Chương 1335: 1365 - Defending Artorion II

Deadly purpose filled Leon's team as they flew over the valley. A few stray shots from when Triton broke through the storm wall had damaged parts of the city, but far more than that, it was the expansive refugee camps filling the Artor Valley that spoke of the death and loss that had been inflicted on the Kingdom. The scale of it was impossible to ignore—more people had been killed in Triton's invasion than had died in all of Leon's planar conquests to date.

Lamentations could be heard by all of them, dirges sung by the few left behind for the many that had been taken. Hate and anger could be both heard and felt, too—promises of vengeance spoken alone in hushed tones and dark corners, cries for swords and blood by the remnants of communities in between songs of war and revenge. By the time Leon's team reached the Northern Talon, they were ready for war. However, they came to a brief stop as several figures made their presence known.

"You weren't going to fight without me, were you?" Red asked as Leon landed next to her on the highest terrace of the fortress. [After everything, you should remember that we're never going to let you fight alone,] Maia added.

"We're going too," Valeria agreed.

"Staying cooped up here has been beyond frustrating!" Cassandra finished.

"I feel like I'll die if I let you fly off to war without me there beside you!" Leon smirked as the others at his back more openly laughed.

"I'm almost surprised Elise isn't here, too," he said with a current of sarcasm flowing through his tone.

"She wanted to come," Cassandra stated, to his more genuine surprise.

"Asiya and Cristina talked her out of it."

"She's made progress recently," Valeria added, "but for something like this…" [She shouldn't come,] Maia finished, her tone final. Hoping they hadn't said that to her face—at least in those words—Leon sighed and smiled.

"I'm happy to have you by my side, of course, but—""But nothing," Cassandra hissed, her ruby eyes flashing dangerously.

"You had better not try suggesting that we stay here! I'm about to pull my hair out!" Leon opened his mouth to put in one more argument, but Red growled, red scales breaking out over her face and exposed arms.

"Are we killing anyone yet? Let's skip the talk and just get to the fun." The wyvern didn't quite take off immediately and leave everyone behind, but she tapped her foot and crossed her arms, her impatience shining like a sun on a clear morning.

"We are burning moonlight, Brother," Anzu whispered, glancing up at the darkened Origin Spark. It was just after midnight, when the number of those sleeping in Triton's fleet would hopefully be at its highest. If they delayed too long, however, that might change.

"Fine," Leon conceded.

"Fight as a unit—I'll be watching in case Triton finds the courage to face me, but he'll also have twelfth-tier mages that might try to fight us. If they appear, retreat. This is a raid, not a decisive battle. I'd rather need more raids to whittle his fleet down than to have to scrape any of you off the valley floor." He made eye contact with everyone, getting a nod from most to confirm that they heard him.

Red was glaring to the northwest where Triton's fleet was still amassing, and while he momentarily wanted to chide her for not paying attention, he just shut his mouth. If she went too far, he trusted his people to rein her in. They weren't going to be that dispersed, after all.

"All right," he said as he then traced a quick rune of light in the air.

"Let's get going."

"Weak rune work," Nestor complained even as a shroud of invisibility fell over them.

"I should've done this. Your work will crumple at the lightest breeze."

"I didn't see you volunteering," Leon sniped back as he rose into the air, the rune following him. The rest of the team did likewise, staying close so that they could use Leon's ancient rune for cover rather than their own invisibility gear. Nestor continued grumbling, but Leon put the dead man out of his mind. The only dead man he wanted to contemplate at the moment was Triton. He didn't set a hard pace for his team, but neither did he crawl. Instead, it took them about an hour to approach Triton's fleet.

They passed through several areas where magic senses and sensor enchantments were strong, but Leon hadn't been that concerned given the strength of his rune. It wasn't until they drew to within a hundred miles that he started to truly worry about being discovered, but as he and his people came to a halt in the air, that worry drained away. The fleet in question was in perfect battle order all those miles away, ready just in case Leon's fleet emerged from behind the storm wall.

Small detachments patrolled, but these detachments were fairly small, amounting to corvettes, frigates, and destroyers led by singular light cruisers. All of the carriers, dreadnoughts, and heavy cruisers remained where they were, ready to fight. To some extent, Leon admired how alert Triton's arks seemed.

He couldn't see within them, so he couldn't know the truth, but as individual arks and other small detachments continued to arrive from where they'd been ravaging his Kingdom or from the King's Ocean, they joined the line of battle smoothly, not hesitating as they slid into position. Another thought had Leon's lip curling in distaste, however.

