Turiel was missing.  No one had seen him for almost two days, and not for lack of trying.  Marines had gone to his reported place of residence in the upper-class district, but no one was home.  None of the remaining elite of Kraterok could tell the Legates where he’d disappeared to, either.  As far as anyone could tell, there weren’t any missing ships in the port, though given how destructive the battle had been on the local Islander navy, no one could say for certain.

However, after two days, it was apparent that Turiel was missing, and there wasn’t so much as a clue that anyone could find of where he’d gone or how’d he’d disappeared.

To that end, Sigebert, in need of local assistance to prop up the provisional government they’d leave behind when they moved on, decided to start talking to the rest of the elites, giving Leon and several of his Tribunes the task of finding the missing Islander.

The natural place to start was at Turiel’s house.  Like all Islander homes, its footprint was fairly conservative compared to the palaces of Bull Kingdom nobles, but it was well-appointed and luxurious by the standards of the city.  However, one thing that Leon took note of was that it was one of the few buildings in the entire city that had been warded against magic senses.

When Leon and his squad—including Gaius—arrived with about thirty Legion marines and the Tribunes that Sigebert assigned them, it was about noon.  Much like the previous few days, it was stunningly beautiful outside, but the forty or so people in the party were all dour and serious, treating the disappearance of the most prominent of the remaining elite in the city with all the seriousness the situation demanded.

Leon, in particular, was disturbed and curious about Turiel’s whereabouts.  He hadn’t seen the man since Turiel had told him the story of the supposedly eponymous serpent of the Serpentine Isles, but he had a good enough impression of him from that conversation that he wanted to know just what exactly was going on.

Wasting no time at all, Leon swiftly knocked on the door, expecting that a man like Turiel would have at least a few servants who could open the door even if he were missing.  His knock went unanswered, however.

“Looks like nothing’s changed, then,” Gaius observed.

Leon shrugged.  He couldn’t imagine that no one had knocked on Turiel’s door in the two days he’d been missing, but he still didn’t want to make any assumptions.

“Surround the place as best as you can,” Leon ordered one of the Tribunes.  He wasn’t technically in any position to do such a thing, but that didn’t matter, the Tribune immediately complied, taking half of the marines and separating them into four groups that locked down the mansion as best as they could in the narrow, rather confusingly laid-out streets.

Without another word, Leon gripped the door handle and twisted hard, easily breaking the lock and wrenching the door open.  Hardly subtle, but he’d knocked first, so subtlety and the element of surprise had already been lost.  Not that he thought anyone was still in the house, but still.

Leon walked in, unarmed and unarmored, though his magic was flowing through his body so he could easily change that in an instant.  Just about everyone else walked into the house’s main hall with a great deal more caution.  But it was dark and silent, no lights on that Leon could detect, nor could hear anyone moving about in the wooden building.  The magic in the house, too, spoke of little in the way of wards that might either impede their progress or pique Leon’s curiosity other than that one in the outer walls that blocked magic senses from entering the house.

“Secure the place,” Leon ordered, and over the course of the next five minutes, the marines and Tribunes stormed through the rooms, making sure the place was just as abandoned as it seemed.  Leon and his squad, however, took their time moving through the place.  The main hall was fairly long and tall, with all three floors of the house opening into a gallery looking down on the hall.  At the opposite end of the hall was a grand staircase that gave access to those upper floors.

“These bottom floors will likely be the most interesting,” Marcus said.  “In places like these, these lower rooms would be the ‘public areas,’ I guess you could say.  The places where Turiel would operate his businesses from.”

“If he was kidnapped, though, then his private apartments—probably on the top floor—would be where the most evidence might be found,” Gaius countered.

“We’ll start upstairs, then,” Leon said.  “If there’s anything to see up there, it’ll probably be more obvious.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Marcus replied.  “A bedroom destroyed in a fight would likely be a better place to start than with whatever papers the man had here…”

Leon’s group began to walk upstairs.  However, with every step, Leon’s concern and confusion heightened.  There were no signs that he could see that the place had been attacked, and with the lacking defensive wards in the place and Turiel’s fifth-tier strength, if he’d been violently kidnapped, Leon would’ve expected to have seen some collateral damage.

