The arrival of Terris’ reinforcements immediately soured the hopeful, if still somewhat dour, mood in Leon’s meeting room.  No one stopped for long to ponder the implications of what these new enemy arks meant; Leon immediately ordered them to their posts just in case Terris decided to attack without delay.

Fortunately, these new arks didn’t do much other than begin patrolling around the coast, taking some pressure off of Terris’ pressed forces.  Still, their arrival made one thing clear: Leon wasn’t going to be able to force Terris away from his claimed territory by force of arms.  He simply lacked the capability to do so.

So, when Leon called another meeting, this time in the southern Talon instead of his villa so as to be closer to the action in case Terris decided to attack while his most powerful advisors were all in one place, the room was quiet and subdued.  Even the Lions were quiet, no longer advocating for blood and violence.

All the progress made, all the lives lost, all the blood and sweat shed in defense of their new home felt like it had all been for nothing.  Their opponent was a Despot, one of the high Lords of the Nexus.  Leon only now saw what a mistake it had been to think that Terris didn’t have more force at his disposal and that he wouldn’t call upon that force if pressed.  He thought it was likely a mistake on Terris’ part to get so bogged down in the Storm Lands, to lose so much of his war material here, but it was not necessarily a mistake that would save Leon’s fledgling colony.

And, almost as if on cue, when the situation was laid out and Leon asked the room for suggestions, another beam of Lumenite cut through the water in the south and deposited another handful of small Ocean arks over their soil.

It seemed that Terris wasn’t done calling his reinforcements.

If nothing else, Leon supposed it was something to be proud of that he’d pushed a twelfth-tier mage to such measures, though it was cold comfort in the face of such power.

“Anathema though it might be…” Clear Day whispered in the silent meeting room as these new arks started taking up positions further inland than the rest of the arks on the coast, “might it not be time to open negotiations?”

The Jaguar snarled.  “What could we possibly have to negotiate with them over?”

“Our lives,” Clear stated.  “It seems that no one wishes to speak the truth out loud now, so I will do it for you, to spare you the humiliation: there is no winning this.  Not with swords, not with hammers, not with lightning.  But perhaps with words, we might survive this.  Or perhaps with the self-awareness to know when something is impossible, and the humility to cut our losses.”

“What are you suggesting, Clear?” Leon asked, sensing that he wasn’t necessarily talking about negotiation with his final sentence.

“How important is this land, truly?” the tau asked.  “We have been here less than a year.  It has proven itself troublesome to hold, if the Ocean Lords are so determined to see it lie fallow.  Surely there are better prospects elsewhere, even if they might not seem as perfect as this valley did at first glance?”

“You advocate for running away?  Again?” the Jaguar asked incredulously.

“I advocate for setting aside our pride,” Clear insisted, and unlike their previous meeting, Leon saw the tau’s words finding greater purchase within his advisors now.  “Yesterday, I called on us to seek allies and was rebuffed.  Now, I suggest that we open negotiations, or at least consider the possibility of abandoning this land.  Can anyone seriously say that we hold the power to defeat our foe now?  What other choices do we have?  Run, talk, fight, or call for aid.  What are other options?”

The room was quiet.  Even Leon mulled the problem over and found no easy solutions.  He had power, but what use was that power if it killed him?  Fighting would do him no good.

“Terris has made it clear that he wants us gone,” Leon stated.  “I do not believe he will settle for anything less than us abandoning this valley.  He will demand that we leave the Ocean King’s buffer zone and never return.”

“You only believe that,” Clear Day pointed out.  “You do not know for certain.  You won’t unless negotiations are opened.”

“If we open negotiations, then he will be in a position to dictate terms,” Leon responded.  “We are diminished, he is almost as strong as he’s ever been despite his losses.  He needs not settle for anything other than exactly what he wants.”

“Should we not verify that?” Clear pressed.

“If we try to negotiate now,” Marcus said, “our enemy might take it as a sign of weakness and attack immediately.  Even if they don’t attack right away, they’ll still know that we’ve been pushed to the point of seeking peace.”

“And your alternative is to wait for them to attack anyway?” Clear asked.  “Is anyone here under the impression that all of our enemy’s reinforcements have already arrived?  Because I think that their numbers will continue to swell.  Our enemy will only grow stronger the longer we wait.  It’s better to open negotiations as soon as we can to get the best deal.”

“If I intended to negotiate,” Leon growled, “I would’ve done so from the beginning.  I’d rather leave this place than negotiate a peace that will see us run out, anyway.”  He laid his hand on the meeting table, and the force of his aura, less restrained than usual thanks to his growing despair, sent cracks spiderwebbing across its surface.  “I named this city and its valley after my father.  I will not now just abandon it, nor will I agree to a peace with Terris that would see us forced from it.”

