The Storm King

Leon scowled as a sense of impotence rose up from within him. All he could do right now had already been done: he’d fried several dozen Islander mages as they attempted to board the Legion ships. Maia had done much more, but even she hadn’t done much more than dent their numbers before she returned to the flagship. All of the Islanders in the water had either boarded the Legion ships, or they’d died in the water at the hands of Leon, Maia, or the various complements of marines scattered around the fleet.

There was still some scattered fighting around Sigebert’s fleet, but for the most part, the boarders had failed in their attempts to do damage. Rather, the more pressing concern were the ships that were now on a course to collide with Sigebert’s fleet, and the Flame Lances in the sea wall that still hadn’t been taken out. Since the boarders had been largely dealt with, the doors of the sea wall had opened four more times, allowing the Islander Flame Lances to sink seven more of Sigebert’s ships, leaving the total losses at eleven ships, and significant damage to others.

But Sigebert was adapting. Leon watched as several of the smaller and faster ships in the fleet began rescue efforts for the crews of the sunken ships, while the bulk of the force shifted in formation to engage the Islander fleet that was bearing down on them. Multiple marine transports, meanwhile, were sailing full speed for the sea wall, clearly intent on landing and storming by land the statue platform beneath which sat the Flame Lances and securing the towers at the entrances to the port. Sigebert’s two dreadnoughts, however, couldn’t join either group, for they were still trying to take out the Islander Flame Lances.

Basina and Theuderic behind them were getting into position, though, so in only a few minutes Sigebert would be able to devote his entire attention to the Islander fleet and leave the Islander Flame Lances for the other two fleets to deal with.

Leon, however, wasn’t so keen on that plan. So far, the Islanders had proven able to open and close those bay doors quickly enough to let their Flame Lances fire and keep them protected. It was a rather surprising show of discipline and training, and while Leon was certain that the marines on course for the sea wall would eventually silence those Lances, he doubted it would happen before significant damage could be done to the fleets. Already, it was becoming clear that the Legion’s Flame Lances weren’t able to immediately deal with them, for the Islanders were able to wait until the doors opened to fire their own Flame Lances, then immediately close the doors. Getting the timing right on return fire was essentially impossible.

‘We’re going to have to take that island by land,’ Leon thought to himself with a frown. There had to be a way down into that chamber, and he felt like if he could get to it, then he could eliminate those Flame Lances from play.

Of course, with the marines on their way, he didn’t feel like he had to go, but heading over there would be a damn sight better use of his time than staying on board the flagship and watching the battle happen elsewhere, hoping that the Islanders didn’t target the flagship again. The ship had taken some serious damage, but nothing even remotely bad enough to put it out of commission, which Leon assumed was the reason why the Islanders were now targeting smaller and weaker ships.

“Gaius,” Leon growled, his tone startling the other man.

“Yeah?” Gaius asked.

“Can you send a signal to Sir Sigebert? Or would you have to act as a runner?”

“I can send a signal,” Gaius answered, sounding almost affronted. He’d told Leon that he had a horn and flares and could signal Sigebert if needed, but that had been almost a month ago.

“Then tell him I want to join the assault on the sea wall.” Leon glared at the statue platform that housed the Islander Flame Lances with a dark look. He needed to get in there and silence those weapons. Their task force would only continue to take casualties the longer they remained operational. He acknowledged that there was some risk in heading over there, but he couldn’t just sit back and do nothing while the Legion ships were slowly whittled down. The Islanders, at their current rate of fire, would probably get off at least a couple dozen shots with each Lance before the marines even reached the sea wall.

Gaius looked for a moment like he wanted to argue, but when Maia stepped up to Leon’s side, and Alix, Marcus, and Alcander all did likewise a moment later in a show of support, he refrained from speaking. Instead, he gave a quick blast on his horn, waited for a moment as he stared at the central tower, and when the fifth-tier Tribune that had earlier communicated with him via hand signals reappeared, Gaius did the same. After making a few gestures, he said, “I sent the message. We’ll see if he agrees to let you go.”

