In the months since Leon’s ascension as King, the barracks and other associated facilities assigned to the central army had been vastly expanded. Arkpads and mustering grounds large enough for tens of thousands to assemble upon had already been present, but the army needed more with the surge in enlistment following Leon’s coronation and the subsequent campaign on the Sword.
Now, Leon stood upon a massive stone platform built at the top of a shallow hill, his ladies, retainers, and highest-ranked supporters at his side, staring out at the largest of the mustering grounds where sixty-thousand men and women of the central army had gathered. Behind Leon was the imposing hulk of his most functioning Thunderbird destroyer, now outfitted with a massive fully charged storm crystal for power and several comm lotuses to take over communications from the destroyer’s previous comm stones. Behind the assembled soldiers were several dozen Tribal transport arks, and beyond those were a few dozen more war arks of varying sizes. The six newest war arks hovered in the air above them all, imposing without having to do anything more than remain in the air.
It was an auspicious day as far as Leon was concerned. The sky was overcast and the sound of distant thunder rolled across the plains. Lightning flashed over Lake Ontarii and wind whipped around them fast enough that some of the weaker mages in the army had to fight to remain standing.
“FOR EIGHTY THOUSAND YEARS,” Leon boomed, his voice backed by his tenth-tier power and carrying across the entire field near-effortlessly, “THE TEN TRIBES HAVE FOUGHT AGAINST THE CENTRAL EMPIRES. NEVER HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THE THUNDERBIRD, AND NEVER HAS THE THUNDERBIRD FORGOTTEN YOU. NOW THAT WE ARE TOGETHER AGAIN, WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE!”
Leon paused, and the assembled army shouted and stomped loudly enough to shake the earth beneath his feet.
“FOR EIGHTY THOUSAND YEARS,” Leon continued as the cheering and stomping died down, “YOU HAVE KEPT DESTRUCTION AT BAY! YOU HAVE SHOWN THIS ENTIRE PLANE YOUR METTLE, AND INSTILLED FEAR AND AWE IN THE HEARTS OF ALL WHO THINK OF THE TEN TRIBES!
“BUT THIS HAS NOT COME WITHOUT COST. COUNTLESS MILLIONS HAVE FALLEN IN DEFENSE OF THE TEN TRIBES! MILLIONS KILLED SO THAT THEIR SONS AND DAUGHTERS COULD LIVE!
“WE HAVE SHOWN ON THE SWORD THAT TOGETHER, WE ARE STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE! BUT TODAY, WE EMBARK UPON AN EXPEDITION MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN ANY THAT HAVE COME BEFORE! TODAY, WE LEAVE KATAIGIDA ON ONE LAST CAMPAIGN THAT WILL SEE US FREED FROM IMPERIAL ATTACK FOREVER! ONE LAST CAMPAIGN AND WE WILL ACHIEVE PEACE!”
The more Leon spoke, the more the soldiers assembled below roared their approval. A few even let their better sense escape them as they fired off their magic into the air, only for the junior officers to punish them on the spot for it. But Leon reveled in their enthusiasm.
“Jaguar,” Leon said, his voice no longer echoing across the entire mustering ground.
The man in question stood behind him and just to his right, in a place of great honor. “Your Majesty?” he whispered back.
“Make sure no one suffers any official punishment for losing their discipline today.”
The Jaguar considered Leon’s words a moment, then nodded his acknowledgment.
Leon then turned around and said, “I’ve said my piece. Get them moving.” He stepped away from the front of the platform to the roar of the crowd as the Jaguar took his place and began to issue booming orders of his own for the assembled troops to get to their assigned transports. With a pulse of his magic senses, Leon knew that the other mustering grounds in Stormhollow were doing likewise, and the Tribal armies that would be accompanying him across the Argonaut Sea were loading into the Ten Tribes’ dread ships on either side of the great island.
‘One last campaign…’ he thought with some relish as he and his immediate followers made their way to the destroyer. ‘Then we can finally relax for a while and get some real work done.’
