The Storm King

“FACE ME!!! FACE ME AND DIE!!!”

Thunder boomed, lightning flashed, and a thousand men were turned to ash.

“YOU ARE FORSAKEN! YOUR LORD HAS ABANDONED YOU!”

Another cataclysm tore the defending formations apart. The defensive lines were shattered, arks were burning across the plane, and cities were seized; the people who lived within given over to the invaders’ mercies.

“WHERE ARE YOU, KAMRAN?! YOUR MEN BLEED FOR YOU! DEATH HAS COME FOR THEM! WHERE ARE YOU?!”

Justin gritted his teeth against the power and ear-splitting taunts of the man who led the way. He didn’t blame Halbast for what he was saying, or even what he was doing, but if he could do it all just a little quieter, Justin would’ve been much happier.

He took a deep breath as armies landed all around him, small transport arks disgorging thousands of troops dressed in golden armor to secure the newest conquest in Halbast’s realm. The breath came with the acrid stench of iron and ozone, blood and lightning. Sweat, vomit, and all the other unpleasant aromas of the battlefield were utterly subsumed in it, and even Justin at the tenth-tier struggled to press on.

“ARE THERE NO GREAT MEN HERE?!” Anax Halbast thundered from ten miles above ground, his body easily discernible even to mortals as the locus for a million bolts of golden lightning. Mountains cracked by his passing alone, the earth shuddered, and the sky cracked open; any of Kamran’s defenders on the plane melted away before the fifteenth-tier Anax like ice before an erupting volcano.

A deafening roar preceded Halbast rocketing into the ground, and even almost twenty miles from the impact site, Justin felt it in his bones. The air itself seemed to break, and Justin thought he heard the bones of a hundred thousand men splinter. Golden lightning roiled across the plane, sparing everyone who bore Halbast’s colors. Even Justin, dressed as he was as a man in service of Anassa Auset, was spared, showing that this attack was no less controlled despite how wide-ranging it was.

He hoped it would be the last one. No one but a fifteenth-tier mage could stand against another fifteenth-tier mage, and if Halbast had wanted to, he could’ve obliterated this entire plane singlehandedly. As it was, confident that the final blow had been struck, Justin ran forward with the seemingly endless hordes of Halbast’s men.

As he ran forward, a wave of ash washed over him—the result of Halbast’s power turning the local forests into ashen wastelands. But he didn’t even blink, not when the goal of his assignment was so close that he could almost taste it. He might’ve licked his lips if he didn’t want to expend the power required to keep his tongue free of ash.

The cacophonous roar of thousands of men in formation filled his ears, but there were no more deafening cracks or blinding flashes of lightning. Smiling, Justin pressed on.

He passed annihilated defensive works, turned into blasted heaps of blackened stone over broken foundations. Ash and charred bone crunched under his shoes. His white tunic had already turned gray from the ash. Despite that, Halbast’s men recognized him and allowed him through without question. He passed several formations that had gone on ahead of him, ascending a mountain that dominated a large, heavily urbanized valley, and past further obliterated defensive emplacements.

By the time he reached the citadel at the summit, he was running hard, not sparing a thought for the city burning in the wide valley below. The screams of its people amidst the clattering of shields and weapons and crackling of thunder likewise rolled off his back, his ears turned elsewhere.

The citadel was little more than blackened walls and heaps of stone, all magic within it already dispersed. So close to Halbast’s landing site, there were no corpses here, not even bone shards. Only ash and shattered stone remained.

“LORD JUSTIN!” Halbast thundered—thankfully more quietly than his earlier roaring, but only somewhat—as he landed next to Justin in what had once been the citadel’s rather cramped foyer. Justin jumped and turned around with almost violent speed. “HAVE YOU MANAGED TO WIN YOURSELF ANY GLORY TODAY? I LEFT ENOUGH FOR ANY BRAVE ENOUGH TO SEIZE…”

Halbast was an enormous man, standing close to eight feet tall and so heavily armored that he looked even larger. He was one of the most striking men that Justin had ever seen, with ruby red skin and eyes with black sclera and burning red pupils. Hair as black as night cascaded down his back freely, while an almost paradoxically well-trimmed beard clung tightly to his jawline. The Adamant armor he’d clad himself in was deep red, but when the light caught it just right, Justin knew that it would shine gold.

That Halbast had become a Storm Lord rather than a Burning Lord once again surprised him, despite his assignment keeping him close to Halbast for several years at this point.

“You pushed too quickly, Lord Halbast,” Justin quickly answered. “My blade remains unstained by even air, let alone blood.”

Halbast threw his head back and laughed uproariously. “SUCH WEAKLINGS INFEST KAMRAN’S PLANES! HOW CAN A MAN LIVE IF HE FINDS NO WORTHY FOES?! WORK HARDER, JUSTIN! GLORY WILL NOT FIND YOU ON ITS OWN!”