“He will,” Leon replied with confidence. He felt like Sigebert would realize that sending him in was the best course of action. With Maia and Anzu, his squad could reach the sea wall in a matter of minutes.

A moment later, his confidence was vindicated when the Tribune returned and communicated Sigebert’s approval of Leon’s proposal.

“All right, then,” Leon said as he smiled at his small squad. “Let’s not waste any more time. Marcus, Alcander, you two on Anzu. Naiad, can you carry Gaius and Alix underwater?”

Maia nodded, while Marcus and Alcander each went a little green around the gills.

“Let’s do this,” Leon said, not taking any time for suggestions. Barely even five minutes later, he was wearing his flight suit and taking off from the deck of the flagship, Anzu just behind him with Marcus and Alcander clinging to his saddle for dear life. Maia, meanwhile, had simply grabbed Alix and Gaius and tossed them into the water like she was skipping stones, and dove in after them.

Hoping that there weren’t many archers defending the sea wall, Leon led Anzu straight up, wanting to clear at least seven or eight hundred feet before making his way over. Maia would likely beat him there, but that was fine, he’d had his taste of water combat and found it not to his liking at all.

Leon didn’t waste any time enjoying the flight. He and Anzu flew as fast as they could without separating, heading straight for the shore of the sea wall. Sure enough, when he was barely even halfway there, he saw Maia pulling Alix and Gaius out of the water and onto the rocky beach of the sea wall. In response, he saw the floor of the sea wall’s statue platform open up between the three large statues to reveal a wide staircase out of which streamed dozens of Islanders dressed in leather and mail armor and wielding longbows.

These Islanders didn’t need to move too far to try and intercept Maia, Alix, and Gaius; they simply had to post up at the top of the ridge that formed the sea wall and loose their arrows.

Leon’s heart stopped for a moment in irrational panic even as he pumped his magic even faster into his flight suit to tease out just a little bit more speed, but a moment later Maia showed that he needn’t have worried. The three were still on the beach, and that meant Maia had all the resources she needed to shield them. A water dragon erupted from the sea and surged forward, wrapping itself around Leon’s people through which no arrows were able to penetrate.

After a few seconds, the dragon twisted its body a little bit, and Alix’s top half almost comically poked out of its side. Everything below her waist remained anchored in the dragon, however, and she had her own bow out along with a handful of arrows. In five seconds, she loosed five arrows and then was sucked back into the dragon before the Islanders could shift their aim, and Leon smiled as he saw three of her arrows strike true, while the other two were deflected off of armor.

But then the stronger of the Islanders stepped forward, half a dozen mages that appeared to be roughly fifth-tier in strength. Four of them were fire mages, as they revealed when they launched sizable fireballs at the water dragon, while the other two were earth mages that broke off chunks of the ridge and lobbed them down the steep cliffs of the sea wall.

These attacks had about as much effect on Maia’s water dragon as the arrows, however, for which Leon was relieved.

During all of this, Maia and her water dragon had effectively monopolized the attention of the sea wall’s surprisingly few defenders. None of them glanced up to see Leon and Anzu flying into position directly over them. Leon momentarily contemplated showing off his own archery skills to these Islander archers, possibly even with some spell arrows to spice things up a bit, but he decided against it. Just like Alix before him, who used completely mundane arrows, he didn’t think these people posed enough of a threat to break out finite weapons, not when none of them were stronger than the fifth-tier.

“Get ready!” Leon shouted to Alcander and Marcus, who still looked quite woozy from the flight, but who drew their weapons anyway.

Then, Leon and Anzu dove, streaking across the sky like a pair of lightning bolts. Leon, in a flash of light, swapped out his flight suit for his armor and hit the ground with all the power of a lightning strike, sending arcs of silver-blue lightning erupting from him to fry the nearest dozen Islanders, including one of the fire mages. Anzu came in just behind him, cushioning his landing with a burst of wind magic and viciously swiping at the nearest handful of Islanders with his sharp talons. His already blood-streaked fur and feathers immediately became even more so.

