Chapter 1107: War of Establishment IV
Fires burned in the mountains from a dozen wrecked Ocean arks. Rain battered the slopes, the wind howled through the peaks, and survivors from the downed arks moaned and cried out in pain from where they fell. Elements of Leon’s central army were already deployed to take these survivors prisoner, though they had to move under their own power since so many of his arks had been shot down or heavily damaged.
Still, as the sky above his summoned storm darkened, the mountains around the Artor Valley grew relatively quiet. The Ocean arks had managed to withdraw from the veil, though no small part of that was due to the veil itself turning them around and pointing them out with greater insistence the more they tried to press inward. They had taken heavy casualties, and though Leon’s people had also taken some casualties in the veil, the Ocean forces took disproportionately more.
All in all, at least half, if not more, of the force Leon had that morning made it to the evening, and that fact weighed heavily on his mind. He didn’t let it show, however, and remained as focused as he could be on the problem at hand.
As the battle slowed and eventually petered out, orders were given that shifted his people’s work from fighting to cleaning up. Thankfully, the fires were controlled fairly quickly with the rain Leon summoned and the dampness of the misty veil. Some six hundred and thirteen Ocean warriors were taken prisoner, with Leon’s engineers moving quickly to construct some simple prison barracks for them to be held in. Finally, some small groups of Leon’s fastest-moving warriors were sent out to scour the wrecks of their arks closer to the veil for survivors and to get them back to the valley.
Unfortunately, there were few survivors to find, as most of Leon’s people either bailed out of their arks or MALLs quickly and managed to escape under their own power, or the destruction of their vehicles was so complete that few survived the crash. Leon thought specifically of the carrier and heavy cruiser that had covered his retreat—each had exploded spectacularly, leaving little room for their crews to survive.
On top of that, the Ocean warriors were already being deployed to swarm over the wrecks of shot-down arks, though, for the moment, they were focusing on their own. The Ocean arks, meanwhile, were spreading out across the plain to the east, covering as much ground as their numbers would allow.
On the beach, Leon could see the enemy getting comfortable, setting up camps and lavish pavilions. Further to the east up the chalky cliffs, he could also see a more concerted effort in setting up infrastructure upon the Titanstone vein his people had found.
Not for the first time, his heart beat with furious indignation. It was but a spark compared to the rage he felt for the death of his people, but it was felt, nonetheless.
From where he stood upon the roof of the southern Talon, he sighed in an attempt to let the anger bleed away. For the moment, there was nothing he could do about the Ocean King’s forces exploiting that deposit of Titanstone, so there wasn’t much use in getting angry about it.