Leon numbly listened as Ajax narrated the events of only two days ago from the report he’d received.  Octavius had escaped from the dungeon, broken free by unknown persons who were possessed of alarming strength.  The current theories in the Bull Kingdom pointed to only a few parties, with the most likely being a group of rogue actors within the government of the Talfar Kingdom trying to exact some measure of revenge for their loss in the recent war.

But Leon didn’t think much of that.  All he’d heard was that Octavius had escaped the day before he was set to be executed, all the other details were practically superfluous.

It had been a while since Trajan had been murdered.  Leon had mourned and moved on; killing Earthshaker and removing Octavius from power had done a great deal to help with that.  However, Leon had thought that his business with the Bull Kingdom had been over with the King now awake and Octavius set to be executed.  He hadn’t felt the need to stick around to watch it, he just wanted to move on.

And now, the man responsible for Trajan’s murder had escaped justice.  That shocked Leon almost to the point of a complete shutdown.  It was a few seconds after Ajax stopped speaking that Leon finally came back to reality.

When he did, it was like the emotional floodgates had opened—fury poured out of him, the wound that Trajan’s death had left in him suddenly and violently tore open, and Leon had to fight to keep himself in check.  Having just come back from the Northern Vales barely a day ago and with all that had happened there still fresh in his mind, he wasn’t sure if he was even capable of keeping his emotions balanced if he tried, though he did the best he could.  His eyes burned with unshed tears, his hands shook with the desire to wrap them around Octavius’ soiled rich boy neck and squeeze until the Prince’s eyes popped, and his legs felt like jelly as his brain tried and failed to comprehend the consequences this could have.

Octavius had escaped, and no one knew where he was.  The last time he was seen was when he’d been loaded onto a ship and taken south by those who’d broken him out of the dungeon.  More than a hundred Legion knights had been left butchered in his wake.  Not even the Penitent Paladin had been able to stop his escape.

“… you get all that, Leon?”

Ajax asked him something, but Leon only caught the tail end of it.  Still, he pretended like he’d heard all of it.

“Yes.  I’m going to need to head south as soon as possible.”

He was a little surprised at how calm his voice sounded; his heart felt like it was only a few beats short of breaking free of his chest.  But even in that haze of shock and anger, Leon knew that he needed to return to the capital.  His time in the Bull Kingdom wasn’t quite over, it seemed.

Ajax offered to arrange a carriage to take him south and allow him to reach the capital in a week, but Leon declined the offer.  He and Anzu could make that distance in half that time.  He’d have to leave everyone else behind, which Elise, Maia, and Valeria were not happy about, but they at least understood why he needed to move quickly.  Maia made sure to emphasize that they’d only be a few days behind him, though, and that he shouldn’t do anything rash before she could arrive to back him up.  Elise, too, emphasized the point, making him promise to wait for them before taking any foolish actions.

Leon agreed.  He just wanted to get south and get the lay of the land as soon as he could.  Before that, though, he had one last bit of business he now had to rush to complete.

---

In the archives beneath Argent Palace, Leon was a little surprised to find that the Librarian had already catalogued and prepared every single tome stored down there for transportation.  He was relieved, of course, but surprised.  He supposed that how organized the place already was made the task easy for tireless golems to accomplish, but he’d been expecting to have to leave most of the books behind.

Instead, it took Leon only a matter of fifteen minutes to grab every single book in the archives and pull them into his soul realm.  He knew that many of them were multiple copies of the same book, but he wasn’t willing to leave even a single solitary page behind.  He had no idea what could be contained within all of that paper, and the idea of possibly leaving behind some crucial secret of House Raime or the Thunderbird Clan was too much to bear.

But once he was finished, that left him to deal with the issue of the golems.  Like the books, he had no intention of leaving them behind.  They were too valuable, and even though Leon had vowed not to use any of the material benefits of the Thunderbird Clan, in his mental state, he just wanted to grab everything, head south, and deal with all of it later.

To that end, he felt a little strange about it, but he managed to pull all of the golems into his soul realm.  It was almost concerningly easy to pull off.

With the golems put to work organizing all of the books in a hastily thrown-together library in Leon’s soul realm, Leon had to think that it was possible to bring other things in there as well…

He filed away that thought for later.  Now was a time for movement, not for discussions with the Thunderbird or Xaphan about the nature of his soul realm.  He simply accepted that his impulsive attempt to pull the golems into his soul realm worked.

