Three days.  That’s how long they had.

‘Or, three days at the most,’ Leon thought.  Fortunately, the darkness infesting Qo Weylekh’s tower was thorough enough that they never ran into any problems carving their way through in their quest to find any kind of escape.  At their level of power, it didn’t take long to reach their destination.

They barreled up a large flight of stairs that still retained just a hint of the majesty they must’ve had at one point, with hints of marble peeking out from under the black stains and what looked like the smooth remains of reliefs carved into the banisters that the darkness had eroded, and arrived on a landing large enough for a group ten times their size to comfortably stand on.  Ahead of them was just one more door, and Leon could sense very little magic warding it against forceful ingress.

So, without a thought, he did as he’d been doing for a while now, and launched himself at the door, the desperation of their situation serving to lend him power enough that he cut right through the huge metal doors, lightning racing up and down his body as he did.

The doors melted away under the heat of his lightning, and Leon ripped and tore through with relative ease, letting him and his team spill out into the massive chamber at the top of this tower.  The sight that greeted him halted him in his tracks, his mouth agape in surprise.

“By Mandy’s wrinkly balls…” Mari whispered, she and the rest of the team similarly struck by the sight.

More than a hundred arks of varying size—though none even half as large as Silver Spear—arranged in a large grid of arkpads.

After that moment of shock, however, Leon realized that the magical darkness that coated seemingly the entire tower had reached this chamber, too, and the hulls of many arks had turned completely black by the Primal Devil’s corruption.

But not all of them…

Without a word, Leon shot straight for the closest that didn’t look completely ruined—an ark that might’ve been classified as a corvette in the Thunderbird Clan, being large enough for a crew of perhaps thirty.  It was still one of the larger arks in the chamber, and given the sleek, but not particularly aggressive, overall design, Leon thought it was probably some kind of pleasure vessel, like the ark equivalent of a yacht.

He didn’t let that thought slow him down, though, as he sprinted for where he thought the main ramp would be.  Unfortunately, none of the arks had lowered ramps, and Leon didn’t want to treat them the same way that he did the rest of the obstacles in the tower complex for fear of potentially destroying the only way off Arkhnavi that he had left.

“How do we get into these things?” Nara demanded as he and the rest of the team caught up to Leon.

“There’re supposed to be ramps,” Leon answered.  “Usually there’d be a runic circle or some other obvious way of opening it from the outside.  But arks are usually secure vessels and can be locked from within.  If we can’t get inside, then…”

“If the gods smile upon us,” Tir responded, “then we might be able to force our way in without compromising the vessel outright…”

Leon grimaced.  “That’s… possible.  Let’s try everything else before that.  But if it comes down to it… arks should have bulkheads that can seal damaged sections of the hull if need be.  I’d imagine these arks to have them if they were built to any kind of safety standard.”

“In war, many quality guidelines are blurred for the sake of just getting something done,” Nara replied.

“Ugh, an engineer’s nightmare,” Mari whispered.

“Let’s hope that these weren’t built during wartime, then,” Leon said as he jerked his head at the ark they stood beneath.  He gave the ark’s underside one last inspection before running around it and checking the rest of the hull for any kind of obvious sign of entrance.  Then he returned to the underside and began contemplating his options.

‘Three days…’ he thought.  ‘Three days…’

He wanted to take his time and do this right.  He wanted to respect these enchanting marvels.  But they just didn’t have the time—he could spend the next few months trying to get inside just one of these arks, and he didn’t even know if any of them were functional.

So, he settled on one idea.  He once more called upon his modest command of light magic and did his best to inscribe a new ancient rune in the air to join the ones keeping the darkness of the Primal Devil at bay.  This one was a fairly simple ‘open’ rune, without any kind of specialization that would make it any more effective at what he needed it to do.

He envisioned the ark in front of him in his mind’s eye, then imagined a ramp beneath it opening, allowing him and his team inside.  He concentrated on that image with as much mental force as he could muster, and then concentrated some more.  He drowned out all other thoughts and closed off his senses, experiencing the world around him only through the magic that flowed out of his fingers and into the ancient rune, carrying his will with it.