Alcander and Marcus slid out of Anzu’s saddle and joined the battle, diving into the small horde of Islanders without fear, while Leon noted Maia, Alix, and Gaius making use of his sudden strike to swiftly advance up the beach under the cover of Maia’s water dragon.

Leon, not wanting to get too distracted, let loose with another blast of lightning that tore through the Islander defenders. He didn’t direct it as a lightning bolt, but instead used a new technique that he learned from the Thunderbird during the past month: he let lightning spill from his fingers, using his will to direct it instead of compressing it into a single violent spear. His lightning bathed the three nearest Islanders in its power, instantly tearing flesh from bone, then went on to the nearest Islanders after that. Leon’s lightning chained itself between another dozen Islanders, immediately killing or incapacitating eight of them.

The remaining two were the stronger mages, who had begun to turn to face the new threat that Leon posed. They were horrifically burned, but this attack was more about breadth than power, and so wasn’t strong enough to even take them out.

But Leon didn’t even blink. As lowly as he regarded their power, he still took this fight completely seriously. He lunged forward, the lightning magic in his body letting him appear in front of them so quickly he appeared to teleport. With two quick swipes of his blade, the two remaining mages he’d targeted lost their heads.

Leon didn’t take the time to revel in this death, or to admire how much stronger he felt with his new refined enchantments on his armor. As powerful as he felt, he couldn’t let himself get complacent. The Islanders had already caught the fleets off-guard with the reveal of their Flame Lances, they could have more surprises planned that could harm him, or even Maia. Without pause, Leon let loose with another blast of lightning at the remaining Islanders, holding little back.

It didn’t take much longer for Leon and his group to finish tearing through the sea wall’s defenders. Marcus and Alcander each took out a few, but Leon and Anzu had done the lion’s share of the work. By the time the others managed to scale the ridge and join them, they were only able to help clean up.

“All right, what now?” Alcander asked as he wiped the blood on his ax onto one of the dead Islanders, his eyes landing upon an injured but still alive Islander who was moaning in shock and pain at the lightning burns that covered his body.

“We move on,” Leon replied, ignoring the small handful of Islanders that remained alive. All were terribly injured and posed no danger to them, but as they were fighting, Leon had watched the Islander Flame Lances pick off two more Legion war galleys. The marine transports on course to the sea wall were still more than a mile out to sea. They didn’t have the time to deal with the wounded Islanders, and while it might’ve been safer, he couldn’t wait for the marines. “If you’re injured, use a healing spell, but we can’t screw around. Let’s go.”

Leon swiftly but with all due caution led his squad further up the ridge to the statue platform, his magic senses bathing the sea wall, watching for any and all threats to his squad. He ignored completely the three statues that stared out at the sea in various poses, focusing entirely on where he’d seen the ‘doors’ to the staircase open. There weren’t any actual doors, though, but that made a degree of sense to Leon; the Islanders had a couple of earth mages with them, they didn’t need handles or hinges to make a door, nor to close one.

Without missing a beat, Leon conjured a fire spell in his hand and tossed it onto the ground, letting his magic power fill and activate the runes on the spell paper. As his people ducked down into cover, the spell detonated, blasting a huge pit into the platform. Leon was a little sad to see that it severely damaged the statues, but was sadder to see that the spell hadn’t managed to punch completely through the platform. Instead, he was left with a crater about six or seven feet wide and a foot deep, and innumerable cracks spider-webbing out from the crater throughout the platform.

With just one more identical spell, the stone ‘door’ was blasted into pieces, its shattered pieces falling back down the staircase into the chamber beneath. A hole big enough for even Anzu to go down was opened, but the first to dive into it was Maia’s water dragon, its head about as large as Anzu’s entire body and its serpentine form at least fifty feet long. Leon followed only a moment later, with everyone else following closely behind.

The stairs led straight to the surprisingly spacious firing platform for the Flame Lances, and from what Leon could glean from his magic senses, there weren’t any other passages leading out, implying, at least in his mind, a hasty construction. He also saw about the same number of Islanders still in the chamber as had come out to defend the sea wall, though most were busy manning the Lances or staring in horror as Leon’s party surged down the stairs.

