Leon made his way back to the tower fairly early, only an hour or two after midday after spending a good portion of the morning at the pool he’d found.  Unfortunately, that moment when he’d been disturbed by someone had ruined it a bit for him, and he hadn’t cared enough to follow the tracks and see who it was.  Instead, he continued to explore the mountains in the west for a few hours before heading back.

He heard a slight commotion as he walked in through the outer door.  When he walked in through the inner door, he saw a dozen first-tier trainees huddled around a table.  He was about to ignore them and continue to the top floor, but he noticed something that made him freeze just as he was about to start climbing the stairs: Henry and Alain, covered in blood and bruises.

From the hurried way they were talking, Leon quickly learned that the two had limped back to the tower only half an hour prior.  Their injuries were awful to look at, but they weren’t so bad that the healing spells in the first-aid boxes scattered around the tower wouldn’t make them right as rain.  The only problem was that none of the trainees around them knew how to use the spells, and as they were trying to figure them out, three more injured trainees had returned to the tower.

Leon walked over to Henry and stared at the bruises and cuts.  Henry had his shirt off, so Leon could see almost every place where he had been hit, as they had all started turning purple or dark red.  The man was an absolute mess.

“What happened to all of you?” Leon asked calmly and quietly.  Henry appreciated this attitude, as most of the other trainees had started to panic when they couldn’t get the healing spells to work properly.

“We were attacked on the street.  After talking with everyone, we think it was some guys from the Deathbringers, but it’s hard to be sure given that we spent most of our time in their presence trying to protect our heads,” answered Henry.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t get this damned thing to work!” complained a nearby trainee, who was pressing a healing spell on Alain’s bruised stomach.

“Well don’t press down so hard!” responded Alain with a wince of pain.  Leon could tell the trainee was aggravating the big guy’s injuries just by pressing down on them without successfully activating the healing spell.

Leon gently pushed the trainee aside and placed his hand on the paper.  The trainee didn’t argue after seeing who was doing the pushing.

Leon’s magic gently flowed out of his hand and into the glyphs written on the paper.  Most of the glyph was built around a small runic circle made mostly of light runes, and that was where the spell was activated and powered.

The glyph on the paper glowed with a bright golden light for several seconds and the bruise on Alain’s stomach disappeared.

“Simply rubbing the spell on an injury won’t activate it, you need to channel your magic into it as well.  Look for this circle in the glyph.”  Leon indicated the runic circle to the watching trainee.  The magic that flowed through the glyph had almost destroyed it, but the circle was still identifiable.  The trainee enthusiastically nodded and started treating the other four’s injuries.  He quickly explained what Leon had just told him to the other trainees who were helping these five injured Snow Lions, and soon enough, all five had almost completely recovered.

But, ‘almost completely’ still wasn’t ‘completely’.  Alain’s left eye was still slightly swollen and the other four still had some visible bruising on their face and torsos.

“So, tell me what happened.  In detail,” Leon demanded of Alain and Henry.  He controlled his voice well, but the slight undercurrent of killing intent he was emitting betrayed his anger.  He didn’t consider himself an overly proud person, but someone attacking people he was friendly with—people he’d agreed to train—infuriated him.  This wasn’t just an attack on them, but an attack on him, as well, and he couldn’t just stand by and let this go unpunished.

Henry bitterly recounted how he and Alain ran into the first Deathbringer trainee, only to be jumped by that group several minutes later.  He narrated how they’d managed to return home, and how they’d shared information with the others who’d been likewise jumped, and how they’d puzzled out who’d attacked them.

When Henry was done, Leon looked over to the other trainees, who all corroborated the story.

Leon was tempted to say that Gaius was behind his.  He didn’t think that he had any other enemies at the Knight Academy, and Gaius had made some pretty specific threats to Leon, but on the other hand, Leon kept his mind open for other possibilities.  This wasn’t necessarily about him.

While this was going on, Castor and Alphonsus, the other two third-tier trainees who were in charge of the Snow Lions, returned to the tower.  There wasn’t anything in particular they had wanted to do in the city, so they came back after spending a few hours in the Heaven’s Eye Tower.

Alphonsus wasted no time heading for the stairs, largely ignoring the gathered first-tier trainees, but Castor curiously glanced at the group tending to their injuries.  The healing spells had healed most of the damage, but the five who’d been jumped were still visibly injured.  Leon saw Castor’s eyes widen as he froze in place at the bottom of the stairs, and Leon was gratified to see that as soon as Castor got over his shock, he came almost running over, a curious Alphonsus in tow.

