There he was, in the back of the room. Justin Isynos. One of the men responsible for the murder of his father, his uncle, his grandfather, and the destruction of his House.
Everything else in the room vanished, as far as Leon was concerned. He had eyes only for Justin, and he started to slowly stalk over, a dark look crossing over his face.
As he walked over, he took in the sight of the man. Justin had been completely enveloped in vines, with only his face, hands, and feet visible. He was clearly unconscious, with his head slumped over and his eyes shut, and Leon could detect not a single hint of his eighth-tier aura emanating from him. However, Leon could detect that the vines that bound Justin had enormous amounts of magic flowing through them. From what Leon could tell, this flow of power originated with Justin and disappeared somewhere in the ceiling, where the vines were hanging from.
Leon arrived at the platform where Justin was being held and climbed up with single-minded alacrity. The platform itself was about waist-height for him, but Justin was being held upright only an inch or two off the ground, so Leon didn’t have to crane his neck to look at the man’s face.
His heart racing in his chest, Leon stared at Justin’s face. Blood roared in his ears, his hands twitched, and power was unconsciously being pulled from his soul realm and into his bloodstream.
It struck Leon that he could kill Justin right here and now. No one was watching, even Xaphan and the Thunderbird didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to what he was doing, being perhaps more interested in each other or in Nestor’s imprisonment. So, he could do it. He could take this opportunity to end Justin’s life and no one would be the wiser. It would be the easiest thing to do, and with all the space in his soul realm and his expertise in fire magic, Leon could clean up any evidence with ease.
No one would know.
Leon’s instincts demanded that he take this opportunity. Rage and fury were boiling within him, and the sight of his father lying dead in their old home demanded that he pay Justin back in kind.
But as he thought about his father, Leon was suddenly reminded of the many lessons Artorias had tried to teach him about mercy, about patience, humility, and generosity. About being noble.
Leon, as much as he wanted to, as much as his body was demanding that he do so, didn’t immediately kill Justin. He stood there, staring at the man’s unconscious body, shaking yet unable to move, furious yet almost terrifyingly calm.
His instinct was to summon his blade from his soul realm—it would’ve felt so right, so perfect, to end Justin with the Adamant blade of the Thunderbird, but unfortunately, as he suddenly realized as he reached into his soul realm, his blade wasn’t there. He’d dropped it when Nestor had invaded his soul realm, and he had no idea where it was now, though he had a strange feeling that it was still right where it had fallen from his grasp.
How he knew that, he couldn’t say, but it was a comfort that kept him from panicking about its whereabouts.
As a poor replacement, Leon drew out a hunting knife. It was barely enchanted enough to hold its meager edge with little maintenance, but in the state Justin was in, it would still only take a single slash to end the man’s life.
And no one would know.
Just one quick slash.
Leon thought about his father. Every swing of the shovel he made when digging the grave, every stone of the ruined obelisk that he laid as a cairn, every moment he spent the night before waiting for his father to die, all of it flashed through his mind, fueling his desire for vengeance, demanding bloody retribution.
But, after a few moments, his mind drifted to a few other thoughts. His father paying a troll so he wouldn’t get in their way, respecting the troll’s right to live and its claim over the bridge. He thought of Trajan; so decisive when dealing with his enemies, but also magnanimous and merciful in victory, forgiving many of the mages who rebelled in Ariminium and ending the war with the Talfar Kingdom in a way that would minimize the risk of another war between the two Kingdoms breaking out.
‘What would they think if they could see me now?’ Leon wondered. ‘What would they urge me to do?’
He still had Xaphan and the Thunderbird in his soul realm, he could always ask them for advice. But he knew what they would say. Kill Justin, end the threat. In this situation, that was for the best. Valeria would never find out unless he told her.
‘Valeria…’ Leon felt a twinge in his heart at the thought of her. The way her hair glittered in the sun, her skill with spear and glaive, her protectiveness to those she cared about, and her dedication to her training.
He liked her, perhaps enough to even consider it romantic. That much he was willing to admit. But all of his reassurances to her about committing to their agreed-upon peace over the past few weeks had been, to an extent, hollow. He’d been not only trying to convince her again and again that his intentions were honorable and that his commitment to peace was genuine, but also trying to convince himself to follow through. But there was no more time for vacillating. It was now or never.
Leon clenched his fist around the handle of his knife and raised it to just a few inches from Justin’s exposed throat, preparing to slice right through and let the man bleed out. For all that had just flashed through his mind, he still only had Valeria’s word that he was a good man, that he was acting to protect his wife and to bring his daughter to their home. Leon had no personal experience with Justin to inform his decision, and given Justin’s power, that made freeing him perhaps the single most risky thing Leon could ever do. All the other decisions in his life that had led him to this moment, all those near-death encounters and rash actions that led to them, paled in comparison to the possibility of letting Justin go.
His face began to contort as his conflicting desires warred in his mind. He wanted peace, he wanted Valeria to be with him forever, but doing so would require that he either kill her father and lie to her for the rest of their lives about his fate, or let him live.
Neither were particularly attractive options.
Leon stood there, his knife raised for a long time, long enough to get a better idea of what was happening and for his vision to expand back to include the rest of the room. The vines entangling Justin were leeching his magic power—probably quite literally sucking out his mana, as far as Leon could tell. When he’d first found Xaphan, the fire demon had been similarly bound and chained, with the great roots that bound him using the magic power they siphoned from him to provide power to the prison.
Justin, at this moment, was nothing more than a magic power generator. Judging from some of the other forms that Leon could see in the room, he wasn’t even that big of one.