Those looks were vindicated when Maia’s water dragon reached the bottom of the stairs and began rampaging through the chamber. Leon followed suit, but given that the chamber was, while relatively open and devoid of clutter, not exactly cavernous, Maia’s water dragon ensured that it was all over before the weaker members of his squad could really join the action. The water dragon had swept through and crushed dozens of Islanders, and Leon had cleaned up the rest with a few well-placed bolts of lightning.

And so were silenced the Islanders’ Flame Lances.

“Was… that it?” Marcus asked, lightly panting.

“Looks like it,” Alcander replied with a hint of disappointment in his tone. “Damn, I was hoping for a little bit more. Would’ve figured that these people would defend their weapons better.”

“Maybe they didn’t have the numbers, or counted too heavily on their boarders?” Leon mused aloud, relieved that his hasty assault hadn’t hit a metaphorical brick wall. If Jormun or his other two seventh-tier mages had been here, or if they’d stole a third Flame Lance and was using it to defend the platform, this could’ve ended much differently, and, at least for him, much more tragically.

“We ought to signal Sir Sigebert,” Gaius stated. “Let everyone know that these Lances have been knocked out. There’s still a battle going on there with the Islander ships, they need to know they can focus entirely on that.”

“Good point,” Leon replied. A minute or two later, he and Gaius were back on the statue platform firing off a couple of flares. From that vantage point, Leon could tell that the Legion ships were doing work against the Islanders, consistently pushing them back. The Islanders had dozens of ships, but most were small and couldn’t carry many people. It was only a matter of time until the Legion won this.

The marine transports were also closing in on the sea wall, but with Gaius’ signal, adjusted their course to bring them in closer to the Islanders’ towers.

The response Sigebert soon sent made it clear that they couldn’t rejoin the fight and assist in the final defeat of the Islanders. They’d taken the Flame Lances intact, and Sigebert both wanted to keep them that way and prevent them from falling into the hands of any Islanders who might try to reclaim them if Leon were to leave.

So, everyone could only watch as the Legion forces slowly finished the fight over the course of another hour or so. The Islander fleet was beaten back, and only about a dozen of their ships managed to successfully break off the attack and sail away. In this, their smaller size and crew complement gave them an advantage, because they were much faster than most Legion ships. A few of the task force’s smallest and fastest ships gave chase, but most turned in the direction of Kraterok once it became clear that the battle had been won. A company of marines also eventually relieved Leon’s squad, allowing them to finally rejoin the fleet and continue on to the city. However, given how long it took, they’d missed the first push, and only entered Kraterok by the time that Legion marines had already secured most major points of interest.

Still, Leon was proud of what they’d managed to achieve given their circumstances, and he made no secret out of it. In his eyes, everyone had performed admirably during the battle. Now, it was just time to link back up with the Fleet Legates and figure out what the next step would be. They’d have to adapt to the possibility of Jormun having at least four more Flame Lances, a possibility that Leon knew had been floated a few times by the Fleet Legates and so shouldn’t be too difficult to adapt to, assuming they weren’t caught off-guard again like they were here.

But still, even for all the resistance the Islanders had put up, the Legion had taken Kraterok quite quickly and easily, with only the Islander Flame Lances doing significant damage to Sigebert’s fleet. Leon hoped that those low casualties would hold for the rest of the campaign, but this was only the first battle for the first city of the first island. There was plenty of time for Jormun to shake things up.

---

From deep in the jungle, high on a cliff where he might as well have been invisible, Jormun initially watched with dispassionate interest as the Legion forces smashed the defenders of Kraterok. The Flame Lances they’d pulled from the fleet they’d destroyed earlier bloodied the Legion a bit, sinking about thirty ships of varying size before being taken, but Jormun wasn’t too concerned about their loss. He’d taken the rest of the salvaged Flame Lances further into the Isles, where they could be put to better use. He’d only given Kraterok those two as a bribe and ‘show of support’ to resist the Bull fleet.

