The Storm King

The ark moved quickly, and that speed was needed, for it had barely taken off before Leon’s party received word that another hunting group of twenty-five had been wiped out by the black wyvern and his growing flight.

Talal spent the entirety of the flight on the comm stone with Vyrias, constantly coordinating their next moves with Heaven’s Eye and the Imperial delegations. As a result, Leon knew that Penelope was already drawing close and would be waiting on them. Cassandra’s hunting party had been picked up in her personal ark and was barreling toward them, as well, but she was further north and would probably only reach the rendezvous point as Leon’s party did, or possibly a little later.

A number of other hunting parties, including those in the Ilian delegation were making their way there, but as far as Leon knew, they only had a few seventh-tier hunters, and none stronger. Complicating matters, much of the Scorched Fields were living up to their name, burning with enough intensity to carve the land up between great seas of fire that greatly restricted travel for weaker parties. More and more, it was looking more and more like the battle would be between the black wyvern and his seventh-tier companions against Leon’s, Penelope’s, and Cassandra’s hunting parties, while all the other wyverns following the black wyvern would be dealt with by other parties.

Leon was fine with that, he wasn’t of a mind to waste his time with the weaker beasts when there were bigger monsters to slay.

A couple hours passed as the Heaven’s Eye ark blazed over the treetops and often-burning fields, and they were drawing close to the rendezvous point when Talal suddenly called out, “Leon! Penelope has made contact with the wyverns!”

Leon’s eyes widened in alarm. “How far away from the RV are we?!” he shouted as he projected his magic senses. He then saw Penelope and her retainers already locked in combat with the wyverns about a hundred miles away in a part of the Scorched Fields already blackened by recent fire.

“About fifteen minutes!” shouted one of the pilots from the back room, barely audible over the roar of the magic engines.

“Fifteen minutes…” Leon murmured. He battened down his initial frustration and irritation because, as far as he could tell, Penelope hadn’t gone looking for the black wyvern without him or Cassandra, but it instead appeared as if the black wyvern had attacked her as she waited. “Find a landing point a mile or two away!” Leon ordered the pilots. “we’ll head out on our own from there!”

“If that’s what you want, we’ll not argue!” the other pilot shouted back.

It was a shame, but their ark didn’t have any weapons. Taking it into battle would not end well, so it had to be left behind. Elise would stay within, as she wasn’t a fighter, though she wanted to be fairly close. Talal would join them, but he wouldn’t participate—instead, he would only be going with Leon’s retinue to ensure he stayed in contact with Vyrias.

It was a nerve-wracking slightly-less-than fifteen minutes, and Leon spent the entire time watching Penelope battle the wyverns.

Penelope herself had taken to dueling the black wyvern. She was powerful, fighting with both light and fire and scoring several good hits on the huge monster. However, she was constantly being pushed back, barely able to compensate for when the black wyvern became intangible and faded into the ground. Despite her fantastic armor, she was injured severely and bled from many wounds sustained in the fight.

The rest of her retinue wasn’t doing all that much better. The white, green, and red wyverns were flying in the air, combating half of Penelope’s retainers who were equipped with some of Leon’s older generation flight suits. The brown, blue, and gold, meanwhile, were fighting on the ground. The brown’s control over the earth around them constantly kept Penelope’s retainers at a distance, while the blue attacked with scalding blasts of steam and the gold shot rivers of lightning from her mouth. Up in the sky, meanwhile, the green kept Penelope’s people at bay with huge gusts of razor wind, while the red burned with impunity. Any injuries that any of these wyverns took was soon healed by the white, with beams of white light shooting from her mouth.

Penelope’s people, while powerful, were completely outmatched by half a dozen seventh-tier wyverns, and that wasn’t even including the several dozen other sixth-tier and weaker wyverns that were harassing several other teams of hunters not too far away. None of the humans could get in many hits, and Leon could see that if they weren’t reinforced, they’d be completely overrun.

