The Storm King

When he achieved Apotheosis, Leon had largely been insensate to what was happening outside of his body. He knew that quite a bit had to have happened given how trashed his meditation room had become, but he’d been far more concerned with the process inside of his soul realm to pay much attention to anything else.

Now, as the Lord Protector settled into a training chamber by himself, Leon found himself treated to another perspective on the process.

For about half an hour after Anastasios was left alone, nothing much happened. All was quiet, so Leon sent for Cassandra so that his wife and her grandmother could spend some more time together while everyone waited. After that first half hour, however, things started happening.

It started with a mild quake that the enchantments in Leon’s palace were more than up to absorbing. Leon, however, still felt it and knew that the quake had originated in Anastasios’ chamber.

More quakes followed, and for a little under an hour, they steadily grew more frequent and intense. By the time they were joined by other phenomena, they’d grown powerful enough that Leon had started to worry about his enchantments being overwhelmed. He was in the middle of ordering some powerful earth mages to come to his palace and shore up their quake resistance when small stones and pebbles around the palace began to float.

Much like the quakes, the gravity-defying rocks started to rise rather subtly but escalated quickly. Soon, currents of sand were pouring upward, joined by larger stones and boulders throughout the palace and adjacent districts that spun and twirled through the air uncontrollably.

The walls in the palace began to creak and groan under the strain as power within the palace was sucked inward, toward Anastasios’ chamber. Again, Leon was worried that too much power was going to be pulled away from his enchantments, so he added his own power to the grid, letting his palace feed upon his power. With access to origin power, even in limited quantities, he felt he could make sure that none of these phenomena would threaten his home and capitol.

By the time the third event started, the city, still in the throes of celebration following Leon’s ascension, had started to give his palace a wider berth. At Leon’s urging, the Jaguar, the Ax-Bringer, and Alcander were all ordered to activate any forces they had to ensure the safety of those in Stormhollow. The Tempest Knights saw to the palace, soldiers from the central army erected a cordon around the palace, and the Ax-Bringer led the city police force in clearing nearby streets.

With all these people running around, they were almost too late to prevent severe damage from the third phenomenon. Stormhollow had been built on relatively flat lands. Anastasios’ power, however, seemed to want to change that; the quakes intensified and Leon sensed the ground seeming to push up against the foundations of his palace.

Leon called upon his darkness magic and coordinated most of the earth mages in the palace to refocus their efforts from protecting the palace structure to using their power to counteract what was happening below.

As a result, the palace remained intact, but several steep hills erupted from the ground in nearby gardens and public parks, and one even pushed up through an administrative building close to the palace.

Fortunately, that was where strange events ended. Leon sensed an intense burst of magic power coming from Anastasios’ chamber that overwhelmed even the privacy enchantments set up within, and he knew that the Lord Protector had been successful. Following that burst of power, there were no more quakes and all of the floating stone began to fall back to the earth. Quite a bit of material had been pulled up there, so once again, Leon redirected the efforts of his earth mages to protecting the city from the return of its wayward stone.

All of the sand was easily controlled, as were most of the smaller stones, but a couple boulders came down quite hard and caused some minor damage, but fortunately, no one was hurt.

In total, Anastasios only needed about four hours to achieve Apotheosis.

Once everything calmed down, the chamber door opened, and a different man than the one who entered emerged. He still looked largely the same, but he had the same kind of ethereal quality to his aura that Leon had noticed in Clear Day’s aura. The look on his face, too, was different, with wonder carving itself into Anastasios’ chiseled features.

“By the Golden Oak…” the Grand Druid whispered in awe, her ruby eyes locked on Anastasios.

Stifling a laugh, Leon said, “Well. I have to say that I’m impressed.”

“I thought… I…” the Grand Druid sputtered before rushing over to the Lord Protector.

Her approach appeared to jolt him out of the wonder that Anastasios had become lost in, and the Grand Druid barely managed to get a single word out before Anastasios pulled her into a tight hug, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around several times, laughing all the while.

“He seems happy,” Leon quipped.

Beside him, Cassandra responded, “Grandmother doesn’t.”

Indeed, Leon noticed that while Anastasios looked overjoyed, the Grand Druid was looking more and more worried by the second.

When the Lord Protector set her down, his joyous expression faltered when he saw hers. However, he seemed to understand more of what was causing it than either Leon or Cassandra.

Taking her hand, he said, “Let’s find somewhere quiet and talk. I won’t leave you behind.”

With only a single apologetic look spared for Leon and Cassandra, the Grand Druid agreed, and she and the Lord Protector shot into the sky, then turned northward.

