Salin stood on the starboard side of the Elora, a two-hundred-ton troop ship among the Empire's seventh fleet. The ship hummed lightly as it swept through the air, a few hundred feet above the Dragon Sea. Salin smiled in reminiscence as he watched a group of birds fly by, admiring their gracefulness and freedom.
"Get back to work, Cretin!" He grunted as something hard slammed into his back. He didn't bother turning, though. He knew who had hit him.
Ever since the humiliating failure in his previous assignment, his life had taken a drastic turn, negatively. His release from the warren had been the only good thing that had happened to him since then, other than not facing execution.
Now, though. He sighed as he returned to his work. He placed both his hands on a crystal orb roiling with unspent power, channeling his energy into the Essence crystal.
Who would have thought that the once prestigious hidden protector would be relegated to one of the most humiliating jobs in the military? Used as an Essence battery. Not only was the job humiliating, but it was also one of the jobs with the highest fatality rates as those who did it were required to constantly stand in the open, where any stray technique or monster could obliterate them in an instant. It was a death sentence wrapped in a pink ribbon. And the only people relegated to the degrading job were those accused of desertion, unauthorized murder, or theft of military property. He was none of those, but still, here he was.
Salin's vision swarmed as his head was slammed into the ship's hull, violently.
"What order did I just give you!?" A voice spat into his ear as a hand continued to press his head deeper against the hull.
Salin blinked tears of pain from his eyes as he quickly answered. "To get back to work."
The hand pressed harder. "Get back to work, what?"
Salin swallowed bile in his throat. "Get back to work, cretin."
He gulped in air as his head was released, the hand violently dragging him up and turning him around. Salin was forced to look straight into ordinary brown eyes as the taskmaster scanned him from head to toe, unhidden distaste on his face.
"That's what you are, cretin. A degenerate. Do you disagree?"
Salin shook his head, not eager for another bout of cruelty. He just wanted the man to leave.
"Good. Now, you have been spared from execution, by the grace of the Emperor, may his name be forever exalted. An execution which you sorely deserved." Hatred spewed from the man like dripping venom. "You have been spared, but not forgiven. Do you understand me?"
Salin nodded.
"That's good of you. As recompense for your transgression against the Empire, you will spend your entire life paying for it. Do you disagree?"
This time Salin shook his head.
Thankfully, the man, satisfied with the amount of cruelty dealt for the moment, soon turned around and moved on to his next victim, never looking back at Salin.
Salin sighed ruefully, rubbing his throbbing temple as he immediately went back to work, eager to avoid the ire of the taskmaster.
The man, a few months ago, would have been groveling at Salin's feet, begging for his scraps. He sighed at the workings of fate. His recent experience had already taught him that a giant today could very well become an ant tomorrow.
Salin frowned as the ship jostled, hard. That was strange, he thought as his eyes looked to the sky, seeing a calm, blue sky. Then why was that?
It wasn't until a commotion began on the ship that he understood he wasn't the only one who thought something was wrong.
A few soldiers on the bridge began pointing forward into the distance, causing more people to look. Salin turned forward, scrunching his eyes as he couldn't see what they were talking about. He looked past the Giant Command ship leading the fleet of two hundred ships, and then he saw it.
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About seven miles from them, a figure floated in the skybefore their approaching fleet, a single figure. Salin couldn't make out their face, but from the way color drained from the Captain's – a Monarch realm wielder – face, he knew something was seriously wrong.
When two Spirit lords immediately flew out from the command ship, it finally sank in that they were in deep trouble.
Soon enough, a siren swept through the entire fleet, with a command coming an instant later calling the soldiers to arms.
Three miles from the figure, Salin finally recognized them, or more precisely, their description. He knew of the figure floating before their fleet.
Sandy blond hair, almost golden, drifted gently in the wind over what Salin recognized as Dragon scale armor, blue dragon scale to be precise. That was armor worth a single major city.
A long spear rested on the figure's arms as blue eyes, reminiscent of the deep ocean, calmly took them in, without regard.
Keilan Stormshredder.
Salin's breath caught as he took in the brother of the man who had led him to the situation he was in now. Although the brothers lacked any physical resemblance in their features, Salin, now one of the lucky few to meet the grey-eyed demon and come out alive, recognized the one feature they took after each other.
