Cold focus was all that Leon felt as Storm Herald appeared above Zar’Deracki, a plane that was largely insignificant save for the fact that Red-Knuckle had claimed it as his temporary headquarters. Leon could understand why, since the plane was close enough to the Halorian Cluster, ruled by Makarios, to watch for any signs of Makarios or the Burning Lord he’d allied with bringing war to Leon’s conquests, while also being distant enough that it couldn’t be taken by surprise and immediately rushed down. Most of Red-Knuckle’s surviving fleet was out patrolling the surrounding planes or undergoing emergency repairs—as much as the local resources allowed, anyway—leaving relatively few arks to greet Leon upon his arrival.
Leon cared about the plane insofar as it belonged to him and its people were his responsibility, but it was otherwise tactically, operationally, and strategically worthless. It was small, didn’t produce any strategic materials—not even Titanstone—and had a small population. If he were to be interested in anything, it would be the people, as the plane was harsh: arid and mountainous. The people were hard, used to living hard and fighting hard. Their tribute to his Kingdom would likely consist entirely of fighting men and women.
That was a matter for the future, however, one that would come after decades spent conquering and consolidating. For the moment, all that Leon cared for on the plane were Red-Knuckle’s arks and legions. The moment Storm Herald arrived above the terminus line, flanked by more than two thousand war arks, logistics arks, and transports, Leon launched himself out of the open hangar wearing naught but his armor. Hundreds of Tempest Knights, Ulta suits, and giants followed.
They burned as they breached the terminus line and hit atmosphere, but their armor withstood the burn easily. They fell like meteors upon a large hilltop fortress, clearly built recently and with magic. Space for thousands of legion soldiers had also been erected in the surrounding savannah, allowing them to stretch their legs instead of being cooped up all the time in their transports. As Leon fell, he saw tens of thousands working, drilling, and resting in the fields and camps, giving the camp an almost urban feel despite how unadorned and utilitarian all of the single and double-story buildings were. As they fell, with Storm Herald and dozens of support arks with her looming in the sky, a great cheer went up around the camp as every soldier who could see them cheered for their King’s arrival.
Leon landed in the fortress’ central courtyard, landing with what to a mortal would’ve looked like inhuman grace despite his speed. Daryun, Zhang, Anna, and Lana landed just as gracefully beside him, though Graniton hit the ground hard enough to kick up a dramatic cloud of dust. Leon might’ve been annoyed had the knights, giants, and Ulta suits not done likewise all around the fortress.
Red-Knuckle appeared out of a large set of doors made of pale local wood, the eagerness in the red-haired Bear’s face impossible to hide. Dozens of his officers and adjutants followed suit, all practically rushing to kneel before Leon as he strode forward, the dust kicked up by his entourage’s arrival almost repelled from his pristine storm cloud-colored armor.
“My King,” Red-Knuckle said as Leon drew to within comfortable speaking distance, “your presence is heartening. I welcome you to this plane, known to its inhabitants as Zar’Deracki.
“Are any of those locals here?” Leon asked as he gestured for Red-Knuckle and his people to rise, his patience for the ceremony at an all-time low.
“Several of their Chiefs and Princes, aye,” Red-Knuckle said. “I was… unable to prevent all talk of our defeat from spreading. I worried about possible rebellions, but instead, some of them have come forward to ask if they might join our armies.”
Leon pulled his helmet back into his soul realm as his hand went to his chin. After a moment of thinking, he said, “We have some room for auxiliaries. Let us head inside to talk.”
Red-Knuckle bowed his head slightly as he and Leon, along with their close followers and assistants, entered the fortress, walked through the bare stone halls, and arrived at a conference room made fancy only by its location on the hillside where much of the camp below could be seen from. Privacy enchantments kept what was said here private, though, which Leon immediately reinforced by conjuring a floating ancient rune.
Then he took a seat, his Paladins taking positions along the edges of the room save for Lana, who had taken it upon herself to act as his adjutant for the moment. Red-Knuckle sat next to him while the other officers remained standing, leaving Leon, Lana, and Red-Knuckle the only ones sitting.
“Give me a full accounting of your forces,” Leon ordered without preamble.
Red-Knuckle immediately said, “Our legions are intact. Casualties during the conquest were light, both due to the weakness of our enemies and the decisiveness of our ark power. But those arks now…” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, frustration and despondence both visible in his face for a split-second. “We have made progress in our repairs, but we are still down to only three dreadnoughts and four carriers—and those carriers barely have half their complements of fighters left. Aside from them, we still have nineteen heavy cruisers, twenty-six light cruisers, twenty-eight destroyers, thirty-one frigates, and forty-eight corvettes.”
It was Leon’s turn to close his eyes. One hundred and sixty-nine arks. A force that, before he left Aeterna, would’ve seemed incomprehensibly powerful. Now, he saw it as almost pathetically weak. About fifteen percent of the total fleet by number of arks, but less than five percent by tonnage.
But he refrained from bemoaning the loss. He could see the fatigue in Red-Knuckle and his people; they needed him to project strength, not to lament their failure. So, he stoically nodded and said, “And the condition of those arks?”
