After arriving in the new land that Leon named Artorion, Leon’s attention was taken almost entirely by coordinating clearance and construction efforts with scouting and mapping endeavors.  It was imperative that they establish shelter, security, and sources of food as soon as they could, but they also had to know what was around them to properly prepare for whatever they may face.  Additionally, most of the arks were still damaged from the jump, and returning them to full functionality was another priority competing for resources.

It was to that last priority that Leon had Nestor focus, letting him give it less of his attention.  After a week, even with many of the arks remaining in the air, Nestor met with Leon to give him his report on the damage.

In short, much of the worst damage was to the smaller arks—mostly the frigates and destroyers.  While they only lost two frigates and one destroyer in the jump, Leon could see that was a lucky outcome given how damaged some of them had become.  The giants and Thundermen had done an admirable job keeping the arks flying even as they approached a month since the jump, but their ability to keep the arks running was starting to fall short.

“I’ve had to ground three frigates until more serious repairs can be made,” Nestor reported as Leon scanned through the stacks of paper that the dead man had prepared.  “All of the other new arks need repairs, but those three run too great a risk of falling out of the sky when they fly.  Better not to risk it.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Leon replied, looking up from the reports.  “How difficult will this be to fix?”

“Remarkably so,” Nestor quickly answered.  “As you might find explained in my reports, we’re going to have to wait until some proper arkyards have been built.”

Leon scowled.  “That’ll be a while.  Several months at least.”

“We need that arkyard,” Nestor insisted.

“We also need farms and roofs over our heads.”  Leon sighed and leaned back in his seat, his eyes momentarily drawn to the projected window on the wall of the fairly small room.  His portable villa wasn’t particularly large or opulent, but it was comfortable and secure enough that Leon insisted the rest of his people see to their own accommodations rather than using their time on a palace.

Down in the ring valley, visible from a flat portion of the nine-peaked mountain where he’d set up his portable villa, a significant portion of the sparser forest in the south and east had been cleared, allowing many buildings to spring up in place.  After working with the bureaucrats that accompanied him, Leon had ensured that many greenspaces remained, and quite a large swathe of the valley was set aside to remain forested.  Artorion would not sprawl from western slope to eastern if he had anything to say about it—and as King, he had more say than anyone.

For the moment, the buildings were large and boring, more barracks than homes.  ‘Enough, until we get more artisans and architects,’ Leon judged.  As simple as the dwellings were, they’d be easy to replace as more of his people arrived from Aeterna.

Turning back to Nestor, Leon stated, “We’re moving quickly.  We should be able to start work on an arkyard in less than two months.  Don’t forget that we also have to build proper service centers for giants and golems.”

“Right,” Nestor almost sneered, “golems.  You’ve furnished me with so few wisps that I can’t help but wonder how long it’ll be until you remember where my specialties lie.”

“Making wisps isn’t easy, dead man,” Leon testily retorted.  “And I’m busy with other matters.”

“You aren’t the only post-Apotheosis mage we can enlist,” Nestor pointed out.  “Have those others pull their weight.  If they expect to freeload off our Clan, then they’re going to—they ought to be disappointed.”

A scowl returned to Leon’s face.  “I’ll talk to them.  Clear Day I’m not worried about agreeing, but he’s not shown up yet.  Anastasios and Eva… should be amenable…”  He made a mental note to get Cassandra to help him out with Eva.  She, at least, will accept her granddaughter’s request.  “Might take a while for them to learn how to make wisps, though.”

In a dramatic huff, Nestor replied, “That isn’t just my problem, Leon.  Since I’m sure you won’t read my reports—”

“I read every report that crosses my desk,” Leon interjected.

“Since I’m sure you won’t understand my report,” Nestor clarified, though his words only served to tick Leon off even more, “I’ll explain it thusly: we need wisps if we want to avoid such horrific damage to our arks in the future.  I overestimated the ability of the ark pilots to adjust to teleportation magic on the fly.  Larger arks with better wards fared better, but the chaos of flying through the portals is too much for even a group of humans to adapt to.  We need to integrate a greater number of wisps into our arks if we want them to ply the Void without destroying themselves.”

