Chapter 1108: War of Establishment V
The anger among Leon’s commanders when he returned from his brief talk with Terris was great. There hadn’t been any real considerations of surrendering or acquiescing to the demand to leave, but that defiant sentiment was truly and irrevocably cemented by the arrogance Terris displayed. Though they were undoubtedly the weaker side, a position that Leon’s Tribal vassals weren’t used to being in, the determination to stay and fight for their claimed land was strong enough to surmount any fear of reprisal.
That anger and determination only grew stronger in the hours after the opening clash; during the night, Terris’ forces picked over the ark wrecks in the plains, taking anything of use and gathering the bodies of the fallen. Leon had quietly hoped that the bodies of their people would be returned to them, especially since he couldn’t send his own recovery crews out beyond the veil without putting them in enormous danger, but Terris, it seemed, had other ideas.
Open-air pits were dug close to the edge of the misty veil, the remains of Leon’s people were placed within, and war beasts were called to feast upon them. Many-tentacled horrors and scaled, serpentine monsters of all shapes and sizes descended upon the remains and gorged themselves in a mad, bloody frenzy, ripping and tearing and leaving nothing behind. More egregiously, skins and skulls of his defeated warriors who’d taken the forms of their Ancestors were strung up for display, with the large, bloody head of a gold-maned lion—the transformed head of Split-Knuckle, Leon identified—being the most notable.
For Leon’s people, this disrespect was hard to take. Respectful handling of the dead was important in their culture, and especially so to the Ancestral Harts. Leon didn’t think he’d ever seen the normally fairly balanced and unflappable Harts so furious. It was all he could do to prevent similar desecrations to the fallen Ocean warriors within the veil. Instead, he had their bodies gathered and put on ice, just in case they were useful later.
What stuck out to him almost as much as the desecration of the dead was that he didn’t see a single Thunderman prisoner taken by Terris’ forces. While he thought it possible that he simply missed them doing so, he’d watched throughout the night, his magic senses sharp and focused, and still didn’t see a single living Thunderman taken into captivity.
The temptation was strong to give his Ocean captives similarly harsh treatment, but he managed to control himself. The prisoners could be an asset, and killing them would gain him little, save for fleeting satisfaction.
While all this was happening, Leon made sure to spare attention to monitoring Terris’ troop movements. Activity was mostly concentrated along the shore and the camps being erected there, but the whale-like arks slowly fanned out to the east, drawing a circle around the Artor Valley. They weren’t moving west yet, but as the sky above Leon’s storm began to brighten, the arks in the east started turning north. By the end of the day, he thought, the valley might be surrounded.
Being surrounded was hardly the best position to be in, but given the casualties taken by the Ocean forces, there was also an opportunity there, which Leon ruminated on throughout the night. When dawn broke, he finally abandoned his vigil, trusting in his people to prepare for the siege adequately without him breathing down their necks, and made his way to Nestor’s lab in the city.
As with most architecture in Artorion, Nestor’s lab was simple, barely more than a rectangular box on the outside, reminding Leon rather unpleasantly of Memoria back on Aeterna. The city had been built with speed and efficiency in mind, and as more of his people migrated to the Nexus, those buildings would be demolished as needed and replaced with grander structures more befitting the new capital of his Kingdom.