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Chapter 777: Argos II

The Jaguar breathed deeply as his ship emerged on the other side of the sea gate, the huge troop transports of his fleet following close behind. The ship’s weapons were firing as fast as they could, providing withering cover for the transports. The Imperial Lances answered in kind, but their deadly fire was blocked by a large shield of light that sprang into existence around his ship. Even better, with the Lance shifting to his ship from the arks above, said arks were able to destroy another tower on the sea wall just a minute or so after the sea gate was breached.

He would remember this for the rest of his life, he could already tell. He wasn’t eager to head off on this raid, but he had to admit, it was going off better than he could have ever hoped for. It seemed that more Imperial forces had been transferred to the straits between Kataigida and the mainland than had been reported, and the—admittedly still rather sizable—naval forces that had remained had been completely destroyed by his fleet. Now, the only Imperial forces stationed within Argos were the ground forces they could cobble together from within the city and its hinterland. Not a force to dismiss out of hand, but not quite the formidable host that the Jaguar had imagined guarding the gateway to the savage Empires.

The Jaguar had estimated that it would take reinforcements about four days to reach Argos following the appearance of his fleet. That had been three days and many assumptions ago. Now, he guessed that it would take the large Imperial relief army he could see mustering further inland at least two more days to reach Argos, and by then, with the sea gate destroyed, he would’ve already sacked it and made good his escape.

But he didn’t allow himself to get complacent. As proud as he was of his Tribe for their work so far, the job wasn’t yet done, and disaster could still strike their force. He had to remain on his game if he wanted as many of his tribesmen to return home as possible.

With the cover of his flagship, the transports drew close to the docks. However, their proximity brought them into range of closer-range weapons. Exploding projectiles and deadly magics met the transports, destroying two of them and spilling their human and war beast contents out into the waters of the harbor. At the same time, a number of water mages began infusing the water within the harbor with their power, and the sea in front of the dock began to rise, forming another wall for them to overcome.

‘And overcome them we will…’ the Jaguar thought with great relish. He sent a quick mental message to one of his most powerful beastmasters, and a dark shape sped into the harbor, passing below his ship. This shape was enormous, and if the Jaguar cared to analyze its aura, he would’ve sensed it to be at least of the eighth-tier by human standards.

The shape revealed itself to be a massive serpentine fish when it stuck its long, monstrous jaw out of the water wall, looking like some unholy combination of shark and eel, its body covered in dull black scales and its long, alien head covered in dozens of big, pupilless, pitch black eyes. It opened its mouth and a great torrent of water, far more than it could’ve possibly stored within its body, burst from within its maw like fire from a dragon. The massive cetan swept its water breath to and fro, covering the docks, killing many Imperial defenders, and disrupting nearly all of their defensive formations. The Imperial water mages defending the harbor were no exception, and the water wall came crashing down as they died or were forced back.

The Jaguar smiled as his transports then reached the docks and began disgorging their passengers out onto dry land. As the transports emptied themselves, the cetan stuck around for a few minutes, then returned to the open sea, where it continued to consume the Imperial sailors still trying to save themselves from wrecks of their destroyed vessels.

It didn’t take long for the harbor to be secured. After their defenses had been breached, the Imperials made the pragmatic decision to retreat from the harbor to the relative safety of the inner wall, where their Lances could still provide decent cover. The Jaguar could see quite a few civilians in the city being left behind and desperately trying to flee, and his growing smile faltered a little when he noticed a few of the Inquisitors that he’d been forced to bring along hunting them down instead of proceeding with their objectives. Their pegasi made them the fastest troops that the Jaguar had access to, and to see them wasting their time on civilians like this…

“I’m heading to shore,” he said to his ship’s executive officer, and together with his personal guard, he took to the skies—himself flying under his own power, and his guard flying with his own team of pegasi. He was dimly aware that he was about to trespass on Elina’s authority over her Inquisitors, but she was up in the sky commanding her own small force of pegasi, and if she wasn’t going to take proper command of her people, then he was more than willing to do so.

