Cataclysm War | Chapter 97: The King's Decree (First Draft) (Patreon)

Friday, August 12, 4 S.E.

Xarina followed Leonidas and his companions as the Archon-King made his way back toward the City, accompanied by the cheers of his people. The roar of it was palpable, shaking the world around them as the Humanity Alliance’s remnants began to limp their way from the City, forming a rough column behind the defeated figure of the Iron Duke as he led the ragged remnants of his Army away from the slaughterhouse that had been the field of battle.

The stench of it was overwhelming to Xarina, baking in the risen sun as the corpses were, and yet they were left where they had fallen. Only the City’s dead were collected, at times by weeping relatives or friends, who still managed to cheer raggedly when the young Monarch strode past them. He gave no smiles, gave no words of hollow commiseration—he met outstretched hands, clasped shoulders, but never truly slowed his pace; marching back into the open gates with determination.

He’d already given orders to his subordinates, arranging for the Army to mobilize to flank the Starhold at the Sunrise gate and compel their surrender, while he would head to the Moonrise gate himself. Word had already been sent to the Queen, and it seemed she’d be joining them presently, along with the third Ascendant still in the City.

Three Ascendants and two Venerates. How did we ever believe we could overcome this bastion? It’s a fortress masquerading as a City.

“How do you plan to stop the Svartfenn, Achilles?”

The question drew Xarina’s attention, and she looked at the horned redhead that asked it—Sinalthria’s daughter, she remembered. Synthra.

“By confronting them with a truth I am told will rob their ability to fight,” Leonidas said wearily. “Though it’ll mean exposing something to Dawnhaven I’d hoped to hide. Nonetheless, I suppose it’s inevitable, now. No point crying over spilled milk.”

The woman seemed confused by his words and glanced back at Xarina, who met her suspicious glare steadily.

“Cheer up, Dusky,” the King’s acerbic sister said from beside her, drawing Xarina’s attention to the shorter Terran woman. “Who knows? You might end up saving thousands of your idiot people from my brother’s fury.”

Xarina pursed her lips at the words, swallowing back the retort that wanted to bubble forth, and returned her gaze to the steady posture of the walking King. He had no crown on his head, but he barely seemed to need one. People parted before him with awe that no crown alone could create—leaving hope and reverence in its wake with equal measure.

How had I ever thought him to be a fool?

The way that Leonidas had confronted the charging Cavalry lived freely in Xarina’s mind. She herself had felt trepidation at the sight, having never witnessed anything like it, but the King had held firm—and then unleashed his power in justification of every fear she’d ever held. His single sword stroke had torn through reality like an unyielding reckoning, eviscerating space and obliterating all that came into contact with it.

Xarina wasn’t sure he even realized how unnatural it was.

He’d wielded the power of primordial destruction with ease.

He’d faced down the charging Terrans with absolute, unwavering confidence, and what the Haelfenn had done to them would haunt her nightmares. Any illusion that these people were the lightlanders of Talrinar had evaporated in the same moment as they had obliterated three thousand charging Terrans, with as much effort as someone else might cull a wounded, feral lesser manabeast. He’d stood in front of the thunder, and he’d faced it down like a man utterly secure in his own victory.

He is a Cataclysm. He is a singular existence. I must never forget that.

“Xarina,” Leonidas said from in front of her, snapping her attention to him as he spoke. “Tell me what your people need to end this.”

Xarina’s mind raced at the question, and she moved forward, keeping her hands firmly away from her weapons as she did, more than aware of the danger she was in if she was perceived as hostile.

“They just need confirmation of what you are,” she answered after she approached, speaking as directly as she could manage. “Once they have it, their will to fight will break. Our people remember very clearly what a—what someone like you can do.”

Leonidas glanced back at her, and the cold steel in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine.

“Good,” he said simply, and turned back to the path ahead. “Because if they don’t surrender, I’m going to wipe them off the face of the planet,” he said flatly.

The certainty in his voice made her blood run cold as sourceless thunder punctuated his point in the cloudless sky above.

*

Istarius glanced up as the sky crackled with sourceless thunder and glanced toward the Venerate, still aloft and exchanging terrifying blows with the Ascendants. Two of those were already out of the fight, smashed into the earth outside the City by the Venerate’s power, while the Matriarch Yvrain and two others desperately worked to keep the terrifying Haelfar woman contained. The chant from the Terrans remained in place, roaring “FUCK AROUND, FIND OUT” like a beat-holding chant as they clashed with the Starhold’s forces.

