All in all, about a dozen ships joined Jormun out in the straits, all long and sleek, with huge iron rams on the front.  They were fairly small ships compared to Legion war galleys, but they were packed with powerful mages at least a tier or two above the average Legion marine by Leon’s estimation, and all equipped with more armor than Leon had grown used to seeing upon the Islanders—many were even clearly foreign by the kind of armor they chose to wear.  With the combined complication of the relative narrowness of these waterways, Leon could easily see them swiftly closing with the Legion ships and boarding them.

‘This is going to be a tough fight if they get in close…’ Leon thought to himself as he glanced back at the group of Legion ships making their way through the straits toward him.  He was still using flares to direct them to Jormun, but their aim was fairly clear, they wanted to push Jormun out of the straits and into the ship groups locking down the exits.

As Leon’s eyes turned back down toward Jormun’s ship, he noticed Jormun and the female fire mage staring off at something in the distance, quietly discussing something while the fire mage’s aura started to rise in clear anticipation of violence.  Leon glanced in the same direction as they and saw Alix and Anzu flying in their direction.

He sighed and dropped his invisibility.  Immediately, he noticed Jormun’s eyes turn up to him, but he paid the pirate little attention and started flying to intercept Alix and the albino griffin, cutting them off before they could come into the effective range of Jormun’s fire mage.  He waved to Anzu and led the griffin much higher in the sky, where they would be able to shoot down onto Jormun’s ship with relative ease.

Alix wasted no time in doing just that as Anzu reached a height of about seven hundred feet.  It was quite windy that high up and so close to open ocean, but Leon noted with pride that Alix’s aim was true; her first arrow flew straight for Jormun’s ship.  It was just a regular arrow, but this was just a ranging shot, meant to gauge how Alix might need to adjust her aim, and to test the enemy’s defenses.

Jormun’s people had no way to tell that, though, and so as the arrow sped downward toward the deck of the ship, a bolt of fire hurled by the female fire mage rose to meet it and incinerated the arrow before it could come close to the ship.

“Keep shooting!” Leon shouted to Alix as he fired off one more flare.  The Legion ships were drawing close.  They were only one more turn away from making visual contact with Jormun.

With that flare fired, Leon began to conjure lightning bolts and hurling them, though not with a great amount of force.  The accompanying thunder was more of what he was going for since he doubted that even his mightiest bolts would strike the pirate ships with Jormun and that fire mage on guard—he didn’t even know where Jormun’s other seventh-tier mage was, which made him more than a little nervous.

About a thousand feet in the distance, the first of the Legion war galleys rounded the corner and finally laid eyes upon Jormun’s smaller fleet.  Horns sounded, more war galleys appeared, and Jormun began to loudly shout orders for his fleet to hold fast.

Leon thought that a strange order, for the longer he waited, the more time he was giving the war galleys to swarm in and close the distance—their magical artillery, while not as powerful as the Flame Lances on the dreadnoughts, would still wreak havoc on Jormun’s ships.  But as the war galleys spilled out into this channel and spread out as much as they could, sailing five ships side-by-side, Jormun made his play.

Leon watched as Jormun strode to the front of his ship and raised his hands, and the water beneath his ship began to vibrate with greater and greater strength.  Jormun’s aura towered and grew in intensity as he pushed more and more power into this move.  Leon and Alix both tried to stop it, but Alix’s arrows were intercepted by the fire mage, and three sixth-tier mages among Jormun’s crew leaped out to defend their captain and took the lightning bolts meant for him, their armor and own power helping them to largely shrug off the damage that Leon’s bolts did to them.  Jormun finished his preparations, and sent a tremendous tidal wave surging toward the Legion war galleys.

Leon saw a number of Legion water mages rush to the front of their galleys and work to halt this wave, but there was only so much they could do against a seventh-tier mage in his own element.  The wave fell upon the front line of ships, knocking them around like they were toys for children, and sending them crashing into those other ships beside and behind them.  Sailors and marines were thrown overboard by the dozen, and the Legion battlegroup was consumed by chaos.