It might’ve been a little hypocritical on his part, but he’d always intended to take command of the push into the city rather than remaining out on the sea, and had planned accordingly. His subordinates knew what they needed to do, and with the command structure he’d built, he was more than confident their objectives would be achieved even with him personally leading the push into the city.

When the Jaguar reached the shore, he didn’t immediately make for the Inquisitors. Instead, he checked in with his subordinate leading the ground forces, the Chief of one of the smaller Clans in his Tribe. He was busy directing the invading tribesmen further into the city with as much organization as possible. Unlike the Inquisitors, they didn’t want to get bogged down sacking the city only to be pushed back by a counterattack from the savages behind the inner wall.

“Karseh!” he shouted as he landed.

“Oh, dearest me, Lord Jaguar!” the ever-polite man replied as he spun in place to greet the Jaguar, the other seventh and eighth-tier warriors around Karseh rendering quick salutes in the manner of their Clans.

“The Inquisitors,” the Jaguar growled, “who let them off their leash?”

“Oh my,” Karseh whispered, his already rather pale skin draining of what little color it had, his head turning back to the city with a look of innocent shock, “they never checked in, My Lord. We just landed and into the city those little ones went!”

The Jaguar growled. “Break off a detachment to bring them back here.”

“At once! Shall I prepare them to be crucified? It doesn’t sit well with me, doing so in sight of the walls, and those I crucify tend to scream loudly enough to give me bad dreams…”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do so, old friend.”

“Oh, what a relief!” Karseh made a show of wiping non-existent sweat off his brow, but the Jaguar knew from experience that Karseh would have absolutely no qualms carrying out any order he gave, even if it were to plunge them into civil war upon their return to Kataigida—the Thunderer likely wouldn’t take stories of crucified Inquisitors well, after all.

The Jaguar waited a few moments for Karseh to follow through on hauling the Inquisitors back to the docks and to finish deploying their ground forces, then asked for a report.

“I was wondering, My Lord,” Karseh began, “have you been keeping an eye on potential reinforcements?”

“As much as I’ve been able to,” the Jaguar replied. The battle took most of his attention, and so he had others like Karseh keeping an eye on the outskirts of the city. Given the number of enchantments blocking magic senses in the region, though, this was easier said than done.

“Oh, that’s not good! Not good at all!” Karseh whispered. In response, the Jaguar, a look of concern breaking across his face, projected his magic senses as far as he was able.

“I can see the army mustering about two days out.”

“Those dastardly brutes have deployed other forces, My Lord!” Karseh said with dramatic trepidation. “Up there!” The brown-haired man pointed upward and roughly north, and after a moment, the Jaguar was able to spot no less than five large arks flying through clouds on their way to Argos, clearly attempting to maintain some element of stealth despite flying at great speed. They were large enough to transport perhaps a thousand individuals, but they’d arrive in a matter of hours, and the Jaguar had no doubt that their best and most powerful were in those arks.

“Looks like we’ll have to make this quick, then,” the Jaguar said with a deep frown, disappointment settling in his stomach like he’d swallowed ice. “Forget about sacking the inner city and focus on destroying the port. Fall back in four hours.”

“My Lord? Are we to leave these children unchastised?”

“No. I’ll see to the inner wall myself. Give them a good scare and kill who I can before pulling back.”

With that, the Jaguar took back to the skies, his personal guard following suit. With them, he had several hundred of his Tribe’s best warriors at his back, and as a ninth-tier mage, he was confident that he had the strength to break through the inner city’s defenses.

However, as he took flight, Karseh hurriedly shouted, “Dearest me, I almost forgot!” The Jaguar paused his takeoff and glanced back downward. “I spotted a couple of Ascended Beasts making their way inside the city only an hour or so ago! A wyvern and a rather lovely-looking bird! Seventh and eighth-tier!”

The Jaguar frowned, but it didn’t stop him. He thanked Karseh for his diligence and continued onward, flying toward the nearest of the inner wall’s gatehouses. A couple of Ascended Beasts wouldn’t make too much difference to the city’s fate as far as he was concerned.

