The magic around her hummed vibrantly; the air was warm; the Origin Spark was bright—it was a perfect day by most measures, though Elise knew her husband often preferred cloudier, stormier days. It was almost a cruel joke how often the wind and the rain would call him from their bed, taking his warmth and steadiness away. But flying amidst curtains of rain, riding the wind currents, and dancing amidst the lightning bolts made him happy, and his joy, understated though it could often be, was infectious.

Now, however, the reason for his warmth being gone was another thing entirely; death out in the planes, and the near-total loss of a Task Force. Elise didn’t think she was a soft woman, but it still took her aback slightly when she realized just how much she wanted her husband to rend those who killed Menander and ravaged his fleet and bring their heads back to parade through Artorion’s streets.

‘Small cost to pay for forcing him away from me,’ she bitterly thought, indulging a little in her anger and frustration. But once the indulgence was over, she tamped down on that instinct. She was a Queen, and this was neither the first nor the last time that her husband would be called off to war.

She sighed as she watched his fleet disappear into the Lion’s Portal hundreds of miles away, her magic senses feeling more potent than ever after ten years of hard training with the rest of her family. She hadn’t forgotten her vow on Voidshore; she was taking her training far more seriously than she ever had before.

But even training had to take second place to duty, and with Leon gone, she was the de facto representative of the Royal Family. Cassandra was still around to help her, and Iron-Striker and the rest of the bureaucracy were in place, but that didn’t mean that she had all the time in the world to watch her husband depart the Nexus.

So, she departed the pavilion and set out back to the rest of the palace. Her handful of Tempest Knights and ladies-in-waiting met her along the way.

“My Queen,” Petronella, one of her personal handmaidens, greeted as she fell in just beside her. “Has the mountain air cleared your thoughts?”

“It has,” Elise said with a smile. “Send for my parents. It’s been a while since I last saw a good update regarding Heaven’s Eye.”

“I’ll send for Lady Emilie first,” Petronella said.

“Good,” Elise said. “After that, perhaps a visit to Nora and Kaifa Sen’uus? Our alchemists have been hard at work, I’m sure…”

“The reports of explosions and strange smells have been unceasing around their workshop,” Petronella remarked. “Their material requests have been… quite something, too.”

“Then I should see what they’ve been working on,” Elise stated. “After them… we shall stop by Nestor’s lab. I don’t have anything I want to go over with him, but I’d like to see what he’s working on. We shall return to the palace after that and convene with Iron-Striker. I should meet with him and the Tribal elders who are yet in the city.”

“Any reason in particular?”

“No. But they should feel valued. I’ll end the day with my mother-in-law and Princess Nyra.”

Petronella nodded in acknowledgment, Elise’s schedule already fully memorized. Without further ado, they set out, Elise feeling nothing but determination to make sure that Leon’s Kingdom ran smoothly in his absence, as she always did. After all, it was her Kingdom, too, and that of their future children—should the Ancestors finally show them favor.

---

The roar of the crowd was deafening, and Elise couldn’t help but wonder if everyone in the Nexus could hear them. Giannis the White Lion of Raitos had been the favored one to win this match, but Bren, the World-Shifting Bison, had beaten him in a dramatic upset. The crowd made their elation—or in the case of the watching Lions, their displeasure—known as loudly as they could, putting on such an impassioned display that Elise wondered how much energy they’d have left for the main fight later that day.

For the moment, she and Serana applauded politely, neither of them particularly into gladiator sports. Cassandra and Nyra, however, were practically hanging out of the balcony of the Royal box, shouting themselves hoarse along with almost everyone else in the enormous arena.

“Still no word from my son?” Serana asked, her lips tight and her eyes flashing in the light of the day.

Elise glanced around the box. There weren’t many people joining them, but those who shared their presence were trusted friends and allies—Gaius, Iron-Striker, Alcander, and a dozen others. Still, she lowered her voice a bit, not wanting them to listen in. She even considered using a nonverbal method of speaking, but she decided against it, not liking how slimy darkness magic felt in her mind.

“No,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t worry. He’s only been gone a month. He’ll often go longer without contact when he’s handling a threat. That’s just who he is.”

Serana took a deep breath, clearly holding herself back from… something. It occurred to Elise that this was her mother-in-law’s longest time spent apart from Leon since Belicenion; it was probably hard on her to be so far removed from her son. So, Elise took her arm and squeezed it supportively.

A smile was her reward, glowing, but also a bit stiff.

“He could stand to be more communicative,” Serana groused when the smile fell.

The door opened, and a courier slipped in, almost sweating from his haste. He made for Iron-Striker, however, and she put it out of her mind for the moment.

