Chương 1145: 1175 - War Cry

Cheering. Excitement. The streets of Ishtorpor overflowed with both. The wine flowed freely, decorative bolts of lightning lit up the night sky, and many businesses had closed despite Djoser's refusal to name it a day of celebration. The reason was simple: for a long time, they had lived on the edge of the buffer zone, always under the shadow of the Diluvians.

While everyone went about their day-to-day lives, there was always the undercurrent of anxiety at a low simmer, knowing that if the Ocean Lords wanted to expand their buffer zone, then Ishtorpor would be the first place hit. Even the presence of the Third Iron Order on their southern shore did little to meaningfully quell these anxieties—after all, when the Ocean Lords had an Ocean King, but the Storm Lords had no Storm King, then how much could they truly be protected?

The Ocean Lords would always have a move that they could play that the Storm Lords couldn't. Instability and long competition in the Far East certainly didn't help matters. Little news trickled in from the Far East, but none of it raised the people's spirits or made them proud to be citizens of the Storm Lands—save for those who felt affronted and retreated into their identities for mental comfort. But those latter cases were generally few and far between. Now, things were different.

Those anxieties had boiled over into pure joy, unrestrained and pure. Fifty years ago to the day, Leon Raime, their newest neighbor, a man they had once feared they might go to war with, had fought off the Ocean Lords, dealing a powerful Despot a crippling blow, and brought some measure of pride back to the people in the Far West. And they made their jubilation known every year on the same day as the Ocean Lords returned to the abyssal depths whence they'd come. Djoser despised it.

From his palace overlooking the streets of his city, he watched with naked disgust as his people frolicked in his streets, drinking, partying, and engaging in other celebratory activities of dubious respectability, all for the actions of a man he hated passionately.

'Crusty shitstain should've died,' Djoser thought with anger that nearly set his blood boiling. Lightning surged through his body and he had to restrain his temptation to fly into the air and demand the partygoers silence themselves and return to their homes under pain of death. If he did that, he'd be threatening damn near his entire capital city, and even with his modest holdings out in the planes, he didn't have the human capital necessary to do that so casually. If he were wealthy enough to do so…

Djoser's eyes swiveled momentarily westward, to the Bolt Mountains, where his stolen city lay. It had grown significantly in the past half-century. Migrants from whatever foul, fetid coprolitic plane Leon Raime had come from had helped to fill it out and expand its footprint. Several neighboring valleys to the one it already occupied were terraced and settled, giving the city access to the resources of two dozen more villages, all growing cash crops for the most part.

Even then, the wealth of Alhamachim was not great. It made some amount of ambrosia and Lumenite, to be sure, but there were tiny country communes in Djoser's territory that made more of both than that entire city could. But even though it represented a negligible material loss for Djoser, he still burned with fury whenever he thought about it. The city was his, damn it, and though he was loyal enough to Archelaus to let the matter go, its loss was a festering wound in his heart that refused to heal.

He wanted Alhamachim back. He needed Alhamachim back. He wouldn't be whole without it. His early life had been hard and filled with danger, and he'd lost much. But he'd always made those who'd taken from him pay many times over. No man had ever wronged him who had gotten away with it. Leon Raime would be no different. Djoser knew that the man had ascended to the twelfth-tier, and his power had only continued to wax over the decades.

His fleets had grown vast, to the point of rivaling some weaker Basileis that Djoser was familiar with—at least, on the surface. Djoser himself had a fleet of comparable size, but it mostly consisted of lighter arks, and they were locked up in defending his planar holdings rather than available for him to use at a whim in the Nexus. Most Lords in the Nexus were the same.

That Leon Raime's fleet was present in Artorion spoke volumes of the vastness of Leon Raime's domain—it was either so vast that the despicable creature prancing about in human skin had hundreds of arks to spare, or it was so tiny that there wasn't much those arks had to defend. Either way, Leon Raime had the arks, and they were known to everyone. Djoser liked fantasizing about Leon Raime's bloody death from time to time. It made for a good distraction when the stress of his position grew heavy.

On this day, a day that his people had decided was a holiday despite him never making such an announcement, he was reminded that his antipathy for the man who had almost unified the unclaimed parts of the Far West—Culain had submitted to vassalage only two years ago, and Queenfall, the last remaining free city of the Far West, was under pressure to do the same—was not shared by the general populace. Nor was it shared, to his dismay, by the Storm Lords he frequently interacted with.

