The thrill of creation never failed to delight Leon, especially if the thing he was creating held as much promise as the Stormborn branch did. The power contained in such a small thing was incredible, and harnessing it would take some doing, but from the moment Leon and Nestor returned to Nestor’s lab, they threw themselves into it wholeheartedly.

    Over the course of a day, sketches were made, debated upon, and thrown out in minutes. They ran through dozens of different variations, all seeking to exploit the branch’s power in the best possible way. Leon only had the one branch, after all, so getting it right the first time was key.

    Still, when focused entirely on their task, Leon and Nestor worked quickly. After working for almost thirty straight hours, they finally had something that just might work.

    “... I think it’ll work,” Leon declared as he stared down at the completed enchantment. The other tables around him and Nestor were covered in previous versions of this enchantment, all heavily annotated and covered in corrections and red ink crossing out mistakes, flaws, and inefficiencies.

    “It will work,” Nestor declared with more conviction. “The problem at hand is whether or not it’ll work well enough. With only one chance, we have to squeeze every spark of power we can from this thing; leaving any power on the table will only lead to regret and possible death.”

    Leon’s eyes flitted across the paper, taking in every one of the thousands of tiny runes scrawled on the surface. It was elegant, yet complex, not drawing so heavily on the branch as to risk breaking it, yet also making efficient use of the power it could access.

    Leon frowned slightly. “How long do we have until the shield falls? Four days?”

    “Close enough.”

    “We don’t have the time to make it perfect, and if we’re lucky, the tree we planted will grow more branches that we can use. This... I’d say we’ve done more than enough.”

    Nestor sighed. “No helping it, then. We’d better get another shot at refining this, I know there are improvements we can make.”

    “One day,” Leon promised as he took out a fresh sheet of spell paper. The finished enchantment now had to be copied in a way that would allow it to easily apply itself to the branch.

    It didn’t take long for him and Nestor to get everything ready, and once they had, Leon moved with grim determination, not wanting hesitation to cost them when they were running so low on time.

    Thus, he wrapped the branch in the prepared spell paper, his practiced hands making even this delicate work easy. Then, he placed the wrapped branch in the middle of another prepared enchantment and gave Nestor one last look.

    “Let’s do this,” he said as a grin spread across his face. Regardless of whether or not this was the best enchantment they could create, it still promised to be powerful, and he couldn’t wait to see what it could do.

    Nestor, with equal anticipation, kneeled by the outer enchantment, eager to watch their work come to fruition.

    Taking that as his silent cue to continue, Leon first activated the outer enchantment, channeling his power into the runic glyphs. The power, guided by the glyphs, sank into the branch, refining it, bending it slightly, and quickly turning the raw branch into the main body of a bow. Some of it was sanded down by Leon’s power, and Leon maintained significant concentration during that part to ensure that he didn’t damage the branch any more than was needed to properly prepare it. When the enchantment finished its work, he was satisfied.

    What he was left with was the body of a long bow, perfectly shaped and ready to be strung. A smooth handle in the center, a notch for the ‘arrow’, and long, thick arms curving slightly backward—it looked remarkably close to Leon’s first bow, with little ornamentation in the shape, though the white color of the refined wood certainly attracted the eye.

    After giving the bow a once-over, Leon activated the spell paper and redoubled his focus.

    Most of the enchantment would be on the thicker arms above and below the handle, but the entire thing would be covered in runes, ensuring the durability of the weapon not only when put to extensive use, but also to survive retaliation from whatever Leon might be shooting at. As the runes were applied, Leon could sense the contained spatial magic within the branch roiling and churning, fighting against the order he was imposing upon it. He slowed slightly, giving the bow a little more time to adapt as the runes were etched into its surface.

    He could’ve finished in minutes, but he took a full hour to make the bow. Despite taking so long, he didn’t hear a single word of complaint from Nestor, which he was mildly, but pleasantly, surprised by.

    When all was said and done, the spell paper covering the bow had burned to ash, leaving the weapon gray and dirty. Leon extended a hand to take it, hesitating only slightly as the magic within the bow surged for the briefest of moments. As his hands brushed against it, he could almost feel his hair standing on end, his mind and vision growing clearer, and the muscles in his arms and back growing stronger.

    He gripped the handle tightly and raised the weapon, his elementless magic washing over the weapon, cleaning it of ash, leaving the weapon gleaming in his hand like it had been forged from a white star. It was heavier than he’d expected, the bow weighing more than three times what the branch had, despite at least a fifth of the branch having been shaven off to shape the bow. The power within, too, felt greater despite the reduction in material—being given direction and order allowed the three elements within the branch to flow smoothly together, whereas before, the branch had tiny irregular pockets where power was clotting.

    Leon grinned at Nestor. “This thing feels good,” he crowed.

    “Show me what it can do,” Nestor demanded, pointing to a much-abused target in a corner of the lab.

    Leon needed no further encouragement; he gripped the handle tightly in his left hand, letting his power flow through the bow, adding to the bow’s natural power and activating the runes. He then brought his right hand forward and mimed drawing back a string.

