The Storm King

The medical bays in the arks filled quickly in the wake of the battle, and didn’t make nearly enough of a dent in the number of wounded that needed care. Taking charge of the situation, Leon ordered sections of the mountains and valleys below leveled and new first-aid centers erected. Given the number of arks lost, his people were looking at more than a thousand injured, and who knew how many dead.

As this was happening, the heavily damaged carrier was forced to make an emergency landing, nearly crashing in the valley in the process. Fortunately, it was able to stick the landing, as had one of his destroyers that had been shot down early in the battle.

That still left him with profound losses, however. One carrier and one destroyer were so heavily damaged that they couldn’t fly, while two heavy cruisers, three more destroyers, and a frigate had been lost. Complicating matters, all of his remaining arks that participated in the battle save for his Thunderbird Clan arks had been heavily damaged.

On top of seeing to their casualties, the remains of the enemy arks had to be secured and any survivors aboard them taken prisoner.

To that end, while the medical stations were being hurriedly constructed, Leon rushed to join the efforts to save as many of his people as possible. He didn’t get far before Valeria pulled him aside and urged, “You have to stay in one place! You have to be found if anything else happens!”

Leon snarled but conceded her point. The surviving enemy arks were still retreating, but he could see them starting to turn and converge far away. If they wanted to attack again, then while his people were busy tending to the wounded would be the perfect time. He had to remain on standby just in case.

“Get out there,” he growled. “Do what you can.”

Valeria grimly nodded while Leon returned to the largest medical station. He ordered Red and Maia to join her, keeping only four Tempest Knights around himself as guards. While he had to stay where he could be found, though, he could still help with some things, and used the storm clouds he’d summoned earlier to pour rain down upon many of the burning wrecks, helping his water mages contain and kill any blazes that might impair their attempts to recover bodies and wounded. He was immensely gratified to see Tribesmen working together to reach their comrades, from Bison using their strength to lift rubble to Spiders transforming into torso-sized spiders to crawl inside the crashed arks. Even Red, Nidar, and Astar helped out, using their large wyvern frames to stabilize parts of arks and transport wounded.

Over the course of several hours, Leon watched as men and women were carried into the medical stations in the hundreds, far too many no longer breathing. Using his tau pearl, he spared the time to tend to whoever needed it, while also monitoring the clean-up operation and the enemy arks.

The enemy did wind up forming back up, and while Leon readied himself for another battle, they simply turned eastward and flew off, apparently humbled where before the battle they’d been almost suicidally arrogant. He kept an eye on them as they flew away but shifted more of his focus to saving his people.

As the hours passed, Leon raced from one medical station to another, supplementing his healers’ skills with the tau pearl and his large reserve of healing spells. He was also able to use his origin power to compensate for his relative lack of skills in light magic, adding even further power to this critical endeavor.

While he worked to heal the wounded, many of his people were already securing the crash sites of the other arks in the valley. No small number of people were pulled from the wreckage, but too few from his downed arks still breathed.

Many prisoners were taken, too—survivors captured from the enemy’s downed arks. Some were able to escape and flee into the forests before they were captured, but most fell into Leon’s custody. Most of them were injured, too, and when asked what to do with them, Leon simply glared in the direction of the prisoner-holding area and ordered that his healers focus on their own wounded first. He’d have the prisoners tended to when his people no longer needed his healers’ attention.

The work carried on into the night and until morning. Leon remained mostly with the healers, helping where he could and staying out of the way where he couldn’t. As his work slowed, his mind began turning over the day’s events, and one question raced through his mind the more of his people with burns, lacerations, and missing limbs he saw.

‘Why?’

He was pulled from his musings when two of his highest-ranked healers approached him.

“Your Majesty,” the stronger of the two began, rendering him a short bow. “We appreciate your help more than we can say, but at this point, we have everything in hand.”

Leon glanced around the main tent in the station. It was one of the smaller stations that had been set up, but it was still full of at least two hundred Thundermen, some moaning in pain and others completely unresponsive even while other healers did what they could to save lives and alleviate pain.

“Are you sure?” he asked a little skeptically.

The other healer answered, “Yes, my King. The most serious wounds have been seen to, and if any more wounded are brought in, we are no longer so short-staffed that we need your aid.”

“Though we are deeply appreciative for your efforts,” the first healer repeated.

Leon smiled. “If you have need of me again, send for me and I’ll return.”

He left the medical station while the two healers again profusely expressed their appreciation, and as he flew around, he found that the other stations had largely finished their critical treatments. With his power and the tau pearl no longer in demand, he found himself making for the prisoner camp.

