“Jormun has to die,” Leon gravely stated as he stared down at the stone map he’d laid upon the table in the fortress’ central meeting room.

It had been several hours since he and his squad had returned to the fortress, and only a few minutes since Sigebert’s return, only just long enough for everyone in positions of authority to gather and discuss their next moves.

“I agree…” Sigebert said, though his tone suggested that he wasn’t quite as committed to the idea as Leon was.

“Was it that bad at that… wherever that place was?” Theuderic asked as he set aside some of the papers he’d brought to the meeting.

“It was quite grim,” Sigebert replied.  “Grim enough that we don’t have to wonder where the inhabitants of this town went.  We found them.  The final count of recovered bodies stands at four thousand and twenty seven.”

Leon winced.  His estimates for the death toll had been in the thousands, but not quite that high.  More than four thousand people represented a ton of power, even if most of them were first-tier or weaker.  He had to wonder if Jormun had needed all of that power, or if this had been some kind of message.  Given how the square had been found and the crucified skeletons that had pointed the way, it was clear enough that Jormun had wanted the massacre sight found, but without knowing exactly what kind of magical power had clearly been there beforehand, Leon couldn’t say.

But at the very least, Jormun was proving himself to be a man that valued theatrics over practicality, which only further convinced Leon that secular power was not what he wanted.

As those thoughts ran through his head, Leon momentarily lost the thread of conversation with the Fleet Legates, and once he returned to the present, Basina was saying, “We have to keep in mind why we came here.  If we can kill the pirate, then we will, without hesitation.  Ancestors know that he’s already done enough damage to us that ending that man’s life will greatly boost morale.  But we’re here to find Prince Octavius and lay him at the King’s feet, and we’re here to restore His Majesty’s rule over these islands.  These have to be our top priorities.”

Leon bitterly smiled as he set his hands down on the table and leaned forward.  “I can’t accept that.  Jormun is an immense threat.  He’s already shown us that he doesn’t care about us our push into the islands, and he’s shown us that he’s willing to kill enormous amounts of people for… whatever his real goal is.”

“And what is that real goal?” Basina asked with a hint of condescension in her voice that had Leon’s eyes narrowing in subdued anger.

For a moment, Leon was silent as he debated with himself about whether or not to push his idea that Jormun was trying to release the mythical Serpent.  It sounded rather far-fetched, but he knew from Xaphan and Nestor’s examples that terribly deadly things had been sealed or trapped on this plane for a long, long time.  Hells, as Leon thought more about it, he remembered that this place was known as the Divine Graveyard.  He wouldn’t even be surprised to find that there were things trapped in remote corners of this plane that could defy his explanation, and even his imagination.

In the end, he told the Fleet Legates his suspicions.

“That’s… certainly a story,” Sigebert murmured when Leon was finished, clearly unconvinced.

“A story is all that it is,” Basina added with a little more certainty.  “Leon, he was a pirate.  He spun you a tall tale just to screw with your head.  He was reveling in his deception, nothing more.  This ‘Serpent’ doesn’t exist, don’t buy into Jormun’s lies.”

Leon frowned.  “I sensed some kind of power in that colossus at that ritual site.  There’s something to this, I can feel it.”

“What would you suggest we do?” Theuderic politely asked, though to Leon, it came off more like the Fleet Legate was humoring him more than anything.

“Set aside the issue of the Earls,” Leon said.  “We’re… well, not wasting time, but we’re giving Jormun all the time he needs to continue working toward his real goal.  Maybe he’s not actually going to release some mythical beast, but I can say with as much certainty as I can muster without speaking with him again that simply becoming King of these Isles is not what he’s after.  He’s looking for something more.”

Sigebert almost responded, but Basina held her hand up, silencing him.  “That’s guesswork on your part,” she humorlessly stated.  “All evidence we have is that he is working to make himself a King.  He’s been resisting our advance on every island, he massacred our colonists, and he purged the aristocracy of these islands until those who were left were loyal to him.  All of this… sacrifice business is misdirection, it’s theater for his people so that they’ll feel better about losing.  Nothing more than that.”

“Go to that ritual site and investigate that colossus yourself,” Leon growled.  “You’ll feel the same thing I did.  Look, Jormun is clearly no ordinary pirate!  We saw him with fucking krakens!”

As Leon spoke, he noted Theuderic slowly take a few steps toward Basina.  It was a subtle thing, but it stated literally with whom he stood.

“You saw him with krakens,” Basina coolly replied, her patience starting to run thin.  “Krakens can’t be tamed.  They’re too big, too intelligent for that.  Those that were in the bay last night were only there to feed off our sailors that Jormun threw into the sea.  They were scavenging a quick meal in his wake.  Just because they were here at the same time doesn’t mean that this pirate has some kind of control over them, or that they’re all working toward a shared goal, or whatever you’re implying by mentioning it.”