However, for all that Leon wanted to get moving, he paused just before he was about to leave the archives.  He wasn’t sure if he was ever going to see the place again, and even with everything that it contained safely stored away in his Mind Palace, it was still a magnificent chamber to behold.  The nature aesthetic resonated strongly with Leon, and he vowed that even if he brought nothing else with him into his new Clan, he’d at least bring along that decorative style.

He hadn’t the time to stay for long; after that brief pause, he left the archives with all due haste, slowing only to make sure that the doors were sealed on his way out.  He may have cleaned the place out, but that didn’t mean he wanted to keep the place open for anyone to wander into.  He then made his way as quickly as he could back to Ajax’s palace to finish up his preparations.

---

“We won’t be too far behind you, so don’t do anything rash,” Elise reminded him as he and his three companions met up in the front courtyard of Ajax’s palace.

The sun had set about an hour beforehand, but Leon hadn’t a single thought in his head about staying behind until morning.  He’d have to land at some point during the night to rest, but he wanted to get to the capital as soon as he could.

It had only been a few hours since he’d been told about Octavius’ escape, but already his blood was boiling knowing just how behind the news he was.  It had taken two days for news of the breakout to reach Ajax, and even then, the Tower Lord hadn’t received much in the way of information—mostly just the bare basics and a formal request from the King to keep his eyes out for Octavius and not to offer him sanctuary if he showed up in the north.  With all of that in mind, Ajax couldn’t make it to see him off, being too busy helping Emilie back in the capital prepare for any potential fallout from this event damaging Heaven’s Eye.

Two days was a long time for these sorts of things.  For all Leon knew, the situation in the capital could be completely different than what it had been two days ago, though he was slightly comforted by the fact that the message had been sent via comm stone, meaning that it had been effectively instantaneous, so the situation likely wasn’t different in the capital, yet.  Still, it would take him at least three days, probably more like four to reach the capital even at Anzu’s quickest speed.

“I won’t do anything reckless,” Leon assured his fire-haired lover.  He took her in his arms and pressed his lips against hers, reveling for just a moment in how she almost instinctively pressed herself into him.  He had no intention of going back on that promise, not to one of the women he loved.

One of the other women he loved was staring holes into his back with the force of her gaze; Maia wasn’t happy that he was choosing to not travel with her, but she at least acknowledged the need for speed.  Anzu was the fastest mode of transportation they had for long distances, and he would fly fastest with only one person on his back.

Breaking away from Elise, Leon then pulled Maia into his arms.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he whispered to her.

[You’d better not do anything stupid,] she warned as she wrapped her arms around him.  She didn’t say anything more, but she did open herself up to him through their connection, letting him feel everything she was feeling right now: her love, her worry, and her anger.  Her love for him, her worry that he wouldn’t be able to keep that promise, and anger at the circumstances that were pulling him away from her.

Feeling all of this, Leon squeezed her tighter against him and whispered into her mind, [Maia…]

He then did the same, opening up his emotions for her to feel his own love for her at the same moment that the effect of his speaking her name had her shuddering in his arms.

Leon could’ve remained there for hours, simply holding his two lovers, but the moment ended far too quickly.  It was time to go.

He spared one last moment for Valeria, who stood not too far away, clearly uncomfortable.  If Leon had to guess at what was going through her mind, he’d say that she probably didn’t know if she should join them in their goodbyes or not.  She still hadn’t given him an answer about what she wanted their relationship to be.

In that respect, Leon figured a little bit of time away would do them both some good.  It would give her time to think over her feelings without him there, while in turn it would help him to come to terms with his own emotions.  He felt like he was in too much of a hurry when he’d sprung his invitation on her to join his family.  Riding on the high of finally defeating Justin—though not in a way he’d ever have expected even just a month or two before—and Maia telling him that she was all right with him and Valeria starting a romantic relationship, he’d acted in haste.

‘Making myself scarce for a while is probably for the best…’ Leon thought to himself as he gave Valeria a brief nod, which she quickly returned.  Neither of them could bring themselves to say anything more, so after a few awkward moments, Leon turned around and strode as confidently as he could over to the waiting Anzu.

Despite the late hour, Anzu seemed ecstatic to finally get back into the air; his wings twitched, he was crouching down low in preparation to take off, and his body was wiggling a bit in anticipation.  Leon couldn’t help but smile at the griffin’s behavior, and he ran his fingers through Anzu’s fur, eliciting a low rumbling chirp of contentment from the albino griffin.

