Cataclysm War | Chapter 84: An Instinct (First Draft)

Monday, August 8, 4 S.E.

Leonidas awoke the day after his Tribulation with a quiet sigh of contentment. The hours following the Arena had been filled with little more than celebration and casual discourse, thankfully including the fact that Uriel had taken to the ‘GOAT’ comment positively after Aylar had explained it to the Dawn-Lord. His eyes drifted to his wife at the memory, and he realized that she’d already left the bed—only to recall, a second later, that she’d had an early meeting with the new Royal Council.

Thanking his lucky stars that his wife was so damned competent, Leonidas stretched languidly and sat up in the bed, enjoying the lack of drowsiness that awakening no longer held.

The benefits of Cultivation, he reflected, are truly innumerable.

His bare feet hit the carpeted manastone of his chambers, and the young King pushed himself to his feet, wandering out toward the expansive bathroom attached to his bedroom and turning on the shower. His discussion with Ceruviel, following her counselling of his parents and sister, had been relatively productive. He’d discussed his new [Skill Purchase] and [Skill Upgrade] points with her at length, and his Mentor had simply suggested he retain them for the immediate moment.

As for his [Attribute Purchase] points, those had been easier to manage.

Leonidas, at Ceruviel’s encouragement, had put 2 points into his Vitality, bringing it to 32, and his Health—including bonuses—to a total of 352. The remaining four points had gone into his Charisma, increasing it to 30 and bringing his [Sovereign Domain] range and duration to 30 meters and 30 minutes respectively, evening it out with respectable diligence.

He’d wanted to increase his Agility and Dexterity, but the older Archon had assured him that his passive 50% boost from Adept rank Tempering would make up for that difference enough that it wasn’t overly pressing. Leonidas stripped off his clothes and stepped under the pleasantly scalding water as he considered his next steps. With the experience injection from the [Platinum Chest], he was comfortably at 22,212 experience, putting him just over halfway to level 22.

There was no easy way to really address the issue of his experience requirement, which Ceruviel had been livid to learn about, but the inherent advantage of taking so long to reach new levels—which his teacher had finally addressed after cursing at the System—was the mastery he would attain in-between, making him far more competent with each advance than any other Cultivator of a similar level.

Everything had a positive, after all, even if it was a little difficult to see.

What was more pressing for Leonidas in that moment was the off-handed thought he’d had prior to leaving the Arena proper, when he’d been reflecting on the Royal Guard. While the Guard's name was informative and direct, it didn’t quite have the distinctive uniqueness he preferred. He’d discussed the matter with Aylar and could still vividly remember the discourse, thanks to his enhanced Mind from the Tempering.

“You want to change the name of the Royal Guard?” his wife had asked, meticulously unbraiding her hair where she sat in front of her vanity as they readied themselves for bed, and Leonidas tried not to be distracted by the entirely too flattering nightdress she’d chosen.

“Yeah, I really do,” Leonidas had responded, removing his shirt and enjoying the cool air of the room on his skin as he did. “The name isn’t bad, babe, but it sort of lacks the impact that I want for our personal guard.”

“The name is very indicative, though, Leonidas,” she’d said wryly, working on her third braid in front of the mirror. “They’ve held that name since the founding of Eldormer. It’s an identity as much as anything, for them.”

Leonidas had grimaced at that and turned toward his wife, walking to stop at the foot of their immense bed and sit on it quietly. He was so tall that his feet remained firmly attached to the floor when he did.

“I get that, and I don’t want to disrespect their legacy—but the argument you’re making didn’t hold weight for the Dawnguard and Duskguard, and I don’t see a reason for it to hold weight here, Aylar. I’m not trying to erase them, I want them to evolve.”

His wife had sighed quietly at his words and turned to him, still working on her braid, and revealing her tantalizingly muscular legs when she’d swung around on her stool.

“You cannot take away their identity, my heart, and then claim you aren’t erasing them,” the Queen had pointed out, her voice wry with amusement.

“Yeah, I know, but I think it’d be a net benefit—besides, we want to recruit more than just Haelfenn for the Guard, right? You said yourself you’d want to try to bring in more Terrans, especially.”