He was loath to help Penelope in normal circumstances, but in this case, as soon as his ark touched down in a clearing about one and half miles away, he was the first out of the door, pausing only for Elise to give him a quick kiss on the cheek and wish him luck. Maia received a similar goodbye from her, while Valeria got a hug.

Once all of his people were out, the ark wasted no time taking off again and retreating.

“Let’s get moving!” Leon shouted, not wanting to take a single second longer when lives were on the line.

Lives that he couldn’t help but think were in danger because of him. The black wyvern might never have launched this attack if not for Leon’s raid on the aeries…

He pushed those thoughts out of his head. Blame could come later, right now what mattered was stopping the wyverns’ rampage.

Leon led his people into the sky, flying with Maia, Valeria, and Anzu at his side, while his retainers followed.

[Stay at a distance,] Leon ordered Anzu and his retinue. [Target the wyverns on the ground. Keep the pressure on with spell arrows.]

He could see Penelope’s retinue doing the same and not getting anywhere, but he hoped with a few extra bows and mages, they could force an opening and maybe do some appreciable damage.

To prevent that damage from being immediately fixed, he focused on Maia and Valeria. [Try and deal with that white wyvern. Its healing is a problem, keep it occupied.]

[On it,] Maia replied, speaking for herself and Valeria.

Leon’s party flew as quickly as they were practically able, slowing only to fish a few potions out of their soul realms to quickly toss back in preparation for their fights—mostly potions to increase their resistance to various elements, but Leon and Maia chose instead to take potions to stimulate their bodies’ mana generation.

And then, with little fanfare, Leon’s party joined the fight.

Leon focused entirely on the black wyvern. The huge monster was driving the flying Penelope back to the ground as waves of darkness emanated from his gaping maw, and Penelope was only just holding him off with a shield of light projected from a bracer. Leon dove in, his anti-darkness magic gem already slotted into his left gauntlet. As he neared, he activated the gem’s enchantment and a pulse of magic burst from his gauntlet and hit the wyvern’s stream of darkness.

The wyvern made an almost strangled noise, as if something had seized him by the throat and physically forced his air tract shut. The darkness that he was breathing at Penelope immediately halted.

Penelope glanced up at Leon flew in, his sword appearing in his hand and glowing with silver-blue lightning. “You took your sweet time!” she shouted, her voice wavering a bit from pain and exertion. Now that he was closer, Leon could better appreciate just how ragged she looked, with blood leaking from the gaps in her armor and a gash opened just beneath her right eye.

As much as he disliked Penelope, this situation greatly exceeded his personal feelings. These wyverns had already killed more than a hundred, and Leon wasn’t going to let them kill any more. The black wyvern had already recovered and fallen back a little bit, eyeing Leon and Penelope with extreme wariness, no doubt remembering the pain that Leon had inflicted only a couple days ago, so Leon took the opportunity to fly toward Penelope.

“You’re injured,” Leon observed.

“Just a few scratches,” Penelope growled, sounding almost offended that Leon had pointed out her current state. However, despite her possession of light magic, Leon noticed that she wasn’t healing herself.

So, with a great deal of reluctance and caution, but little hesitation, Leon activated the enchantments that surrounded his tau pearl and extended a hand toward Penelope. In an instant, a river of pure white light streamed from his gauntlet and into the Director’s daughter, and her wounds closed a second or two later. Her skin was left as unblemished as if she’d never been injured at all, and she even looked a little stronger, too, like the tau pearl had restored some of her magic power as well as stitch together her torn flesh.

“What…?” she muttered in confusion, and in that brief moment, the black wyvern took the opportunity to strike.