Clear sighed deeply.  “Then perhaps we ought to reconsider my proposal from yesterday?  We need allies if we are to survive.  Let us seek them out.”

“What allies are to be had in this situation?” the Jaguar skeptically asked.

“I don’t know,” Clear testily responded.  “That is why I suggested we seek them out.  We are safe, relatively, beyond the mist.  We can put out the call for aid.  Is that not preferable to death?”

Silence fell following Clear’s question.  No one agreed, but unlike the day before, no one was so confident in their chances of success to openly argue with the tau.  They simply sat there in silence, no other suggestions coming.  Not even Eva or Anastasios had anything to say.

For his part, Clear Day did not look happy, either.  Despite his personal feelings about the suggestion, Leon knew that Clear was advocating from a position of pragmatism and a desire to see them survive this crisis.  This wasn’t treason or, if Leon were to be honest, stupidity.

‘Negotiations…’ he bitterly thought.  ‘Maybe… maybe there’s some wisdom there…’

Before he could say anything, however, a knock came at the door, and after Leon ordered it opened, Mari hesitantly stepped inside.  She awkwardly glanced around the room before making eye contact with Leon.  “Nestor is askin’ to see ya, Your Majesty.  Somethin’ urgent, sounds like.”

Leon glanced around the room.  No one had anything more to say, it seemed like to him.  “I’ll take what we’ve discussed here under advisement.  I’ll come to a decision within the next few days.  Until then, back to your posts.  Get that wall fixed and see if we can pull Lances from our more crippled arks and set them up on replacement towers.”

A muted chorus of acknowledgments followed, and with that, the meeting came to an end.  Leon then joined Mari on a trek to Nestor’s lab.

“Any idea what he has in mind?” Leon asked as they flew toward Artorion from the southern Talon.

“Somethin’ that’ll help,” Mari stated.  “He refused to tell me.  Ya know how he is with his secrets and his projects.  Bit of a secretive little shit, ain’t he?”

Leon chuckled.  “That he is…”

It wasn’t long before he and Mari arrived at their destination.  Nestor’s lab was a little more deserted than usual since most of his golems were pulled to join in the valley’s defense.  Nestor himself, however, hardly seemed at all put out by this if his attitude when Leon and Mari entered the lab was anything to go by.

The dead man was pouring over a complex design while examining the wreckage of one of the new Aurichalcum Lances, which had been catastrophically damaged when the tower it had been placed upon was destroyed.  Now, it resembled a metallic dust ball more than it did a powerful weapon of war.

“Nestor,” Leon stated as he and Mari flanked his ancient kinsman and tried to see what in the hells he was doing with the remains of the Lance.  “You wanted to see me?”

“Hm?  Ah, yes, I did.  Come with me, Leon.”

Mari looked a little put out at not being acknowledged, but neither she nor Leon were unsurprised by Nestor’s attitude.  Instead, they both simply followed Nestor over to one of the enchanted mirrors in his lab that would display the design for enchantments, freeing enchanters of the need to fill reams of paper with draft designs.

“I had a thought,” Nestor stated.  He waved at the large pile of metal on his table, explaining, “A considerable amount of Aurichalcum has just fallen into our laps.  I can have it remade into a Lance in only a few days.  This is not hard.  But I can’t help but wonder how much help a single Lance will be, even one so much greater than the current standard we’re using?”

“A little more firepower is never a bad thing,” Leon said.

“Surely not.  But I wondered at using that material for something else, something that might be of far more use than a single Lance.”

Nestor activated the mirror and showed Leon and Mari a large and thoroughly complex enchantment.

“Is this… a shield?” Leon asked, noting that the core of the enchantment resembled the light shields that protected the ancient Thunderbird arks.

“Yes,” Nestor confirmed.  “Just larger and stronger than any I have made in a long time.  This is a shield that would protect the entire valley, preventing our enemy from even entering the Storm Veil, let alone reaching the mountains.”

Despite the situation, Leon couldn’t help but groan.  “Storm Veil?  Really?”

Nestor scoffed.  “A fine, traditional name.  Such was how we referred to such defenses in more civilized times.  Do you have a better name for it?”

Leon sighed in resignation.  “Fuck it, I really don’t care that much.  Just give me the skinny on what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Nestor made something akin to a sound of disgust.  “Have you been spending time with sailors, Leon?  Or other such uncouth folk?”

“Nesssstyyyyy,” Mari admonished.  “Is a little slang and profanity worth focusin’ on now?  Huh?”

“A little dignity goes a long way,” Nestor complained.  “But fine.  All business it is.  Let me just forget that you’re the last hope for the Clan, for if I dwell on it too long, I might lose all hope.”

“So,” Leon testily stated in a pointed attempt to get Nestor back on topic, “the shield?”