“No matter where he is, that never changes,” she said with a rueful look into the distance. “Shall we torment him together when he returns? I’m thinking about insisting that he hunts for me a blue-maned fox; coats made from their pelts have been all the rage amongst Eagles lately, and I rather fancy one for myself…”

Serana smirked, a similar notion undoubtedly occurring to her, but whatever she might’ve said was cut off when Iron-Striker suddenly shouted, “Emergency! We’re under attack!”

---

Elise shivered, the warm palace suddenly feeling dreadfully cold. Cassandra was with her, as were all of the highest-ranked men and women in the city. They had all heard the news, but it was so sudden that it was hard to believe. It was time to hear from Iron-Striker and the Jaguar themselves what was truly happening.

“An hour and a half ago,” the Jaguar said as he stood before the forty or so of Leon’s highest ministers, along with the forty Tribal elders who resided in the city, “an enormous fleet appeared off the western coast.”

Behind him, a map of the Kingdom’s Nexus holdings was projected, with the enemy fleet marked in red. It was concentrated mostly in the northwest, threatening the Serpent’s Head Peninsula, but other detachments were pushing in all along the western coast.

The Jaguar continued, his tone deadly serious, “Our defensive fleets were either destroyed or forced back almost immediately. We’re still assessing losses. What we do know is that many of our settlements in the peninsula have been assaulted, and Queenfall has been put to siege. Culain’s garrison is mustering, and reinforcements from Lancefoot are already on their way. The Seventh Iron Order has also begun to mobilize.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Elise watched as markers for their northern defenses and the Iron Order that Leon had agreed to support moved westward. A thousand arks in total, by her estimation. Their numbers would swell with the remains of their northwestern defenders moving in the same direction.

“The enemy still outnumbers us,” the Jaguar said, dousing any spark of hope she had. “This is no mere raid, not with these numbers. At least seven thousand arks have emerged from the King’s Ocean and assaulted the peninsula. Another three thousand have assaulted our western cities. The Ravens, Eagles, and Hawks have already taken losses. And now, a group of five hundred arks is pushing to the Lion’s Portal as we speak.”

“Are there any forces we can send right now to aid them?” Gaius asked, speaking for everyone in the room.

Elise listened, her ears burning even as her body shook with horror.

“We’re mobilizing everyone,” the Jaguar said. “All of our garrisoned troops, all of our arks, whether in an arkyard or not—if it can fly, we’re putting it in the air. But… we have perhaps eight thousand arks in the Nexus in total, including two thousand legion transports and cargo arks, and they’re scattered all over.”

An accurate number as far as Elise knew, but she also knew that the Tribes could put together another thousand, perhaps thousand-and-a-half—assuming all of their arks weren’t destroyed before they could muster. She also knew that some of the arks that the Jaguar was counting had already been destroyed.

“If our enemy seizes the Lion’s Portal,” Iron-Striker gravely intoned, “they’ll cut us off from the north. Most of our infrastructure is built along the Blue Feather River and its tributaries.”

Elise cut in, her voice rising above everyone else who wanted to express their opinion, and as it did, they fell silent.

“What of our newest friends?” she asked. “What of Archelaus, Illum, and Ingrid?”

She saw Iron-Striker and the Jaguar exchange an uncomfortable look, so she asked again.

“Has any word been sent to my husband’s newest vassals?” She waited a moment, and when no answer came, she took that silence as her answer. “We have been attacked from the King’s Ocean!” she shouted as she rose from her seat, drawing all eyes to her. She strode toward the Jaguar, her red hair billowing behind her, her eleventh-tier aura practically boiling. “Do you understand what that means?”

“My Queen,” the Jaguar began, but she immediately cut him off.

“It means!” she shouted as Cassandra rose to stand beside her. “That we are being attacked by someone powerful enough to disregard Princess Miuna, my dear friend and the daughter of the Ocean King himself! Why have our allies not been called!”

“It hasn’t even been two hours yet, Your Majesty,” the Jaguar said.

Elise blinked rapidly, unable to believe what she’d just heard. “Just a moment ago, you were elucidating how outnumbered we are! How many arks do our new Despot friends have between them? How many does our new enemy have still hidden beneath the waves?! Call them immediately! Demand that they fulfill the obligations that they have to my husband!”

The prospect of sending for help made the Jaguar look like he’d just swallowed a lemon, but the ever-steady Iron-Striker said, “It will be done.” He nodded to a nearby blue-clad officer who rushed out of the room.

“Has there been any stirrings to the south?” Cassandra asked in the wake of Elise’s order.

“Some,” the Jaguar admitted, looking eager to move on. “But Seabreak Fortress is strong. Breaking through our defenses there will not come as quickly as it did in the west.”

“It will mean little if they can reach us by another way,” Cassandra said, to which Elise nodded.

“It won’t,” the Jaguar agreed. “That’s why we’ll have to hold them further north. We must hold the Lion’s Portal.”