“Was that our problem…?” Leon asked in concern.

“Partially,” Nestor brutally answered.  “Mostly.  My drives worked well enough, though ‘well enough’ is never ‘well enough’.  Much room lies for improvement, but as I’ve stated previously, we need not only an improvement in the drives but an improvement in operation.  This task of creating and directing spatial magic on such a large scale can only be satisfactorily accomplished by wisps.”

Frowning, Leon leaned forward, his brow furrowed in thought.  “Can we use giants as a stopgap?  Or even a replacement?”

With a loud scoff, Nestor replied, “No.  We may disagree on those things’ nature, but what isn’t up for dispute is their lifespan.  A giant will live for three, maybe four hundred years before their bodies—the lightning wisp parts, not the stone or bronze parts, obviously—”

“Obviously.”

“They have that long before their bodies lose magical cohesion and decay, returning their magic to the universe.  Now, I’m all for subjecting them to the stresses of portal maintenance, but that would increase the magic they use in their lives, shortening their lifespans considerably.  The giants are better used elsewhere.”

“Is the stress really that bad?  They can operate Ulta suits and help with other parts of arks just fine…”

“The giants’ apparent increase in self-awareness comes at a proportional decrease to their ability to absorb and generate magic power, problems that properly created wisps do not have.  A wisp will also be tailor-made for a specific purpose, whereas the giants are not.  So yes, Leon, don’t try and question me on this, we need more wisps and we can’t substitute giants in for them.”

Leon opened his mouth to sarcastically respond when a knock came at the door of his office.

Glaring at Nestor, Leon made a bit of a show of slowly and deliberately taking out some paper and making large notes demanding wisps and an arkyard, all without breaking eye contact with his mostly dead ancient kinsman.  For his part, Nestor didn’t say a word.

When Leon was finished almost a full minute later, he finally called out, “Enter!”

The door opened, revealing Gaius standing there with Lana.

“Troubling news from the scouts, Your Majesty,” Gaius said with great seriousness.

Elaborating on his statement, Lana stated, “A patrol of Bears sent to scout some caves in the western mountains have been found dead, my King.”

---

The western slopes were rocky and vertical, shaded well by the massive blue-leafed redwoods that made up most of the area’s timber.  The underbrush was sparser without the thick, loamy soil down in the valley, but the slopes were broken and jagged enough that a mortal would’ve had tremendous difficulty getting up and down.

As it was for Leon and most of his people, they simply flew to their destination.  His scouts were either strong enough to fly of their own accord or were given Ulta suits or flight belts, expanding their range dramatically.

When Leon came in to land at the top of a steep incline where the rocks flattened out for about a hundred feet before rising again, about fifteen others were already there.  Most of them were from the Booming Brown Bears if their large, muscular statures and thick red or brown hair were any indication, but Leon noted two bloodline-less members of the central army there, too.

More eye-catching were the five corpses fallen amongst the roots of a tree that grew just about in the exact center of the small plateau.  Each of them wore greaves and breastplates, but little else in the way of armor.  Nowhere around could Leon see their weapons.  Concerningly, what little skin Leon could see was ashen gray.

“Your Majesty,” a sixth-tier Bear said with a short bow.  He was the strongest one present before Leon’s arrival.  As Gaius, Lana, several secretaries, and a dozen fully armed and armored Tempest Knights followed, the Bear nodded to them.  “I am Yiannis, captain of this contingent of hunters.”

“Well met, Yiannis,” Leon replied as he smiled first at the captain, and then to the rest of his people waiting for them.  “Let’s cut straight to business—what in the hells happened to our boys?”

Yiannis grimly nodded and walked over to the bodies, stopping at one in particular.  “Ioan led this team.  A cousin of mine.”

Leon’s face fell.  “We are all diminished with Ioan’s passing, but you more than most.  I am sorry for your loss, and grateful for his service.”