“What happened with these guys?” Castor asked Leon. 

“They were assaulted while in the city.  Seems to be by trainees from the Deathbringers.”

“Are you sure?” Castor asked after a moment of thought, his face one of serious contemplation.

“Wasn’t there, but I believe them,” responded Leon in a serious tone.

Castor frowned and looked back to the five injured trainees.  “If that’s true, then this is going to be a little difficult to handle…”

Leon fought the urge to roll his eyes.  He knew how to handle this: attack the Deathbringers, gain vengeance for their injured trainees.  It wasn’t something that needed a great deal of thought.  He supposed that the reason Castor was hesitating was that he’d fought Actaeon, one of the third-tier nobles from the Deathbringers, during the morning duels that week and lost fairly quickly.

“Do you have any proof that it was the Deathbringers?” he asked Henry.

Henry blinked in momentary confusion at why Castor was asking him this, before seeming to shut off a little bit.  It was only after a quick nod from Leon that he sullenly stated, “We saw who it was.  We recognized them.  They didn’t hide their identities.”

“But can you prove definitively that it was the Deathbringers?” asked Castor again, with a little more insistence this time.

“What proof is there to be had?!  Do you want to compare their fists to my bruises and see if they match?  It’s not like they left a signed confession with us…”  Henry’s tone was a mix of rising anger and incredulousness at Castor’s question, and a notable lack of respect.

“Are you calling us liars?!” asked Alain with growing fury.  The other three assaulted Snow Lions appeared to be of varying levels of anger, but all were obviously annoyed at Castor’s requests for proof.

Castor interposed himself between the two and glared at Alphonsus before he could talk back to make sure he wasn’t going to shout at them and make things worse.  After Alphonsus shrugged, glared at Alain, and then stepped back, Castor continued, “You all want revenge, right?  You want retaliation?” Castor asked, looking at the five in turn, then moving on the other half dozen or so trainees who had gathered around.

“We do!” shouted Henry, with a few of the others nodding in agreement.  Many others didn’t, though, preferring instead to see how the three third-tier mages fell on the issue.

“We don’t need to immediately jump to violence!  If we do, nothing will end, we’ll just end up in a conflict with them throughout the entire rest of the training cycle!  It’s best if I go and talk with Gaius and work out whatever this is with him.  It’s best if we can settle this like men, not like animals!”

Before Henry, Alain, or any of the other trainees could respond, Leon spoke up.  “I think it would be better if you go there in a position of strength.  I’ll go and get revenge, and then you can go and talk with Gaius.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Castor replied as he turned to fully face Leon and regard him with all the dignity he could muster.  “Things may work differently where you’re from, but in this Kingdom, we resolve our disputes differently.  I’ll go and speak with Gaius and we’ll get all of this sorted out.  There’s no need to jump immediately to violence.”

Leon gave Castor something that resembled a look of pity; he didn’t like Gaius, and he didn’t trust him to speak with Castor in good faith.  He couldn’t envision a scenario in which Castor’s plan was going to work.  When he glanced at the rest of the first-tiers, he could see his sentiment shared.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Leon turned away from the other two third-tier trainees.  No matter what they said, he would go and attack some Deathbringers the next morning, and he knew for sure that there were going to be some willing first-tier Snow Lions at his back when he did.

---

“Those peasants should just do what they’re told.  Who do they think they are to question our decisions?!” ranted Alphonsus in the third-tier common room a few minutes after he and Castor left.  Leon had stayed below for a few minutes, though he hadn’t said why.

“They’re angry.  Some of them were assaulted today,” responded a much calmer Castor.

“And you said you’d take care of it!  What more do they want?!”  Alphonsus was almost shouting now, only kept in check by how composed Castor remained.

“I said I’d talk to Gaius.  They don’t want to hear anything about ‘talking’, they just want their revenge.  I understand that, but we’re one of the smallest units this cycle.  I don’t want us to make enemies yet, we can’t afford to,” said Castor with a thoughtful look.

As Castor said this, a voice resounded through the common room.  “Enemies aren’t always chosen.  Regardless of what you want, the Snow Lions have enemies now.”  Castor and Alphonsus glanced at Leon, the source of this voice, as he entered the common room.

“Ah, here comes the barbarian now, sauntering like a conquering hero!” Alphonsus bitterly spat.  “This is your fault, I’m sure!  You humiliated the third son of House Tullius and now he’s put our unit on his shit-list!”

“Don’t blame me for this.  I didn’t force the Deathbringers to do this!  I’ve been trying to ignore Gaius and let this whole thing blow over!” retorted Leon in uncharacteristic anger.

