The first day after their arrival in Ariminium, Leon and his family met up with his old friends from the Knight Academy after parting with Asiya after the disappointing chariot races.  It had been more than a year since they’d met up, and right from the beginning, Leon could tell that things were different.  He’d ascended twice in that time, while Charles, Henry, and Alain were still in the third-tier.  Worse, it seemed that his reputation had started to affect them—their meeting was awkward, with the three of them not quite knowing how to talk to him.  Not even Elise could get them to open up.

Leon supposed he understood.  As an eighth-tier mage, he was now head-and-shoulders above just about everyone in the entire Bull Kingdom, power-wise.  He wasn’t their stronger and more experienced friend, anymore; he was now essentially something that was untouchable, something beyond what they could consider a friend.

After a couple hours of polite, if awkward conversation, Leon’s old friends left.  Leon had toyed with the idea of inviting them south with him, but Charles had met a girl in Ariminium that he clearly didn’t want to leave, Alain was still married to his three wives, and Henry seemed… happy enough, he supposed.  He couldn’t follow through, and he knew that as he watched his old friends walk away from the Heaven’s Eye guest house that he’d almost assuredly never see them again.

It left him feeling quite melancholic.  On a practical level, it didn’t change his life at all since he saw them so infrequently, but it reinforced more than anything else had that he was leaving this part of his life behind.

It took him a couple of days to get out of his mental funk, and what finally pulled him out of it was work.  He’d long promised Elise and Maia to make them flight suits of their own, and he’d decided to follow through on that promise—a promise that now included Valeria, given their dynamically different relationship compared to when he made his first flight suit.

So, he put his all into the design of the new suits.  They were far more compact than his previous design, being mostly confined to a pair of gauntlets and boots, along with an enchanted belt to keep them stable while in the air.  Much more stylish while also being significantly more powerful than his previous design.

However, since these were for those he loved rather than himself, he tested them much more rigorously than he had his previous suit.  A week after their arrival in Ariminium, his lovers were ready to try them on for the first time.

And they didn’t do so without an audience.

“Wooow!” Asiya crowed in amazement as Valeria hovered about three feet off the ground on a cushion of air.

The silver-haired woman was effortlessly held aloft by the suit’s enchantments, and judging by the abject smile of joy on her face, she was having a blast.  Not too far away, Maia and Elise were similarly flying around, though neither looked particularly comfortable with how they were operated.  Still, they were all ecstatic with the new suits.

“Leon!” Asiya called out, drawing his attention away from monitoring how the suits were operating.  “How much for one of these?”

Leon shrugged noncommittally.

Right next to the dark-skinned knightess stood Princess Cristina, a look of amazement and contemplation on her face.

“This is…” she muttered as she unconsciously grabbed Asiya’s arm.

“… incredible!” Asiya enthusiastically finished.

“It really is!” Valeria added as she started swooping around.

“Ah, be careful!” Leon pleaded, not wanting to see anyone face-plant even though they were testing the suits in a courtyard with plenty of grass to cushion the fall, and they weren’t going too fast or too high.  However, it became clear enough that he didn’t need to worry that much.  Following Valeria’s lead, Elise and Maia started to get a bit bolder in testing the limits of the flight suits, flying around above the handful of spectators as they reveled in their liberation from the ground.

And it seemed that either all three were natural fliers, or his new stabilization enchantments were doing their job admirably, for they took to his flight suits like they were born for them.  Leon couldn’t help but smile as he pushed his anxiety down, seeing them move about so naturally in the air.

“That is seriously amazing,” Emilie whispered as she sidled up to Leon, and when he glanced around, he could see similar sentiments in the expressions of everyone else who had turned up to watch the test, from a pale Justin Isynos to the glittering eyes of the knightesses in Cristina’s retinue.  There weren’t any representatives from the Legion present, though there were two people that Leon had only been recently introduced to: an older man and woman who shared Asiya’s skin tone, dressed in the style of the Bull Kingdom—tunics and trousers—but with the white and yellow colors of the Samar Kingdom.

Asiya’s parents.

