Chương 1287: 1317 - Task Force Aetos I

Metal crunched and screamed, magic rippled in the air, and heat roiled off the combating war forms of a pair of strong giants as they swung their intense blades of blue light at each other. Their frames were battered and broken, but so long as their cores remained intact, they could always transfer into new bodies, so damage wasn't taken too seriously.

On the one hand, it meant that they could push their limits more easily and move with greater confidence, but on the other hand, it could also lead to self-destructive confidence. In this case, under Leon's watchful eye, this duel wouldn't go nearly so far as to endanger the giants themselves, buried in their heavily armored frames.

"YEAH! GET HIM IN THE FACE!" Leon blinked, easily able to tune out his more enthusiastic companion thanks to ten years of practice. The giants in the courtyard below were strong in ways that they could never have been in the Border Mountains back on Aeterna. It had been made apparent to Leon in the centuries since that giants had a hard time growing stronger, but their strength could be enhanced through stronger bodies—and, of course, having a hard time growing didn't mean that growth was impossible …

That culminated in the display before him: a pair of tenth-tier equivalent giants, part of a group of twenty of such great power, sparring for a chance to join the ranks of his Paladins.

"HE'S OPEN! GET HIM IN THE KIDNEY! IT'S WIDE OPEN!"

"Nyra, my aureate sister, giants don't have kidneys, and that spot is quite heavily armored." Serana's gentle words calmed Nyra somewhat, but the younger woman still barely averted her gaze. Fortunately, sound enchantments kept their voices from reaching the sparring giants, allowing them to focus on the challenge before them, though that didn't stop Nyra from boisterously expressing herself. Leon simply focused more on the duel, evaluating not just power but also technique and attitude.

To be one of his Paladins was to be put in a position of such esteem that he would tolerate nothing short of absolute paragons. Fortunately, the Paladins he already had were honorable enough that he didn't have to worry about them, not to mention their loyalty was unquestionable. For his new Paladins, he'd be much stricter.

He was willing to reserve spots in his Paladins for the best men, women, and other beings in his Kingdom, and not just his friends or those that he was personally impressed by, but they would still have to meet his high expectations. In this case, he reserved at least one Paladin position to always be filled by a giant. Their loyalty was undeniable; that much was apparent to everyone, and their natural strength was great.

They were limited significantly by their bodies, but thanks to Nestor and other golem researchers, they were improving all the time. He just wished those giants of his youth could see this. Lapis, of course. Rakos had 'burned out' many years ago, and Siddi's passing was more recent but felt just as acutely. It was deeply unfortunate, but it seemed that even though the average power of the giants was going up, their lifespans remained limited to just two or three hundred years.

The fight ended in a final exchange, with one of the giants taking a hit in the torso, clearly trusting in its armor there, so that it could then drive its blade of light into the midsection of its opponent. Serious damage was done, and the fight was brought to an end to ensure that the cores where the lightning bodies of the giants were contained weren't damaged.

"Whoa," Nyra gasped as Ignos, the highest-ranking giant Tempest Knight and one of the twelve de facto leaders of the giants as a whole, stepped in, barking in the rumbling language of the giants to stop.

"That was surprisingly dragon-hearted. Taking a hit like that…"

"It's always a risk," Leon stated.

"One has to have complete faith in their kit or their own toughness—or just be that desperate—for a risky move like that to be viable. More often than not, it would end the fight in their opponent's favor."

"It's a fine show," Serana said with a wide smile.

"That one wants to serve you, Leon."

"It already does," Leon replied.

"But… maybe I've underestimated how much everyone's actually wanted to be a Paladin…"

"To be one of your Paladins is to have access to you," Serana stated.

"And access to the King is always going to be desired in any Kingdom."

"Like the Claws!" Nyra exclaimed.

"Yes," Serana confirmed. In the past ten years, Leon had learned quite a bit about the Great Dragon Clans, including how they governed themselves. He recognized the title of Claw as being somewhat akin to Paladin, being one of the personal warrior-retainers of the Clan leaders, though they were more numerous and functioned more like a personal guard than the broader responsibilities that Leon had in mind for his Paladins.

But the narrower responsibility associated with the role didn't stop the Claws from always having tens of thousands of applicants every time a position opened up.

"Will you take that one as your Paladin?" Serana asked.

"I'm not yet sure," Leon said, though a smile quickly spread across his face as he added, "but its showing was impressive. Such determination is valuable…" They continued discussing the aftermath of the duel and what the three had gleaned of the giants who'd fought it, just barely managing to distract Leon for a while from thoughts about the campaign. The five Task Forces had departed barely more than a week ago, and he'd rarely managed to think about anything but how they were doing.