“We’re repairing what we can, but we’ll need help from the mobile yards you’ve brought.”
Leon nodded, having expected that. ‘Mobile arkyard’ wasn’t the best way to describe the largest of his logistics arks, but it was apt enough—it was essentially a large, cross-shaped ark that could dock with any ark in his fleet. Stationed within the mobile arkyards were swarms of arksmiths and giants with the skills and tools they needed to fix just about anything wrong with an ark, so long as they had the requisite supplies—and Leon had brought a lot of supplies. They were immensely valuable, while also extremely expensive to build, which was why none of the Task Forces had been given any when they departed, and why Leon had only brought three—he only had five in total, with a sixth due for delivery in ten years.
“Send a list of what’s needed to Commodore Leontios. He’s in charge of the mobile yards.”
Red-Knuckle nodded in acknowledgment, waving to one of his adjutants to make a note of it.
“Has there been any change to the position of the enemy since we last spoke?” Leon asked.
“None,” Red-Knuckle hurried to say. “We’ve had little luck penetrating their defenses. They wasted no time reclaiming the planes we had to abandon, and then began heavily patrolling the Voidspace between the Halorian Cluster and the Zer Cluster. I can confirm that their presence in the outlying planes of the cluster is heavy, though little else.”
“Is Makarios still relying on his Burning Lord backer for ark power?” Lana asked as she scrawled down the conversation as fast as they could speak.
“It seems to be a mix of the two,” Red-Knuckle smoothly answered. “I suppose that’s still ‘relying on’, but if I’m honest, there are more of Makarios’ arks still around than I had thought…”
Leon frowned. By Red-Knuckle’s previous estimations, the casualties inflicted on Makarios and his Burning Lord backer were relatively heavy, but by no means was it a mauling. Low enough, at any rate, that not pursuing Red-Knuckle to Zer was curious, if not outright suspicious.
“And no sign that they are looking to invade?” Leon asked.
“Their strategy—as much of it that we can see—appears to be focusing on defense,” Red-Knuckle explained. “Their fleets are spread evenly across the outlying planes, and we’ve only detected a few scouts keeping an eye on us; not enough to suggest they’re gathering intelligence for an invasion.”
Leon hummed in thought, his eyes drifting upward. The conference ‘room’ wasn’t just open to see the fields; they could also see the sky, and in that sky, Leon’s thirteenth-tier eyes could clearly see Storm Herald and her escorts hovering just past the terminus line. Other arks were also maneuvering into similar positions, including King of Golden Lions, the flag ark of the Lion Tribe. There was a debate among the Tribe, Leon knew, about potentially changing her name to reflect their vengeful mood after Menander’s death, but it had yet to go anywhere. Regardless, aboard, Leon knew that the leaders of more than half of the Clans were waiting to join him on Zar’Deracki. They’d lost so much with Menander and those of their Tribe that followed him, but their Tribe hadn’t been crippled, and those that remained were roaring for blood.
The glow of an ark breaching the terminus line drew his eye—it hadn’t come from any of the hovering arks, but a flight of fighters fell in to escort it as it beelined for the fortress. Leon recognized it as a medium-pattern merchant ark built in the Yun Cluster, and prominently emblazoned on every side was the golden eye sigil of Icarius’ new Heaven’s Eye. It wasn’t the man himself, but it was still a fairly high-ranking merchant in the guild aboard, given the other markings Leon saw around the golden eye.
He wondered what the merchant wanted, but based on its speed, he figured it wouldn’t be long until he found out…
---
The merchant before him was slim and severe of face, his hair pressed against his skull by nervous sweat, his dark Raven skin gleaming almost purple in the light of the afternoon sun. He kneeled in front of Leon, with the rest of the present leadership beside him, all waiting to hear what the man had to say.
“Why did you come here in such a hurry?” Leon asked the merchant after the requisite introductions were made.
“And why couldn’t you tell us why over the comm lotuses?” Daryun boldly added.
The merchant visibly gulped, his sixth-tier aura wavering as he did his best to withstand the attention of many mages who were so much more powerful than he was. “I don’t have a long-range lotus,” he admitted. He then added, “I was sent with this…”
Leon remained relaxed, but he sensed several others tense up as the merchant reached into his soul realm for something. After a flash of light, everyone relaxed as all that he held was a scroll with a prominent red wax seal. Lana took the scroll from him and, after a quick inspection, brought it to Leon.
Before breaking the seal, Leon examined it, noting that the insignia upon it was a stoic, angular face surrounded by flame. It might’ve just been his imagination, but he thought it bore something of a resemblance to the silver masks used by Khosrow cultists.
Regardless, he broke the seal and unfurled the scroll. His golden eyes flashed across the scroll, his expression not changing in the slightest as he read the words within.
It was an invitation to talk on neutral ground. The scroll was signed by Makarios, another prominent seal next to his name. Another name was signed there, too, but in a language that Leon couldn’t read. He thought it was still rune-based, but it was so stylized that he couldn’t even hazard a guess as to what the name was.
