sheer horror of using eldritch abominations to wage war, so I had couched my arguments in pragmatic, costs-and-benefits terms. I was confident I had made my case well, but unfortunately, this wouldn't keep the brass' expectations of us from rising to impossible levels. The reward for a job well done was more work, after all, and the reward for performing a miracle was being asked to produce more miracles.

And the problem was, we did have the means to produce more miracles. Projekt K was just one of the avenues of research we had pursued that had ended up fruitful. As the overseer of Division Y and someone with military training, thinking of military applications for the works of my subordinates had fallen mostly on me, even if the researchers were all very enthusiastic – too enthusiastic – about suggesting potential uses.

So yes, Division Y could produce more miracles, perhaps even enough of those to win the war against the Entente and the Republic – hell, given some of the Projekte, perhaps even against the entire world. I only worried about what the end cost of it all would end up being.

The sound of a knock on my office door pulled me out of my pessimistic, self-pitying funk, and I snapped to attention.

"Enter," I called out, and the door swung open, revealing the figure of my personal assistant.

I had no issue admitting Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov was a beautiful young woman. A bit too young for my former self's taste, given that she was barely of legal age, but there was no denying that her aristocratic heritage had blessed her with good looks rather than the deformities I'd associated with the inbreeding practiced by the so-called blue blood back in my old world. I suspected that in this world, the fact magical potential was at least partially hereditary might have played a part in the powerful making sure they didn't accidentally cripple their bloodlines by marrying their own cousins one too many times.

Of course, in the case of Viktoriya (or, as she insisted I call her, Visha), the point was moot. The women who had benefited from Projekt U would never have children, that much we were certain of. Things were a bit less certain for the men who had undergone the same procedure, but I wasn't about to authorize that kind of experiment. Sure, suggesting it might be the push too far that would get the whole Division shut down, but with my tracking record so far, it would probably just get approved, and that could give people all manner of inappropriate, stupid and dangerous ideas where a young female mage like myself was concerned.

"Here's your coffee, Major," she said, putting a cup of fragrant goodness in front of me.

"Thank you, Visha." I sighed in pleasure as I picked it up and breathed its aroma in.

It had been a pleasant surprise to find out that the loss of Visha's own ability to ingest normal food and drinks hadn't hurt her brewing skills at all. No one in the entire division made coffee as good as her, which was one of the reason I'd claimed her as my assistant after she had recovered from her … traumatic experience.

Visha was one of the greatest successes of Projekt U, [Untoten]. A conscript mage from the exiled Russy nobility that had fled the communist revolution by taking refuge in the Empire, she had been deployed to the Rhine front and met the fate of so many rookies sent to that hellscape. Unlike most of them, however, her body had been recovered and sent to our division. She had risen as one of the Deathless, which was really a fancy way of saying we had turned her into a vampire, though at least she only needed a few drops of magic-charged blood every week to sustain her. Vampire legends existed in this world, and though the name of Dracula's author was different here the title of the book was the same, which made sense since as far as I could tell, languages were the same as in my world, and Dracula meant, if I remembered correctly, Son of the Dragon in Romanian.

There were just over a score of Projekt U's results in the Division, mainly because each of them required a steady diet of mage blood, and we didn't have a lot of those. We didn't know what would happen to them if they starved : it wasn't exactly something we could test, not when our subjects were Imperial citizens who also happened to be capable of orbless, undetectable flight and strong enough to rip a steel door off its hinges. Morality aside, pissing them off would be just plain stupid. Even their deadly vulnerability to sunlight could be managed with the proper uniforms, though the slightest tear in their full-body cover would be fatal.

Of course, even if we had access to more mages, we couldn't resurrect every fallen Imperial soldier this way. Unique nutritional requirements aside, each instance of Projekt U was prohibitively expensive in terms of ritual reagents, and required the body to be more or less in one piece, which was a rarity in this war given the liberal use of artillery in the trenches. We had limited ourselves to mages, and I had even claimed that the ability to use magic was needed for the resurrection to work in the first place : the last thing we needed was for some Imperial noble to think we'd stumbled onto a path to immortality and force us to turn the entire ruling class of the Empire into literal undead bloodsuckers. In my humble opinion, our image on the international scene already had enough problems.

Besides, for all I knew, the limitation actually existed. We hadn't tested it after getting our first positive results using mage corpses – that was how expensive the reagents were.

So far, Visha and her peers had taken the transition to vampirism remarkably well, but I'd no idea how long that would last, or how much of it was due to military discipline helping them keep calm as opposed to some mind-altering aspect of their transformation.

"Also," said Visha, "there's been another message from the headquarters." She put a sheet of paper on my desk, and I had to keep myself from groaning.

Then I read the subject line, and my efforts failed miserably. There, next to the identification code that indicated this order came from the highest level of military authority in the Empire, were the words :

'Request for support on the Northern Front'

Sure, I thought, phrase it as a 'request' if you want. As if I could possibly refuse. The bastards hadn't even waited a month.

