In a rush of power, heat, and death, Leon shot from the dreadnought, his heart racing with cathartic joy. The brief screams of the dying before the Void snuffed them out dampened his mood, but the sheer visceral joy he felt in releasing his power without restraint was impossible to smother entirely.
Fire erupted around him as the lines of power running through the ark, nearly all made of either enchantments or Titanstone, ruptured and detonated. Metal warped, twisted, and screamed as it came apart. Those closer to the explosions vaporized immediately, while those farther away had time to scream, knowing that they had reached their final moments.
But Leon was unharmed. His armor gleamed in the fiery light, and Iron Pride hummed with power. The Iron Needle within vibrated softly, its power at Leon’s fingertips.
A Strategos had commanded that ark. Leon had carved his way through metal and man both to reach him, and sent him to his Ancestors with hardly more than a single thrust of his prized weapon. The man had seemed more suited to commanding rather than fighting, but Leon had no pity.
But as great as single-handedly destroying a dreadnought was, it paled in comparison to Leon’s true objective: another dreadnought, one that sat at the center of the advancing detachment, within which Leon knew was Aristarchos. When setting their plan into motion, Makarios had told him that he’d finally handed over three of the Sen’uus bombs, but had waited a short time to give Aristarchos as little time to examine them as possible. They were rare resources, but had proven their worth in the ambush, and Leon was eager to see them prove themselves worth the price of his investment again.
He spared only a second to revel in the physical experience of letting his power flow without restraint while the remnants of the dreadnought behind him scattered in the Void, and then accelerated hard toward Aristarchos’ flag ark. He shot through the black Void like a lightning bolt, not allowing himself to be distracted by the other arks around him unless they dared to get in his way. Fire exploded around him as those arks tried to stop him, but only a few of the smaller and nimbler craft physically interposed themselves between him and Aristarchos’ ark.
He tore through the first one with ease, though it was little more than a corvette-sized ark, with a crew complement of less than one hundred in his estimation. Its weapons were small in size and number, while its armor might as well have not even been there for all the difficulty it posed to Leon, and with just a few swings of Iron Pride and a few matching bolts of silver-blue lightning, Leon ripped through the ark with almost insulting ease.
Once through, the ark exploded behind him, and he wondered just how low the standards were at Antipatra’s arkyards for their arks to detonate so easily. His arks had better damage control systems—if they didn’t, then his losses so far would have been far greater.
As he flew, he conjured three Thunderbirds made of silver-blue lightning, each one full-sized. Animated by wisps, they set about their job immediately, physically crashing into any fighters or other arks that strayed too close to him. Not even those great war machines could stop his power, and he pushed on until a destroyer-sized ark got in his way.
Again, Leon prepared himself to carve his way through on his way to Aristarchos, but a wall of fire swept in from behind, enveloping him until he almost felt like he’d been swallowed by a star.
A spear shot through the fire, shimmering in red and gold, and with what looked like amber embedded just behind the diamond-shaped blade. A figure in red-colored Adamant emerged from the flames a moment later, and judging by her feminine figure and thirteenth-tier aura, Leon knew that this was Antipatra herself.
Her armor was strong, as was her weapon—that much he could tell as both a smith and an enchanter. So, instead of taking the blow on his armor, he ducked beneath the strike and shot up, aiming to slide past the minimum range of Antipatra’s spear. She didn’t stop her forward movement, and they crashed against each other so hard that Leon could almost feel his teeth rattle in his skull.
Fire exploded from her, its sheer volume forcing him back just far enough for her to swipe with her broad-bladed spear. He caught the weapon in Iron Pride’s guard, his Adamant weapon proving its strength once again as the spear clanged and hummed, but left no mark upon his weapon.
But Antipatra kept pushing with frantic, almost manic strength, and with no more than a single forlorn glance over his shoulder at Aristarchos’ ark, barely visible past Antipatra’s wide-sweeping fire, he knew that someone else was going to have to take this target. Fortunately for his fleet, he’d anticipated Antipatra coming out to duel him personally—no one else would’ve been able to stop his rampage, after all—and had planned accordingly…
---
The calamitous clash between Leon and Antipatra was worrying; there was no doubt there, but Maia let out a low sigh anyway. Her mate had designated the commander of that particular detachment as his target, and killing him was the point of this battle, as no one was under any impression that they were going to outright defeat Antipatra here. But if he killed her in single combat, then everything would change.
She had faith in his power, but she put that possibility out of her mind. She had her own targets and couldn’t distract herself from them. Her mate was counting on her, and she wasn’t going to let him down.
‘You still owe me children of your blood, Leon,’ she thought with a playfully subtle smile. ‘You are forbidden to die until you fulfill that bargain…’
She spared one last moment to top herself up on the affection pouring through their connection, added some of her own, and then charged into battle.
It was almost insulting to her, pitting her against such weaklings. She had attained power that no other river nymph ever had—at least, as far as she was aware—and killing regular humans was almost beneath her. But for Leon, she could lower herself. She almost blushed as she thought of the other ways that he and Elise had thought of to make her ‘lower herself’, but she was certain no one saw it as her body transformed into white ice, rapidly taking on the form of an enormous serpentine dragon.
