War of Futility
Obviously, since Haalfrin feels uncomfortable sleeping in the old emperor's bedroom, he goes to another room to rest up. He HAD only been curious, after all.
Once Haalfrin gets to his new room, he sees a figure crouching down on his windowsill, with a several thousand foot drop right behind her. Freyya is here, yet she didn't have her usual box of cake..
Still, Haalfrin isn't all that surprised to see her here, and he says, "Ah! I haven't seen you in a few days. Come sit down. I'll have somebody bring you something to eat."
"You'll 'send for' somebody?" Freyya raises her eyebrows. "You know you just sounded like a noble when you said that, right?"
"Ew."
"You got to admit it," Freyya says as she plops herself on his bed and star taking her shoes off. "It's even worse when you're alone in an oversized room with noble furnishings."
"I can't help it," Haalfrin laughs softly as he helps Freyya take her coat off. "This IS a palace, after all."
He then looks out the window to the huge drop to the ground below. "Speaking of the palace, Fisco and I are talking about him sending some more mana conductive ore over."
"What for?" Freyya stretches her arms and asks. Then, she wraps herself in his blanket and gets comfortable. "You already have a floating castle."
"I'd like to get some mana cannons equipped on the bottom side of the palace. Just having cannons on the perimeter walls isn't enough."
"Did you officially become in charge or something?"
"Surprised?"
"No," she snorts. "It's about time, honestly."
"Mmm…," Freyya mumbles blearily after a long pause. "Well, have fun with that."
"Going to sleep already?" Haalfrin asks.
She doesn't even poke her head out from his sheets. "Yup." Her arm reaches out of the blankets and beckons to him. "You should come sleep too."
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A few hours later, Haalfrin lays on his back on his bed, and Freyya is draped haphazardly on top of him with a blanket over her and her bare feet sticking out. "You seem to be in an awfully good mood, girl," Haalfrin remarks.
"Heh," Freyya chuckles, "I just did something the Death King didn't like, and I think I actually got away with it this time."
Haalfrin is about to open his mouth to ask about what she did, but Freyya slaps her lips over his and cuts him off. After a long kiss, she says, "No. I'm not telling."
"…You know Freyya," Haalfrin starts to ask, "Have any of the Arkin actually seen you yet? I've noticed that you always pop up in my room and disappear without letting anyone see you."
"Huh…," she mumbles, "You should know me well enough by now to know that I'm not going to go chat some strangers up." She suddenly sits up and looks down at Haalfrin. "I'm going to make this clear, but DON'T go introducing me to the Arkin."
Haalfrin laughs at this, "No need to be shy, girl. I would say 'they won't hurt you,' but in your case, it's 'they CAN'T hurt you.'"
Freyya pinches Haalfrin's shoulder and plops herself back down. "You do realize that I've reaped all their souls before, so they'll recognize me. I… just don't like talking to strangers very much."
Haalfrin gives a smile at this and says, "Is that why, whenever I see you do your job, you always abruptly just rip their souls out of their body, stuff the souls into your lantern, then ignore them? I mean, I've seen Das and the other Death Reapers do their jobs, and they sometimes chat with their souls and console them. Haha. I thought you were just being ruthless before, but it turns out you're just shy. Bwahaha!"
Haalfrin then reaches his hand over and sips on cold tea and the stand next to his bed that he doesn't feel like wasting. "So… What are you going to do now?"
Freyya just stares at the ceiling for a bit while deep in thought. She then says, "I'll stay here for now." She sticks out a hand and points out the window to a tall tower in the distance." "Being high up would be nice. I want that tower."
That tower was used for some of the more important surveillance features Laura's team recently set up, but Haalfrin immediately says, "I'll have that tower ready in a few days."
No matter how happily married Haalfrin and Freyya are, she still likes to spend some time alone. Haalfrin knows this very well, so there's no point in quibbling over her request.
"Am I being a bother? Is that tower important?" Freyya suddenly asks.
"No, it's not important at all."
Freyya smiles at this and burrows even deeper into her pile of blankets. Slowly, Haalfrin watches in amusement as she naturally gravitates to one corner of the bed.
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Because of the nonstop fighting, Haalfrin and Freyya hadn't been able to spend much time together. Thus, with the Ant Queen suddenly focusing on hiding and the Arkin being in no position to pursue her yet, the war has lulled into a strange silence.
Now that Haalfrin is free, Freyya takes this opportunity to stay with Haalfrin in his room for the next couple of days. She even stays after the tower had been prepared for her.
Only after about a week does Freyya get bored and bid Haalfrin farewell. "Come visit me anytime, Haalfrin!" she waves at him as she picks up her bag and stealthily flies to her new house.
Once Freyya reaches her tower, she heavily enchants the place, and the area around it becomes a deserted ground that nobody can go near (except for Haalfrin).
