Chương 1330: 1360 - Rally Point

"You remember how it felt? The way that the universe reacts around you when you use it?" Leon frowned. The Great Black Dragon was being pushy, and he wasn't in much of a mood to tolerate it. But tolerate it he did, for the prize was one of the grandest in existence: conscious control over the Eye of Calamity.

"I remember," he replied without much enthusiasm. He concentrated, allowing his current lack of patience to set him alight from within. Pressure built in his eyes as magic gathered. The colors he could see started to darken, and his eyes began to sting. He cut himself off, but it was enough to know that the Eye of Calamity was close, close enough to call upon when needed, close enough to know that his eyes weren't any more durable now than they had been when fighting Antipatra.

Sustained usage of that power would destroy his eyes, as had happened when he unconsciously used the power against Planerend. As he cut the flow of magic and his vision returned to normal, he glared at his Ancestor.

"What about my mother? What about everyone back in Artorion?" The Great Black Dragon had been smiling down at him with pride—not in a fatherly way, but more like a craftsman gazing upon his magnum opus. That smile wavered slightly but didn't fade much at all.

"They yet fight. Their struggles continue. But your Kingdom awaits your return." Sighing, Leon asked, "Is that it? You have nothing further to add?"

"Why should I concern myself with your lessers? Your mother is the only one in your little hamlet that deserves even a fraction of my attention. All others exist only to be scorned."" All others? Nyra is still in Artorion, isn't she? She didn't leave?" The dragon answered with a click of his tongue first, then a begrudging, "She is fine, too." Leon closed his eyes—that was the only way he could stop himself from rolling them right out of their sockets.

A glance at a clock told him that his allotted time for training was almost at an end, but he stood up from where he sat anyway and said, "We'll leave it here."

"There is still transformation work to do," the Great Black Dragon pressed.

"One breakthrough may portend another."

"You want to help me achieve your form, hm? Vanity or genuine desire?" A draconic scoff, hot and scornful.

"All dragons are vain."

"I like to think I'm not."

"You are. In your own way. But you would be safe to take me at my word. As the other one hangs her entire being upon your survival, so do I hang my hopes for my legacy upon you. The Eye of Calamity would be one thing, great enough on its own to shake the universe… but to have my form taking flight throughout the universe again… No god, no weaver of fate would ever stand a chance against you, then!

And at the sight of your wings, all would know their own vanity, for thinking themselves masters of the universe when my Clan continues on!" Leon didn't dignify that with a response, choosing instead to walk over to the throne in his soul realm and sit down.

"I'll deal with that later. For now, stick around. I won't have much for you to do for a while, but it would make me feel a lot better knowing that you were bored and waiting on me."

"Cheeky brat." A slew of other castigations followed, echoing in Leon's ears as he opened his physical eyes in a meditation chamber within Storm Herald. He paid the dragon's annoyance no mind as he rose to his feet and made his way out into his private chambers. There, he found Maia waiting, her hand merging with water in a vase tall enough to reach her lower ribs. The inner walls of the vase were covered in bright red algae, in which the roots of a beautiful violet orchid had taken hold.

The orchid itself was mostly submerged in the warm water, but the petals themselves reached into the air, glittering so brightly that they cast purple light across the pillar the vase stood beside. Without a word, Leon embraced her from behind. She practically melted back into him, her warm body revealing all of itself to him through that touch—she was dressed, much to her antipathy, but the dark blue sea silk dress was, while opaque, thin and incredibly soft.

Leon could feel everything, including the slight shaking in her shoulders, the uncertain way she had been standing, and the gratitude she felt as his arms snaked around her waist, taking much of her weight off her feet. [Six weeks,] she murmured into his head. [Long enough to lose everything.]"We haven't lost everything," Leon replied aloud. He pressed his palms into her abdomen to emphasize his point.

His river nymph wife seemed ready to argue, but a moment later, she simply said, [I'm going to kill everyone who's ever threatened us, and everything that may have harmed my people.] Leon smiled.

"Good." They stayed that way for a while longer, simply enjoying each other's company. For his part, Leon particularly reveled in how robust her aura felt, in how difficult it was to sense that she had ever been severely harmed. A knock at the door pulled them from their quiet reverie, and Leon reluctantly parted from her. She stayed with the orchid, tending to it in a way that made Leon think she was striving for control.

When he called for the door to open—the wisp monitoring and maintaining his private chambers opening it without delay—he was confronted by the immense form of Graniton, bowing slightly to fit through the grand, but still more human-sized door.

"We are about to make the jump," it said, its voice rumbling pleasantly.

