The Storm King

The wind lifting Leon raged around him, but not nearly enough to counter the inexorable pull of gravity. Under normal conditions, the fall that Leon was threatened with was nothing to worry about, but given the demands of Kavad’s Lance, that being to never try to fly, he was far more concerned. He didn’t fear death even if he fell to the ground, but he was not going to lose his people on the mountain or its orbiting floating islands.

Leon waited only just long enough to confirm that he wasn’t going to reach the floating island at the end of the current and sent his power flowing through the transformation enchantment in his soul realm. Grandin had been adamant that they don’t fly, but he hoped that having wings might mitigate any repercussions.

In a moment, his body had more than tripled in size, bent and deformed into its new shape, and sprouted white feathers all over. With his crest of long blue feathers streaming behind him, he spread his wings and caught what remained of the wind current, letting it lift him even faster than it had in his human form. It wasn’t enough to reach the destination, however, and he called upon wind magic of his own.

Almost as soon as his wind magic pushed up into his wings, he felt the ambient magic in the cloud all around him suddenly recoil, then fall upon him. Before he’d beat his wings even once, he was struck by half a dozen bolts of golden lightning. The magic rippled over his feathers, though, unable to enter his body, and after a moment, winked out entirely. He actually found the experience rather pleasant.

What was decidedly less pleasant was, a moment later, dozens of winged serpents—each one green or blue of scale, more than twenty feet long, and with feathery gray wings sprouting from not far behind their heads—came lunging at him from within the cloud, where even to his magic senses they’d been completely invisible.

Three of these serpents snapped their jaws shut around his wings, piercing his feathers and skin with razor-sharp fangs. A burst of silver-blue lightning threw them off and warded away the rest, but his pristine white feathers were now marred with blood, and even worse, he could already feel his wings starting to lose strength. These serpents, it seemed, had venomous bites.

Leon frantically beat his wings to reach the floating island with all speed, while fending off further attacks with silver-blue lightning. Golden lightning continued to rain down upon him, but with his mastery of lightning magic and natural affinity for it, especially in his Thunderbird form, these bolts did nothing more than tickle.

Finally, only a few seconds after transforming, he reached the edge of the floating island and almost crashed into the ground. The serpents didn’t pursue him once he’d reached the island, and as soon as his talons brushed the grass, lightning stopped falling from the clouds.

“What in the Stone Pit are you doing?!” Grandin screamed as he realized what just happened. As Leon transformed back into his human form, the guide wrathfully continued, his hazel eyes blazing with fury, “I specifically told you to never fly! Now you’ve gone and stirred up the natives!”

Grandin grumbled, not too intimidated by Leon’s order, “Well, you’ve made the rest of the journey much more difficult. Those cloud serpents aren’t going to leave us alone, and we have three more island jumps we have to make.”

“This isn’t where our quarry lairs?” Gaius asked.

“No,” Grandin confirmed. “On top of those island jumps, we also have to jump back to the Lance. And make a large jump up the mountain that could get complicated if we’re being pursued.”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Leon said without hesitation. “This wasn’t going to be a walk in the park anyway. Let’s just continue.”

Grandin looked like he wanted to continue, but with Leon’s party closing ranks around him, and with Valeria in particular looking rather murderous as Anna applied a salve to Leon’s wounds, he kept any further complaints to himself. Instead, after several seconds of quiet, he simply asked, “How long do you need to heal?”

Leon flexed his arms and said, “I’m already healed.” The winged serpents’ venom was nasty, but he’d channeled a bit of black fire through his bloodstream, burning it out of him. He was covered in blood, though, so he didn’t begrudge the question. With a quick burst of water magic, he was cleaned, and a moment later, fully dressed again.

He then took a look around. This floating island was quite large, being perhaps one of, if not the largest that orbited Kavad’s Lance, with a ‘shoreline’ of at least fifteen miles. It wasn’t quite as vertical as the Lance, though, and sported greenery over far more of its surface. Case in point, they’d landed in a small depression surrounded on three sides by ten-foot-tall cliffs. The depression was flat and covered in a soft blanket of grass, while trees and thick forest peered over the edges of the cliffs.

“Where to, now?” he asked.

Grandin clicked his tongue, then glanced around. “We’ll get up these cliffs, and then we follow the edge of the mountain for a couple miles. At this time of day, we shouldn’t have to wait long before we jump into another current.” He glared at Leon, his warning to not repeat this going unsaid.

“Then let’s get moving,” Leon ordered, and without any further discussion, the party followed Grandin over to the cliffs. It was easy enough for them to ascend the cliffs—jumping short distances wouldn’t trigger any reactions from their surroundings, and all of them were more than powerful enough to clear the cliff.

From there, they entered the forest. Unlike the previous bit of forest on the Lance proper, this one was far less traveled and boasted no footpaths cutting through the foliage. Thankfully, however, the ground was rocky and broken enough that the forest wasn’t too thick, and it was easy to make their way through, never straying too far from the edge of the island.

Leon could sense creatures out in the forest watching their movements, but for the most part, those beasts were guided by fear of their party more than anything else, and they encountered no trouble reaching another grassy ledge several miles around the floating island. Once there, Grandin stood on the island’s edge and outstretched his hand into the fast-moving wind around the island.

