NOVPUBAgonized screaming, defiant war cries, crackling flames, raging magic, and whinnying horses, all these sounds filled the air and then some. Daryun felt the rush of victory, the relief of having survived, of having defied the odds once again. Given the sheer number of corpses around, he’d been lucky—though, his power likely played a great role in that.
Still, the battle was essentially over, and it had been won at great cost. The mountains were alight with the burning wrecks of eight enemy arks and thirty-four of Imak’s. The enemy’s ground force had been crushed, but their warriors had been disciplined and dedicated, and victory over them had cost Daryun nearly ten thousand souls.
Now, Daryun rode across the battlefield accompanied by a retinue of two hundred White Horn Riders. Small pockets of enemy warriors still stubbornly held out in hastily erected strong points, though their numbers were few. Others still had surrendered, though it had taken more than a few demands and promises of honorable treatment. By Daryun’s count, five hundred at least had been taken prisoner, and more were added to that tally by the minute as the reality of their defeat set in.
The battle would end here, however. Though the enemy had retreated with less than half of their arks, they had done so in good order, with their remaining arks still powerful and combat-effective. Their carrier and transport weren’t even touched as far as Daryun knew, but nearly all of Imak’s arks were damaged. Pursuing them out of the mountains would not do any good aside from costing them more lives.
Besides, Daryun knew that this victory was only temporary. The enemy would be back, and he doubted it would take that long to formulate a response to this humiliation. The question for him and Imak now was how to respond to whatever response would come their way. Fighting at these mountains might work again, but most of their mountaintop fortresses had been obliterated by the enemy arks, and while their ground forces were still ready for a fight, Daryun doubted their chances in a straight fight against the entire enemy fleet.
Fortunately, their fleets were spread across the plane, so their entire force couldn’t be brought to bear against them, but if he and Imak were lucky, their resistance might inspire uprisings amongst those who’d already submitted…
Daryun banished these thoughts as Scarlet Star bore him past a most curious sight, forcing him to stop and stare. A hundred mages, all fifth, sixth, or seventh-tier, stood gathered around a dying monster, an enormous beast the likes of which Daryun had never seen before.
It was an enormous stag, its brown fur marred by grievous injuries and matted with blood. Its body was easily twice or even thrice the size of even the largest stag he’d ever seen, while its antlers were made of some strange glowing crystalline material, though that glow was growing dimmer by the second.
“Lord Daryun!” called out a familiar voice, and Daryun’s sharp eyes soon found the speaker: Lord Mayor Ibra Rassim of Kaatori.
“Lord Ibra!” Daryun called out as he pushed his visor up. “What is this thing?”
“An Ascended Beast of some kind!” Ibra shouted. “The damn thing transformed right in front of us! Nearly took my entire retinue down on its own! Had your riders not disrupted the enemy formation, they might’ve been able to surround us and finish us off!”
“I see you didn’t waste that opportunity; what are you going to do with it?”
“Might skin it; I could use a new cloak. Might even mount its antlers above my mantle! Have you ever seen such a magnificent set?”
Daryun struggled not to frown. Nets and ropes, all of the finest make, held the injured beast down, and though it was soon to depart from the land of the living, its eyes still glimmered with understanding. Daryun could see fear and anger within it, but at this point, there was nothing the monster could do.
“An ignoble fate for such a creature,” he stated. “Eighth-tier, too…”
“Is that how powerful it was?” Ibra asked, not seeming that surprised. “I suppose if it were stronger, I might not have been able to bring it down.”
In the distance, Imak’s flag ark descended into a designated landing spot within the trees, its hull blackened and scored while smoke poured from several jagged gashes punched through its relatively thin armor.
“I’ll leave you to it, Lord Daryun,” Ibra said, having noticed the landing too. “You have brought honor upon us, today, my Lord.”
“As did you, my Lord,” Daryun replied. He spared the enormous stag one last discreetly sorrowful look before turning away. The loss of this creature was unlikely to go unanswered, though he supposed the same could be said for the rest of the enemy’s losses.
As he and his retinue picked their way through the devastated lines of battle, Daryun saw many of Imak’s vassal forces stripping the armor and weapons from their fallen foes. He could understand this; their armor was of a quality unseen before in their Kingdom. Who might get those weapons or suits of armor was anyone’s guess, as he doubted Imak would give them out to just anyone.
Returning to the tree line was a sobering affair. Seeing the losses with his own eyes drove home just how costly the battle had been, as the field leading up to the tree line had been devastated. The golems and armored vehicles had battered Daryun’s charging force with Lancefire, and the magic of their stronger mages had ripped through the weaker followers charging in Daryun’s wake.