None of the soldiers here really know why Haalfrin set this area aside, nor do they know what it's being used for; they just know that it's a forbidden ground they're not even allowed to ask about.
The only clue about what's going on in there is that their supreme Commander sometimes goes into the tower with some alcohol, roast meat, and a box of chocolate cake.
(… It's actually because of the cake that Faylin and Resburn are able to guess who is living in the tower.)
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A month after Freyya is tucked away in her tower, more mana-conductive stone is sent by Fisco. To preserve the limited stock of these supplies, Haalfrin has his soldiers build small domes on the underside of the fortress – all of which have mana cannons tucked inside. It's way cheaper than building another entire floor.
Once the cannons are in place, Haalfrin has his fortress start pummeling the ground relentlessly in hopes of collapsing the tunnels and killing the Ants.
…but the Ants just dig deeper.
Haalfrin then sends his Arkin to start roving across the surface and looking for hidden tunnel entrances. Once they find another way underground, he starts sending forces down there to engage the Ants.
The Ants, in turn, are sure to keep re-digging their tunnels and changing the paths through the underground – successfully keeping the Arkin confused and giving themselves the element of surprise.
Ant thus, the long, bloody war finally begins again in earnest.
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Years stretch into decades as each side fights for ground against the other.
Haalfrin's forces consistently have a hard time fighting the ants in the tunnels, since the ants can easily launch ambushes from tunnels nearby that the Arkin didn't know about before, seeing as how the Ants are hard at work keeping the tunnels freshly dug.
In turn, the Ants are at a heavy disadvantage on the surface. Atop those vast open plains, the Ants make easy target practice for the thousands of mana cannons erected on the "demons" fortress.
A pattern soon emerges in the long war. The Arkin will think of some new strategy to invade the underground tunnels. The Ants will think of a counterattack. The Ants will then try to think of a way to storm the floating fortress, only to give it up after trying once or twice.
The Arkin send countless squads on suicide missions to infiltrate the tunnels and countless assassins after the Queen.
The Ants, in turn, start to get more and more proficient in magic as the Queen herself is diligently self-studying.
With their growing arcane wisdom, they start thinking of creative ways to get to the Arkin walls. They build crude mana cannons and try launching eggs up to the sky. They try sneaking some eggs onto the clothing and into the pockets of imprisoned Arkin, only for them to let the Arkin escape and hatch the eggs up in the enemy castle.
Another time, the Queen tried having her Ants make another massive ramp to reach the castle… except this time, she had her children carry slabs of metal on top of them to protect themselves from the mana cannons bombarding them from the heavens.
The metal is actually effective in deflecting the mana bolts, since mana bolts mostly deal damage by burning things.
However, to the Queen's dismay, Haalfrin just has the mana cannons switch to a different type of ammunition – blunt cannon balls. The Ants' protective metal sheets are either bent out of shape or knocked away.
And so, the back-and-forth battling is endless as they think of more and more creative ways to invade each other's territory.
Still, it isn't capturing territory that is the end goal for either of these armies; it's killing more enemy soldiers. Taking strategic spots only makes the killing more convenient for one side.
(After all, the Queen's power will grow if she becomes more efficient at killing the Arkin and devouring their mana, and the Arkin's power will grow if they become more efficient at killing the Ants and taking their Death Aura.)
(In other words, whoever is better at killing the other side efficiently is the long-term winner of this war.)
One place that Haalfrin never gets back in all these years is the maze; the Queen is very sure to keep him well out of there.
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The barrier made from Haalfrin's Syl Name is a deep grey color, and it covers the entire sky like a mantle, cloaking the land in perpetual twilight. Because of this, there IS no visible difference between night and day.
Haalfrin is certainly able to tell the time, since Fisco is there, in his soul Realm, to update him on the years passing.
The Ant Queen, on the other hand, starts to get stressed out. She really doesn't understand how long she's been fighting here.
Sure, the war was fun at first, but the novelty has long worn off. Sure, the Queen is used to being in darkness, but having the sun seemingly removed from existence is still stressful for her. Even more, after seeing some of her Ants actually age to death, the Queen finally realizes that she, herself, has a time limit on life.
If she can age and die… will she be stuck on this battlefield forever? Will she really die here without ever being able to truly experience freedom?
Remembering the feeling of escaping the tunnel she was born in and discovering the outside world, the Queen had been childishly ecstatic!
Now? Now she feels trapped again, and it's suffocating.
The only way for the Queen to tell time is that every now and then, the dragonbone ax she's stolen briefly stirs awake (right before she sucks it dry of mana once again). The Queen has the feeling this is happening fairly periodically, so she starts counting how often it happens and regarding this as her new time-measuring system.