The rune resonated with him, though that wasn’t too surprising—he’d used ‘open’ runes before, after all, and knew how they worked.  His magic flowed along its lines and was then directed upward, into the hulked of decayed metal above him where it began to poke and prod at the ark’s exterior.

He could feel his magic teasing through the outer hull, finding every little pore and crack that it could exploit, guided by the open rune.  He felt his magic run through the ark, traversing along the near-boundless wires and circuits formed by Titanstone within the ark until it reached what he thought was the ramp.

With redoubled concentration, Leon pushed his magic to do what he wanted it to do, and he thought he could feel something giving way to his will.  He pushed even harder and kept pushing until a hand clapped him on the shoulder, pulling him out of his trance.

Leon jerked back to his senses, finding Tir standing beside him with his hand on Leon’s shoulder.

“Leon,” Tir said, sounding a little worried, “the ramp is open, thank the gods…”

Leon blinked, then his head turned so quickly that his neck popped.

“Oh that sounded like it felt fuckin’ good,” Mari said.  Leon didn’t hear her for he was too busy running up the ramp that had opened beneath the ark.

The ark had another door at the top of the ramp acting as an airlock, but this one fortunately still had a flickering runic circle next to it—possibly powered by the remnants of Leon’s magic, if what he could sense was accurate.

Leon wasted not a second before slapping the rune, and the door filled the air with terrible screeching as the weak magic in it just barely managed to get it to grind open, sliding just a bit into the wall.

Once there was enough room, Leon darted into the doorway and began pushing the thick door further into the wall.  It was only just barely big enough for Mari to squeeze through, so long as it opened all the way.  Tir and Nara added their strength to his, and despite the skin-crawling racket, they got the damned thing open, and all four of them got into the ark itself.

“Woooow,” Mari whispered as Leon, Tir, and Nara stood in the ark’s main entrance room.  It was big enough for all of them to fit, but not by much, and several sealed doors branched into other areas of the ark.  “What are we lookin’ for, Lele?”

“Power room,” Leon said.  “Engine room.  Bridge.  Unlikely to be wisps still active in this thing, so… here’s hoping we can use anything here and that we can actually fly the damn thing…”

He shared a look of commiseration with the other three, and though he couldn’t see Mari’s face, he thought all three were sharing the same expression—determination mixed with profound fear.

Three days to save their world—three days to save themselves.  They at least found something promising, but if they couldn’t get it to work, then…

Well, Leon didn’t know quite what to do.  ‘Follow Mbana and Serena, maybe?  Wander around and hope that we stumble upon something that will lead us down to the Primal Devil, along with a convenient Devil-killing sword that we can stab it with?’

Leon steeled himself.  Better not to think in those terms.  Better to focus on the here and now and what they could still do.  He’d run the others ragged enough that they hadn’t yet really talked about their deadline, and he wanted them to keep moving so that they wouldn’t think too hard about it and get distracted.

“We have a way to open these doors,” Leon said as he traced another open rune.  “Let’s explore these arks and see what we can see…”

---

“I’m not abandoning this plane!” Nara shouted as he and Tir ran through the arkpads carrying some parts that Leon had designated for them.

“The gods would look unfavorably upon us if we did!” Tir added.  “They turn their backs on cowards and those who derelict their duty!”

“No one’s suggesting that!” Leon shouted back.  “But this is simply beyond us!  The only ones who can stop this nightmare are the Grave Wardens!  Our only shot of contacting them is to get far enough away from the plane that they notice us!  We need this ark!”

“No one’s disputing that, Leon,” Nara insisted as they ran around the last arkpad and arrived at their destination.  “I just want you to know that.  I am not abandoning my people!  This whole plane is my home!  I will save it or die upon it!  And anyone who intends to stop me from doing so will answer to my Cloud Piercer!”

Leon fought to keep himself from rolling his eyes.  A day had passed filled with frantic searching and desperate evaluations of the arks they’d found even reasonably intact.  Of course, ‘reasonably intact’ in such a place polluted by the magic of a Primal Devil was graded on a steep curve, with many arks only having a few salvageable parts.