By his reckoning, they should start running into their first inhabited planes around now…

Space shuddered, and metal groaned; the deep blackness of a spatial portal rippled as Alix's flag ark, Furious Wind, was spat back into reality. Bolts of lightning danced across the hull as the dark blue light that surrounded the spatial portal dissipated. Within the ark was what might've looked like complete chaos to an outside viewer, but to those trained in Leon's Kingdom, every step taken by everyone within the ark was done with purpose.

Alix herself sat in the command chair on the bridge, buried within the heart of the enormous Exallos-class dreadnought. She'd taken the more offensive ark as her flag ark deliberately, wanting a greater degree of control over Task Force Aetos than Leon generally took over the fleets he commanded.

She wasn't going to sit back and watch the fleet move about; she wanted to be in the room, involved in every decision being made for the fleet, and if violence should break out, then she wanted to charge right in and do her part. She didn't pass judgment on Leon for how he commanded arks; she simply affected a different command style than he did.

"Status report!" she shouted after almost a full minute. That minute had given her officers plenty of time to update each other on how not only Furious Wind fared but also the condition of the rest of the Task Force.

"No damage reported!" Captain Estevall reported. Had she not taken Furious Wind as her flag ark, then the seat she'd planted herself in would've been his. Thankfully, he didn't seem too put out by having to constantly move around the bridge instead of resting in the seat.

"All elements of Task Force Aetos are accounted for!" If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Drift?" she asked.

"Ninety-one percent accuracy!" the navigation officer reported, his console alight with thousands of monitoring runes as well as three illuminated projectors allowing him to communicate with the ark's suite of navigation wisps. Alix breathed a sigh of relief. This last jump was the longest they'd made so far, and it was almost twice the distance that earlier Nestorian Drives could've made.

Ninety-one percent accuracy meant that ninety-one percent of the fleet had emerged within ten miles of their calculated destination. She'd ordered her Task Force to travel in a spread-out formation, taking advantage of the vast, incalculable empty space of the Void to ensure that even those arks that fell outside of this accuracy metric weren't too far away. Indeed, her entire Task Force had arrived at its destination without losing a single ark, though a few had taken some minor damage along the way.

One of her adjutants—a Hawk named Bright-Eyed-Wanderer—quickly summarized the status of the other arks, confirming that they were all present. A few transports that she'd left the Nexus with weren't present, but that was because they had been left behind on uninhabited planes, the forces that they were transporting acting under orders to establish small bases and communication relays.

Once all summaries were complete, Alix activated a few runes on her command chair, calling a small civilian transport close to Furious Wind. A woman answered her call who looked, by mortal standards, to be roughly middle-aged. Though she hailed from the Eagle Tribe, she bore no awakened bloodline. Without much prospect for advancement within her own Tribe, she had made her fortune trading between the Artor Valley and the subjugated cities of the Far West.

When Leon sponsored merchants to venture out into the Great Strand of Rhea and act as subtler pathfinders than his official scouts, she had been one of those chosen.

"Greetings, Mileta," Alix said formally, but with a warm smile.

"How was your jump?"

"Smooth, Dame Alix," Mileta replied, her voice husky and almost seductive—something Alix assumed she'd worked on to help her in her business dealings.

"That's fantastic to hear. I'd like to know what you think of the plane before us. Has anything changed since you were here last?" When Alix was finished, she muted her side so that her captains and handful of admirals could continue coordinating back into her desired formation. Their scanning enchantments pulsed continuously, particularly alert even in the Void—made all the more important with the fact that this part of the Void was not all that empty.

"Everything looks as I left it," Mileta reported.

"I'm not seeing any signs of change." Alix nodded as Captain Estevall and Bright-Eyed-Wanderer drew her attention to a group of much smaller arks in the Void over their destination.

"And these arks I'm seeing?"

"That's the welcoming party," Mileta confirmed.

"High Archos Ojolon should be aboard one of them."

"Thank you," Alix responded. This was her first true test, though by the standards of the campaign, it should be relatively easy. She'd come to what had been, in the days of Jason Keraunos, a cluster of about fifteen planes, all somewhere between half to three-quarters the size of Aeterna. Three had been dedicated agricultural planes, while three more were given to industry, building arks and refining strategic materials for the old Thunderbird Clan.

The remaining planes had apparently not been habitable, so the ancient Thunderbird Clan had ordered that they be ruthlessly stripped of their resources. The cluster that now lay before Alix bore little resemblance to what it had once been. Before Task Force Aetos was a dense field of broken asteroids and comets, some as large as cities and others as small as fingernails.

Only a single plane remained from that bygone age, but it had hardly escaped unscathed; from her perspective, Alix could easily see the heavy pockmarking from thousands of asteroid impacts, likely suffered when the other planes were destroyed. There were cities down there, and many of those old impact craters had filled with water and were now life-supporting lakes, but the plane wasn't the verdant breadbasket that the ancient Thunderbird navigation wisp had promised.

