The world felt suffocating, muted, dimmer than usual ever since he, as Veles put it, ‘opened the gates of death’. It was a dreadful experience for Leon, but his worry was decreasing as color slowly returned to his world. It returned faster as he glared ahead of him, the fires of wrath sputtering slowly to life as he watched the Diluvian arks pull away from the Artor Valley as swiftly as their thrusters allowed. His fleet was pursuing somewhat, but after about fifteen minutes, they cut off the pursuit.
It was easy to see why: casualties on his side had been horrendous, with thousands of burning arks in the forested mountains taking hundreds of thousands of Artorion’s defenders to their Ancestors. Many warriors were still alive, however, and needed help rescuing themselves and their comrades from the wreckage.
There were also thousands of Diluvian arks burning next to them, and their survivors had to be controlled. Leon could see many of his warriors choosing to deal with the survivors permanently, refusing to take them prisoner. He laid little blame at their feet, and when he made it back to his city, he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of this. Those Ocean warriors followed their Basileus to burn and slaughter, and few tears would be shed in Artorion for them receiving in turn what they had tried—and in a lot of cases, succeeded—meting out.
Indeed, as life slowly reasserted itself within his body and his emotions and perceptions returned to normal, he had to fight the urge to fly off on his own to obliterate the retreating Diluvian arks with thunderous prejudice. He didn’t want a single one of them to leave his lands alive. He wanted to skin them all alive and mount their skulls on the western beaches, staring into their homeland, unable to return.
As a hissing sigh escaped his pursed lips, he knew that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted. Even if there weren’t any more pressing issues, he knew that he didn’t have the patience for so extreme a punishment. And those issues took precedence anyway; he wasn’t going to charge off after the Diluvian arks when the status of his friends and family was still in the air.
He didn’t try to mask himself as he drew closer to Artorion. It took many minutes of hard flying to get back—he wasn’t sure how Veles had taken him away so far so quickly, but it was worth investigating at a later date—and on his final approach, a party of Tempest Knights led by Lana and Singer-in-Caves flew out to meet him.
“King Leon!” Lana shouted, falling in beside him.
Singer, too, looked like she wanted to greet him, but Leon held up a hand, silencing them both before they could perform any more of the typical ceremonies expected when greeting a King.
“All of you look like you’ve been through at least three hells, maybe even four,” Leon wryly said, scanning first Lana, then Singer, and then moving on to the rest of the Tempest Knights. None of the latter had been of the contingent that stood with him against Triton, but all had participated in the battle, and he struggled to find a single one of them who wasn’t wearing battered armor. “I need to know how we’re doing.”
“The day is ours, thanks to you,” Singer said, flying on Leon’s other side as Leon led them back to the city. As they flew, all of them were dyed in reds and oranges as they flew over the battlefield, illuminated by the burning arks below. “It… came at great cost.”
“Rough count?” Leon asked, scanning his fleet both visually and magically. It seemed to him that around half of his fleet had been shot down, and few arks came out unscathed. As it was, he could only see Storm Herald, Bolt in Shadow, Silver Spear, and Bright Intent, the four ancient Thunderbird Clan arks in his possession, without visible damage.
“Admiral Anshu’s working on that now,” Lana reported. “Count last I heard was around forty percent of our fleet destroyed, another fifteen disabled, and the count was ongoing.”
Leon grimaced, a spike of cold wrath piercing his body more deeply than Triton’s ice ever managed. Again, he felt the pull to pursue the fleeing Diluvian arks, but it was easier to fight this time.
“Recovery efforts have started,” Singer said, pointing to the many heroic efforts around the mountains to fight the blazing fires consuming many arks and pull survivors from the wreckage. But it was slow going, and Leon couldn’t see many people being taken from those broken hulks.
“Elder Singer,” Leon intoned, catching the Hawk’s attention, “please see to your people. I don’t need an escort, and they need you more than I do right now.”