Justin coughed as ash and dust were thrown into the air by the mere flexing of Halbast’s aura. “I have tasted glory enough for several lifetimes,” he said. “Do you know why I have come?”

Again, Halbast laughed. “NO TRUE MAN FORGETS AID GIVEN, NOR ITS PRICE! SEE YOURSELF TO MY ARK; I HAVE HAD YOUR ENGINEER TAKEN ALIVE!”

Justin let a breath he’d been unconsciously holding out, spared Halbast nothing more than a shallow bow, and then launched himself into the air. He paid no heed to any alarm he might have caused as he flew over Halbast’s men, trusting that they weren’t going to turn any of their weapons upon him. And sure enough, he was unchallenged as he rocketed into the sky.

Halbast’s arks were cutting through the smoke and ash as they seized the plane. Most were smaller arks—destroyers and frigates that were better designed for combat below a plane’s terminus line—but one mammoth monster darkened the plane as it came in to hover over the city that had once been its capital, but which Halbast had just turned into a smoking ruin.

The ark made for a majestic sight, long and straight, with metal furrows along its entire exterior. Lightning flashed within these furrows, causing the ark to be perpetually cast in darkness or in overpoweringly bright golden light.

Justin came in fast to the largest of the hangars, where one of his adjutants was already waiting for him. They jointly ignored the cries of surprise and complaint as Justin landed and forced himself past the hangar’s staff who were trying to work around him.

“Brig,” the adjutant said, sparing no more words when none were needed. Justin took off at a near sprint, blazing his way past startled officers and ark personnel. If he were not representing another fifteenth-tier Anax, he knew that for all of this, his trip down to the brig would’ve been accompanied by a thousand other mages, and he wouldn’t have left.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

But he didn’t care about that; all he wanted to know was that the man that Halbast claimed was taken alive was still in that state.

The brig was a blur; he shouted at officers, his adjutant flashing his credentials seemingly every ten seconds, but he was finally brought into a tight cell. It resembled little more than a five-foot-by-five-foot box of onyx, almost pitch black within save for a hint of light flashing beneath the glassy black surface of the walls.

When Justin saw the man inside, he exhaled, relieving the large amount of stress and worry that had accumulated since he’d left Halbast and the citadel nearly an hour ago. The man, huddled in a corner, glanced up in terror as Justin entered, revealing an ugly black burn running down his face and neck.

Quickly getting a handle on his rapid breathing, Justin nodded for the door to the cell to be closed, leaving him in the near-dark with the man. He wasn’t afraid; the man was broken even if he was eleventh-tier.

“Most Honorable Lord Hasahlain?” Justin asked once the door was shut. “Architect without Equal? Master of Hammer and Chisel? Wall Breaker and Wall Raiser?” Justin’s eyes narrowed and his tone grew icy. “Builder of Kamran’s palace in the Nexus?”

Hasahlain curled into himself even more, shivering in terror as Justin stepped closer.

“I have so many questions for you…” Justin hissed. “If you answer them, I’ll allow you to live. If you do not… my mercy has limits…”

---

The crystal flickered, struggling for a moment to make a connection. But then, it suddenly clarified as the receiving end confirmed it, and the infrastructure allowing them to communicate from across the universe prioritized the connection.

Above the crystal appeared a woman dressed in red robes so thick and many-layered that her body was completely obscured within. Her head was exposed, though, allowing her dark skin to be readily seen. Her face was noble and refined, though her expression was devoid of any warmth. Blue and gold makeup accented her features, while her hairless scalp was further adorned with glittering golden runes. Whether they were tattoos or not, Justin couldn’t say, but he’d never seen the runes on her head change in all the years he’d known her.

“Speak,” she coldly demanded, wasting not a single word on greetings.

“Anassa Auset,” Justin said respectfully as he fell to a knee before the projection. “Strategos Hasahlain has been taken alive.”

“Victory,” Auset replied. “Good. The war?”

“Halbast drove away all before him, as expected,” Justin immediately explained. “The Garden of Black Petals was seized; forty planes within the Nightingale Cluster were incinerated before the rest capitulated; and Tone of Silence’s last stand was, as you can guess, futile. Hasahlain was seized on Tone of Silence attempting to reinforce it against Halbast’s push—in vain, it must be said, though he could have escaped if he’d wanted to. Or rather, the ability to escape was always there.”

“Why did he not?”

“I can only speculate that Basileus Kerethein prevented him from leaving, not wanting Kamran’s greatest architect to abandon a thousand planes to Halbast.”