“Do you think so?” Leon bashfully asked.  He’d gotten used to the idea of flight by now, and its novelty had worn off a bit.

“It is,” Emilie said.  “Few people outside of the Central Empires can fly without the aid of a flying war beast.  If you were to make more of these suits down south, you’d make quite a lot of money.”

“Good to know,” Leon said, his smile growing wider.

“But you have to make me one first!” Asiya cried out with great enthusiasm, only for that exuberance to be immediately quashed.

“Asiya,” her father said, his voice deep and rumbling, “you’re not bothering your friend, are you?”

It almost sounded like a threat, but the wide smile on the handsome Samarid’s face betrayed his good humor.  Still, Asiya shrank down a bit as if she’d just been caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar, then turned to her father, gave him a glowing smile, and said, “No, Daddy!”  Her voice had gone up almost a whole octave, and she also sent her father’s way an exaggerated wave.

But Leon noticed that not once did Cristina let go of her knightess’ arm.  The Princess was still staring at Valeria slowly swooping around and doing little pirouettes in the air, seeming to have the time of her life flying about.

He turned his attention back to the Samarids and said, “It’s not a bother, really.  If it was, I’d just tell her a flat ‘no’.”

 The elder Samarid just smiled as Asiya posed triumphantly, smirking as she glanced back at Leon.

“So, does that mean I can get one of those suits?” she asked impishly.

“No,” Leon immediately replied, smirking in a perfect mirror to her.

She acted like Leon had just inflicted a mortal wound upon her, gasping and reeling back until her mother sternly said, “Asiya!  You’re acting undignified!  And before Her Highness, too!”

Asiya immediately straightened up, while Cristina let go of her arm and fixed Lady Samarid in her warm brown gaze.  “I don’t mind.  It’s quite refreshing, actually, to have one of my knights be so unrestrained.”

With the Princess having spoken, Lady Samarid couldn’t say anything more, and her husband chuckled good-naturedly.  “You’ve found some good friends, kiddo, to tolerate your antics so.”

Leon decided he liked hearing the man talk.  He spoke in a slow drawl that by its tenor alone seemed to relax everything around him.

Asiya and Cristina went over to Valeria and Elise, who’d started flying together in the courtyard, leaving Leon alone with all of the rest of the onlookers.  The Princess’ knights were watching her like a cast of hawks, Emilie never once let Elise out of her sight, but with Asiya not participating, her parents seemed to feel comfortable sidling up close to Leon.

“Leon Raime,” Asiya’s father said, “is it all right if I call you that?”

“Just ‘Leon’ would be fine,” Leon replied as he turned to speak with him.

“Ah, in that case, you may call me Khayu.”

Asiya’s mother added, “And me, Iset.”

Leon nodded in gratitude.  They were nobles—and if Asiya hadn’t been exaggerating when speaking of them, they’d been quite important within the Samar Kingdom before their exile—but there wasn’t so much as a trace of arrogance in their demeanor.  Though, Leon supposed that a few decades in the Bull Kingdom could excise arrogance from any foreigner.

“I was hoping to speak with you for a bit, while the ladies are busy,” Khayu whispered just loudly enough that his voice could be heard over the gleeful whoops and cheers of Leon’s lovers having fun flying around.

Leon gave him a look of mild expectation.  “You sound like you have something specific you want to talk about.”

“I would be interested in speaking with you no matter what; we’re both foreign to this Kingdom, at least in spirit, after all.”

Leon couldn’t argue with that.  Even if he was of House Raime, he’d still been raised away from the Kingdom and had been thought to be a Valeman until relatively recently.

“Though,” Khayu continued, “with the recent decision that my daughter made to accompany her Princess south, I found that I wanted to speak with you even more.  It’s not easy on a father to lose his daughter like this, even if she is all grown up now.”

“There’s no need to worry,” Leon replied.  “I won’t let anything happen to her, or anyone else on this journey.  But I don’t think she needs my protection, anyway; we’ll be traveling under the banner of Heaven’s Eye, and she’ll have the backing of a Princess.  I can’t imagine there’re going to be many situations she’ll find herself in where she’d need my aid.”

