For two weeks, they were corralled, ushered, and led towards a destination they were completely unaware of but were fully aware was not going to be good. As Solis had said, their cry for help was never picked up. It was like something was gobbling it up as soon as it was sent out. And left with no recourse, the group elected to push back.
It was better than being herded towards the slaughter like animals.
Their first battle had taken place about a week and some days back. The Monsters were grouped up in teams of dozens each at the lowest and up to a hundred at the highest, all tasked with forcing the fleet into a certain location. Sure, they could easily fight off those groups, but apparently the monsters had counted on that. Any attempt at ganging up on any group immediately saw the immediate reinforcement of the full horde, led by the Divine King monster, itself.
They couldn't take on that number.
With a good number of Spirit Kings, and a few ships—No Dreadship included—they’d peeled from the main fleet, under the cover of the darkness of space, assisted by the enhanced essence of Darkness and shadows, or Ala and a few Shadow-aspected Kings.
The Monsters had been a short distance away from them—three large continent sized spaces stacked between them—which had made it difficult for the them to see the assault teams until they'd struck.
Solis hadn't followed them. As a commander, his place was in the command seat within his flagship. This left Keilan and the others joining the assault, led supremely by Feene, the Spirit Queen elemental second in command to Solis.
The assault began when Ala had peeled back its shroud of darkness, dropping them right over the heads of the monsters.
Now, Keilan had rarely been in the presence of Spirit King monsters. The only references he had were the beasts, Nalon, and the others, and even they were rarely in their full true forms. They were either in humanoid forms or toned down true forms, reducing their sizes to easily comprehensible heights.
The monsters that drifted below them were easily the size of Mountains, great ones. They breathed power and might in such a way that had Keilan's heart beating with hammering fright. It felt like only a single glance from them was needed to end him, and it would have been so if they hadn't been backed by Spirit Kings.
Monsters in general didn't have domains, even the beasts. When in their true forms, they were granted great physical prowess in exchange for the precision and delicacy that domains provided, strengths Keilan had been told were almost comparable to an average human Spirit king with a domain summoned.
Their true forms granted them great power, and it was with that power that they terrorized civilization.
So when Nalon dropped onto one with his full domain summoned, the only thing Keilan grasped that the monster took out of it was a slightly ruffled fur. It retaliated by roaring, sending devastating shockwaves that would have pulverized any Spirit lord in its path.
Keilan and the others had picked on their own sizes—The Calamity tier monsters—, corralling them away from the vicinity of the Spirit Kings.
Full Astral image summoned, they'd fought the monsters in a full battle, going the full breath of the Spirit lord limit. They battled the monsters for more than a full day straight, lighting up space for miles away. And for the first time in a while, Keilan had pushed himself the way it should be, in a battle he had at least some agency with. Space was a vacuum, which meant it lacked air as a constant presence. Keilan made use of that difficulty to train his new technique. He suffused the area with his essence, moderately controlled with the assistance of his will and astral image. Over the hours the battle had gone on, he'd slowly extended the range and width of his invisible blade, taking it from a small blade into a short dagger. Truly, he was moving up.
They'd immediately retreated after thinning out the herd considerably, though not without some casualties. Feene, by Vanis's suggestion, had ordered a retreat, with the team bringing up the rear. It was a good thing they'd retreated when they did, because as soon as they crossed the first half of their journey back, a great power had ignited at their recently evacuated location. So great it was that even the Spirit lords, with their comparable far lesser senses, had easily detected the surge in power.
The Divine King had arrived.
They got back to the main fleet, thankfully with the Divine King monster not giving chase.
“So, the attack was a dead end; we failed to find the creature blocking our SOS signal,” Commander Kanos said darkly. His once normal calm features were twisted in a frustrated grimace, his elven half a dark contrast to the beauty of the race.
“Look on the bright side, Kanos!” Enis said cheerfully with a nonchalant shrug, a sharp opposite to Kanon's brooding expression, “We took out a considerable number of them. That's fewer monsters to fight when our eventual final battle comes.”
“Why don't we just attack the main horde itself and drop a trump card on their head? ‘Save ourselves the trouble.”
