As expected, Walking Fortress Al-Lavik lost most of its momentum once beyond the pre-claimed territory surrounding Elmshadow. Not wanting to lose contact with the ground cost him speed, but not as much as he had assumed it would. It was true that lesser servants couldn’t outpace the tower on the ground, nor could they spread out fast enough once the forwardmost leg planted itself on the ground.

But Arkk had a workaround to the issue. A teleportation ritual and a truly copious number of servants allowed him to send them forward to dig the tunnels—by far the most time-consuming aspect of claiming new territory—and have them all in position ready to begin claiming the moment they had connected territory.

That little trick he had come up with let him barely outpace Mags and the Prince’s rallied army.

The Prince said to put them on the front lines. Arkk still doubted their ability to survive contact with anything but the most base conscripts in the enemy army. As it was, the tower marching ahead would take the majority of the enemy’s focus. It was large and notable, too much to be ignored. Hopefully, that would take some of the pressure off the regular soldiers.

At the same time, Arkk hoped they would take the brunt of the worst conventional fighting. Although he had heard murmurs about his bleeding heart nature—not that he thought wanting to keep people safe was a bad thing—Arkk didn’t necessarily agree. He wanted to keep his people safe first and foremost. Whether that be through a demonstration of overwhelming power to potential enemies or sending them to their deaths as a distraction, he would do so without hesitation.

Or, in this particular circumstance, he would allow them to rush to the frontlines on their own. It wasn’t like he had direct command over the army.

A sudden ping of alarm through the link pulled his attention from his thoughts. Arkk quickly honed in on it, hoping it wasn’t Lexa, only to find the source of the alarm only a few paces away from him.

Camilla, the young fairy on the scrying team, wavered in her seat and crashed to the floor, unconscious.

Drek and Luthor both, in the same scrying pit, jolted in shock. The gremlin cried out in shock, leaving the crystal ball to check on Camilla. Luthor recovered his wherewithal a little better, taking over the crystal ball. An image of a blue sky shimmered into its glass.

“Airborn ship sighted,” the chameleon beastman said in a surprisingly calm declaration.

“Whale ship or the other one?” Arkk asked as he teleported himself a few paces into the pit. He quickly checked on Camilla. Information through the link indicated she was alive and healthy, if unusually drained. Drek stood over her, fretting. He tried to pat her cheeks to wake her up.

Arkk teleported them both to the infirmary. Hale’s specialties did not include recovery from magical exhaustion, unfortunately, but she would be able to reassure Drek that Camilla was alright.

Had that been an attack just now? On his scrying team? Or had Arkk been pushing them too far lately?

“Other one,” Luthor answered. “Looks like a b-big sea ship.”

It certainly did. Tall, black and white sails bulged with the wind, carrying the wooden vessel through the air as easily as its water-based equivalent would move through an ocean. Wood panels, rather than the metal of the whales, gleamed in the morning light, reflecting as if they had been polished just last night. Ports along its underbelly were open, letting three rows of short cannons protrude.

Arkk took control of the crystal ball, scrying closer. The moment the perspective crossed beyond a short distance from the deck, the interior of the glass ball turned black with a drastically increased drain on his magic. Similar but not quite the same as the way the inquisitors hid themselves from scrying so long ago.

The drain must have been what got Camilla. Not an attack then, at least not directly, but a defensive measure against unwanted observers. That was a small relief.

“Do not attempt to scry inside that ship,” Arkk said, raising his voice loud enough for the team in the opposing scrying pit to hear. The whale ships lacked defenses like that. Or did they have them and he hadn’t paid enough attention?

Something to check on later. For now, the airship warranted his full attention.

Pulling the perspective back, he scanned around it, trying to get an idea of where it was.

It was high above the ground. So high that trees in the forest below looked like mere dots. A river, the same that ran through the Elmshadow valley, looked more like an oddly colored hair stuck to the crystal ball than a river flowing with fresh water from the slowly melting mountain snow. And his tower… Arkk had thought his tower was one of the tallest things he had ever seen, mountains aside. Yet in the perspective of the crystal ball, it was nothing more than a small coin placed among the dots of the trees and the line of the river.

He couldn’t even imagine how high up that airship had to be at the moment.

With a start, Arkk’s eyes flicked to the tower once again.

It was overhead. Directly overhead.

The underbelly cannons began to glow a bright white.

The tower lurched hard enough that even the stabilizing magic wasn’t enough to prevent people from stumbling. All six legs planted into the ground, giving it as much support as Arkk could.

Arkk flicked his eyes to the army trailing after the tower. They were too far away. They would be caught out.

Arkk didn’t hesitate.