“Think we should go after them?” Leon asked.

A sickened look passed over Cassandra’s face. “Absolutely not. Whatever they have going on between them is not something I want to interrupt.”

“Hmm. You make a good point. Let’s give them their time.”

Exasperatedly, Cassandra stated, “I’ll talk to their ambassadors. They also have their escorts coming in soon, and they’ll have to be coordinated.”

Leon nodded gratefully. Anastasios and the Grand Druid had come to Stormhollow so quickly that their entourages had been left behind and were only now closing in on the northern coast of Kataigida.

“Works for me,” Leon said. “We’ll have to clean up all the damage, too. Was it this bad when I ascended?”

“It was worse,” came Cassandra’s instant reply. “Less damage, but the storm was far more violent.”

Leon nodded, then grinned in the direction Anastasios had taken the Grand Druid. It seemed that he wouldn’t be leaving those two behind after all, as he couldn’t imagine that the Grand Druid was going to just let age take her when Anastasios had just ascended. He couldn’t help but feel some small amount of reassurance that he’d have them with him when it came time to leave Aeterna.

---

The ark before him was unlike most that he’d seen before. In general, arks were shaped to be aerodynamic, even those that were designed to fly through the Void. Some were much thinner, almost resembling needles—Silver Spear was one such ark that followed that design—while others were thicker and often bore wider, flatter wing-like sections. Even these arrowhead shapes, however, were still quite slender.

But the ark that Leon now stared at was surprisingly thick. Its main features were rounder, its body was thicker from nose to tail, and the wings astride it looked like they could help the ark glide for a long distance if main power was ever lost.

The reason for this ark’s unusual thickness was easily apparent: assembled before it were three dozen new vehicles, each one only large enough for only a single operator. A dozen additional larger vehicles joined them, each one big enough for a crew of two and could carry a complement of up to eight passengers.

These new vehicles were the culmination of the miniaturization effort that some in the Ravens had taken to after Leon had shown off his MALLs, made possible by thunder wood. The ark behind them was designed to carry them, and while it was an ugly thing, it was only a prototype, a proof of concept. Everyone was far more concerned with seeing whether or not their theories and engineering skills worked than they were with making everything pretty.

‘My own carrier…’ Leon thought with great anticipation. Only two weeks had passed since his ascension, and while the Lord Protector and the Grand Druid remained on Kataigida, they had all but vanished within the Hart’s forest. Leon hoped that with this test of all the new arks, then his Kingdom would have something new to celebrate in addition to his ascension.

Magic flared within all of the arks before him. Engines engaged, and the small one-man arks shot into the sky. They were light and speedy, flying with great dexterity. They were lightly armed, too, with only a small Lightning Lance mounted on their bow. Even the Sunlit Emperor’s stealth arks were better armed, but Leon was assured that later models would have better armaments.

The small transport arks, meanwhile, were slower to take off, but they moved deliberately, their pilots ensuring that they retained control at all times. Eventually, they, too, picked up speed, though they didn’t manage to reach the speed that the fighters did. They lacked weapons, but they were much more heavily armored than the fighters, which contributed to their reduced speed.

The carrier, meanwhile, took off ponderously, only rising a few feet at a time. Leon could imagine all of the engineers and navigators triple-checking everything they could measure, making sure that what they had built was working within acceptable parameters. Given that they were working with thunder wood, storm crystal, and Lumenite, Leon could understand their hesitance to push the ark to its limits.

About a hundred feet off the ground, the carrier stopped rising. Enormous doors opened just in front of where the wings met the ark’s body, and several fighters flew through them, followed by several transports.

Beside Leon were the Jaguar and many observers from the central army, the Royal bureaucracy, and the Tribes. All cheered when the arks took off, stomping their feet in delight to the point that Leon thought they might flatten the shallow hill they stood upon. The test so far had been successful.

However, there was still one more test they had to run, and while most of the smaller arks continued to fly over the testing field, the carrier angled up and engaged its main thrusters. It moved even slower than the ark Leon had used to escape Arkhnavi, but it climbed at a steady rate.

It climbed higher and higher into the sky, and Leon, after whispering a few words to the Jaguar and Gaius, took off after it, watching it the whole time. Through the clouds they soared, pushing ever upward. Leon flew on ahead, finding it fairly easy to move faster than the test carrier, channeled his origin power, and then passed through the barrier separating Aeterna from the Void.

Only a few minutes later, the ark followed suit, slowing down as it neared the edge of the plane, before crawling past the barrier. Once it entered the Void proper, it leveled out and began flying parallel to the surface of Aeterna. Its engines appeared to be functioning perfectly well, and Leon couldn’t sense much magic or air being vented out of the ark.