Singer looked like she wanted to argue for a moment, but then nodded and shot off into the distance, toward the Hawk Tribal fleet. That part of Leon’s fleet had been relatively small, but it was no less battered than the rest of the fleet.
“That goes for the rest of you!” Leon shouted over his shoulder at his following Tempest Knights. “Make yourselves useful wherever you can!” They showed more hesitation than Singer, but with a glare, Leon insisted, and their officers started peeling off, their subordinates following their lead.
“We don’t know if the fighting is over yet,” Lana pointed out. “They could turn around and hit us again. Those knights should be—”
“They should be aiding their fellows,” Leon interrupted, finality inundating his tone. Lana quickly pasted an apologetic look on her face and said no more as Leon led them back to where he and those who’d come to aid him had fought Triton.
In their final approach, Leon flooded the area with his magic senses, bringing both relief and greater worry to his heart in doing so. Many of his people were on their feet, but others…
Things were at least orderly, with handfuls of Tempest Knights picking through their fallen brothers and sisters, gathering their bodies together to give the dead dignity and the living medical care. By Leon’s estimate, around three-quarters of the knights who’d come to his aid had either died or been seriously wounded.
Of his post-Apotheosis followers, all were close to Clear, who was bathing them all in soft white light, applying his prodigious talent for healing to their injuries.
Anzu was the first to feel his power, and the griffin-in-human-form leaped into the air to join him.
“Brother!” he shouted in relief. “We were worried! I was ready to tear these mountains down to find you!”
“I don’t doubt that you could,” Leon said with a tight smile. That smile quickly faded, however, as he landed.
He went first to his wives. All were conscious, but all were heavily injured. Cassandra was in the best condition, allowing her to rise as he approached.
“Leon,” she warmly said as she wrapped her arms around him.
“Cassie,” he replied, following her lead until she flinched at his touch.
“Ah, sorry,” he hurriedly apologized, but she shook her head.
“No, if anyone should apologize, it’s him.” She jerked her head over at a lump beneath a silkgrass sheet. “Broke more than a few of my bones, but Clear’s mostly seen to them.”
“Battered her internal organs, too,” Clear added. “And there was all the internal bleeding.”
“Can’t forget those,” Cassandra sarcastically replied. “But I’m fine now. Or fine enough. Or will be fine. Choose which you’d prefer.”
“I’ll take them all,” Leon said, gently squeezing her arm before moving to Valeria and Maia.
Maia was conscious, the gash opened in her stomach by Triton’s black ice spear now closed, but Leon could still see where it had raked across her abdomen. Much of her bronze skin had paled considerably, but there were black streaks along that injury that hadn’t faded.
As Leon stared at it, Maia whispered into his mind, [Would’ve had my armor on at the slightest crack in my river dragon’s ice, but…] She drifted off, looking horrified until Leon sat beside her and pulled her into him, pressing his forehead against hers. Love pulsed in their connection, more from him at first until she was pulled back from whatever nightmare that Triton’s spear had put into her head. Once their love pulsed in time with each other, Leon stood up again. No more words were needed; she’d need time to fully recover, but she would recover.
Valeria, however…
Clear stood over her, focusing much of his attention on her unconscious form. Blood wasn’t flowing through the hole in her armor that Triton had punched with his black ice spear, but it was clear enough that a lot had before Clear got to her. What Leon found more worrying, however, was that Valeria was still unconscious, her aura fluttering weakly.
“How is she?” Leon asked the tau.
“Needs time, physically,” Clear responded. His aged features flexed with uncertainty, his red eyes flitting to Leon but not lingering long before guiltily looking away. “There’s… her mind is… I can’t heal that. I don’t even know if she needs healing.”
Leon’s breathing hitched as his eyes began to burn. His heart beat madly as he kneeled at Valeria’s side and pulled his armor back into his soul realm. He took one of her hands in his, her gauntlet cold against his skin. She didn’t move.
A pulse of his magic into her armor told him that most of her defensive wards had been broken or disrupted. Under normal circumstances, this might have been a bad thing, but in this case, Leon let the Thunderbird’s lightning flicker through his body weakly, and then with slowly increasing strength. A few sparks were jettisoned from his fingers, and then a few arcs, directed into Valeria’s hand.