Almost as soon as Leon got into the saddle, Anzu shot off like molten rock from a Flame Lance, giving Leon only enough time to give the other three a quick smile and a wave before he and Anzu were in the air.  Leon steered the griffin in a roughly southern direction, following the Julian Road toward the capital.

---

It took Leon roughly three days to reach the capital by griffinback.  He’d left in the evening but had only been able to fly for a few hours before stopping to rest.  However, the following morning, he and Anzu had risen early and reached the capital in good time.

He didn’t fly low over the capital as he came in, but he didn’t fly high enough to make himself inconspicuous, so he guessed quite a few people noticed him on his way back in.  By the time he landed in the front yard of his villa, he hoped that someone was already on their way to summon him to the Royal Palace.

However, he didn’t count on such a thing happening.  He’d made it abundantly clear to the King when he resigned that he wasn’t interested in the political affairs of the Bull Kingdom, but the escape of Octavius the night before his execution was something that greatly concerned him.

‘At least the city itself seems fine,’ Leon had thought to himself as he’d flown.  Whatever had happened during his absence clearly hadn’t been intense enough to leave much collateral damage.

Leon didn’t spend much time dwelling on these things.  He couldn’t count on anyone sending him a message, so he only spent the time to wash up, change his clothes, and get something to eat for himself and Anzu.  Once all that was taken care of, he had Anzu carry him in the direction of the Royal Palace—on the ground, this time, as he knew that the officials who ran the city didn’t care overmuch for people flying about as they pleased.  It wasn’t a common enough problem to have laws against it, but Leon didn’t want the first thing he did upon his return to be to step on anyone’s toes.

As he rode toward the Royal Palace, he had plenty of time to think—something which he’d done quite a bit of on the flight south.  His immediate and visceral anger at Octavius’ escape had quickly faded once he’d gotten on his way, and he was able to look at things with a little less fury.

From what he knew about Octavius—which he would readily admit wasn’t much—he doubted that the disgraced Prince would abandon the Kingdom he’d tried so hard to take for himself.  He imagined Octavius would try and restart the war, but wouldn’t seek foreign aid to do so.  Leon couldn’t see Octavius managing to wrangle up the support he’d need now that the King was awake and a huge proportion of the retainers under the landed nobility had been crushed.

Leon had no idea where Octavius might find support… but then again, someone had broken him free of his prison, and from what Leon had been told by Ajax, that someone was powerful enough to either be a seventh-tier mage, or have the loyalty of a small handful of mages at that level.

So, Octavius had support somewhere, and that support was likely strong enough to pose a legitimate risk to the Bull Kingdom.  Leon doubted that it could be strong enough to challenge a united Kingdom, but he didn’t think the Kingdom was particularly united, right now, with the civil war having ended only about a month ago.

As Leon rode on, he noticed that the noble district was a little less populated than he was used to seeing.  Many of the local nobles who had fled the city during the war clearly hadn’t returned, and the only people on the roads that he saw were a small group of Legion soldiers looking harried as they ran in his direction.

It took Leon a moment to realize that they weren’t just running down the road, but were looking for him, specifically, if the sudden look of realization in the lead Centurion’s face when he saw Leon was anything to go by.  It took him another moment to pull himself out of his thoughts and slow down as he approached the group.

“Sir Leon?” the Centurion asked, his voice tinged with apprehension and worry.

Leon briefly scowled, but he nodded and said, “Just Leon, if you please.”

“Of course, Si—uh, Leon…”  The Centurion clearly wasn’t comfortable using such an informal mode of address, but Leon wasn’t in the mood to care right now.  He hurried the Centurion on with a long, hard look, and the Centurion quickly relayed that the King had sent for him as soon as he’d appeared over the city.

“Then lead on,” Leon replied, and the Centurion and his escorts swiftly turned on their heels and began running back toward the palace with Leon in tow.

---

“… and that’s where we’re at,” the Legion Legate said as he finished walking Leon through everything they knew about the attack on the dungeon that saw Octavius freed.

Leon was standing in a small meeting room in a private wing of the Royal Palace, with the King, the Penitent Paladin, and half a dozen Legates in attendance.  Any worries he had of them not bringing him into the loop regarding these issues had been almost immediately quashed upon his arrival, with them wasting no time ushering him into this quickly-assembled meeting.

Leon hardly said a word, merely asking a question or two here and there regarding the timeline.  The King and the Penitent Paladin were likewise silent, speaking nothing more than a greeting to Leon after he had been shown into the meeting room.