Many of the galleys behind the frontline, however, were largely unaffected, with their water mages easily able to deal with the wave after it had expended most of its force on the frontline.  After a few horn blasts from the ship that Leon assumed was in command, these galleys launched their payloads from the trebuchets and catapults on their main decks.  Burning spheres and stones were hurled at Jormun’s fleet, and though the female fire mage and Jormun himself used their power—with fireballs and great geysers of water rising from the strait to intercept these missiles—a little under half landed among Jormun’s small fleet.  The stones exploded, showering Jormun’s pirates in stony shrapnel, while the burning spheres detonated with great force, sending waves of fire to scour the pirate decks.

Two of Jormun’s ships were immediately disabled, from what Leon could see from his vantage point, but Jormun’s ship remained almost completely untouched as a shield of light erupted from the decks and kept all fire and stony shrapnel at bay—showing that the seventh-tier light mage was still on the ship somewhere, just not on the deck.

Leon scowled, but he took some comfort in seeing the pirates taking a greater beating than the Legion in their first exchange.  Already, the Legion war galleys were righting themselves and slowly getting back into position, though Leon could also hear many of their magic engines screaming from use.  One galley’s engine seemed completely done for, as they had resorted to deploying their many oars from the second deck to steer themselves.

Leon continued to rain lightning down upon the pirates, killing a few whenever there was a chance.  Alix had, in the chaos of the opening plays made by the opposing fleets, taken to firing down a few explosive arrows, which played even greater havoc on Jormun’s ships than Leon’s lightning bolts.  Leon took only one break from harassing the pirates to send a quick update to Maia, who in turn told him that Sigebert was preparing to send in extra reinforcements.

Suddenly, as Leon was preparing another lightning bolt to hurl from the heavens down onto the deck of Jormun’s most beaten-looking ship, Jormun’s personal ship surged forward with a wave of magic power, and the two weapon emplacements on the front of his ship that resembled small Flame Lances began to light up with magic power.

‘Shit!’ Leon thought.  The war galleys were still preparing their next salvo and couldn’t immediately counter this change in tactics.  The pirate ships were smaller and faster, and those that could were falling in behind their leader.

“Stay up here and keep shooting whenever you get the chance!” Leon shouted to Alix as he tossed her more explosive arrows and then began to drop from the sky.

“What are you going to do?!” Alix shouted back, the smile she wore from getting to show off her improved archery skills freezing on her face.

“I’m not sure, but I can’t just watch from up here!” Leon shouted back, and he began to hurtle downward like a meteor.  He couldn’t attack Jormun’s ship, that was too well-defended and would probably only result in him getting double-teamed by Jormun and that fire mage.  They were out on the sea, so Jormun’s hammer wouldn’t be of much help, but that fire mage’s sword with its golden fire would be a problem on top of their combined power.

No, Leon knew that he couldn’t do that, but simply staying in the air wasn’t doing enough.  He targeted one of Jormun’s other ships not too far down the line and plummeted towards it.  It had taken a beating and lost a fair portion of its crew.  More importantly, Leon hoped that if he managed to take it down quickly enough, it might block those ships behind it from following behind Jormun closely enough to take advantage of whatever he was doing.

Leon fell faster than Jormun’s ship advanced, and practically before anyone could really react to his sudden change in tactics, Leon hit the deck of his target ship like a bolt of lightning from a furious god.  Lightning exploded out of his body on impact, bathing the deck in his silver-blue power.  The innumerable arcs that erupted from his person were so hot that they covered the deck in black vein-patterned lightning burns, vaporized the soft flesh of many weaker pirates within terribly close range, and caused many pirates who were farther away to explode into wet giblets.  In only a moment, the deck of the ship, made of the fairly pale red wood of the local jungles, was painted in great streaks of black and crimson, with the only survivors those whose armor possessed robust enchantments.

The force of Leon’s landing did a number on the ship itself, too.  Were it not relatively heavily reinforced with powerful enchantments, Leon suspected he might’ve even torn the ship in half.  As it was, deep cracks spider-webbed out from his impact point, and the ship began to list to the right, cutting into the path of a ship just behind it and getting immediately caught on its vicious iron ram.

But as damaging as Leon’s aggressive and unexpected strike was, it did nothing to stop Jormun’s ship, and neither did it wipe out everyone on both of these ships.  Many of the stronger mages survived, either thanks to their power or to their higher-quality armor, and they sprang into action to do battle with Leon, despite the obvious disparity in their power levels.

