Chương 1338: 1368 - Defending Artorion V

For the first few minutes, everything seemed to go well—or as well as anything could go. Anshu had ordered the fleet to engage in defensive maneuvers above the mountains rather than sallying out to engage the enemy outside of their fortifications. The enemy had wrecked most of their static defenses along the ridgeline, but enough was there to give supporting fire. More crucially, once the enemy flew over the mountains, Mir would rain lightning down upon them.

The Diluvian arks still outnumbered and outgunned them about two-to-one, but in the rear of the formation, Anshu could see that Nestor was working to undo whatever Triton had done to their protective mist. Once that veil fell around them, the advantage would lie entirely with Artorion's defenders.

'We just have to hold until that moment,' the Indradian had thought to himself. Arks exploded, the air filling with the screaming of men and metal alike. Even deep within Storm Herald, Anshu could almost convince himself that he could smell the fire, blood, and smoke. Casualties were sustained, but the fleet, either having just returned from cutting their teeth in the planes or having spent weeks doggedly defending their capital city, fought ferociously and skillfully.

Triton, it seemed, had little plan other than to throw his fleet into the jaws of their defenses, heedless of losses. Already, the western mountains were ablaze, several hundred arks already having fallen to their well-wooded slopes. Fighters exchanged weapons fire in what looked like enormous clouds of gnats surrounding greater beasts, flitting everywhere as the beasts locked horns. Giants and Ulta pilots targeted the smaller war arks, acting as the tip of the spear for marines to take boarding actions.

Anshu could see that, aside from slow and easily-handled transports, the enemy had few answers to the Ultas and giants. Their fighters would've been a better defense, but those were already engaged. Their higher-tiered mages would've been the other obvious choice before relying on point-defenses, but they were also engaged almost one-to-one—Zhang and Daryun had doubled up on a Strategos, and it looked like they weren't going to draw out their inevitable victory.

And then Leon and Triton crashed through the battlefield. The fleets were already giving them something of a wide berth, no one foolish enough to approach two battling Basileis, but then the battle came to them instead, and the dueling mages' magical energies spilled outward indiscriminately. Anshu had to fight the urge to grind his teeth—he could direct the fleet, but against Triton himself, he had few options. He could only trust that Leon would handle it.

The battle between the thirteenth-tier mages only took a turn for the worse, however, and Anshu had to fight the urge to focus entirely on that fight. Others were able to act, however—too many did, if he were candid. There were other post-Apotheosis mages active on the battlefield, including three Despots, but as Leon was struck from the sky and others rushed to his aid, Anshu was left with only Singer-in-Caves and Red active in the sky.

Even Theron shot out from his flag ark to join them, recognizing the same desperate situation that Anshu had. With his heart hammering in his chest and such an example made before the entire Nexus, Anshu made the only decision he could.

"I'll be taking to the field myself," he declared, surprising the entire bridge crew.

"Admiral Red-Knuckle… will have command." He left the bridge in stunned silence, though their chatter resumed as he reached the door. He readied himself for battle; he was doing his best to compartmentalize, but he couldn't imagine a worse outcome than Leon losing to Triton. But he couldn't help Leon right now; he could only help the fleet. He may have already moved too late; the tide was turning hard against them…

Triton's face hurt.

'Such joy should be banned,' he thought, the muscles in his face pulling his lips so far upward that he could barely see out of his own eyes. He cast his cold gaze around at all of the newcomers. Their auras were grand, and he would never denigrate achieving Apotheosis, but even all of them together were no match for him—there wasn't even a single Despot among them, let alone another Basileus. With the Thunderbird heir face down in the dirt—where he belonged —he had already triumphed.

With Lord Kamran's ancient runes, he wasn't just triumphant; he was utterly unstoppable.

'I should look more into runes in the future,' he mused.

'Who knew such power was achievable?' That feeling of victory already in hand suffused him from his head to his toes, and he spoke to Leon Raime's desperate defenders.

"Your King lies defeated by my hand," he boasted.

"And all of you believe yourselves great enough to succeed where he failed?!" He raised his spear to all of them, the black ice glimmering as arks exploded around and above them.

"Your arrogant leader has made you all believe that tiers are easily crossed, I'd say! Let me disabuse you of that notion!" His eyes found the enemy of all mankind again, immobile in the mountain's thin soil.

