With his aura flaring around him, Leon’s armored boots touched down on the surface of the floating pavilion, the sound traveling quickly through the pocket of air that surrounded the platform that supported the pavilion. Iron Pride gleamed in his right hand, silver-blue bolts dancing along the blade, promising more than words ever could the violence that Leon would commit if this turned out to be a trap. The Voidspace around the Lion’s Portal resonated with his power, until a few tiny wispy clouds wafted off of the multi-colored magic that perpetually swirled around the portal.
Through it all, Triyr remained motionless, weathering the storm that Leon brought with grace and dignity. His aura pulsed, though the only expression of his power that could be seen was in the lack of effect that Leon’s aura had.
Leon landed lightly, his muscles tight with expectation as he looked around the empty pavilion. Nothing threatening had revealed itself when he’d scanned it with his magic senses, and nothing that he may have missed appeared now.
Finally, he turned his eyes upon Triyr and fully regarded him, all the weight of his attention falling squarely upon the man’s shoulders.
Triyr unfolded his arms and let them fall to his sides. Then he spoke a single word: a greeting, one that lacked either warmth or frigidity.
“Leon.”
Leon’s lips curled upward. “Triyr. You have a way of getting a man’s attention. Why have you come so… encumbered?” Leon’s golden eyes flitted to the Voidspace hundreds of miles from the portal, where Triyr’s thousand-odd arks glimmered in the darkness like new stars.
Triyr, on the other hand, let his eyes wash over the area around the Lion’s Portal, where the remains of Leon’s fleet and Void fortresses that had once guarded this side of the portal could still be seen, catching the light shining from the Nexus like motes of dust in the air.
“The Nexus is abuzz with rumors of a new war,” Triyr stated calmly and slowly. Then he paused and grimaced. “They’re always talking about some new war, somewhere. But this war… the talk of this war caught my attention. Basileus Triton defied his King’s alliance with the new Lord in the Storm Lands’ Far West, the purported last living heir of the Thunderbird.”
Triyr’s eyes shone deviously, and he whispered, “I mustered all the forces that I could on short notice and rushed here as quickly as I was able.”
“To join Triton?” Leon asked with an almost savage grin. “Triton’s dead. I killed him. His fleet has been put to flight. They returned to the King’s Ocean with tails tucked and noses bloodied. They left thousands of arks behind, burning in the valleys of the Far West.”
Leon expected that to get some kind of reaction from Triyr, but he certainly wasn’t expecting what he got: Triyr stared at him in surprise for several seconds, then exhaled, his shoulders sagging as if his muscles had been locked up for weeks and were only now relaxing.
“I had… worried,” Triyr stated.
Leon almost sneered. “About what? I would have thought that seeing my end would give you cause to celebrate. Or to curse your luck that you weren’t the one to make me a head shorter.”
Triyr’s relaxed demeanor flickered for a moment, revealing… shame? And then it locked again, darkening any window that Leon might have peered through to understand Triyr’s thoughts.
“No,” the Basileus stated, his refutation simple and to the point.
Leon’s grin thinned, as did his patience. “Then why are you here? You’ll find that my Kingdom is more than ready to face down your fleet. If you bring war, then I will cast you down more permanently than I did on Voidshore…”
“Then it’s a fine thing that I did not bring war. No, Leon Raime, I am here for a more important purpose: to regain my honor and pride. But I cannot do that when I have obligations. Obligations to you.”
Leon cocked an eyebrow, wondering just where in the hells this was going. This was a very different Triyr from the one he’d known on Voidshore, who had demanded all that he did, believing that just because he was thirteenth-tier and Leon was twelfth at the time, that he had the right to take what Leon had and to dictate what happened with his wives.
The very idea boiled Leon’s blood, and the white wispy clouds that were slowly gathering around the pavilion suddenly darkened. Triyr noticed, his eyes flitting from Leon to the clouds and back again in less than a second.