Barely even two seconds after he hit the deck, Leon had already drawn his blade and cut down a pair of pirates—one fifth-tier and the other fourth—who’d survived his impact with a single smooth motion, their chainmail armor proving no obstacle for Leon’s Adamant blade after his previous lightning strike already tested their defenses.  After taking another second to get his bearings and survey the damage he’d done, Leon sprang into action, not willing to just let the pirates come to him.  As the pirates attacked him, so too did he attack them, and he was far more effective. 

They charged, their swords and daggers sharp and deadly, but he was as air, dancing around and between them, slashing, stabbing, piercing, blasting with lightning, always moving, always dodging their weapons by such thin margins that an untrained eye might think he was struggling.  However, with lightning flooding his body, Leon moved with the speed of that element.  On this ship he’d attacked, none were even close to being fast enough to deal with him, or powerful enough to pose much of a direct threat.  The only strength that the pirates had was in numbers, and Leon was quickly and efficiently destroying that advantage.

With judicious use of lightning and blade, Leon soon cleared the deck of the ship.  He’d moved fast, spared no one, hesitated not at all, and so reduced the dozens of pirates on the deck to corpses.  The ship that had gotten entangled with this one was still flush with more fighting men and women, however, so while Leon heard more pirates below deck scrambling to defend the ship, instead of running down there to deal with them personally, Leon sprinted to the rear of the ship.  A few pirates from the other ship had leaped over to aid their doomed comrades aboard this ship, but with a few swings of his blade, Leon was once more alone on the deck, fresh corpses his only company.  Killing intent poured from him like great cushions of air that preceded an avalanche in a frozen mountain range; the blood on the deck of the ship was starting to freeze, even in the heat of the sun.

More importantly, the pirates in the other ship, even their fifth-tier commanders, were frozen in fear and unable to stop Leon as he took some time to conjure a lightning bolt of truly terrifying power.  Up against so many mages that were weaker than he was, Leon was able to put his own power on full display, and while he reveled in his expression of power and skill, he couldn’t help but want all of this to be over.

Leon did his best to bring an end to this as quickly as he could; when he hurled his lightning bolt, he’d packed it with so much power that when it hit the other ship only the briefest of moments later, the ship was consumed in his power.  Lightning arced and danced along its length, shattering the men and women aboard, scorching its deck black, and even starting a few fires here and there.

But Leon wasn’t done.  With the deck of the other ship cleared of any hostiles, he turned to a third ship that was sliding in alongside the first, this one also full of more pirates looking to avenge their fallen fellows.  They balked at his killing intent, however, and he conjured his bow and a few explosive spell arrows from his soul realm.  He drew and loosed them with terrific speed—the first exploded across the bow of the ship, not quite overwhelming its structural enchantments enough to do much damage to the ship itself, but more than a dozen pirates were caught in the fiery blast.

The second arrow landed in the center of the deck, killing several dozen more as it bathed the deck in white flame.  The last hit a pirate near the rear of the ship, finally putting enough stress on the ship’s enchantments to not just kill a dozen more pirates, but also to blast the rear of the ship into splinters.  The third ship was thrown forward by the blast with enough force for its ram to strike the ship Leon stood upon, cracking the wood, and punching a small hole in its hull.  Water flooded the inside of the ship and it began to go down.

None of the pirates on the other ships challenged him, so Leon took off back into the sky to survey the situation.  He’d disabled or destroyed three ships in only a matter of a minute or two, and three more ships had been temporarily blocked by the wrecked ships that were now in their way.  One of them, Leon noted, was covered in burns and holes, and it was immediately clear as to why when one of Alix’s explosive arrows burst over its hull, killing several more pirates and punching a sizable hole in the ship that the force of the rowers below deck that were trying desperately to escape began to pull the ship apart at the seams.

Leon spared just enough time to glance up at his former squire, nod in approval, and then turned his attention to Jormun.

