Chương 1342: 1372 - Death and the Dead

The root was digging deeper. Leon could feel it pulsing with the not-power he'd called upon, anchoring itself within his soul realm. It was growing slowly, so slowly that it would take a century or more just to double in length, but Leon could still feel his heart skipping a beat when his attention returned to it. He'd have to do something about it—study it, remove it, nourish it, something —but for the moment, he had more pressing issues.

Staring out across the western mountains, he could see through the haze of distance Triton's separate fleets getting closer. He had his Stormborn bow in hand and Iron Pride at his waist. His fingers flexed where a bowstring would be, and after opening his power up to the bow, the blue-black magical bowstring appeared, followed shortly after by the sliver of spatial power that served as the bow's arrows. That power lasted for all of a second before Leon felt the strain of using that power, and he let it dissipate.

His spirits fell as he realized just how weak he still was, how in need of rest he was—he wasn't in danger, but he was still recovering from everything surrounding his fight with Triton. He sighed, lamenting how out of time he so frequently felt.

"Shouldn't you be doing something other than brooding on a mountainside?" Leon had sensed his arrival, but instead of rising to Nestor's challenge, he continued watching Triton's fleet for a few more seconds. When he finally spoke, he still ignored Nestor's probing strike entirely.

"The rescue is over," he said, the wrecks west of the Artor Valley finally quiet and cold after more than a day. The fires were out, the men and women within rescued, and salvage operations were beginning.

For Triton's people, few prisoners were taken, and the only way Leon had been able to convince many of his subordinate commanders, Tribal elders, and Chiefs to devote people to securing their wrecks was that he pointed out that leaving the survivors to their own devices would only allow them to infest the western mountains. Now, he had about eight hundred prisoners to deal with.

Given the thousands and thousands of crew members those arks had, it was a paltry number, but he wasn't going to ask questions on that front.

"There is always more work to do." Leon rolled his eyes.

"Just as there is always time to brood. Is there something you wanted, dead man? I'm still evaluating my condition and planning my recovery." Nestor scoffed, his arms crossing his metallic chest.

"Are you? Or are you fantasizing about what you'd like to do to those arks?"

"They're not mutually exclusive. Are you going to make me repeat myself?"

"Of course I will." Leon fought the urge to groan, but it was powerful, and he was weak. In the end, his exasperation peeled past clenched teeth as a low hiss, and he finally turned to Nestor properly.

"What. Do. You. Want?" Though the man's faceplate didn't contort with emotions, Leon could hear the smug smile in his tone when Nestor responded, "I've already gotten what I wanted. So let's now talk about what I need. And what I need is to speak with you about that fight. About what you did." As much as he wanted to continue sniping with Nestor, Leon decided to be productive.

He cast one last look over his shoulder at Triton's fleets, then down at the valleys and mountain slopes where arks were already being dismantled and salvaged, with dozens of large healer's tents scattered amongst them where the wounded were being seen to before they were evacuated to Artorion.

"I was meaning to speak with you about that. No time like now, I suppose. Though… not here…" Leon lifted off, Nestor following close behind. Leon sent off a quick message and, accompanied only by a host of Tempest Knights, turned toward Artorion. Now that his fleet's survivors had been saved and the healers were working, his highest-tiered warriors were getting their rest. Those who'd stood with him against Triton, in particular, had been sent back already to rest.

Leon intended to join them, but he'd wanted to stay a little longer—a part of him had thought that Triton's fleet was likely to launch another assault the moment he turned around and tried to rest. As Leon, Nestor, and his Tempest Knights flew over the valley, Leon could feel the city exhaling, relieved that the siege was over. Grief and anger were there too, and more would follow, but a weeks-long siege had come to an end, and it seemed like they'd won a decisive battle.

Leon hadn't expected mass celebrations to begin in the streets, but he also wasn't surprised that there weren't many displays of mourning yet. Only once he and Nestor were safely ensconced within the dead man's lab, the Tempest Knights remaining outside to augment the contingent already on guard, did Leon start to open up.

"Something happened…" he whispered.

"That power I called on…" He spoke almost to himself, his voice a low murmur in Nestor's cavernous lab. It was almost lost amidst the many tables stacked high with spell paper, golem parts, notes, and material relating to a hundred other projects that Nestor had aided in. In one corner, Leon could see some of Nestor's notes and observations about the Iron Needle; in another, he spied alchemy formulae that Nestor had taken from the Sen'uus couple for study.