Yiannis nodded in gratitude, maintaining a professional demeanor.  He took a moment to visibly steel himself before continuing.  “He was only fourth-tier, not even forty years old.  He was excited beyond all description to join this expedition…”  Yiannis looked over at the other four men on Ioan’s team.  “Two of them were second-tier, and two were third-tier.  All were killed in the same way.”

Delicately, Yiannis lifted Ioan’s head to show off two deep holes in Ioan’s neck, explaining his exsanguinated look.

“We found them here,” Yiannis explained further as he set Ioan’s head back down.  “No signs of a struggle, no signs of any other kind of violence.”

“Were they moved here after their deaths?” Leon asked, his eyes sweeping over the pale orange-yellowish rocks of the mountain.  “I don’t see much blood…”

Yiannis waved over another mage, this one fifth-tier.  “Tree Runner,” the captain explained, “my lieutenant and beastmaster.”

Leon nodded to Tree Runner, who bowed deeply before stepping forward.

“If I had to guess, Your Majesty, these wounds were left by a creature that subsists on blood,” he explained.  “We’ve found other animal carcasses on the mountains and in the valleys that show similar signs of exsanguination.”

“What was Ioan’s mission here?” Leon asked.  “And what precautions were they taking, given their power?”

“They were supposed to remain in the air,” Yiannis explained.  “They were looking for cave entrances and marking them for further exploration.  All of my teams have been doing likewise.”

Leon nodded.  “We would all do to remember that we’re not on Aeterna anymore.  This is a dangerous place, and the animals might not fear men.”

Yiannis replied, “Many beasts didn’t fear men on Aeterna, too.  But the Bears were masters over them all.  My cousin may have seen something new that he wanted to investigate, or there may be something that we haven’t seen yet that attacked him and his team in the air.  There were no witnesses…”

Leon nodded along, listening but also letting his eyes sweep over the surroundings.  Something stuck out to him, though, causing his eyes to narrow.  “How thoroughly have you checked this area?” he asked.  “Did you bring any beasts here before me?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Yiannis replied.

Leon moved not too far away to examine several scratches on the exposed redwood roots.  “Looks like these were made by claws.  Recently, too.  Today?”

Yiannis replied, “I judged those to be several days old.”

Leon clicked his tongue in thought as he stared at the scratches, noting that there didn’t seem to be any other tracks around.  However, he turned and raised his head to the canopy, noting, too, that if something had fallen from the branches, then they could’ve made these scratches on the roots.  The scratches looked like they could’ve been made by large claws and weren’t too far away from the team of dead Bears, making him envision a scenario where the Bears landed for some reason, then for a monster to leap from the branches, landing on the roots, and attacking them right there.

He didn’t imagine such an attack could go off without at least some evidence of fighting, though, so he didn’t give voice to it.

Straightening up, he ordered Yiannis, “See to your people.  Get them back to Artorion.  I’ll personally see if I can find out what this creature is that attacked them and where it went.”

Yiannis gave him a look that was both grateful and sorrowful, then bowed.  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

As the Bear scout handled that, Leon turned back to the scratches.  The Bears were the specialists in his Kingdom when it came to hunting and capturing beasts, so the fact that it was one of their teams that got attacked and killed was worrying.  Even more so that there was no evidence of resistance.  Iron-Striker wanted peace and serenity, but as far as the Booming Brown Bears went, Leon knew he was a bit of an outlier.  If this team was attacked, he assumed they would’ve fought back.

‘So… something else has to be going on, here…’

Leon projected his magic senses, looking around for the auras of any magical creatures.  There was significantly more interference in the Nexus than elsewhere given just how much magic was in the air, but he found more than a few that could’ve taken the entire team out.