But once the Legate briefing Leon was finished, the King cleared his throat and the Legate and the rest of the Legion knights made themselves scarce, leaving Leon alone with Julius and Penitent.

“What do you think about all of that?” the King asked, his voice smooth and confident, indicating without a shadow of a doubt that he’d largely recovered his strength during this past month.  His body was still rail-thin and deathly pale, but overall, the King looked almost healthy to Leon’s eyes.  His aura, in particular, radiated off of him like light from the sun, and he oozed the confidence of a man who knew he was the most important person in the room.  The only thing that dispelled that illusion was the look of worry on his face and the bags under his eyes showing his fatigue.

“I think it was a hell of a story,” Leon replied, keeping his less charitable thoughts to himself.  “A group of two dozen people—along with three seventh-tier mages, no less—managed to break into the prison, slaughter more than two hundred guards, and made off with the Prince who was supposed to be executed barely half a day later.  If all this is accurate, then I’m both impressed with their boldness and appalled that they managed to succeed.”

Leon kept his tone even and calm, but a little bit of accusatory sarcasm crept into his words here and there, and his stoic exterior cracked a bit to show some displeasure, disbelief, and disappointment.  All of this had little visible effect on the King or Penitent, however.

“They were quite skilled,” Penitent quietly replied as he seemed to unconsciously bring his hands together to rub his knuckles in what Leon interpreted as both guilt and a desire for a rematch against these people.

“Leon Raime,” the King said, his voice stern and commanding, “Octavius has been taken by whoever these people were.  Things are complicated in the Kingdom right now, and we can’t spare the forces I’d have otherwise sent to retrieve him.  I would like to know if you’re amenable to being on standby to join the punitive expedition that gets sent after him whenever we locate him.”

Leon was quiet for a long moment, turning over what the King had said in his head.  After that moment was over, he hadn’t come to any conclusions about what he wanted his place in whatever this punitive expedition to be, and he realized that he’d need some clarification before making that decision.

“If I recall, the Royal Legions are supposed to have forty Legions when at full strength,” Leon said, his lack of formality going by without comment by either the King or Penitent.  “I know that the Legions took some serious losses during the civil war, but how ‘complicated’ are things right now that you can’t even spare the soldiers to find your runaway Prince?”

The King, clearly expecting this question, replied without hesitation despite how it might reflect upon himself.  “When my youngest son made his promises during the meeting between his supporters and the Consul of Discord, that cemented the course of actions we could possibly take.  If I had been awake and running things when Octavius rebelled, I would’ve offered amnesty and forgiveness to any of my vassals that had sided with my son after scoring a victory or two.  Unfortunately, Crown Prince August promised to seize all the land of the landed nobility everywhere in the Kingdom, so forgiveness was off the table.”

“And you started the process so soon?” Leon asked, a little incredulous at how quickly the King was moving.

“We have to,” Penitent answered as the King nodded.  “A conservative estimate would say that the nobility lost at least a third of their total professional fighting forces.  In all likelihood, they lost quite a bit more.  They’re too weak now to resist the Legions that are still active, but if we leave it for too long, the nobility will simply hire or raise more knights.  With all the property of dead knights that they can seize, we estimated that it would only take about five years for the nobility to largely recover their strength.  We had to move quickly.”

“We started in the west,” the King continued as Penitent paused.  “That was the nucleus of Octavius’ attempted coup.  That must be where we focus our attention.  I had the Brimstone Paladin and the Bronze Paladin each take five Legions and march west to deal with the rebellious nobles.  Most of the nobles, too weak to resist, didn’t even try.  Others, however, have been doing their utmost to hold onto their power, and that has led to sporadic fighting in the Western Territories as those nobles are evicted.”

“Where are the trouble spots?” Leon asked, light curiosity in his voice.  He wasn’t going to offer to help the Bull Kingdom with a few rebellious Dukes, but he still wanted to know who was being difficult.

“There are many, but the two big ones are Valencia and Aurelianorum,” the King replied, his tone surprisingly calm and even despite talking about treason and rebellion.  Leon could see that no matter what was happening, the King was supremely confident that these nobles couldn’t stand against his Legions.  Given just how many soldiers he’d sent, Leon could understand why.

“So those two Duchies are in open rebellion, and that’s why you can’t spare the soldiers to find your traitor of a son?” Leon flippantly asked.