The ark they’d explored first was one such ark, with such a mess having been made of its internal mechanisms that even Leon, with his relative unfamiliarity with ark machinery, could tell that they weren’t getting that thing running ever, let alone anytime soon.

So, after that realization, they ran out of the ark and began looking at the others.  Half a dozen other arks looked relatively fine from the outside, though only two had passed Leon’s—and more importantly, Mari’s, the Thunderbird’s, and Xaphan’s—evaluations.

Leon had knowledge of ark engineering thanks to Nestor and the Ravens, but he’d barely even scratched the surface of what he needed to know.  Fixing any of the arks they found by himself would’ve been impossible.

Thankfully, he had Mari there to pick up the slack.  The woman was a damned genius with magical engineering, taking to it like a fish to water.  With what little guidance Leon had been able to provide, Mari had declared with no small amount of uncertainty that she could get one of the smaller arks working if they could only scavenge some replacement parts from the rest of Qo Weylekh’s fleet.

Ever since then, she’d been doing her best to get the ark’s power systems back up and running, and bypassing all of the rot and damage between the ark’s central power storage systems and the engines.  Fortunately, there wasn’t that much room between them, but it was still a monumental task given the complexity of what they were working with.

At least Leon was more helpful in the replacement part regard.  He was a skilled enough enchanter to fix a lot of the more general problems with what few replacement parts they found, and the thunder wood and storm crystal he provided from his stash aided Mari greatly in trying to jury rig something together to provide power to the ark’s engines.

“My home will not fall, my home will not fall…” Nara repeated again and again as they charged up the ark’s ramp and made for the engine room with their salvage.  They were there in but a moment, all of the doors having been kept open after Leon forced them open.  The walls were dark and any decorations had eroded away, but there were at last white runes on at least one wall in every room and hall they were using that staved off the darkness.  As a result, Mari was able to work outside of her Ulta suit with relative ease despite only being sixth-tier—the suit was left as compact as it could be in the ark’s storage room where Mari could get to it quickly if need be.

The woman herself was working diligently on ripping out some gears and other enchanted bits and bobs when Leon and the rest of the team charged in.

“What didja get?” Mari asked, pausing in her work to see what they brought back.

They opened their soul realms and dropped what few salvageable parts they were able to find.

“Shit,” Mari said as she took one look at what appeared on the outside to be a L-shaped pipe and tossed it over onto a pile of rejected parts.  “Trash.  Scrap.  Wouldn’t even use this thing as a riding toy…”  By the end of her quick evaluation, about half of what they’d managed to find had been discarded, either unneeded or not functional.

“How much more do you need?” Leon asked.

Mari scrunched up her face and stared at the monstrosity of an engine she was working with.  “Thing’s not an Ulta, Lele, but… I think I’m gonna get it up and running with what we got.  Just need some—”

She paused as hints of new magic came drifting in from outside.  Leon, Tir, and Nara immediately drew their weapons and summoned their power.

“Keep working!” Leon shouted at Mari as he shared one look with the other two, nodded to them, and then led them in a charge out of the ark, ready to face the source of the aura they could sense.

The three burst out of the ark and landed ready for battle.

They didn’t find something there ready to fight, however.  Instead, they found Mbana, the man kneeling in front of their ark, his eyes torn from their sockets and dangling in front of his face.  He was covered in blood and battle wounds, and his aura was shaky.

The man groaned a few times before collapsing fully, his attempts to speak stymied not only by his obvious weakness but also by his apparent lack of a tongue.

“Stay alert,” Leon ordered Nara and Tir as he hesitantly approached Mbana.  “Hey,” he said as he gently kicked the man, looking to see if the man responded to his words or the light kick.  Mbana remained on the ground, unmoving and unresponsive.

Leon, after bathing Mbana in his magic senses and looking for any sign that this might be some kind of trick or trap, kneeled next to him and pulled out a few of his strongest healing spells, reasoning that Mbana quite direly needed them.  However, as he pressed the spells to Mbana’s body, the light magic in the spells resisted healing the man, and Leon had to push much harder than he’d ever had to before to get the spells to activate.

