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Chapter 593: The Growing Storm

Leon froze at the top of the immense stairs, staring at the beam of light connecting the two great pyramids, a bright white halo around it almost making it seem like a small star that had been stolen from the sky and hidden down here. Something was in there, and it was staring at him with great expectation, and Leon couldn’t help but assume that it was the thing that had been speaking to him this entire time.

He didn’t move. The voice had compelled him to move through the underground tunnels somehow, but he resisted its allure this time. He simply stood at the top of the stairs, trying and failing to pry his eyes away from that light.

This was much easier said than done, unfortunately, and Leon almost felt like his eyes were about to bleed from the strain of trying to pry them away from such magnificence. There was something about this light that was just… calling to him, like it was an easy meal being paraded before a wild beast.

Leon clenched his jaw and, with titanic willpower, slammed his eyes shut. He projected his magic senses, hoping that he could get a better idea of his surroundings without having to look directly into that beam of light anymore. To his relief, he was largely successful, being able to perceive the world around him, with the beam so bright to his senses that he couldn’t even see it.

However, he saw so much more, too, details that he’d missed in his first quick scan of the place.

He saw corpses scattered everywhere—skeletons of humans adorned the winding, switchback staircase, some looking like they had fallen as they walked down the stairs, others looking like they had been killed as they tried to crawl up. There were countless bodies here, but none were even remotely recent enough to still have so much as a scrap of flesh still attached to their bones. Whoever these people were had been dead for centuries, if not longer.

More eye-catching were the corpses that filled the plaza around the largest pyramid. There were countless in that large space. Closer to the outer edge, the corpses were smaller, perhaps only ten feet tall or so. Further in, they grew in size, eventually reaching almost thirty feet tall. Every one of them had been winged in life, with the smaller corpses having only one pair of wings, while they gained increasingly more pairs of wings the larger they got. The largest corpses boasted four pairs of wings.

Unlike the human skeletons that adorned the great stairs, which all seemed to have been struck dead in the midst of either ascending or descending the stairs, the corpses of these angels—for after what he’d seen Jormun summon, Leon could not think these skeletal corpses were anything but angels—had been laid out, deliberately placed. Interred here. From what he could tell by how their bones were now arranged, their arms had been laid across their chest, while their wings folded to cover their faces. Those with more wings had their lowest pair covering their feet, while those with more than two pairs of wings had their remaining wings spread out on the ground.

Not a single one had so much as a lick of magic power. Leon had the impression that these corpses had been down here for much longer than the living angel outside might’ve implied, probably since the end of the Primal Age, at least.

That much tracked with the feel Leon got from the rest of the cavern; the entire place felt ancient, like an ages-old city forgotten and lost to time. But the longer that Leon took to take it all in, the more he realized that this place wasn’t as unfamiliar as it first seemed—Maia had described Saron to him, the city of the river nymphs, and its description matched this place nearly perfectly, with the only difference being the sole fact that this place wasn’t flooded.

Suddenly, as if to try and fix that discrepancy, the beam of light flickered, and the entire gargantuan cavern shook. The ceiling cracked open, and water began spilling into this massive chamber. However, while these waterfalls were objectively huge, in comparison to the cavern, they were quite small, and so hardly put the cavern in much immediate danger of flooding. The beam of light was still active and still quite blinding to Leon’s magic senses, but to his physical eyes, it was also noticeably weaker, as if the magics keeping it active were slowly disengaging.

Which, Leon supposed, they probably were. And he felt like he already knew what was in there. It wasn’t a Great Horned Serpent, as Jormun had led his followers to believe. Leon was inclined to believe that such a beast may have once lived, perhaps had even been in control of a significant part of the plane when the Thunderbird Clan arrived, but that was not what was imprisoned here.

Leon remembered the Thunderbird telling him of the servants of the Primal Gods, and why Aeterna was one of the twelve planes known as the Divine Graveyard. This plane was the resting place for the Primal Gods, some of the most powerful beings in existence.