    “No one’s around,” she said as she glanced around the otherwise empty room. “You can be honest with us.”

    “Then honestly, I’ll tell you this: we have a real chance of making it through this, what with all that we’ve managed to gain from those brief few weeks. Nothing’s guaranteed, but I’m genuinely confident, not merely putting on a brave face.”

    A smile spread across Penelope’s face as she stared Leon in the eye, searching for any signs of deceit. “Hm. You almost have me believing you.”

    “Let’s focus,” Icarius said, drawing their attention back to the map. “Titanstone is likewise easily acquired from our neighbors, and especially from Strategos Sakha in Joystone.”

    “Have you met with the Strategos there?” Leon asked, vaguely recognizing the name as one of the five Strategoi that were subordinated to Archelaus.

    “Not directly,” Icarius said, “though we’ve met with some of their low-level representatives. There’s so much Titanstone in the Mirthwood near Joystone that not only does it meet Sakha’s and Archelaus’ needs, but he also provides more than half of the Titanstone on the public market.”

    “If we’re able to force the Ocean Lords away,” Emilie said, “we won’t have to worry too much about sourcing Titanstone from other people.”

    Leon nodded, though his lips turned downward in a slight frown as his magic senses showed him the operation that Terris had at the massive Titanstone deposit on the coast. They were blasting the land apart with powerful jets of water, obliterating the landscape and hauling away not only the Titanstone they found there but all other precious materials, too—notably gold and marble, which Leon’s surveyors had missed. The devastation was immense, and Leon doubted he could back even so much as a scrap of what Terris was taking.

    Pushing Terris away from the land was one thing, but getting reparations or the return of all of that material was another thing entirely.

    “I’m also concerned with how we’re going to pay for all of this,” Emilie continued. “We don’t have control over any producers of Aurichalcum, which the currency of this place is made of. So how are we to mint currency that our neighbors will accept?”

    “I had some thoughts on that front,” Leon stated. “I was thinking of continuing to use silver for internal transactions, but to use storm crystal in the same way that the Kingdoms of Aeterna used gold talents. It seems that the people here will value storm crystal quite a bit, and I can make as much as we need.”

    “That would make us entirely dependent on you to mint our currency,” Emilie said with a frown.

    “Nestor and I have been working on that,” Leon responded. “That shouldn’t be the case for long. Assuming we have the time to experiment.”

    “There are other options, too,” Icarius interjected. “Influence over Shatufan will continue to yield Aurichalcum.”

    “Assuming our allies there remain in power,” Penelope cynically stated. “I’ve heard some rumors that the city’s been growing only more unstable since we left and that Manuchehr is rallying opposition to Jamshid out in the countryside. There’s a real possibility that he’ll oust Jamshid and return to power if he’s not stopped. And once he does, he’ll block access to Aurichalcum again. And that’s assuming that Archelaus even allows us to continue buying it after we essentially stole all of the Aurichalcum he’d already purchased.”

    “One problem at a time,” Leon said. “I’ve already been thinking about Shatufan, though. I’m content with Jamshid in charge, for the time being. If Manuchehr returns to power and becomes cooperative, then so be it. If he does and shows that isn’t... then we might have to resort to other means. But that’s a discussion for another time.”

    Penelope grimly nodded, and Leon turned back to the map. Before he could say anything, however, a huge burst of magic in the distance caught his attention, and when he turned his eyes in that direction, he could only stare in shock at what he was seeing.

    The burst of magic came from the south, where the enormous wall of water still loomed over the coast, providing cover for Terris’ war leviathans. Those enormous beasts, however, had shrunk back in the face of a rather small in comparison jellyfish, about the size of a frigate or maybe a little larger, swam toward the wall. It was a graceful thing, moving so smoothly that it belied the speed with which it pierced the water. It glowed intensely, pale white over most of its body while red and blue glowing nerves spread throughout its translucent body.

    Its aura was equivalent to that of an eleventh-tier mage, and when it emerged from the water wall, Leon saw Terris’ palace ark hurrying over to meet it. The rest of his fleet on the south side gave the jellyfish space as it danced in the air, its smooth tentacles and frilly oral arms elegantly trailing behind it.

    Terris himself emerged from the palace ark and hurried down to meet the jellyfish. Leon noted that the man was acting a little subservient, bowing slightly to the jellyfish as he came to a stop in front of it.

    And then the jellyfish flexed and pulsed, its body splitting open to reveal not what could be seen beneath its translucent skin, but instead a pit of darkness within its body, and around that pit was a dark blue halo.

    Leon’s eyes widened in surprise and alarm, and only widened further when Terris, without hesitation, plunged into the waiting portal, which the jellyfish sealed behind him.

    The jellyfish continued to dance in the air afterward, though its appearance was not promising as far as Leon was concerned.

    Something was about to happen.

    “We’ll pick this meeting up another time,” Leon said to the three former members of Heaven’s Eye. “I think we might have considerably less than four days until fighting resumes...”