“You’re still an eighth-tier mage,” Khayu pressed.  “It’s no small comfort to both of us just hearing you say those things, though.”  Iset nodded in agreement.

“Well, I’m married to one of her friends, and involved with another,” Leon said.  “I’m not with Asiya, but Elise and Valeria treat her like a sister.  I wouldn’t call us friends, but she’s still practically family.”

“That’s good to hear,” Iset murmured with a bright smile on her bronze features.

The three stood there for a few more seconds, watching Elise and Valeria try to catch Asiya as she jumped into their waiting arms, and failing, though with how much everyone laughed, no one was hurt or took offense.

“So,” Leon said as the silence started to make him feel awkward, “I hear you two are heading across the Gulf in the next few days?”

“Indeed we are,” Iset said, her face lighting up.  “We’ve gotten some—”

“Perhaps it might be best not to get into specifics,” Khayu whispered warningly, and when Iset silenced herself, acting as if she’d been just about to say something she shouldn’t, Leon found himself suddenly intrigued.

“We’re hoping we might be able to return to the land of our birth,” Khayu lightly stated.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been there,” Iset added, her demeanor suddenly relaxing, “we’re very homesick.  We still have some friends over there who’ve been plying the Sultan with their words, and they’re confident that we might be able to have our exile lifted.  At the very least, we received word that we could visit some of the more remote outposts of the Sultanate without being immediately arrested and executed, which is progress.”

“I’d say so,” Leon laughed.

“It’s good, to be involved in politics again, even if only peripherally,” Khayu mused aloud.

“I’m afraid I can’t agree with you there,” Leon replied.

“It’s not for everyone,” Khayu conceded.  “However, we never really managed to break through into the inner circles of the Bull King here, and so we haven’t been able to do much with our skills.  Make a living?  Sure, easy enough.  But to use our skills doing what we love—serving the people we care about?  That, we don’t think we’ll ever see in this Kingdom.  It’s time to return home, if we can, where we can better answer our calling.”

“That, I can understand,” Leon agreed.  He could empathize easily with someone who thought they didn’t belong and knew that there was somewhere else they ought to be.  The only thing is that he used to think the place he belonged more than anywhere else was the Forest of Black and White.  Now, he could almost hear the south calling to him, beckoning him onward with the promises of shelter until he could carve out a place for himself in the Nexus.

“I suppose you might,” Khayu responded.

Iset added, “If anyone could here, you definitely could.  We weren’t that active back in the capital, but even we heard about the ‘savage’ who’d been stirring up trouble these past few years.  I think you had a lot of admirers, and a lot of people who hated you without ever meeting you back there.”

Leon could only shrug.  Then, his eyes narrowed.  “Maybe I’m paranoid, and I’ll be the first to admit that I know nothing about the Samar Kingdom’s politics, but do you trust this information that you’ve gotten?  I don’t know, it sounds like it might be a trap to me, but I barely know anything about it.”

Khayu sighed, and Iset responded, “That’s a discussion we’ve had many times before.  We trust those who sent us word that things were progressing back home.  I think that we might still have to pay some kind of penance—perhaps some long formal public display of contrition for our transgressions against the Sultan, something like that.  But those who told us that we might be able to come back are reliable.”

Leon smiled and nodded.  The two seemed like good people, and as his eyes flickered over to Asiya now trying to pull Elise and Valeria out of the air in an exaggerated show of playful jealousy, he knew that if anything happened to her parents, then she’d be upset, to say the absolute least.  And if Asiya was upset, then Elise and Valeria would likely be upset, too.

“I hope you’re right,” he said as he glanced back at Iset.

“So do I,” Iset stated, a slight crack showing through her otherwise supremely confident exterior.

Despite the hopeful words, her tone just about killed the conversation.  Leon was only able to wish them luck in their attempts to return home before they descended back into awkward silence.  He would’ve liked to speak with them a bit more, though; they were of a completely different culture, a different people, and if pressed, he would’ve admitted to some curiosity.  However, before he could work himself up to continuing the conversation in a different direction, Cristina left Asiya’s side and marched over to Leon.