“I am here,” he hurriedly said, “to fulfill the oath I made before our duel.” With a wave of his hand, he conjured seemingly several hundred large boxes, all radiant with power, several open at his feet. To his right, Leon saw the open boxes filled with gleaming Aurichalcum. To his left, he saw the boxes filled with brilliant Lumenite.
“One hundred times my weight in both materials,” Triyr stated. “And… further…”
He fell to his knees, the stones of the pavilion echoing as much from the fact that a Basileus had just shown submission as they did from the physical impact.
“I apologize for my behavior,” Triyr said. “And especially for the dishonorable terms I made for our duel on Voidshore. You are the last living descendant of the Most Powerful Thunderbird, and I thank you, your father, and your entire lineage for the privilege of my life, and I thank you especially, Leon, for not taking it. I cannot remain on Voidshore for the duration of the Games as the Games are over, but I apologize again for bringing dishonor upon myself and not fulfilling these terms after your righteous victory. Furthermore, I cannot kiss the ground your wives walk upon as they are not here to walk upon this ground, but I will do so at my earliest opportunity.”
His words echoed across the pavilion, but nowhere moreso than in Leon’s ears. Leon could hardly fathom this outcome, and he stood there, speechless, motionless, his aura fading as his mind was overcome by the sheer overwhelming shock that Triyr just gave to his system. He stared, almost slack-jawed, at the man as he kneeled on the polished stone, waiting patiently for Leon to say anything at all.
“Ah…” Leon whispered, almost all enmity he felt melting away, even if he still didn’t quite trust this man. But this display… he couldn’t believe that it was deceitful. The Triyr that he knew was a deeply prideful man, and though dishonorable, his flavor of dishonor came more from his entitled behavior than from outright trickery.
And there he kneeled, waiting, waiting, for Leon to find his tongue.
And finally, after an eternity and a half—or perhaps only three or four seconds—Leon did just that.
“Um… what brought this on? You seemed pretty definitive in rejecting… ah, all of this when you fled from Voidshore after our duel…”
“That magic you struck me with…” Triyr whispered, not rising from where he still kneeled. “I… it gave me… visions. Much of it fled my memory more quickly than I fled Voidshore, but I remember… enough. I was brought face-to-face with death itself, and I challenge you to… rhetorically, of course… to find me a man who can see what I did and not emerge changed… if he emerges at all.
“It is my regret to say that I have stewed on that defeat for this past decade, and reflected greatly on the choices that led me to that point. I am here to fulfill the terms of that duel, yes, but… until you told me that Triton was dead… I had also come to render what aid I could in this time. To regain my honor not just with words and a few boxed trinkets, but with actions. To wash away my shame in the most permanent way that shame can be washed away: in blood. I confess to something of a lie I told earlier, Leon: the arks you see behind me are not only the forces that I mustered on short notice—I could have brought more if I pushed my Empire enough—but rather, the forces that I thought were significant enough to make a difference without being so great as to present a threat to you.”
Triyr lowered his head to Leon, speaking now more to the floor of the pavilion than to Leon.
“Please do not turn me away, Basileus Leon, Last Heir of the Thunderbird. Allow me to fight alongside you. To show you the depths of my contrition in the blood of your enemies that I spill.” He chuckled to himself. “I rehearsed those lines a thousand times before coming here, never thinking that you would have no more need of me. Perhaps I should have known better.”
The storm gathering around the pavilion had dissipated entirely by the end of his spiel. Leon simply couldn’t imagine that such a man would speak those words, would lower his head to him, just to try and trick him. This was a man displaying such raw honesty and putting himself in such a position of vulnerability that all of his killing intent bled away, and his aura instinctively calmed. He was left feeling almost foolish as he stood in front of Triyr, surrounded by the terrific wealth that the Basileus was handing over, his form covered in gleaming armor, Iron Pride held at his side.