The unsettling piercing gaze.
Salin grunted, his knees, alongside everyone else on the ship, buckling and going down hard on the floor. He looked up, seeing the origin of the auras crashing down on them from the two figures who took up a defensive position in front of the entire fleet. Empire Pillars.
Keilan Stormshredder took them in with the same disregard as anyone else, a single sentence coming out a second later. "Good, you're all here. Let's begin."
The world heaved as another aura erupted, far more powerful than the previous ones.
Salin knew their death probability had just gone up.
And then the aura drastically intensified as an illusory image rose from behind their aggressor.
And Salin knew he was surely going to die.
In response to the powerful illusory image generated by Keilan Stormshredder, the two Empire Pillars also copied, generating their own strange illusory images.
Aside from the Emerald colored wings and some other features, the image looked exactly like Keilan Stormshredder.
Salin looked at the others, seeing the same illusory strange resemblance to their summoners. What was going on?
The entire ship heaved forward as the three Spirit lords collided, their mere collision sucking the air out of his lungs and crushing him deeper down. An instant later, a filmy, transparent ward spread from the Command ship down towards the entire fleet, enveloping it all in a protective dome that seemed to shield them from the powerful auras and shock waves he could feel generating from those clashing powers.
"CLEAR THE AREA! I WANT SPACE BETWEEN US AND THEM, OR WE'LL BE SQUASHED IN NO TIME!" The ship captain shouted, his words going from ship to ship. His advice was heeded moments later as all ships began a slow retreat, careful not to hit anyone behind.
Salin stood up, taking a deep breath and then stumbling toward the orb.
"I WANT ALL PROJECTILE CONSTRUCTS ARMED AND POINTED AT THE ENEMY!!" The captain roared. "WE WILL PROVE THAT THE EMPIRE IS NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH."
The ship shook and then heaved to the side as something whished by, and Salin prayed that the protective ward would hold against the devastating shockwaves generated by those titanic clashes.
"DEPLOY THE SKYRIDERS, LET US SWARM HIM WITH FAR MORE THAN HE CAN HANDLE!"
From the troop ships, soldiers on large eagles detached in swarms. Trumpets sounded all over the ships as other soldiers hailed the Eagle division.
The next orders, though, did not come from the Captain.
"GET DOWN!" A voice filled with incomprehensible power slammed into his mind like a sledgehammer, his body obeying long before his thoughts could even process it. And that was what saved his life.
The giant illusory image seemed to flap its wing, a single wing, and that was the last thing hundreds of people saw before they were shredded into tiny minced meats. More than a dozen ships began listing downwards, their hulls parted in twain and their wards overloaded and bypassed.
And those were the lucky ones.
Salin looked over at the SkyRiders who had detached moments ago in pride. Had he not been inured to the ravages of war, he would have been puking his guts out by now.
Where the thousands of SkyRiders had been, only a few remained. An army of thousands reduced to little patches of disorderly men filled with panic and terror. Blood stained the air, both in mist and liquid form, as thousands of shredded bodies dropped into the sea. Soon nearby monsters began flocking to the scene in droves.
Salin tried to get back to his work as he was slammed into the side, the ship, along with a dozen others, listing violently as an emerald gust of wind crashed into them. Their Command-generated ward lit up like a second dawn as it absorbed most of the attack.
"NAVIGATORS! I WANT US OUT OF THIS PLACE, NOW!!" The captain roared, fear on his features now.
From the Command ship, a single beam fired, its distant passing generating shockwaves of intense heat that battered against his natural resistance.
Salin breathed a sigh of relief; the battle was over. Surely, StormShredder couldn't recover from an attack like that, right? He'd have to retreat, right? Wrong!
Salin never saw it coming, and neither did anyone. One moment, Keilan Stormshredder was floating in the sky, holding well against two Pillars in a combat of such blurring speed through the air that they rapidly flickered in and out of existence. The next, an emerald titan instantly materialized a breath later.
Salin began wondering where Stormshredder had gone. Had he retreated? He didn't have long to wonder as the titan slammed an equally titanic emerald spear into the command ship.
And this time Salin knew they were surely dead.