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“It’s good to be back,” Leon replied with a professional smile plastered across his face. He wasn’t particularly happy to be in the Director’s office, but the man had reached out personally for a meeting. Leon had only been back in Occulara for a day and wanted to focus on his projects, but when the Director himself reaches out, he had to respond positively.

“Leon,” Penelope whispered in greeting.

Leon gave her a more genuine smile and head nod. “So,” he said, “how have things been in my absence?”

“Fine,” the Director replied, his aged features utterly impassive. “Not great, but fine.”

“The war in the south hasn’t gone anywhere,” Penelope added, to Leon’s gratitude. Whenever they’d had a meeting like this, Leon had always been more concerned about the Sky Devils than just about anything else, so it didn’t surprise him at all that she picked up on what he was more specifically asking about.

“The Imperials,” the Director said, his emotions still subdued, but letting just enough spite into his voice for Leon to pick up on it, “are still keeping the Sky Devils contained within the Sword. The shipyards have managed to recoup most of their losses five years ago, but now the Sky Devils are dug into the Sword, and dislodging them has proven a task beyond even Imperial power.”

Leon smiled. The situation wasn’t ideal, but as far as things went, it wasn’t bad, either. Sure, fewer Sky Devils meant a smaller potential force he might be able to recruit, but since they weren’t yet in his corner, nothing could be counted on.

Still, the fact that the Imperials were making so little headway against the Sky Devils was a bit surprising.

“Do we know why the Sky Devils are giving them so much trouble?” Leon asked. “I mean, I’m sure the tactical and strategic situations are terrible, but I would’ve figured all four Empires with their focus—”

“Hardly all four Empires,” the Director interjected. “The only one that has committed a substantial force has been the Sunlit Empire, and even then, they’ve been conservative with their troop deployments. Only assaults with overwhelming force have been approved so far, and even then, they’ve not made much progress. The Sunlit Emperor himself hasn’t yet personally involved himself in the war, either, further restricting their ability to act.”

Leon lightly scowled. There were battles that, in his opinion, the Sunlit Emperor could’ve tipped in Imperial favor if he’d only been there. It wasn’t like the Sky Devils had anything or anyone that could single-handedly stop him, though they could with the proper application of combined arms. But their problem was that if the Sunlit Empire were to manage to tie up those other resources or launch a large enough attack, they’d have no answer for the Emperor himself.

So, and not for the first time, Leon wondered just what the Sunlit Emperor was up to that was so important that the war in the south was taking up his time.

“He’s still preoccupied with whatever ‘personal project’ he’s been working on, I suppose?” he asked.

“As far as we can tell,” Penelope replied. “And so far, we’ve been unable to figure out just what exactly he’s trying to do… which is disturbing. I wouldn’t have thought the Imperials could hide anything from us so completely, and yet here we are.”

“Case in point,” the Director said, “Leon, the Grand Druid made mention of a celebration in Evergold in the near future when she last visited your villa, did she not?”

“Yes,” Leon said, cocking his eyebrow as he did. He didn’t think the Director was trying to actively spy on him, so he wondered just how he knew that, though he left the question remain unasked.

Fortunately, the Director seemed in a mood to explain. “I thought so,” he said with a sagely nod of his head. “Evergold recently uncovered something close to the border with Ilion. Something that took our people a long time to identify given just how secret they were keeping the site.” The Director nodded to Penelope, who took over the explanation.

“They found an ark, Leon,” she bluntly stated.

Leon blinked in surprise, both at the value of such a thing, and also that it was apparently such a secret. Since entering into the bargain with the Grand Druid and Lord Protector for his help in activating some of his Clan’s old legacies in return for protection and support against anyone like the Keeper, he’d helped both Empires to reactivate a couple arks.

‘Though those were a bit on the small, old, and decrepit side,’ he silently noted.

“What more do we know about it?” he asked.

“It’s big and powerful,” Penelope said. “Likely heavily armed, though our contacts haven’t been able to confirm this. We believe it’s probably a war ark that went down during the chaos following your Clan’s fall from grace.”

Leon lightly scowled.

“They’ll want you to try and activate it,” the Director growled. “It must be said that a find of this magnitude is unprecedented. War arks are nothing new, relatively speaking, but one hasn’t been found intact in more than ten thousand years. Those war arks that have been found haven’t been operable, and only serve as inspiration and research material.”

“Well…” Penelope murmured as she sent a pointed glance the Director’s way.

Leon, picking up on the obvious look, asked, “You have war arks of my Clan?”

The Director didn’t immediately answer, but when he did, he stated, “I’m still nervous about showing you the arks we have. So long as this war in the south goes on, there will be no small amount of scrutiny paid to you, Leon. But with this new situation in the north, it seems we have little choice. Before you go to the Sacred Golden Empire, I would show you what we have, Leon. You should be prepared to inspect whatever it is that Evergold has found.”

“… And because they’re arks of my Clan,” Leon said. “You weren’t going to forget that part, were you? Many would confirm my claim to those arks, remember…”

The Director gave him a withering glare but didn’t rise to his challenge, despite Leon’s provocative smile.