And a prison, it seemed, as the subtle pressure that the thing exerted upon Leon with its attention seemed to insist.

“We are not… enemies…” the voice said, and Leon became suddenly very conscious of how long he’d been standing at the top of the stairs, not moving. He no longer felt much compulsion to continue, but whether that was because the being within that light consciously dropped the compulsion or if it was wearing off, he couldn’t say. The voice, even without directly pulling him onward, was quite alluring anyway. It put thoughts into his head with speaking them aloud; it wanted him to head down into the city and go to the plaza. There, he would find his destiny, and more power than he could ever dream of—or such was the idea Leon found rushing through his head.

Leon took a moment to think. At the barest minimum, this thing didn’t seem immediately overtly hostile, and he supposed he could count himself lucky for that. However, the magics keeping it in place were still there, though they appeared to be slowly unraveling—Jormun’s rituals and blood sacrifices seemed to have worked, even if their effect wasn’t immediate. Whoever had built this place had the foresight to give the unlocking process a long time delay, it seemed.

Taking a quick look behind him, his heart beating with fear and anxiety as the attention of this thing in the light pressed in on him with expectation, Leon noted with no small amount of disappointment that the tunnel had sealed itself—there was no going back through it, though there probably wasn’t much point in doing so. He’d been teleported into it, and even if he could go back, there was no way out that way. He was trapped in this city, with this voice of a profoundly ancient and powerful being speaking to him. It seemed to be greatly interested in him, and though he doubted the man at the time, Leon was immediately reminded of when Jormun had told him his bloodline had drawn the Serpent’s attention.

Before doing anything else, Leon quickly checked his soul realm one more time. Unfortunately, the connection through his heart still seemed strangely disrupted—magic was flowing between himself and his soul realm, so he didn’t have much problem with accessing his reserves of magic power, but for some reason, he couldn’t get in contact with Nestor, Xaphan, Maia, or the Thunderbird. He was still frustratingly alone.

So, it seemed he had little other choice than to respond to the voice. There were few things he wanted to do less than walking down into the midst of those pyramids, so he could only hope for the slim possibility that this creature was reasonable.

“If you’re not my enemy, then what are you?” Leon called out, though with some hesitation as he felt almost as much pressure from the sheer silence of this place as he felt from this being’s attention. This place felt old and hallowed, and raising his voice felt wrong.

“A friend, I hope,” the voice replied, and was immediately followed by the sound of flapping wings. A moment later, the small Thunderbird look-a-like flew right over Leon’s head from behind.

Leon ducked low and had to fight the urge to conjure a lightning bolt; he was wound quite tightly, and the sudden appearance of the bird almost set him off.

But once his brain registered what he was seeing, he forced himself to relax, and the bird soared in a long arc around the stairs before coming to land not too far in front of him.

“I have aided you…” the voice said as the bird then vanished in a flash of light. “I have guided you… in your quest to kill the pirate…”

Leon scowled. “I’m fair certain that you’ve also guided that pirate…”

He wasn’t expecting much shame from this thing, whatever it may be, but he also wasn’t quite expecting its immediate and frank response.

“Yes, I did…” it said. “I am trapped here… and have been for so long… I needed to seize any… chance that I could to escape…”

“Working with Jormun, though…”

“The damage that pirate… can do is… limited…”

“The death toll he’s responsible for is already measured in the thousands!” Leon protested, though he kept his voice controlled. It was subtle, but after that flickering, he could feel the power in the beam of light was slowly diffusing out into the rest of the pyramids, and even seemed to be swirling about the corpses of the angels in relatively small quantities. As they were speaking, something was happening, and he was certain that the things in these pyramids were starting to wake.

“A million is just a number,” the thing replied. “What matters… is power… And power is what you seek, no?”

Images once more assaulted Leon’s mind: his father, moments after the being stabbed by Jason Isynos’ assassin, followed by Leon placing the last stone in his father’s cairn.