‘Perhaps it was because I led the charge that I came out alive,’ he mused.
“Such a victory…” Nimrak murmured beside him, his armor a little battered but otherwise unmarred. Years had seemingly been added to him in the hour or so since the brutal battle had begun, the lines on his face deepening into crevasses darker than the most desolate and abyssal valley in the White Horn Mountains.
“Many more like this, and we’ll wish we surrendered,” Daryun whispered as they entered the tree line, the screaming in the air growing louder as they drew closer to the healer tents.
They soon reached Imak’s landing zone, and the King himself was there, drinking a bright red healing potion while no less than five healers scrutinized him from every angle.
“King Imak!” Daryun called out as he approached. He bowed his head for his company, who fanned out to not crowd the landing zone since many of those in Imak’s retinue had already secured it.
“Lord Daryun!” Imak shouted back as he finished off the healing potion. “Yrati has walked with us this day!” His voice was loud and boisterous, and though Daryun knew that he had to put on a show for their victory, he had to fight the urge to dampen the mood with an immediate retort about how much this victory had cost them.
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With a gentle squeeze of his thighs and pull on the reins, Scarlet Star stopped in front of the King, and Daryun easily slid from the saddle. “Are you all right, Sire?”
“My ark was damaged and I did not emerge unscathed,” Imak admitted. “But I imagine there are others who wish they were as lucky as I was.”
Daryun nodded gratefully. “The enemy has been routed but not destroyed.”
The healers glanced at them, their leader quickly stating, “We’ll return in a moment, my King, your injuries do not need such immediate scrutiny at this time.”
Imak nodded, and as the healers hurried off, one of Imak’s other retainers hurried forth and used his wind magic to seal them off from everyone else in the landing zone, keeping their words for them and them alone.
“No, they have not been destroyed,” Imak stated, his expression still confident even though his tone had fallen. Those in the landing zone could still see them and he didn’t want to damage morale, especially since the evacuation of his damaged ark was still ongoing. “I had hoped to destroy that task force entirely here, but I overestimated how effective our ambush would be. We gave the enemy a bloody nose, to be sure, but it cost us a third of our fleet. We might not even finish rescue operations before the enemy can send another force against us, and in the state we’re in…”
Daryun glanced up at the sky, noting how many of their arks were listing or making emergency landings. All wore signs of their struggle on their hull.
“How many prisoners have we taken?” Imak asked.
“More than half a thousand,” Daryun answered. “More, maybe, depending on how quickly we get to those crashed arks and how many more who are still resisting see the wisdom in living another day.”
Imak’s confident smile faltered for just a moment. “I doubt the enemy will agree to negotiate with us after this, even with the prisoners we’ve taken.”
“We’ll have to win again, at least one more time,” Daryun stated.
“Yes,” Imak agreed. “And another ambush like this won’t work. They’ll come with greater numbers and greater caution. I’m sure they saw this ambush for what it was but simply miscalculated how great of a threat it was. Such a mistake will not be made again.”
“We’ll ready ourselves,” Daryun said. “For whatever will come.”
A strained chuckle escaped Imak’s lips. “Your fealty is a gift, Daryun. Anyone else, I believe, would’ve told me to surrender now, while I’m ahead. I should’ve expected as much from the man who held Kaarahi despite a century of Sylphian assaults. Very well, then. Let’s get ready for the next assault.”
Daryun nodded as his magic senses swept over the Kingdom. He could see several other task force groups, three of them the same size as this one had been and another swollen with heavy arks, cut through the sky toward their Kingdom. Could they win against such force?
‘We’ll find out soon enough…’
---
Rain battered Sakhmej while wind roared through the streets and thunder shook the buildings down to their foundations; word had come in about a loss in the northeast to a certain King Imak, and Leon was furious. The commander of a task group, Commodore Nicetas of the Tiger Tribe, had followed obvious bait into a trap in the mountains in the arrogant belief that the new arks, armor, and, well, everything that had been gained in the past century and a half guaranteed them victory.
Such thinking was not something Leon could abide. Nicetas had already been relieved of his command, his second-in-command, Captain Rucos of the Hart Tribe, replacing him as the commander of what remained of his task force. Vice Admiral Diomedes had already redirected additional forces to crush Imak and his Kingdom, and as Leon stared out of the window of Sakhmej’s palace, there was nothing he wanted to do more than fly out into the field and join them.