These were professional soldiers in advanced, extraordinarily valuable military platforms—building arks required a degree of industrial sophistication that he was learning was relatively rare in the universe, and Triton had more of them than Leon did. These were learned and skilled men, and yet, they had all decided that Leon and his vassals needed to die.

He wondered how they, as individuals, all came to that conclusion, and if there might have once been a chance for peace between himself and at least some of Triton's vassals if not the man himself. But he knew that his momentary contemplation was purely academic, as after the destruction wrought in his Kingdom, the only proper discourse he could have with Triton and his warriors was by bolt and blade. To that end, he rose higher in the air, his eyes raking Triton's fleet for the best target.

"That one," Nestor said as he pointed out one of Triton's dreadnoughts. It wasn't the closest or the farthest, and to Leon's eye, it even seemed like an older model, being more bulbous in the front and with more faded blue fish scale paint.

"Why?" he asked without heat. He wasn't looking to argue; he just wanted to know. Stolen story; please report.

"It has a minute magic leak. That means it's either shoddily built—a possibility, but I still doubt it—or it was damaged in the fighting to this point and hasn't been repaired yet. I'd wager that its defenses are compromised, too, along with their power leak, given what I can see from the surface…" Leon did what Nestor couldn't and blanketed the ark in question with his magic senses, and true enough, he sensed the magic leak coming from faint, easily missed cracks in the hull.

Leon even detected unusual fluttering in the thrusters that suggested the ark's condition was even worse than what could be gleaned only from its exterior. But Leon could still see the ark's main cannon glistening in the dark light of the Origin Spark at night. Damaged though it was, it was still so large and powerful that it demanded attention. Every one lost was a terrible blow for them to bear, and as Leon's smile turned into one of vicious anticipation, he conjured his chosen weapon.

The Stormborn bow appeared in hand, the runes along the bow's limbs glowing faintly as Leon's power filled them. He could feel the bow's natural magics responding to him, taking his offered power and turning it into something that the bow could use. Leon mimed drawing a bowstring, and a 'string' appeared, black surrounded by dark blue, that pulled on the limbs despite not being physically there. An arrow then appeared, identical in color to the bowstring, heavy as a mountain and deadlier than a thousand Lances.

"Ready…" Leon whispered, his people taking up positions of their own around him.

"And…" The others donned what armor they hadn't donned yet and bared their blades. Anzu and Red assumed their beast forms, with Anzu even donning griffin armor, whereas Red seemed largely content to rely on her own scales—though she did also conjure several enchanted wing rings to complement her wyvern body. Nestor began inscribing runes in the air while Maia dissolved into water, ready to dart into battle within her usual ice dragon construct.

"Go…" Leon whispered as he loosed his arrow. The concentrated spatial distortion flashed across the sky, darkening a fairly bright night. It moved quickly, but almost a hundred miles was still an enormous distance, and it took several seconds to hit its target. The arrow struck true, Leon's aim unerring. A flash of dark blue consumed the struck dreadnought, and when it reappeared, it was distorted, as if it was being seen on shards of a broken mirror.

And then the cracks closed, the pressure of all the space around them sealing those breaks in reality with thunderous cracks. The distortions were made 'real', and the dreadnought suddenly found its midsection shattered. Power transfer systems ruptured and the ark's Engineering compartment outright exploded. Moments later, fire and death continued through the ark, turning the great war machine into scrap within seconds after being hit. And the ark's defenses had done nothing to stop Leon's black arrow.

However, the moment he'd loosed the arrow, his invisibility rune shattered, revealing him and his people for all to see. They charged, their speed as largely post-apotheosis mages ensuring that they drew to within effective magic range quickly. They let loose with their power without restraint, and an ocean of myriad powers bore down on the enemy arks.

Leon didn't think they would accomplish much even at 'effective' range, especially since the enemy arks immediately showed that they were not simply appearing to be alert; blasts of nightmarishly hot steam from a thousand arks shot toward Leon's people, glowing so brightly that they appeared like beams of light. Physical shards of ice were also shot like Lance bolts, though they took longer to travel.

Xaphan was the first to respond to those threats specifically, conjuring what seemed like a million small motes of demonfire to consume those shot shards of ice. Red added a titanic blast of fiery breath to the mix, ensuring complete saturation of the sky and maximum potential coverage. Maia and Valeria then moved against the steam blasts, calling upon their mastery of water magic to turn them off course. Their efforts were successful, though it clearly took a significant toll upon them.

