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Still, Leon was more than happy to take that ark as his personal transport, and soon enough, he felt that he’d healed sufficiently to head out. He said goodbye to Elise, leaving her as his representative in Stormhollow.

Cassandra, too, was left behind, much to her chagrin. But she, after getting in contact with her family back in the Sacred Golden Empire, had been officially appointed as the Evergolden ambassador to Leon’s Kingdom, and as someone who represented another country, Leon couldn’t justify bringing her to a warzone.

Of course, Leon wasn’t too thrilled by that idea since Cassandra was, as one of his wives, also one of his Queens, but he supposed it wasn’t that terrible of an arrangement. Marriage alliances were hardly unheard of, where a given spouse acted as one family’s representative inside of another family, but it still annoyed him. If he hadn’t been planning on leaving Aeterna once achieving Apotheosis, he might’ve insisted that their arrangement remained more informal.

So, Elise, Cassandra, and Cassandra’s guards remained in Stormhollow with a force of Tempest Knights to guard them. Leon took the rest of his retainers and the Tempest Knights to Raimondas, where they met up with the assembling army.

It was, in short, massive. Hundreds of thousands of Tribesmen gathered in that one city, raising its population by nearly a quarter. Feeding and housing that many people was difficult and expensive, but Leon was grateful to have the support of the Screaming Eagles, who were more than willing to do what had to be done to avenge Exallos’ death. Temporary barracks were made by earth mages, and nature mages worked overtime to ensure the army had enough food and water.

The biggest concern was just how to get all of those warriors to the Sword. Few of them were strong enough to fly the whole way—or fly at all—so thousands of ships, arks, and war beasts were needed, all of which had their own logistical needs. Thankfully, the Ten Tribes were hardly inexperienced in these matters, so there wasn’t much Leon had to do on an administrative front once he arrived in Raimondas.

Instead, the few days he and his people spent there were filled more with troop inspections, meetings with the various elders and Chiefs leading their Tribes’ warriors and officers of the central army, and making public appearances in the city itself to reassure the people for the war to come.

Wherever he went, Leon was almost surprised to find that he was quite well-received. Huge cheering crowds were the standard sight he saw whenever he went anywhere, even when that visit wasn’t announced ahead of time. It cheered him up immensely, even if he found it mentally taxing enough that he was almost happy when he boarded his ark one more time and led the first task force of the reinforcements out into the Veins of Vigilance.

They were moving separately, not in one massive wave since it took time to load the ships and arks. Leon wanted to emphasize speed, getting the reinforcements to the Sword as quickly as was considered safe since combat operations were ongoing. The large naval battle off the eastern coast, at least, hadn’t kicked off, with neither side apparently willing to commit to the massive battle it would become, but still engaging in smaller skirmishes along the islets and coves of the coast.

For the most part, their movement was uncontested. The seas between the Sword and Kataigida, despite the presence of the Sunlit fleet out in force, were still controlled by the Ten Tribes, so they had a straight shot to the island itself.

It took about a day for the entire task force to reach the Sword from Raimondas. The closest port was also the largest, ensuring rapid deployment once they’d arrived. However, that deployment didn’t take place right away, as the leaders of the Tribal armies were waiting for Leon in that port.

---

Leon swiftly walked through the halls of the large, rather nondescript building that served as the center of administration for the port. Until the island had been taken, the port had been a small, if important and well-defended port for the navies that kept the Ten Tribes on Kataigida, but now that the island was theirs, it had been expanded.

Hundreds of people worked in this building alone, and it seemed like nearly all of them had stopped their work to come and greet Leon when he arrived. However, he did his best to get them working again—during a war, he felt whatever work they were doing would be far, far more important than coming out to greet him.

He was led to the top floor where the main command center and highest-level conference room were located, and there Leon met with the Jaguar and Iron-Striker.

“Your Majesty!” the Jaguar formally shouted, the relief audible in his tone despite the formality. “The Sword is yours!”

Iron-Striker remained quiet, but he regarded Leon warmly, bowing with a smile on his face as Leon entered the room.

“Thank you for the warm greeting, but I think we have some business to see to, don’t we?” Leon asked with a friendly grin. “The Sunlit Emperor won’t kick himself back into the sea, will he?”

The Jaguar chuckled good-naturedly, then led Leon, Iron-Striker, and most of the high-level officers into the secure conference room.

As soon as they sat down, Leon asked, “What’s the status of those arks? The new ones that Sunlit has?”

The Jaguar waited a moment for the door to shut behind them and for the privacy ward to activate before answering. He then activated a light enchantment that projected a three-dimensional illusion of the island onto the table.

“Here’s the current line of contact,” the Jaguar explained as he indicated a mostly-horizontal line around the middle of the island. That line followed the course of a river, with Tribal positions on the south side being on higher ground. “Most bar—Imperial forces are focused either on the line or located along these routes leading back to the ports in the north.” The Jaguar indicated two roads, one of them running back north in the center of the island while the other followed the western coast.