I read the rest of the message : it was a summary of the situation in the North, which was far from ideal. The initial offensive on the Entente following the Norden Incident had been going well, but the morons at Central Headquarters had decided to risk sending all the reserves in the hope of quickly ending the war. Then the Francois Republic had joined in without provocation, forcing the Western Army to stand against them without support for months while the idiots in charge desperately redeployed the very forces they had sent north. That whole mess was why I had been ordered to intervene when Dacia had decided to throw its hat into the ring, despite its army being ridiculously behind the times.

Now, with the Imperial forces split between two fronts and with the Entente being not-so-secretly supported by foreign powers (including the Allied Kingdom, though we couldn't say that out loud lest they openly join the war) combined with the difficulties inherent in attacking an enemy on their home ground, the Northern Front had slowed down to a crawl and turned into trench warfare. Thousands had already died, and I knew from my memories of the first World War in my previous world that it would only get worse – a lot worse.

And so, since Division Y had proven to be so effective against Dacia, the genius at Headquarters had decided that throwing us into that grinder could only be a good idea.

I sighed. The worst thing was, we did have some things in our arsenal of horrors that I thought could be used to break the deadlock. So I couldn't simply refuse by pointing out the obvious differences between the situation in the North and the Dacian incursion, as my superiors were aware of the diversity of our work, even if they didn't know the specifics.

"Visha, please sit down. I'll need you to carry an answer to the transmission room once I'm done writing it."

"Of course, Major." She saluted sharply.

"Once that's done, please come back here. I'm afraid the next few days are going to be quite busy."

"She accepted ?"

"Yes, sir. We received her response just now. She says she'll leave for Northern headquarters in three days, along with a small group of Division Y members, and link up with the theatre command there to discuss their options to, and I quote, 'break this unseemly deadlock for the glory of the Fatherland'."

"Good. After what happened to the Dacians, I had worried she might … well, nevermind that. It was unworthy of me anyway. I should've known the Major would put her duty above all other concerns, and that her loyalty to the Fatherland is second to none. Did she give any details about what she's planning for our northern 'friends' ?"

"Yes, sir. She mentioned bringing several instances of Projekt U with her, along with some of the more … practically-minded researchers of Division Y to assist her."

"Very well. Please contact Northern Headquarters and inform them of the Major's arrival. Remind them that she operates under our own authority, and that even if her activities and those of Division Y are classified, they are still to treat her as the heroine of the Empire that she is."

"Of course, sir."

"… You've something you want to say. What is it ?"

"Sir Brigadier General … you've read her report on the deployment of Projekt K, and the interviews of the Dacian captives themselves. Are you sure sending her north is a good idea ?"

"I assure you that I don't intend for her to do the same thing she did there. I think she'd refuse if we tried to order her to do it anyway. But the longer this war goes on, the more people on both sides die. The Entente may have started this war, but it is our responsibility as military commanders to end it as fast as we can … no matter the means required to achieve this. What happened to the Dacians was terrible, yes, but not only were they invaders in our country, the utter annihilation of their forces led to the Duchy's prompt surrender out of sheer shock and fear. Many of their soldiers died, yes, but their homeland – and ours – were spared from the ravages of war thanks to it."

"And you think Division Y can repeat that with the Entente ?"

"I don t know. But if there is anyone that can, it's certainly them, with Major Degurechaff leading them."

Overheard exchange at the Central Headquarters of the Imperial Army, Berun – October 11th, 1924

AN : Merry Christmas, everyone ! Here, have some comedy/eldritch horror.

This story was inspired by the TTRPG series Achtung ! Cthulhu which is basically "WW2 but with eldritch horrors". Except, you know, the Empire of Youko Senji isn't based on WW2 but WW1 Germany, which makes them having eldritch horrors under their quote-unquote control less horrifying. I actually had this chapter finished for some time, but I wasn't sure I wanted to publish it while I already had other stories in the works ... as you can guess, I caved in eventually.

Unlike Hell Is Empty, this is going to be a short series rather than a one-shot. I have a total of six chapters planned for this story. All of them should be in the same style as this one : a mix of in-universe document extracts and POV of important characters. This story's priority on my writing schedule will depend on its reception, but I will finish it regardless. I am planning to experiment with shorter fics that would let me explore a variety of fandoms and types of stories in the future. There are already several half-finished drafts and first chapters in my backlog, and if you have suggestions, don't hesitate to send them to me.

I am looking forward to your reactions on this story (don't take it too seriously, because I certainly didn't). On another note, the next chapter of A Blade Recast is almost finished, and I am pushing through to finish Prince of the Eye before the end of the year. After that, well, we'll see where the Muse takes me.

That's all from me today. See you all soon !

Zahariel out.