“While avoiding favoring our two species over the other Nyrfenn, husband, but yes,” his wife had said with the same quiet smile. “How about you tell me your idea, and I’ll give you feedback?”

Leonidas had returned her smile and leaned forward eagerly, his hands clasping together as he spoke.

“So, on Terra, there was this place called the Roman Empire—”

“I know the Roman Empire, Leonidas,” Aylar had cut in with a quiet laugh, “I’ve read your histories.”

“Oh! Right, yeah—okay, so, basically, the Emperor Augustus established this group called the Praetorian Guard—”

“No,” Aylar had said mildly.

“But—”

“No, Leonidas,” she’d said more firmly. “It’s one thing to indulge your love for history, my heart, but that is far too much. The Aegis of Avalon is at least racially neutral. If you call them Praetorians, it will hearken far too much to Terran history. By your own words, are we not meant to be avoiding that kind of bias?”

Leonidas had sighed at her words, but he’d known she was right. Calling their new nation the [Kingdom of Avalon] had been Terran enough, let alone naming themselves Pendragon—using the Praetorians might, in fact, have been going too far.

“Okay, well, I do have one other idea,” Leonidas had said, eyeing his bride carefully.

“Go on,” Aylar had said, her beautiful blue eyes twinkling with mirth.

“Well, I think the Kingdom needs a unified ‘high language’, right?”

Aylar remained silent as he spoke, simply listening as he did.

“Haelfennyr can be hard for most humans, so I was thinking we could use Latin as the base, and then expand it through the efforts of the linguists in the Kingdom,” he said carefully. “To that end, I was thinking of the name ‘Ordo Aureati’ for the Royal Guard. Translated into English, it essentially means ‘Order of the Gilded Ones’, where ‘Gilded’ means ‘Adorned in Gold’.”

Aylar had stared at him when he was done, but hadn’t dismissed the idea out of hand, and had instead hummed in thought while working on her final braid.

Leonidas had watched her nervously until his wife had finally smiled at him.

“I’ll think on it,” she’d said instead of answering, flipping her fully-freed hair and rising from her stool. “And if you want to make me more inclined,” she’d said as she stood, “I think better when I’m thoroughly exhausted, my husband.”

Leonidas had been initially confused until Aylar had dropped her nightdress completely. After that, he’d gotten the hint and worked enthusiastically to convince her of the merit of his idea.

Sleep had eluded them for some time.

Leonidas turned off the shower with a wry smile at the memory and stepped out to towel himself off, striding back into his rooms to his walk-in closet and fetching his preferred suit. It was the same one he’d worn for most of his time as Ceruviel’s squire, but it remained his preferred choice. He dressed in it quickly, thankful for the way the enchanted material never wrinkled and self-repaired, and had just put his crown on his head when a knock came to his doors.

“{Enter,}” Leonidas said in instinctive Haelfennyr, turning toward them.

“{Good morning, Your Majesty,}” Verity Durandal said as the doors opened, and the redheaded Haelfar entered with a clank of her gilded warplate.

“{Good morning, Verity,}” Leonidas said in kind, while making his way toward her. “{Is my tie straight? I can never quite get it right.}”

The Lance-Master of his guard detail hesitated, then sighed and reached out to quickly adjust the sapphirine-inlaid tie, stepping back after she did.

“{Thank you,}” Leonidas said with a faint smile. “{Now, what’s going on?}”

Verity eyed him for a moment and then dipped her head.

“{There is a report from a border unit that requires your attention. I wouldn’t normally bother Your Majesty with this, but the Legion-Master of the First Legion seemed to believe it required Royal Attention.}”

“{And my wife was busy?}” he asked in faint amusement.

Verity simply stared at him, and Leonidas’ amusement faded.

“{What?}” he asked warily.

“{May I request to speak bluntly, Your Majesty?}” Verity asked.

“{Go ahead,}” Leonidas said with a raised eyebrow.

“{You Tribulated twice in a row, Your Majesty,}” Verity said to him very directly, her green eyes intent. “{Any illusion any of us held that you were just a Terran in over his head evaporated yesterday.}”

The Lance-Master hesitated and then continued when Leonidas did not stop her.