He teleported a large red marble directly into the center of the ritual magic room. Lelith, sitting at the table in the ritual room, stared at the marble for a full second before her eyes widened. The dark elf whirled around, shouting alarm. Arkk couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he knew the protocols. He watched, teeth bared in a tense grit, as Kassa rushed to the defensive circle. Charged glowstones were already in place. All it took was the orc slamming her hand onto the ritual and pulsing her magic to get it going.

The tower lurched and rocked as impacts struck along its side and top. Each exploded in a perfect sphere, uncomfortably reminiscent of the detainment Tybalt, avatar of the Jailer of the Void, had used under Inquisitrix Sylvara’s command. Unlike Tybalt’s magic, they did not obliterate the contents of the circles. The tower was intact, if strained. He could feel the tower’s Heart warning him of the attack.

Although it had been mere moments since sending the red marble to the ritual room, it felt like hours before the protective dome began to form. A swirling and obscuring rush of magic similar to the spell Zullie had demonstrated upon his first encounter with the witch.

The bombardment from above continued. The shield caught the attack, though it wasn’t perfect. If two impacts struck the dome at the same spot in rapid succession, some of the magic of the second would make it through, enough to strike the tower, albeit in a much less powerful strike than the first volley.

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If their attacker noticed those holes and had the accuracy to lay down concentrated fire, the situation could turn dire.

Arkk teleported himself out of the command room, reappearing in the bombardment room with the crystal ball in hand. Lelith jolted at his arrival, only to take a breath. The few other members of the bombardment team were running around, ensuring all the rituals were fully operational and ready to be used. At the moment, only Kassa was actively maintaining a ritual, doing her best to keep the defensive spell going.

“Sir, defensive shield in place and holding. We’re prepared with a second to take over when the glowstones start to wane—”

An impact slipping through the defense thundered against the reinforced walls, cutting her report off. A momentary strain crossed Kassa’s face. The ritual circle brightened as the glowstones dimmed. It was just a flicker, returning to a steady glowing hum as the barrier sealed itself back up.

“Good work,” Arkk said. Although he thought she could have been a little faster in getting it going, he wasn’t about to harm morale by berating her in the middle of combat. He made a mental note to increase training among his ritual team in the future. For now, Arkk held out the crystal ball. “Our target is high overhead. Have we got anything that can hit it?”

Lelith squinted into the crystal ball with a slowly deepening frown on her face. “May I?”

Arkk handed over the crystal ball. “Do not try to scry inside it. It has some kind of active defensive spell preventing that.”

“Noted,” she said, lightly tapping the crystal ball to take over its perspective.

She didn’t try to look inside. Neither did she look closely. Instead, the view in the crystal ball zoomed about near the ground. It looked upward at the dot in the sky, checking its position from several spots, usually with the tower in view.

Arkk knew what she was doing, roughly. He had seen her do so before. She was trying to measure distances. The known height and size of the tower provided a reference for her to use. Most casters had a mind for geometry—a trait Arkk attributed to the circles and geometric lines drawn out for rituals—but Lelith was one of the best at rapidly estimating exactly how far something was with nothing more than a glance through the crystal ball. It was one of the reasons the dark elf was in charge of the bombardment teams.

This time, however, she was taking longer than normal. The growing frown on her face didn’t fill him with any amount of reassurance.

The tower shuddered as a pair of shots made it through a small gap in the barrier. The magic of the fortress kept them mostly steady despite it rocking backward a few degrees. It was still enough to jolt them.

That jolt got Lelith talking. “The distance between us and the airship is approximately equivalent to the distance between Hemlight Village and Cliff City.”

Arkk closed his eyes, trying to place the village relative to Cliff. While he had heard of it—he was fairly certain he, Ilya, and Dakka had passed through it on their first visit to Cliff—it hadn’t been in any way notable. On their horse-drawn cart traveling casually a bit over walking speed, it had probably taken them two hours to reach the city walls.

Not an insignificant distance.

They had specially prepared long-range spells and even practiced hitting aerial targets—with Priscilla providing the target. But none had been so far. That was well beyond his expectations. Nothing they had could hit a whole village away.

“The only thing we have that might hit them is the boulder ritual,” Lelith said, making Arkk raise his eyebrows.

While a traditional trebuchet could hit something about a thousand paces away and the boulder drop spell could target maybe double that, that wasn’t anywhere close enough to target the airship if her estimate was correct. “How so?” he asked.

“It manifests a boulder at extreme altitudes then uses simple gravity to destroy whatever is underneath, but I am not exactly sure how high. Unfortunately, even if it does manifest high enough, we would still have to target the ground underneath the ship.”

“Target us, you mean. The tower can take hits from the boulder ritual.”

