Without hesitation, Leon shouted a warning to his retinue about the incoming vampiric threat.  Helen reacted a little sluggishly, but Anna and Anshu were armed and armored in a moment.  Alix was just behind them, drawing the blade she kept at her waist, though she wasn’t armored given that this was just supposed to be a trip to gather alchemy ingredients.

And to Leon’s horror, the auras of these vampires were already towering as they merged and billowed outwards, all of them together seemingly in possession of magical power greater than even his own.

“Back to the boat!” Leon shouted, and with nothing more than a thought, he pulled all of the herbs they’d gathered into his soul realm, removing any temptation to stay or to carry baskets that might slow them down.

They began to run back toward the shore of the swamp not too far away, where their boat had been tied to a tree.  As they ran, Leon projected his magic senses in an attempt to more thoroughly evaluated the danger.

He saw a dozen vampires of varying, but potent, strength.  There were three seventh-tier, four sixth-tier, and five fifth-tier bloodsuckers.  With them were half a dozen war beasts—one sixth-tier griffin, three fifth-tier wolves, and two large fourth-tier birds of prey.

They’d practically come out of nowhere, to Leon’s shock.  He’d barely noticed them until they were within five hundred feet.  They weren’t chasing them, but as his magic senses washed over them, he realized that this wasn’t a good thing—the reason they were standing around in one place was because the lower-tiered vampires were arranged in a tight formation around their stronger comrades, channeling their power into each other in some kind of ritual.

A moment later, the demonic aura surrounding the group spiked in intensity, and spiraling ribbons of dark red demonfire erupted into existence over the three seventh-tier vampires’ bodies.  The lead vampire lifted his hands and pointed in the direction of Leon’s group, and then the other two raised their hands to the sky.

With a terrible explosion of magic power, the ribbons of demonfire coalesced and formed enormous globes of demonfire larger than their boat, which were then launched up through the leafy canopy with great force.

‘Artillery!’ Leon realized as the fiery orbs almost lazily rose high into the air, and then began curving back down in the direction of him and his comrades.  The aura those globes emanated filled him with dread—he was individually stronger than any of those vampires, but these fiery spheres contained all of their powers combined.  If he were to try and take one head-on, he’d be heavily injured, at the least.

“Incoming!” Leon shouted as he pointed to the sky.  His retinue faltered for a moment as they climbed into the boat, and he summoned his water magic as quickly as he was able, not waiting for any of them to get properly seated before he conjured a wave of stagnant swamp water to carry their boat out into the swamp as quickly as he could.

Helen shrieked as she almost lost her balance and went over the side, but Alix was a little more sure of foot and managed to grab the back of the blue-haired alchemist’s shirt and keep her from falling out.  Anna and Anshu, meanwhile, were more securely seated and strongly held onto the sides of the boat, so with his retinue secured about as well as they were able to be, Leon put even more power into the wave to help them escape faster.

His caution and panic were both vindicated when only a few seconds later, the first of the artillery orbs fell upon the spot where the boat had been moored only a moment before, burning clean through the canopy as it fell.  As soon as it touched down, everything within a hundred feet of the landing spot was enveloped in a horrific conflagration of demonfire.  Leon’s magic senses were almost drowned out as magic spilled out of the explosion, and he had to avert his gaze and retract his magic senses to not be blinded.  The swamp quaked in response, with water for a dozen feet outside of the explosion so quickly vaporizing in the heat that it exploded outward with enough force to strip nearby trees of their bark.

The shockwave of the explosion devastated the surrounding swamp, and the magic within; Leon’s water magic was disrupted, and the wave propelling their boat onward collapsed.  Their boat was then battered by the aftershocks of the explosion, and the wood it was made of cracked and bent under the pressure.

Leon barely noticed, though, for the pressure on his ears from the sheer volume of the explosion was tremendous, and he had eyes only for his retainers.  They were thrown about in the boat, and Alix and Helen were both screaming in pain as their weaker senses and lesser pain tolerances were both put under extreme pressure.  Anna and Anshu fared a little better, but Leon could see the pain in both of their faces.