“The arks that the Sunlit Emperor has been using are based in these three forts,” the Jaguar continued, indicating three inland strongpoints about a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles north of the point of contact. “They aren’t used often, only being called in when Imperial regulars are unable to do a job. Even then, we’ve been holding the current line for more than a week and those arks haven’t moved.”

“Are they scared of losing these assets?” Marcus softly inquired.

“Possibly. The lines of contact have been reinforced by powerful mages and arks of our own, so the Imperials might be hesitant to risk too much.”

“That hasn’t stopped them from using infantry, powerful mages of their own, and many war beasts in costly assaults,” Iron-Striker added. “They’re using stationary Lance emplacements to support themselves, as well as artillery support from their ships in the west, but we’ve been holding our ground and keeping them north of this river.”

“They might be taking a breather,” a seventh-tier Tiger said. “Their initial invasion cost tens of thousands of lives, at least, and their remaining offensive potential without those arks doesn’t seem to be enough to continue taking ground.”

“But they have reinforcements inbound, too,” the Jaguar said. “We’re hoping that with ours reaching the island first, we’ll be able to strike first and recapture some favorable territory before they bring their fresh armies to bear.”

“We’re going to have to take out those arks first, though,” Iron-Striker said as he gave Leon a pointed look.

“That’s what I’m going to focus on,” Leon replied. “I have a few ideas, but let’s go over the rest of the strategy first…”

Over the next hour, the Jaguar and the other Tribal officers in the room gave Leon and his people a framework for how they wanted their plans to go, along with alterations made based on how any potential offensives went, and whether or not those Thunderbird arks were still in play.

While Leon considered himself far from a rank novice in matters of war, the kind of war they were fighting on the Sword was markedly different from what he’d fought in the Bull Kingdom. Even the campaign in the Serpentine Isles, which featured the usage of air power and Flame Lances, didn’t quite come close.

So, while he had a few questions, he largely didn’t demand alterations to the current strategy. He just focused on the one key aspect that he felt he could unambiguously help with: those arks.

From the conference room, Leon projected his magic senses north and quickly brought the forts that the arks were stationed within into sight. They were great fortifications on high ground, surrounded by plains or swamps. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to see much more since his magic senses were disrupted the moment they brushed up against the heavily-enchanted walls.

Leon wanted those arks. He really wanted those arks. He wanted them so badly that he could almost taste it. He kept it in mind that they might be beyond capturing, but he wanted to try.

So, after some planning and debate, it was decided that he would make an attempt on one of them. The arks were mostly spread across the line, but that didn’t mean they were too vulnerable. The light cruiser, one destroyer, and the scout ark were being kept in the middle of the three forts, with the remaining two destroyers on the flanks. Any threat to those flanking destroyers—themselves heavily defended by tough fixed defenses, thousands of Sunlit troops, and several Sunlit arks—could be answered by those three central arks moving out in response. What was more, the destroyer in the west was close enough to the sea that the Sunlit Navy could lend fire support if any attempt was made on that fort.

Compounding those issues was the fact that these three forts were still far behind enemy lines, making any attempt to seize the arks militarily almost unfeasible. If Leon wanted any of those arks, he’d have to move with a relatively small and tough force that could sneak past the enemy’s frontlines, through all the defenses covering the arks, and then make off with one without being shot down.

A tall order, to be sure, but Leon was willing to try. He was fine with waiting until they could set better conditions for such a raid or until they had a better plan, but he wanted to try soon.

Unfortunately, ‘soon’ would have to be postponed; the meeting ended soon after, but as the ships and arks were still being unloaded, the Sunlit Empire attacked. With Leon’s people receiving their relief force sooner than the Imperials did, it seemed they decided that they had to do something, and so the naval forces in the east finally decided to make their move to cut the Sword off from Kataigida.

And that was not something that Leon could let happen.

---

In a war of this scale, sneaking up on an enemy was nearly impossible. Too many powerful mages with magic senses measured in the thousands of miles, not to mention all other signs of mass movement.

With that in mind, Jacopo didn’t think he did that badly. He’d maneuvered the ships under his command well, taking the Sky Devils by surprise as his advance force dealt with the outlying scouts. But such maneuvers can only go on for so long, and soon enough, all of the Sky Devils’ dread ships were turning in the direction of his fleet. Their terrifying weapons were stronger and more versatile than Imperial Lances, and their crews were fanatical. Jacopo had seen their ferocity first-hand in his long life, and while it pained him to admit, the upcoming battle terrified him.

The twelve enemy warships that were now on their way to the bottom of the sea did lift his spirits, though.