Buoying their efforts, however, was the titanic wave of power they'd unleashed before taking defensive action, which struck Triton's fleet almost a full minute after being conjured. All of the magics that Leon's people could command concentrated upon the front-most arks of Triton's battle formation. A dozen smaller arks detonated outright, while others were buffeted and visibly damaged by this wide-scale attack. Several other small arks began to list, threatening to fall to the mountains below.

Auras then appeared outside of their arks—Triton and his other post-Apotheosis mages, all announcing their presence fearlessly. Leon sensed more than a dozen Strategoi, outnumbering his people without even considering the Despots. Those Despots numbered three and represented a potentially larger threat against Leon's people than even Triton himself, as Leon would have to fight Triton and ignore them if this were to become a knock-down, drag-out brawl. He wasn't going to let that happen, however.

He drew back the bow's magical bowstring again and loosed another arrow, but then, after that, he screamed into his companions' minds to fall back. Damage had been done, arks had been damaged or outright destroyed, and continuing to challenge Triton's entire fleet now was a bad idea. His people listened to him, thankfully—though Red seemed somewhat reluctant to turn around—and fell back with all haste even as Triton's arks tried answering a second time.

Leon's bolt struck a heavy cruiser, and the great machine exploded almost the moment that Leon's arrow struck it, but a thousand more arks opened up. More steam and bolt-like shards of ice, each larger than a carriage, shot out again. This time, it was Nestor who acted, inscribing a rune in the sky that formed a brilliant white shield to cover Leon's retreating team.

He was a dead man residing in a metal frame, which severely limited his magical abilities, but thankfully, he was a master of runes and didn't require titanic magic reserves to make a difference. As Triton's arks' great wave of steam and ice tried crashing down on Leon's retreating team, Nestor's shield flared with light and held against the tide.

Leon was rather impressed, though a part of him couldn't help but point out that the rune Nestor used was a particularly complex ancient rune, which limited its potential scope but also meant that it didn't require as much power or mental strain to use as a more generic ancient rune would. Nestor didn't stick around, falling in as Leon's people sped back to him. He drew back the bowstring again, intending to cover his people.

This time, however, his golden eyes tracked the most important target of them all: Triton himself. If he could kill the man here and now… His fingers slackened and the bowstring pushed the black, blue-ringed arrow into the sky. It flashed through the air, and for the briefest of moments, Leon thought it might actually hit Triton. What damage it might do, he couldn't say, but he guessed it would be severe.

He had not expected Triton to conjure a rune of his own, this one even more complex than Nestor's, and the black spatial distortion pretending to be an arrow bent around him and struck the mountain behind him. Leon stared, almost slack-jawed, having never expected his bow to be so directly countered. Triton using a weapon of his own to threaten Leon with would've been more of what he'd expected, not… this …

'Is he an expert in runes?' Leon wondered.

'He got through the mist and survived Mir's strikes somehow …' Leon's musings came to a rapid end as his people shot past him, making for the safety of the Artor Valley. They showed their experience in war and battle and their ability to work together without saying a word by spreading out across the sky, dispersing themselves so that Triton's arks would have a harder time concentrating their weapons fire on them as they retreated.

Leon turned to follow them, but as he launched himself back toward his home, Triton called after him.

"Coward! You run from me now?! Are you the heir to the Thunderbird or not! Face me, monster! Face me and learn what the waters of the Aesii taste like! Face me or know the scorn of all who look upon you, coward!" Grimacing so hard that his face started to hurt, Leon kept moving. Triton's fleet was advancing slightly, and his Strategoi and Despots were at his side. Leon wasn't going to trust Kamran's vassal to fight fair, and he also didn't like his chances facing so many post-Apotheosis mages.

But he still had Triton's taunts echoing in his ear as he plunged into the mist surrounding the Artor Valley. Triton himself and his people called off their pursuit and returned to their arks, and it took a titanic amount of self-control for Leon to keep from attacking Triton as the Basileus turned his back. Beyond him, Leon could see that the raid had been successful: a dreadnought and a dozen other arks felled.

More were damaged, though hardly enough to cripple Triton's fleet as a whole, and for that, Leon's team paid nothing. It didn't meaningfully shift the balance of the war, but it was a good hit, and one that came without cost. But as Triton shot a smirk back over his shoulder at Leon, still watching from the mist, Leon couldn't help but think that next time wasn't going to be as easy…