Leon opened his mouth to speak, but held his tongue for a moment. His eyes narrowing, he regarded first Triyr, and then the arks he’d brought. A thousand was a game-changing number, though it wouldn’t be enough to alter the tide entirely against Alderion. But it might be enough to make all the difference.
“My war… isn’t over,” Leon stated, and Triyr’s face shot up so quickly that his neck audibly cracked. But Triyr didn’t even flinch as he waited patiently for Leon to further explain. “You may feel like withdrawing your words in a moment, Triyr. I am seeking allies, and you appearing here is almost… a sign from the Ancestors…”
“If my fleet can aid you here,” Triyr stated definitively, “then it will.”
Leon suppressed a sneer of disbelief. Deciding to do away with all pretense or hesitation, he said, “Anax Alderion is charging toward my territory. I will confront him at the frontier. I do not believe it will be a peaceful confrontation where we talk through our various contentions.”
“An Anax…” Triyr stated, and Leon almost expected him to make some excuse to leave. Instead, he smiled. “An Anax is a much greater symbol. Against a Basileus, a man my equal, how could I regain my lost honor? But against an Anax… standing with you against Anax Alderion would be the greatest sign of my sincerity, would it not? Allow me to offer my fleet again, Leon: please do not turn me away, Basileus Leon, Last Heir of the Thunderbird. Allow me—”
“Fine,” Leon said, cutting him off. “Fine. Just… stand up. You’re making me feel damned awkward talking to you on your knees.”
Triyr nodded slowly, and then just as slowly, giving Leon more than enough time to decide otherwise, pushed himself back to his feet. Then he began to slowly walk forward, and when Leon said nothing, his pace increased. As he approached Leon, Leon’s grip on Iron Pride tightened, but instead of magic or a blade, Triyr extended a hand. Leon stared at it for a long moment, wondering if Elise had finally fulfilled her many promises of killing him with pleasure.
Then, he transferred Iron Pride to his other hand and extended his arm. He and Triyr clasped wrists lightly, but to Leon, the sound was deafening.
---
The Drum Desert was a wasteland as far as the eye could see. Even to Leon’s thirteenth-tier eyes, there was little to see in the desert other than great shifting dunes wracked by enormous perpetual sandstorms. It was utterly devoid of water or life in any meaningful capacity, but Leon couldn’t help but stare wistfully across the wastes.
Lightning surged within the dunes, thunder booming and cracking within the swirling sands. It was easy for him to see how the desert had gotten its name, as it sounded like a thousand gods were raining blows upon a great drum as thunder echoed from one side of the desert to the other. Golden sand blew in every direction, and the jagged black pillars of melted sand thrown up by the incessant lightning were quickly torn down and buried, making the sand look almost like it was boiling as it momentarily lanced into the air, drawn upward by lightning, before being laid low by the storms.
Out there, Leon sensed Alderion’s fleet growing closer.
He and his assembled fleet hadn’t waited long after Triyr’s fleet followed Leon through the Lion’s Portal. He’d watched them closely, alert for any sign of betrayal. He’d throw open the gates of death again if Triyr betrayed him, but something in Triyr’s gaze had told Leon that the Basileus knew he’d do that, and so ensured that his fleet did everything that the rest of Leon’s forces demanded of them.
Now, the fleet flew alongside Archelaus’, Ingrid’s, Illum’s, and Theron’s forces, separate-ish from the rest of Leon’s integrated fleet. Archelaus’ forces were the largest by far, as he’d done as promised and levied his Strategoi as they passed through their lands. Three Strategoi had answered with varying levels of reluctance—Djoser, still apparently resentful of Leon ‘stealing’ Alhamachim from him, most reluctant of them all—and pushed Leon’s combined fleet to roughly eight and a half thousand war arks.
Alderion still outnumbered them at ten thousand, and as an Anax, Leon thought it was reasonable to assume that Alderion’s arks were likely to be of high quality compared to, for example, Makarios’. If a battle were to be fought here, then it would take everything that he could give to ensure that it wasn’t an immediate disaster.