That exclamation had everyone looking again at the projection, and at the red dots pushing deeper into the mountains and closer to the portal…

---

Elise felt like she was going to be sick. Her stomach twisted and turned as a storm of motion surrounded her.

The Lion’s Portal had fallen, and fallen quickly. Their warriors had put up quite a fight, but ultimately, it had been a doomed effort. Led by a pair of twelfth-tier mages, the fortresses and fleet guarding the Lion’s Portal had been overrun. Some of the arks fled through the portal, others scattered eastward, but most now burned in the valleys around the portal. Fires burned just as hotly within the fortresses, in which little resistance remained. Already, enemy arks were pushing into the portal and doing who-knew-what on the other side.

More arks had appeared off the coast—another two thousand pushing into the mountains to link up with the force that had taken the portal. Elise could imagine what was going to happen next.

Messages had been sent all over. To Heaven’s Eye, to Leon’s new Despot vassals, to Aeterna, to the Task Forces, and to Leon himself. Communication, however, was sporadic, with the Jaguar speculating that this was coordinated with forces outside of the Nexus who might be putting pressure on their lotus relay stations. With the portal lost to them, however, it was hard to say for certain what was happening outside of the Nexus.

But what Elise knew was what was within the Nexus, and that was death and loss. Barely more than a day had passed, and they were losing on every front. Queenfall’s walls were barely holding, and the assembled fleet at Culain was horribly outnumbered by the arks assaulting the north. There were even suggestions to pull them back, to arc them around the Bolt Mountains and reinforce Artorion from the east.

That, however, would mean completely giving up the north. Elise insisted that they remain in the north to do what they could to defend those cities. The Jaguar disagreed, but Elise argued him around. She’d also given orders to evacuate the settlements along the Blue Feather River. She doubted that the large cities that had sprung up around that great waterway could be evacuated into the Artor Valley in time, especially with little in the way of defenses left between the Lion’s Portal and the Northern Talon, but some lives had to be saved.

Even now, arks and ships were packing themselves with people and bringing them south. Most of them were either Bison Tribesmen or Tribeless, having settled there after moving from the north or from the planes. And now they had to abandon everything to desperately try to escape this oncoming tsunami with their lives.

Elise thought she might be sick, but she did her damnedest to seem calm and in control. She wasn’t Leon, who she was certain could meet the gaze of Death itself and force it to blink. She also wasn’t Cassandra, who even now had taken a patrol of Tempest Knights to inspect the defenses of the Artor Valley.

She was just herself, and as strong as she tried to be, this was not where her skills lay.

Still, as the sole remaining Queen in Westmount—at least, until Cassandra returned from her inspection—she was determined to be that steadying force, that representative of her family that her people could count on.

Not far away, she could hear a comms officer swearing at the lack of response from Miuna. That worried her, but she couldn’t believe the Ocean Princess would turn on them like this. Rather, this seemed to her like something more coordinated, as the Jaguar had said. This was planned.

But Miuna wasn’t their only great ally. The Despots had been called, and their forces were mustering, but even they weren’t who Elise most hoped would aid them.

“I will send word to Arushae,” Serana said after Elise finished with her request. It didn’t take much convincing, not after Elise brought her mother-in-law to the room of the palace that she was basing herself out of. The Jaguar, Iron-Striker, Alcander, and all the others came and went, seeing to their own duties, but for Elise, this was her command center. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

“Thank you,” Elise expressed warmly, but the look on Serana’s face told her that she wasn’t convincing her that she was calm.

“Stay strong,” Serana all but commanded. “The Great Dragon Clans have often fought against greater odds and won.”

“I am not a dragon,” Elise stated, almost wanting to justify her fear.

“No, but you married one. And now you have one before you. Stay strong, my dear. My son did not take a weakling to wife, did he?”

The comment stung as harshly as if Serana had slapped her face, but Elise took the comment in the spirit that she thought it was intended—the dragons were harsh, and they expected certain things. She could—she would—live up to that expectation.

“He did not.”

Serana nodded, and without another word, walked to the quietest corner of the room to send her message to her family and brother Clans.

Elise, however, kept an eye on the maps, watching as the enemy fleets drew ever closer, and as the forces deployed, whether Tribal or from the central army, scattered. Artorion was now preparing for a siege. She didn’t know how long it could last against a force this size, but she knew that Leon, Nestor, and so many others had spent a significant amount of effort to reinforce the Artor Valley’s defenses. The Talons were stronger than they’d ever been, and the walls and towers that encircled the valley along the mountaintops were ready for a fight. The city’s star condensers were ready to pump origin power into the protective wards, and the local soldiery was mobilized.

She hoped it would be enough.

‘Leon…’ she silently pleaded. ‘Come back home… I—we—need you…’