"And then I'll return to you, Leon. Once all of your friends and family are dead at my feet. Then, and only then, will I put you in your boat and send you off down the white waters of the Aesii…" A burst of fire from the side didn't come close to catching him off guard.

He wasn't surprised that a beast that thought itself a man would throw his lot in with Devilspawn; he was only surprised that Leon had sold out whatever remained of his humanity to such a flickering, sulfureous confluence of incandescence rather than one of a more thunderous bent. In a way, Triton was grateful for the mistake. Though it had been centuries since he'd last needed to, he remembered well how to deal with demons.

He shot back from the blazing inferno conjured by the white-flamed creature, and true to its infernal nature, it pursued. But the moment it moved, Triton halted in place, one of the other watching mages hurtling just past him where he would've been if he hadn't. He didn't spare that one much mind, however, and focused entirely on the demon. Triton lunged forward, pulling his spear back into his soul realm as he plunged his hands into the demon's fire.

He saw the blazing eyes widen in shock moments before they widened again in fear and realization; the demon knew what he was doing. Heat washed over him, and the stench of burning hair flooded his nostrils. He felt the magic in his armor warp as his hands found the demon's obsidian skin. Fire burned around him, unable to penetrate his armor— yet —as he wrestled the larger nightmare down, and with a burst of origin power, manifested golden chains around the demon's body.

Magic hit his back, but Triton trusted his armor to protect him; he ignored the wind blades that could cleave mountains and the bolts of lightning that laid arks low. None of it was an immediate threat. The demon roared in its crackling tongue as the runes inscribed on the golden chains activated. Dark red fire exploded from him, overtaking the natural white-hot flames that covered his body. Triton was blown back, his feet carving furrows into the soft ground as he kept himself upright, as a man ought to.

He watched, satisfaction warming him from within far more than the demon's fires were able to from without, as the dark red demonfire dissipated, leaving nothing in its wake. The demon was gone, banished.

"Xaphan!" the white-skinned and red-eyed one who had reached his fallen King first shouted. The name rang a bell to Triton, but he wasn't going to ask for clarification. Instead, he lunged at the albino, and a blast of ice caught him in that briefest moment of distraction, blasting him into the nearest mountainside. Three fell upon him then, two women and a man. The man was large and vicious, swinging a blazing ax that didn't burn nearly as hot as the demonfire that Triton had just bathed in.

One of the women was confident and struck fiercely, golden lightning sparkling around her. The other was more cautious, and Triton could detect a slight waver in her aura, as if she'd sustained a wound that she'd only just recovered from. Triton split the man's city-ending torrent of flame with a single spike of ice. It didn't quite penetrate his Adamant armor, but it still struck him hard, knocking him hundreds of feet back.

The first woman's lightning was easily dealt with using the same rune Kamran gave him to defend against Leon's bow, and when she faltered, Triton drew his black ice spear again and drove it into her chest. Adamant screeched, enchantments flared, and bones broke, but his spear didn't penetrate her armor. Still, she fell, breathless and pained, knocked out of the fight for at least the next few seconds—a tremendously long time for mages of their power. This book's true home is on another platform.

Check it out there for the real experience. Finally, he met the third woman's attack head-on, deflecting her heavy blow, then engaging her in a dozen exchanges in less than a second. He seized the initiative on his first attack, and by the last, he'd disarmed her—he'd separated her both from her weapon and from one of her arms. He cried out in jubilation, the feeling of victory rushing through him like a raging river cutting through the mountains.

He waved his spear, and the thousand pre-Apotheosis mages trying to rescue their King were engaged by a hundred icy sharks, conjured with his power. They flew as fast as fighters and tore into armor and flesh equally well. The screaming around him intensified as a sword and light-wielding man launched himself at Triton from behind. He was well-trained and powerful, with his light shining more brightly in Triton's eyes than even the Origin Spark above.

He almost considered sparing the man if only to make him a champion of humanity, but Leon, struggling in the dirt in the corner of his eye, reminded him of his duty. Triton conjured a veritable mountain of ice, encasing the light-wielding man within, where the weight, cold, and magic that Triton infused into it would freeze him to death. Not even an eleventh-tier mage was immune to the cold brought by a thirteenth-tier mage.