When the fire died down, another of the fiery orbs impacted the swamp not too far away, slightly to the north.  If Leon had tried to escape in that direction, then it would’ve fallen practically right on top of them.  He couldn’t count his blessings for too long, however, for even though that explosion was more distant and more easily weathered, the third and final of the demonic artillery strikes was now falling only a couple dozen feet away—given the size of those explosions, it might as well have been falling down amongst them.

They wouldn’t survive if that attack struck them, Leon realized.  He had to act.  He had to do something to try and shield himself and his retinue, otherwise they were going to die in just a few seconds.

There was no time for any complex planning.  Perhaps if his body were flooded with lightning magic, he might’ve been able to think quickly enough to come up with something, but he’d been channeling water magic, not lightning, and so his reaction speed suffered.  All he could think to do as the orb of demonfire hit the swamp just in front of them was to reach out with his magic power, calling upon all of his command over the magical element of fire.

The orb detonated on contact with the ground and demonfire erupted from it.  Fire surged toward Leon and his boatful of retainers with explosive speed and crashed into his projected magic power with force enough to nearly knock him over.

But it parted around them, Leon’s magic power acting as a shield against it.  Leon roared in exertion, his powers straining as he used everything he had to bend all of that demonfire around the boat.  He was vaguely aware that the boat started to burn under the heat, and the magic engine sputtered with strain.  Something within the engine snapped, and all magic power within the boat vanished.

He was more concerned with his retinue; Alix screamed in pain, and then went silent.  Helen was a little quieter, but she soon went still, as well.  Anna and Anshu were right there with him, still conscious, but in Anshu’s case, only just barely.  The Indradian howled in exertion as he extended a hand and conjured a thin, translucent sphere of white light around the boat, providing relief from the heat, but only for a moment before the power rolling over them shattered it.

And with that, Anshu went quiet as his eyes closed.

The explosion lasted for five seconds.  Those seconds felt like years as Leon put his all into shielding his retinue from the blast, his own magic causing his fingers to become enveloped in bright orange fire.  But the blast couldn’t last forever, and when the fire finally died out, Leon almost fell to his knees, panting from exertion.

Anna was the only one still conscious, and she was in pretty rough shape.  Blood streamed from one of her ears down her cheek, and her eyes were hazy and unfocused.  Helen, Alix, and Anshu, meanwhile, were all out for the count.  None were dead, if the magic radiating from their bodies was any indication, but none were in any condition to fight.

The boat, meanwhile, fared worst of all.  The wood creaked and groaned as Leon shifted his weight about, the bottom of the boat stuck in the dried mud at the bottom of the swamp, now practically hardened into concrete from the heat of the blast.  He only had a moment to take in their situation, though, before the swamp began to rush back in to replace what had just been vaporized.

They were within a crater made by the artillery strike, close to the edge, but more than deep enough that Leon realized they would be submerged if they didn’t move.

“Get up!” Leon shouted to Anna, pulling her out of her stupor a little bit.  He grabbed Anshu and Alix and pointed to Helen.  “Grab her!”

Anna blinked in confusion for a moment, and then moved to follow his directive.  With Anshu tucked under one arm, Alix over his opposite shoulder, and Helen in Anna’s arms, Leon and Anna struggled out of the boat as swamp water came rushing back in.  Leon had to use his water magic to part the rushing water around them, allowing them to get out of the crater, but behind him, the savaged boat disappeared beneath the murky swamp water.

Once they struggled out of the crater, however, they found that a significant portion of the swamp around them had been utterly leveled.  Trees closer to the center of the blasts had been rendered into ash, and those further away were burning, their trunks stripped of bark, their branches devoid of leaves.  All around them, Leon could sense the various beasts and animals of the swamp scrambling to get away as fast as they were able, and less than three hundred feet away, near the edge of the crater their first strike had made, stood the dozen vampires and their war beasts, staring at them as they struggled out of the third crater.