When he arrived, the guards promptly bowed, drawing some attention from the prisoners. The holding area had only been surrounded by a simple wall, but those within could easily see him through the gates. He could see them easily, too, noting with great disdain that few of the prisoners were even trying to help their injured comrades. With his healers mostly tending to his people at the moment, there were few doing the same for the prisoners. Some, he guessed, had already succumbed to their injuries while they waited for treatment.

Not that he was particularly upset about that, though.

“Any trouble with the prisoners?” he asked the highest-ranking guard at the gates.

“None, Your Majesty,” the rough-looking Lion answered. Leon didn’t have to work that hard to imagine how badly savaged any of the prisoners might be if they made any trouble given the appearance of this man watching over them. “They’ve been insultingly quiet. I’d thought I might have to enforce some manner of discipline, but most have hardly made a sound.”

Just as he finished, one of the wounded prisoners made a loud cry of pain as another did his best to bind a laceration on his leg.

“Those ones were louder before sundown,” the guard dismissively stated. “Gotten very quiet over the past few hours, though. Seems most of the bastards have gone to rot with their Ancestors.”

Leon grunted in acknowledgment, feeling nothing. “Any seem like they’re in charge?”

There were several at the seventh-tier, but none stronger. Leon imagined most of the stronger mages had died at this point, or gone down with their arks.

“That one,” the guard replied, jerking his thumb at the man tending to his wounded comrade. “Didn’t catch his name. Some of these feckless cowards were louder when they were brought in, but that one shut them up before we could.” Leon detected a note of disappointment in the guard’s tone. He wondered what the guard would’ve done to the prisoners if they’d given him an excuse.

“Bring him over here,” Leon ordered.

The guard bowed and barked a few orders. There were a few hundred prisoners including those no longer moving, which necessitated quite a few guards on the walls. When the head guard gave his order, those other guards began shouting and projecting their auras, making sure the prisoners were intimidated and suppressed enough that they wouldn’t interfere with Leon’s order. A team of three then marched in and all but dragged the one Leon had singled out back to the gate. The gate remained closed to keep the prisoner separated from Leon, though Leon had approached it so that they could converse comfortably enough.

The prisoner was thrown down before the gate and Leon didn’t wait for him to try and rise before asking, “Who are you?”

With a hateful glare, the prisoner attempted to rise again only for the team of guards to force him back to his knees. Leon didn’t stop them, choosing instead to simply stand where he was, glaring imperiously down at the prisoner.

After spitting into the dirt, the prisoner grumbled in a lightly accented common tongue, “I am Jos Ajhir.”

“And your rank within your fleet?” Leon asked.

“Quartermaster of Uilocraich,” he answered without much hesitation.

“Where are you from?” Leon asked.

Jos visibly seethed and his jaw remained shut long enough that Leon thought to add an implied threat. Before he could give that threat voice, however, Jos slowly, reluctantly, admitted, “The Sylphia Cluster. Plane of Prachtor.”

“Your entire fleet from there?” Leon asked.

After loosening his tongue, inertia kept Jos talking. “No. Others from other planes. We flew under the banner of Brihinis, the Lord Reaver.”

“Quite the title.”

“It was earned. No plane in Sylphia was fool enough to cross us—not on their own, anyway. We received tribute from all corners of the cluster, and those that offered no tribute, we pillaged to take our due.”

Leon nodded, not quite taking the man’s explanation at face value, but assuming there was a great deal of truth in his words. It seemed that his fleet, victorious if at a heavy cost, had defeated another fleet that had dominated a planar cluster.

‘Useful to know. Just have to find out how powerful this ‘Sylphia Cluster’ is compared to others.’

“Why come here?” Leon asked.

“Weeks ago,” Jos explained, “we encountered a derelict ark. It was in terrible condition—probably some accident with their Road Builder. Survivors were still aboard, and though they resisted fiercely, they were taken captive and their minds plundered.” Jos halted at the sight of Leon’s visibly growing rage. The Tribesmen around him, too, were now giving him extra attention while thickening the air with killing intent.

Coldly, Leon demanded, “Keep talking.”

“I… was not involved,” Jos was keen to add. “The captains and officers were told of what was learned by the Lord Reaver. People freshly arrived in the Nexus. Vulnerable. They came from the Divine Graveyard and wouldn’t be missed. The Lord Reaver demanded we raid this people, and the captains voted to agree.”

“And this people… were mine?” Leon inquired, his tone light despite the wrath that burned within him.

Jos could only nod in confirmation.

With a deep, steadying breath, Leon asked, “What of the prisoners you took from this derelict ark? How many were they? What happened to them? Did they identify themselves? Their ark?”

Jos grimaced, his expression growing deeper by the question. “I… do not know the specifics,” he admitted. “We… our prisoners… if they are not ransomed, then they are…” He choked up a moment and couldn’t look Leon in the eye. Leon felt that that was answer enough, though.