He felt a little conflicted when they arrived on the third-floor.  He wasn’t particularly interested in Turiel in a romantic way—or any other guys, really—but he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d have been involved in whatever happened if he’d spent more time with the man.  One conversation wasn’t enough to build up much of a rapport between them, but Leon was rarely flirted with so brazenly, and he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt at the thought that he could’ve maybe prevented Turiel’s disappearance if he’d been around at the time, despite his lack of romantic interest.

“Look for anything that might be out of place,” Leon said as his squad separated and began to sweep through the third floor of the mansion.  By this point, the marines had secured the place, so Leon wasn’t too cautious, but he made sure to project his magic senses into every room he was in just in case, making sure that if anything moved, he’d have as much warning as possible.

The first room that Leon entered with Maia looked to be a private dining room.  There was a larger dining room on the first floor large enough to hold at least two dozen people, but a family of five would’ve felt a little cramped in this one.  The small light orange wooden table had only two accompanying chairs, a large window let in enough light to keep it pleasantly illuminated during the day, and on the wall hung a portrait of some Islander that Leon didn’t recognize, a man with deep black hair, tall, heavily muscled, and a lean, predatory physique.  He was dressed in what Leon could only assume was Islander ceremonial  wear, basically a blue sash across his bare chest, a blue skirt that went to just below his knees, and a pair of sandals.

Strangely, he looked nothing like Turiel, but Leon could think of plenty of explanations for that.  A distant relation, maybe, or someone that Turiel loved or respected, or even an artistic depiction of some Islander hero of old.

Leon, Maia, and the rest of his squad continued to inspect Turiel’s home, but found nothing else of note, which was in itself noteworthy.  Everything seemed pristine, with barely anything out of place.  They even found a small armory, with seemingly none of the expensive-looking weapons or armor taken, save for what might’ve adorned a single bare mannequin that had been placed quite prominently within the armory.

They did, however, find a few other portraits, and while they all depicted different people, these people all looked remarkably similar to the man in the first portrait Leon saw.

As they returned to the first floor, Leon quietly absorbed everything they’d seen upstairs, and his unease began to grow.  No signs of struggle, seemingly no personal effects of Turiel, and no recognizable art of him to be seen.

It almost looked like someone else’s house.

His squad then got to work going through the first floor, just looking to see what they could find.  They found a lot of paper, as much as a successful merchant would need to run a trading empire, but it would take a long time to go through all of that—not that that stopped Maia from diving right in, to Leon’s amusement.  Everyone else reacted to seeing all of this with a mixture of resignation and disgust.  Financial reports did not make for particularly exciting reading material, after all.

For an hour, Leon and the five others he was with poured over these papers, and for the most part, they found exactly what they’d expected to find: not a damn thing of note, just what was being bought and sold and shipped—mostly jungle timber and produce from elsewhere on the island—and some payroll records for sailors and other staff.  However, Leon began to notice another pattern that lined up with what he’d seen upstairs: none of the papers he’d looked through had Turiel’s name anywhere on them.  When he asked his squad if Turiel was named in anything they were examining, they all replied with the same amount of success he’d had.

“Leon Raime!” came a shout from just outside, and the Tribune who’d taken charge of the marines stationed outside stuck his head in through the door of the dining room, where Leon had posted up with his squad to examine the stacks and stacks of papers they’d found.

“Huh?” Leon replied, his attention pulling away from the sheets full of numbers and signatures and lists.

“We found someone who said that she used to work here as a maid,” the Tribune replied.  “She has information that you ought to hear.”

Leon hurried outside with Marcus and Alcander, both of whom seemingly the most ill-prepared to deal with paperwork.  Gaius, Maia, and Alix stayed inside, continuing their cursory examination.