His fellow Strategoi under Archelaus were either ambivalent to Leon Raime or held him in some regard, and Archelaus' positive opinion was well-known to all by this point. Which was to say that Djoser had no recourse for acting against Leon Raime in the open. His fleets were too large, the man himself was too powerful, and there wasn't a large enough base of hatred for him amongst the denizens of the Storm Lands that Djoser would easily find allies. There was nothing he could do to reclaim Alhamachim.

Or rather, there was nothing he could do in the open. Asa, one of the city's previous leaders, and who had been unfairly run out of the city by Leon Raime, had, with Djoser's leave, started writing back to some of the city's ruling class some years back. While it might not grow quickly, the former Speaker was slowly planting seeds of doubt against Leon Raime's reign in Alhamachim, and reminding the city's people of the many millennia of peace they had known under Djoser's rule.

Djoser was patient enough to wait for his chance. It would come when Leon Raime's weakness was shown for all to see, when his bestial ways were no longer tolerable by those of a more civilized bent, when his demands for taxes and tribute grew too great to bear by those he'd subjugated… And when it did, Djoser would be ready. Ready to reclaim what was his. Ready to teach that bastard Ascended Beast that thought he was a man that he was, in fact, nothing at all. That day would come. Djoser just had to wait.

The great hall was deathly silent. Ten thousand men and women of the highest caliber in their Clan, and not one made a sound. Ten thousand pairs of eyes were locked upon the door as, in the background, the sounds of footsteps grew louder and louder. Stolen story; please report. The great black doors, intricately carved with the head of a dragon glaring at them with ruby eyes, opened, and from its gaping maw spilled forth a hundred women, all in full battle regalia.

The black scales of their armor drank in the light such that even the light behind them seemed to bend around them to try and escape such an ignominious fate. They moved in perfect unison, keeping their charge between them secure—both against anyone who might wish her harm and from herself, as those higher-ranked in the Clan knew. The Patriarch's daughter carried herself with dignity and grace despite the weight of the attention she attracted.

Her footsteps echoed as loud as temple bells in the massive hall as she ascended the short steps to the elevated platform where only the highest of the Clan were allowed to set foot. Around her, obsidian columns gleamed as heat roiled through the chamber. Three black dragons lay curled around the platform, watchful for any signs of intruders, while far above, the ceiling billowed as smoke, both real and projected, gathered.

It was fairly common knowledge that Princess Serana hadn't been seen in public for nearly two centuries. This was hardly something noteworthy given how much time some post-Apotheosis mages could spend on their hobbies, sleeping, or otherwise doing something other than soaking up the public gaze.

The ten thousand in this hall, however, knew that she'd done something to upset the Patriarch gravely, such that even after the losses the Clan had suffered in the great war two centuries ago, he still kept her locked away in her private palace. The specific reason, however, was known only to a select few, and so many rumors had spread. Some said that Serana had started a war out in the planes amongst their allies.

Others speculated that she might've been an unwitting participant in the calamitous war that saw so much taken from them a mere two centuries ago. A few daring rumormongers bet that she'd given her virtue to some low-born in the planes, and even given birth to a child out there. All should've been dismissed as the obviously false claims that they were, but in the absence of the real reason, those rumors festered.

Needless to say, many of the gazes directed her way were rather hostile—not that she seemed to care, carrying herself as she did with all the grace and dignity expected of one of her power and station. When she reached the foot of her father's throne, upon which the Patriarch himself sat, she lowered her head almost imperceptibly. Dragons did not bow, but showing respect for one's Lord, especially if that Lord happened to be one's own father, was to be expected.

While the Princess was the last one to arrive, she was not the focus of this meeting. The great hall of the gigantic war ark War Cry was rarely used, and when it was, it was meant to live up to the ark's name. As the Princess took up a position next to her father, the Patriarch himself rose to his feet. He and his daughter were the only two not armed and armored in the hall, though with the grim look about him and his deep, boundless aura, no one thought he particularly needed a weapon or armor.

"When the sky is falling, we must band together." The Patriarch's voice was just shy of a whisper, but no one in the hall had any trouble hearing him.

"In such times, it is the Clan that gives us strength, that protects us, that ensures the survival of the entire flight." He paused, his gaze sweeping across the room. Everyone was dead silent, hanging on his every word, waiting for the announcement of such importance that demanded the use of this hall of all possible halls. With clear disagreement, yet determination to relay the decision, the Patriarch of the Black Dragon Clan continued.

