“The Northern Vales?” Elise asked for confirmation.

“Yes,” Leon affirmed, his tone grim and irate.  Offended, even.  “The chances of him being anywhere else are… slim, I think.  I can’t think of anywhere else he and the rest of his people could be other than my childhood home.”

“Maybe…” Elise responded as she leaned back in her chair, lost in thought.

It was the morning after they had arrived, and all four of Leon’s party had assembled in one of Ajax’s sitting rooms to decide what to do during the day.  With Rhea—or a woman Valeria guessed was Rhea—in the city, they’d decided that heading to Argent Palace right now was a little too risky, even with all that they could do to mitigate those risks.  Leon didn’t like it, but it was what it was.

So, with the entire reason for their visit to Teira now off-limits, they had to decide what to do instead, and for Valeria at least, that decision was easy: venture north to the Vales and look for her missing father.  For all that she felt betrayed and abandoned by his disappearance, she couldn’t just let Leon’s guess go uninvestigated.

She couldn’t just abandon her father, even if she felt that he had done just that to her.

Leon had already decided to go with her.  He doubted that she’d be of any help to him in the archives with this weighing down on her mind, and besides, he didn’t think he had it in him to deny her this and see her either leave him or be distracted during their time in Argent Palace.  So, he figured that since the palace wasn’t going anywhere, it was safe to put it off for just a little while longer.  They could take care of their business in the north, then visit the archives on the way back south.  All told, he doubted this delay would last longer than a few weeks.  Two months at the most.

On a more personal note, it had been years since he’d last seen his former home, and the more he thought about returning, the more his heart demanded that he do so, despite the dangers inherent to the Forest of Black and White.  There was also that mysterious location in the east of his home Vale that he had to check out, and he now felt confident that he had the power and gear to do so in relative safety.

Plus, he was livid that his home seemed to have been invaded in this way.  Well, it wasn’t his home anymore, not since he burned it down on his way out, but the idea of allies of those who murdered his father walking around that place was something he found offensive on a deeply personal level.

So, with that decided upon, the only problem lay with Elise and Maia and what they would decide to do.

“We don’t know for certain that he’s there, it’s only a guess,” Valeria said.  “But I think that if he were still in the Kingdom, then he would’ve reached out to me by now.  He’s been gone six months, he has to have run into trouble up there!”

Elise glanced at Leon.  He’d told her of the dangers that lived up there, of ice wraiths and banshees, of tree sprites, river nymphs, and trolls, and of all the other things that he could think of.  As beautiful as Leon claimed it to be, she wasn’t in a hurry to see it for herself, but from seeing Leon so often leave and his only recent return from war, she was loath to let him go off on his own again.

“It’ll be a hard trek north,” Leon said, “I’d understand if you didn’t want to come with…”

“You think I’d just let you two leave here on your own?!” Elise asked, her tone almost offended and accusatory.  “I know that I probably won’t be able to follow you into the Forest of Black and White, but I can at least come with you to the Brown Bears Tribe!”

“No, I don’t expect you to just let us leave,” Leon honestly replied.  “But what kind of person would I be if I just expected you to drop everything to come with?  It’s a long way over some of the coldest and harshest terrain on the plane.  I don’t want to subject you to that, but I also hate the idea of leaving you here…”

“I get it,” Elise said, “It’s a long way and the Vales are dangerous.  But I won’t be left behind again while you gallivant around the edge of the world!  I’ll get some Heaven’s Eye guards to come with us, and I can accompany you at least partway.”

Leon smiled.  Truth be told, he hated the idea of leaving her behind, too.  Their relationship had first started with him leaving for several months, then coming back for only a few days, then leaving again for more than a year.  They’d been together for almost four years, and yet they’d only been together for less than two.  Now that they could be together permanently and without fear of being split up by their responsibilities, he would have to tear out his own heart if he wanted to leave her behind.

Even then, judging by the fire in her eyes, he didn’t think that would work.