“Leon,” she said, her tone imperious, though softer than the last time she’d made a demand of him, “how much for one of those suits?”

Leon quietly chuckled.  He could feel a few jealous looks from some of the others in the room—no doubt wanting him to grant them the power of flight, too—but he didn’t immediately quote the Princess a figure.

“Let’s say I did make you one of these,” Leon said, “would you just turn around and sell it back to the Bull Kingdom?  Do you want them to reverse-engineer my work?”  He kept his tone light and questioning, but from the way her eyes hardened, he didn’t think he gave the impression he was hoping for.

“Is your answer contingent upon mine?” she asked with the utmost seriousness as she folded her arms across her chest.

Leon simply shrugged.  “No,” he replied.  “But it’s something that I still want to know.  You’re not just you, you’re also an extension of the Bull King.  You are his representative, now, even if he’s given you a great deal of freedom.”

Cristina controlled her expression, but Leon thought he saw the ghost of a scowl playing across her face.

“I honestly don’t mind if you do,” Leon said.  “As I said, I just want to know, first.  Are you hoping to buy something just for yourself?  Or are you trying to increase the power of the Bull Kingdom?”

“Is there a reason I can’t do both?” Cristina impishly asked as her lips turned upward in a devious smile.

Leon shrugged again.

After a moment of the two staring at each other, Leon took to seriously considering the prospect.  He’d made his second-generation flight suits in only a matter of days, but he’d been considering how to improve his original design for years.  His recent work to actually create the suits had gone by so quickly because he’d already puzzled out ninety percent of the work before he’d even started putting pen to spell paper.

The materials he’d used for these second-generation suits were also quite cheap, something he’d already had lying around to test with.  If he ever wanted to sell flight gear, then he knew he’d have to upgrade their style, at least.  And making them out of better materials would also have design implications, affecting how his enchantments would function…

He was sorely tempted to agree to the Princess’ request, but he wasn’t sure if he could reasonably give her something so cheap.  He was only comfortable with letting his lovers use the suits he’d already made because he wanted to share in the gift of flight with them and just couldn’t wait long enough to make something more suitable.

So, putting together all of that in his head, he puzzled together that it would take him at least a week to put together a design suitable for a Princess, plus another day for the suit’s actual creation.  It would also be relatively expensive, perhaps as much as…

‘Hmmm, twenty thousand silver?’ Leon wondered.  ‘That’s how much the materials would cost, but how much should I value my labor?  She can have it at cost, but would that start a bad precedent for the value of my work?’

“Wait just a moment,” he asked the Princess, then walked away before she could even answer.  She seemed surprised, but not too aggrieved, waiting with a light smile of contentment on her face as Leon strolled over to Emilie and whispered his thoughts to his mother-in-law.

Emilie glanced over at Cristina, then back to Leon, and whispered back.  The two quietly spoke for several seconds, and then Leon walked back over.

“I’ll agree to your request, though there’s a couple things I’d have to insist on, first,” he said.

Cristina nodded her head.

“For a member of Royalty, I’ll give you a discount: two hundred and fifty thousand silvers for something of this quality.  Double that for something fancier.”

“Define ‘fancy’.”

Leon let a half-smile crawl up his right cheek.  “You know, something fancible.  I can make these suits with better materials than scrap leather and steel I have lying around.  Something silk, maybe?  Or whatever you might prefer?  Half a million for a custom job, a quarter for something ‘generic’.”

Cristina and Leon continued to work out the details, but they eventually agreed.  She wanted a custom suit, and she paid the full price for it—the accoutrements would be made by a reputable tailor, and then Leon would enchant them.  Leon was quietly surprised; despite his confidence, he was almost sure that she might try to negotiate the price down.  He supposed Emilie’s advice that he could set the price to whatever he wanted it to be wasn’t just arrogance.

He had a lot to learn about being an enchanter, but now that he was four hundred thousand silvers richer—after deducting the cost of materials—he felt like he was going to enjoy the learning process even more than he already was.

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