In this form, she was long and strong enough to crush entire arks, nimble enough to easily wind through the dense cloud of debris that had once been an entire plane almost as large as Aeterna, and inhuman enough that no one could see her lovestruck expression as Leon’s power roiled over her. Antipatra’s aura tainted it somewhat, but she could feel her mate more keenly than anything else, even on a battlefield this chaotic.
She could also feel the oncoming rush of small attack arks, each one slightly larger than her mate’s fighters, but with far inferior men and women piloting them. Their inferiority was proven by the simple fact that they flew against her, and then proven again when shards of ice split from her body, forming into ice dragons themselves, and shot out into the Void, snapping their jaws around the similarly-sized fighters and crushing them with ease. She almost laughed as her smaller dragons devoured an entire flight of fighters dozens strong, and the urge only grew as she dodged potent jets of fire and coiled around a medium-sized ark.
The metal beneath her body, rippling and flanged like metallic flame, crumpled under the sheer weight of her tremendous power. Her magic flowed through her icy body like all the rivers of Aeterna, and racing through these rivers were thin currents of origin power; with such strength, she squeezed, icy spikes sinking through the ark’s armored hull, impaling anyone in the outer decks, and causing the superstructure to crumple.
She immediately detached when she sensed the ruptured lines of magic within the ark, and barely managed to disentangle herself before the fire could do so much as make her ice shine. She almost laughed, watching these great machines forged by the hand of man be eliminated as such things ought to be—they deeply offended her spirit just by existing, and once her mate had built his Kingdom and secured their legacy, she hoped he would come with her back into the wild and get away from all this metal.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
This happy thought was chased from her mind almost the moment it appeared as another aura hit her like a stone wall. Its weight was damn near physical, and she felt microfractures form all across her icy body just a moment before a wave of fire was summoned into being.
She glared at the source: a mage, bold in action and expression, armored in nothing save his own aura and a few magical trinkets that gleamed around his neck and fingers. He was another ‘Strategos’, and in his eyes burned a hatred that she’d rarely seen. Had voices carried in the Void, she imagined he would be castigating her as his fire surged toward her, but for once, she was grateful that there was no air in the Void.
She roared silently as she turned to face her opponent. Her smaller wisp-powered ice dragons, having gorged upon the feast of blood and metal in her wake, turned from the grim task she’d tasked them with and fanned out around her. She cut through the oncoming fire like a knife, while her smaller ice dragons shot around it, surrounding the Strategos as they approached.
He clearly understood the danger and backed off, summoning motes of fire in his wake that either detonated as she passed, causing her icy skin to glisten, or shaped themselves into small fish with long, fanged mouths and launched themselves against her ice dragons.
This battle was one she put out of her mind, save for conjuring a few more ice dragons, but given she was facing an opponent of roughly equal power, she didn’t split off too much power. Instead, she bore down on her retreating enemy like a river swollen by a storm.
His amulet glowed blue, and a shield of bluish light formed around him as her enormous fangs, each one half again as tall as he was, closed around him. Her fangs cracked against the shield, and in the same instant, fire bloomed around him. Tinged with origin power, her entire icy head was consumed. She felt tingling pain, but as her body was mostly made of magic power and her true body was deeper within the ice dragon, the loss of her head was of little consequence.
Ice slashed from the stump and further down her body, splitting off almost like insect legs. Her opponent was forced back again, his blue shield having vanished within the flame, but one of her spikes snagged his boot, and it came away bloody.
He answered the wound with more fire, letting it flow from him like a river that threatened to envelop her. She abandoned the ice dragon, leaving the cold remnant as a distraction as her ‘human’ body, clad in Adamant, went around the fire. She hurled icy spikes at the Strategos, who barely noticed and dodged in time, but her spikes halted only a few dozen feet beyond him and formed into jagged sea serpents. To his credit, he realized the threat and sent a wave of fire to meet them; the wave roiling and turning into snapping humanoid jaws.
In his moment of distraction, she attacked, an icy lance forming in her hand. She drew close and lunged, aiming for his heart, but one of his rings flashed, and a small shield of light appeared over his chest. Her lance slammed into the shield with all the power of a tidal wave crashing onto the shore, and he was hurled back into his own fire. Several of her serpents slithered through his fire and sank their fangs anywhere they could—arms, shoulders, waist, and legs. One went for his neck, but he spun, blood pouring from his wounds, and conjured half a dozen fiery arms from his body that snatched, crushed, and melted her serpents.
But she wasn’t idle, and was already lunging again; he tried to dodge, but only managed to move enough for her lance to dig into his waist just below his ribs rather than punch through his sternum and impale his heart. He threw his head back in a silent scream, and his power surged as hers raced into his body, ice and water slicing and tearing into everything it touched.
Fire exploded around him, forcing them back and destroying her power within his body. But damage had still been done, and she was ready to do more—
Another aura bloomed close by, one greater than hers by a wide enough margin that she couldn’t identify its owner’s tier. Her eyes widened when she realized just how close it was, but she was hardly able to turn before a hammer slammed into her armored back.