A pair of heavily-armored knights chose then as their moment; one with a lance and the other with a shorter spear. They fought as one; their spears dancing in the light of a dreadnought—his or Leon's, he wasn't sure, his focus had narrowed to his own battle rather than the one raging above—detonating in wild reds and oranges less than a mile away. Triton felt that detonation in his bones, but he felt the burn more acutely when the white-armored knight landed a hit to his cheek.

It was a shallow cut, his helmet's modest cheek guard keeping the cut from going too long or too deep, but it reminded him that playing around, even with mages two tiers below him, was dangerous. These were killers, the potency of their killing intent speaking volumes of the lives they'd taken, and of the lives they would take if Triton left them alive. Triton thrust his black ice spear and caught the white-armored knight in the visor.

Blood poured from the tiny slit as the magic infused into the black ice by a Universe Fragment assaulted the knight's mind. He fell, silent and unmoving, as Triton faced the black-armored knight. Triton endured a wild series of strikes, the black-armored knight fighting with ferocity unmatched by anyone else. He shouted in a language that Triton didn't know, his tone indicating his words were curses fouler than any uttered in Triton's presence in millennia.

But Triton only smiled, blocking and deflecting until he created a moment for himself. He reached out with his aura, freezing his armor for a fraction of a second. The enchantments in the black armor vaporized the ice, but by then, Triton had already driven his ice spear as deeply into the black armored knight's visor as he could—which wasn't that far, but blood was spilled, and the black-armored knight fell just as his white-armored partner did.

A laugh, low, guttural, and primal, rumbled from his chest as a lioness leaped at his back, snarling and snapping now that her outer body matched her inner self. Triton didn't even turn; he sent a wave of his power surging through his surroundings, interrupting the lioness' leap. He then carved Kamran's more potent anti-bloodline rune in the air, and the lioness fell, such a bestial sound coming from her snout that Triton's blood curdled.

Another man stepped forward, his eyes hard and determined even as Triton's rune ravaged his body. Triton admired his tenacity—he must have been in indescribable agony just standing there with his tainted blood rebelling against him—but he stood between Triton and Leon. There would be no mercy from him. Bodies fell around them as Triton strode forward, his ice sharks casting down the thousand other heavily-armored mages that had come to their King's aid.

With his anti-bloodline rune active, Triton barely had to do anything, sweeping this final man away with a wave of ice that devoured his vastly weakened attempt to stop it. A great serpentine dragon came snapping through his ice, and Triton ducked slightly, raking his black ice spear through the icy dragon's underbelly. The conjured ice shattered into millions of tiny glimmering shards, and a woman fell from the dragon's remains.

She rolled through the dirt, landing several hundred feet behind Triton, bleeding from a deep gash carved into her stomach while his spear's power assaulted her mind. And that left two remaining between him and Leon: a pair of women, armored even more heavily than the knights had been, one with a glaive and the other with a longsword. The others that Triton had struck were recovering; few of his strikes were immediately fatal.

He'd need to deal with these two women, then Leon, and then finish off these other bearers of polluted bloodlines and traitors to humanity. He slowly walked forward, reveling in the power he held over all of their lives, in the way their weapons trembled more with every step he took. He raised his spear, then attacked.

Leon couldn't even scream, not in pain or frustration, as his people fell around him. Xaphan, Anzu, Alcander, Alix, Anna, Marcus, Zhang, Daryun, Xanthippe, and Solomon, all struck down with dreadful ease. Some horribly injured, others buried in ice, and Xaphan was just… gone… His teeth were pulled back in a terrible grimace as Tempest Knights fell from the sky, lifeless, their armor ringing out as they hit the ground. And Maia… he felt her pain, and their connection dulled.

Only Valeria and Cassandra remained, but against Triton…

'MOVE!' he silently roared at himself. The rune that Triton had hit him with, which yet burned in his soul realm, had so immobilized him that he couldn't even speak anymore, let alone try to move. He could barely even see what was happening, his knowledge of the fight so far almost coincidentally taking place where he could see it since he couldn't even project his magic senses. He struggled with all his might, but his muscles refused to obey, the energy in his body sapped until nothing remained.

He reached deep within himself, calling for his powers, his magics, anything at all, to respond.

'Please,' he thought desperately as Cassandra took a hit to the breastplate and screamed in pain as she was hurled into the distance.