He was looking forward to being able to have other things than the war with the Sunlit Emperor to worry about. But he indulged that desire for only a moment before boarding the destroyer. Anshu and the crew were all ready to go, as were some of the Tempest Knights who would be accompanying him on this expedition. Most of the order, in fact, would be joining him, with only a company of one hundred knights out of the order’s one thousand total remaining behind to guard the palace. Most of them were distributed around in other arks, though, with those joining Leon in the destroyer amounting to less than a company of knights.
The palace didn’t need that many guards, for all of Leon’s family would accompany him on this expedition. Neither Elise nor Cassandra remained behind. This was the final push before they could enjoy a lasting peace on Aeterna.
Or so he was hoping, anyway. Something could always go wrong, but in this, he was confident in the allies he’d made and the force he’d assembled that victory was all but assured. He was still a little nervous having all of his ladies with him, but in the Thunderbird destroyer, he knew they’d be safer than they’d be just about anywhere else.
He also didn’t feel like he had to worry about Kataigida, for with Iron-Striker—who was staying on the island this time—now mostly healed thanks to the Hesperidic Apples, he felt like the Royal administration he was leaving on the island was in good hands.
Leon and his retainers immediately made for their quarters. The only one who wasn’t entirely satisfied with their accommodation was Anna, and that was only because the destroyer wasn’t built to house large war beasts. Her wyverns and Attican Snapper would remain on Kataigida.
So, as the rest of the retinue got settled in, Leon and his family entered their private quarters. Elise almost immediately flopped down into the nearest sofa as soon as the door was closed behind them.
“Uuugh,” she groaned.
“Everything all right?” Leon asked as he walked over and began rubbing her shoulders.
“I’m ready for this to be over,” Elise said as she tilted her head back to make eye contact with him. She gave him a radiant smile that turned somewhat apologetic after a moment. “I’ve hardly even been involved in this fighting, but I’m already sick of it. I just want my husband to be home with me.”
Maia spat in response, “I’ll kill that one for disrupting our peace!”
“I know you will,” Elise replied a little indulgently, eliciting a proud look from Maia.
“In all honesty,” Cassandra said as she sat down next to Elise, “this is probably going to take a while. The Sunlit Emperor can’t have the kind of force remaining to launch expeditionary actions, but he’ll almost certainly have plenty remaining to defend his Empire. And that’s not even counting what the Sentinels will do…”
“We’ll defeat them,” Valeria declared with unambiguous certainty. “No matter what, we’ll beat them. How can we not?” She gave Cassandra a knowing look.
Cassandra bitterly smiled. “My family can only do so much as far removed as they are. They also have to save some strength to aid Arcaion or whoever steps into the power vacuum once old Sunshit is dead.”
“Not even going to entertain the idea that we’re going to lose?” Leon cheekily asked as he targeted a knot in Elise’s back with his thumbs.
“Nope,” Cassandra replied with confidence flashing through her ruby eyes.
Leon grinned, then turned his attention to the last person in the room who hadn’t yet spoken. “How about you, Anzu? Ready for all this to be over?”
Anzu frowned and shrugged. “I could stand for it to go on a little longer, to be honest.” He flashed a wicked grin at Leon, killing intent spiking through his aura. “It’ll be better if they resist a little better than they did on the Sword.”
“Anzu!” Elise cried, sounding a little scandalized. “It’s not becoming to be so bloodthirsty!”
Anzu gave her a blank look. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a terrible thing to wish for destruction when you should want peace, reconciliation, and construction!”
Anzu frowned slightly. “But why?”
Elise stared at him in disbelief before craning her neck to look at Leon in a silent plea for assistance.
“Anzu,” Leon sternly said, drawing the griffin-in-human-form’s almost terrified stare. “What do we do to our enemies?”
For a long moment, Anzu said nothing. After taking that time to think, he eventually answered, “Kill them all?”
“Wonderfully put, I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Leon responded with a proud smile.