Leon sighed as Sigebert took a few steps toward Basina.  “How long until we can set sail for the next island?”

Basina glanced at Theuderic, who responded, “Shouldn’t be more than a week.  The local Earl is still alive, so getting him back on board with the King shouldn’t be too much of an issue.”

“A week…” Leon muttered as he stared at the stone map on the table.  The corpses at the ritual site had been determined to have been killed only a few days ago, possibly even as recently as after Jormun’s deception back in Kraterok.

‘If he can do that in just a few days, then what the hells is he planning now?’ Leon wondered.

Out loud, he said, “Jormun will have all the time he needs to do whatever it is he’s going to do.  And that means that more of our people are going to die.  More Islanders are going to die.”

“Leon,” Basina quietly said, her tone that of an aged elder lecturing a child, “we have plenty of supplies, but they won’t last forever.  If we leave the islands behind us unsecured, then they will likely go right back to Jormun the instant we’re gone.  We need to do this right, otherwise we’ll find ourselves pressed between Jormun on one side, and whatever forces these Isles can raise once we’re gone on the other side.

“Now, I can assure you that the capture and execution of the pirate Jormun is a priority, but right now it’s not the biggest one that we have to see to.  But we’ll get him.  He’s hurt us, yes, but our task force is too large for him to win.  We’ll run him down eventually, no matter how many Islander fairy tales he cares to invoke.”

Leon bitterly smiled again.  He wasn’t convinced, he wanted to hunt Jormun down as soon as possible before the pirate had a chance to enact his plans.  But he knew when he was outvoted, Theuderic and Sigebert were with Basina on this one.

And, if he were to be honest with himself, he couldn’t blame them.  It was much easier to believe that Jormun was working for political power than it was to believe that he was trying to unleash some kind of ancient, sealed god.

With a tremendous amount of reluctance, Leon dropped the issue, and he participated so little in the rest of the discussion that he might as well not have been there.  Instead, he found himself dwelling on Jormun, and what might happen if he succeeded in his endeavors.  Above all, he hoped with everything he had that the Fleet Legates were right, and that Jormun’s actions up to this point were him just trying to screw with all of their heads.  He hoped that all Jormun wanted was to set himself up as an independent King.

But Leon remained unconvinced.  In fact, the idea of going off on his own to try and deal with Jormun was growing ever more appealing.

---

When the meeting ended, Leon made for Maia first and foremost.  If he were to try and deal with Jormun on his own, he’d need her on his side.  Three krakens and three seventh-tier mages were far too much for him to take on without support, and that wasn’t even accounting for all the other advantages that Jormun had, such as his ship with its strange flamethrowers, his crew, and all the others that the pirate had convinced to fight alongside him.  Leon knew that he could always invoke Xaphan’s power, but his left arm ached just thinking about it.

No, he couldn’t do this on his own.  Hells, he didn’t even think that Maia would be able to kill the pirate on her own in a straight fight, just her against everything that Jormun could bring to bear.

But with the two of them together, Leon felt like they had a real chance to deal Jormun catastrophic damage, and he already had a fairly good idea about where Jormun was going to go; the Fleet Legates hadn’t paid much attention to the stone map that Leon had brought to the meeting, but Leon felt like that strange, now kind of ominous Thunderbird look-a-like wouldn’t have led him to it without reason.

‘Jormun has to be going to whatever is here…’ Leon thought, picturing the serpent’s eye marking on the slopes of the next island’s volcanos.

However, for all that, Leon didn’t want to jump to such a reckless move right away.  He felt like that would be suicide, and carried with it a great risk of failure.  Still, him and Maia going off on their own was an option that he felt was on the table, and he wanted to explore it a little bit.

He found Maia at the rather grand tent that had been set aside for the use of him and his squad, though to call it a tent was to almost do it an injustice; it was practically an entire house made of cloth.  Every one of his people had their own private room, and there was even some space set aside for Anzu.  Additionally, they got their own bathroom complete with a small bath, and a large common room with plenty of space for them to practice and train if the desire to do so struck them.

When Leon arrived at the tent, he found Alix, Marcus, and Alcander availing themselves of that space to train with a ferocity that Leon hadn’t seen since their time together during the civil war, while he found Maia and Anzu both napping on his bed.  Leon had a large bed, but it seemed comically small with the large Anzu curled up on it.  Maia didn’t even have enough room to stretch out, and had practically draped herself over the white griffin.  She probably hadn’t intended on sleeping, Leon realized as he walked in and collapsed into a chair next to his desk, for there was a book on the ground where it looked like it had fallen out of her grasp as she dozed off.