There wasn’t much cover they could use, and Leon’s heart sank as he felt the auras of those vampires spiking in clear indication of further violence.

But then, the voice of his demonic partner came blazing through his mind.  [LEON!] Xaphan bellowed, saying no more.  Leon needed nothing more, however, and he pulled on their connection.

A circular plane of fire sprang into being just in front of his chest, and from it burst Xaphan, his killing intent staggering, his aura immense.

“YOU DARE TO RAISE YOUR HAND AGAINST ME!” the demon bellowed, staggering the vampires with the roar alone.

Xaphan charged at the vampires and their beasts, but instead of gormlessly watching, Leon turned to Anna and shouted, “Come on!”

His priority was to see to his retinue, not watch Xaphan fight.

Not too far away, a tree had ‘survived’ the artillery strike, though it had been completely blackened by fire.  Leon carried Alix and Anshu over there, fighting against the swamp as it surged back in with every step.  He lifted his unconscious retainers up onto the tree’s roots, which were high and numerous enough to act as an impromptu platform to keep them out of the swamp water.  Once that was done, he turned around and helped Anna and Helen up, laying the unconscious alchemist down beside the rest of his retinue.

As this was happening, the swamp shook as his demonic partner battled the vampires, and heat roiled through the environment, accompanied by intense flashes of light and waves of magic power.  When Leon finally turned back in their direction, he saw that all of the fifth-tier vampires were dead, as was the griffin and wolves.  Only one of the sixth-tier vampires remained, as did all three of the seventh-tier leeches, and their two birds.  The seventh-tier vampires were working in tandem to keep Xaphan busy, their power borrowed from their demonic master allowing them to keep up with every fiery blast that Xaphan sent their way, while the final sixth-tier vampire seemed to be directing the birds to send vicious wind blades at Xaphan at every opportunity.

Despite his power and what he’d already done, Xaphan couldn’t make much progress.  He was fighting on all sides, and he couldn’t focus on any of the vampires for long enough to do much appreciable damage—at least, not without leaving himself open for the rest.

That was all Leon needed to see.  He turned to Anna and ordered, “Stay with them and keep them safe!”  He then conjured a stack of healing spells, pressed them into her hand, and then leaped into the air, his blade reappearing in his hand as he did.

He was furious.  His heart beat against his ribs like they owed it money, and magic power surged through his veins.  He was still channeling his fire magic, and he was far too wrathful to take even the briefest of moments to switch from fire to lightning.  He descended upon the sixth-tier vampire, his blade erupting into bright orange fire as his fingers tightened around the grip.

With one vicious swing, he took the surprised vampire’s head off, which he followed with another swing, sending a wave of fire into the air to roast the two birds.  This wasn’t nearly enough for him, and with his body shaking with wrath, he turned upon the nearest seventh-tier vampire.

His killing intent washed over the vampire like a tsunami, and the bloodsucker froze in terror, only able to turn his head slightly to see Leon stalking towards him, his burning blade raised, his eyes flashing orange in the light of his power.  The vampire barely managed to fight off his paralysis in time to raise his arm to stop Leon’s first cruel strike, but even the vampire’s seventh-tier power was unable to stop Leon’s blade.  The burning sword pierced right through the man’s arm, cleaving through flesh and bone with ease, sending Leon’s deadly magic power surging through the vampire’s body, burning all it touched.  Leon’s blade wasn’t stopped by any of this and pierced all the way through the vampire, sliding between his ribs, impaling his heart, and then right out the other side, nailing the vampire’s arm to his chest.

The vampire was probably killed instantly, but Leon roared in anger as he flooded the vampire’s body with his magic power.  This monster had nearly killed him and four of his retainers, and that fact alone had Leon seeing red.  The vampire practically exploded under the pressure of Leon’s power, and for a moment, Leon and the vampire’s body were lost in a pillar of flame of Leon’s making.

A moment later, the pillar died down, leaving Leon standing there, a pile of charred bones at his feet.  His blade still burned just as furiously, though, with just a hint of black fire licking at its edges.