Elise almost squawked in alarm as Maia smiled and Valeria and Cassandra both laughed. “No, no, no!” Elise loudly protested. “We shouldn’t be corrupting our dear sweet Anzu like this!”
“How is this corruption?” Cassandra asked with only a hint of sarcasm. “Killing your enemies is good advice, if a bit vague and not universally applicable.”
“Why isn’t it that?” Anzu asked.
Cassandra laughed again as Elise leaned back in a bit of a huff while Leon stifled his own laughter.
“You have to look at it with some nuance, Anzu,” Leon said in as controlled a tone as he could manage. “If you can make peace with your enemies without fighting, then that’s probably going to be your best bet, if only to conserve your own power.”
“But if you would suffer negative consequences for that,” Cassandra added, “such as other enemies thinking you weak and thus attacking you, then simply killing the first enemy would be better in the long run.”
“You can think of many more factors like these that muddy the situation,” Leon said. “Ultimately, it’s for the best to try and keep the bigger picture in mind and that you’re always acting in the best interest of you and our people. Does that make sense?”
Anzu’s frown lightened a bit and he shrugged. “I suppose.”
Elise sighed. “We’re going to have to talk about this later, Anzu.”
“Why?” Maia asked. “He’s right. Kill all of our enemies!”
Elise face-palmed as Leon and Cassandra doubled over in laughter and Valeria struggled to not do the same.
For the next hour or so, Leon and his ladies found themselves alternatively debating wartime ethics and trying to keep Anzu from thinking that killing everything that displeased him was a valid solution to all his problems. They were only disturbed when a knock finally came at the door.
“Enter!” Leon called out, trusting in the ark’s enchantments to carry his voice outside of the room even when the rest of the conversation was blocked.
Sure enough, a moment later the door opened to reveal Gaius.
“We’re ready,” he said.
Leon’s light and happy demeanor immediately turned deadly serious. “All right, then.” He gave Anzu and his ladies a parting look before heading out. He and Gaius then made their way to the bridge, which was mercifully close by in the relatively small destroyer.
Upon entering the bridge, the crew there didn’t rise from their stations as per Leon’s directive, but Anshu did rise from the command chair and greeted Leon with warm formality.
“Your Majesty! Silver Spear is yours!”
Silver Spear was the new name of the destroyer, chosen by Anshu since he would be captaining it for the foreseeable future, and Leon was thoroughly uninterested in naming it.
“Very good,” Leon replied as he took a seat in the command chair that Anshu had just vacated. While he was on the bridge, Anshu would remain on his feet in a show of deference, while Leon would have the command chair. “Status?” he asked.
“Silver Spear is in perfect condition,” Anshu declared as he took a position on Leon’s right and Gaius on Leon’s left. “All soldiers have boarded their arks, and the armada is ready to launch this expedition on your order!”
Leon leaned back in the command chair and smiled. Their first stop was Argos, and then they’d push further north.
“And the eastern and western fleets?” he asked as he projected his magic senses to see the armada for himself.
“The western fleet weighed anchor half an hour ago,” Anshu informed him. “The eastern fleet will do the same in less than an hour.”
Leon nodded as he inspected the armada of arks outside. More than a hundred thousand troops of the central army from several mustering grounds all packed into more than a hundred transport arks. Nearly a hundred war arks would act as their escort as they moved north, with additional arks to join them as they crossed Lion, then Hart, and then Raven territory. Hundreds of thousands of more troops were in the two fleets on either side of Kataigida, which would act as reinforcements and bring much-needed supplies—assuming the assault on Argos didn’t fail.
As far as Leon could tell, they really were ready.
“Very well,” he said authoritatively. He nodded at the light projection at the front of the bridge that showed what was ahead of them and said, “Let’s go.”
---
It was a quiet day in Argos. The sky was overcast, and the air smelled of rain. But it wasn’t the rain that had most of the people in the city hiding in their homes. Instead, it was the order of the commander of the local garrison, an eighth-tier mage from the Sunlit Empire.