But what did capture his interest was the young man who took the Lances. At first, Jormun had been no more than mildly intrigued at the strange-looking lightning the man had displayed that flashed so brightly even a mortal could’ve seen it from Jormun’s perspective. He’d heard tales from the Sky Devils far to the south east of such colored lightning, but he’d never actually seen it before. Still, as powerful as the young man was, he wasn’t enough to raise Jormun’s proper interest.

At least, until he began to hear the slithering in his mind, telling him to watch that young man and not to let him out of his gaze. And as the slithering continued, it told him other things, too, ancient histories and secrets which served as the proper catalyst for Jormun’s interest. He saw brief flashes in his mind, glimpses of monsters and powers beyond his imagination, all bowing to a great eagle, its coat of feathers a deep lustrous brown flecked with gold, flashing and sparking with silver-blue lightning. He saw that same eagle striking down a titanic serpent with a huge ivory horn protruding out of its skull and curving back along its body, the eagle’s potent lightning tearing scales from the serpent, ripping stomach-turning gashes in its flesh, and scorching its body. And he saw many more things, the Serpent telling him of many glories won by the one who bore the power of that young man who seemed to replicate them on a much smaller scale down on the sea wall.

The last thing the Serpent told him was to bring that young man to the ritual sites before the slithering ceased without further explanation.

“Captain?” Rolf asked from behind, pulling Jormun out of his silent staring and alarmed contemplation.

“Hmm? What is it?” Jormun replied with an instinctive smile, letting on absolutely nothing of what he had just been told, or even that the Serpent had visited them at all. He turned to face the other man, any irritation he felt at being disturbed quickly concealed.

“It looks like the defense of Kraterok will fail. We should leave soon.”

“Yes, yes we should,” Jormun agreed as his eyes turned back to the sea wall. “All of you go on ahead. I’ll catch up in a day or two.”

“Is… that wise?” Rolf asked, pointedly staring at the retreating Islanders. None of the pirates directly under Jormun’s command had fought in the battle, despite his promises. Jormun had let the people of Kraterok fend entirely for themselves.

“I don’t give the tiniest of shits if it’s wise,” Jormun serenely replied, his eyes locking on the young lightning mage who’d attracted the Serpent’s attention. “I’ve found something I simply must investigate. Besides, after all of this, the Bull will be here for days reasserting their dominance, it’s not like losing a couple of days is going to be too harsh a loss. If all of you leave now and get a head start on that ritual, we won’t even lose anything at all.”

“Very well,” Rolf said with an uneasy tone and a shallow frown as he took a moment to watch the Bull fleets start to file into Kraterok’s port, and he turned to the rest of Jormun’s crew that were still around and began barking orders. They’d take small longships down a nearby river to the southern coast about ten miles away where their ships were anchored, and then they’d be out to sea before the Bull could even realize who they were or what they’d been doing.

Jormun, however, continued to stare down at the battle, watching as the last of the Islander ships retreated. He felt nothing for them, no pity or sense of kinship, no regret or anger. They’d resisted the Bull because he said he’d support them, but he’d given them naught but two Flame Lances and empty promises. The people of Kraterok had served their purpose, he had no other uses for them.

What would come next would concern the survivors none. Once this was all over, they’d be just another people under his scales. Assuming, of course, that they’d survive the birth of his new world.

Jormun smiled as he thought about what a glory that would be. Not even the mightiest fleets of the Central Empires would be able to stop him, not when the seas rose and fell at his command, not when his power expanded beyond theirs, not when the Serpent finally made good on its promise to him, just as he was making good on his promise to it.

But those thoughts could wait. He had to concentrate on the tasks at hand above all else. He had to succeed here and now or lose his chance forever. But so far, everything had gone perfectly according to his design. With a quick pulse of his magic senses, he checked on the cliffs where he’d carved his glyphs and saw them shining brighter and brighter red as they slowly filled with the power in the spilled blood of those who fell in the battle.

‘They’re really making this almost too easy,’ he smugly thought to himself as he stood up and began to leisurely walk down the mountain toward Kraterok.