That finally cracked the King’s stony exterior just a little bit.  For a brief moment, he almost seemed to collapse into his chair, his visage returned to the on-death’s-door version of him that Leon had first laid eyes upon when he was woken up.  Shame began to build within Leon for phrasing things like that, but the King, sooner than Leon could bring himself to apologize, sat back up and replied almost without missing a beat, his voice as calm and even as it had been throughout their entire exchange, acting as if Leon hadn’t said a thing.

“We must remain strong here,” King Julius stated.  “I have many soldiers scouring the Kingdom looking for any signs of Octavius, but we cannot leave ourselves open for any other nobles to try and rebel while many of my Legions are occupied in the west.  The entire Kingdom could fall apart if we don’t take all due precautions.”

“The Kingdom could fall apart anyway if Octavius gets away,” Leon observed, though he found himself agreeing with the King’s choice to focus on his vassals instead, in a pragmatic kind of way.

“Octavius will either look for domestic support or he’ll seek foreign aid,” the Penitent Paladin said, saying out loud exactly what was going through Leon’s head.  “The former case we’re already dealing with—and given the power of who broke him free, I doubt that anyone within the Kingdom was responsible anyway.  The latter, more likely option, isn’t something that will threaten us in the near future.  A foreign invasion of our Kingdom would need planning and organization, and the earliest possible time that might happen would be in about sixth months, according to our best estimates.”

“Any actual threat of outside invasion?”  Leon was skeptical about that—Samar, the relatively sparsely-populated desert state on the southern side of the Gulf of Discord with most of its trade taking place with the Bull Kingdom was rarely seen as a threat.  As far as Leon knew, the Bull King and the Samar Sultan were usually on cordial terms.  Talfar, meanwhile, was still at war with the Han Kingdom, and after their devastating loss to Prince Trajan and subsequent peace treaty likely weren’t looking to officially open up a second front they’d have to defend.  Whether or not that peace would stand once Talfar ended its war with the Han was another matter, but Leon felt confident in estimating that the peace would hold for at least a couple decades.

In other words, the only two nations that had much of a stake in meddling in Bull Kingdom politics were unlikely to be doing so, at least as far as Leon knew.

“We’re not anticipating such a thing,” Penitent replied.  “However, what seems obvious by conventional wisdom leaves the fact that Octavius was broken out by three mages of seventh-tier power open to interpretation.  We have no idea who may have done this, and unless we can pick up their trail in the Southern Territories, we’re not likely to find out any time soon.”

“That’s pretty disturbing…” Leon murmured.

“Yes, yes it is,” the King agreed.  “But you’ve yet to answer my question, Leon.  I know that you’ve renounced your claims to your ancestral seat, and you seem to have no interest in remaining here in the land of your Ancestors…”

Leon frowned, but he didn’t try to correct the King.  He didn’t much consider the Bull Kingdom the land of his Ancestors, even if the only Ancestors he was ready to acknowledge after what Nestor did to him had been based here.

“… but I want to know if you’ll join the hunt for Octavius when the time comes.  I don’t mean to join the search in the south as my Legions sift through the mud, but rather when we find out where my so—where Octavius went, if you’ll join us then.”

Leon gave the King a fairly soft, if cold stare.  He didn’t want to appear too eager, but the simple fact that he’d come south so quickly made his choice clear enough.  And he felt like the King knew what his choice would be, too, but Leon still didn’t want to just agree right away.

“That would depend on something from you,” Leon said.

“Name your condition,” the King gravely replied.

“If you want me to join your hunting party when it gets sent out, I’d need to ask for payment.  I’m not one of your knights, after all.”

“How much?”

Leon smiled.  “One silver coin.”

The King nodded, a hint of surprise breaking out from his dignified exterior for just a moment before it was replaced with an expression of muted gratitude.  “Done.”

Leon nodded back.  “How do you want me to play this when the time comes?  Bring him back alive or dead?”  Leon kept his tone even, not revealing which one he preferred.  In truth, the longer he thought about it, the less certain he was which route he even wanted to take.  Regardless, he knew that he had to do this.  He would feel no peace knowing that he’d just left despite Octavius still being at large.

The King simply replied, “I will leave that to your discretion, Leon.  Octavius is no longer my son.  Whether he returns to this Kingdom alive and well or in a small box, I no longer care.  Just bring him back.  He cannot be allowed to tarnish the Kingdom’s reputation by gallivanting across Aeterna with impunity.  Bring him back.”

Leon didn’t need time to think before giving his answer.

“Just tell me when.”

—-

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