“Do they yet live?” he growled. No demands for ransom had been made, so… one could hope.

Again, Jos went quiet long enough to fray Leon’s patience, but he still answered before Leon could demand anything more. “I… do not know.”

Leon took another long, steadying breath, but this one was less effective than the previous one. “You have one option remaining to you, pirate. If you want to live, you will tell me everything you know of your Sylphia Cluster. If you do not, then you will meet a painful end.”

Apparently finding some courage, Jos obstinately claimed, “I will not! I would be tortured!”

Leon barely heard the second sentence. Instead, with blood pounding in his ears and fury blooming in his heart, he bent down, took hold of the gates, and handily lifted them with a small application of origin power. The wards in the gate gave off an ear-piercing screech and resisted him for several seconds, but in the end, relented. Leon hurled the gate upward into the gatehouse and marched through, drawing Iron Pride as he did.

With a single slash, he sent a wave of lightning surging through the prisoners. Of the few hundred assembled there, fifty were rendered ash in but a moment, while Leon’s lightning ravaged dozens more. Screams filled the air as prisoners tried to get some distance between them and Leon. Intending to leave things there, Leon lowered Iron Pride to further address Jos, but the Tribesmen watching the pirates took Leon’s actions as permission and began hacking them to pieces. Some of the prisoners tried to resist, but they’d been stripped of weapons and armor and placed under heavy guard; they stood no chance against the wrath of Leon’s Thundermen.

Leon watched this happen impassively, upset only that his men attacked without orders, though not so upset that he ordered them to stop.

Still held by the other guards, Jos screamed once in panic and briefly tried to resist the grasp that the guards had on him, but one of the guards drew a dagger and sliced the muscles in his upper arms, eliciting more screams but considerably less resistance from the pirate.

With the slaughter as a backdrop, Leon turned back to Jos. “I’ll give you over to those who better than I know how to pull information from the unwilling.” He leaned down to get a little closer to Jos. “I suggest if you want to avoid further suffering, you find more willingness.”

Without another word, Leon walked out of the camp as the last of the prisoners were brutally executed, their screams and moans of pain falling silent as he took back to the sky.

As he flew back toward the largest medical station, he felt the Thunderbird’s attention.

[I didn’t think you had it in you, Leon,] she said appreciatively. [I’m impressed.]

[With what?] he bluntly asked.

[Killing such filth. I think others might judge you harshly for this, but I will not.]

[I do not fear the judgment of others,] he replied. [Not in this case.]

Xaphan’s crackling voice responded, [Starting to look like a real King now, boy, and not some ceremonial bureaucrat.]

Leon scowled and decided to change the subject. He slowed down, nearly causing the Tempest Knights following him to pass him by.

[That Lord Reaver guy… probably the one I killed in that large ark. Strongest one, makes sense. He… He seemed… I don’t want to say ‘fanatical’ since I don’t know what he might’ve believed in—I mean, he was a pirate so I’m guessing he ‘believed’ in plunder and riches. But he fought like a man possessed…]

The Thunderbird answered in an almost nostalgic tone, [Such sights are… not uncommon among post-Apotheosis mages. Long lives lead to boredom. What does one do when they have lost all they care about to time? What can make your heart beat faster when you have experienced all that the world has to offer? It’s not unheard of for those who’ve achieved immortality to become obsessed with death—one kind of has to be motivated enough to achieve immortality in the first place, wouldn’t you agree? A bored mage who drowns in loss might wish to press against the barrier of that last thing they’ve yet to experience: death. They might live on the edge of death, live for their own pleasure, devote themselves to dangerous occupations…

[I am not privy to that man’s thoughts, but your pirate, Leon, had all the hallmarks of a man who had lived too long. The effects of limitless time can manifest in many ways, and suicidal bravery is only one.]

A shiver went down Leon’s spine.

[Was it that bad for you?] he asked.

[No,] she admitted. [But I came close in my darker moments. Though I outlived my children and grandchildren, I still had my Clan. I had friends and their children. I was not alone.]

A deep frown carved itself into Leon’s face. The return to the central medical station didn’t take much longer, but he remained silent the rest of the way there. Though he’d only just started his campaign to return his Clan to glory, he couldn’t help but mull over the abyss of time he stood in front of, and the family he was struggling to start. None of his wives had yet reached his level of power, meaning that they were all working with limited time. And even if they achieved Apotheosis, that was no guarantee of anything, as Leon himself had proven when he’d struck down the Lord Reaver.

He glanced at the wrecks of the arks in the valley just before he landed, wondering how many such battles he’d have to fight before he ran out of friends and family. If that ever happened, he wondered how long he’d be able to continue.