While he knew very well that the Imperial Army had spotted the vessels and started to prepare, Hyarmenion was banking on the fact that it took them a while to get to that point. They had only started to prepare once they had actually seen his flotilla.<br/><br/>On the other hand, Hyarmenion himself felt that he actually still had the element of surprise working in his favor, since they hadn't expected a move like this at all. Once they were even remotely close enough, he allowed his vessels to begin to fire in what was a cacophony of noisy blasts.<br/><br/>Naturally he had no real way of knowing what was going on with Sorin, but he knew very well that she was fierce and aggressive. She always was in all of her dealings, and as a result he knew that she wasn't going to have much mercy.<br/><br/>For now, though, he just shelled the land with everything that he had, hoping to soften up the targets for what he considered an inevitable landfall.<br/><br/>Making haste with everything, as Sorin would have likewise known that he surely would have done, he got as many troops prepared as possible. He wanted to make sure that he would be able to run these vessels with their skeleton crews, but he figured that almost any sacrifice was acceptable to get another person out there as a pair of boots on the ground.<br/><br/>It was an all out assault that would come only after all the defending units were completely crushed.<br/><br/>Some might have called him merciless, but indeed he wanted to end things as quickly as possible in order to allow people to once more go on living without the challenges that war would have forced them to face in turn.