"Let's go," Leon said as he exited his chambers and began walking toward the observation deck. Graniton fell in beside him, as did several other Tempest Knights. Zhang, Daryun, and Anna were all resting away the lingering effects of their wounds, while Lana was already at the observation deck. They reached the deck just in time to brace for the jump. Magic coursed through the great ark like blood, activating enchantments and flowing into a million different pieces of moving machinery.

Light flared and space warped; in seconds, Leon's fleet, led by Storm Herald, emerged at the rally point: a heavily built-up plane that had once ruled a small planar cluster, and one whose skies were choked with arks. A quick look surprised Leon, as he'd only expected Alix and Marcus to get there before him, but close by, he also saw White Feather, Anzu's ark, surrounded by the rest of Task Force Kyros. It seemed they were only missing Task Force Nikolaos, led by Valeria.

Smiling, he gave the order for his fleet to relax and for the mobile ark yards to see to any other arks that required repair. Then, he commanded the leaders of the other fleets to join him on Storm Herald.

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"Brother!" Anzu shouted as he disembarked the transport ark within Storm Herald's hangar. Leon didn't verbally respond, but he moved forward and caught Anzu in a tight, familial hug.

"I thought I was going to beat you here," Leon whispered, his cheeks already starting to get sore from how widely he was smiling. Anzu's expression was similarly gleeful, and he responded, "You almost did. I had to push my engineers hard to get here when I did. If you arrived five hours ago, you would've beaten me."

"I knew stopping at the Plane of Endless Pleasure was a mistake!"

"Ha! If a place like that truly exists, then stopping there will never be a mistake!" Anzu lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"There isn't really somewhere called that, is there? If there is, then I might have to make time to visit…"

"No, unfortunately," Leon said warmly, though his smile quickly died.

"Come on; Alix and Marcus are waiting." Anzu's demeanor turned serious immediately.

"Right. We have a Kingdom to save." He took a deep breath, then fell in with Leon as they went deeper into Storm Herald. Alix, Marcus, the rest of Leon's Paladins, Maia, Red, Anshu, and Theron were waiting for them in a well-appointed sitting room. Greetings amongst the Paladins were had, with Anzu doing as Alix and Marcus had done and giving Lana and Graniton a particularly fraternal welcome. Once that was over, however, business demanded their attention.

As they took their seats, Anshu asked a fairly obvious question, "Should we be starting without Queen Valeria?"

"I didn't want to waste any time," Leon said.

"My wife will be joining us within the day. We can hash out the remaining details then. But for the moment, we need to get the general strategy down." Anshu looked a little uncomfortable leaving Valeria out of even this much, but the others jumped right in. Marcus was the first to speak.

"We received little in the way of information before we lost the Lion's Portal. Since then, nothing. We should assume that we're going to have to fight through the portal, at least."

"And unless our enemy is brain dead," Alix added, "taking the Void-side of the portal will be easy. It'll be the other side that will test us." Leon nodded in agreement, as did most of the others. Only Red and Maia stayed dispassionate, neither looking like they were going to do much more than listen. As a projection of the Lion's Portal appeared above the sitting room's central table, its main problem was thrown into stark relief: on the Void-side, the defenders would have to defend from essentially all sides.

That would spread their forces thin, and was the reason why Leon had kept defenses on that side relatively light. A few small Void fortresses and a relatively small fleet. That fleet was under orders not to challenge other fleets that were more than its own size, however, and to evacuate the fortresses and retreat if any such stronger force tried to force their way through the portal.

It wasn't a perfect solution, and kept the forces on that side of the portal relatively vulnerable, but the Void-side of the portal couldn't be easily defended since the Void lacked defensive terrain, but it also had to be monitored. The Nexus-side of the portal was where the lion's share of the forces defending the portal were located. A much larger fleet, and dozens of fortresses, both large and small, dotted the mountains surrounding the portal.

Any fleet that came through would necessarily be coming through a dangerous chokepoint, rendering them vulnerable to the massed forces that Leon had on that side of the portal. Of course, that also meant that most of those forces were only concentrating on the portal, which left them relatively vulnerable to attacks that came at them from any other direction—as Triton had when he launched his invasion from the ocean to the west of Leon's Kingdom.

The Lion's Portal was fairly deep within Leon's territory, and on the other side of a rugged mountain range, so no one had thought that the Lion's Portal would be in any danger of being taken, let alone as quickly as it had been.

"I'll go through first," Leon said to the immediate protestations of the others. Even Maia sent a sharp thought of rebuke through their soul realm connection, demanding that he either not take that risk or take her with him. But he silenced them all with a glare and explained, "One man, especially one at my power, won't be in as much danger as a larger, slower, less powerful ark. Any of you can follow me, if you wish, but otherwise, you will be on your flag arks, commanding the fleet.

