Frustration hit Sarjell the moment that the order to retreat was given. And it was a ‘retreat’, despite how diplomatically the Princess’ order was relayed. The strategic objectives of the campaign hadn’t been achieved; they’d lost the war.

    But they still had in their possession more than a hundred arks, and thousands of willing warriors. They could’ve won the war if they’d only pushed a little further. Their enemy was on his last legs, Sarjell could sense that, feel it in his gut just based on how much they were able to respond to the Diluvian aggression.

    And yet, the spoiled brat ordered them back. Sarjell couldn’t fathom what she was getting out of the deal, but it had to be good. She was acting against her own august father’s will, after all.

    Terris should’ve been the one to tell the brat off, to explain to her the merits of continuing the war. Unfortunately, their last clash with the monster had cost them not only in arks and manpower but in Terris himself—the Despot was laid up, unconscious, most of his body burned beyond recognition. He wasn’t dead, but the healers were keeping him comatose to treat the burns made by that black lightning.

    Sarjell had to stifle a tremble at the thought of facing Leon Raime in battle. Anyone would shudder at the idea of facing anyone who possessed Doomfire, but Terris had nullified that particular threat with the strength of a blue dragon scale, a treasure that Sarjell hadn’t even known the Despot possessed. The black lightning wasn’t so easily countered, however, and the Despot paid the price for his bravery.

    Without his voice there to advocate for continuing the campaign, there was little Sarjell could do. Truthfully, Sarjell didn’t think that Terris could countermand the brat’s orders even if he were whole and able to argue, but at least it wouldn’t have fallen to him to carry out her will.

    With bile rising in his throat, Sarjell glared at the Stormwall separating him from victory as the ark turned and accelerated back into the King’s Ocean. Given how much of Terris’ military power had been pulled away from its regular duties to attack this upstart Storm Lord, there would be plenty of problems to deal with once they returned home. And now, they wouldn’t even be coming off of a victory to salve their wounded pride.

    ---

    Leon breathed deeply, stress almost physically evaporating from his brow and shoulders as the Ocean arks slowly turned and accelerated back into the wall of water on his coast. Only a single transport would remain to collect the prisoners that Leon arranged to release upon the full retreat of Terris’ fleet.

    Miuna had been true to their deal and called off the war. It wasn’t the complete blowout victory that Leon would’ve preferred, but he supposed it was the best he could’ve ever hoped for.

    His people were busy still cleaning up the debris from the battle, but as the arks made their retreat, he could hear cheering go up all over the valley. Even that, however, hammered home just how much this war had cost him, as the five thousand or so souls that remained to him were almost silent compared to the empty enormity of the Artor Valley.

    There would be celebrations in the near future—they’d won, after all—but the rest of the time spent waiting for the next wave of support from Aeterna would be spent cleaning up the remnants of the war and helping the survivors to heal. The dead had to be seen off, their defenses had to be repaired, and the countless destroyed arks had to be salvaged. Little of that could be accomplished in the next few months, but at least then they’d have a greater pool of manpower with which to do it.

    For the time being, Leon turned from the south to check out his new floating mountain, beneath which lay the lake of poisonous mist seeping up from the Aesii. He began flying in the direction of his portable villa, looking forward to getting a bit of rest before devoting all of his time to dealing with all that had been broken and lost over the past month.

    Unfortunately, when he arrived, Elise was the only one of his wives there to greet him, though he’d sent messages to Valeria, Cassandra, and Maia to meet him back there when they were able. That would take some time, however, as Valeria and Cassandra were with Eva helping to heal the most severely injured, while Maia was seeing to her river nymphs as they raced back down the river, reasserting their dominance over it with the Diluvians finally taking their leave.

    So, it would just be him and Elise for a while.

    As soon as he saw his fire-haired wife, Leon raced over to her. She barely got a word of greeting in before his hands were on her body, taking her by her rear and lifting her into his arms as his lips cut off her cry of surprise.

    When they parted, she laid one hand on his chest while her other snaked around his head. “Hey you,” she breathed.

    Her handmaidens snickered at the display, but Leon ignored them. He smiled back at her, taking in her beauty, especially the way her emerald eyes caught the light of distant lightning bolts off in the misty veil. She was breathtakingly gorgeous. Miuna, for all her beauty and power, couldn’t compare to the woman in his arms, let alone all four that he’d married.

    “Let’s go talk,” he whispered as he carried her off, her handmaidens tittering away as they followed at a distance.

    “Talk?” she asked as she settled into his embrace. “Or ‘talk’?” Her hand on his chest wandered southward, making her meaning clear.

    “The first one,” Leon said, and her hand stopped moving.

    “Oh,” she whispered in disappointment.

    “The second one can come later,” he added.

    After being assured of her health and happiness, Justin continued eastward. Leon looked forward to what he might have to say when the man finally got situated and was able to give him intelligence about the Far East, where most eyes in the Storm Lands were fixed despite this war.

    What concerned Leon more than Kamran, distant as he was, were matters much closer to home. Tauri was quick to visit Artorion and reaffirm Alhamachim’s vassalage, as well as offer their aid in fixing the city. Alhamachim had been ruined by the pirates, but Leon had helped them; now, they saw a way to show their gratitude, and Leon was only too happy to take their help.