The other commanders turned as one to regard Oola, who remained sitting with her head cupped between her hands. “What?”
“What, pray tell,” Kanos said, “makes you think we have something capable of wiping out the horde?”
Oola rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, do you think little Verrille here doesn't have some trump card hidden up his sleeve? Seriously? He's the son of the Mistress of Madness, grandson of the Desolate Duchess—both mad women, by the way. No offense, kid. Do you mean to tell me they didn't have him sequester some weapon of mass destruction within those hulls of his?”
As one, the others turned to look at Solis, Keilan included. If there was a great weapon Solis was keeping in reserve, then he was with Commander Oola on the decision that they should use it immediately.
Solis leaned back in his chair, a calm look on his face as he weathered the intense stares from the other commanders, as well as his own officers. He sighed.
“Believe me or not, but I do not have some cataclysmic card hidden away. I'd have used it by now if I did.”
The others continued staring.
“Honestly, I say the truth. One of the deals I made with my grandmother for taking up the post of commander was that I would do it on my own merit. No other way.”
“So we're back to square one, then?” Kanos sighed.
“We could try again… select another group and beat them till we find the signal monster."
And so they'd tried again. Two more times they'd ambushed and attacked one of the many groups of monsters, dealing great devastating damage and lessening their number by a great deal. Yet, they'd found nothing, not one bit of the creature blocking their signal.
“At this rate,” Kanos said. “We'd bleed ourselves completely dry before we find our target. Ten Spirit Kings, that's a loss big enough to collapse most houses.”
Keilan couldn't help but see the logic. If they continued like this, they'd drain themselves quicker than even those they were hunting. They knew it, and even the Divine King monster seemed to know it, too, considering how it wasn't even chasing them anymore. After the second attack, it hadn't bothered responding to the third ambush. Why prevent the enemy from killing themselves? Let them bash their skulls against the endless monstrous bulwark.
The next few days after that had been spent in a lull. Keilan spent it practicing with the others, Huiron especially.
Contrary to what he'd expected, the Saulae scion was very resourceful. Despite how many times they'd fought together, Keilan had never seen him use more than his darkness cage and his teleporting technique. It was apparent now that Huiron was actively electing to hold back more than he could do.
Keilan didn't ask. The way he saw it, as long as the other man was on their side, then he could hide as much as he wanted.
The Saulae scion remained cheerful all through, regaling Keilan with embarrassing tales of Vanis, or the soldiers with heroic deeds of Solis. What an odd man.
Sareina was more of an anomaly than Huiron. Despite the nonstop kindness she showed to him, he noticed how much she kept away from the other low born people. If she wasn't with her maidens, training most likely, then she was with Keilan and the others.
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He wondered for some time why she treated him much differently from the other common soldiers, and then it dawned on him some time later. Unlike the soldiers, Keilan had not grown up in the Lese Worlds, and so did not carry her on a pedestal like the soldiers seemed to do. Back in his home world, despite not having his own kingdom, he'd still been among the ruling class. Kings and Queens took advice from him, carrying them out as their subordinates did with them. Guess that privilege had made him see himself as more of an equal to the Lese scions than a subordinate. He'd made it clear before that while he took suggestions from Vanis, out of courtesy, considering that the other man was the more familiar person on how things were run on Lese, he wasn't his boss.
Vanis could suggest but couldn't order.
The man in question spent the days sequestered in endless strategy meetings with his brother and the other commanders. They spent mostly the whole day in the ship's command center, only appearing in the mess hall for meals, and even then not for long.
It had gotten to the extent that Huiron and Sareina had barged into an ongoing strategy meeting, calling a sudden end to it, much to the disgruntlement of the other commanders, though they hadn't contested. Both scions might have lacked military offices, but their authority as direct scions of two of the three great houses of Lese triumphed over any military post.
Solis, on the other hand, did not take it very well. He'd fought back vehemently, demanding that they leave the room immediately.
“Get out!”
“If you keep going like this, Solis,” Huiron said with a bladed smile, “then your already overbloated ego will explode.”