The garrison commander could only curse his lot as he stood upon the sea wall’s battlements, staring south. If the Sunlit Empire were being run well, he would’ve never even been here. He’d done his job well, of course, but Argos should’ve been run by a ninth-tier mage—anything else only left the city vulnerable, as much as it pained his ego to admit it.
But the Sunlit Emperor had recalled all of his ninth-tier mages. There were rumors that there simply weren’t many left in the Empire, but the garrison commander didn’t put much stock in rumors. Still, he’d witnessed the return of the Sunlit Emperor to the city and had spoken to many mid-level commanders as they filtered through the docks and made their way back home. The campaign on the Sword had been a disaster, though the exact losses hadn’t been released to the public.
In the end, none of it changed the fact that he was now the commander of the city’s garrison. It was his job to keep it safe from the Sky Devils down south, to ensure that it was never sacked again.
Unfortunately, he’d been denied many of the defense upgrades he’d requested. Even his garrison was undermanned compared to what it had been during the previous sack years ago, and his requests for reinforcements had gone unanswered. Many of his requests for anything at all, in fact, went unanswered these days. He had no idea what was happening in Thunderhaven, but the military high command was in tatters and more disorganized than it had ever been.
So, when he received news less than a week ago that the Heaven’s Eye enclave had suddenly and publicly evacuated from the city, he’d put his garrison on high alert and did his best to keep the people calm. He failed in that task as much as he’d succeeded, with nearly half of the city’s population fleeing as quickly as they could.
As he gazed out at the oncoming threat, he couldn’t help but muse that evacuation had probably been the smarter play. He had his duty, so he couldn’t leave, but he didn’t blame the civilians who didn’t want to suffer through another sack if worse came to worst.
And it certainly looked like it was about to come to the worst. At least two hundred arks of varying size and armament were gliding through the clouds above that he could see with his magic senses. He couldn’t yet see any ships on the sea, but the sea was foggy in this weather, as if the plane itself were working to give the Sky Devils every advantage it could.
It didn’t take long until the Sky Devil arks came to a stop some miles out from the sea wall, just barely outside of the maximum effective range of the Imperial Lances atop the sea wall. From what little he’d heard of the battles on the Sword, though, the commander knew that he and his people were likely within range of their Lances, if they decided to open fire.
Thusly discouraged, he sighed and resigned himself to die before ever laying eyes upon his enemy.
‘Better than trying to parse through whatever’s going on in Thunderhaven, I suppose…’
However, instead of immediately opening fire, two figures emerged from the leading ark, their auras resplendent and beyond the commander’s ability to see through.
‘Ninth-tier at least, then…’
The commander felt some confusion at what was going on, and his confusion only grew as he examined these figures. One was fairly handsome, with a proud nose, golden eyes, and a self-assured smile; it seemed he was in charge. The other one, however, almost made his blood freeze in recognition.
‘Is that… Commander Arcaion…?’
As his mind sputtered to a halt at the appearance of his old mentor, the first figure’s voice came booming down from above.
“LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND SURRENDER, AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED. WE ARE TAKING THIS CITY, AND ALL THOSE WHO RESIST WILL BE DEALT WITH APPROPRIATELY. ALL THOSE WHO GIVE NO RESISTANCE SHALL NOT BE HARMED. SURRENDER AND LIVE, OR RESIST AND DIE. CHOOSE WISELY.”
The man’s words kicked off a torrent of whispering among everyone in the city, but the garrison commander didn’t even have the chance to chastise his troops for their lack of discipline before he felt a brush of darkness magic against his skull.
As a darkness mage himself, his mental defenses were strong. But this probe, he felt, only wanted to talk. He allowed it in enough for it to make its point.
[Let us parley, Commander,] a voice said into his mind—the same voice whose words had rolled over the city. [Come and speak with me, and perhaps we can find a mutually beneficial way to end this that will see you and your men live to see tomorrow…]
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