Once he did, any accomplishment he felt for his actions died in his heart; Jormun’s ship had advanced far enough that it was upon the Legion’s war galleys.  Jormun stood upon the deck of his ship, his arms raised like those of a mad prophet as the water around his ship raged like the waves caused by the deadliest of hurricanes.  The Legion ships closest to Jormun’s ship were tossed around so much that their artillery was practically useless, while Jormun’s ship was so close to them that the artillery of the other ships was no more useful—even if they could still afford to launch their projectiles at Jormun, Leon knew that Jormun’s seventh-tier fire and light mages would likely be strong enough to save the ship from any meaningful damage.

A moment later, however, the small Flame Lances on the front of Jormun’s ship began to belch flame.  Great gouts of flame big enough to engulf the entirety of the pirate ships Leon had just destroyed or disabled were spat from the barrels of these fearsome weapons, bathing the two closest Legion war galleys in their light.  On the decks of these ships, marines and sailors immediately died as the fire swept over them, while Leon saw a few flashes of light that indicated the fire was so hot that the defensive wards of these ships were almost immediately collapsing.

Leon barely had enough time to begin to fly in that direction before the screams of those dying men and women reached his ears, and the ships began to burn of their own accord.

With a pair of enormous water geysers, Jormun tossed those burning ships to the side, sending them crashing into the ships right next to them, and his ship sailed on through the hole in the Legion line, Jormun’s Flame Lances continuing to spew fire the entire time.  These strange Lances kept the Legion ships from closing with the pirate ship enough to ram it into submission, or at least to allow their complements of marines to begin boarding actions—worse, as Jormun forced his way through the Legion’s second line with fire and water, Leon realized that the Legion ships were barely even able to delay Jormun by any appreciable amount.

Leon loudly swore and took off after Jormun.  He conjured a few more lightning bolts, but they were thrown in vain.  Jormun’s light mage had, just a few moments before, come out onto the deck, and after noticing Leon, he projected a great shield of golden light behind Jormun’s ship to protect it.

Every one of Leon’s lightning bolts exploded across this shield and showered it in sparks and small arcs of lightning, each great enough to obliterate the smallest of Legion ships, cracking and severely damaging the shield.  Under his short barrage, the light mage clearly struggled to keep the shield raised, but keep it raised he managed to do, even as he gritted his teeth and braced against the pressure Leon exerted upon the shield.

After several bolts, the female fire mage stepped up, laid a hand upon the light mage’s shoulder, and pulled him back behind her.  A moment later, the shield of golden light fell, and the fire mage launched a great gout of flame toward Leon, who was still rapidly approaching.  Leon was in the midst of summoning another lightning bolt, and so couldn’t react with his usual degree of alacrity, but he still managing to contort his body to only take a glancing blow.

However, with how thinly he was armored with his flight suit, a glancing blow from a seventh-tier mage was all he needed to take before he was harshly reminded just why he’d so rarely used his flight suit in combat before.  The fire grazed his leather cuirass, upon which he’d inscribed his stabilizing air runes.  The enchantment scheme immediately failed as the fire mage’s magic power ripped holes in the leather, and Leon lost control of himself.  He twisted and spun in the air before plummeting into the water below.

A few bolts of fire hit the water in pursuit, but they were quickly snuffed out by the deep and frigid waters of the channel.

The temperature didn’t do much to Leon, but having been spun around and tossed into the sea like that threw off his spatial awareness.  Combined with the primal shock and fear of being suddenly and unexpectedly submerged—and in waters that he knew had krakens in them, no less—Leon thrashed and writhed in the channel for a few long seconds before he understood what had just happened and where he was.

When he did, he forced himself to remain calm and project his magic senses again, quickly getting an idea of what was around him.  When he saw that there weren’t any sea monsters around of the sort that his panicked mind was fearfully conjuring in his head, he found it much easier to relax.

He took a quick moment to update Maia on the situation as it was, and how it looked like Jormun might be able to break through this force Sigebert sent.  When she relayed that message, Leon got right back to it.

With a quick flash of light, his flight suit vanished into his soul realm.  Without the stabilizers on his chest piece, the entire thing was practically useless, so there was little point in wearing it.  Fortunately, while most of the enchantments on his black Magmic Steel armor had been destroyed by the shade of his father back at the Serpent’s Temple, the ice fins on his boots still worked, so Leon donned those in another flash of light and, combined with his relatively rudimentary understanding of water magic, began to chase Jormun’s ship.