Still, it should do much to support her push, as well as those fleets that followed, assuming she could clinch the annexation. Surrounding this one remaining plane were larger fragments of two others. Fifteen of these fragments were fairly densely inhabited, though only the central plane had any arkyards, small though they were. In total, it was estimated that roughly half a billion people lived on the sole remaining 'intact' plane, with another fifty million or so on the demiplanes surrounding it.

And all of these planes were buried in the dense asteroid field where countless dangers might await unseen. Dense clouds of magic wafted around within this broken cluster, the only remnants of the suns that had once orbited the destroyed planes. The light of the only remaining sun reflected off these clouds, making them opaque to both the naked eye and to magic senses. These clouds, Alix knew, were going to be her challenge here…

"How much of a threat do these arks pose?" Alix asked. Bright-Eyed-Wanderer didn't hesitate a moment to report, "Little to none. Their hulls appear optimized for carrying cargo, and there are no visible weapon hardpoints." She pointed to the projections of this small fleet, drawing attention to their thick, straight frames and smooth hulls unblemished by weapons.

"Then bring us in. Slowly, we don't want to crash into any stray asteroids." Estevall acknowledged her order by barking orders of his own, while the communication officers relayed her orders to the rest of the Task Force. Furious Wind's engines pulsed with power, accelerating the ark toward the party assembled to greet them…

High Archos Ojolon struck the figure of a proud man. The dark-skinned man held himself proudly, his wide robes glimmering with gold and covered in red trim. Red runes were embroidered over most of the golden robes, but as far as Alix's admittedly fairly amateur eye could tell, none of them were proper enchantments. Ojolon himself had strong features and clearly kept himself in good condition.

His square jaw was shaved clean, while what little Alix could see of his head beneath a tall headpiece of gold cloth appeared likewise shaven. Those accompanying him were dressed similarly, though their golden robes bore fewer embroidered runes, and none of their headpieces were nearly as tall as Ojolon's. As Ojolon led his delegation into Furious Wind, he didn't balk at the size or power of Alix's greeting party, not even to give Mileta, who personally knew him, so much as a glance.

His ninth-tier aura shone proudly as he led his people into Furious Wind's hangar.

"On behalf of the ancient plane of W'Nadack," he spoke in lightly-accented Nexus common, having learned the language from a Stone of Many Tongues, "I welcome all of you! Welcome!" With a flourish, he produced a jar of sweet-smelling liquid and took a generous draught of it. He then held it out in Alix's direction, though he stopped about twenty feet from her. Alix smiled and crossed those last twenty feet, taking the jar and tipping it back, taking a drink almost as generous as Ojolon's had been.

Dark red wine, honeyed and spiced, hit her tongue, delighting it with its rich flavor, and when she lowered the jar, she said, "Greetings to you, representatives of W'Nadack. I hope you don't mind me saying up front that this was delicious, and I hope you'll allow me to purchase more."

"We are eager to do bus—" one of Ojolon's followers, a seventh-tier mage who appeared surprisingly overweight given his power, hurried to say, but a glare from Ojolon silenced him before he could finish.

"There are other matters to confirm, first," he said coolly.

"First and foremost: the reason why you came here. You wish the submission of my people to yours."

"I wouldn't call it submission," Alix stated.

"My King is generous and willing to allow you to rule yourselves."

"So long as we bow to him." Ojolon didn't sound particularly pleased, but Alix wasn't daunted, not when the reports she'd received from the scouts, Mileta, and Clear's diplomats had all painted a certain picture for her already…

"Yes," she confirmed.

"You will acknowledge him as your King, and you will provide him with certain tributes. In return, you will find yourselves under his aegis, given his protection. Hardly unfair given your current situation, is it?" Ojolon's hard expression didn't twitch. He knew what was to be gained and what that would cost him.

"Promises were made," he finally said.

"Until they are kept, then you are guests, nothing more."

"And when they are kept?" Alix pressed.

"Then we will bow to your King and provide him with all that is owed." Alix nodded, her gaze momentarily flitting to the exterior of the ark. Out there in the dense asteroid field laired many groups of pirates. They supposedly had small arkyards of their own and sustained themselves on raiding. There were other planar clusters nearby that suffered from their predations, but it was Ojolon's people who took the brunt of it.

Clear's diplomats had promised that these pirates would be crushed, bringing peace to this planar cluster that hadn't known it in tens of thousands of years.

"We'll avail ourselves of your hospitality, then. And in the coming days and weeks, show you that our word, and that of our King, is as good as gold. A storm will fall upon those that threaten you such as they have never experienced before, and when we are done, your people will be at peace under the protection of King Leon."