“Hmmm,” he murmured. “We have about twenty minutes to rest and ready ourselves.”

Sure enough, about twenty minutes later, a wind current picked up over the grassy field, and Grandin shouted for them to move. With Leon’s near-fall fresh in their minds, the party moved as quickly as they could and leaped into the current. This time, Leon’s people—and especially Maia and Valeria—forced him to go right after Grandin, who led the way. Thankfully, despite his misgivings, the party moved quickly enough that the current didn’t die before they all reached the next island.

This one was markedly different from the last, being little more than a chunk of wind-battered and lightning-scorched rock the size of two city blocks. A few resilient weeds grew on its surface, but Leon hadn’t much time to examine it before Grandin shouted, “The next one is forming! Keep going!”

The guide pointed to another current picking up on the other side of the small floating island, and without waiting for anyone else, jumped in.

“Move!” Leon shouted, and the rest of his party rushed into the third current.

Fortunately, despite being a little taken aback at how quickly the next current formed, no one fell or was left behind, but it was rather close. The current died almost as soon as Alix, who had taken the rear of the formation, set foot on the third island, and Leon could sense winged serpents out in the clouds writhing in response. He could even see a little bit of churning in the clouds from how close they’d gotten from how close they’d come to losing Alix.

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His power sparked within him, but the serpents remained in the clouds, not threatening his party.

A sigh from Grandin drew his attention, and he almost had to do a double-take.

The island they were on was another large one, but it was flatter than most, consisting mostly of a few scattered forest-covered hills. The island itself was barely more than a mile across and two miles long, and other than the howling of the wind was almost dead silent.

What Leon found far more interesting, however, were the scattered remains of large siege weapons, most in extreme states of ruin and barely recognizable. He saw man-portable scorpions and larger ballistae, spears and other polearms stuck out of the ground, and fragments of other weapons too ruined to be identified were scattered all over the rocky ground, half-buried or hidden in grass.

“May you all find rest within the stone,” Grandin whispered as he strode over to one of the ballistae. Next to it was a rack of ammunition—large wooden bolts with steel tips. There was serious enchanting work done all over the bolt, more than Leon would’ve expected for the weapon in question.

Grandin took one of the bolts from the rack and turned it over in his hand. Much of the wood had rotted and the tip was rusty, but the enchantment was still relatively functional as far as Leon could tell.

“Hide-splitting spears,” Grandin said. “This one isn’t much use now, but there might be a couple usable ones left. I have two dozen with me already, but I could always use more.”

“What is all this?” Valeria demanded to know as Grandin started going through the rest of the bolts on the rack.

Grandin paused as he took another hide-splitting spear from the rack. “This… isn’t the first expedition to track our quarry,” he said neutrally, though Leon detected a minute quaver in his tones. “The bounty offered by the Azadan of Lancefoot has attracted quite a few free fighters and mercenaries to make their moves. All of this, specifically, is from an expedition launched about… fifteen years ago, now? By the Stone, has it been that long? Obviously, the expedition failed. Nearly everyone was killed and our beast remains to torment the land of the living.”

“Seems like this was a serious expedition,” Leon said as he glanced around at the half dozen or so destroyed siege engines and the remains of weapons for at least a hundred people.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

“Serious, but unprepared,” Grandin bitterly responded. “Moved too quickly, drew too much attention, took too much time setting up. The beast picked them apart with ease.”

“Did you lead this expedition?” Valeria asked accusingly.

Grandin glared at her and didn’t respond. Instead, he turned his attention to the spear in his hand, and after a moment, tossed it aside.

“King Leon,” Grandin said, his voice so thick with anger that he seemed hardly able to enunciate his words, “you promised to help me kill this thing. Do you intend to fulfill that promise?”

“Of course I do,” Leon definitively stated.

“… Good,” Grandin whispered, and without further discussion, took off running into the sparse forest that surrounded the relatively flat arrival area.

“Hey, wait!” Leon shouted, but Grandin didn’t listen, and Leon took off after him, the rest of his party in hot pursuit. Even with this surprise, they fanned out as much as the terrain allowed, showing their training and professionalism.

Despite moving far faster than Grandin, the island wasn’t so large that Leon caught up to him before he’d stopped. Leon skidded to a halt, the rest of his party doing likewise, as Grandin stood with arms outstretched in a large clearing hundreds of feet across. In the center of the clearing was a deep, sandy depression, at the bottom of which Leon could see the mouth of a cave from which emanated a fearsome aura and a dangerous growl.

Conjuring a pristine hide-splitting spear into his hand, Grandin stood upon the edge of the depression and shouted down into the sand, “FACE ME, MONSTER! TODAY, I WILL TEAR YOU APART! I WILL PAINT THIS ISLAND RED WITH YOUR BLOOD! YOUR BONES WILL BE SCATTERED ABOUT THE FAR WEST FOR ALL TO SEE AND MOCK YOUR DEATH!”

“Set up there!” Leon hurriedly ordered his people as he pointed at the edge of the depression next to Grandin.