After a moment, her fingers twitched, and her aura started stabilizing. After another moment, she began to stir, and he heard her voice, weak and echoing within her helmet. “… Leon…?”
“That’s my name,” he replied with a worried smile. “How are you feeling? Great, or fantastic?”
She showed mercy on his attempt at humor by giving him a few chuckles, which quickly turned into a bad coughing fit. Clear kneeled on her other side and fed her more healing light, and her coughing ended.
“That was… awful…” she groaned.
“Are you in any pain?” Clear asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Everywhere.”
Leon listened to Clear ask her a few more questions, and her answers made him feel much more confident about how she was doing—still recovering, but now stable. He squeezed her hand and had Cassandra kneel by her while he reluctantly left to see the others.
His post-Apotheosis Paladins had stood with him bravely against Triton, a man two tiers stronger than any of them, and they’d paid the price for their bravery. Anzu was in the best condition of all of them and had ‘only’ been thrown head-first into a mountain. He’d already been flying back to keep fighting when Leon cracked open the gates of Death’s Kingdom for a moment.
Alix’s armor had been pierced by that black ice spear, though not quite as deeply as Valeria’s had been. She was pale and shivering slightly, but she was able to rise as Leon approached despite one of Clear’s nearby healers squawking in protest.
“Sit,” Leon gently admonished. “Rest. You’ve more than earned it.”
She deflated slightly. “Hard to feel that way. Hard to feel much of anything right now—feels like my nerves were frozen and they’re not yet thawed.”
Leon clapped her shoulder, hitting with a quick jolt of silver-blue lightning. “Better?” he asked.
She’d jumped a bit, but as she settled back down, she stretched an arm and gave him as glowing a smile as she could muster. “A bit, yeah.”
Satisfied that his Blademaster was reasonably fine, if not quite in fighting shape just yet, Leon turned to the woman lying next to her.
Anna had lost an arm defending Leon—a terrible injury to a lesser mage, but to a post-Apotheosis mage with Clear and his healers around, it was much more manageable. Her arm had already been reattached, but Anna looked so utterly drained that she could barely muster lifting her head slightly as Leon paused beside her.
“How’re you?” he asked.
She managed a weak groan, but with the arm that didn’t require reattaching, she managed to clasp his wrist and give him a reassuring squeeze.
“Thank you,” he said quietly as he squeezed her arm back, packing those two words with as much meaning as they could carry.
Marcus lay beside her, pale and unconscious. He’d been entirely encased in Triton’s ice, and it clearly hadn’t spared him any suffering if the amount of blood on his armor was any indication. Several heating and healing spells had been layered over him.
“He’s resting,” a healer beside him told Leon. “We put him into a coma to better heal.”
Leon nodded, saying, “Keep me informed of his status,” as he moved on.
Nearby, Daryun sat with Zhang, both of their helmets off. Daryun had a powerful healing spell over his right eye and drank every so often from a particularly strong regeneration potion.
“Lost an eye,” he said to Leon. He swished the potion around a few times and added, “I’ll be fine. I’m no stranger to bad injuries.”
Leon sat down next to his Black Knight. “It’s not a competition. But that you got away from a fight like that with only a lost eye is something to write songs about.”
“It would be, if it were true.” Daryun’s gaze went distant for a long moment. “I wasn’t expecting to have my mind assaulted. It was… Ahh, I’m fine. I’m here for whatever you need, Your Majesty.”
“You fought a thirteenth-tier mage for me,” Leon responded. “I’m here for whatever you need.”
“That’ll be easy; I don’t need anything more right now.” Daryun glanced at Zhang with his one good eye. “He’ll need more help, though.”
Leon turned his gaze upon his White Knight. Zhang’s entire head had been wrapped in healing spells, and a few patches of blood had leaked through around the left side of his face.