“I will give you… all the power you need… all the power you could ever want…” the voice tantalizingly offered. “All you have to do…”

“Is serve you?” Leon asked, almost snarling at the distant beam of light. He was cautious in tone before, but this thing invoking Artorias’ memory was infuriating enough to abruptly override his fear and anxiety.

“To serve a God… is the natural place of humanity…”

“Eat shit,” Leon angrily growled. He didn’t want whatever this thing was selling, and he sure as hells wasn’t going to be signing over his free will to it. It may be foolish—he could sense a mind-bending amount of magic within that light, though from where it came from, whether it was from the thing within or the magic of the barrier, he couldn’t say—but he wasn’t going to bend his knee to this thing, even if it was exactly what he feared it was: a Primal God.

His blood boiled as the strange thumping in his head, seemingly earlier muted by the voice, grew louder and louder and an odd sense of pride in himself and his heritage roared to life. He was a scion not just of the Thunderbird—an august lineage all on its own—but also of the Great Black Dragon. He could feel it in his blood; he wouldn’tserve.

The voice was silent for a long moment, and when it spoke again, its smooth, soothing tones were preceded by another flickering of the beam of light, and another great crack opening on the ceiling, which allowed even more water to spill into the titanic cavern.

“… Humans…” it whispered in obvious consternation, “always so quick… to anger… and rash action… Our lessons were not taught harshly enough… And so must be taught again… and again… until they are drilled into the memory of… your entire species…”

The thing’s voice grew harsher and more bestial as it spoke, until it was growling with hate. A few flashes of killing intent leaked out of the beam of light, but that alone was enough to nearly drive Leon into catatonia.

Still, Leon didn’t for a moment feel like he’d made the wrong decision.

That belief was challenged as the magic swirling around the plaza suddenly froze for a moment and was redirected toward one of the larger corpses.

“You will serve…” the voice declared. “You will swear your bloodline to me… But fear not, for while you are weak now… I shall make you strong.”

The magic condensed over one of the largest angel skeletons, one with four pairs of wings, and began to form into flesh and cloth.

“I will rend your flesh and twist your bones…” the voice declared.

Leon watched as muscles and robes formed over the skeleton, as the bones were covered with flesh and skin whiter than the fur of the Snow Lion he’d hunted so long ago.

“I will remake you… into the best version of yourself that you could be…”

As its voice began thrumming with power, the process of encasing the angel’s body in flesh finished, though its wings were still bare—covered in flesh, but bare of feathers. It was dressed much like the one that Xaphan had fought, in flowing white robes that concealed everything but its svelte, only somewhat masculine form. Grasped in its hands that were still clasped on its unmoving chest was the hilt of another bladeless two-handed sword.

‘And you will love me for it…’

A moment later, a rune flashed above the corpse, and it began to violently twitch. The corpse and Leon were still separated by miles, but Leon could see every movement of its body with perfect clarity, and he could see the flesh of two of its wings rip and tear as pristine white feathers forced their way out through the flesh, though not a drop of blood was spilled.

Slowly, the angel rose to its feet. Only two its wings were feathered—the highest one on its right, and the lowest on its left—while the rest hung limply, brushing the ground behind it, yet it didn’t even seem to spare them a glance. It just slowly looked in Leon’s direction, its eyes burning white within the black abyss of its hood, full of righteous fury, before the higher of its two feathered wings folded in and covered its face. Its lower wing then folded in, covering its bare feet from view. It held the bladeless hilt in its left hand, and a moment later, as its aura suddenly exploded out of its nearly-forty-foot-tall body, a huge twenty-foot blade of light flashed into place. Its aura rapidly climbed in power, starting in the first-tier but only staying there for the briefest of moments. It climbed to the seventh-tier with great alacrity, blowing past what Leon knew his own level of power to be, and only seeming to slow once it had become incomprehensible to his senses.