“{You may not fully understand the gravity of what you’ve achieved, my King, but in the history of Altera, less than one percent of Cultivators ever Tribulate—and only Alurien Starsword himself was known to have Tribulated more than once. With the greatest respect, Sire, you need to realize that, to us, you are both terrifying and a symbol of hope. You are both an Archon and a born [Sovereign]. That means something to us. To all of us.}”

Leonidas was silent as he listened to her words, and his eyes scanned her own, fixed on the Haelfar woman’s steady green gaze. After a moment, he simply nodded and set his lips into a grim line of understanding.

“{The Legion-Master asked for me, I presume?}”

“{Directly, my King, and with great urgency,}” Verity confirmed steadily. “{The Royal Army respects you, Sire, more than you may realize. Even those of us who once doubted you no longer do. You’re our King, my liege. Please remember that. We Haelfenn may be… stubborn… but once we acknowledge something, we acknowledge it.}”

Leonidas nodded again in acceptance and summoned his [Archon’s Psiblade], pulling his custom sheathe from his [Spatial Storage Ring] and belting it around his waist, under his jacket, before sliding the blade home within it.

“{Alright, Verity,}” he said after a moment of mental preparation. “{Lead the way.}”

The former Dawnguard officer smiled at his words and drew herself into a firm salute.

“{Yes, Your Majesty!}”

*

Ten minutes later, Leonidas strode into the War Room of the Royal Palace of Dawnhaven, nodding to the Dagger of Royal Guards in the room. The circular construction was immense, at least fifteen meters high at its domed ceiling, with banners and maps adorning the walls all around the chamber. Arcane lamps lit everything, and the only windows were in the domed ceiling above, streaming in sunlight onto the immense map table at the room’s center.

Leonidas did not slow as he entered, and instead moved toward the highly decorated forms of the Legion-Masters standing near the central map, both of them and their staff. Eight Banner-Masters formed a half-circle around the two men, and Leonidas mentally translated the ranks in his head.

Legion-Master is roughly equivalent to a Colonel, which makes those eight Lieutenant Colonels. The Army isn’t big enough to justify Generals yet. I’ll need to fix this organization; it works for their current size, but it’s just not enough for proper growth.

The military officers wore robes according to their ranks, with the Legion-Masters in jet black and the Banner-Masters in dark purple. The Cohort-Masters would be in darkred, and the Lance-Masters would have worn dark blue, while the Dagger-Masters would be garbed in dark green. He remembered that from his lessons with Ceruviel.

“{Hail, Archon-King!}” the Legion-Master of the First Legion declared—Marquis Malovan Colquen, Leonidas recalled—slamming his fist to his heart and bowing his green-haired head.

“{Hail, Archon-King!}” the other nine repeated, saluting and bowing in kind.

“{Be at your ease, gentlemen,}” Leonidas said with a return salute, and joined their grouping near the massive 1:1000 scale map of Dawnhaven that the ten of the Haelfar were gathered around. “{Lance-Master Durandal told me you had urgent news.}”

The two Legion-Masters nodded as their subordinates assumed a parade rest, all ten sets of Haelfenn eyes fixed on Leonidas in silent assessment.

“{We do, Sovereign,}” the Legion-Master of the Second Legion, a Viscount named Randul Endymion, agreed with a nod. “{One of our border watches to the north-west has missed a mandatory reporting window twice in a row. This normally wouldn’t be too great a concern, but it lines up with the growing pattern of silence at two other outposts.}”

Leonidas raised his eyebrow and looked down at the map, to where Randul was pointing. Based on the scale of the map, he quickly deduced the distance to be about one day’s full sprint from Dawnhaven for a Contender-rank Cultivator, about three hundred miles.

“{I am not entirely well-versed in Army protocol, gentlemen,}” Leonidas admitted calmly, looking back to the two Legion-Masters. “{But my family was in the military before the Integration, and what knowledge I do have tells me that two missed reports are not a simple mistake, especially not when a pattern is involved.}”

The Legion-Masters nodded, and the Marquis spoke next.

