Chương 1234: 1264 - Ingrid's Duel

The mood offstage was tense; there were thousands of Lords and hundreds of thousands of hangers-on already in the seats, and many hovering over the stage to get a better look at the upcoming duel. Pressure had focused him, tightening Leon's muscles and getting his heart to beat like a war drum. Despite this, he was confident. Those accustomed to war and battle had an air about them even without projecting any killing intent; he found Mikaela lacking in this regard.

As with Cassandra's assessment of Perenelle, one of Miuna's friends, Leon found Mikaela to be soft, more used to throwing around her political power rather than her magical power. With the time for the duel to begin drawing inexorably closer, Leon found himself with Ingrid staring out at the arena.

"I'd deal with them both if I could," Ingrid bitterly groused.

"Maybe you can," Leon replied.

"Mikaela's tier leaves room for uncertainty, but I feel like any twelfth-tier mage who's competent in the arts of battle would make short work of her."

"Bold," replied the instigator of this duel.

"Does this mean you have a plan for dealing with her?" Smirking, Leon said, "I was thinking of using extreme violence. I find that usually works." Despite the tension visible in Ingrid's posture, she gave him a hearty chuckle.

"I'll deal with Mikaela," Leon continued.

"You get your licks in on Vrothgar. I'm sure you have plenty planned for him."

"That faithless man-whore abandoned me," Ingrid spat.

"Worse, he abandoned our daughter! Were this a duel to the death, I'd string him up by his entrails and parade his flayed skin across every square foot of my Despotate."

"So a fairly measured and restrained response, then." Ingrid chuckled again, momentarily amused before her face fell again.

"I… feel guilty leaving Mikaela to you. Whether or not she's used to fighting won't necessarily matter if she can overpower everything you throw at her."

"I'll be fine," Leon confidently said. As the words passed his lips, he felt attention from his soul realm from multiple sources. The heat of Xaphan's eyes had been with him since his arrival at the arena, but now he could hear the faint energetic crackling of the Thunderbird, once more gracing his soul realm with her presence.

He'd have shared a few words with her, but a gong sounded, and the amphitheater went silent; it was almost time for the duel to begin, leaving him with no time to spend chatting with his Ancestor.

"Last chance to back out," Ingrid said.

"I won't think any less of you for it." Leon snorted and remained where he was. He'd already announced himself to the universe at large with his duel against Triyr. This was an affair on a grander scale, but he wasn't going to shy away from it—doubly so when a new friend needed his help. In these last few seconds, he cast his gaze around the arena, evaluating who had showed up.

The vast majority of faces he couldn't recognize, but he could see his friends and family sitting close to the nigh-invisible magical barrier separating the stands from the theater floor. Sitting with them were his newer friends and acquaintances, including Archelaus, Gwarim, Nuertis, and Realiz. Miuna's entourage had posted up in the enormous private box in the center of the amphitheater. There were more than a thousand other such boxes scattered throughout the titanic stands, but that one was the largest.

Miuna herself had only just arrived, having left Leon only ten minutes or so ago, and with her were many powerful Ocean Lords, not to mention her own friends. It seemed that her status as the Princess of the Ocean Lands—oxymoronic though her realm's title was—had warranted her and her party an invitation from the Sun King himself.

Other Lords filled that particular box, but given the power and wealth of all Lords, Leon wasn't sure how important any of them were judging by their incomprehensible auras and magnificent clothes. Besides, if he was someone important enough to have a private box, he'd have a private box, not one shared with other Lords. The other boxes of the amphitheater held important mages, he was sure, possibly even some Anakes. Notably, he did not see the Gale Queen anywhere, not even in Anushirawan's box.

The gong sounded again, and the Sun King launched himself from the edge of the box he'd been sharing with Miuna and let his overwhelming aura spill forth. Rays of light filled the sky as if he were a second sun manifesting just for them, drawing all eyes to him. The man himself was impressive, even by Leon's standards. His skin was relatively tan, though how much of that was natural and how much was as a result of time spent outdoors, he couldn't say.

What was less ambiguous were the well-built muscles that covered his body, managing to strike the perfect balance between aesthetics and practicality. The Sun King made little effort to hide his body, with tight trousers over which he wore a loose shirt that bared most of his chest but extended down to his mid-thigh. Over that, he wore a long robe-like jacket that shimmered in the light emanating from his aura. Everything he wore was stark white, the traditional color of light mages.