Leon barely even noticed this, and when he turned to the rest of the vampires, he found that Xaphan had already dispatched one of the other seventh-tier vampires, having capitalized on the massive opening Leon had made.  The final vampire, however, seemed to be the strongest.  He had been backed against a scorched tree by Xaphan, and his hands were raised, a storm of dark red demonfire pouring out of them and just barely holding Xaphan off.  The arms of his shirt and coat had been incinerated, leaving his burned arms bare for Leon to see.

Leon recognized those kinds of burns; he’d suffered them many times in his younger years.  The vampire was calling upon powers beyond his ability to control properly, and that power was injuring him from within.  These were the same burns Leon had endured as when he’d called upon the fifth-tier equivalent Xaphan when he was only fourth-tier to aid him against the Valemen during Hakon Fire-Beard’s raid.

The vampire couldn’t hold long against Xaphan, but Leon didn’t care.  His demonic partner soaked up that power, his own rage spilling through their connection and letting Leon feel it just as he felt his own.  Each fed off each other, but the vampire was concentrating on Xaphan, leaving Leon relatively free to act.

Leon took a few running steps forward, then swung his sword in a horizontal slice.  A thin wave of potent flame was ejected from his sword, burning bright orange, but with a core of black.  This, Leon noticed easily, and he froze in shock, his rage melting away almost in an instant.

Fortunately, when the fiery wave hit the final vampire, the bloodsucker had no power in reserve to protect himself.  Leon’s power crashed over him, stripping flesh from bone with ease and leaving nothing more than a blackened skeleton propped against the tree, its bones fused together and keeping it upright.

Xaphan didn’t care, however, and as soon as the vampire’s power ceased, he stepped forward and swung one of his massive fists into the skeleton, crushing it against the tree and rendering it ash on the wind.

The swamp went relatively quiet.  Many fires had been started during the battle, but it was a swamp, and there was almost no possibility that any of those fires would spread very far.

The area around the battlefield, however, had been completely transformed by the short fight.  The swamp water had been turned dark gray by ash, what few trees survived in the area were little more than blackened husks, and the sun now shone down directly on the swamp for hundreds of feet around them, a huge hole having been punched in the swamp’s thick canopy.

Leon saw none of this, however.  Now that the fight was over, his eyes fell to his blade, where fire continued to burn.  But now that his emotions were under control, there wasn’t a hint of black within his fire.

---

“Hmmm, that could’ve gone better,” the tall vampire said as he watched the fight from hundreds of miles away.  He stood upon the deck of his yacht, a large vessel for the Wetlands, and as opulent as it should be, given his high power and station.

“That’s an understatement,” the woman beside him whispered, her black attire immaculate, and covering nearly all of her body save for her head despite the heat and humidity of the Wetlands.  “Even with that spell of invisibility letting them get close, they were crushed in minutes.”

“This is why we send scouts on these sorts of missions,” the tall vampire whispered.  “We’ll attack later, at a more opportune moment.  Now that we know Leon Raime can summon Xaphan like that, we’ll be able to account for it.”

Without a word, the tall vampire turned around and made for the interior of the yacht.  He pushed open the door and entered, the female vampire only a couple of steps behind him.  Both were of the eighth-tier, but neither fancied a go at Leon or Xaphan right now, not after the brutal fight and show of power they’d just witnessed.  Sheer power wasn’t the be-all and end-all of fighting, after all.

They had to make their plans and prepare properly.  They had a much better idea of Leon and Xaphan’s capabilities, now, and they were going to capitalize on that knowledge.

And when they finally succeeded in killing both, their master would grant them immeasurable power.

Only a few minutes later, their yacht began to turn east.  They were, much like Leon’s convoy, going to the Ilian Empire, but they weren’t going to risk taking the same route that Leon was.

As the yacht turned, the sigil of Heaven’s Eye, prominently emblazoned on the ship’s side, glittered in the light of the sun.

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