He didn’t have to go too far, the inner walls being less than a quarter of a mile inland from the harbor. However, he did have to keep an eye on the Imperial Lances atop that wall despite being confident that none of them would shoot. He was flying over their city, and he didn’t think they’d risk a missed shot hitting any of their people still in the city, of whom there were still many—his forces were pulling from their homes those foolish enough to have stayed behind and either rounding them up, or, especially in the Inquisitor’s case, slaughtering them indiscriminately. The thieving savages weren’t so without honor that they wouldn’t buy back their people if taken in a raid.

Soon enough, the Jaguar found himself in front of the southern gate of the inner wall. The battle so far had filled the air with titanic clouds of thick smoke, completely covering the sky. The Jaguar could feel the building of lightning magic within, and it wasn’t that hard to not only take control of it, but to add his own.

By the time he’d taken ten steps toward the gate, the sky had filled with golden lightning bolts arcing between clouds of smoke, and the occasional blood red bold that struck the ground around him. The street was torn asunder under such magical assault, and the thunder shook the buildings around him so hard that they began to collapse despite plentiful reinforcement enchantments.

With a flick of his wrist, the Jaguar called a dozen red bolts down upon the gate, each one striking with the full power of a ninth-tier mage. The flash cast everything in stark white for fractions of a second at a time, the thunder shattering glass throughout the city. The gate, however, remained intact, looking hardly worse for wear.

The Jaguar had to stifle some small amount of admiration; he hated the Imperial savages, but they weren’t utterly incompetent when it came to building their fortifications.

So, he took a deep breath and drew from his soul realm a massive hammer, far too large and unwieldy for even a third-tier mage to lift, let alone wield. Yet the Jaguar held it just fine, raising it above his head and attracting all the lightning above.

Bolt after bolt fell upon him, being drawn into the hammer and stored. A dozen, then two dozen, then three, four, and five, and more bolts struck him in a matter of seconds. By the end of it, the hammer was aglow with the contained power of a hundred lightning bolts, and when the Jaguar swung it at the gate, all that terrible power was unleashed.

A single blast of lightning erupted from the hammer and slammed into the gate. Under such heat and power, the enchanted wood and steel shattered, burned, and melted, the concrete frame around it cracked in a thousand places, and the runes within the gate were torn asunder.

The gates didn’t survive his second swing, blasting inward in millions of tiny pieces. A heartbeat later, the dust and gate fragments came blasting back outward towards the Jaguar’s people on a massive cushion of wind.

The Jaguar smiled and flicked a finger, causing that cloud to fly up into the air, revealing the formation of powerful mages standing just inside the broken gate. The heavily-armored man in front radiated ninth-tier power, the same as the Jaguar.

‘The military commander of Argos…’ the Jaguar thought with relish.

He didn’t speak a word, and neither did the commander. They just began calmly walking toward each other, the Jaguar slightly adjusting his grip on his hammer while the commander brandished a large halberd. Their followers advanced behind them. The commander’s entourage was larger, but the hole in the gate negated that advantage, and the Jaguar had great confidence in the skill and experience of his personal guard, who’d been guarding the western shores of Kataigida with him for many years.

Magic began flying all around them as the mages started their fights, but the Jaguar had eyes only for the commander, who reciprocated.

They drew to within fifty feet, and the commander made the first move—he thrust forward with his halberd and sent a powerful wind spear five times the size of his weapon rocketing towards the Jaguar.

The Jaguar countered with an arc of red lightning, slicing the spear in half. He smiled behind his jaguar-shaped helmet as he saw his bolt also dissipate, all of its magic power gone from countering the wind spear.

‘Just the fight I’ve been looking for…’ the Jaguar thought as he wrapped himself in his magic power rose into the air. The commander followed, and a moment later, they were a hundred feet above the ground, staring each other down as their respective forces took to butchering each other with sharp blade and potent magic.