‘Shit…’ Leon thought, and the angel began to take slow, menacing steps in his direction. It was a straight shot to the stairs, down a wide street flanked on both sides by intricate murals, and the angel was starting to move faster and faster with every step.

There were at least ten miles between them, if not more, but it would be on him in only a matter of a minute or two at the rate it was accelerating. Leon clenched his jaw, unable to see any way he could win this fight. He lacked his most powerful weapon—his family’s sword—and while he still had his bow and many spell arrows, he couldn’t imagine they would have much effect on this creature, not with what little he could sense from its aura.

But as his mind raced trying to figure out a way to get out of this mess, his eyes drifted down to the emerald ring on his finger…

—

The remains of Sigebert’s fleet that managed to limp out of the channels of the last broken Serpentine Isle were ragged and badly mauled. A paltry fifteen war galleys, four of which had been so damaged they weren’t even capable of fighting anymore. Only one marine transport, carrying a mere half-battalion. Nearly all of the marines that had accompanied Sigebert’s fleet had been deployed to islets around the caldera, or had been massing directly on the slopes of the caldera itself.

They had been easy prey for the monstrous serpent.

The second of Sigebert’s dreadnoughts at least managed to escape largely undamaged, but unfortunately, without Sigebert himself around to issue any orders, there wasn’t much will to head back within the Legate who commanded it.

Maia and the rest of Leon’s retinue managed to reach the second dreadnought and link back up with the Legion as they made their escape from the massive serpent that had just practically devoured the entire fleet. They hadn’t been able to much as scratch its scales, let alone do any meaningful damage to it. It had just run right over them, crushing their ships in its massive jaws, tearing them apart with water magic, impaling entire ships upon its immense curved horn, sweeping entire companies of marines into the seas with huge, summoned waves…

Maia shivered when she thought it, glad only for the fact that, for whatever reason, it hadn’t followed them out of the broken remnants of the island.

However, that still left it doing something back near the caldera, around which the storm was still swirling. Outside of that, it had largely stopped raining, though the sky was still dark with storm clouds, the wind was still perilously strong, and the seas were dangerously choppy.

They had managed to escape the worst of what had just happened, but no one could get comfortable just yet, for as Maia watched on in fear, wondering just where in the hells Leon was in all of this, the storm suddenly surged in power as a titanic burst of water magic filled the swirling black clouds. And the clouds spilled out from the crater and began to consume the nearest islets. Just before these islets vanished from view, Maia could see them shaking apart, cracking and breaking and falling into the sea.

The wind suddenly changed directions, howling past them toward the mainland instead of rushing into the crater, and tipping one of the more damaged war galleys onto its side and spilling its contents of sailors into the sea, from which they did not return.

This controlled storm rushed outward, devouring the entirety of the broken island, only mercifully stopping once it had eaten every bare rock that had survived the island’s previous cataclysm.

“Fuck!” Alix screamed, with her sentiment loudly shared by hundreds of others across the ravaged fleet. “What do we do now?! How are we supposed to fight this?!”

“Get ready for a last stand!” Marcus shouted back, his voice shaking but still full of bravado. “Whatever’s going on isn’t going to stay here! It’s going to spill out to the rest of the plane if it gets past us! We have to stop it here!”

“And we will stop it here!” Alcander responded, though his eyes were wide enough that Maia wasn’t convinced he truly believed his declaration.

“With what!?” Alix shouted back, but before this exchange could devolve into hopeless argument, Gaius chimed in.

“We need to reach the command tower! Speak to the Legate in charge and organize what’s left! Whether we retreat or stay and fight, we need a plan!”

The group agreed, and began to run toward the central tower of the dreadnought. Without Sigebert, someone had to step up and take responsibility for what remained of the fleet.

For Maia, though, she already knew what she was going to do. These seas were treacherous, and everything going on here had likely attracted the attention of greater things below the waves, but despite that, and despite the proven power of that horned serpent, she wasn’t leaving here without Leon.

Even if everyone else ran away, she was going to find Leon, or die trying.