It soon became apparent that there was no way in any hell that he was going to be able to catch up, so Leon changed course and made for the Legion ships.  It took a little while, during which time he heard several muffled, but still loud booms from above the water’s surface, explosions powerful enough that he felt them in his chest.

From what he could see down below, it looked like Jormun had just pushed past the last line of Legion ships and was now behind them.  The pirate ships he’d tried to reinforce himself with had all been destroyed, however, either by Leon’s earlier assault, Alix’s well-placed arrows, or the Legion’s artillery.  As Leon approached the Legion ships, he took a few seconds to glance at the bodies and broken ships that were now filling the channel.  Most of them were of the pirates, but one was a Legion vessel.  Terror-stricken faces, bodies leaking clouds of blood, and a few people here and there twitching and writhing as they slowly drowned.

Leon figured that he might be able to help a few of them.  It looked like this skirmish was over, and while they may have won a tactical victory by destroying so many pirate ships and seizing the field, Jormun had still slipped past them.  They still had one more chance to stop Jormun when the pirate tried to escape these narrows, so Leon decided that he could afford to lose a couple minutes surveying the damage a bit more.

He scanned the broken hulks that were sinking into the surprisingly deep channels.  First, he looked at the Legion ship, but the only Legion sailors or marines that he could see that were still alive were already swimming for the surface, so he turned his attention back to the pirate ships.  His eyes and magic senses washed over the hundreds of bodies and into the ruined hulks.

Immediately, one man stood out, for he was clearly not an Islander.  He was rather dark-skinned, perhaps one of the darkest-skinned people Leon had ever seen.  He possessed a fifth-tier aura, though it was weak and flagging.  That was likely due to the arrow stuck in his shoulder, though, so Leon didn’t judge.

This man was dressed in a manner quite unlike what Leon had ever seen, and one that certainly stood out from his fellow pirates: off-white robes made of either silk or silkgrass, Leon couldn’t tell at this distance; a short, lacquered coat of golden scales, not even long enough to reach his upper thighs or elbows; a conical helmet with a mostly open face save for the nose, simple in shape but gilded and decorated with geometric patterns along the nasal bar; a brocade overcoat woven of some golden fabric and decorated with pink and red flowers; and finally, a huge curved saber with a thick blade at his waist with an oversized oval-shaped guard and what looked like an opal that glowed with magic power serving as the pommel.

Leon needed nothing more; he swiftly swam toward this man.

The pirate seemed unconscious, but he’d been tangled up in some of the ship’s many ropes of the wind-powered ship as it sank.  Leon conjured his blade, slashed through the ropes, grabbed the man, and made for the surface.  He’d saved this one man—who would likely be made a prisoner, anyway—and Jormun was still on the move.  Leon didn’t go back for anyone else, for he could spare only these few minutes.

When he finally broke the surface, he did it with great force.  His water magic and ice fins propelled him out of the water, but he still needed to grab onto the guardrail of the nearest Legion war galley and haul himself and his prisoner up.

His sudden appearance and boarding of their ship had several nearby marines shouting in alarm and drawing their weapons, but when they saw who it was, they relaxed.  Leon was surprised when they called out his name, he hadn’t thought he was that recognizable.

Leon didn’t stay on that ship for long, only just long enough to hand off his prisoner to the ship captain and to get an update: this battlegroup had been severely damaged by Jormun’s Flame Lances, and they were combat ineffective.  Leon could only sigh, wave down Alix—who’d been flying around frantically looking for him with an equally panicked Anzu after he’d fallen into the water—and mount his griffin right behind her.

“All right…” he whispered as he settled in.  “That was good work Alix, but this battle isn’t over yet…”

“I’m ready for more,” his former squire responded with a confident smile and a gentle squeeze of her bow.

“That’s what I want to hear,” Leon said, and he gave a quick verbal command to Anzu, who took off from the deck of the war galley with tremendous force.

Leon hadn’t been injured during that short, but intense battle despite his flight suit being destroyed, but he’d used a significant amount of power.  However, he was just as ready as Alix to continue this fight.

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