'PLEASE! ANYTHING!' His eyes burned, tears flowing so freely that he could no longer see. But the Eye of Calamity remained locked away. Thunder erupted around him, and lightning arced gracefully through the sky. None of it was from him, though, with not so much as a single spark, golden, silver-blue, or black, shooting from his skin. Metal screeched and Valeria fell, a hole driven through her Adamant armor by that black ice spear. Red seeped from the hole, and she went still.

Leon felt Triton approach, his every footstep thumping through the ground with such force that to Leon, it felt like the mountains themselves shook in anticipation. Triton began to speak, but his words fell on deaf ears. Leon focused entirely on eliminating that damned rune. But nothing he did helped. He couldn't conjure anything in his soul realm, nor could he cast his mind into his magic body; it felt like the rune was preventing both. It was a peculiar feeling, being so drained of power.

Leon cursed it with his entire being, raging silently against anything and everything that had driven him to such a state. But as Triton fell silent, so too did Leon's unspoken curses and pleas. Even the battle between their fleets seemed to fall silent, and the Origin Spark flickered, the entire universe seeming to hold its breath as Triton raised his spear above Leon. In that silence, Leon felt… something. It was cold, dark, and faint, so faint that Leon had never sensed it before, even though it felt…

familiar, as if it had been there all along, waiting… With nothing left to him, no power, no weapons, he seized this thing with both hands, desperate for any chance at all, no matter how faint. That cold darkness inundated every fiber of his being the moment he embraced it. And deep within him, he felt a door open, a seed take root, a possibility open to him that hadn't been there before. He felt something connect to him, something unfathomably beyond him, beyond anything else he'd ever sensed.

Power didn't fill his body, but instead fled from this cold darkness like rats from a sinking ship. This cold emptiness wound its way through him, and without hesitation, Leon let it, hurrying it along, opening himself fully to whatever this was. The world around him changed. It grew dark, as if all the light in the universe had been snuffed out. Anything beyond him or Triton vanished into that darkness.

Mist gathered around them, ghostly, ethereal, and whispering softly in a chorus of a million voices, none loud enough to truly hear the words they spoke. And Leon's hand twitched. Strength returned to him, and in the blink of an eye, he was on his feet. Triton was frozen in place, terror scrawled across his face in every language of man ever written. He shone like a radiant light in this ethereal darkness, his blazing life contrasting sharply with the freezing power he commanded.

Leon's fingers twitched again, and Iron Pride appeared in a flash of black lightning. Calmly, slowly, Leon raised the blade. Triton couldn't even scream, immobilized as he was, as Leon slipped his blade through Triton's very being. His armor didn't even seem to be there, Iron Pride pushing into the core of Triton's shining light with terrifying ease. Triton's radiance suddenly flickered out, leaving Leon standing amidst cold and darkness, alone and blind, numb and wondering what, precisely, he was doing.

He spun around, feeling like the only resident in this dark world, his senses attuning themselves to wherever this was, until he felt impacts around him like rain on skin. The more he looked, the more he felt, and the more he felt, the more he was able to see. Lights in the darkness, too dim to see past Triton's radiance, but visible now that he was trying to see. More and more lit up in the darkness, some falling, others rising, but all wavering like candles in the wind.

Lights were vanishing throughout the sky, and every time, Leon felt it in the depths of his being. He recognized these lights: people aboard arks, even though he couldn't see the arks themselves. He could see all of their crews. Just based on how these lights were clumped, he could even pick out which arks were his and which were Diluvian, and if he reached out…

He raised Iron Pride, pointing at those thousands and thousands of lights, and they started winking out as his not-magic reached them, as easily as Triton's light had been snuffed out. Light after light, every one that he could identify as not being in one of his arks. Then a voice whispered to him.

"That's enough…" Leon turned, coming face-to-face with a pallid man with coal-black eyes, a man he'd seen before—on Khosrow's Fane. The man laid a hand on Leon's shoulder, and darkness returned. The lights around him faded, and Leon felt himself pulled away, some unspeakable shroud settling over him that separated him entirely from the physical world. Where he was being taken, Leon couldn't say.

All he knew was that Triton was dead, and he was now likely in the grasp of someone who considered the Ocean Basileus an ally…