About an hour or so after Leon’s arm was regrown, Leon and Elise parted ways to see to their own respective business.  Despite their agreement to find a house separate from Emilie’s estate, they still had other, more immediate things to attend to.

For his part, Leon’s first concern was to find Anzu.  After the fight with Lewis, the griffin had accompanied the unconscious Leon back to the capital, but he had largely been left alone after Leon had woken up.  The Heaven’s Eye beastmaster assigned to him gave him a clean bill of health, so other than the servants that brought him food, no one bothered much with him.  As a result, he was left in the stables and gardens to do his own thing while Leon was still in bed, which usually meant anxiously pacing back and forth waiting for his human to recover.

When Leon finally did arrive out in the gardens where Anzu was waiting, the griffin was ecstatic, running straight at Leon and almost tackling him to the ground.  In fact, if Leon were mortal, he probably would’ve been badly injured from Anzu’s enthusiastic charge; Anzu’s head now reached Leon’s shoulder and he weighed more than double the average man.

“Hey, there, little buddy!” Leon said as he patted Anzu’s head.  The griffin’s paws were up on Leon’s shoulders, his wings were spread and curled around the two of them, and he kept rubbing the top of his beak on Leon’s face in an obvious show of joy and affection.

Once he managed to get Anzu off of him, Leon quietly observed the young griffin.  He was continuing to grow incredibly fast and was now larger than a small pony.  If he wanted to, Leon figured he could probably start to ride Anzu, but the griffin still wasn’t large or powerful enough to be used as a warhorse quite yet—Leon had learned from the Heaven’s Eye beastmaster that took care of Anzu that the griffin needed to be at least fifth-tier equivalent before he could learn to fly, as the use of wind magic was required to get off the ground.  Leon couldn’t help but feel some disappointment when he learned this, but at the rate Anzu was growing, he estimated that he and his griffin would be invading the firmament in less than a year’s time, an estimation that the beastmaster agreed with.

Shelving that for the time being, as he had other things to do, Leon moved on.  He and Anzu went back inside to tend to his next biggest priority: his armor.  The armor had been taken to Elise’s wing after it had been removed, so that’s where Leon went.

The armor was in terrible condition, and the more Leon surveyed it, the more his face fell.  The few Magmic Steel plates he had left that covered his left arm, already so resistant to fire and which he had enchanted to even better resist fire magic, had all melted to the point of being largely unusable.  Most of the rest of his plates were in more usable condition, but almost half of his Skyflax padding had been incinerated and the silver griffin insignia on his cuirass had melted into an indistinct blob.

All in all, his armor had been utterly ravaged by both Lewis and by Leon’s own use of Xaphan’s power.  Fortunately, those damaged parts were at least still salvageable, and since he was staying in the Tower Lord’s own palace, it was easy enough for him to arrange for repairs to start, which he was told would only take about a week.

He’d still need a couple of days after the armor was repaired to remake his enchantments, though he was actually looking forward to that part.  It would not only give him more practice with his enchanting skills, it also gave him the opportunity to do them better than he had done more than a year ago.  Plus, he could also start working on some of the other enchantments he’d been thinking about since the last time he had done work on his armor.

The more he thought about it, the more Leon’s excitement grew and the more his dejection at the state of his armor lessened.

With that taken care of, Leon decided that his next bit of business would be with the Royal Archives.  The Royal Archives was the central repository of knowledge within the Kingdom, and it wasn’t just filled with academic texts and other objects of scholarly interest, it was also where the Kingdom stored all of its records.  Leon needed information, and the Royal Archives was the place he knew he’d find what he was looking for.

And he just so happened to be acquainted with someone who worked there.

Less than an hour later, he found himself standing outside the cylindrical building that housed the Royal Archives.  He notably hadn’t seen Lapis in its usual place outside the palace, but he wanted to take care of his business before he went looking into that, and so he walked inside with Anzu at his side.

As soon as he entered, one of the receptionists instantly stood up and said, “Please, Sir, no pets or war beasts within the Archives!”

Leon frowned, but he glanced down at Anzu—quietly marveling at how little he had to look down to make eye contact with the griffin as he did so—and said, “Anzu, wait here.”

Anzu gave him a strange look, but he sat down right next to the door, though he stared at Leon’s back as the knight walked further into the building.

“I apologize, Sir, but those are the rules,” the receptionist said as he gave Leon an apologetic look.

“It’s fine,” Leon responded.  “I’d like to meet with Prince Antonius, if that’s possible.”

“His Highness…?” the receptionist hesitantly asked as he glanced at his superior.

“We’ll have to check with His Highness, first,” she said as she stood up and took over the conversation.  “May we have your name and your reason for coming here, Sir?”

“Leon Ursus, I need to check in on something His Highness was looking into for me,” Leon answered.

“Very well, Sir, please feel free to have a seat while you wait…” the receptionist said as her colleague took off down the halls toward Antonius’ office.

Leon availed himself of their hospitality and sat down in one of the few couches that were in the entrance hall for just these occasions and waited.  He wasn’t waiting long, as less than ten minutes later, the receptionist returned and informed Leon, “His Highness is willing to see you right now, Sir!”