Finally, Nestor explained, “I can use this Aurichalcum and some Titanstone and Lumenite I can rip out of our damaged arks to build a large shield through which our enemy cannot penetrate.  The valley would be safe, so long as the shield remains active.”

“That sounds like quite the loaded ‘so long as’, there, dead man.”

Nestor grunted.  “So it is.  Given the… time constraints that I will no doubt be working under—I hardly have several years to perfect this design—I’ll have to brute force much of it.  And that’ll require power.  Namely, Leon, I’d need you to give it an initial boost with the Iron Needle.  And then I’d need no fewer than two post-Apotheosis mages to maintain it.  Preferably three, all working in tandem.”

“That’s… a lot of power,” Leon observed.

“So it is,” Nestor impatiently agreed.

“But the shield be impenetrable?” Mari asked.

“If what I know of the Iron Needle’s power is accurate, then yes, it would be,” Nestor confirmed.

“Those power requirements are high,” Leon noted.  “How long can it be maintained?  Surely not forever…”

“A month,” Nestor said.  “Perhaps two, if we’re lucky.  After thirty days, I make no guarantees about keeping it up.  After seventy days, I will guarantee that the shield will fail.”

Leon frowned deeply.  This was hardly a solution to the current dilemma, but it could potentially be a part of a solution, depending on what he decided to do.

“How much can be done with so little time?” he wondered aloud.

Nestor grumbled incoherently for a moment before turning to Leon and in a serious voice, asked, “What is the problem, then, boy?”

Leon rolled his eyes.  “I don’t know if you noticed, dead man, but we have a teensy little incursion on our doorstep.”

“Thanks for pointing that out, boy; I’m pleased to see that you’ve remembered that I don’t have any eyes.  Now let me ask you this: what is preventing you from kicking this ‘teensy little incursion’ back into the fell waters it was birthed from?”

“Lack of power,” Leon swiftly answered.  “Lack of war material.  Too few arks, too few powerful mages, too little everything.”

“Sounds to me like that’s the solution, then,” Nestor stated.  “Go get more.  More mages, more material, more everything.”

“You agree with Clear, then?  That I ought to seek allies?”

“I don’t know what that peace-loving dove has to say about this, but I’m quite sure I’m not advocating for whatever flower-arranging tea party he’s been saying we ought to do.  No, boy, I’m saying that you should go and get more of everything.  Don’t ask for it, don’t go with hat in hand to everyone who might give you the time of day; I say you should go and take what is needed.  The means for our survival exist.  Go and find them.  I can buy us time.”

“Not much,” Leon noted.

“More than you would have otherwise,” Nestor shot back.  The dead man took a deep ‘breath’ and added, “With a little more Lumenite salvaged from our damaged arks, I might even be able to help a little more with that.  It’s been too long since I properly worked on spatial magic, anyway.”

Leon almost choked on his own surprise.  “Spatial magic?”

“Yes, boy, I’d thank you for keeping up, but it seems you’re only just barely managing it.”

Leon chuckled despite himself.  “Tell me more, then…”

“I can make a Lumenite tunnel.  And maybe even something to call you back whenever you’re done.  More, I cannot promise.  I cannot even promise this much, honestly, for you’re right: we lack too many materials.”

Leon smiled and shook his head, even the situation he faced unable to stop his heart from beating quickly at the mere thought of spatial magic.  The only real experience he had with such advanced enchanting techniques was in Xaphan’s prison on Aeterna, where the various floors of the prison were largely connected with spatial magic-connected tunnels, allowing the passageways to seemingly loop around in confusing manners that gave the illusion that all but the lowest levels of the prison were all one floor.

Such mastery of magic almost made him salivate.  But it was only a quick reminder of the situation he and his people faced that returned to him his composure.

Not even two days ago, the Iron Needle had granted him power for his attitude, for his pride, for asking, but not begging, for its help.  That alone was enough to keep him from submission.

But Nestor raised good points: he needed more of everything.  The only place to get more of anything at all was outside of the valley.  Alhamachim had Lumenite, and Shatufan had Aurichalcum.  Other cities in the region had to have more Lumenite and supplies of Titanstone.  All had manpower.  And he had Icarius out there looking for more.  While Leon wasn’t going to go begging for this material, Clear Day at least made a good point—he wasn’t going to win this conflict by relying on what he had in the valley alone.

A month wasn’t much time to secure access to this material, but… it was a chance—certainly more of a chance than turtling up in the valley and hoping Terris would simply give up or thinking that sheer mettle would overcome the extreme disparity in numbers and resources.  It was a chance to survive in their chosen home that Leon was more willing to trust than any negotiation he entered into with Terris.

“Begin building this shield with all haste,” Leon ordered Nestor and Mari.  “I’ll go arrange everything else.  We have to do this right, because if we don’t, then we won’t get another chance…”

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