He projected his magic senses again, his ninth-tier magic pushing them as far as they needed, taking in every rock in the water and every grain of sand on the beach. He saw the dread ships assembling miles further south and put his main fleet into a wedge formation, his flagship just behind the tip. They’d fall upon the Sky Devils with all the anger and fury of those who could see the final end to this bitter generational conflict on the horizon. Covering their advance would be a dozen war arks that their great Emperor had assigned to the east—not that Jacopo expected much from them given the Sky Devils had an equal number on their side.

But he, like nearly everyone else in the task force, was ready to end this long and bloody war, this conflict that had gone on for hundreds of generations. With their Emperor unsealing the Imperial vaults, victory was now assured.

And yet, even as they sailed on toward their inevitable victory, Jacopo couldn’t help but feel a small amount of hesitation. He knew his Emperor, and while he had to almost physically stop himself from judging the monarch he was sworn to, the man’s behavior gave him some misgivings—especially in recent months.

The Emperor had taken to concealing himself, preventing anyone from seeing him and giving orders from behind an enchanted curtain. It was a far cry from the usual flamboyant man that Jacopo knew, the man who demanded the attention of everyone around him. Jacopo, despite his status as one of only about a dozen ninth-tier mages in his Empire, hadn’t seen the Emperor since before the tragic Sky Devil raid that had only just barely been repelled at great cost—Jacopo still grieved for his fallen comrades, and a fire burned in his heart for vengeance.

But the Emperor still hadn’t been seen since then, and with a strange change in behavior—the man was less obviously licentious and far more driven… and cruel—there was a part of Jacopo that wondered if it was even still the Sunlit Emperor who was giving any orders. Another part of him asked him how much he cared if whoever this Emperor was led them to victory.

For the time being, he put it out of his mind, forcing himself to focus on the battle. He’d find out the truth of the matter at some point, but that could come after they’d achieved victory in their great crusade.

It wasn’t long before the advance flotillas made contact with each other. As an opening, each side’s Lances fired upon the other from a distance of many miles, sinking many ships. Two dozen Sky Devil ships of varying size were sent to the bottom of the sea, at the cost of twenty-seven Imperial ships—each one a terrible loss.

As the fleets drew to within five miles, other weapons began being deployed. Personal magic from the mages aboard the ships was exchanged; powerful mages took to the air for one-on-one combat; and most terrifying of all, the seas themselves began to roil and churn as water mages took their battle below the surface. Despite the latter, several enormous war beasts made their presence known by destroying entire ships—several krakens tore smaller ships apart with apparent ease, while three gigantic whales targeted the larger ships.

For a while, it seemed like the Imperials had the advantage, especially once the arks engaged far above, firing upon each other with their terrible weapons. Several of the Sky Devil arks, however, projected shields of light that stopped most of the incoming Imperial weapons fire before returning fire with new Lances. Their projectiles weren’t balls of molten stone or metal, but tiny bolts of iron no larger than Jacopo’s arm, yet they were launched with such speed that they tore enormous holes in the sides of the Imperial arks.

Jacopo’s heart sank faster than any of the ships around as first one, then three, and then six arks were shot down within ten minutes of the battle proper beginning. But just when it seemed that he would have to order a hasty retreat or a change in tactics, a titanic aura exploded outward from the largest ship in the fleet, the ship farthest in the back that spat Lance fire faster than any other platform in the battle.

The Sunlit Emperor himself rose into the air, his entire body clad in shining golden armor, his radiant aura suppressing nearly everything else in the area. Four more of Jacopo’s brothers-in-arms rose with him, each of their ninth-tier auras shining powerfully even with their Emperor making his move.

His great Emperor drew a massive golden sword from his soul realm and swung it at the Sky Devils. A wave of lightning larger than any Jacopo had seen before crashed down upon the dread ships, tearing many to pieces and vaporizing their crews.

The Emperor swung again, and three of the Sky Devils’ arks were knocked from the sky.

Pride in his Empire and his Emperor bloomed in Jacopo’s chest as he reminded himself that they were going to end this war. The Sky Devils were going to fall before the mighty armies of the Sunlit Emperor, and then they could deal with their feckless neighbors who’d abandoned them in their moment of triumph.

Jacopo guided his ships further into the battle, commanding with skill and determination. Above him, the Sunlit Emperor provided more cover than any singular weapon system, almost single-handedly ensuring that their cause continued.

But then the early afternoon sky darkened in an instant, silver-blue lightning exploded downward to destroy a handful of Imperial ships, and some terrible new Sky Devil war beast fell from the heavens, its damn near tenth-tier aura clashing with the Emperor’s. It was a massive eagle with silver feathers, save for a long crest of blue feathers that fell from its brow down to the middle of its back.

The Sunlit Emperor fell back as his four ninth-tier bodyguards charged. Seeing the Emperor fall back so quickly struck a chord of terror in Jacopo. Suddenly, victory didn’t seem quite so likely anymore.