"MY FELLOWS," the Sun King exclaimed, his voice thundering over the amphitheater,"SUCH A PLEASURE IT IS TO SEE ALL OF YOU HERE, TODAY! BEGINNING IN JUST A FEW MINUTES, WE SHALL BEAR WITNESS TO THE END OF A GRUDGE, PEACE BROUGHT BY BATTLE, BUT NOT BY DEATH! LET IT STAND AS A SYMBOL OF WHAT CAN BE ACHIEVED WHEN WE ACT LIKE MEN, NOT LIKE BEASTS!" He smiled, his handsome face framed well by his trimmed beard and long brown hair that had been tied back into a loose braid.

His eyes, shining like white stars, scanned the crowd before spilling their light upon the enormous doors on opposite sides of the amphitheater floor, which started to swing open. The volume of the crowd increased, with some hooting, hollering, and making all manner of noise, while others endured such enthusiasm with silent grace. They weren't so loud, however, that they drowned out the theater attendant who poked his head into the room and said, "It's time, my Lords."

Without further ado, Leon and Ingrid stepped out onto the stage floor. At the same time, their opponents did likewise, and Leon found himself mildly surprised with his opponent; Mikaela had somehow managed to squeeze her generous body into armor—and quite heavy armor, no less. Just about every inch of her was covered in Adamant plate, providing such a level of defense that Leon briefly pondered adjusting his chances downward just a tad.

He didn't, however; he'd given it almost equal chances for her to step out nearly naked or dressed as she was now. He was ready to face her with or without armor. The two groups met at the center of the stage, where Anushirawan landed. His shining eyes swept over them all, and though it might've been his imagination, Leon thought they lingered on him just a mite too long.

But the wide smile on the Sun King's face—not to mention how utterly welcoming and downright pleasant it was to be in his colossal aura—banished any suspicion in Leon's mind.

"Your duel will commence shortly," the Sun King intoned, his voice rich and deep, made more apparent with him no longer addressing the millions of gathered mages.

"But first, we will go over the rules and terms. State clearly for me your names and ranks." They did so, with Anushirawan's eyes lingering this time on Mikaela.

"Do you two consent to facing a Basilissa in combat?" he asked Leon and Ingrid. After they agreed, he asked a similar question to the eleventh-tier Vrothgar, who likewise agreed, if a little more hesitantly.

"Then let us move on to the duel's terms," he said.

"As the challenger, I ask you to name yours first." Ingrid growled, "I want Vrothgar on his knees begging for my mercy. I want him to prostrate himself before me and all the universe and apologize with all the contrition he can muster for abandoning our family." She shifted her gaze to Mikaela.

"And you. I don't know why, but you have interfered in the affairs of my family. It would've been one thing if you moved against me for resources, but my husband?! You have destroyed my family and left my daughter without a father; I would have a thousand times his weight in Titanstone, the same amount in Aurichalcum, and twice as much in Lumenite."

Mikaela scoffed, and though little of her face could be seen even with her visor open, it looked like the only reason she didn't immediately respond was because she was waiting for the Sun King to address her first. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

When he finally asked her for her terms, she stated, "I want you to crawl through the dirt, proclaim yourself to be the lowest and vilest creature in all of existence, and then spend a hundred years as my footstool."

"Is that all?" responded Ingrid lividly.

"Be grateful you're not your Ancestor," Mikaela added.

"I would've turned that thing into a cloak." Ingrid nearly attacked her right then and there, but Leon grabbed her wrist and stopped any rash actions.

"Do you two have any terms?" Anushirawan asked Leon and Vrothgar together, perhaps sensing that both of the ladies needed to start the fight soon.

"An acknowledgment that our marriage is over," Vrothgar said to Ingrid.

"And a release from all related familial obligations." Mikaela had insulted the Moon-Jumping Fox and ignited burning fury in Ingrid, but Vrothgar's brought cold wrath. She didn't say a word in response, but Leon could feel her killing intent thicken tremendously as she glared at her former husband. When the Sun King looked to him, he simply said, "I need nothing. I'm here to support my friend and to fight a good fight."

One of Anushirawan's brows inched upward, while many in the stands—powerful mages themselves, who could hear the exchange—whispered about his 'terms'. After a moment, Anushirawan quietly laughed and said, "Then let that be it. The terms of the duel will be as you have agreed. The rules I now impose are simple: you four will fight as you see fit; use whatever powers or tools you have available to you. Weapons, armor, I don't care.