Hundreds of the Terrans were already dead or out of the fight, but thousands remained to take their place, and Istarius felt himself growing frustrated. The Starhold was clearly superior in terms of raw levels and experience, but the sheer number of Terrans was a weapon unto itself. They couldn’t match Istarius’ kin for martial power, but they were aided by a core of golden-armored Haelfenn that reinforced their lines, creating an almost-impervious bulwark of gilded might that denied the advance of the Starhold’s societies.

Dozens had already died trying to penetrate their shields, and now the combat was deadlocked. They’d managed to gain several dozen meters of ground, but the Shield-Host, as the Terran commander called them, had been stubborn—and after the golden warriors had arrived, they’d become downright immovable. The battle had been reduced to long-range Skills and lightning-fast skirmishes, of which the Starhold was somehow coming off worse.

The line of armored Haelfenn was indomitable, and Istarius reasoned that all of them must have been Contenders or higher. How the lightlanders had amassed such a force of maniacs baffled his comprehension, but with time, he knew they’d break them. Exhaustion would take its toll, Contenders or not, and without another Venerate or Ascendants of their own, they’d eventually succumb to the number of higher-tier Cultivators his people possessed.

“[Prepare to charge]!” the Heartwarden Commander roared, her Elite-tempered voice rolling over their forces. “[We will break these lightlanders, for the glory of Talrinar!]”

Istarius joined the roar of agreement when it came, and prepared himself to attack, locking his eyes onto one of the wounded golden-armored Contenders in the front ranks. If he could push past the woman’s guard and put his blade into her neck, she’d drop as easily as anyone else. It was just a matter of time before the Starhold was victorious in the advance. Twenty thousand Initiates and Adepts was a respectable force, but this was a ragged group.

Superior training had its place, and it would triumph, even if the cost was high.

“[Ready! Charge on my—]”

The woman’s voice cut off as a boom of thunder rattled the street, and Istarius felt his gaze drawn to a sudden appearance; a winged Knight in obsidian warplate, with pinions of crackling violet-veined scarlet energy that seemed to radiate with ominous power. Something deep inside of him quailed at the sight, and Istarius found himself staring in shock at the arriving Cultivator.

Before he could do more than stare in disbelief, a new chant erupted among the defenders.

“ACHILLES! ACHILLES! ACHILLES!”

Istarius felt his confusion heighten, and then a System notification abruptly blazed to life before his eyes.

SYSTEM MESSAGE

Leonidas Achilles Romulus Altera Pendragon, King of the [Kingdom of Avalon], wishes to share part of his [Profile] with you.

Do you wish to accept?

[Y] | [N]

Istarius stared at the notification, looked up at the Knight, and then impulsively used Intent to confirm he would accept. Whatever the fool was playing at, nobody turned down a chance to see their enemy’s tricks when freely offered. The one thing the System couldn’t and wouldn’t do was lie. Whatever the King wanted to show them, it would only prove to be a weapon for the Starhold.

As soon as he accepted, a blue System window appeared before him.

PARTIAL PROFILE

Name: Leonidas Achilles Romulus Altera Pendragon

Age: 25

Race: Terran

Sex: Male

Core Name: [Cataclysm Core]

Ambition: [Sovereign]

Trait: Terran Cataclysm [U]

Istarius stared at the information in unblinking, frozen silence, and then slowly lifted his eyes toward the hovering Knight. Fear and dread rolled through him in equal measure, and he felt his spine grow cold. The words on the screen drilled into his mind, flashing in his vision with indisputable truth—igniting a deep-rooted religious terror that every child of the Nightlands knew from the cradle.

Cataclysm.

Cataclysm.

Cataclysm.

Istarius’ sword dropped from his hands, and he fell to his knees, staring up at the hovering harbinger of the apocalypse with animal terror rolling through him. A Cataclysm? A Cataclysm in the City, and its King? Not just a King, a [Sovereign], avowed by the System itself. Istarius felt as much as heard others of his kind falling down to prostrate themselves, and he followed suit, squeezing his eyes shut and slamming his forehead down to the manastone.

They had made war on a Cataclysm! It was the end. It would be Talrinar all over again. They were doomed. His eyes, despite his terror, lifted toward the King from where he prostrated himself—unable to resist his morbid curiosity. As he did, he saw the Terran, the man named Leonidas, lift his right hand, pointing his blade to the sky.

Scarlet lightning roared to life around him, and thunder boomed in the sky above.

“Hear me, Svartfenn of the Starhold!” he roared, voice quieting the area as the defenders fell silent, and the Starhold was stunned into the same, many of them openly weeping in terror. The psychological imprint of the Cataclysm was invariably scarred into their species. The divine harbinger, the herald of the apocalypse, the final punishment of the System’s Divines.