The black wyvern lunged forward, his mighty wings beating hard enough to cause the trees hundreds of feet behind him to shake, and his massive jaws split open. His fangs, gleaming in the light of the sun, nearly reached Leon and Penelope, but with a slash of his sword, still sparking with built-up lightning, Leon unleashed a tremendous lightning bolt right into the wyvern’s mouth. His lightning forked as it passed the wyvern’s lips, raking across the wyvern’s tongue and the roof of his mouth like talons, something that Leon hadn’t consciously attempted to do, but which seemed to yield great results, for the wyvern shrieked again, and though he didn’t seem too injured by the strike, he was still forced to roll out of the way, breaking off his attack.

The wyvern broke off by flying lower, and Leon dove after him, Penelope on his heels, all confusion that she’d showed from Leon’s aid having vanished. Only determination now showed upon her face, her almond eyes locked upon the retreating form of the beast that had attacked her party.

The wyvern wasn’t helpless, though, and his massive tail, trailing smoky black darkness behind it, lashed out with great speed, striking Leon across the shoulder and throwing him away. Leon rolled through the air as Penelope threw a fireball after the wyvern. The fireball exploded halfway there, but instead of dissipating, the fire roiled, expanded, and took the shape of a huge, majestic-looking bird. That bird dove after the wyvern as Penelope slowed and glanced down at Leon. Her eyes weren’t filled with concern—or at least, no personal concern, but she still clearly worried if he was still alive or not.

He was, fortunately enough. His armor had taken the blow completely, and while the wyvern’s titanic strength was enough to throw him away like a ragdoll, he hadn’t actually been injured. Only momentarily inconvenienced, and he was already flying hard to catch back up.

As he did, he saw the white wyvern struggling with three water dragons wrapped about her limbs, but after several seconds, she’d managed to free herself from Maia’s dragons, force Valeria back with a needle of light fired from one of her eyes, and then breathe a stream of light at the black wyvern.

Leon’s heart sank as whatever damage he and Penelope had done to the monster vanished as the light instantly hit the gigantic beast, and the black wyvern roared in triumph, staring back at Leon and Penelope with what almost seemed to be smugness. The firebird that she’d thrown after him was nowhere to be seen.

However, before they could begin their second round, the brown wyvern below roared in pain, and Leon saw that not only had Anzu attached himself to one of the wyvern’s wings, but one of Penelope’s seventh-tier retainers had thrust his lance up into one of her legs, penetrating her scales completely. Two more of Penelope’s retainers closed in, their auras spiking, as Marcus and Alix peppered the brown wyvern with explosive spells. The spells weren’t doing much to the wyvern’s scaled hide, but each strike elicited another shriek of pain.

The black wyvern roared again, his smugness gone, and he immediately dropped into a dive. Leon and Penelope followed, realizing he was now more interested in intervening in the fight between their retinues and the brown wyvern.

Leon summoned a bolt of lightning from one of the clouds above while Penelope threw another firebird after him.

Both of their attacks passed right through him as a shroud of darkness enveloped his body, and Leon winced as his lightning bolt came perilously close to hitting Alcander as he charged the injured brown wyvern, his huge ax in hand. Penelope’s firebird pulled out of her dive in time, though, and attacked the black wyvern again, but his intangibility remained.

Leon increased his speed as much as he could, his left hand outstretched, his magic flooding into the anti-darkness gem in his gauntlet, hoping that maybe he’d have better luck with disrupting the monster’s magic resistance this time. But the gem’s range wasn’t infinite, and the wyvern had a head start.

The black wyvern roared, reaching the brown wyvern first. Darkness streamed from his mouth, and Anzu barely managed to pull himself off the brown wyvern, blood still trailing down his beak and claws, barely avoiding the black wave. One of Penelope’s sixth-tier retainers wasn’t so lucky, and as the wave washed over the brown wyvern, he vanished within. Everyone else, though, managed to pull back, and Leon breathed a quick sigh of relief as he saw that Anzu and all the rest of his retainers were safe.

[Light these things up!] Leon roared at his retainers. [Everything you have! The strongest magics you can call upon!]

