Zeke’s lips curled at the edges.
Despite the tension coiling in his chest, he kept up the act as best he could. If he wanted to convince this woman to do what he needed, then there was no other choice. She had to truly believe the situation was hopeless.
Already, he could see the urge to rush past him and go to her colleague’s aid beginning to overwhelm whatever apprehension she still had about turning her back on him. That was something he couldn’t allow.
“Come now…” he said, his voice deliberately relaxed. “Could you really have saved them if I hadn’t come? Or do you simply pretend not to know that you are throwing your life away?”
Zeke didn’t have to try very hard to sound convincing. If this woman actually trudged into his swarm, she would die. Archmage or not, a thousand draconic Blood-Shades were not something she could survive.
But her death was not what he was after. Worse, she might live long enough to make things difficult, and he had something far more important that he needed her to do.
“Do you think I fear death?” the woman sneered.
With every passing second, her eyes seemed to grow more resolute. More willing to throw caution to the wind. It was a worrying trend.
“I am Windtänzer, kid. Do you know what that means? My forefathers have lived and died for the Empire since the day of its inception. Death in battle is a fate I would relish.”
Zeke knew that his next words were critical. If he couldn’t convince her now, she would rush to her death.
“Then how about the next generation?” he asked softly. “Do they not deserve that same privilege?”
“What are you…”
The woman paused.
For the first time since their conversation had begun, her eyes left him. They flicked toward the limp figure lying on the ground below. Toward Viola.
The confusion on her face vanished.
Rage took its place.
“Is that why you left her alive?” she hissed. “To deal with me? To tie my hands?”
“Guilty as charged,” Zeke lied, not allowing even the smallest flicker of emotion to show on his face.
She had concluded exactly the wrong thing.
That was good. That was necessary.
“Enough talk,” he continued. “You know your options: Die with your men, or save your kin. I assure you, only one of those is possible. Choose wisely.”
Zeke’s face didn’t show a single trace of the turmoil inside. He looked at her with the bemusement of a man watching an already-finished game play out. As if every choice she could make had been reduced to pieces on a board, and he had already calculated the outcome of each.
Inwardly, however, he was already searching desperately for any other way to get Viola off the battlefield in case this stubborn old woman decided to make the wrong choice.
“If you think I’ll allow you to blackmail me with your childish—”
A crimson dart tore itself from Zeke’s fingers.
It traveled with a speed that could barely be followed by the eye. A moment later, the projectile struck the ground, piercing through earth and stone with ease. Right next to Viola’s limp form.
The woman froze.
Zeke adjusted his aim by a fraction, making sure she understood what he meant.
“Go then,” he said. “Go and relish your glorious death, Lady Windtänzer. I won’t stop you.”
A bead of blood gathered at the tip of his finger, trembling with restrained force. In a situation like this, the more urgent he made the choice, the less room she would have to question it. He couldn’t leave a single doubt in her mind that she was dooming Viola by not rushing to her rescue.
“I was foolish again,” he said self-deprecatingly. “I should have expected no different from your ilk. You Windtänzer truly do have a taste for betraying those who trust you.”
The woman’s face twisted with hatred, but her gaze had already betrayed her. It had moved from him to Viola.
Zeke smiled wider.
“Leave the battlefield. That is the only way either of you survives.”w
“…I will be back.”
Leaving only those words and a furious glare behind, Zeke’s biggest headache departed.
She reached Viola an instant later, but after carefully picking up the heavily injured girl, she didn’t dare travel at such speeds again.
Good.
At the pace she was going, Zeke would have more than enough time to do what he had to.
The Hive seemed to grasp the opportunity as well. The very moment the Archmage departed, its efforts to slaughter her men redoubled. Now that they didn’t have to guard against her, the struggling Mages stood even less of a chance.
Roughly a minute later, the corpses of roughly one hundred Wind Mages were brought to him, carried in the claws of several Blood-Shades.
They had not asked. They had not waited. They had simply brought him the bodies and expected him to understand.
Zeke fell into deep thought. This was worrying…
Despite appearances, he only had minimal command over these creatures. He could make them aware of his wishes, but they were by no means obliged to follow them. No contract bound them, and no magical oath forced them to obey his will.
The idea of being ordered around by his own creation sat poorly with him, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to be picky. A glance toward the battlefield helped him make up his mind. The Hive was the only variable capable of tilting the balance back in their favor. But he also had to make sure he retained some sort of control.
He pointed toward the remaining destroyer-class airships of the Legion.
“Take care of those before the woman returns.”
The golden shade, whose shoulder he was sitting on, turned its head. It regarded the airships currently battling the Alexandria for a moment before nodding.
With the deal struck, Zeke didn’t hesitate any longer.
Before the corpses could lose any more blood, he added them to the swarm. Still perched on the golden Blood-Shade’s shoulder, Zeke followed at a moderate distance as the Shades rushed off toward their next target.
The Legion airships, despite already being engaged in battle, naturally had defenses against hostile takeovers. Unfortunately, their greatest defensive asset had always been their superior Wind Mages. They were, in most cases, the only deterrent the Empire needed to guard against an assault like this.
Left without them, the light crossbows and scattered spellwork of the sailors posed little to no hindrance to the swarm. That disparity grew even worse once the creatures boarded. Shades capable of massacring fully prepared infantry regiments barely slowed when faced with lightly armored sailors.
Zeke watched, unable to decide whether he should feel pride or dread at the effectiveness of his creation.