An unstoppable force of pure destruction.

The end of everything; the world-killer.

Nocturne preserve me. I don’t want to die like this!

“I am Leonidas Pendragon, First of my Name, [Sovereign] and King of the [Kingdom of Avalon]!” the Reckoning in Terran flesh proclaimed in a voice that seemed to rattle through Istarius like thunder. “I am the Terran Cataclysm, empowered by the System, and you will yield to my authority, by the Divine Laws of Talrinar!”

Istarius closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the pavement at the proclamation, feeling tears in his eyes, and uncaring.

Please, Nocturne, he pleaded into his mind, spare us from our sacrilege!

*

Yvrain staggered out of the sky as the proclamation boomed across the area, and slammed into the manastone, staring up with blood-covered vision at the Venerate that remained aloft, her body ablaze to the Matriarch’s gaze with seemingly endless mana. The woman was a creature from the Hells. Every blow had felt like it vibrated into her soul, every second was like fighting against a psychological terror that sought to consume her.

Two of their Ascendants had already died at her hand, cast down in a storm of Psi that had destroyed them mind and body. Yvrain had realized they couldn’t win long before, but stalling the woman until she was exhausted had been an option—right up until she’d used some sort of Graft that had rapidly increased her Psi output and drastically enhanced her mana. It had appeared on her skull: a pair of curved, amethyst horns that had burned with power in Yvrain’s Ascendant vision.

And now, the worst possible outcome had come to pass.

The Cataclysm hadn’t been a prisoner of the Haelfenn; he was their King.

Yvrain’s red eyes rose to meet the specter of damnation hovering above them on wings of power, and for a wild moment, she considered killing him: charging forward and ripping him apart before he could become what they truly feared. She could feel his Cultivation—he was still young, still nascent. The legendary dirge was soft, a quiet thing, so easily snuffed.

Yet one glance at the Venerate had dispelled the idea.

The woman had drifted to the Cataclysm’s side like a Guardian Deity, blade held at her side, horns aglow with wrath as if daring someone to try something exactly like what Yvrain had considered. The Matriarch’s fingers curled into fists out of powerless fury, and she looked around at her people. Multitudes were already kneeling, many of them weeping openly as the divine herald of the apocalypse made itself known.

They, like her, had been raised on tales of the Cataclysm—taught to fear it from the cradle, taught to revere it, to worship it so that it never returned to destroy them. Only she knew the truth, the origins, the tale behind the infamous legend. She, and one other on the planet. Her eyes searched the crowd that had arrived with the Cataclysm, and she spotted her.

Xarina.

The Scion of Lyrin met her gaze coldly when Yvrain stared at her, and the woman lifted her chin, cheeks flushed but defiant as she did.

She knew, Yvrain realized in outrage, she told him! She betrayed us!

Yvrain’s fingers curled inward with rage, and then relaxed again as she looked up at the winged Knight and tasted bitterness on her tongue. It was beyond her, now. Even if she could kill him, her people would never understand. Her prospects at becoming Empress had already died, and if she did succeed in her task, she’d never live long enough to enjoy the reverence that came with it; the other Matriarchs would tear her apart for sacrilege, and her own people would cast her out as a sinner and pariah.

She alone knew the truth, after all.

She alone knew that Nocturne had been the Cataclysm.

Yvrain’s mind shifted toward calculation, and she drew in a breath, forcing herself to relax as she suppressed her hatred, and lowered herself elegantly to her knees, crossing her arms over her chest and swallowing her pride as she bowed before the Terran child that wielded the greatest power that the System had ever created.

“I am Matriarch Yvrain of the Starhold of Talrinar,” she called out, breaking the silence left in his wake. “By the Divine Laws of Talrinar, O Cataclysm—” her voice nearly broke in fury, but she controlled it as she continued, “—I hereby offer the surrender of the Starhold’s forces, and implore your mercy, Harbinger of the Apocalypse. I request parlay, that we may explain the reasons for our sacrilege, and implore your mercy.”

Her regal head touched the manastone when she finished, and Yvrain gnashed her teeth as the System chime exploded across the area, signifying and formalizing her surrender. It was done. She had been defeated.

I cannot kill him, she resolved in the security of her mind, but that does not mean I cannot use him. I know what spawned Xarina’s line. It will be mine.

She knew the potency of a Cataclysm’s brood, and this one was a [Sovereign].

She would secure that bloodline for the Starhold, and if she had her way, for herself.

No matter the cost.