He watched it for a few more minutes, every passing second doing more to convince him that what they had made was working. The ark was Void-capable.

However, just because the ark could fly through the Void didn’t mean it was useful enough for Leon’s purposes. It would have to move fast if they wanted to actually reach the Nexus, let alone any other plane. So, when he sensed darkness, light, and lightning magic in front of the ark, he focused.

Decades spent studying the construction of the arks given to them by the Director were about to show their worth.

A sphere of darkness materialized in front of the carrier with a blue tinge in its core. Undaunted, the ark flew right into the sphere. At almost the same time, another sphere appeared several miles away, and the carrier emerged only moments after entering the first sphere. It looked much worse for wear, with scratches all along its hull and a more noticeable stream of magic being ejected into the Void from missing hull panels, but the concept seemed to have worked.

The ark remained hovering in the Void for several more minutes before it turned downward and began a controlled descent back to Kataigida. Leon followed, though the elation so buoyed his heart that he was almost at risk of being stuck in the clouds.

Their earlier tests had been promising, but now it was confirmed: they could build Void-capable arks. Now, they just had to iterate on the design, refine it until it worked flawlessly, and then they would truly have unfettered access to the Void.

---

“It worked?” the Thunderbird asked.

“It did,” Leon said, a joyous and satisfied smile featuring prominently on his face as he leaned back in his chair. “Took some work getting the prototype mounted on that carrier, but Nestor’s work was invaluable. And Laylen’s, too.”

“Promising,” the Thunderbird said with an almost greedy grin. “And everything else?”

“The giants are integrating well with what we’re building, to the point that wisps might be relegated to noncritical roles. Mari’Kha’s cloud glass has been received well, too. Every operator we have in a machine that uses one swears by it after using it a few times. Hard to beat controlling an ark or a MALL or an Ulta suit with your mind.”

“I wish I could experience that,” the Thunderbird whispered wistfully. Before Leon could respond, her yellow eyes darted back to him. “Are you ready?”

“As I ever am,” Leon replied.

“Good, my boy. Follow me.”

Leon did as bid, following the Thunderbird away from his Mind Palace and to a more remote corner of his soul realm. Upon a large mountain they alighted, and the Thunderbird immediately launched into her explanation regarding the creation of wisps. Leon had received many lectures on the subject from Nestor, and the Thunderbird wasn’t giving him much new material to work with, but he listened intently.

“Did you get all that?” the Thunderbird demanded after nearly an hour.

Leon nodded. He held up his hand and summoned his lightning.

“Show me,” the Thunderbird intently growled, her eyes shifting from Leon’s face down to his hand.

Leon grinned, showing more confidence than he felt, and then he began to shape the lightning in his hand. In a matter of a second or two, an avian creature made entirely of silver-blue lightning hovered over his hand. He’d used such creatures in battle before, but they weren’t even close to wisps. They were autonomous but largely incapable of doing complex work or lasting much longer than the mage that created them had power to supply them with. A wisp, on the other hand, was able to handle complex tasks, such as operating enchantments, and could generate its own power in addition to feeding upon any power provided. A wisp, if properly maintained, was effectively immortal, not requiring further input from its creator. It could even be repurposed if the one doing the repurposing was skilled enough with wisp maintenance tools.

As the lightning bird took shape in Leon’s hand, he called upon his origin power. A glimmering, pearlescent thread of power wound its way through the bird, and Leon’s power wrapped around it, locking it into place within the lightning construct.

Throughout this, the Thunderbird watched him unblinkingly. “Keep it slow,” she said. “Keep it controlled. You want the origin power to be anchored tightly enough in your magic.”

Leon fought the urge to say something sarcastic in response. Instead, he took her reminder to heart and did his best to keep the origin power wrapped up in silver-blue lightning.

The origin power wound through the lightning bird, and Leon thought he was making good progress, but he’d hardly woven the origin power through a quarter of the lightning before the lightning suddenly seemed to unwind from the origin power. Leon’s eyes widened in panic as he tried to clamp down on it, but his action only caused the bird to completely fizzle out, the magic and origin power slipping from his fingers to join the sea of power within his soul realm.

He stared at his hand partly in disbelief, partly in frustration.

“It’s your first try,” the Thunderbird soothingly stated. “Give it time. Give it practice. Keep trying.”

Leon nodded and did just that, summoning more power. His people needed wisps, and until someone else in his Kingdom achieved Apotheosis, he was the only one who’d be able to provide.

So, he settled in for a long practice session. He was going to practice this until he got it right.