“I'll flay your hide and throw you into the nearest sun. Maybe the heat will do wonders for your undercooked brain.”
“Undercooked? You call my brain undercooked?” Huiron let out a bellyful of laughter. “I could shine a light down that skull of yours and all I'd find would be emptiness. I wonder why you weren't blessed with an affinity for darkness, you do have a kinship with hollowness, that and echoes, given those are what your brain seems to contain.”
Well, their verbal exchange had quickly escalated into a physical one. Vanis had thankfully cleared the area of any soldiers, and the others had brought our chairs to sit and watch the fight play out. Keilan had even taken the liberty of ordering popcorn, not that anyone minded.
Eventually, after much back and forth, Huiron and Sareina took the win, dragging the sour and disgruntled twins to the recreational center within the ship.
Their lull ended three days later.
Solis sat on his command seat, sporting a black eye that for some reason refused to go away even after days. Keilan sat in the back with Huiron while Solis and the other commanders hatched up some crazy convoluted plan to attack the main horde. This wasn't a new idea. It had been brought up multiple times by Oola, who'd been backed by Enis. The plan hadn't gone through the other times because the others were wary of engaging the horde. They were vastly outnumbered, they said. It would be a slaughter. But since it was becoming clearly apparent now that whatever creature was blocking their sos came from within that horde, Solis and Kanon had eventually relented and given in.
Keilan was in the middle of trying out some drink Huiron had brewed up when the alarms suddenly blared out, bringing everyone to sharp attention.
“Commander! We've got incoming!” One of the officers sitting behind the big control desk shouted. “Multiple unknowns just entered the outermost range of our perception, and they're closing in fast!”
“The monsters,” Keilan murmured.
The room instantly went into overdrive. Demands began going out as even the other commanders demanded answers from their subordinates.
“How long before they reach us?”
“At their current speed, I project an estimate of two minutes before we make contact!”
“That's more than a million miles of distance, it's got to be the monsters,” Huiron said. “I'd suggest asking how many there are, maybe we could fight off this lot.”
“Answer the question,” Solis commanded. “How many?”
She took a while to answer, a stutter to her voice when she finally responded. “I… can't say, commander.”
“What do you mean?”
“I counted over a hundred in the initial wave. They've more than tripled in the few seconds since they were detected.”
“Shit,” Enis said from the other side. “I see them. This has definitely got to be the full horde. We have to leave, now!”
Solis nodded, and commands began flying out of his mouth. “Rolal, take us away from here. Inform the other ship captains, I want all civilian occupied vehicles positioned right in the center of the formation while the others take up perimeter positions.” He grimaced. “Shirel, deploy all War Titans, let them stall the monsters long enough for us to get away.”
“Yes, commander!”
Tension stretched through the room like a drawn rubber band as commands began flying out, lieutenant Feene passing orders out towards the other officers within the ship. Alarms blared out in all sections of the ship, and Keilan picked up conversations as all warriors cleared themselves up for battle.
He gripped his chair handle tightly as the ship jerked into motion, his feet humming as whatever powered the great construct came to life. And a second later, the lights of the distant stars became blurs as the ship sped forward.
“All War Titans deployed! They should come in contact with the horde in ten, nine…” she counted until she hit zero, and then the ship shook as distant explosions rocked space apart. “Contact, commander!”
A screen came up before them, displaying many dots, majorly red with a tiny grain of green. Looking once at it, Keilan's optimism about their escape swiftly shrank down to zero. Despite the green dots surpassing more than a hundred, they were still but a tiny smidge compared to the vastly red that swarmed forward.
Right in front of him, as explosions wracked space in their wake, the numbers of green dots began dwindling rapidly, along with a good but ultimately, meaningless number of red. The War Titans were taking out their opponents quickly, and If it had been a fair fight, they would have been slated to win this battle long before it even started. But what the Titans had in sheer power, they lacked in numbers.
The horde swarmed them, the ones with greater glow blazing past, leaving the ones with lesser lights to combat the moving constructs.
It took thirty seconds, thirty freaking seconds, and the green dots on the screen vanished, disappearing under a tide of blazing red.
“That's not good,” somebody said.