Castor sighed and held up his hand, stopping Alphonsus from escalating the disagreement into a full-blown argument.  “Indeed, the Deathbringers made the decision to attack our people, and only they can be blamed for that.  But we should think carefully before we do anything to intensify this any further.  De-escalation is what we should strive for, not escalation.”

“Yes, let’s just let them walk all over in the streets!  Say, how will you be spending the day while our people are being assaulted in back alleys and left bleeding on the ground?  Sipping expensive drinks at a fancy local club?” asked Leon, his words dripping with sarcasm.

“And what would you have us do?” demanded Alphonsus.

“I’m going to do the same to them that they did to us: ambush them and leave them bleeding on the ground.”

“We can’t be fighting a war in the streets!” responded Castor emphatically.

“It won’t be in the streets.  I’m going to hit them tomorrow morning before they leave the forest.”

Castor sighed again and leaned back in his chair.  After a few more moments of thought, he said, “Whatever.  Do what you will tomorrow.  I don’t like this at all, but I suppose it might be easier to talk to the Deathbringers if they’ve been bloodied too.”

Leon smiled in anticipation, and after a moment of silence, turned around and went to his room.

Just before he entered his room, he turned around and said to Castor, “I suppose I can at least try to talk first.  Probably won’t get far though…”  He chuckled to himself as he stepped into his room, but Castor at least nodded in acknowledgment.

“What the hell are you doing?” inquired Alphonsus quietly once Leon’s door was closed.  “You should’ve stuck to your decision!  It isn’t his place to question you!”

“He’s a third-tier mage, Alphonsus, and technically our equal.  He has every right to question me.  Besides, even if I told him not to do anything tomorrow, do you think he’d listen?”  Castor sounded exhausted from the day’s unexpected trouble.  He closed his eyes and stretched, intending to make like Leon and go to his room.  He doubted that his words with Gaius would have any effect, so he needed to rest up and ensure that he was ready for the war this was going to bring.

---

The entire dining hall was tense enough to cut with a spoon the next morning.  The Snow Lions had to endure the smug faces of the Deathbringers staring at them from across the hall, though they returned every glare and scowl they received.  The atmosphere grew so charged that even the third-tier nobles were affected, with many eyes constantly flitting between the third-tier Snow Lions and Deathbringers.

Few looks were spared for Leon, save for a few self-satisfied smirks from Gaius and some oddly embarrassed glances from Valeria.  Whenever Leon glanced in her direction, he’d catch her staring at him, only for her cheeks to redden further and her head to snap so that she was looking in another direction, and all to the tune of her bronze-skinned friend’s chuckling.  Her behavior was strange—especially so given the icy stoicism that Leon had come to expect from her over the past week—but Leon put it out of his mind.  He needed to focus on the attack he was going to lead in an hour or two.

The end of breakfast couldn’t come soon enough, and almost everyone in the hall was quite eager to leave as soon as their Senior Instructors ordered them to.

The Snow Lions’ Senior Instructor took them back to their tower and dismissed them, giving them only a cursory speech about safety and what time they were expected to be back.

The nobles immediately made their way to the stairs.  Castor hesitated before heading up and looked back at Leon.  Leon didn’t return the look, instead choosing to watch a few dozen first-tier trainees gather their weapons and make last-second preparations.

For a moment, it seemed to Leon like Castor was tempted to join them.  But that moment passed quickly.  The third-tier noble shook his head and followed Alphonsus and the second-tiers upstairs.

“Everybody ready?” asked Leon several minutes later.  There were a little over thirty first-tier trainees before him who’d been sufficiently enraged after hearing about the attacks the previous day to pick up arms and join Leon in a retaliatory strike, including Charles, Alain, and Henry.  Not as many as Leon expected, but enough to work with.  After everyone nodded back at him, he simply said, “Then let’s get moving.”

He immediately led them out of the tower and turned north-east.  He’d spent much of the previous night studying the maps that the Academy gave its trainees of the training grounds.  The towers for the Deathbringers and the Snow Lions were relatively close, only about a mile apart.

But Leon wasn’t taking his group to the Deathbringer’s tower.  Instead, he was taking them to a point he’d marked on the road that connected it to the training field.  The road curved around a small hill dense with vegetation at this point, which would allow Leon’s group to watch the road without being easily seen.