She’d often disregarded armor, preferring to clad herself in water and ice instead. Armor, after all, was man’s craft, not something for nymphs. But for perhaps the first time, she was grateful that Leon had convinced her to wear it, as the force that it absorbed surely saved her life. She was hurled through Voidspace toward the debris field, and she was unable to halt herself before crashing painfully into a large chunk of former-plane. The chunk was entirely stone and covered in sharp edges; she felt the impact keenly, her bones rattling as pain flared beneath her left arm and blood started soaking her torn gambeson.
She was barely able to react as the powerful newcomer slammed into her again with his hammer, shattering the asteroid she’d crashed into as the hammer met her abdomen. All breath was forced from her lungs, her legs went numb, and the rest of her body drastically weakened. Her Adamant armor was strong enough not to scratch, but even it, and the wards Leon had woven into the metal, had their limits, loath though she was to admit it.
She weakly tried to resist, but the powerful mage was upon her again, and she could sense the eleventh-tier mage that she’d nearly ended shooting around the side, his wounds already closing as another of his rings glowed white. She sensed one of her mate’s Paladins—Daryun, made obvious by his Void-black armor—shoot forward to try and help her, but he was intercepted by the Strategos.
Her heart suddenly skipped a beat as icy terror she’d not felt in a long time overcame all other thoughts in her mind. She sensed the newcomer charge again, but she could barely summon the strength she needed to resist…
---
A dodge saw Antipatra’s spear stab past his head rather than between his eyes, and Leon let loose with a torrent of lightning, back by the Iron Needle. Antipatra was hurled back, and her fire, blazing around him, flickered. His Thunderbirds tore into it, forcing it to dissipate, and giving him a clear view of his opponent: her armor was scratched, but the amber-colored jewels in her armor were glowing. Leon wasn’t sure what that signified, but he resolved to kill her before he could find out.
With Iron Pride, he rapidly inscribed a glowing rune before him, one of ancient design. He then thrust, though Antipatra had been hurled hundreds of feet away. But it was through the glowing rune that his sword stabbed, and it flashed with light as a silver-blue lightning bolt shot from the blade.
It struck Antipatra before she could react, and her body tensed and crumpled inward, her muscles contracting hard as Leon’s bolt, augmented by a ‘stop’ rune that he’d interpreted as ‘paralyze’, ravaged her body.
But he sensed the enchantments in her armor already at work restoring her body to motion, so he charged. But he took this moment to glance around at the battlefield. Maia was fighting another eleventh-tier mage, and she seemed to be winning. Aristarchos’ flag ark, however, was moving away from him, along with his detachment, as Antipatra’s fleet continued attempting to surround the plane and box in the fleet elements that he’d left within the debris field to lure them in. He could’ve used more illusions, but he’d hoped his enemy would charge into the debris field and allow him to kill them in more favorable terrain.
Unfortunately, they seemed to have other plans, but that was fine by him. What was less fine, however, was his contingencies for dealing with Aristarchos: it seemed his remote triggers for the bombs either weren’t working, or his handful of stealth corvettes were having a hard time approaching the flag ark. Makarios was also holding back, even though Leon had wanted him to tail Aristarchos’ detachment. Those remaining bombs were supposed to be used to ravage the rest of Antipatra’s fleet while he ‘supported’ Aristarchos.
And yet, he wasn’t moving…
‘Did he turn against me?’ Leon wondered as he brought Iron Pride down on Antipatra. ‘Turning against me as he turned against her?’ Silver-blue lightning exploded around him as the glowing amber in her armor flashed. He was consumed by light, the resplendent power burning at his armor’s defenses, seeking any way in. But he quickly inscribed another ‘stop’ rune, focused on what he wanted, and the light began to flicker. He wasn’t able to get it to stop entirely, but it was weakened enough that with a sweep of Doomfire, he was free of it.
He almost smiled behind his helmet. Antipatra had her tricks and now seemed hardly the worse for wear; whoever had made her armor clearly knew what they were doing if the enchantments helped her already rapid thirteenth-tier healing powers restore her so quickly.
But as he launched himself after her as she tried to gain distance to better use her spear, he felt a surge of pain from his soul realm—not his own, but Maia’s, echoing through their connection. His eyes widened as fear gripped his heart like someone had reached into his chest and wrapped their fingers around it. His head turned just in time to see her struck again, the asteroid behind her shattering from the impact.
He felt her pain keenly, more even than the blow Antipatra struck against his head in his moment of distraction. With fire burning around him, Leon felt his blood begin to boil as Maia’s twelfth-tier opponent—Eirenaios, if Leon identified correctly—charged again.
The idea that Maia would be killed had always seemed distant to him. They’d come close, to be sure, but it was easy for him to always at least trust in her ability to escape if any situation turned against them. But now, against a twelfth-tier mage, and with her already injured…
He turned to launch himself to her aid, but Antipatra crashed into him from behind, her spear exploding against the back of his cuirass. Heat washed over him as fire enveloped his body.
But that heat was nothing to what had been ignited in his heart as he saw Eirenaios’ hammer smash into Maia again…