The commander soon vanished in a whirlwind of dust and debris, and the Jaguar called a storm of lightning down upon the twister. The lightning vanished into the twister just as the twister surged forward, tearing at the Jaguar’s defenses.

The Jaguar wasn’t deterred, though, and a torrent of blood red lightning erupted from his body. He stimulated his bloodline, calling upon his most primal power, and four bolts of controlled red lightning extended from his left hand like claws ten feet long. His hammer, meanwhile, began to charge with the lightning from his right hand.

He swung his hammer, sending a wave of lightning to meet the relatively slowly approaching twister, and the magic power of these two attacks detonated in an explosion that blinded the Jaguar’s magic senses for a moment, filling the air above the battle with an opaque cloud of dust, the Jaguar’s lightning claw barely visible to those below.

The Jaguar didn’t even blink, and he quickly dodged with all the speed of a powerful lightning mage as a massive wind snake came snapping out of the cloud. He swiped upward with his lightning claw and the wind snake was sliced in half.

Half a dozen more wind snakes came rushing outward then, and all met the same fate as the Jaguar dodged in and out, rending them all to formless magic and air in barely more than a second.

The Jaguar grinned in delight, but he wasn’t the sort to just take punishment. Like a proper jaguar, he projected his magic senses and found his prey, now flying above him, still hidden in the dust cloud, and charged. At the same time, he pulled his hammer back into his soul realm and conjured another set of lightning claws for his right hand.

Like an animal, he slashed and mauled and lashed out at the commander, now put on the back foot. The older commander barely had the space to launch a handful of wind spears at the Jaguar, let alone conjure another whirlwind or wind snake as the Jaguar kept on him, unrelenting in his attacks, savage and animalistic in his single-minded pursuit of his prey.

The old man was slower and perhaps just a little bit weaker; it was only a matter of time until he slipped up. The Jaguar got him first on his left arm as he raised it to defend himself against one of the Jaguar’s swipes. The Jaguar’s lightning claw was repelled at first by the commander’s enchanted plate armor, but much force was still transferred, knocking the commander off-balance and leaving him open for another attack that raked across his chest, leaving dark lightning burns across the pristine plate.

The Jaguar surged forth, never letting up, and soon he’d broken through the commander’s defenses, heating up his armor to the melting point where he wasn’t outright ripping it off the man’s body, along with copious amounts of lightning-scorched flesh.

Not even five minutes after they’d risen into the air, the commander came crashing back down to the ground as an unrecognizable corpse, rendered little more than a mass of burned flesh and pellets of rapidly-cooling red-hot metal.

The commander’s troops lost heart, but the Jaguar, recognizing many of his own people lying dead or dying on the ground from the battle, descended in a rage, his lust for the hunt not yet sated. He took a few hits, but his armor served him exceptionally well, and he rent and slashed and blasted his way through the Imperial ranks, his personal guard rallying behind him and cementing his push while the Imperials fell before him like a rabbit before a jaguar.

Not even a quarter of an hour after the inner gate had been breached, the defenders had been shattered, rendered into hundreds of broken and bloody corpses strewn around the gate. The area around the gate had been devastated, most of the buildings reduced to little more than dust and splinters from the power of the mages in battle down there.

But the Jaguar barely even noted any of that. All he saw was that the gate had been breached, and his people now had access to the inner city. He was still conscious of the Imperial arks flying toward the city with all haste, meaning he had only a matter of hours left to him, but with the ninth-tier commander of Argos dead, there was only one remaining place that his pride demanded he level.

Slowly, his eyes turned toward the west, toward the fairly close-by Heaven’s Eye enclave.

‘Willful traitors, all…’ the Jaguar thought to himself. ‘Worthless barbarians puppeting the cold corpse of our great Lord…’

The enclave wasn’t unoccupied, and even had a handful of eighth-tier mages guarding it. The man standing in front of the defenders looked quite young, but sure of himself, his golden eyes staring back at the Jaguar with what, to the Jaguar, looked like an arrogant smile playing at his lips.

The Jaguar smiled back, though his helmet blocked the view, and began advancing toward the enclave.