Dark Tides Part I

"They are finally here…"

Lady Fye was looking up to the sky as the flying ship was hovering above the city gates. The gust of wind coming from the working helices made her long hair and clothes flutter lightly.

"I thought it was impossible-" Frey muttered before turning around to the soldiers who were still staring at the flying machination. "Hey! Clear out the bystanders! They need space to land!"

As the flying ship became closer and closer to the ground, many came to surround the curious machine capable of flight.

"Our savior returns!" Lady Fye loudly proclaimed as she clapped her hands while Leona and Krieg climbed off the ship. "Just in the nick of time as well!"

Despite the murmur around the crowd, the tactician was no less intimidated than she was intrigued. She approached the demi-human lady and spoke in a soft voice, attempting to keep the conversation between the two of them.

"Lady Fye, with all due respect. Did you plan for us to attack the Arcadian army?"

"In all honesty, no. But I knew something was going to happen soon. Our king's army was in the process of training new recruits with all the haste despite us having more than enough to keep the frontline secured." She replied softly. "Though I'd say your timely arrival was more than welcome since most of the soldiers keeping the Arcadians outside our walls were either killed or badly injured."

"Lady Leona!" Frey came running to her after she had spotted the tactician talking to her master. "Thank the heavens you are alright. Was it you that pelted the enemy army with spells?"

"Spells? Hardly, those were barrels of gunpowder, you can thank Lady Fye for foreseeing this happening."

The young captain looked with a surprised expression towards Fye who simply brushed off with a motion of her hand.

"Regardless of what happened, I'm glad to see our hard work paid off." She glanced at the flying ship with a warm smile on her face. "With this irrefutable evidence of our work I'll be able to make the other families work together in the creation of these ships."

A sense of guilt was starting to build up in Leona's chest. It was true that it was thanks to her that the tactician had the means to travel without the fear of being attacked by a death angel, however a flying ship at that point in time was only going to become a weapon to be used against whatever threatened the dwarven kingdom.

"Lady Fye, you aren't planning to use these ships against Arcadia, are you?"

"Not offensively, no. But should they attack again we'll need to have the means to defend ourselves now wouldn't we?"

"Fair enough…"

Deep down Leona felt responsible, should Akrapocalis be able to mass produce those airships, virtually nothing would stand in its way.

"However I don't think that'll be necessary any time soon."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Arcadia's army had sustained some losses even before coming to our doorstep. Some creature has been roaming the Great Forest killing anything or anyone that it would come across."

"A creature? Not a death angel?"

"No, as a matter of fact this creature had slain a death angel. If I recall correctly, Lest, who was responsible for overseeing the watch around the capital's walls, had the chance to see the creature from afar." She turned to the captain beside her. "Frey, call your brother here. I'll head back to the mansion and start working on a petition to the king and other families."

"Yes madam!"

Upon saluting, the elf captain turned around and ran towards the main street where most of the soldiers seemed to be coming from leaving Leona and her group to be stared at by the curious inventors around the ship. It took a few minutes for the crowd to be dispersed by soldiers of the house Loraexion and as they did so, Frey had brought her brother in order to speak with the tactician. The moment he approached the group he bowed elegantly with his right arm in front of his body and the left behind it.

"I wish we could offer you a warmer welcome, but alas our unwanted guests had to make an appearance before an exalted guest-"

Frey slapped him so hard in the back that his posture just straightened automatically.

"Get it together Lest. Come on, tell them what you saw last night."

"Ack, must you be so ruthless sister?" The older sister raised her hand threatening to slap him once again which made him raise both hands, conceding to her persuasion. "Alright, alright, no need to get violent… where should I start…? Ah yes, yesterday my squad was on patrol duty just outside the gates in case of a surprise attack by the order of Lady Fye. Normally it is uneventful and quiet as it can get, being the dead of the night only a few stray animals or the usual critter would be making a noise right outside our fair city. But as we were making our rounds near the southern walls we heard hustling coming from the vegetation and shortly thereafter an enormous creature about thrice a man's size came out of the woods. At first I thought about giving the order to attack it but after seeing it destroy a tree by barely bumping into it I had my men to hold their fire and let the beast go away on its own."

That caught Leona's attention.

"Could you describe its appearance?"

"Yes, it was much like a goat on two legs, muscular and covered in fur from head to toe, I'm not quite sure about its face aside from the crimson red eyes and the two very thick horns, one of which was broken though."

"A broken horn and crimson red eyes…?" One prominent memory came to mind, but she slightly shook her head as if trying to erase the idea from her head. "And what did it do? Did it see your group?"

"I'm sure it did, but it simply paid us no mind and continued to roam around for a bit more until it eventually went back to the forest."

"I see…"

"I'm thankful we didn't attack it, earlier today we noticed it was once again roaming the forest carrying a dismembered death angel's arm." He shuddered from the spine chilling memory. "If it can do that with a death angel, imagine if it grabbed a hold of any of us."

Leona lowered her head slightly, staring at the ground in front of her before Krieg gently squeezed her left shoulder whilst shaking his head.

"Very well." The tactician turned to the elf siblings. "We still have some leftover gunpowder on the ship, if any of your soldiers could help us-"

"Say no more." Frey whistled and some of the soldiers making the perimeter around the ship came to her. "We got some sensitive materials on board and Princess Leona wants us to unload it to the mansion."

"Yes ma'am!"

In no time the rest of the gunpowder was unloaded and Leona was free to go once again. As she was about to climb up the ship Frey called out to her and as the tactician turned around, the captain saluted her.

"Best of luck to you Princess Leona! May the light ever guide you to victory!"

Upon saying her goodbyes, Leona and Krieg climbed on board and Phoebe slowly made the ship ascend. Once high in the air they began to move eastward, crossing the dwarven castle and the capital's west walls towards Lugna plains, a vast grass flatland devoid of any trees in sight.

'Lugna plains…' Leona thought. 'The most fierce battle against death angels took place here.'

She leaned over the right railing of the ship and even though she was very far away from the battlefield below she could see the trenches dug by Akrapocalian soldiers to serve as makeshift shelters with cannons sitting in front of said trenches, the spray of darkened red alongside numerous corpses filled what was supposed to be a verdant flatland. She frowned her brows, even if it was to keep the citizens at peace, sending soldiers so far away from the citadel was a death sentence.

"Leona!" Phoebe shouted which prompted the tactician to look at her. "How far are we going to go?!"

Despite not knowing the exact lay of the land due to never traveling anywhere further than Akrapocalis in her childhood, she was intimately familiar with trade routes thanks to the books in her father's study and the next place they could land that would be safe from death angels was…

"To the town of Arivaul!"

"Understood!"