With a quick glance at Maia, he knew that it would be pointless to try and convince her to stay behind, too, even if he were of a mind to try.  All four of them were going to go north and there was little point in discussing that much any longer.

“All right, then,” Leon said.  “Let’s get the specific logistics worked out.  If Valeria is right and Rhea is desperate, then there has to be some reason for her desperation.  So, I think it would be safe to assume that we’re probably working on a time crunch.”

“Assuming we’re right in our assumptions,” Valeria added with a cheeky smile.

“Assuming that, yes,” Leon conceded, returning the smile.  He glanced around at all three ladies.  Maia had been rather quiet during the entire conversation, but he knew if she objected to anything, she’d make her mind known.  From what he could see, they were all on the same page.  “So, why don’t we get started on working out what all of this is going to look like?”

It didn’t take long for them to work out the logistics.  Elise had already figured most of it out before they’d started seriously talking about going north—not that they needed to work much out, they weren’t going to be bringing too many people.

Once they were done with that, though, Valeria had one last thing to say.

“Thank you, everyone,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion, her eyes starting to glisten with unshed tears.  “I know none of you have to do this for me, but it means so much that you’re willing to go so far to help me.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Leon said with a smile.  “We’re friends, this is nothing.”

Valeria smiled as Elise then took her hands.  “We’re with you, no questions asked.  Even if you don’t share our bed, you’re family as far as I’m concerned.”

The two embraced, Valeria quietly starting to sob as Elise whispered more words of comfort into her ears.  After a few moments of watching this, Leon’s eyes wandered over to Maia and saw that Elise’s sentiment was not shared in his river nymph lover.

[Got something to say?] Leon asked her, his tone soft and light, not a trace of accusation could be heard in it.

[It disturbs me how quickly this woman has been accepted,] Maia said.  [You resisted me quite fiercely when we first met, yet this woman who is connected to your enemies is comforted and embraced, almost to the point of excluding us…]

[Jealous?] Leon playfully asked.

Maia responded with a glare.

Leon smirked back at her before his expression turned more serious.  [She’s not just some woman we picked up on the side of the road.  Elise has known her since she was little, and I’ve also known her for years.  Known her longer than I’ve known you.  Do you remember that she was there at the villa when you killed those vampires?]

[Was she?  I confess I wasn’t paying those other humans much attention…]

Leon bitterly smiled.  [Would probably do you good to change that mindset.  I think that where we’re going to be ending up in the near future you won’t be powerful enough to get away with it.  Anyway, I understand why Elise is acting like this, but I think that we can talk to her about this when we get back because I do agree somewhat that her need to take care of Valeria is getting a little bit excessive.  I hope that, until then, we can all remain civil.  And I do mean everyone, the two of us most of all.]

Maia shrugged and said nothing more.  She pointedly didn’t look at Elise or Valeria for the rest of their conversation.

---

“Hey there demon,” Leon said as he hopped off the throne in his soul realm.

“Human,” Xaphan lazily responded from his pavilion.  He sounded barely attentive, as if he were in the middle of something and Leon was little more than a fleeting distraction.

“I don’t suppose you noticed that I emptied out my vault?”

Xaphan didn’t immediately respond, so Leon entered the pavilion and lay his eyes on what Xaphan was doing.  Thousands of fire runes and other modifier runes had been written in the air and swirled around the fiery demon like a gentle tornado, each of them glowing a hot red-orange.  However, even for all his skill in enchanting, Leon couldn’t discern even the barest hint of what the demon was actually doing with all those runes.

“What in the hells are you doing?” Leon asked, both amazed and mildly horrified at what he was seeing.

The demon finally turned his eyes toward the human and growled, “Proper enchantment.  Your recent gains in power have been enough to push me closer to what you might call the ninth-tier, but it’s still proceeding excruciatingly slowly.”

“Excruciatingly slowly, huh?” Leon muttered as he took in all of the runes flying around the demon.  “You going from third-tier power to the eighth-tier in four years is slow?”

