The image of himself in the mirror was one fully healed.  His arm was burn-free and covered in fresh skin, and though his fingers remained a little stiff, Leon had regained full mobility in the entire limb.

The healers couldn’t stay long after finishing up with him since there were many more wounded after the latest assault on the valley by the Ocean forces, but Leon made sure to thank them profusely.  At some point, he’d have to figure out a good way to reward them for their loyal service.

‘If only everything could be so easily fixed,’ he thought as he flexed his arm and put it through a few stretches.  As his hand fell to his hip, he glanced at a table not too far away where his armor lay.

It had been a long time since he’d forged that armor—he’d still been living in Occulara then.  The armor had served him well, but with the damage it had taken in his battle with Terris, it was now going to take its place next to the armor he’d worn when he’d still been a knight of the Bull Kingdom.  Until he could have a proper vault built, it would lie in a place of honor in his soul realm.

That still left him bereft of proper armor, but he was already considering his options on that front.  He wanted a new set made to his newer, higher standards.  He wanted it heavily enchanted, incorporating Lumenite, Titanstone, and Aurichalcum.  But he primarily wanted to make it from skyforged Adamant.  Doing so ought to make it stronger and more compatible with his power.

Unfortunately, doing so would require time and materials that he simply didn’t have.  So, he’d have to rely on a spare set from the Tempest Knights until he managed to figure out how to properly replace the armor.

He sighed deeply as he pulled the armor into his soul realm.  ‘Some pieces may still be usable,’ he thought.  Much of the armor that covered his torso was completely unusable since the enchantments he’d layered into the plates had been broken by the ice dragon with black ice fangs.  His greaves, gauntlets, and helmet hadn’t been touched, though…

Vowing to put more thought into the problem, he returned his thoughts to the issue he now faced, and for which he might need that armor: the Ocean forces that remained on the southern shore.

As he’d guessed, they hadn’t taken the losses inflicted in the last clash as a sign to retreat completely.  Instead, it seemed more like they were going to guard their beachhead and wait.  What they were waiting for he couldn’t say, but he both feared and strongly suspected that it was reinforcements they were waiting for.

He wondered at the mentality that kept them here.  ‘Surely my little city isn’t so big of a threat as to justify these losses?’  Any other power would’ve balked at such expenditure in blood and treasure just to evict a bunch of newcomers, but he supposed the pride of a Kingdom was priceless.

Thinking more about it, the Ocean Kingdom might feel obligated to enforce its buffer zone.  The idea might be that if they didn’t, then others might take it as a sign that the Ocean Kingdom is weak, and therefore invite further conflict with their neighbors.  Terris and the Ocean King’s calculation might be that even this much loss was worth it to keep conflict on their other borders low.

Still… there was a point where it simply became not worth it to keep going.  In Leon’s estimation, given how much of Terris’ initial expedition now decorated the plains and mountains, spicing up the landscape with bones and burned metal, they’d passed the practical concerns already and were now continuing only out of pride and a sunk-cost mentality.

‘Not that it matters too much why they’re still here; only that that they’re here.’

He sighed again as his attention turned now toward his city and its defenses.

The wall and towers, raised strongly and mindfully, had also been raised in haste, and the damage taken by the Diluvian Lances was reflective of that.  Had he another year of time to prepare, he doubted even half of the towers and sections of wall that had been demolished would lie in ruins after that exchange.

But he didn’t get that extra year, and now more than a dozen towers and adjacent sections of wall were little more than rubble.  Fortunately, the enchantment keeping the misty veil up was still functional, but many other defensive enchantments within the wall were now compromised, which meant that it would be easier to destroy the remaining towers and wall sections.  As it was, about a quarter of the valley’s static defenses were now in ruins.  The walls and towers could be rebuilt, but the Lances were not so easily replaced given his city’s current dearth of strategic materials.  Those Lances were unlikely to be replaced until the siege could be properly lifted and the flow of materials into the city, both from their current trade partners and vassals and from Aeterna, could be resumed.

For the time being, they were stuck with what they had, and what they had wasn’t much.  A handful of functional arks, not enough Lances to cover their entire perimeter, and a dwindling supply of human resources—he’d get a better idea of his numbers when he met with his advisors in a few hours, but the casualty estimates from the latest clash already put his force at less than half of what he’d left Aeterna with months ago.

In other words, his ability to make that final push against the Ocean forces was… without the Iron Needle, essentially nonexistent.  Given how dangerous it would be to use that power again, he didn’t want to rely on it to defend the valley unless there was no other choice.

With all this flying through his mind, he sat down on the nearest sofa, Maia following suit only a moment later.  The river nymph hadn’t given him a moment’s privacy since returning to heal his Iron Needle burns—not that he was going to complain about it.  She molded herself to his arm as he leaned back and followed Clear Day’s instructions to rest.  Their connection had wavered while he’d been affected by Terris’ weapon, and she was compensating for it.