“We’d like to bring you to our arks now,” Penelope quickly said, all but throwing herself between Leon and her father. “Let’s not get too carried away before then.”

Leon’s smile softened, and he said to the Director. “Just a little upset that it’s taken this long to see those arks. Was just making a joke.”

The Director grunted, then turned toward one of his office’s walls and magically interacted with it. An otherwise imperceptible door slid open, and without another word, the Director strolled right into it.

“The arks are this way,” Penelope said. “Or at least, our ride to the arks is this way.”

“We’re going just like that?” Leon exclaimed as he fell in beside her. “I would’ve preferred to do this tomorrow or something. Would’ve come more prepared…”

‘Like with Nestor…’ he thought. If it were analyzing any enchantments or pieces of magical engineering his Clan left behind, the dead man had much greater skill than Leon thought he did. He was excited as hells to see these arks, but without Nestor, he worried his own skills wouldn’t be adequate to know what he was looking at.

“Better to do this quickly,” Penelope explained. “People know that you were here, even if these meetings aren’t supposed to be public knowledge. If you left, only to return soon after—breaking with our established patterns—only for all of us to then disappear for a long while, then that might attract a few buzzards, flying too far above us to do anything about.”

Leon nodded in understanding. “How long will this take, then?”

“That’ll be up to you, I think, but we probably shouldn’t go beyond just a few hours. We have enough eyes trying to track us.”

Leon nodded again, agreeing with her at least in principle.

Together, they followed the Director through several well-appointed private hallways, and eventually to the Director’s personal hangar. Once inside, Leon gawked a bit at the sleek, surprisingly small ark waiting for them before boarding. He watched as closely as he could as the enchantments within it fired up and the magic engines propelled them, invisibly, out of the hanger and out into the skies above Occulara.

So intent was he on inspecting the interior of the ark that he barely even noticed they’d reached their destination until the ark touched down and was lowered down into the massive underground arkyard that housed all of the arks that the Director was concealing from the world.

“Finally back with us, are you?” Penelope quipped as Leon returned to reality.

“Was it that obvious?” Leon asked.

“Your eyes were practically hanging out of their sockets the entire way here,” she replied.

Leon smirked and shrugged, but as soon as the ark’s doors opened and he saw what was waiting for them, his expression immediately twisted into one of abject awe.

The arkpad they’d landed on was at one end of a massive chamber, and several buildings stood at the other. There were three more arkpads on each side of the chamber in between Leon’s group and the buildings, each with an ark resting upon it. These arks were all bigger than the Director’s, and each one was seemingly bigger than the last.

The crown jewel amongst this collection, however, was the largest of the arks, a true behemoth of a thing that looked large enough to demand a permanent crew of thousands. Its arkpad by itself was almost larger than the other six combined. It was at least two thousand feet long and shaped like a narrow arrowhead. However, the front tip of the ark was curved downward, and with its enormous landing gear, the entire ark had a rather avian appearance that appealed to the vanity within Leon that he typically tried to ignore.

Leon stared at each of these arks, but his eyes almost always return to the big one. Even with its rather subdued aesthetics, it was still the most stylish of all the arks, all of which seemed to eschew aesthetics in their entirety in favor, Leon hoped, of a complete focus on functionality.

“This is…” he whispered, unable to finish the utterance.

“I had the same reaction when I first saw all of this,” Penelope observed with amusement. “Take your time, Leon, but the faster we get this quick inspection over with, the better.”

“Right, right,” Leon responded as he forced himself out of this reverie. “Let’s go see what we can see. How much of these arks has Heaven’s Eye been able to access?”

“As you may be able to see,” the Director intoned, “we don’t have that many people working here. Even for arks as large as these are, we can’t risk having a large staff and having someone leak their locations. Every person we hire to work here is one more possible point of failure, another potential link for the Empires to discover. And should they discover this place, then they’ll try and seize it. This many ancient arks in our hands present a massive problem for Imperial power, not a single one would allow us to keep it.”

“Then they won’t find out about it,” Leon declared.

“Let’s hope you’re right. But the faster we get these arks operational, the better.”

“Then let’s get back to my question: how many systems of these arks have you managed to turn on? I get that you’re short-staffed, but you had the aid of vampires and more than enough years to get somewhere…”

“For the most part, we haven’t gotten far,” the Director explained as they stepped down from the arkpad they’d landed on and began walking toward the first of the ancient arks. “We’ve managed to access most areas within each ark, but other than their life-support systems and a few other noncritical systems, we haven’t been able to get far. These things are secured with powerful blood magic, and even though it isn’t much, we only managed to get as far as we did thanks to the expertise in blood magic that the vampires gave us.”

Leon frowned but refrained from saying anything, even though he had a lot he could say about it. He’d just be rehashing old arguments at this point, and with so many of the high-level vampires on the plane dead, there wasn’t much point to it.