His fingers curled around the hilt of Iron Pride as it hung from his waist, his blood thundering in his ears louder than the actual thunder outside. ‘Act,’ it demanded. ‘Crush these defiant fools.’
Or, perhaps that wasn’t his blood but the thoughts floating through the boiling fury filling his mind…
He felt the Thunderbird’s presence in his soul realm, his Ancestor apparently easily sensing his mood. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been present as she could be there without giving away her presence, but when she spoke, she revealed that she’d been there long enough to at least be privy to recent events.
[My boy… What is the greatest skill a monarch can have?]
Leon’s jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth almost cracked. [Delegation…] he spat, barely able to form the words.
[Yes, it is. I’m proud of you for having forsaken glory in the name of bettering your Kingdom. But… there is a limit when it comes to delegation. Trust your vassals as much as their performance allows it. Can a vassal be trusted even when they fail?]
Leon closed his eyes and sighed, the breath coming long and without much comfort. [That… depends on their past performance.]
[A wise and diplomatic answer. But is that the answer that you want to give? When someone fails in so important a task as conquest, what is a King to do, but act?]
Whatever form the Thunderbird was taking, Leon could hear the smile in her tone. She was encouraging him to act, to move, to take vengeance for the slighted pride of his Kingdom. He was tempted, but…
[I agree with the pigeon, human,] Xaphan crackled. [A defeat such as this ought to be paid for in blood. In the Elemental Plane of Fire, many who failed like this would be… if they extinguished their own flames, they would find their end would come quicker and with less pain than otherwise…]
[That accounts for the commander, but what of the enemy that won the battle?] Leon drily asked.
[Complete annihilation. If the situation allows for it, anyway.]
Leon’s lips twitched upward even as Xaphan almost hurried to provide caveats.
[That is, an enemy who can win battles against you is often one that you’re forced to make peace with rather than rush. But that is not the case here, is it?]
Leon shook his head. He could see the enemy with his magic senses, how they maneuvered through great curtains of magic, fading in and out of perception as whatever admirable stealth magic they’d concocted affected their forces. Were he less furious, he might have even vowed to learn their secrets, as these wide-ranging stealth enchantments appeared finer than what he’d made in the past. Instead, he found his eyes drawn first to the burning arks on the mountainside where enemy mages were already at work controlling the fires and searching for survivors to take prisoner and weaponry to salvage. Then his eyes turned to the ground battlefield, and his fury magnified.
His soldiers, those of one of his Legions, hundreds of them stripped of their armor and held in some kind of antimagic chains. More than a thousand more had been likewise not only of their armor but of their lives and dignity; their bodies were thrown into large piles and fire mages were going around incinerating them. Finally, Leon saw one particular sight that had his blood chilling from white-hot fury to cold, brutal wrath: the eighth-tier elder of the Hart Tribe Lir, one of a handful of elders who had joined the conquest force, dead. He was in his Hart form, and his eye-catching crystal antlers had already been torn from his head, while several mages with hands practiced in hunting were working to strip him of his hide.
Such an affront was appalling on its own; for a Hart, this was sacrilegious. They hated mutilating the bodies of their fallen, mostly choosing to inter their dead as intact as possible. That went double for those who perished in the form of their Ancestor. Though the Harts were generally the most moderate voice among the Ten Tribes, this sight would’ve had them baying for blood.
Leon turned from the window with death in his eyes. The gold subtly darkened as he stalked through the halls of the palace, ignoring the whispered inquiries from Lucianus and his Tempest Knights as to his destination. He walked right out into the nearest rain-battered courtyard, the storm, fierce though it was, failing to bring him any kind of peace.
In one moment, he stood in the center of the courtyard, drawing some attention from those inside the palace as lightning flashed around him, his secretary and his Tempest Knights surrounding him, and in the next moment, he was hundreds of feet in the sky, his white wings beating hard enough to resound with thunder, the blue crest trailing from his head flashing with silver-blue lightning. Though Leon didn’t take much note of it, the normally golden scales of his legs and talons had darkened to a browner color, though as lightning struck him and danced through his feathers, his eyes and scales brightened to their usual gold colors.
Over the southern continent he flew, faster than anything else on the plane. Towns and cities shook with his passing, his knights and other followers already left far behind despite their attempts to keep up. Every beat of his wings brought him further northeast, closer to his destination, closer to the enemy that had not only defeated him but now humiliated his defeated and slain troops.
Though they had won, in his wrath, he wondered how fondly they would look back on this victory in the years to come, if they survived his wrath…
