His body slumped.
On the throne. The spear still through him. The black skin. The withered flesh. The open mouth. The dead eyes.
The ministers were still charging.
Ada twisted. Her hand on the spear shaft. She pulled — not the spear out of the king. She pulled the spear itself. The weapon came free from the throne. From the body. The blade — wet, black, bloody — emerged.
She swung.
Not at a single target. At the room. The sweep was horizontal. The blade — seven feet of dragon-scale shaft, two feet of curved, poisoned steel — arced through the air. The edge cut through the space.
The energy surged.
From the blade. The mana — concentrated, compressed, the stored energy of a dragon heart — released. Not as a spell. Not as a technique. As raw force. A wave. A wall. A surge of energy that expanded from the blade in a semicircle — forward, outward, encompassing the entire room.
The ministers were caught.
The wave hit them. Not like a blade. Not like a fist. Like a wall. A wall of force. The impact — the pressure, the velocity — was beyond what a human body could withstand. The first minister — the one-eyed man — was hit. His body broke. The ribs. The spine. The organs. He did not scream. He did not have time. His body was thrown — backward, ten feet, twenty — into the wall. The stone cracked. The body hit. The body did not move.
The others — the same. One after another. The wave caught them. Threw them. The bodies hit the walls, the pillars, the ceiling. The sound — the cracking of bone, the splattering of flesh, the wet thud of bodies against stone — filled the room.
The throne room was destroyed.
The walls cracked. The pillars shattered. The roof — the wooden beams, the thatch — collapsed. The fire — the torches, the braziers — spread. The bone throne cracked. The gold leaf melted. The gemstones shattered.
The palace — the barbarian palace — was buried.
~~ The Ocean — The Eastern Fleet
Three hundred battleships.
The fleet of the Kingdom of Valdoria — the strongest of the five human nations. The naval power. The island nation that had built its wealth on trade and its military on ships. The fleet was enormous. Each ship was a galleon — three masts, sixty guns, a crew of two hundred. The sails were white. The hulls were black. The flags were gold and blue.
They were moving.
Westward. Toward the Athoria Kingdom. Toward the new queen. Toward the kingdom that had just changed rulers and that — the Valdorian high command believed — was weak. Vulnerable. Ready to be conquered.
The general stood on the deck.
Of the flagship. The ’Iron Tide’. The largest galleon in the fleet. His name was General Aldricus — not to be confused with Sir Aldric, the knight who had died in the Doria palace. This was a different man. A different kind of soldier. Not a knight. An admiral. A tactician. A man who had won twelve naval battles and who had never lost one.
He was tall. Gray-haired. His face was weathered — the sun, the salt, the wind of forty years at sea. His uniform was blue and gold. His sword was at his hip. His spyglass was in his hand.
He looked westward.
The horizon was clear. The sea was calm. The wind was favorable. Three hundred ships. Sixty thousand men. The largest fleet ever assembled by any human nation.
"Report," he said.
"Landfall in six hours, General," his first officer said. The man was young. Eager. His uniform was crisp. "The vanguard reports no resistance. No ships. No patrols. The Athoria coast appears undefended."
"Good," General Aldricus said. He lowered the spyglass. "The new queen is a fool. She has emptied her coastal defenses to garrison the capital. She will learn the cost of that mistake."
He smiled.
The smile was thin. Cold. The smile of a man who has calculated the odds and who has found them favorable.
"Signal the fleet," he said. "Full sail. Battle formation. We strike at dawn."
"Yes, General."
The flags went up. The signals — the colored flags, the coded messages — flew from the mast. Three hundred ships adjusted. The sails spread. The fleet accelerated.
The ocean moved.
Not the fleet. The ocean.
The water — the calm, blue, favorable water — changed. The surface rippled. Not from wind. From below. Something — below the surface — was moving. The water swelled. The waves — small, gentle — grew. The ships rocked.
"What—" the first officer said.
He looked over the rail. At the water. The blue was changing. Darker. The depth — the visible depth, the water that was usually clear for several fathoms — turned opaque. Black. The ocean floor was not visible. The water was black.
The temperature dropped.
Not gradually. Instantly. The air — the warm, favorable, summer air — turned cold. The breath of the sailors became visible. White clouds from a hundred mouths. The rigging frosted. The decks iced.
"What is happening?!" General Aldricus shouted. His hand went to his sword. His eyes scanned the horizon. The sky. The water. "Report!"
"General—!" the first officer screamed. He was pointing. Over the rail. At the water. "The water—! LOOK—!"
The ice spears came.
From the ocean. Not one. Not ten. Hundreds. Thousands. The spears — crystalline, sharp, each one the size of a mast — erupted from the water. They shot upward. Into the air. Fifty feet. A hundred. The spears hung — suspended, the sunlight catching the crystal, the light refracting into rainbows — and then they fell.
They fell on the fleet.
The first ship — the ’Golden Shield’, the vanguard — was hit. A spear — twenty feet long, the diameter of a barrel — went through the deck. Through the hull. Through the keel. The ship split. The wood shattered. The men screamed. The ship — sixty guns, two hundred men — was impaled. The spear went through it like a pin through an insect.
The second ship — the ’Blue Crown’ — was hit by three. The spears went through the masts, the deck, the hull. The ship folded. The masts fell. The rigging came down. The men were crushed, impaled, thrown into the freezing water.
The third. The fourth. The fifth.
The spears fell like rain.
"FULL RETREAT—!" General Aldricus screamed. His voice was raw. His face was white. His hands were shaking. "RETREAT—! ALL SHIPS RETREAT—!"
The meteors came.
From the sky. Not from the clouds — there were no clouds. From the clear blue sky. The sky that had been clear and calm and favorable. The sky that had promised a smooth voyage. The sky split.
The magic circles appeared.
High. Above the clouds. Above the atmosphere. The circles — enormous, each one the width of a ship — formed in the air. The symbols were not human. The language was not human. The mana — the energy radiating from each circle — was not human.
The meteors shot.
From the circles. Down. Through the sky. Through the clouds — the clouds that formed instantly, the moisture condensing around the mana, the sky turning dark. The meteors — flaming, trailing smoke and fire and mana — fell.
They fell on the fleet.
The ’Iron Tide’ rocked. A meteor hit the water — fifty feet from the hull. The wave — the explosion of water, of steam, of force — lifted the ship. The bow rose. The stern dropped. The men fell. The cannons broke loose — rolling across the deck, crushing men, smashing through the rails.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING—?!" General Aldricus screamed.