The Storm King-Chapter 1169: Beginning the Last Push

When Leon returned to Kaifa and Nora’s cells the day after making his recruitment pitch, both signed on with an eagerness that he didn’t quite expect, but wholly appreciated. Still, he wasn’t going to give them any unearned privileges, especially after proving that they weren’t above providing his enemies with weapons, so he decided to assign them a guard of a dozen Tempest Knights who would keep them under control in Shatufan until they could be escorted to Artorion.

With that win under his belt, Leon was further buoyed with the news that Aurichalcum production was restarting after having been halted by the city’s recent instability—Leon couldn’t help but feel more than a little responsible for that particular effect given his looting of the warehouses. Production rates were a fraction of what they were only a year ago, but both the Ravens and Kyros assured him—however reluctantly on the Azadan’s part—that production would be back to its previous levels in less than two years, especially with Leon’s reassurance that he would purchase every scrap and flake of the material that could be produced.

Leon understood that a guaranteed market was always good for building up production capacity, but directed investment was good, too—to that end, he also promised Kyros that he would direct significant financial resources to rebuild that capacity. As he prepared to formally turn the city over to Marcus and proceed with his campaign, he began that process by creating hundreds of pounds of storm crystal and having all of it cut into roughly equal pieces that could be used as currency.

‘I really need to build a good mint,’ he’d silently noted. Given how Shatufan and Archelaus had both accepted it as payment for Aurichalcum, he figured others would accept it, too. ‘Perhaps silver notes for internal currency, and storm crystal for foreign trade?’

He’d just have to run it by his Steward, first. Unfortunately, Ipatameni was still on Aeterna, and would likely be staying there for several more migration waves, so getting his opinion on this financial move was going to be tricky.

Dwelling on that issue wouldn’t get him far, so over the evening, he pivoted to focusing on more pressing concerns. He deployed the Eagle Clan which constituted most of the Eagle Tribesmen in his army to scout Krizos, trusting in the speed of their wings to keep them safe. He hadn’t been hearing much news from Krizos, though he wasn’t noticing much with his magic senses. As far as he could tell, Krizos was behaving almost offensively normally despite the conflict they were now in. No arks covered the sky, nor were there warships in Treasure Lake. Armies weren’t gathering in the dark fields of the Shaded Plain, nor were those living out in the country fleeing with all the possessions they could carry to fortified towns and Krizos itself.

Krizos wasn’t even trying to get in contact with him, which he found almost insulting. He had no special dislike for the city as he did for Shatufan, so he would’ve been more than amenable to negotiations, but it seemed they decided against such actions.

‘They’ll sing when Xanthippe shows up with the fleet,’ Leon thought with some amount of anticipation and regret—he both reveled in the power of his fleet to take such control over the Far West, and wished he could be there to witness Krizos’ capitulation with his own eyes. As it was, while Xanthippe was leading the fleet, he’d be in the north, bringing Lancefoot to heel.

Not that Lancefoot looked like it would need much work—Mountainfall had truly ruined the city, leaving it with little in the way of prospects. The city’s entire economy was built around that flying mountain and all of its orbiting floating islands. Kavad’s Lance had not only provided the city with a spectacular tourist attraction but also great natural resources in the form of beasts, their byproducts, and plant life. Without the Lance, Lancefoot had little reason to be as large as it was.

‘Save for its location…’ Leon noted. Lancefoot was in the perfect spot to control Stormshroud Bay, which opened out into the King’s Ocean. Not far from Stormshroud Bay, relatively speaking, was the southeastern coast of the Burning Lands, while a channel further northeast connected the King’s Ocean with the Speckled Ocean that lay to the north of the Storm Lands.

Lancefoot would be Leon’s gateway to these regions, a grand port connecting his Kingdom to several other important regions of the Nexus. It was easy to forget that while he and his people could use arks freely, nonstate actors and magically weaker private merchants—those who form the backbone of trading networks—were unlikely to travel or transport their wares using arks. Even in the Nexus where the average magical tier was higher than on Aeterna, most mages weren’t strong enough to have completely unfettered access to their soul realms, and they certainly didn’t have access to strategic assets like arks. Those people would find the Bolt Mountains an intimidating barrier and would need a place like Lancefoot to enter his Kingdom.

The city had rapidly contracted since Mountainfall, as far as he could tell, and not simply from the sudden release of monsters into the city from the fallen mountain and islands. That had been largely contained, though the fallen mountain itself and the remains of the larger islands still appeared to be dangerous. Those who remained in the city, he figured, who hadn’t fled into the country or left on the first ship, ought to be willing to accept his offer of vassalization.

Hopefully.