“So we’re just going to hope that my blood will be enough to get them up and running? A lot of trust you seem to have in my Clan’s engineering skills.”

“The arks are fully functional,” the Director countered. “Or at least, such is our best guess judging by what we’ve found inside. They’re well-preserved machines, and if it wasn’t apparent, your Clan knew how to build things to last when such robustness was needed. These were military vehicles, so such robustness was needed.”

“Then let’s see what we can see…” Leon whispered and approached the first of the arks. It was the smallest, but even that was only relatively; it was still massive, being larger than any contemporary ark he’d seen active on Aeterna so far. It didn’t have any obvious weapon emplacements, but that didn’t mean much as far as he was concerned.

It was, as most arks were, shaped roughly like an arrowhead, though a bit flatter and broader than most he’d seen. The primary entrance was up a long ramp near the prow, and Leon practically skipped right on up. There were a few Heaven’s Eye guards nearby, but he paid them no mind. What was more interesting to him were the thick security doors at the top of the ramp made of highly enchanted steel. Even though the ark was apparently not active and more than eighty-thousand years old, there was still a startling amount of magic power running through the doors. He was a ninth-tier mage, and he didn’t think he’d be able to force his way through if he tried.

Fortunately, as soon as he stopped to investigate, an arkyard worker came running forward saying, “I’ve got the do—”

Before he could finish his statement, a rune made of light flashed over the doors for a moment, Leon felt the slight charge in the air of lightning magic, and then the doors simply swung open, revealing the long corridor behind it. At the same time, the ark seemed to almost come alive as magic power suddenly started flowing through it at much greater volume, and the ark’s internal lights powered on.

“Looks like it recognized you,” Penelope whispered as she stopped right next to Leon.

“How far have you explored inside?” Leon asked, focused entirely on the task at hand.

“Not far,” the Director replied as he waved off the yard worker. “All of the control rooms for the most critical rooms remained shut tightly, no matter how hard we tried to access them.”

“Then let me try,” Leon said as he strode inside. “Just lead me anywhere you haven’t been.”

Following the Director’s directions, Leon waltzed down the halls, glee filling his heart as doors opened for him to reveal what seemed like barracks, gathering halls, engineering compartments, and several dozen other rooms whose purpose he could only guess at. But finally, they reached the first room that the Director steered them towards.

The door was sealed by a particularly large bulkhead and led into a secured lock chamber. To the right was what was clearly a guard station, while at the other end of the chamber was another thick bulkhead that only opened when the first closed behind them.

The other side was almost underwhelming given this level of security, consisting of a fairly cramped room of only a dozen or so control consoles. The very center of the room had a large circular table with a glass surface that glowed as Leon approached. Above the table’s glass appeared a light projection of the entire ark with several areas on the wings highlighted. After taking a look at the other consoles as they lit up, Leon guessed what they were looking at.

“This… is a weapon’s station. I think most of the ark’s weapons were controlled here. The big ones, at least.”

“Then, we’d best not touch anything carelessly,” Penelope whispered.

“Especially without knowing what we’re doing,” Leon replied with some dismay. The opportunity to inspect genuine weapons from his Clan during their heyday was a dream come true, yet he didn’t have the time.

Together with Penelope and the Director, he continued to explore the ark, eventually finding the main control room. It was located in the very center of the ark, as far as he could tell, and seemed almost a throne room, if any throne room could be considered such when it was so bereft of decoration.

The room was rectangular, with one large seat for, Leon presumed, the ark’s commander, in the back. More than two dozen more consoles were arranged around it, and each console had at least three seats around it. There were no windows, and the walls were simple steel plates, lacking any and all ornamentation. It was a spartan chamber, and one that Leon was rather surprised by, given his Clan’s more ostentation tastes, in his experience.

‘Though, this is just the smallest of the arks,’ he noted.

“This is…” the Director whispered as he took a few steps past Leon to take in the control room, all of its control consoles online and ready, “… incredible…”

Leon agreed though he was loath to admit it aloud. It was going to take a lot of inspection just to figure out what consoles did what and what information they shared, let alone how to operate this smallest ark, but with Leon’s help, Heaven’s Eye could get started as soon as possible. What was more important was making sure that Leon himself didn’t have to be present at all times while this testing took place.

So, after taking in the sights a bit more, Leon, Penelope, and the Director continued their exploration of the ark, finding many more compartments of interest, though little of it was immediately identifiable to Leon. He thought they found some armories, though most were empty save for a few swords and shields. More interesting, though more opaque to him, were the engineering compartments, as the magic engines and all the other machinery that allowed the ark to function were as much mechanical as they were magical, and even the magical parts were so advanced that he could barely understand what he was looking at.

It seemed Nestor was right when he said that ark enchantments were far beyond him, as much as it pained him to admit. For now, though, Leon contented himself with this quick inspection, and soon he and his companions were back at the foot of the ramp. The ark powered down as soon as he left, unfortunately, which meant that they’d need to figure something out which didn’t involve him coming back every time they wanted to turn on the lights.

But before they could do that, they had five more arks to explore…