He took a few seconds to rest his mind before he bent down to pick up the book.  His cheeks immediately went red as he realized that it was a long medical treatise that Maia had asked for regarding the magics that the Thunderbird Clan had devised to help them reproduce—Leon had always been up front with both Maia and Elise that, being the descendent of one Ascended Beast, let alone also being the descendent of a Divine Beast, he’d probably have a great deal of trouble having children.

Maia, however, was undeterred.  She’d wanted a daughter since long before she and Leon had met.  Much of that desire had been to help her stave off Gorgonism, but neither her bonding with Leon—which rendered her immune to Gorgonism—nor the cure to Gorgonism that her aunt had found had killed that desire.  She was committed to having a daughter with Leon, and so was putting in more time researching how it might be physically encouraged.

Leon was a little more ambivalent towards the idea, though he didn’t protest when Maia had asked for the book.  He’d always known that children with her was part of the deal, and when things between him and Elise had turned more serious, he’d known that children would probably be in their future, too.  He was still only twenty, almost twenty-one, though, so he wasn’t too keen on having any kids anytime soon.  Still, there was no harm in giving Maia the information she wanted.  Having the information wasn’t necessarily the same as using it, and the sooner they had a way to reliably have kids, the sooner they’d be able to make a more informed decision about when they might want to have those kids.

He felt a twinge of embarrassment well up as he realized that he must’ve made a little too much noise moving around.  As he sat back in his chair and set the book on the table, Maia started to sit up, blinking the sleep out of her eyes.

When her lake-blue eyes finally landed upon him and her lips turned up in a smile of recognition, Leon smiled back and said, “Hey there, beautiful.  Sorry about waking you…”

Maia yawned and stretched as she sat up a little bit more, her languid movements drawing Leon’s eyes to how little of her body her clothes concealed despite revealing little skin.  After finding what she’d been reading and seeing her stretch, he got a powerful urge to join her on the bed and tear those tight clothes off her as fast as he could, but he clamped down on that urge.  There’d be time enough to indulge it later, but right now he was in a more talkative mood.

[Don’t worry about it,] she whispered into his mind.  [What did those Legumes say?]

Leon chuckled at her mistake—likely one she made on purpose, if he had to guess—and replied, “They’re not too keen on heading out without securing the islands, first.  They don’t want to get hit in the back while we’re trying to find our pirate.”

[Seems short-sighted,] Maia replied as her heart-shaped face scrunched up in distaste.  She was more than powerful and knowledgeable enough in less mainstream magical practices to know that what Jormun was doing with those bodies at the ritual site was more than just terror theater.  The only problem with that in Leon’s eyes was that she didn’t seem to care all that much about stopping Jormun.

Leon shrugged nonchalantly, though his rapidly deepening frown betrayed the fact that he cared a lot more about this than his shrug would imply.  “That’s what I told them, but they’re determined to continue on their own course of action.  I suppose I’d do the same if I hadn’t met the man or seen all of that…”

Leon fell silent for a long moment, after which Maia asked as she fixed Leon in her narrowing gaze, [You want to go after him?]

“I do, though I’m not quite seriously advocating for it, yet,” Leon readily admitted.  “I… don’t suppose you might be able to help with that?  Getting across all of this water shouldn’t be that big of an issue for you…”

Leon had hoped that she could help, but as soon as he asked the question, his heart sank.  He could feel through their connection that a spike of terror had ripped through her, though she didn’t let it show awfully much.  A briefly averted gaze and shallow frown were the only signs of her extreme reluctance.

“No need to answer that…” Leon said with some embarrassment.

[It’s…] Maia began, largely ignoring Leon’s statement walking his question back, but her hesitance was almost physical with how powerful it was.  After taking a moment to think, she started again.  [It’s not that I don’t want to help you.  I love you, you are my mate, and I want to help you achieve your goals.  But that’s a long way to the next island.  A lot of saltwater between us and it.  A lot of places for more krakens or worse to hide…]

Leon nodded, recalling the sheer visceral terror he felt when he realized he’d jumped into the sea with those terrible beasts.  Their sheer size and the strength that came with it he estimated made them easily as strong as a human mage a tier or two higher than they were.  And those krakens with Jormun had been sixth-tier.

“Is that why you’ve been so reluctant to head out to sea?” Leon asked.  On the long journey from the Bull Kingdom to Kraterok, Maia had not once gone overboard to swim in her natural environment, or at least what Leon assumed to be her natural environment.