He immediately saw a stag with glowing antlers and seventh-tier power quietly eating its way through a fruit-bearing bush about twelve miles away.  Twenty-seven miles away, he spotted some large sixth-tier cat-like creature stalking something that greatly resembled a boar with the horns of a ram.  Thirty miles in another direction, Leon saw a winged creature that looked kind of like a featherless raptor with dark skin and bat-like wings radiating sixth-tier strength as it sat upon a nest.  He saw dozens more animals like these, too, but he couldn’t see anything that immediately cried out to him as the perpetrator of the Bears’ deaths.

So, he focused his magic senses on his immediate surroundings, hoping his greater power might give him an edge in finding any trace of something coming or going that Yiannis might have missed.

Almost immediately, he found more scratches, though on a boulder several dozen feet away, much fainter than what he’d seen on the roots.  Even when he looked directly at the boulder, he could barely see the scratches with his physical eyes.  They’d stuck out with his magic senses, though, and likely because they radiated a slight hint of darkness magic.

Leon barely managed to prevent an ugly grimace from passing over his face.  Some monster with powerful darkness magic was not something he wanted to tangle with, though when he thought about it, it made more sense why the weak victims might’ve not fought back against their killer—that killer could’ve dominated them somehow, preventing them from doing anything but standing there as it feasted on their blood.

Pure speculation on his part, but he began striding toward the new scratches while bathing his surroundings in his magic senses, hoping to find more.  And now that he was keyed into what to look for, he found it fairly easy to follow this creature’s steps.  Unfortunately, the tracks he followed were so faint that he was only able to follow them through looking for the traces of darkness magic, and as a result, Gaius, Lana, and his Tempest Knights weren’t of much help to him since their senses weren’t fine enough to find that trace of darkness magic.

Eager to exploit the discovery of the tracks of the Bears’ possible killer, Leon followed the tracks as quickly as caution allowed.  Over boulders and up the mountain, nearly cresting the ridge before finding a small fissure in the stone, hidden so well behind a relatively small redwood that if he didn’t have the trail leading him to it, he might never have found it.

The fissure was so thin that he wouldn’t be able to enter fully armored, though he saw many more scratches around the fissure walls indicating whatever he was following laired within.  It merely seemed that it was either smaller than he assumed given the size of the scratches, or it was using darkness magic to facilitate its entrance and exit.

Leon glanced at his people following him, ordered them to remain vigilant and for four Tempest Knights to remain outside and another two to return to Artorion to report on what he’d found, then began squeezing through the fissure.

A deep feeling of claustrophobia hit him almost immediately as the stone of the fissure pressed against him from both sides, but it abated when only a few feet in, it widened into a narrow tunnel.  He breathed deeply, forcing himself not to think about the mountain above.

He projected his magic senses to inspect the tunnel he found himself in while he waited for Gaius, Lana, and the other six Tempest Knights to follow him through the fissure, and immediately, he went on guard.

The tunnel proceeded deep into the mountain, plunging several hundred feet before leveling off into a narrow cavern.  Buildings were carved from the cavern walls, with pillars decorating their exteriors.  The cavern was tall enough for several layers of these buildings, and a few arched bridges connecting both walls.  Stairs close to where the tunnel widened into the cavern facilitated access to these upper levels.

All in all, there were buildings enough for at least three dozen families, possibly more.  Leon, however, wasn’t worried about meeting them.  Though he detected traces of magic in their doorframes, scratches had destroyed the inscribed defensive wards.  The interiors of these buildings were likewise trashed, with decayed furniture scattered everywhere like something had torn the rooms apart.  Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust, save for the footsteps of some bipedal creature through the central street of this little ‘village’.  It seemed like whatever he was following came through here frequently if the tracks in the dust and the scratches left behind were any indication.

Most eye-catching, however, were the bodies—or rather, the skeletons.  Long dead human remains littered the village, some of them rather disturbingly small.  Some were hiding in their homes, while others died out in the cavern.  None looked armed or armored, or if they had been, their arms and armor had been taken after death.

With great severity, Leon told his followers what he could sense.  It seemed his claimed land had once been inhabited by at least one small community, but that community appeared to have died long ago.

And whatever they were tracking was even deeper inside.

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