“It isn’t precisely overhead, but again, I am not exactly certain where the boulder manifests. To hit the ship, we may have to aim around us. Fine if we’re aiming to the west, but if the manifestation event occurs on the opposite angle…”

Lelith readjusted the view of the crystal ball, displaying the swirling whirlwind around the tower and, down toward the ground, the panicked King’s Royal Army as they sought cover from the handful of stray shots that may or may not have been deliberately aimed in their direction.

Arkk pursed his lips. It was one thing to leave them out in the open. It was another thing entirely to deliberately target them, even if it was to strike at the airship. If he did so, he had little doubt that a demon would pop into their midst and obliterate them all.

“Target us or ahead of us. If the boulder manifests below the ship, it won’t be worth pursuing further and we’ll have to come up with something else. If we have to target the army to hit the ship…”

His eyes flicked to the army again. They were trailing behind the tower. Because of that, they were directly over the tunnels he had been making to keep connected with Elmshadow.

“Try to hit the ship, but do not hit our allies. I’ll handle getting them to—”

The tower rocked under a series of impacts. The airship figured out the trick to focusing their shots. Arkk grimaced, grasping at the table to keep himself upright. Lelith jolted backward but managed to keep her balance with a single step.

Kassa wasn’t so lucky. The orc maintaining the defensive ritual slid as the floor inclined, falling to her backside. Without her in position to maintain it, the entire ritual circle flickered and failed. The swirling protective barrier collapsed around the tower.

Another group of shots, fired at the same spot to punch through the no-longer-existent shield, all struck the tower as one. The Heart cried out in alarm as chunks of shadowy stone blasted off the side of the tower. One of the tower legs, hit at the higher joint in the spider-like configuration, cracked and broke from another impact, causing the tower to lean slightly in that direction.

Arkk teleported himself to the defensive ritual, flooding it with magic the instant he arrived. The defensive swirl started up immediately, coursing around the tower to block another follow-up volley.

He immediately teleported a swarm of lesser servants out to the tower exterior. They didn’t even need to be told that repairs were needed.

“Sorry,” Kassa said, voice a bare whisper as she hurried back to her spot.

“Lie on your stomach,” Arkk said instead of the first, more acetic response that came to mind. “You’ll be less likely to be knocked around if that happens again.”

It was his fault anyway. The magic of the tower kept them from feeling it moving, so he figured there wouldn’t be a problem, but that clearly was not the case for sustained, heavy fire. The moment they had a reprieve, he would be figuring out how to get harnesses in place for anyone maintaining the spells. Or rather, he would be delegating that task to one of the crafters.

For now, he made sure that Kassa had control over the defensive ritual circle again before he stepped off it. “Lelith, try to hit the airship with the boulder. Don’t hit our friends.”

“Unders—”

Arkk teleported away before she finished.

He reappeared in the tunnels beneath the Prince’s army.

Lesser servants swarmed about. He practically had to wade through a knee-deep layer of the slime-like monsters just to move. But they were working and they were working fast. A hundred of them could get a great deal of work done, especially when they weren’t trying to outpace a walking fortress.

The tunnel widened around Arkk, deepening, lengthening, and forming into more of a grand hall of sorts. It wasn’t fancy. It was still a rush job. But it grew to a big enough size to at least temporarily house several thousand troops. He wouldn’t be able to maintain such a wide tunnel the entire way, not if he wanted to move at even a sedate pace, but for now…

Large ramps, angled upward, breached the surface. Arkk didn’t even need to venture above to call the troops in. As soon as something that looked like shelter appeared, the soldiers were all too happy to rush straight toward them. It could have been a trap for all they knew, but it wasn’t out in an active siege zone. That was all that mattered to the soldiers and their horses.

Arkk was about to teleport away when he noticed one particular figure bustling through the crowd of soldiers. Mags, normally dressed in fine clothes ill-fitting of war—in Arkk’s opinion—decided to adorn himself in a regalia of mud and dirt. Either that or he fell off his horse. Arkk was not surprised, but he was disappointed he had been focused on more important matters and had missed the incident.

“What—I say, what manner of sorcery is going on here?” Mags blustered as he approached.

Arkk stared at him, long and hard. Mags barely seemed to notice, too busy patting himself down in a futile attempt to clean up his clothing. “I did warn you,” Arkk eventually said. “Your army is not prepared to fight this war. Do you still wish to continue? Do they still wish to continue?”

Mags looked up with narrowed eyes. He opened his mouth, about to say something, only for Arkk to feel another warning alarm from the Heart.

“Excuse me,” Arkk said, teleporting away before Mags could voice whatever he was about to say.

As an afterthought, Arkk got the swarm of lesser servants to construct several heavy walls between the tower and the tunnels. There was a demon among that army and Arkk had no patience for doppelganger-induced panic to spread among his crew at a time like this.

He had a war to fight.