Cassandra and Valeria, meanwhile, were helping to coordinate their remaining defenses—their manpower had fallen so low that even his Queens couldn’t skip work without a valid excuse.  Even Elise was down in Artorion directing efforts to evaluate damage and tend to the injured—the only silver lining in that case was that since their manpower was so low, most of the city had been deserted when the Ocean Lancefire managed to fall upon it.

It enraged him that such damage had been done to his new home.  It enraged him even more to know that there was little he could do about it without putting himself in great danger.  For the time being, there was little he could do but sit, watch, and plan…

---

The image of himself in the mirror was one fully healed.  The flesh of his face had been completely restored, and though some of his facial muscles remained stiff, his appearance was now back to normal.  All of the Doomed flesh had been flensed away, leaving him free of the fear of watching himself decay and fall apart over the next few years.

Terris shivered as he remembered the last time the Great Dragon Clans had thought to remind the universe of their power.  Thousands of years ere, someone had seen fit to encroach upon their territory out in the universe; a plane under the protection of the Great Blue Dragons had been assaulted, and the dragons responded with extreme force.  Too little remained of the fools who had inspired such a response for anyone to remember them, but the indiscriminate actions of the Great Dragons were known to all.

Terris himself had seen a force of Great Black Dragons burn their way through the ocean of Anax Belarius on their way to punish someone they thought partly responsible.  He’d seen with his own eyes as men stronger than him decayed from the effects of that Clan’s Doomfire, as the magic in their bodies rotted and rebelled against them.

It baffled him that someone else had seen fit to attack them less than a century ago.  The entire Nexus had held its breath after the dragons fought off the aggressors, but in an even more baffling twist, the Great Dragons made no further response.  They’d remained on their small continent of Arushae far to the northeast, not doing anything of such consequence that it reached Terris’ ears.

‘Small mercies,’ Terris thought as he ran his hand over the fresh flesh of his healed face.  When he pulled his hand away, his eyes turned northward, toward the Stormwall behind which his enemy hid like frightened turtles.  ‘Or… maybe like dragon turtles?’ he thought as his cheek twitched.

His eyes turned downward, his magic senses taking in the sight of more of his arks now adorning the plains.  He’d paid a considerable price so far, but given the power that Ascended Beast had displayed, he was resolved to pay far more to make sure the cursed thing found its end.

That pelican had used Doomfire.  It had survived the effects of his Ebon Glacier.  It had a Universe Fragment that allowed it to not only match his Ebon Glacier in a direct clash but also grant him the power to destroy his arks as easily as pointing his finger.

Terris shivered at the thought of being struck by that black lightning.  It killed Naimon, and now Straid lay in agony, his origin power of little use in dulling the pain of the burns inflicted by that profane power.

However the pelican achieved these things, Terris had no doubt that it was due to some disgusting, misbegotten technique of the Ascended Beasts.  Ocean King Ahndhas tolerated such creatures so long as they supported his rule, but Terris grimaced in revulsion at the thought of mankind consorting with beasts, no matter how much it might empower their descendants.

For the most part, he was powerless to do anything to stop such miscegenation, in this case, he found himself uniquely positioned to prevent the rise of another horrid Clan that might threaten humanity’s position on the universe’s stage.  It was not an opportunity he would let pass by.  He viciously smiled at the thought of storming through that Stormwall, laying waste to all the pelican had built to ape the achievements of mankind.  He thought of plucking the feathers one by one from that abhorrent monster and weaving them into a cloak.  He envisioned cleaving the monster’s wings off, bending and twisting its talons into more pleasing shapes, and hacking off its head to hang in his court for all to see.  He imagined finding the pelican’s roost, slaying its mate, and smashing its eggs to pieces before its very eyes.

Such threats to humanity simply couldn’t be tolerated.  There would be no Clan to rise from this pelican’s seed, no like replacement to the vile Thunderbirds that once dominated the Storm Lands.

And, as the magic power around his palace ark shifted in response to something in the ocean, he knew he was about to possess all the power he needed to bring his visions to life…

---

“… power do we have that can push our enemy back?” Marcus asked.  “Their strength lies not just in arks but also in beasts and mages!”

“Their leader hasn’t been seen since his duel with our King,” the Jaguar responded.  “It’s likely he’s either too injured to keep fighting, or he’s outright dead.  We have the opportunity to inflict more damage to our enemy, and we should take it, even if it doesn’t immediately push them back whence they came.”

“And risk even more ark losses?” Marcus pushed back.  “We have four battle-worthy arks right now!  And one of them is a carrier!  Aside from them, the only strength we have to speak of is the strength of our arms, and if you’re wrong about their leader, then how much can we count on that strength?”