Without a word, he passed the scroll to Red-Knuckle and then waited for the information to be disseminated, his mind whirring through the possibilities.
The first and most obvious one was that this was bait for a trap. This ‘neutral ground’ was chosen by Makarios and his ally, and it was a curious choice indeed: a dark plane that Leon didn’t even know existed between these two planar clusters. For all he knew, this ‘neutral’ plane was actually bristling with weapons just waiting for him to arrive.
On the other hand, it was a fair distance from the Halorian Cluster, and being a dark plane, it had no sun, which meant it couldn’t support a large population or much in the way of magical infrastructure. It would be relatively easy to scout, should he accept…
“Now they send this request?” Red-Knuckle growled. “They couldn’t have sent it weeks ago?”
“It doesn’t seem like they’d have had the time to send it due to our King’s arrival,” Lana responded. “We only arrived a few hours ago, and they’d need a couple days at least to prepare this…”
“Merchant!” Daryun called out, the man almost jumping out of his skin as the Paladin addressed him sharply. “How did you come by this message?”
Leon focused on him, eager to hear the answer.
“I was going about my business,” the merchant stated. “I was trying to acquire some rare pearls; I’d heard the smallest were twice the size of my head! But I was picked up by some powerful mages and dragged away. I was imprisoned for days, and only released when I agreed to bring this message to the commander of the fleet in this cluster!”
Leon nodded slowly, noting that the scroll hadn’t addressed him personally, but rather had been addressed to the ‘fleet commander’. He thought it equally notable that the scroll had been polite, if only due to how succinct it was.
“Did you speak with anyone while imprisoned?” Zhang asked. “Were you interrogated?”
“Y-Yes,” the merchant sputtered. “One man spoke to me, demanding to know who I was and what I was doing! In our second meeting, he gave me this message and released me when I agreed to deliver it! There were no other meetings or interrogations. I was on my own through most of my imprisonment!”
“I’m curious,” Leon said, drawing attention away from the merchant, to his visible relief. “I want to know what they feel they can negotiate about.”
“My King…” Zhang whispered cautiously, others around making their disagreement known more vocally, though all were silenced by a single glare from Leon.
“I want to hear what they have to say. It’s that simple. But we’ll do this smart: we’ll scout out this plane and plan from there…”
There was still a significant degree of trepidation, but as Leon continued listing his precautions, most of those fears were assuaged.
The decision was thus made. He was going to this dark plane to hear what Makarios and, presumably, his ally, had to say…
---
Dark planes were some of the most depressing places in the universe—at least, as far as Leon had seen. Most planes, in his experience, had suns and moons orbiting them at significant distances. Even those that were uninhabitable often had these two features.
Those planes that lacked both, however, were known as dark planes. Without suns, they were completely pitch black, making them almost impossible to find in the vast, empty expanse of the Void. Most Void-capable arks couldn’t truly explore the empty Voidspace between planar clusters and would jump between more visible planes and clusters, skipping over all the Voidspace between them. So, while it was theorized that dark planes were relatively common, there weren’t many known—at least as far as Leon was aware.
Dark planes came about in varying ways: some planes didn’t have the magic power to generate a sun, though given how nearly all planes were born from debris blasted out into the universe when the Nexus exploded every one hundred thousand years, that reason was rare.
Other ways trended more towards human intervention: some terrible thing that mankind did that could cause a sun to die. Leon felt like he had the power to destroy a sun—and quite easily if he applied himself—he thought that most suns were destroyed unintentionally. Some magic ritual going awry, or some accidental cataclysm ejecting all magic power around a plane, leaving it in eternal darkness for the rest of time. Umbra, for instance, was on track to become a dark plane if Leon and his people hadn’t killed that juvenile Soul Eater. Fortunately, that sun had recovered after the source of the darkness magic eating away at it had been killed, but that put it in a minority case regarding potential dark planes, as far as he knew.
In the case of this dark plane, it was all but certain to have been inhabited in the past, given the ruins that Leon could sense on the surface. The ruins could have been built without a sun, of course, but he doubted it heavily. Which meant that something happened that deprived this plane of its sun rather than it having never had one in the first place.
What that something was, he doubted he’d ever know. As Storm Herald maneuvered into a close position to the plane, her escorts spread out. The scouts he’d deployed to the area had been accurate in their assessment of the place, and the plane hadn’t changed much in the day since the scouts did their survey: several arks, gleaming in the dark, were present at the meeting place. One was a Makarios ark, roughly heavy cruiser-sized. The other two matched the images Leon had seen of Makarios’ Burning Lord ally’s arks. Both were light cruiser-sized.
Leon had no doubt that other arks were nearby just in case things turned violent, but he wasn’t intending for lightning to flash during this meeting. Despite that, he still had the rest of his fleet on standby only a single jump away, ready to reinforce him if needed.
So, down to the dark plane he went, accompanied by a small force of Paladins and guards, to meet Makarios and his mysterious Burning Lord ally…
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