Having spent most of his life wandering around in a forest, Leon’s sense of direction was uncanny; the group arrived at the hill in less than fifteen minutes.  They moved with notable swiftness, and the weaker trainees needed a few minutes to catch their breath.  Leon wasn’t too worried that they’d missed their targets, as they wouldn’t be in as great a hurry as the Snow Lions were, not to mention the nobles typically took longer to leave their towers than the commoners, so even if they missed the weaker Deathbringers, they might still bag themselves a few nobles.

The group waited a couple hundred feet into the tree line while Leon sent Henry and two others to watch the road.  After about twenty minutes, Henry ran back to Leon.

“They’re here!”

“You sure?” asked Leon.

“Absolutely,” replied Henry through gritted teeth.

“All of them?”

“It’s them, all five who attacked me and Alain.  They’re following some second-tier noble.”

“How many do they have?”

“At least three second-tier nobles, plus about a dozen first-tier guys.”

Leon nodded to Henry, then called out to the rest of the group, “Alright!  Let’s move up!”

The forest was thick enough that the Deathbringers didn’t notice a thing as the group moved forward.  Leon made sure they spread out to cover a little more ground, just in case any of the Deathbringers ran away.

 When the Deathbringers finally came close to their hiding place, Leon emerged from the forest alone with the rest of his group waiting in the tree line.  He calmly walked out like he was just out for a stroll until he came to a stop in the center of the road, blocking the Deathbringers from passing by.

The group of Deathbringers stopped and stared at him for a moment before several of them broke out into smiles and began walking towards him.  Leon just stoically watched until they came close enough to speak comfortably without shouting—which also happened to place them in perfect position for his ambush.

One of the second-tier nobles stepped forward and said, “I know you’re from the uncivilized Northern Vales, but surely your savage mind understands that the smaller group makes way for the larger?  We’re coming through and you’re in our way, so it would be best if you were to remove yourself from our path!”

A second noble added with a smile that was both provocative and condescending, “Or don’t.  I wouldn’t mind removing you.  Shouldn’t be too hard with all the people we have…”

Leon, ignoring their threats, addressed the host of a dozen first-tier trainees behind them, “You are the ones who attacked those in my unit yesterday, aren’t you?”

The nobles looked a little taken aback.  They weren’t used to being so blatantly ignored.

“Yeah, that was us,” confessed one of the first-tier trainees without a hint of remorse in his voice.  In fact, he seemed almost proud of it, though saw that he was staring more at the second-tier Deathbringer than he was at Leon, so he figured that it was mostly just a show of loyalty.

“Who cares if it was?” said another.

“What, did you come here to piss and moan about it?” said a third with a mocking tone.

“No,” answered Leon immediately.  “I’m here to get you all to publicly apologize and pay my people appropriate compensation, otherwise I’ll leave you just as battered and bloodied as you left my guys.”

The three Deathbringer nobles stared in shock at the completely serious Leon for a moment before bursting out into laughter.  Their amusement spread to their first-tier underlings who also started chuckling at Leon.

“Hehehe… I don’t think you understand what position you’re in, you faithless animal!” said the second noble when he managed to stifle his laughter.  “No one threatens our people and gets away with it!”

“Indeed!  The standards of this Academy must be slipping if this fucking clown can manage to enroll!” shouted the third noble.

The first noble smiled derisively at Leon before adding, “It seems the accident that let this barbarian rise to the third-tier makes him think he’s better than us!  Now, I realize that basic math may be a hard concept for your primitive brain to grasp, but we outnumber you fifteen to one!  It doesn’t matter that you’re in the third-tier, we’re still going to break every bone in your body!”

Leon felt fury rising in his chest, a fury that he knew was coming from Xaphan.  The demon had been quiet these past few days, but Leon knew he was occasionally watching what was happening outside.  This short exchange had left the demon burning with a rage that made his own flames seem insignificant.

But for all the strength of his fury, it was dwarfed by Leon’s.

[Those ones need to die,] said the demon through clenched teeth.

[They won’t be dead when I’m through with them, but they might wish they were…] responded an equally furious Leon.

The first noble made a quick gesture and the dozen first-tier underlings quickly spread out and surrounded Leon.

Leon was confident in his skills, enough to be relatively certain that he could take just about any other trainee in the Knight Academy one-on-one save for Valeria, and even then, his record with her was tied.  Still, he didn’t think he alone could take on all of these people and win.  But he wasn’t alone.

Leon smiled, having gotten what he wanted, and waved over his shoulder at the waiting Snow Lions.

Before any of the Deathbringers could react, three dozen Snow Lions poured out of the forest and were upon them.  The three Deathbringers closest to the tree line couldn’t even raise their training weapons quick enough to block; the Snow Lions cut them down in an instant with the stabs and slashes they’d learned during their Basic Combat classes.