Auset curled her lips in disdain for such waste. Justin had to agree; Hasahlain alone was worth more than any of Kamran’s planes, as proven by his defensive works having delayed Halbast for months. Once Halbast was through, Hasahlain should’ve been evacuated, but it seemed that Kerethein had decided that he was worth more to Kamran than the architect and abandoned Hasahlain on Tone of Silence below. Justin could see Halbast not only pushing deeper into Kamran’s territory but also regaining lost planes with Hasahlain no longer able to design new fortifications for the aspiring Storm King.

Of course, Justin would’ve normally not cared if such a man had been killed by Halbast. It would’ve achieved this victory more permanently, ensuring that Kamran never again benefited from Hasahlain’s genius. But given what else Hasahlain had built, Justin had hatched a plan with Auset and Halbast. And now that Justin had what he wanted, he wasn’t going to prevent Halbast from ensuring that Kamran’s greatest architect never again lent his skills to the would-be Storm King’s cause.

“Did he cooperate?” Auset coldly asked.

“He did,” Justin stated. “Eventually. It took several days, but I now have a complete plan not only of Kamran’s palace but also of Lingol Hen. There are a few promising options for infiltrating the city, but I can already tell that it’s going to be much harder to get into the palace…”

“Return,” Auset ordered. “Then work.”

The projection flickered out, the connection severed on Auset’s end. He straightened up, his heart racing like it wanted to break free of the confines of his ribs and race around Halbast’s flag ark. He had come so far, and now his opportunity was so close that he could almost taste it. His fingers curled, the ghost of a memory of Ariana’s fingers entwined with his. The sound of her laughter; her radiant smile that shamed every star in the sky; her wit, sharper than any blade…

The mother of his daughter, who had languished in Kamran’s palace under house arrest ever since she’d given birth to Valeria. Justin had been exiled soon after their daughter’s birth in all but fact, given a job he’d never been expected to succeed in. The only way he could free his wife now was to do it himself…

The situation in the Nexus was about as conducive to a breakout as he could ask for; with the war against Halbast and Auset, Kamran couldn’t afford to remain in the Nexus, letting his territories rule themselves. He had to sally out with his forces and meet his enemies in the Void.

As of yet, none of the three battling fifteenth-tier mages had met in battle, but lines had shifted throughout the universe. Halbast had been on the losing end until Justin managed to convince Auset to support him. Halbast, after all, was poorly suited to the title, but that would only work in Auset’s favor since she didn’t want the title herself. Halbast could have it, Justin had argued, and that would allow her all the autonomy from the Throne of Thunder that she could want.

He kept silent about his thoughts on either Kamran's or Halbast’s chances, however, knowing that his son-in-law had his eye on the title, too. He, after all, also knew that Auset clearly remembered the days of the Thunderbird Clan’s rule over the Storm Lands, and she was in no hurry to replace Jason Keraunos with anyone even remotely as ambitious and energetic. Halbast could be controlled, but she would be much harder to convince to side with an ambitious scion of the Thunderbird Clan…

But she didn’t need to. Justin just wanted her to fight alongside Halbast against Kamran. All three would wear themselves down, thereby increasing the chances that Leon could take the title when he was strong enough. And given what he’d heard from the Far West over the past few years, Leon was making great strides.

‘Anax at only the thirteenth-tier,’ Justin thought, his mouth twitching with amusement. He’d almost coughed up a lung in shock when he had been informed of Leon’s duel against Anax Alderion. In the decade since, however, only admiration remained. That Leon had also killed Triton and Antipatra only further increased Justin’s esteem for the younger man. He’d had the displeasure of briefly meeting both when he was working for Kamran, and neither had made a good impression on him.

That they were both dead only further weakened Kamran. Already, the war was taking its toll, with the violence of every battle only increasing as damage accumulated and desperation increased. No one, not even Halbast, had been interested in destroying planes in the early days of the war, but now, Halbast was blasting his way across Kamran’s frontier strands with abandon, while Kamran deployed his own brutal forces in retaliation.

Losses were being taken everywhere, and what was being gained added little to the wealth and power of the conqueror. Justin could feel some heat coming to his cheeks as he thought about his part in all of this, of how much he’d contributed to the death and destruction of this war. Auset, after all, may not have joined Halbast if he hadn’t convinced her, and Halbast might have already been defeated by a more surgical, directed strike by now. Fewer planes would’ve been destroyed, and millions, if not billions, would still be alive if that were the case.

But Justin thought again of Ariana, waiting for him in Kamran’s palace. He thought of Valeria and his promise to reunite their family. And he thought about living under Kamran.

‘I will do whatever I must to get her back,’ Justin thought, resolute determination causing his chest to swell. ‘And whatever I must to see Kamran’s head on a spike…’

His killing intent spiked briefly, but after a moment, he got his aura back under control. The day would come when Leon would face Kamran. The younger man had earned that honor, even if Justin wished the killing blow could be struck by his hand instead. But this way, he knew that he could at least be there to witness it. It would surely be a memory he’d treasure for the rest of his days…