With these plans running through his head, a rush of excitement and eagerness ran through Leon. His conquests, such as they were, were almost finished. If nothing unexpected happened with Krizos and Lancefoot, then he’d be able to quickly return to Artorion and focus his attention back on the establishment of that city and the migration of his people.

‘Not long, now…’ he thought with a wild grin. ‘Two more steps and it’ll be time to relax. Two more steps…’

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The ceremony to hand off Shatufan to Marcus was mercifully brief. Leon only reiterated his desire for the city to be at peace, and that he expected all of the remaining Azadan—who were all present—to support Marcus in bringing peace and prosperity back to the city. Then he formally declared Marcus to be the Exarch of the city. Marcus bowed and graciously accepted the posting, as did the Chiefs of the three Clans that Leon was leaving under his command.

Then Leon gave the order to Xanthippe to deploy the fleet. She was still smarting a bit from how the army had treated the city, but Leon didn’t blame her for their behavior—and was quietly a little flattered and gratified that they would fly off the handle so completely from his possible death. Regardless, he trusted her to see to the conquest of Krizos honorably and decisively and made sure to tell her as much.

The Lioness held herself with all the pride expected of one of her bloodline and departed with the kind of viciously determined look that almost made Leon question his faith in her. Almost.

That left those who would follow him to Lancefoot. This amounted to his friends, family, the Tempest Knights that were still with him, and Bolt in Shadow. While depriving the fleet of its most powerful ark was a potentially risky move, Leon didn’t think that Krizos had the power to threaten the fleet anyway, and wanted his flag ark with him to make the proper impression upon those in Lancefoot.

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Knowing that he had left Shatufan in capable hands, he departed Shatufan heading north.

This was a markedly different route than the one he’d taken to the city in the past, taking him over a part of the Shaded Plain that he’d not laid eyes upon before. For the most part, the bleak region was about the same as what he was used to, but due east of the mist-shrouded Lake of the Lost lay something else nestled in a shallow valley.

The valley itself was lost in a dark mist, as if a storm cloud had descended from the sky to the earth, and what lay within could only be glimpsed when an occasional lightning bolt illuminated the interior. Even Leon’s magic senses couldn’t penetrate this cloud.

He could see small buildings—homes, perhaps—within. The place couldn’t be larger than an average rural village, but at its center, he momentarily caught sight of a large square and a statue standing in the center. The statue was of a man with his arms reaching toward the sky—or maybe the Origin Spark—in a pose of standing supplication. Most of the lightning bolts that gave Leon these brief glimpses into the village struck this life-sized statue’s raised arms, yet seemed to do no damage to it.

Surrounding the statue were well-ordered rows of bones, which looked quite human to Leon’s eyes in those short moments when he could actually see them. It looked like a thousand corpses had been lain in neat rows before this statue and left there, their bodies exposed to the elements, yet apparently untouched by scavengers who might’ve been expected to drag them off to be eaten elsewhere. Some of the skeletons were disturbingly small, yet all had runic carvings on their foreheads, plain to see with no flesh in the way.

A strong temptation burned within Leon to bring his ark to a halt so that he could explore this stomach-turning place, but as he reached out with his power, the dark mist resisted him fiercely. He called a lightning bolt from the sky to cut through it, but his lightning just rolled off the mist’s outer surface.

Despite his curiosity, Leon decided not to risk anything when he was so close to finishing his campaign and moved on from this place. He could explore later, when he had more time.

Not far to the north of this place was the rough edge of the Paleholt forest, and then just north of that lay Lancefoot.

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It would take at least another day to reach it from the strange village, so Leon decided to spend some time in his soul realm. He had a suit of armor to replace, and he was meticulous in designing its successor. He’d last made his armor when he was still living in Occulara, and between his studies under Nestor, his discussions with the Ravens, and his friendship with Mari’Kha, he’d learned so much more about enchanting that the new design was going to make the previous suit look like little more than a runic circle.

And that wasn’t even getting into what he could do with his new materials. Storm crystal, cloud glass, thunder wood, Aurichalcum, Lumenite, Titanstone, and most important of them all, Adamant. If he wasn’t invincible by the time the new suit was finished, he’d be mightily disappointed.

Such was his intention on opening his eyes in his soul realm, but he found the Thunderbird already there, quietly staring out into the Mists of Chaos roughly in the direction of the Great Black Dragon.

“Ancestor,” Leon stated in polite greeting. “Did something happen?”

[Hm?] she responded, not even turning her avian face in his direction. [Does something have to have happened for me to be here?]

“No,” Leon hurriedly replied. “You just look… distracted.”