However, I will personally oversee this duel and ensure that you do not inflict a mortal wound. When I command the duel to stop, it will stop. Do I make myself clear?" They were reasonable and easy enough terms; all four nodded.

"Then make your final preparations," the Sun King said.

"I will signal the beginning of the duel in sixty seconds." The fighters did just that as Anushirawan took back to the sky and shot back to the box with Miuna. Ingrid took a position just opposite Vrothgar, her choice in opponents remaining despite the words Mikaela had given her. Leon, likewise, took a position opposite Mikaela.

Confident though he was against her, he refused to allow himself to succumb to arrogance, especially with the Thunderbird and more than a million powerful mages watching; he donned his armor and drew Iron Pride as Mikaela drew from her soul realm a powerful halberd and lowered her visor. Above, the Sun King intoned the fateful word.

"BEGIN!"

When he returned to his box, Anushirawan found the conversation to have hardly moved at all in his absence. Princess Miuna, as the woman closest to Despot Leon, was fielding many a question about the Storm Lord, mostly focused on his chances. Anushirawan himself had his own thoughts on the matter. His gaze returned to Leon far below, waiting for him to announce the beginning of the duel. His aura flowed naturally, like a smooth river.

Mikaela's, on the other hand, was wilder and more chaotic—a flagrant reversal of how a Gale and Storm Lord ought to be, in Anushirawan's experience. However, it spoke volumes to Leon's confidence that his aura was so steady. More than that, Anushirawan could sense potent killing intent buried deep in Leon's aura, far more than Mikaela's, and even more than the wrathful Ingrid standing beside him.

Anushirawan's mouth curled upward slightly as Leon's 'terms' echoed in his ears—his aura might not have been Storm Lord-esque, but his response certainly was. A question was asked of the box from someone behind him about who everyone thought was going to win. The conventional answer was Mikaela's side since she was the strongest.

However, after rereading the report he'd been brought of Leon's performance at his duel on Voidshore, and now with the man himself before him, Anushirawan wasn't so sure about how far conventionality was going to take those making bets. His eyes momentarily drifted to one of the private boxes where he knew the Gale Queen was watching. He felt like she was about to get a show the likes of which she may not have imagined, even if she'd given her ridiculous cousin a new set of armor.

He said the word, beginning the duel, and he wasn't surprised at all to see Leon move first. In a flash of silver-blue lightning that sent shockwaves, both literal and metaphorical, through the crowd, Leon closed with Mikaela in a moment and slammed his blade into the woman's oversized breastplate.

The weapon, so radiant to Anushirawan's senses that he could barely even brush against it with his magic senses, didn't penetrate the woman's Adamant armor, but she didn't react in time and was hurled back with immense force. Leon followed her, not letting up for the slightest moment as he rained blow after thunderous blow upon her. Not too far away, Vrothgar was being tossed around by his former spouse with almost childlike ease.

She, too, had an Inherited Bloodline, made obvious by her red-gold lightning, but it drew considerably less attention than Leon's silver-blue. She was so utterly dominant in her fight, Vrothgar's standard golden lightning unable to put up much of a fight against her, that Anushirawan tuned her out completely. A walking violation of the Canticles of Hormizd she may be, but the man throwing around the Thunderbird's own lightning was of far greater importance.

In the brief moment that his attention had been split, Mikaela showed that her thirteenth-tier aura wasn't completely for show as she managed to get her feet back under her and summon her origin power. A powerful twister surrounded her, bending Leon's lightning as it passed through.

A few bolts still scorched her shining armor and sent her skidding across the rapidly-degrading floor—Anushirawan quietly praised the enchanters' work as these moves would've normally obliterated mountains instead of only damaging the amphitheater's floor—but she maintained her protective shield.

And then, as Leon flashed across the amphitheater in a powerful charge, his weapon blazing with silver-blue lightning—and a certain ancient rune appearing within the lightning arcs that Anushirawan spied—Mikaela made her move. Her origin power snapped into place as she pulled from her soul realm a cloud of the Mists of Chaos. The cloud resolved into a spiked wall, made real by her origin power, made of some kind of dark, shiny stone.

'Not enough,' the Sun King thought, his thought immediately vindicated as Leon's rune-backed strike shattered the stone, sending it blasting back into Mikaela's face as millions of pieces of shrapnel. She screamed, likely more out of surprise than pain, and reeled as Leon surged forth again, his body blazing with silver-blue lightning.