“He nearly had his face torn off,” Daryun explained. “The Gods only know what he’s dreaming about because he hasn’t woken up yet.”
Hesitantly, Leon laid a hand on his Paladin and gave him a short silver-blue shock. Zhang twitched but didn’t immediately move. Then, a muddled groan slipped through the wrapped healing spells, and the healer attending to him bent down to see what was happening. Leon watched as the spells were removed to reveal Zhang’s face where it ought to be, but his eyes were completely bloodshot, and he was far from fighting condition if his aura was any indication.
He managed a bit of a struggle when he glanced at Leon, but the healer kept him down, and Leon insisted that he follow those orders for the time being. Showing that he was fairly lucid, Zhang relaxed, and Leon stood back up.
Alcander, though not a Paladin, had stood with them and had taken a harder hit than Anzu. He was in fine enough condition that he was helping to coordinate the Tempest Knights in aiding their fallen fellows, though he turned from them as Leon approached.
“It’s damn good to see you,” he warmly said. “I’d worried that you were lost.”
“I almost was,” Leon said. “If all of you hadn’t arrived, Triton would’ve killed me.”
“I’m sure you would’ve been fine,” Alcander modestly replied. “You always seem to pull something out of…” He glanced around and cut himself off. “Anyway, Your Majesty, we’re doing what we can for the survivors. There are… fewer than I hoped for.”
“They’ll be honored and cared for,” Leon promised. “All of them, living and dead. The risk they took was greater than almost anyone else’s, and they paid for it. I won’t forget that.”
Alcander replied, “It was their duty… but it was a duty we all asked for and carried out gladly.”
He offered an arm, and Leon clasped it tightly. When they released each other, Leon left him to his work and found himself with the two most heavily-injured of those who’d come to his aid: Xanthippe and Solomon.
Both were unconscious still, with Solomon looking on the brink of death. Xanthippe was still in her lion form, and her breathing was ragged and shallow.
“Will they live?” Leon asked one of the nearby healers.
“We’re doing everything we can,” the healer responded. It wasn’t the answer Leon was looking for, but it seemed it was the only answer he was going to get. He stayed with them for a while, giving each one a couple arcs of silver-blue lightning to ensure that their minds were freed from any continued assaults. They were important leaders amongst the Tribes, and he was not going to let them die.
As it was, he counted all of them lucky that they weren’t dead. They had all been rendered combat ineffective, but against a mage of Triton’s power, that was as much as they could hope for. If Triton had taken just a few more seconds to ensure their deaths, then they would be dead. In that respect, Leon was grateful that Triton had been so focused on him, as it meant he didn’t finish Leon’s people off.
‘Arrogant bootlicker thought he had the time to ignore them…’
As he finished with the elders, he found himself standing next to Triton’s body, covered by a dark sheet. He took a knee next to it and lifted the corner just enough to get a glimpse of the man.
He found Triton staring back at him, his eyes dull but wide, his face frozen in shock and fear. Leon reeled back, startled at the sight so much that he almost believed Triton was still alive. But after a moment, he calmed down. The man was dead, but at least Leon now understood why he was afforded the dignity of the sheet—that death stare was unnerving, speaking of horrors glimpsed in the last moment of life.
Leon laid the sheet back over him properly and, after a deep, tired sigh, sat down next to him.
“You’d still be alive if you hadn’t come here,” he muttered. His golden eyes swiveled, his gaze washing over the burning arks and the thousands of men and women working to rescue anyone still alive within those crashed vessels. He thought it likely that a million people died on these slopes during the battle. Tens of millions more were killed or displaced following Triton’s invasion.
He found little sympathy for Triton, but he still lamented the pointlessness of it all. And, as his eyes skimmed over the retreating Diluvian arks, and then flickered northward to where Triton’s other fleet was still operating, he knew that the dying wasn’t quite over, yet.
He turned his eyes upward and let his power spill from his body. The weather responded to him—clouds gathered in moments, and rain began to fall over the burning arks. Then, Leon looked inward. He’d checked on the living, but now he had to check on the dead…
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