Beside him stood all of his wives. Maia, Valeria, and Cassandra had refused to stay behind—not that he’d tried to order them to—but it was Elise insisting that she’d accompany him that took him most by surprise. But she’d been training hard for these past ten years, and while he didn’t expect her to take to the field of battle, he’d still hesitated to acquiesce. Still, he’d allowed it.
None of them had been particularly happy when he told them that Triyr was going to fight with them. However, their antipathy drained away almost as quickly as Leon’s had when Triyr, upon seeing them again, fell to his knees right where he was in a hallway in Westmount and kissed the ground before them. Once again, the Basileus had only risen when the ladies allowed him to, regardless of the whispers from those watching the scene.
Not far away, standing next to many other officers and vassals on Storm Herald’s observation deck, Archelaus set down a crystal he’d been using to keep in contact with those he knew within Alderion’s ranks. They couldn’t sabotage Alderion’s war machine, but Leon was still grateful that they were willing to pass along information to Archelaus despite the danger. It spoke well of the first Despot to submit to him that his friends would take that risk for him.
“We should not expect much talk,” Archelaus stated, surprising no one, yet crushing hopes all the same. “Alderion is incensed. He has publicly ranted several times during his flight about how King Leon is ‘stealing away his Despots, his rightful vassals’. My friends have rarely seen him so enraged.”
“Then we will be fighting immediately?” Marcus asked. “It would be to our benefit to open fire the second that his arks reveal themselves within the desert storms rather than wait for any sign of parley.”
“We should still wait,” Illum responded. “Even if it’s only to state his terms, Alderion will want to speak with King Leon. Basic propriety demands that he be heard.”
“As much as I dislike Alderion,” Ingrid added, “I agree. It’s bad form to not at least put in a performative gesture to avoid violence; otherwise, no one will ever trust your offers to speak again.”
“A wise philosophy,” Clear agreed, smiling widely.
“And one that erodes our tactical advantages,” Anshu bitterly complained.
“Not like we had many to begin with,” Xanthippe bemoaned.
Leon couldn’t help but agree with their griping, though he kept his mouth shut as he stared out across the dunes. They had the advantage of choosing the battlefield, but since they’d chosen to defend as much of Archelaus’ territory as they could, that meant that their defensive geography and infrastructure were… lacking. Engineers were on the ground, throwing together some static defenses, but in the time they had left, Leon didn’t expect them to build anything that might make up for their ark deficit.
‘Or the magical deficit…’ Leon thought. He was certainly feeling more battle-ready than he had when going out to confront Triyr, but he was facing a fourteenth-tier mage, with all the forces that such a powerful mage could bring to bear. Thankfully, it seemed that he was only bringing along one of his subordinate Basileis, but that hardly meant that they were fighting on even magical terms.
Leon was the only one on his side that he could imagine contending with Alderion, and the Anax undoubtedly had his own tricks and unknown powers that might negate Leon’s advantages. He had reminded himself often on the flight over that just because he’d beaten Bennu and Triyr, both of whom had been a tier higher than he had been at the time, that didn’t mean that he could repeat the feat against Alderion.
This was a terrible risk, but it was one he’d have to take.
He tuned out the last-minute strategizing as he focused entirely on the fight ahead, preparing himself in any way that he could for the fight that seemed inevitable and would undoubtedly be the hardest he’d ever fought in his life.
His flow was interrupted only when Elise slid her fingers into his. He turned and was confronted by a radiant smile, but one tinged with fear. Leon then glanced around to find that everyone was either looking at him or trying to seem like they weren’t looking at him.
“Hmm?” he asked.
“They’re close,” Elise whispered. “It’s time to head out.”
Leon blinked, then turned his eyes back to the window. In the distant sandstorms, he could see a few flickers of movement discordant with the wind and lightning. Arks were out there, enormous hulks that were disturbing the flow of magic in the desert.
“Yes,” he replied. “It is.”
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