“{We had thought it might just be an unforeseen manabeast wave, but that would constitute at least one runner from each outpost to request force deployment. This doesn’t match that pattern, but conversely, there aren’t any major forces within a thousand miles of Dawnhaven that can actually threaten us.}”

Leonidas frowned at that and bent over the map, his blue eyes scanning the Thronehold and its surrounds in quiet assessment. The farmlands and various established food sources immediately within the Thronehold’s control radius were all demarcated, none of them more than a hundred miles from the City, and all of them well-protected by the Army’s patrolling forces. It was, however, the far outskirts that remained a danger.

“{The Integration greatly altered the topography of the region, as well,}” Leonidas murmured, eyeing the map of Dawnhaven and its surrounds as his Tribulation Tempered mind ran through assessments, pulling up knowledge he’d thought long-forgotten. “{Nothing on the maps is the same as it was prior to the System’s arrival. That means that the usual suspects for habitation may not even exist…}”

The Legion-Masters blinked at his words, and then nodded again when he looked up at them.

“{What Terran maps we could acquire did not match the land around us at all,}” Marquis Colquen agreed. “{We’ve had to create our own, but the general shape of the land remains the same, even if the System has heavily altered the surrounding area. The fact that Dawnhaven used to have four lakes, for example, is one such anomaly.}”

Leonidas grimaced to himself and looked toward the geographic north-east, where the border outposts were marked.

“{How long has it been since they fell silent?}”

“{Two days, Sire,}” Viscount Endymion reported steadily.

Leonidas’ jaw locked, and in that moment, an instinct in him flared with warning. Unbidden, the Administrator’s words flooded back to him.

“I wish you luck on your journey,” Primus had said mysteriously. “Given what is coming for your nascent Kingdom, I daresay you will need it.”

“{You were right to bring this to me,}” Leonidas declared finally, heeding the sudden stone of dread in his gut, but not showing its existence outwardly. “{Summon the Army to full strength,}” he continued, far more calmly than he felt. “{For the next week, I want every citizen of the Thronehold behind the gates and prepared for a siege.}”

The Legion-Masters and Banner-Masters straightened in surprise at his words, and the two seniormost officers glanced at one another before looking back toward Leonidas.

“{Sire, I understand the concern of the outposts, but there is no evidence of an attack of that magnitude.}”

Leonidas smiled mirthlessly and looked at the Marquis when he finished.

“{If I ordered you to attack a City the size of Dawnhaven, my lord, would you show signs it was coming before you struck?}”

The Legion-Master fell silent at the words, and his expression grew troubled.

“{If I am wrong, my lords and ladies, then I will look like an overcautious, reactive young fool. I can accept that moniker, it would be forged from my own mistake,}” Leonidas continued, looking between the ten of the Haelfenn officers present. “{But if I am correct, and we do not act immediately, we will all be far more than just fools.}”

That seemed to get through to them, and the Haelfenn all nodded in acceptance of the logic.

“{Full muster,}” Leonidas repeated again, and turned to the Royal Guards. “{Send a runner to the Dusk-Lord and the Dawn-Lord,}” he commanded. “{Tell them to mobilize the Aegis of Avalon in full deployment. I want the Thronehold fully secured and locked down by Nightfall, and alert the Queen as well. Additionally, send a runner to Guild Mistress Sinalthria and tell her that the Crown is invoking the Mutual Defense Clause of the Adventurers’ Guild. She and her people will act as Irregulars under the command of the Crown.}”

Four Royal Guards saluted immediately and set off at a quick stride, before breaking into a dead sprint with the sound of thundering warplate going in different directions as soon as they left the immense war room. Two of the Banner-Masters followed them at a glance from each Legion-Master and a salute and bow for Leonidas, similarly breaking into softer sprints as they left the chamber.

Leonidas turned back to the remaining military officers, and his eyes hardened with memories of blood and death, drifting back to him in perfect clarity from his time on Elatra. He had been tutored in war for five years, and while he would never be foolish enough to pretend toward expertise, he had enough experience as the Hero and a Warlord to understand what may have been waiting for them.

The Haelfenn seemed to recognize the look when it took root on his features, as only veterans could, and they stood straighter when he looked back at them.

“{Now, my lords and ladies,}” Leonidas said in a voice that sounded cold to his own ears. “{Tell me everything about how we’re going to protect the Thronehold.}”