Almost instantly, a beam of light lanced out from Anna and struck the darkness that still streamed over the brown wyvern. It didn’t do much, but Leon could feel at least some of the black wyvern’s magic having to expend itself to protect against Anna’s damaging light. Leon saw the rest of his retainers on the ground pulling out their bows and nocking back on some of his most powerful Thunderblast spell-arrows, and just as he got within range with his anti-magic gem, they loosed their deadly missiles.

Leon felt his anti-magic gem go to work, and a moment later, the darkness spilling from the black wyvern’s maw was halted, the beast making another strangled noise. A second later, the Thunderblast spell-arrows hit the brown wyvern, almost making her vanish within the light of hundreds of arcs of golden lightning. Anna’s beam of light then sliced into the wyvern, cutting through some of her scales and spilling blood.

The brown wyvern shrieked again, but Leon had stopped paying attention to her.

Instead, his focus was taken by the black wyvern, and as the brown wyvern filled the air with the sounds of her pain, Leon was slamming into the black wyvern’s back hip blade-first, driving his Adamant blade right through the monster’s scales. His body sparked and burned with lightning, and he would’ve filled the wyvern’s body with it, too, but a pulse of darkness magic threw him right off the monster only a moment after impact. He managed to keep a grip on his blade, fortunately, but he was thrown back.

A moment later, though, a firebird detonated right between the black wyvern’s wing-shoulders, scorching and scratching as his scales.

The beast roared in anger and turned his head upward and backward a bit, focusing on Penelope. He turned his entire body around with startling nimbleness and snapped at her. She just barely managed to twist out of the way, letting the wyvern’s teeth scrape right off her armor. Still, her flight suit was damaged, and she started falling.

Leon prepared himself to charge, but as he did, he saw the black wyvern’s eyes dart to something behind him and widen with fear. Leon projected his magic senses a little farther than where they were, widening his focus away from the battle, and saw another ark cutting through the sky, racing toward them.

It was the very same gleaming white ark that he’d seen on the journey in: Princess Cassandra’s personal ark. However, it looked a little different, as several sections of its armored hull had retracted, revealing a complement of three Imperial Lances per side.

Leon grinned, knowing the battle, already leaning towards them after his arrival, had now swung decisively in their favor.

The black wyvern seemed to realize this, and he roared and turned away from Leon. He was retreating to the mountains.

Leon glanced at Penelope and saw that she had righted herself in her fall. She was an eighth-tier mage, he didn’t need to worry about her. So, instead of diving after her, he began to conjure lightning bolt and hurl them after the black wyvern. Each one slid right through his scales, but not in the way that Leon had hoped for. Instead, the beast had become intangible to magic again, and Leon was unable to do him harm.

Below them, the earth shook and broke apart as the brown wyvern took back to the skies, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Not too far away, the white wyvern was freed from more of Maia’s water dragons by the green, and the two followed the black.

However, the remaining three, Leon noted, took a moment to follow. The red, in particular, stared at Leon, then at Penelope, and then at Maia. However, after another furious roar from the black, the red, gold, and blue followed the other four.

Leon almost gave chase, but they weren’t the entirety of the wyvern attack: there were still a couple dozen weaker beasts running around in the area, making the lives of the other hunters much more exciting—and much shorter. Fortunately, it seemed that the primary group of seven were retreating toward the aeries rather than toward any other group of humans, and with two arks, Leon knew they’d be able to catch up quickly.

So, with some reluctance, Leon turned away from the seven and launched himself into cleaning up this mess. His retinue followed suit, as did Penelope and her people.

The clean-up didn’t take long, not with the strongest wyverns remaining being only sixth-tier. Not the mention the Princess’ ark reached the rendezvous point and her Lances lit up those who were left, striking them with preternatural accuracy. Dozens of wyverns fell from the sky, and the battle was over.

But even through the joyous rush of winning the battle, Leon noted the dozens of human corpses that also littered the ground.