'The Thunderbird Clan…' Anushirawan thought, pondering the implications of that Clan's return. It had been supposedly disposed of at great cost thousands of years ago, freeing an Elemental Land for the first time almost since the Great Lord had imposed his Law upon the universe from the tyranny of a beast-blooded family.

'Kamran wasn't as thorough as he claimed…' The flashing of polychromatic lightning faded in Anushirawan's eyes as he asked himself,'Should I tell him? Should I tell… anyone?' The screams of the dying once more filled his ears, the flashing of lightning in the amphitheater momentarily replaced in his eyes by the flashing of his power ripping a plane apart, slaughtering billions for the crime of their birth.

'Necessary…' he thought.

'Necessary…' Though repeated, the word did nothing to banish the memory pricking at his mind. A gasp from Miuna's direction pulled him from his momentary fugue and returned his attention to the duel before them. Only a short span of time he'd been distracted, but it was enough for the fight to progress quite a bit. Mikaela, showing her greater power once again, had surrounded Leon with a tempestuous twister, hampering his lightning-enhanced movements.

She was swinging her halberd at him, slicing the air with deadly wind blades that tore the floor up around him. Meanwhile, she was constantly conjuring chains from mist and origin power, hoping against hope to bind her opponent. She was experiencing little success, though she was at least managing to keep her sharp-eyed foe at bay—and his sharp-edged blade. But if that was all that she was capable of… then Anushirawan wasn't impressed.

All of the Basilissa's considerable power should've ended the battle before it began, not merely held her opponent off until he could get his feet under him. An expectation formed in Anushirawan's mind, that of a bolt of silver-blue lightning blasting apart Mikaela's twister, tearing her armor from her body, and nearly killing her. He could see Leon preparing something in the twister, but there was too much debris and other detritus in the way that no one could quite see what.

To the untrained eye, it might have even seemed like Leon was in trouble. Anushirawan tensed, ready to bolt out and rescue Mikaela from whatever the man was doing. Despite this, he wasn't at all ready for what happened next. An arrow, black as the Void and surrounded by a faint blue halo, shot unerringly from the twister. This arrow-like sliver of spatial magic, infinitely sharp just from its nature, warped space around it, leaving it unimpeded by everything whirling around it.

Bits of chain, stone, and broken floor whipped across it, but the spatial distortion around it also distorted these things, and the arrow was untouched. In an instant that the Sun King thought the vast majority of mages in the audience missed, the arrow burst from the twister and slammed into Mikaela. He sensed the magic in it and was already out of the box by the time the magic detonated.

Cracks appeared in the air around Mikaela as if the universe itself was a pane of glass, and Leon's power was about to break it. Space bent, twisted, and continued to crack as all magic coming from Mikaela ceased, all the way down to her aura. The arrow had embedded itself in her breastplate, and the Adamant armor had parted before it like wind around an ark. The cracks snapped, and Mikaela screamed. Anushirawan's power enveloped her as she fell, her arms and legs severed at the shoulders and hips.

All of the Adamant on her body shattered into dust as her halberd broke into a thousand pieces. For a moment, Anushirawan thought himself too late, the woman's heart destroyed by the arrow. However, as he landed beside her, healing light staunching her bleeding immediately and knitting together broken bones and torn flesh, he saw the hole made by the black spatial arrow exactly placed in her chest to miss everything vital.

Her heart had been missed by a hair, and she was certainly going to spend the next few centuries horrifically injured, but she was alive, and with the Gale Queen's resources, she was going to make a full recovery. Regardless, as the remnants of her magic died and Leon was revealed again to the crowd, he was holding not his sword but a bow of shining white wood, whose aura was so terribly alien that Anushirawan instinctively shuddered in its presence even though he could end Leon with a snap of his fingers.

He'd won the duel, and he clearly knew it based on his proud smile and relaxed posture. Not too far away, Ingrid was glaring at her former husband, disgust writ large across her face as she returned her helmet to her soul realm. The duel's outcome was hardly surprising, but as Leon stashed his bow in his soul realm, Anushirawan couldn't help but wonder what sort of waves that the young Lord was going to make.

Kamran was certainly going to be interested in this development, and might even make Leon his first priority once he dealt with Halbast. But Anushirawan himself… at least for the moment, stood up and declared for all the amphitheater to hear: Leon and Ingrid had won their duel. Anything more would wait until another day.