"The Eldest Brother, Prasinos, has asked us to participate in the Belicenian Games alongside our brother Clans. I have agreed." Left unspoken was the price of that agreement. It may not be goods or cash, but something was exchanged. Those present were all familiar enough with the Patriarch to know that he despised any sort of competition that incorporated combat.

'War is war,' he'd been known to say, 'and games are games. The two ought not to mix.'

"To participate in these Games is an honor for our Clan. Surely, we will win every competition, for none exist who can match us for power and bravery!" Everyone in the hall, from the Princess herself to the lowest warrior, raised their voices in a loud war cry that shook War Cry, though it lasted but a moment.

"Though our victory is assured, I have decided that we require practice! All blades must be kept sharp, lest they rust or dull with time! And what better whetstone is there than war?! Today, we deploy into the universe! For too long have we allowed planar clusters near our territory to remain unclaimed! We will bring these planes into the fold and display our might before the universe! Let all who claim us weak choke on their fetid words!

And then we will cap our great conquests with a trip to Belicenion where every prize shall fall into our hands!" Again, a war cry from the assembled mass of powerful warriors seemed to shake both heaven and earth, though it remained disciplined and brief. The Patriarch capped his short speech with a single command. He raised his hand and conjured the black flame of their Ancestor, which had been awakened in so few of their number, and at the sight, the entire hall burst out into reverential roaring.

But above all of the noise, the voice of their fifteenth-tier Patriarch carried easily. The two words he spoke promised to bring untold glory upon them as he brought the Clan out of their self-imposed exile. This would be a sign to the universe not only of their strength but also of their willingness to fight and impose their will upon others—two qualities that stirred the heart of every dragon.

War Cry, larger even than the largest supercarriers of the Elemental Lands, turned upward with surprising speed and accelerated toward the portal to the Void. Behind her flew a thousand other arks of varying size, though notably, two dreadnoughts and a dozen of the Clan's supercarriers were among them. A mighty fleet, one that would easily conquer the primitive planes outside of the Nexus. But through all of this, there was one face that remained untaken with the Patriarch's display: his own daughter.

She stood by his throne, face set in a carefully maintained neutral expression. What she thought of this expedition was anyone's guess, though having her present certainly boosted morale among many despite the untoward rumors that had been spread about her confinement. With such obvious confidence displayed by the Patriarch, their conquest was assured.

Serana internally scowled at the farce of a ceremony she was forced to witness. War Cry moved on her father's orders, and her father had ordered many planes to be conquered. So would they be as surely as the Origin Spark would brighten in the morning and dim in the evening. That was never in question. Rather, she was bitter that she was there at all.

When her father had come and told her of his decision to join with the other Clans in preparing for the Belicenian Games, she'd been initially elated; she knew that preparations would draw him away from their Clan's home valley, which might afford her an opportunity to sneak out and seek out Fain, who had yet to respond to any more of her messages after the first.

'Little coward's hiding in his damn lab,' she thought, barely managing to restrain her fury from leaking into her aura. With so many of her Clan's strongest warriors around her, there would be no way she'd be able to hide that, and explaining it would take too much effort to be worth it. Hope still burned within her that her son and husband were alive, but she was struggling more to keep that hope alive without news from Aeterna.

She needed to sneak out somehow and find her way back, even if she had to fly through the Void under her own power rather than using an ark. Such a feat would take years, but she'd already waited centuries. The problem lay with her father. He knew her too well; he knew that she would attempt an escape if he were gone from the Clan for too long. Taking her with him on this conquest was not meant to honor her or bolster their forces' resolve.

No, his intention was clear: he wanted to keep an eye on her, but when the Clan went to war, he was expected to lead from the front. That left him only one option since she still refused to renounce her son and husband, and that was to bring her on this conquest. No one was happy with this arrangement, but she supposed getting out to see the world again was a small bonus, even if she would never get the privacy she needed to try and escape.

'Maybe I can convince Father to bring me to the Games,' she thought.

'There ought to be a way to slip away once there…' Ideas ran through her head about how she might get away, how she might return to Aeterna and reunite with Leon and Artorias. If neither had achieved Apotheosis, however, then her time was running out. If Artorias hadn't managed to awaken her little Leon's blood, then it might already be too late… She pushed that thought as far out of her mind as she could. That wasn't a possibility that she was willing to consider. She would reunite with Leon and Artorias.

They would be a family again. Woe to anyone who stood in her way, father or not.