“Yes it's not. Metel, weapons hot and ready, I want them pointed at the approaching horde. You have my command to shoot them down the second they come within optimal range. Lieutenant Telle, order your soldiers to prepare for battle.”
“You think we're going to have to fight them personally?” Feene said as she stepped to his side.
“Hope for the best but plan for the worst. What's our optimal path?”
“Forward, commander,” the woman replied. “We're almost surrounded, with enemies approaching from all sides except our front.”
“Celestials help us,” the commander swore. “Forward it is.”
They lasted up until three hours before the wave line of monsters finally reached shooting range. By then, all the other ships were already in formation, the civilian occupied ones riding in the middle while the others, led by the Dreadships, flanked them on all sides.
As soon as the monsters came within optimal range, as Solis had commanded earlier, Metel opened fire, the ship echoing with distant thunder as projectiles ripped out of the ships, flaring hot with trails of bright burning energy left in their wake.
They carved into the approaching wall of red like a hot knife through butter, cutting a line that ran straight down the wave of red until it finally sputtered out, dead.
Other weapons fired out too, constructs that shot out heavy shells of metal, each large enough to turn mountains to rubble without pause. They deleted dozens of monsters from the screen, snuffing out their lights like wet cloth over a candle flame.
A creature in the form of a flaming eyeball caught up with the leading Dreadship, its red eyes shining with burning flame. They fired into the ship with the force of a moving mountain, shaking the entire thing and making the shield flare with bright energy.
A second Dreadship shot it down, leaving way for Dread One to focus on the other creatures catching up.
Space lit up and shook as attacks were exchanged, the monsters sending heavy attacks their way that caused their ships to flare with defensive power, yet fortunately none of them fell. The monsters, on the other hand, suffered massive losses, their numbers dying in droves to the endless strikes of the Dreadships, who carved into them with eerie precision. Unfortunately, they were too many for the individual deaths to mean anything. Another just simply took the place of the next dead creature.
Millions of miles passed within minutes, and hours stretched past them as they exchanged assaults left and right against the hordes of hungry creatures. Keilan was beginning to fear that this was going to be the norm for the foreseeable future, just endless trembles and thunders as they took and dealt attacks.
Somebody suggested that Solis let loose his cadre of high tier Spirit Kings but he shot those down instantly, whatever reason it was vanishing into his endless commands to fire.
Tension stretched across the fleet, lining ship to ship. They lost their first ship after the first day, though not any of the Dreadships. It had been swallowed up when a powerful monster, indicated on the screen by its blazing red aura, clamped onto the hull. Its shield flared bright as it fought to hold against the monster, but ultimately it failed against the creature's relentless assault.
The captain, making a snap and cold decision, decided to veer off course, diverting the ship's path back into the horde of monsters.
Through the screen, Keilan watched the grim expressions on the faces of the commanders as they watched the ship go. They knew what the captain was doing, yet made no calls to have him return. Keilan was only confused for a few seconds until a massive explosion tore across space, sending even the Dreadships trembling and groaning. A massive hole appeared in the midst of the monster horde when he checked again, a new vacuum that took much more time to fill.
The captain had elected to have the last say rather than give it to the monsters.
Over the next few days, three more ships were overwhelmed, and each captain, electing to take the example of the first, led their ships right back into the midst of the monsters, creating more vacuums that, for the first time, caused the horde to hesitate.
It took five more ship explosions, each blasting within the span of a few hours over the next few days, before the monsters finally paused and retreated, running back to lick their wounds.
The fleet kept going after that, hours stretching into days, and when it became certain that the horde were no longer chasing, they slowed down, Solis calling a halt.
They'd barely taken stock of themselves, each commander calling a roll across the many captains under their command, when something else happened and a ripple swept across space and crimson flooded the world.
Commander Kanos grunted, exhaustion plain in his voice. “Solis, please tell me that is your grandmother coming to rescue us.”
Through the pressure that suddenly descended, squeezing them in a slow crushing grip, Keilan heard Solis gritted out.
“No, that is not grandmother.”
And then the space in front of their fleet seemed to come alive, rising up like an awakening beast.
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