She clicked her beak and didn’t respond, so Leon didn’t press the issue.

“So…” he said a little awkwardly. Not entirely sure how to continue the conversation, or if he even really wanted to, he asked, “How do you think I’ve been doing so far? I’ve taken control of the Finger Lakes and their cities, along with Rolor’s Highcastle. And Alhamachim before that. Seems a good start to my Kingdom’s time in the Nexus.”

His Ancestor fluffed her feathers and slapped her wings against her body in a clear show of annoyance.

[It could be better,] she replied, the snarl in her mental voice clear enough. [I’ve long cautioned you against appearing weak, Leon. Strength is the greatest asset you can have, and you have that in this region of the Nexus. No one can stand against you in battle. You should be leveraging that advantage more than you are. Your enemies should be stomped into the ground so completely that their descendants wake in cold sweat at the thought of defying your commands.]

“That seems… extreme,” Leon stated with a long frown. He pulled up a chair and crossed a leg over his knee, then rested his chin in a hand propped up on the chair’s armrest. “There’s been little battle so far. Or at least, not as much as my gains would suggest. My enemies that have met me in battle have been broken, and those shows of strength have allowed me to take other cities without a fight.”

[You were indulgent to leave them with so many privileges,] the Thunderbird chided. [Shatufan was the most… acceptable. After your enemies have been defeated, you must subjugate them entirely. Break their spirits and destroy their practices. If you leave them with anything, any shred of identity, then it will grow and undermine your authority. If your enemy identifies more with the defeated than their new masters, they will always strive to regain their freedom.]

“Treating the conquered in that way may just inspire such rebellion,” Leon argued, his frown growing deeper. “By using mercy and employing leniency, I can engender goodwill among those who now call me King.”

[Their children will not remember your mercy or leniency. All they will see are their most recent grievances. The privileges you award them will become standard, hardly worth noticing, and their responsibilities will chafe as they see their treasure leave their lands and enter your treasury.]

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

The Thunderbird, despite her relatively inexpressive avian face, still wore such a dark expression that Leon almost shivered when he beheld it.

[This was a long time ago,] she explained. [I had won the favor of the Iron Needle but had not yet achieved Apotheosis. I was a Queen, an Empress, a Goddess on my home plane. On Minos…]

She trailed off for a moment, her fury at this otherwise long-forgotten slight momentarily set aside.

But when that moment was over, her wrath returned.

[A Clan of serpents, as deceitful and duplicitous as their lineage would imply, had been conquered. I destroyed their army in the field, and in response, their entire Kingdom surrendered to me. I awarded them many privileges in return for their surrender, confident that they would become loyal to me as a result.

[I was not rewarded with loyalty. Instead, they plotted and schemed against me, now knowing that they could not win against me in open battle. I left their power structure largely intact, and they were able to coordinate their sedition. I left them their practices and cultural traditions, and all it did was remind them of what they once were, of the heights they had once stood at, of the Kingdom they once ruled.

[As a result, they never integrated into my Kingdom. They only ever sought to undermine it. Their cultural recollection of who they were and what they had lost was not destroyed, and I lost half a century to it when they rebelled. I had been on the cusp of achieving Apotheosis when those fork-tongued saurians slaughtered my governors and massacred my armies. The damage they did in a coordinated strike across my Kingdom was immense.

[I crushed them. I afforded them no more mercy. I threw their Princess from the cliffs of their palace. I impaled their Prince on the peak of Sword Mountain. I slaughtered their armies and forbade the survivors from ever awakening their blood again.

[Even then, it took more than two generations before they began to see themselves more as my subjects than as citizens of their fallen Kingdom. In all the conquests I led afterward, I never made the same mistake. My new subjects were broken and made to be obedient and loyal. And now you find yourself in the same position as I once did.]

“Manuchehr’s dead,” Leon stated. “The lynchpin for resistance has been crushed. If I make sure that those who remain are properly incentivized to participate in my Kingdom rather than strive to make their own, then they’ll remain loyal. If they are made to see that the quickest and easiest path to personal advancement is working within the system that I build, then that is what they will do. That is how they will be integrated, not by leaving them broken in the dirt, unable to remember who they were before I came along.”

Again, the Thunderbird clicked her beak, then finally turned from the Mists of Chaos to regard him almost pityingly. [I hope you never face the worst consequences of your mercy, Leon. But I believe you will. One day, you’ll see that I was right.]

Without another word, the Thunderbird took flight in the direction she’d been staring at throughout almost the entire conversation, leaving Leon alone to ponder what they had discussed.

In the end, he didn’t get that much work done on his armor before Bolt in Shadow arrived at Lancefoot.