They mobbed, massacred, and dismantled the first of the destroyers in a matter of minutes. Emboldened by the success, they split their force to take the next two simultaneously, and then the remaining three all at once. By this point, they had learned the ships’ weaknesses so well that the final boardings took less than a minute before the airships began to fall from the sky, unable to keep themselves afloat due to catastrophic failures in the runic arrays.
The sky was clear again.
All the while, fresh corpses were brought to him, belonging to the crews of the Legion airships. Dozens at first, then hundreds. Some of them belonged to Mages, others to regular humans: mechanics, cooks, cleaning staff, and the like.
The realization made Zeke frown, but once again, he was left with little choice but to cooperate. His current situation felt more and more like he had climbed onto the back of a tiger he was unable to get off.
The Hive, his own creation, seemed to have only a single goal: expansion.
And he, as their creator, was not a revered figure in its eyes. He was merely the only tool it had for making more of itself.
Zeke didn’t know what would happen when he refused to comply with its demands, but he highly doubted the Hive would take kindly to it.
Ever since the addition of the draconic genes, its consciousness seemed to have changed on a fundamental level. Before, they had been hungry.
Now, they were hungry and proud.
Whatever the name, the swarm had become far less docile. Every one of his demands seemed to be weighed carefully now, measured in terms of cost and benefit.
Just then, every member of the Hive turned its head upward.
A thousand sightless faces fixed on the Alexandria.
Even from the outside, the ship was clearly in a terrible state. It was the sort of prey any predator would drool over. Exhausted. Wounded. Brimming with blood, Mana, and life.
“That’s an ally,” Zeke said quickly to the golden Shade beside him.
To his dismay, it did not avert its head. On the contrary, Zeke sensed greed from it. Maybe the Hive had noticed the number of people on board, or the presence of the Archmages powering the ship’s arrays. Whatever it sensed, it was clearly tempting enough to ignore his warning.
So. It was starting already.
“Back. The. Fuck. Down,” he growled. In tandem with his words, the golden Shade’s body began to deform, its solid outline turning liquid.
Instantly, it averted its gaze from the Alexandria and stared at Zeke instead.
“I made you,” he said, looking right into its grotesque face. “Don’t force my hand.”
The Shade hesitated.
For one long moment, Zeke almost believed it would ignore him again. But then, one by one, every single member of the Hive began lowering its head. Their slow, disjointed movements made it clear how unwilling they were, but it seemed his display of power had achieved the desired effect.
Zeke was not bluffing either.
To anyone else, the Hive was a terrifying foe. Even an Archmage had little to no chance against a combined assault. But to Zeke, they posed far less of a threat. Their bodies were Blood. His Blood, shaped by his Mana. If he truly wished it, he could remind them of that.
That was a worst-case scenario, though.
Destroying his own creation in the middle of the battlefield would be madness. Even if he won, the Legion would be the only side to benefit. As long as there was common ground to be found, Zeke was willing to compromise to keep the peace.
He quickly pointed at the gathered army of the Legion.
“They are all for you.”
As if trying to present themselves as sacrifices, a troop was charging at that very moment. Zeke instantly felt the power of their leader. It felt like looking directly at the sun. Another strong Fire Mage, likely not much weaker than the Archmage battling Rhea.
Following him was an elite battalion. Fire Mages, one and all. Heat shimmered around them in waves, turning the air above the battlefield into rippling glass. This was not the same riffraff they had faced before. This unit was clearly a core fighting force of the Legion.
Currently, there was nobody on his side strong enough to face such a force. Zelkara would fall first, which would mean the first line of defense would become dysfunctional, quickly snowballing through every single battle.
Zeke could see it play out clearly before his mind’s eye.
There was no doubt. If they were allowed to reach his people, it would mean death.
Thankfully, he had the Hive. These people were the perfect victims for it. Rich in Mana. Rich in Blood.
However, even after a long moment, not a single member of the Hive moved to intercept. It was as if they had not heard him at all.
“…What is it now?” Zeke asked, slightly irritated.
As one, every member of the Hive turned their heads in his direction.
Zeke fought as best he could to keep his composure, but even he had to admit how threatening and eerie it was to be stared down from a thousand different angles by such an inhuman entity.
Out of everything he had faced so far, the Hive had to rank among the highest when judged by intimidation alone.
“…What?” he asked again, more to give himself courage than because he actually expected a response.
To his shock, the golden Shade opened its mouth.
Until that moment, Zeke had not even been certain they possessed the concept of speech.
What emerged was broken and garbled, a corpse of a voice stitched together from stolen throats and half-remembered instincts. Yet Zeke understood it nonetheless.
“We… Fight… We… Die…”
“No… Chance…”
Zeke’s gaze turned hard. “So you would rather not fight at all? You want to idle the time away until the energy in your bodies is used up?”
The Shade shook its head.
“There… Is… A… Way…”
Zeke already had a bad feeling when he heard those words, a feeling that was proven right when he saw where the Shade was looking.
Its eyes had once again settled on the Alexandria.
“Allow… Us… To… Feed…”
“Have… Chance…”
Zeke understood at once.
More bodies. More Mana. More mass.
His lips curled derisively. “I’d rather kill you all than ever let that happen.”
To his surprise, the golden Shade mimicked his expression perfectly.
Its gaze slowly traveled downward, to the troop of elite Mages who were soon going to collide with his Bloodguard.
For one terrible moment, Zeke forgot how to breathe.
“Then…”
“They…”
“Will…”
“All…”
“Die…”