“I’m not gaining that power, I’m regaining that power,” Xaphan testily replied.  “There’s a world of difference.”

“Uh-huh…” Leon responded as he reluctantly tore his eyes away from the runes and made eye contact with his demonic partner.  “Well, the reason I’m disturbing you like this is because I emptied out my vault, and so have access to some high-quality gems for enchanting.  With my Mind Palace completed, I wanted to make a permanent version of that training platform thing that you used to get back to the eighth-tier…”

Xaphan’s burning yellow eyes flashed brighter and the runes floating in the air around him halted for a moment.

“… It’s about time!” the demon roared, the bright orange fires that covered his body almost exploding in intensity.

“I’m glad you’re happy, but there are a couple of caveats we’re going to have to address first,” Leon said with a predatory smile.

“Name them,” Xaphan said, barely hesitating.

“First, you’re going to have to make good on your promise to teach me your mental communication technique—no more fucking excuses this time—and you have to teach me everything I need to know about this enchantment rather than simply giving me the whole thing to copy.  I want to know exactly how it works.”

Xaphan didn’t take long to deliberate, though he did spare a few seconds to get in a few jabs at Leon’s expense.  “I would’ve figured you’d have researched it on your own, boy.  Maybe you’re not as skilled in enchanting as you think you are?”

“I’ve made no claims as to my skills, and I’ve been focused more on brushing up my fundamentals than studying something that advanced,” Leon countered.

Xaphan quickly swept his fiery arm through the air, dispelling the hovering runes.  Leon still wasn’t sure what they had been doing, but with the prospect of gaining a new spell that could control the Mists of Chaos to give him more power right in front of him, he controlled his curiosity.

“All right, then, settle in and let old uncle Xaphan tell you all about the powers you wish you had,” the demon mockingly said.  Leon fought the urge to roll his eyes and held his tongue.  “I think you’ve already started on learning a mental communication technique with your fish girl, so let’s go over the basics that she’s taught you…”

---

“There, did you get all that?” Xaphan asked, several hours after beginning his lecture on his mental communication technique.  “Or do you need me to explain all of that again and… speak… slower… with… smaller… words… so… you… can… understand…?”

“No, you ass, I got it all the first time…” Leon said with a dark expression on his face.  He’d thought that since he was making progress with Maia’s communication technique, then he would be able to learn Xaphan’s and maybe combine the two, or at least have both for different situations.  However, now that he knew how to do it, he understood why Xaphan had repeatedly told him he was too weak to use it—it required extremely fine control over his magic power and a good familiarity with magic senses.

In truth, it shared many similarities with Maia’s technique, in that it was much like magic senses that projected his voice instead of other senses.  But that wasn’t even accurate, for magic senses only appeared like sight and hearing because, as Leon understood it, that was how his brain was choosing to interpret the information it received.  In the case of Maia and Xaphan’s ability to speak directly into another person’s mind, things were much more complicated.

For one, he had to know someone was there to use the technique.  It had to have some kind of target for him to focus on, something with an aura that he could observe, otherwise his voice wouldn’t be projected.

The second and much harder part was actually getting his magic power to pulse in the proper way.  To use magic senses, he had to project his magic power and fill his spine with mana, letting his projected power resonate with the power in his spine.  To use these finicky techniques, he had to have much finer control over the power in his spine so that he could pass on information rather than passively receiving it.

That in itself highlighted how easy Leon found it to communicate with Maia like this.  Their soul realms were connected, and they shared a great deal of their emotions with the other already.  Speaking to each other through this connection was child’s play with what they already shared.  For everyone else, Leon would have to be able to get his magic power to resonate in a certain way with theirs, effectively spoofing their magic senses so that they could hear his voice.

After several hours of trying, Leon was left frustrated and jealous that river nymphs and demons apparently found this so easy to do.  Then again, Maia was more than a hundred and seventy years old and Xaphan was at least half a million, so he took some small comfort in the fact that they’d had much more time to practice communicating in this way.