The Tribune led them to the main hall where a short and relatively plump mortal woman was waiting.

“We had some trouble with her accent, I don’t think she speaks our language all that well,” the Tribune whispered to Leon.  “However, she told us some very interesting things, assuming nothing was lost in translation.”

“I’d like to hear those things from her,” Leon said as he walked over.

The woman noticed them walking over and a look of growing anxiety appeared on her tanned face, enough that Leon almost stopped walking towards her.  He supposed that anyone as magically weak as her might feel more than a little intimidated at seeing four much more powerful mages marching over, all with stern, stoic expressions.

He took a moment to try and force a smile on his face, hoping to relieve some of that anxiety she was obviously feeling, but the effect seemed decidedly mixed.  She didn’t back away from them, but she still didn’t seem comfortable, so Leon had everyone stop about a step or two before they might’ve otherwise, hoping that a little bit of extra space would help her to relax and tell him what she knew of what might’ve happened to Turiel.

“Hello there,” Leon said, his smile becoming a little shallower, but also more genuine.  “My name is Leon Raime, and I guess I’m in charge here…”

He glanced back at the Tribune with an amused look, and the Tribune just chuckled and nodded.

The woman, speaking in a somewhat high-pitched and nervous squeak, and with a thick accent that Leon was terribly unused to hearing—the only time he’d ever encountered people who didn’t speak the same language he did was during the war with Talfar, and that had been incredibly brief.  It had been such a nonissue for him that dealing with language barriers after leaving the Bull Kingdom hadn’t been something that he’d put too much time into considering.  That Turiel spoke the same language as he did so fluently and without even the slightest trace of an accent hadn’t even seemed strange to him, but now that he was thinking about it, Leon supposed it was just a little bit odd—though he was a merchant and had claimed to be a supporter of the Bull Kingdom…

“I… Gyda,” she said.  “Work here, in before.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Leon replied, his tone soft and encouraging.  “I was told that you have some information to share with us about Turiel, the man who used to live here?”

“Miikct…” she muttered under her breath as she glanced around at the main hall.  “No Turiel.  Not known person.  Burg home master.”

Leon cocked an eyebrow in surprise, then slowly dawning realization as his eyes drifted in the same direction that Gyda was looking.  There he saw a large portrait of man similar to the rest that he’d seen in the house, a man who looked nothing like Turiel.  In that moment, all of the creeping suspicions were confirmed: this wasn’t Turiel’s house.

“That sly bastard!” Marcus murmured from behind Leon.  “No wonder we haven’t found anything with his name or signature!  This isn’t his fucking house!”

Leon held up a hand to silence the young nobleman.  He turned back to Gyda and asked, “Is that man in the portrait over there the man who owned this house?”

Gyda seemed a bit confused for a moment, but after taking a moment to parse his words, she slowly nodded her head.  “Home master, there.”

“And the name ‘Turiel’ is unknown to you?”

“Not known person, Turiel,” she replied.

Leon bitterly pursed his lips together.

“I suppose this might handily explain why we haven’t found a damn thing since coming here,” Alcander growled, clearly irate at the lost time.  “Where does this guy live, then?”

Leon scowled as he thought about it, the man’s offer to get him alone suddenly taking on a much more sinister tone, his slight guilt from earlier being replaced with rapidly mounting anger.  “Who the hells knows?”  Turning back to the Tribune, Leon said, “Make sure she’s rewarded for her information.  Keep everyone else here and sweep this place top to bottom, just in case.  Me and mine are going to check in with Sir Sigebert.”

The Tribune nodded, and not even five minutes later, Leon and his squad marched right out of the mansion, all expressing various kinds of anger and frustration, everyone wondering just what the hells else Turiel might’ve lied about if this wasn’t his home.

---

“That fucking bastard!” Sigebert growled as he stared at the map of the Serpentine Isles on the table in front of him.