Not too far away, he could see small-scale prototype jump drives and ark engines, while next to them were designs the Ravens had sent him for new weapons and ark patterns.

"That much was obvious," Nestor drily responded as his large feline pet stalked over to them, chuffing insistently until Nestor ran his metal fingers over the enormous cat's head.

"I was busy trying to repair the damage done to the outer wards; else I would already know what happened."

"Are those wards fully repaired?"

"Yes, and don't change the subject. What did you do?"

"What do you think I did?"

"You're playing games." Leon leveled a stern glare at Nestor, replying, "No. I want your perspective untainted by my explanation. Then I'll explain." A long sigh echoed through Nestor's frame, and after waiting just long enough for Leon to think he might not follow Leon's order, he said, "I… hmm… I felt something I hadn't since… The universe seemed to darken, and I heard a chorus of long-dead voices sing to me, calling me to join them. I felt a ripple in space, beyond space, and felt the dying of thousands.

I felt like an outsider among the living, a pale shade lingering in a place that he no longer belonged in." A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"You've felt like that before?" Nestor grunted in something that seemed like affirmation, but it took several seconds of silence for him to open up.

"In the years following the death of my physical body… and the years before it. The power of the moon stone that poisoned me, the power of the Primal God that spelled my end… I fell slowly past the veil of life and death, and managed to anchor myself, if only just, to the living world.

"What I felt when you channeled that… power … reminded me of that time. So. What did you do?" Leon nodded slowly, processing what Nestor told him. It didn't tell him anything new—at least, nothing that he could immediately recognize—but it was still an important perspective to have.

"I channeled death itself," Leon stated. A long silence stretched between them, Nestor's hand freezing in the cat's fur, much to the feline's displeasure.

"… What…?" Were Leon not so exhausted, he would've burst out laughing. As it was, his lips only curled slightly upward before he elaborated.

"Triton struck me with a rune that sapped me of all magic power. Another hit my Ancestors in my soul realm. I was able to call upon no magic power, whether conventional or bloodline related. I was utterly helpless, unable to move, unable to do anything at all. In that state… I felt something, some tiny current of… something. Now that I know what to look for, I can still feel it…" Leon paused, flexing his fingers and aura both.

Rather than 'throwing open the gates of death', he intended mostly to poke the gate's frame a little, but even that sent a cold shiver through his living flesh, and he immediately pulled himself back.

"The Heartwood seed," he said.

"It had to be. I seized that something, gaining access to something that isn't magic power, and lashed out at Triton and his fleet. The moment I did, the Heartwood seed took root in my soul realm."

"It did… what?" Nestor hissed. [What?] the Thunderbird asked from within his soul realm, she and the Great Black Dragon having still been present, waiting, listening. [Summon us,] the dragon insisted. Leon clenched his jaw a few times before reaching out for the Ancestor Gem, locked up in a vault below Nestor's lab. It took a couple minutes to get it past its own security, but Leon soon found himself holding the gem. But before he summoned his Ancestors, he noticed the glow within the shining stone.

The three 'powers' that the gem absorbed from his flesh had changed somewhat. Silver-blue and black with hints of red still swirled around the edges of the gem, but the white-haloed darkness at the center had grown deeper, and Leon could almost hear a soundless song when he stared into it. It enticed him to stare, to look deeper, past the color and the power, to see beyond the surface and perceive truths beyond human ken. He tore his eyes away and simply activated the gem.

The Thunderbird and the Great Black Dragon both appeared in their human forms, their fragile 'physical' bodies flanking him, and the moment he felt their presence, he set the gem down behind him and resolved not to look at it again until he was sure that the call to stare wasn't dangerous.

"The power is different," he whispered.

"The seed is the reason why, I'm certain of that. It's been within me for so long… its power is why the Iron Needle gave me black lightning. Its power of death is what I was able to call upon. And now it's rooted itself in my soul realm." His voice trembled as he spoke, and as he continued, he only grew quieter, as if the universe might punish him for speaking such truths aloud. Underscoring the seriousness of what they were now discussing, the other three let his obvious terror pass without comment.

"The Aesii are associated with death," Nestor mused aloud.

"There is a hole in the center of this valley that leads directly into one."

"The Aesii don't penetrate outside their caves," the Great Black Dragon stated as fact.