It also gave him some ideas about spying on other people if he could get his power to resonate with their projected magic senses, or even feeding them false information.  He wondered if that was even possible, receiving the information from someone else’s magic senses as if they were his own or making them see or hear things that weren’t there.  Or making them not see or hear things that were there.

‘Or maybe I could just learn some shadow magic, that seems much less complicated than this,’ he sarcastically thought.

But Leon didn’t get much time to think about, for a moment later, Xaphan launched into an explanation of his enchanting array that would accumulate the Mists of Chaos and help them to be absorbed.  He didn’t get very far before the Thunderbird finally deigned to show herself, however.

She came tearing out of the Mists as Xaphan conjured light projections of the necessary glyphs, all hovering around him in their proper places.  The spots for the gems that would contain and refine the power of the Mists were clearly shown.

“What are you two doing?” the Thunderbird demanded to know as she assumed her human form and strode into the pavilion.

“Teaching,” Xaphan flippantly replied.

“You’re hardly a qualified teacher,” the Thunderbird said as she turned her gaze to the hovering projections.  “This is too strong.  It must be weakened if you don’t want the gems you have to shatter.”

“It needs to be strong or else it’ll be useless!” Xaphan protested.  “Gems are as common as fleas on a dog’s ass!  If they break, just replace them!”

“That sounds expensive…” Leon said, shuddering at the thought of having to constantly buy and break the stones.

“Oh for the…” Xaphan exasperatedly began.  “Look, I get that you’re now part dragon or whatever, but you have to use what you have!  Otherwise, why have it?!”

“In case I want to use that stuff for other things,” Leon said.  “If there’s a better way to use these gems without destroying them every time, then I want to know what it is.”

“Don’t listen to this noisy campfire,” the Thunderbird said, turning her attention to Leon.  “Use this enchantment instead, it’s much better for your purposes.”  She snapped her fingers, conjuring another light projection in the air, showing a similar, though much simpler enchantment than the one that Xaphan was showing off.

“Fine.  Fine,” the demon replied, letting his own projection drop.  “If you want to use that weak baby shit, I won’t stop you.  Just don’t come crying to me when you want some real enchantments that’ll put some embers on your chest!”

Ignoring the demon’s grumblings, the Thunderbird said to Leon, “I’d say it’s time to resume your training.  It’s been too long, we need to keep you limber and in the best condition that you could possibly be in.  What do you say?”

Leon glanced at her, at the blatantly not-looking-at-them Xaphan, and then at the enchantment still floating in the air.  He thought about the lies that the Thunderbird had told him, and of the dangers that he still faced.

“Promise me that you’ll never lie to me again,” Leon said, his tone as serious as it could be.

“I will never lie to you again, of that you have my undying word,” the Thunderbird unhesitatingly replied.  “I burned that bridge with the Great Black Dragon.  It might make your life a little harder if it decides to tell the rest of his Clan about you, but my first responsibility is to you, not to him and his desire to disown you.  He was the one thing I ever lied to you about, nothing else will I conceal from you.  I also apologize for my earlier deception.  You have a right to know about your own heritage and the capabilities you may have inherited from it.”

Leon nodded, his eyes drifting to the edge of his Mind Palace far out in the distance.  If the Great Black Dragon was out there… well, it hardly mattered to him right now.  It wasn’t like he could call upon that power at will, no matter how hard he tried—and he had tried, and quite a few times, at that.

There wasn’t much reason for him to be bitter, it wasn’t like anything was being actively taken away from him since as far as he was concerned, he never had that fire in the first place.  Far better to resume his training with the Thunderbird and be that much more prepared for whatever might be to come, especially since his confrontation with Justin and his return to his childhood home was on the horizon.

“All right,” Leon said.  “I’d like to resume training, if you’d be willing.”

The Thunderbird smiled.  “Let’s get to it, then.  Let’s start with enchanting, and this enchantment in particular…”

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