“Thank you,” Leon said as he stood up and began walking toward Antonius’ office.  As he started to leave the receptionist’s line of sight due to the curve of the hallway as it traveled around the building’s perimeter, he glanced back at Anzu, smiled, and nodded.  Anzu immediately took off sprinting to catch up, and Leon heard both receptionists gasp in shock.

“Sir!” the male receptionist called out as he started to run to catch up with Leon, but he was instantly stopped by his female colleague.

“Don’t bother,” she said as she sighed and sat back down behind the desk.  “That guy’s a fifth-tier mage, at least, and if he has business with His Highness then he’s far above our pay grade.  Best to just leave him be.  Besides, it didn’t look like his griffin was so ill-trained that he would trash the place.”

The male receptionist looked a bit conflicted, but in the end, he submitted to his co-worker’s wisdom and let Leon go.

Leon quickly made his way to the Prince’s office.  When he pushed open the door, he found the place in about the same state as when he was there last, with the walls lined with full bookshelves and the dozen tables covered in books, scrolls, and ancient artifacts.

Antonius was hunched over one of these tables that contained various shards of green metal and three clay tablets.  Hearing the door open, Antonius looked up from his work, and after a barely noticeable moment of hesitation, he smiled and said, “Sir Leon!  Wonderful to see you!”

“And you, Your Highness,” Leon responded as he entered the room and gave the Prince a short bow.

“Please, no need to hold to such formality when it’s just the two of us!” Antonius said with an exasperated tone.  He had made his distaste for formalities clear when he had met Leon, but Leon wasn’t going to let his formal greetings go until he knew the Prince better.

As Leon walked further into the room, Anzu followed close behind, but with a few words, Leon had him wait by the door.

“That’s a beautiful griffin you have there,” Antonius said once Leon had finally come over to his table.

“Thanks,” Leon said with a smile of pride.

“Was he wild?” Antonius asked.

“He was,” Leon confirmed.  “His mother abandoned him, and I happened across him not long after.  He imprinted on me, and we’ve been almost inseparable since.”

“I must admit some jealousy, albino war beasts are hard to find unless they’re bred.”

“I’m very lucky to have Anzu,” Leon said.

“Anyway, what brings you out here?” Antonius asked, his brown eyes gleaming with curiosity.  He was fairly anxious around Leon, but his thirst for knowledge far outweighed that anxiety.

“Made any progress on my map?” Leon asked.

“I did,” Antonius answered as he led Leon over to another table covered in arcane scrolls and detailed maps of the plane.  With a quick scan of the largest map, Leon was unable to locate the Most Serene Republic of Siracusa, the nation that Justin Isynos claimed to hail from, but most of the Bull Kingdom’s maps of Aeterna south of the Four Empires were hopelessly out of date, so such results didn’t strike him as unexpected.

“Most of the locations that were marked on your map are the locations of cities within the borders of the Four Empires,” Antonius explained.  “I couldn’t point to any common element that links them together, though, as there are still three locations that I couldn’t identify.”

As Antonius explained these things, Leon scanned the map of Aeterna that he was using, his eyes drawn to every marked location.  The map that he had found in the Cradle had three dozen lights strewn all over the plane, and with Xaphan’s prison and in the Forest of Black and White that he left out, that left thirty-four marked locations, with more than half of those within territory owned by the Four Empires.  Less again the three that didn’t seem to correspond to anything, and that left thirty-one cities, including Teira.

“I’m quite curious as to what these points refer to,” Antonius said.  “I’ll keep looking into it, especially since Teira is marked on here, but I haven’t a single solid clue as to what they could mean, the map is just too zoomed out to know for certain.  Maybe ruins similar to what you found in the Border Mountains, but I’m afraid we don’t have detailed enough information of these locations to know about any old ruins around them.”

“Thanks for looking into this for me,” Leon said.  He could make an educated guess that the lights were pointing to major Thunderbird Clan facilities established when the Storm King conquered the plane eighty thousand years ago, but he didn’t know if these places had been found and looted yet.  If these locations were cities, then the possibility was strong that the facilities at these locations had been found and plundered, but the chances were better that the three that weren’t around cities were relatively intact, and to say that piqued his interest would be to make a gross understatement.

“Looking to head to Teira anytime soon?” Antonius asked.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Leon replied, “though I’d love to make the trip.  I didn’t get nearly enough time to sightsee when I was coming south.”

“If you ever go, be sure to let me know, I’d love to have an excuse to poke around and look for anything of note that may be related to these points,” Antonius said with a look of anticipation.  “As far as I know, and I’ve made plenty of inquiries and done quite a bit of research, there aren’t any ruins similar to what you described in that ‘cradle’ place in Teira, but I’d still like to look around in the older districts just to be sure.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Leon said.  He figured that his family’s archives were what the mark was pointing to, but he wasn’t about to reveal that knowledge to Antonius.  Given the way Argent Palace was guarded, he also wasn’t too worried about the Prince finding out about the archives below Argent Palace.  No one was allowed access to the site, which kept the place as safe as could be, not to mention the other safety features that Leon had to pass to access the site himself.

“Anyway,” Antonius continued, hoping that he could get his business with Leon concluded as soon as possible, “is that the only reason why you’ve come to visit me today?  I was preparing a report to send your way to save you the trouble of coming all this way…”

“No, there is something else…” Leon said.  “I’d like to look into the history of vampire attacks within this Kingdom.”

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