We don't know what awaits us on the other side. The enemy may have taken our fortresses and seized all the weapons within. Maybe this was only a raid and they've moved on, giving us no challenge to retake the portal."

"Is that a real possibility?" Marcus asked skeptically.

"No," Leon admitted.

"And that's why we're not planning on it being so. That's why I'm going first: to wreak havoc and show Triton the mistake he made in attacking us." A few glances were shared, but Leon didn't have to wait long before he heard the silent question spoken aloud.

"And we're sure that this is Basileus Triton?" Leon gave Marcus a hard stare.

"Who else would it be?"

"Toss a stone; without trying, I'm sure you'll hit at least a few people who would want to do the same thing."

"But how many have the means?" Alix pointed out, "Triton is an Ocean Lord. Don't we have an alliance with the Ocean King? Or at least one with his daughter?" Leon grimaced.

"We're supposed to …" Alix frowned and said no more on that subject, recognizing Leon's tone.

"Regardless," Leon continued, "our enemy is almost certainly Triton. I can't imagine it would be anyone else. Antipatra was the one who attacked us out here in the planes. Who else would be working with her?" His people had no counter to that aside from pure speculation that was even less substantiated than what Leon was going on, though Theron looked noticeably a little unsettled. Leon could understand why—fighting against a Basileus was a tall order, even for him.

For someone like Theron, it might as well have been suicide.

'And that makes it all the more important that you're here,' Leon thought to himself, vowing silently to honor Theron's standing with him when it would've been the easiest thing in the universe for him to not do so.

"Without speaking on who is attacking," Leon pressed on, "I'll head in first and disrupt the enemy's defenses. Then the fleets will follow and exploit any openings I've made to defeat the enemy in detail. Once we've secured the portal, we can evaluate our next moves. Any objections?" There were none, so Leon continued with the meeting, though covering less important matters, such as the specific route they were going to take back to the Nexus.

That was fairly easy, as it was almost a straight shot back to the Nexus via the paths already conquered. It would still take days, however, and Leon was planning on running his people hard to get back to the Nexus as soon as possible. As they were wrapping that up, Theron asked an important question.

"What comes after?"

"After what?" Anzu asked, his head cocking with curiosity.

"Win. Lose. What comes after this matter is resolved?" Leon didn't need much time to consider that—he already knew.

"After we win," he said confidently, "we will devote resources to repair, rebuild, and consolidate what we've gained. How long that takes depends on how much damage has been inflicted. Thankfully, we have several hundred inhabited planes that will aid us in that endeavor, not to mention thousands of uninhabited planes to draw raw resources from. And once that's done, we will continue our expansion into the Great Strand of Rhea.

Anax Jericho has entreated me to take over Lorgos' territory, and I intend to do just that. Though, I suppose you're alluding to the path that Antipatra carved through Rhea to reach my new territories?" Theron nodded in confirmation.

"Without her, those territories will likely be in turmoil. We'll push along two axes—one heading to Jericho, and the other rolling up Antipatra's conquests." Theron breathed a visible sigh of relief and relaxed. Leon supposed he was worried that after aiding him, his territory might be left vulnerable for an extended period of time. Leon silently promised that he'd do what he could to ensure his protection reached Theron's planar cluster in as timely a manner as possible.

The man deserved nothing less than that after coming to Leon's aid without even being asked to do so. With that matter finished, Leon dismissed them to see to their own affairs. Their conquests had gone well, and they'd taken few casualties, but there were still soldiers to be healed and rehabilitated, and arks to repair. Leon, meanwhile, let them work without interruption and stayed aboard Storm Herald with Maia close by.

That only changed when Valeria arrived several hours later, having pushed her arks even harder than Anzu had. That brought the total fleet up to around seven thousand combat arks and almost two thousand transport arks—a size that Leon found almost impossible to wrap his head around. Valeria's arks needed significant maintenance work after blazing through the Void to reach the rally point so quickly, but that only gave her plenty of time to transfer over to Storm Herald.

Leon eagerly met her in the hangar, and even she nearly let her Queenly dignity break to embrace him right then and there. As it was, keeping things restrained and his hands to himself on their way back to Leon's private chambers was, at least to Leon, almost as difficult as fighting Antipatra.

The moment they were in private—Maia didn't count, even though she watched their every move with no small amount of pleasure—their hands were all over each other, and their lips only parted when they roamed each other's bodies. They had been gone from each other's arms for almost a year, and though they didn't have much time before the journey back to the Nexus began, they did all they could to make up for that lost time.