His people moved quickly, forming a line at the top of the depression. Two of the stronger knights even conjured MALLs and four of the weakest knights in the retinue jumped in to operate the weapons.

At the same time, from the mouth of the cave came an island-shaking roar, and a lithe, feline form came confidently striding out from it. It was enormous, standing at more than twice Leon’s height. Its fur was dull orange, while its legs, ending in vicious claws, were covered in dark green scales. Its tail was long and serpentine, at the end of which was an actual serpent’s head, complete with fangs dripping with venom. The monster’s orange eyes burned with intelligence, hatred, and magic, and when it opened its maw to shake the island with another roar, it gave Leon’s party a view of nightmarish fangs. Above all was its tenth-tier aura, strong and robust, putting even Valeria and Maia’s to shame.

“GO NOW, TO DEATH!” Grandin screamed, his voice carrying over even this creature’s roar, and he threw his hide-splitting spear with tremendous force. At the same time, the Lightning Lances on the MALLs crackled with power and fired bolts of their own at the creature.

All three of these projectiles passed through the creature like it was only a light projection; Leon could also sense a burst of darkness magic from the creature, which caused its body to temporarily become intangible. Unharmed, the creature’s tiger-like body tensed, and then it moved. In the blink of an eye, it was upon one of the MALLs, its enormous claws ripping through the enchanted hull with startling ease. Fire burst from the vehicle as magical circuits were destroyed, while Leon surged at the creature, Iron Pride in hand.

The creature swiped at him as he came into range, but Leon simply held up Iron Pride, and the monster’s paw raked itself upon the edge of the blade. The pad of its paw was split by the Adamant even as the force of its strike hurled Leon back several feet. The monster roared in pain even as Leon surged forth again, lightning arced across his body. At the same time, the rest of the party made their moves. Magic rained down upon the monster in thick sheets, while an ice dragon came barreling in from behind.

Maia, however, was forced to back off as Grandin charged in ahead of her, a wild look in his eye, another hide-splitting spear in his hand.

All of these attacks, however, were for naught, as the monster channeled darkness magic and sank into the ground.

A moment later, it sprang up from the earth like a flying fish from water and sank its jaws into one of Leon’s seventh-tier knights, killing him almost instantly. Its serpentine tail, meanwhile, lunged out and sank its fangs into another knight, whose scream of pain was almost immediately strangled off as his body seized up.

Leon moved again, swinging Iron Pride at the monster sending a bolt of lightning crashing into its hide.

The monster howled in pain as its fur burned and its scales were scorched black. Eager to capitalize on its pain, Leon attacked again. The monster responded in kind, its claws fending off Iron Pride’s first couple of blows, though at the cost of clipping short the specific claws that made contact with the Adamant blade.

The beast shrieked, its hate and anger now replaced with fear as Leon’s lightning exploded from his sword and danced across the creature’s legs. It lashed out with magic, tendrils of darkness stretching from its shadow to slice four more of Leon’s knights apart as they moved to surround it.

With a cry of rage at the loss of his people, Leon held back none of his power. Silver-blue lightning exploded from him with tremendous force, bathing the monster in its power. It gave a spine-shivering shriek of pain and lashed out with its darkness magic again, its body charred but not destroyed by Leon’s attack.

Leon’s lightning ripped apart the tendrils of darkness, but Grandin had charged in from the side and was caught by the serpentine tail. The venomous fangs sank deep into Grandin’s torso, and some of Leon’s power then surged through the monster and into the guide.

Grandin screamed almost as horrifically as the beast as his body was scorched by Leon’s lightning, and Leon immediately called off his stream of lightning. Just as the silver-blue lightning died down, Maia came barreling in from the other side, her ice dragon snapping shut around the beast. Some of her ice teeth snapped off as her jaws shut around the monster, but others pierced its hide and locked it in place. With a swing of her glaive, Valeria then severed the serpentine tail, releasing Grandin.

In its death throes, the beast writhed and raged in Maia’s jaws. Darkness spread across the surface of the ice dragon, wearing down on it, though not quickly enough to save itself. In desperation, its eyes began to glow more intensely, and Leon could feel magic concentrating within them. Remembering the warnings that the beast could petrify with its eyes, as it slowed its writhing to fix Leon in its gaze, he let loose with a torrent of lightning targeting its eyes. Silver-blue lightning smashed into its face, and in seconds, the monster’s eyes boiled away. Shrieking like a banshee, it snapped and swung its claws at anyone and everyone, but with two quick swings of Iron Pride, Leon severed both paws at the wrist.

The beast roared again, but its voice had lost nearly all of its power. Leon prepared to end the creature, but Grandin forced himself to his feet and conjured another hide-splitting spear into his hand.

“THIS ENDS HERE!” he shouted as he hurled the spear at the monster. Being trapped in Maia’s jaws, it couldn’t move, and it was too injured to call upon its magic in time; the spear lived up to its name, parting flesh and bone and impaling the creature’s heart, and in a moment, shattered its soul realm.

Almost immediately, the monster went limp in Maia’s jaws, no longer troubling the living with its presence. The hunt, it seemed, was successful.