"The mist it releases settles at a certain height."" And the power of an Aesii is different from what you sensed… isn't it?" The Thunderbird fixed Nestor in an expectant stare, and the dead man hurried to respond.

"Yes. What I felt from Leon then was no power I could begin to describe. The poisonous aura of an Aesii is conventional compared to that."

"The seed," Leon interjected, wanting to refocus the discussion on what he felt was the most pressing problem.

"The Aesii beneath us is unrelated, I'm certain. We encountered it much later than when I first held the black seed, and the power I took from it felt… it felt like I had always felt it, at least buried beneath my power. Even when I was only third-tier, it faded into the background, but I'm certain that I could've sensed it then, if I were only paying attention and knew what to look for… But the seed… Should I be concerned?"

The Great Black Dragon growled, "Anything that changes the soul realm ought to be regarded with deep suspicion. Any power that exists outside of the natural order, even more so."

"Are you saying that the cult was right?" The Thunderbird's tone came without any teasing; she wasn't mocking the dragon's earlier denial of the cult but instead asking her question with the seriousness it deserved. Scowling, the Great Black Dragon responded, "No. There has never been true proof of 'other universes', and power over death, while novel, is not proof. It only proves that powers exist beyond what we are already familiar with."

"The Sen'uus couple might know," Nestor suggested.

"They have spent more time studying Aesii than anyone else, and that might give them some special insight…" Leon instinctively recoiled from confiding in anyone else about this matter.

"I'd rather keep this as close to the chest as possible. Family. Few others." Nestor shrugged and didn't argue.

"If there's no proof," Leon continued, "then why does talk of things like 'gates of death' concern you?"

"It concerns me," the dragon replied, "because it is power, regardless of the source—not because it has been given a poetic name. It is power that I am unfamiliar with. If a Heartwood seed has taken root within you, and is the source of this power, then it must be studied." Leon sighed and bluntly asked, "Should I be concerned that the seed is growing within me?"

"You would be a fool not to be worried," the Thunderbird intoned seriously.

"This is… this is unprecedented. I've never heard of a Heartwood seed taking root within a soul realm. The unknown should always be treated with caution." The Great Black Dragon grunted neutrally, but it might as well have been a full-throated agreement as far as he went. Nestor was a little more circumspect, though.

"I wouldn't want it growing within me." He shivered.

"But… I'm quite happy that it's growing within someone other than me. Better for study."

"If you'd taken that tack for your last project in life, you might still be alive," Leon noted.

"Heh. What do you think taught me that lesson?" Leon wanted to exchange a few more barbs with the dead man when he felt his comm slate go off with a familiar ID—one that banished any trace of levity in his demeanor. A question had been hanging over this war from the moment it began. His alliance with Miuna should have prevented something like this from happening.

Leon understood that since Triton was a follower of Kamran, then the Basileus wasn't necessarily going to honor that alliance, but the key to enforcing something like that was power, and Miuna had the ear of the Ocean King. Triton shouldn't have been able to operate as freely as he was able if Miuna and the Ocean King could stop him. The natural assumption, then, was that they couldn't stop him.

But given the difference in every kind of power between the Ocean King and Triton, Leon could hardly imagine the reason why the Ocean King would've been unable to act. Miuna, at least, he thought would've put in significantly more effort to contact him, though he was willing to be more open-minded with her. Either way, as he took out his comm slate and saw it identifying her as the caller, he hesitated to answer. She was a friend; one he didn't want to lose.

What she was about to say could very well damage that relationship permanently.

'If it's going to be damaged, then it's already damaged,' he told himself.

'If she has an excuse, then everything's fine. What changes compared to how things are now?'

"I need to take this," Leon said as he turned from the rest of the group.

"We'll return to your soul realm," the Great Black Dragon said.

"I will study that black seed further. Its secrets will reveal themselves to me." He quickly faded away.

"We'll do what we can," the Thunderbird said.

"We'll talk again soon, my boy." She smiled and likewise faded, the Ancestor Gem darkening as its power retreated. Leon felt himself relax minutely, knowing that they were fine and ensuring his safety despite what the seed had done. So, he answered the comm slate. It was time to find out what had kept Miuna away from Artorion for so long that Triton was able to invade.

It was also time to see if her finally calling him just after Triton's death was just a coincidence, or if there might be something more sinister going on…