As he did, he pulled Mbana’s fairly simple shirt off, looking to examine his condition in more detail.  As the severity of the man’s injuries was revealed, however, Leon almost wished he’d left well enough alone, finding ugly black splotches all over Mbana’s reddish-brown skin.  The man seemed dehydrated, with his skin pulled exceptionally tight, and his veins were bulging far more than Leon thought healthy—and that was in addition to the numerous bloody lacerations, burns, and other signs that Mbana had been in a fight with someone.

“Terrible shame,” the now familiar voice of Khaji’Yun said from over Leon’s shoulder.

Leon shot to his feet and turned to face the cultist, Iron Pride brandished with silver-blue lightning arcing across the blade.  Nara and Tir responded in kind, though Khaji’Yun remained standing there, completely unfazed by their hostility.

“He attempted to steal from the true gods,” Khaji’Yun said in the same tone that Leon might’ve used to comment on the weather.  “A grave crime,” the cultist continued, “but not one that the gods are unable to forgive.  He ran away from their salvation, but I’m happy he made it here.  Thank you for saving his life, Leon Raime.”

“What happened?!” Leon growled, noting Tir’s slight twitch when Khaji’Yun brought up the topic of forgiveness.

“Will you let me take him?” Khaji’Yun asked, ignoring Leon’s question.  “I would like to sit with him for a while.  I think I may be able to save his soul just as you saved his life.”

“Fuck no,” Leon responded.

Khaji’Yun smiled sadly.  “Very well.  I shan’t bother you any longer, then.”

The cultist vanished, leaving them about as alone as they ever were.

As if he were waiting for the cultist to leave, Mbana gasped, and Leon felt his aura weakly pulse as he projected his magic senses.

“Mbana,” Leon whispered as he crouched down beside the heavily-injured man.  “Can you hear me?”

Mbana-of-the-Thousand-Blades gasped again, sounding barely strong enough to breathe.  But after a moment, he whimpered in pain as he pushed himself back up into a kneeling position and grabbed Leon’s arm, his eyes still dangling hideously out of their sockets.

He mumbled something, clearly attempting to speak, though it was completely unintelligible.  After a second try, Mbana showed that he was still fully aware as he mimed for Leon to take off his helmet.

“By the gods, be careful,” Nara whispered.

Leon nodded to him before grimacing slightly and pulling his helmet back into his soul realm.  The rest of his mental defenses remained raised, but once his helmet was out of the way, he could feel a weak, hesitant probe of darkness magic coming from Mbana.

Leon scowled deeply, but Mbana seemed harmless.

Seemed.

Silver-blue lightning raced through Leon’s veins as he prepared himself for the worst, and then tentatively, slowly, carefully opened himself up to Mbana’s probe.  He felt their minds connect for but the briefest of moments, and though Mbana didn’t manage to tell him anything in words, Leon still felt his fear, desperation, greed, and anger.

The anger was at himself, for indulging his greed.  Leon felt like he could guess the object of his greed.

The fear was what awaited him instead of what he sought.

The desperation was directed at Leon, though it didn’t regard Mbana himself.  What it was directed at Leon wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be related to the release of the Primal Devil.

The last thought he received from Mbana was the complete map of the tower, including a vast network of subterranean vaults beneath the tower complex that wasn’t included on the map he’d given Leon earlier.  Special attention, Leon noticed, was placed on the smallest and deepest vault, located directly beneath the central tower.

‘Where the Universe Fragment was stored?’ Leon wondered.

He was about to ask when Mbana raised his hand to his own chest and, before Leon could stop him, channeled the last of his magic.  Razor-sharp wind punched a hole right through his chest, obliterating his heart and killing him instantly.

Leon stared at the man in complete shock, hardly able to comprehend what he’d just seen.  The healing spells had been working, and Mbana could’ve recovered, despite the severity of his injuries.

But it seemed whatever he’d encountered below the tower had left him without any desire to keep living.

And he’d left Leon with the knowledge to investigate, and a choice to make…

—-

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