Leon drew his own training sword and sliced through the two Deathbringers between him and the nobles in one quick motion.  Leon surged forward and engaged the three second-tier nobles.

The fight was over in a matter of seconds.  The Snow Lions completely overwhelmed the surprised Deathbringers and left all twelve of the noble’s first-tier underlings stunned and unconscious from their training weapons.  Some of the Snow Lions even got in a few extra hits on those who’d ambushed them, leaving some of the first-tier Deathbringers with a little more than a few quick stunning slashes.  One in particular looked like he lost a few teeth from a Snow Lion fist, while another was left fountaining blood out of his nose.  It wasn’t quite to the level of how beaten the five Snow Lions had been, but it didn’t necessarily have to be; this was more about salvaging honor and pride than inflicting grievous harm.

Leon, while all that had gone on, had disarmed the nobles so quickly that they hardly had a chance to draw their weapons, let alone use them.

Their ambush was so successful, in fact, that some of the Snow Lions were a little let down at the anti-climax and started staring at the three surrounded nobles.

 “If you were smart, you’d make with that compensation…” said Leon with a confident smile as he threw their training swords into the forest.

“Ha!  As if we would ever do something so shameful!” laughed the second noble, though his voice was wavering in fear as he stared around at the Snow Lions staring at him with starved looks.

“Indeed!  If you intended to harm us, you would’ve done so by now!” shouted the third noble, who then chuckled at Leon in derision as if certain Leon wasn’t going to do so.

The first noble looked particularly irate, and his chest swelled as he took a deep breath and began to shout, “We serve Gaius Caecilius Tullius!  You are all going to be stomped into the dirt where you belong when he hears of this!  Attacking us unprovoked will only serve to see your unit isolated and crushed!  You will be this training cycle’s punching bag!  Don’t get used to this, swine, for in a few short weeks, Lord Gaius will make sure that you never taste victory again!”

Leon slowly sheathed his training sword and stepped forward, to the delight of the nobles whose smiles grew even wider.

“I’m terribly sorry…” he started, to which the nobles started laughing.  However, their laughter was smothered as he continued.  “… because it seems that I’ve given you the impression that I was joking.  That could not be further from the truth.”

Leon started walking forward with an ominous smile, an aura of killing intent emanating from his body causing one of the nobles to shiver in momentary fear.

“You seem to have found much of what I’ve said today funny.  Do I really amuse you so much?” he asked as he neared the first noble.  The fire that the nobles had exhibited only a moment before withered under the weight of Leon’s terrible gaze and shiver-inducing smile.  Leon doubted any of them had ever encountered someone willing to act against them like this, let alone a real battle.  At the most, he figured they’d been hunting a few times.  Not enough to give them enough killing intent to resist what the Forest of Black and White had instilled into him.

Leon clenched his fist and drove it into the first noble’s cheek.  The noble dropped like a bag of rocks and Leon followed up with a kick that made the noble fly over to the watching Snow Lions.  They treated him about as gently as Leon just had, practically descending into a cloud of fists.

Leon paused before moving on to the next noble.  “You don’t seem to be that entertained anymore.  Are my jokes no longer so delightful?”  His tone started fairly playful and mock hurt but turned extremely menacing and disquieting by the end.  Leon slammed his foot into the stomach of the second noble so hard that the noble crumpled and emptied his stomach all over his very expensive looking shoes.  Again, Leon punted the noble over to the waiting Snow Lions.

Leon finally turned to the final noble, who felt his hair stand on end.  His arrogant demeanor had collapsed, and he couldn’t maintain a straight face, constantly twitching between various looks of fear and terror.

“Why aren’t you laughing?  Hmm?”  Leon’s words echoed in his ears and the noble found himself unable to form any words.  Leon punched the noble in the face so hard that he was knocked flat on the ground.  He didn’t try to get back up, so Leon contented himself with throwing a few kicks at him.

“You still don’t find this funny, huh?  I’m suddenly not so hilarious?” Leon said with both exceptional rage and a strange sense of delight in being able to cut loose with the frustrations that the past few months of dealing with the Bull Kingdom had given him.  He needed this catharsis, he was realizing.  He kicked the noble a few more times before stepping back to let the waiting Snow Lions tear into him.

“That’s a shame,” Leon said sarcastically as he calmly watched the Snow Lions rain blows down upon the nobles.  “I thought I might’ve had a good future in comedy.”

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