“Do not doubt the strength of our arms, Sir Exarch,” Nychikratos boasted as he flexed his arms and broad chest.  The display of the new ‘elder’ of the Lions was somewhat dampened by his sixth-tier aura, however, which wouldn’t avail him of much in a duel with a post-Apotheosis mage.

“If I thought we had the strength to run the enemy back into the waves right now, I would be advocating for it,” Marcus stated.  “We just… don’t have many options remaining to us.  We’ve taken far too many casualties.  Our combat power is almost nonexistent now.”

There was some grumbling around the room, but Leon found himself agreeing far more with Marcus than anyone else.  He had the Iron Needle, but the enemy likely still had Terris.  He’d managed to kill one Strategos, but they had at least three more.  His city still had himself, Anastasios, Eva, and Clear Day, but against the power of Terris, the actions they could take without taking suicidal risks were few.

The best he could think of doing was to continue his strategy of hit-and-run strikes, but with the enemy now restricting their movements to the coast, he would have to fly a long distance just to get into proper range.  Retreating to the misty veil from there would be nearly impossible, and would more likely draw him into another extended duel with either Terris or his Strategoi.

There simply wasn’t much his people could do on their own.

“Since no one will say it,” Clear Day said, drawing the attention of all Leon’s remaining advisors, “I will.  Is there any need for us to resist this on our own?  Are there no other Storm Lords who would come to our aid if we were only to ask?”

“You would have us go hat in hand to someone else?!” the Jaguar exclaimed in shock and disgust.  “The Ten Tribes have never needed such outside aid before, and I do not believe that it’s needed now!”

Leon held up a hand to stop the other Tribal representatives from kicking up a fuss, though he noted the Ancestral Harts and Screaming Eagles didn’t seem averse to the idea of asking someone for help, and the Ravens, Hawks, and Bison seemed at least ambivalent to the idea.

“Who would we ask for help?” Leon asked Clear Day.  “Archelaus?  I’d say this was likely to be his strategy.  We either form a buffer between him and the Ocean Lords, or we’re destroyed.  I’m sure he’d love it if we were to come crawling to him for help.”

“Asking for aid is not a dishonorable thing,” Clear Day pointed out.

“No,” Leon agreed, “but agreeing to ignoble conditions for the sake of survival can be.  I won’t rule out the possibility of seeking help from other Storm Lords, but for the moment, I don’t want to risk it.  They’re likely to ask for things we cannot give.  And I certainly have no intention of bowing my head to any of them right now.  I’d rather give up the valley and run away than bow my head, and running away is something I consider anathema.”

The Jaguar led his Tribal vassals in stomping their agreement.

“So… what do we do, then?” Marcus asked the room.  “How are we to get rid of these squatters on the shore when we have so few resources?”

“We have reinforcements coming,” the Jaguar pointed out.  “In less than half a year, new arks and warriors will arrive from Aeterna, with which we can fight off the remainder of our foe.”

“If we can last that long,” Marcus stated.  “Not to be overly pessimistic, but this conflict has gone on for less than two weeks, and we’ve lost nearly all that remained of the fleets after our clash with the pirates, and now our defenses have huge, gaping holes.  If our enemy tries something like they did yesterday, blasting new holes in the wall, then we might lose even the misty veil, and at that point, what hope do we have of defending this valley?  Waiting for reinforcements is an idea that will, more likely than not, see our reinforcements arriving to find a destroyed, corpse-filled city, not the thriving colony they were expecting.”

No one immediately responded to Marcus.  For all their bluster, Leon knew that the reality of their situation was not lost on anyone.

He was about to speak, to hear what his advisors might think of joining him in sallying out again against the odds and in defiance of the risks, to support him in using the Iron Needle to inflict some casualties on the enemy before attempting to retreat again, when a sudden burst of magic power caught his attention.

When he turned his attention upon the source of that magic, he paled with despair.  All the progress made, all the pain he’d inflicted upon himself to cause damage to the enemy fleet using black lightning seemed for naught.

Beams of golden light emanated from the wall of water just off the southern shore.  From that light, he could see the shapes of dozens of enormous horrors in the water, but they weren’t what instilled such horror within him.

The beams of light were bands of Lumenite, and they were thicker even than Terris’ palace ark.

Arks streamed from these beams of light, and in the minute before the beams of light faded, more than a dozen arks appeared.  In a moment, the ‘paltry’ remainder of Terris’ fleet had doubled in number, though most of the reinforcing Ocean arks were smaller in size.

Any hope Leon might’ve had to sally out and face his enemy died in that moment.  And that was before another beam of light burst from the ocean, depositing a carrier and an escort of five light cruisers in the air above the shore.

In the span of barely two minutes, any chance that Leon thought they had of defeating Terris militarily was gone.

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