Maia slowly nodded.  [In terms of magic, saltwater isn’t so much different from freshwater.  I’d swim up and down what you call the Gulf of Discord without hesitation or problem.  Instead, it’s the creatures that live this far out into the ocean that give me pause.  Krakens are the only real problem this close to the surface, but when you start getting deeper, more… alien things start to appear.  Things that might be attracted to my aura if I were to jump into the ocean.  I’m fine sticking to the shallows, but as I told you before, I’m a river nymph, not one of my oceanic cousins.]

“So there are other nymphs out here?” Leon asked.

Maia nodded again.  [They’re… not quite as human as my people and I appear, but we’re distantly related.  They’re also wilder and less communal.  They’re the least of my worries this far out to sea, and krakens aren’t that much higher than them.  My mother told me many stories about the creatures that live in the deep, and I would rather run into none, if given the chance.  I’d rather not even take the chance.]

She paused a moment as she tightened her expression, giving Leon a look of utmost seriousness.

[It doesn’t matter what that arrogant pirate is doing.  What matters is that we return home to Elise.  Stay with the ships, don’t cross the open seas without them.  If we want to return home, that’s how we’re going to do it.]

A light scowl graced Leon’s face, but he didn’t argue with her.  “I suppose…” he said, his thoughts turning toward the bird.  It wasn’t just a figment of his imagination, it had led him too well for it to be a trick of his mind.  But Xaphan’s reveal that he hadn’t been able to see it still bothered Leon.  There was the possibility that it was still real, but he also remembered Alix mentioning that she hadn’t seen any bird when he’d briefly brought it up.  He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now that he was thinking about it, the situation was growing more and more concerning.  At the very least, the bird seemed to be helping him, so he was comfortable enough putting off discussing it with Xaphan and Nestor, but that conversation had to be held at some point, and preferably before they left this island.

He was suddenly jerked out of his thoughts when Maia got out of bed, walked over, and planted herself in his lap, straddling his legs so that she could face him directly.  Her arms wrapped around his head, forcing him to look at her and only her.

[What’s wrong?] she asked as she leaned in, coming within an inch of letting her nose and forehead touch Leon’s.

Leon leaned forward, crossing the remaining distance between them as he simultaneously wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her well-endowed figure into him.

After a quick sigh, Leon asked her, “Do you remember a hawk or an eagle or some similar kind of bird—about three or four feet tall, brown feathers flecked with a bit of gold—leading us through the jungle last night?  One that led us to each of those crucified bodies?”

Maia frowned in thought, briefly breaking eye contact with Leon.  When she looked back at him, she said, [No, I don’t.]

Leon’s heart sank.  If she hadn’t seen anything, then there likely hadn’t been anything there.

“I’ve… been seeing this bird around lately…” Leon said, quickly telling her everything he knew about it as well as his suspicions that it was intelligent.  Maia had been melting into Leon’s embrace, but as he spoke about the bird, she began to stiffen in concern.

[Someone is messing with your mind?] she asked once he’d finished, not even entertaining the idea that the bird might be real.

“Maybe,” Leon said.  “The bird might have some kind of power that renders it invisible to everyone it doesn’t want to see it.”  Maia gave him an incredulous look, so Leon hurriedly added, “I don’t believe that it does, but the possibility can’t be ignored, can it?”

[I suppose it can’t…] she conceded.

Leon grimaced.  “I don’t want to think about maybe having my senses screwed with, I guess.  The bird helped us find the ritual site, and it found this map for us.  If it’s someone trying to communicate with me, then they’re being helpful.  Still, maybe keep an eye on me going forward?  If I see the bird again, I’ll try to clear my mind with the Thunderbird’s power, but if there’s any possibility that we can’t ignore, it’s that I might be compromised in some way by this… I don’t want to call it a vision, but hallucination seems too strong.  By this illusion, how about that?  If I start acting strangely, like something is influencing me, can I count on you to keep my head on straight?”

[Of course,] she said with a reassuring smile.  [If anyone tries to take you from me, I’ll tear them limb from limb.]

Leon nodded in gratitude and held her a little tighter.  Her lips found his, and one of her arms disentangled itself from around his neck to start slowly making its way down his body, soon sliding beneath his pants to start rubbing his rapidly hardening length.  Leon responded with enthusiasm, letting his own hands wander her body, from her toned rear to her generous bust.  It had been a terribly long day, and while he was ready for some rest, he was more ready for something to get his mind off of Jormun and his plans and the possibility that something was manipulating him with illusions.

Maia seemed eager to be that something, and soon enough, the two were going at each other as if they hadn’t seen each other in weeks.  It worked to get Leon’s mind on something else, at least for a little while.

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