    The Seventh Iron Order, their work done, took their dead and departed Artorion quickly after peace was settled. With Carver dead, Leon wasn’t expecting much of them, but Vetta and Uwe both contacted Leon to express their admiration for fighting off the Ocean Lords arrayed against him. Leon accepted their admiration even if he knew he could quibble about the details, and expressed his own gratitude for their aid in defending his city.

    He would find a way to express that gratitude in some way in the future, he vowed.

    Far more worryingly, Jamshid had been ousted from power in Shatufan, though not by Manuchehr. Instead, one of the other tenth-tier mages in the city had counter-couped him, securing enough loyalty from the remaining Azadan in the city—not that there were that many—to proclaim himself King of Shatufan.

    This didn’t stop Manuchehr from gathering his forces, but it did leave Shatufan in the lurch, outside of Leon’s influence. For the moment, he was content to watch and see what happened with the city. He hardly had the forces to spare to conquer and adequately garrison the city, so if there weren’t internal factions he could exploit, then there wasn’t much he could do. The self-proclaimed King had at least made his position clear, denouncing Jamshid before having him publicly executed, and declaring that he was no friend of Leon’s.

    Given the strategic importance of Shatufan, other powers in the Far West circled it like vultures, Krizos and Sentudon lending some strength to Manuchehr, while Hosragan and the King of Rolor’s Highcastle, a small but powerful fortified city about halfway between Artorion and Shatufan, were both moving considerable military forces toward the only city in the Far West that produced Aurichalcum.

    Had he the forces, Leon would’ve marched right into Shatufan, annexing it and anyone who resisted him. As it was, he could only watch as the energies of the Far West’s elite concentrated on the city.

    Lancefoot was another matter—he liked the city, but it had been ruined in the Mountainfall. While he wasn’t able to do anything for it currently, the city still held some strategic importance—a good natural harbor, and a position on the northern coast. When Leon imagined his Kingdom in only a couple decades, Lancefoot was an important logistics and trade hub, allowing him to project power to the north, possibly even reaching the Burning Lands.

    He may have cost Lancefoot its purpose and importance in the Far West by taking Mir, but he’d give the city another purpose, a longer-lasting purpose just as soon as he could.

    Of all the problems he’d have to deal with, though, the biggest one was Archelaus. He was under no impression that beating Terris would come without consequences within the Storm Lands, even if most attention was fixed upon the conflicts over who would succeed Jason Keraunos as Storm King—right now mostly fought between Kamran and Halbast, though other Anakes, such as Adrasis and Jensis were exerting their influence over it.

    However, he was more concerned that Archelaus was going to take offense to his seizing all of the Aurichalcum in Shatufan. The Despot—or his people—would seek recompense, he was sure.

    His surety was vindicated when, three weeks after the last Diluvian ark vanished to the south and the water off the coast returned to normal, an envoy from Archelion arrived. Instead of arriving on a thin beam of Lumenite, she instead came in a heavy cruiser ark, escorted by a pair of destroyers and half a dozen frigates. Such a show of power was more than Leon would’ve been able to deal with, but fortunately, they weren’t immediately hostile.

    Instead, the envoy merely requested an audience with Leon to discuss the issue. Leon, only too happy to talk rather than right at the moment, allowed her and a large escort into the city, though the arks remained outside.

    Leon met them in a wide, open courtyard close to the heart of his city. He stood in the center of a sandpit as he heard their grievances, which as he’d expected, focused on the ‘stolen’ Aurichalcum.

    In short, Archelaus wanted what he’d paid for. Leon couldn’t give it to him, most of that Aurichalcum having already been used. An impasse was had, at least for a moment, before Leon made his play. He’d known that Archelaus would want his Aurichalcum at some point, and had made plans to try and pay that debt in another way.

    Thus, to the envoy’s alarm, he’d summoned his power and drew Iron Pride when the topic of how they were going to reconcile this came up. Despite the threatening undercurrent of war and annexation, it seemed the envoy hadn’t been prepared for Leon to bare steel in her presence, but she was fortunate that Leon meant her no harm.

    Instead, Leon called upon his lightning, striking the sand over and over, creating a veritable forest of red-hot crystal sticking into the air. These crystals held the shape of lightning for a moment before warping under the heat and cooling to a smoky black color.

    In this way, Leon introduced the envoy to storm crystal and offered all that he’d just made—some four tons of the material—as a way to apologize. If Archelaus was happy with the material, Leon further offered, he’d pay for the Aurichalcum with twice its weight in storm crystal.

    The envoy wasn’t that optimistic, but she’d taken the storm crystal and departed.

    She returned only a few days later, informing Leon not only that Archelaus accepted his offer, but that he was willing to purchase more of the material.

    Leon breathed a sigh of relief at the offer. With Archelaus satisfied, that left him essentially free to wait for the next wave of his people to arrive from Aeterna. Only the chaos that Shatufan was turning into weighed on his mind. He had the sinking feeling that he’d have to deal with that city in some way no matter how it sorted itself out.

    And if he had to, he resolved to outright annex the city. Having the capacity to make Aurichalcum would certainly enrich his Kingdom spectacularly...