Leon had gone back to him immediately to report on his findings regarding Turiel, and Sigebert, instilled with the same suspicion, surprise, and anger as Leon, immediately summoned the rest of the remaining city elite.  He’d had them all questioned before about what they might know of Turiel’s location, but they’d all claimed to have no knowledge of the man that they could use.

That was, at least, until Sigebert and Leon personally began to ask questions.  Perhaps it was because of the seriousness that Leon and Sigebert were treating the situation that convinced them to stop lying, but during their individual interrogations, four of the Islander nobles gave up the fact that Turiel was, in fact, Jormun, the very pirate that had kidnapped Octavius and taken over the Serpentine Isles.

There were a few minutes where Sigebert didn’t want to believe it.  Maybe it was his ego not wanting to admit that something that huge had slipped past him, but it wasn’t until three of the nobles confessed to Turiel’s true identity that he finally accepted it.

Leon didn’t take that long.  That Turiel was the seventh-tier water mage they were pursuing made a strange amount of sense.  It explained his strange aura, which Leon now recognized as having been constrained in much the same way that Maia’s had been hidden following her killing of the vampires that had assaulted Leon’s villa in the Bull Kingdom’s capital.  It also explained his desire to get Leon alone and away from the rest of the Legion, though Leon was kind of miffed that the attraction Turiel had displayed was clearly not genuine, a little embarrassed that he’d been so flustered he’d fallen for the ruse, and slightly offended that the man hadn’t tried harder to get Leon on his own.  If it were Leon pulling the same con, then he’d at least try a few different tactics to get rid of the strongest enemy mage in their force.

Though, he supposed that the story Turiel—or rather, Jormun, had told, might’ve been that attempt.

Regardless, they had Jormun here with them, in their presence, breathing the same air, and they’d failed to realize it.  They’d let him escape.  Hells, if he hadn’t disappeared on them, they would’ve been none the wiser, and might’ve even left the city in his hands, under the guise of ‘Turiel’.

“I am going to cut that man’s head clean off!” Sigebert raged.

“Save that rage for later,” Leon whispered.  “I understand the humiliation, but now we know what he looks like.  He won’t be able to do this again.”

“We should’ve recognized him anyway!” Sigebert insisted.  “The Penitent Paladin gave us all his description!  We should’ve known!  Instead, he walked right in here, spouted off a bunch of horse shit about his own damned motivations!”

Leon almost responded, but as his mouth was opening, he felt the slightest of touches brush against his ear, and he heard the flapping of feathered wings.  When he swung his head around, it took him a moment to see what had brushed against him, but he saw the bird from before perched on the rim of the courtyard’s roof, just over the frieze depicting the Serpentine Island’s eponymous myth—the same bird that he’d seen just before Turiel told him the story, in fact, its resemblance to the Thunderbird even more uncanny in the light of day when the luster of brown and gold feathers could shine even brighter.

The bird glared at Leon with its avian eyes for several long seconds, the strange sight of it utterly captivating him, only for it to then turn and pointedly look at the frieze.

Leon followed its gaze, the possibility of it being sapient suddenly flashing through his mind.  His eyes followed the story as they had done a couple days ago, and he wondered just why exactly Jormun had told him that story.

‘He… couldn’t believe that story is true, could he?’ Leon wondered.  ‘Is he somehow trying to free that Serpent?  But then why did he need to conquer these islands?  Why kidnap Octavius?  Did he need to do that for his plans?’

Leon gritted his teeth in frustration.  Jormun had probably only fed them a bunch of lies, getting himself off on the fact that none of them knew who he was, flaunting his deception before them.  Leon felt his heart almost burst with how fast it was angrily beating.  Leon wanted nothing more than to find Jormun and rip into him with his claws and talons, sink his fangs into his flesh and tear, Jormun’s blood turning his feathers and scales red…

‘My claws? Scales?’ Leon thought, that strange instinct pulling him right of the violent fantasy he’d almost lost himself in, the knowledge of just where in the hells it had come from eluding him.  But something drew his attention back to the courtyard’s roof.

There, Leon saw that the bird had disappeared.

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