A few of the platforms were devoid of vines or things to entangle, but most were not. Of those that weren’t empty, all but one were clearly dead, either a desiccated husk of some strange creature he couldn’t identify or nothing more than vines and odd, alien bones. The one living exception apart from Justin was just a few platforms over, where a huge crystalline entity was bound, the thing towering over Leon at about twelve feet tall.
It took Leon a few seconds to realize, but he guessed from its form that it was an ice demon much like the five that he’d seen out in front of the colossus. It seemed that at least one demon had survived the colossus, only to be brought down here to be used as a resource. From what Leon could tell of its aura, the thing was only barely clinging to life, though the fact that it wasn’t dead was something that amazed him.
He had no intention of trying to help it. He doubted Xaphan would appreciate him trying, and if it weren’t for the fact that he wanted some peace and quiet to think about the issue of Justin, he would’ve asked the flame demon how he ought to deal with the captured ice demon.
It was a viscerally horrific thing, and it only grew more so the longer Leon stared at the vines and the corpses within. A few of them looked vaguely human the more he squinted at them, and he couldn’t help but wonder at what their last moments were. This wasn’t an abandoned facility like Xaphan’s prison was, so there would’ve been no doubt in any of their minds—assuming they had that kind of self-awareness—that help wasn’t going to come once they were stuck. That they were going to die within those vines, their blood being siphoned off to feed the power needs of this facility.
As Leon’s eyes turned back to Justin, he couldn’t help but lightly smile to himself, knowing that no matter what he decided to do, Justin had still suffered for coming here. He’d lost all of his people, and he’d been stuck in these vines for months, leaving him drained and at Leon’s mercy.
Leon couldn’t stand there forever. He had to make a choice. There was no way around that, but his conscious mind wasn’t coming to any decisions. As much as he liked Valeria, his need for vengeance was powerful.
’Which is it?!’ he demanded of himself, pushing himself to make a choice. Vengeance, or peace. Solidify Valeria and anyone she and Justin might be connected to as his enemy or make peace with them and hope that they could forge some kind of alliance. Indulge his more primitive side, killing Justin and implying that he didn’t need the help, or accept that he was flawed, that, in the words that Roland had spoken to him only weeks ago, he could be more than he was, more than the barbarous savage killing everything in his path and bringing nothing to the universe but pain and suffering.
Screaming in rage and frustration that had built up for more than four years, Leon raised his knife one last time, stepped forward, and lunged toward Justin. The relatively cheap metal, with Leon’s power backing it, sliced through the vines like they were spider silk, but bit not into Justin’s flesh. Instead, Justin’s hand dropped from where it had been restrained, now freed.
With another swipe and another scream of fury, Leon’s knife cut through the vines that bound Justin’s other hand, freeing it in turn.
Leon’s eyes were watering, and his knife felt as heavy and cumbersome as a bag of bricks. It wasn’t easy, but his choice was made, and his vengeance was not going to be taken out on Justin—at least, not right now. He hoped that Justin would make a similar choice when he woke up, and the uncertainty only made it all the harder to follow through with his choice.
Brushing the unshed tears from his eyes, Leon muttered an apology to his father and then started sawing and slashing at the remaining vines holding Justin in place. The older man fell to the platform in short order, the vines no longer restraining him.
Leon breathed deeply. It had only taken a moment, not even a dozen slashes with his knife, but he felt like a mortal who had just run a marathon. He staggered back from Justin’s crumpled form that was still half-buried in the vines that had clung to him and turned away.
His mind was practically locked up with what he had just done, as if his own brain were shocked at his decision. His hands were shaking as if to say that it wasn’t too late, that Justin was still weak and vulnerable, that it would only take one more swish of his knife or a brief burst of lightning and vengeance would be his.
But, as a salty tear rolled down the side of Leon’s face, he knew that even if Justin died here as his instincts were demanding, it wouldn’t be over. He’d still have to deal with Valeria in the short term, and then whoever ‘Lord Kamran’ was in the long term.
Nothing would end with Justin’s death. Leon repeated that over and over in his mind as he wiped his eyes again and turned back to the fallen man.
And it was a pathetic sight that awaited him. Cutting the vines had not woken Justin, but from their cut ends they slowly leaked a trickle of bright red mana, the magic-rich blood that they were siphoning from his body. Leon’s face wrinkled in distaste, and he approached Justin once again.
It wasn’t too difficult to remove the severed ends of the vines from the man, but Leon still didn’t take too much care in ripping them from where they’d anchored themselves in Justin’s flesh. Each location celebrated the vine’s removal with a little spurt of blood, and after taking out a few, Leon reluctantly conjured a few healing spells from his soul realm to apply to the wounds. He wasn’t about to go through all of this mental anguish just to have Justin bleed to death at his feet.
He couldn’t help but laugh at the dark possibility, though.
‘It’d be fitting, for the universe to fuck me like that after I’d finally sorted this out…’ he thought as he pulled the last vine from one of Justin’s legs.
Once he was done, he lay Justin out as comfortably as he could, pulled all the vines away, incinerated them with a quick blast of fire, and then sat down on the edge of the platform to wait for Justin to wake up. With four of Leon’s healing spells on his body, his wounds were closing fast, and Leon figured that it wouldn’t be long now before he regained consciousness.
Leon then leaned back a little, letting his eyes wander about the room without actually looking at anything, for nothing in the room interested him in the least, not even the ice demon only a few feet away.
His decision had been made. Now, he just had to prepare himself to live with the consequences.
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