Leon gritted his teeth as he knelt there in the spatial tunnel. His gauntlet had been ripped and torn as it was pulled from behind the wall in the previous chamber and into the curtain of darkness, and the flesh and bone beneath had fared little better. Blood poured out from the shredded metal, and Leon could barely think from the pain. His right hand, his dominant hand, had been horribly mangled.
With a terrible scream, Leon summoned the strongest healing spell he possessed and wrapped his hand up in it. The blood soaked through the spell paper immediately, but fortunately for him, the spell paper he’d used for this spell was of particularly high quality, so it still activated and soothed his pain considerably, enough that he could start to fit more than just pain into his head.
Leon used that spare mental capacity to quickly take stock of his surroundings. He was in an identical spatial tunnel that he’d been in not too long before—it was pitch black all around him, enough so that he had little frame of reference for where he needed to go or where he literally stood.
At the very least, it seemed like the golden serpent-man colossus, which had been mere feet away from snatching him up in its gilded fist, hadn’t been able to follow him through the curtain of darkness. That brought a small sense of relief to Leon.
That relief was immediately dashed when Jormun’s disembodied voice suddenly rang out through the tunnel.
“Now, now, now, Leon, we were having such a fine conversation, why did you have to just start ignoring me like that? As I told you a moment ago, I can enable any security features I want. Just leaving that colossus doesn’t mean I can’t strike at you, so why don’t we continue where we left off?”
“Kiss my ass!” Leon shouted as he struggled to his feet, his voice hoarse with pain even as his flesh slowly stitched itself back together. He could tell that he’d need several more healing spells and likely a few days of rest to properly recover, but at the least, he estimated that he’d have full functionality of his hand again in about ten minutes so long as he wasn’t disturbed overmuch.
“Is that an invitation?” Jormun asked flirtatiously as a flash of light from behind Leon suddenly illuminated the tunnel, turning the floor stark white and the walls into a strange grey gradient that darkened as it rose toward the still-pitch black ceiling. The tunnel was incredibly wide and endlessly long, but as the tunnel began to heat up, Leon just forced himself to his feet and began to run. Clearly, Jormun was activating some defensive measures, and he wanted to get to wherever this tunnel led before he found himself caught here.
[Oh, that’s not good…] Leon heard Nestor whisper from his soul realm.
[What are you saying?!] Leon demanded in panic as he continued to build up speed, the light that illuminate the tunnel from behind him growing more intense with every passing second. Already, he could feel his back starting to break out into sweat despite his command over fire magic and the extensive defensive enchantments he’d built into his armor.
[It looks like the exit of this tunnel has been somehow blocked,] Nestor explained.
[That’s hardly an issue, just tear your way out,] Xaphan stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world. [I did it all the time back in the Void when traveling around the Elemental Plane of Fire. If you don’t like where you’re going, or if the tunnel begins to destabilize, just rip your way out and deal with wherever you land. You could land right back in front of that colossus, and it would still be less dangerous than staying in a spatial tunnel that’s actively resisting you like this.]
“Have you noticed it, yet, Leon?” Jormun’s smug voice sounded. “Coming into this tunnel was a terrible mistake, you’ll only die here. You really should’ve stayed where we could talk more, I would’ve much preferred us to hash this out like men, not for me to crush you like an ant in a paper tunnel. Ah well, I suppose I can’t have everything…”
Leon heard a surprising amount of remorse in Jormun’s voice, and he couldn’t help but wonder where the hells it was coming from. He didn’t for a moment think that Jormun was being properly genuine, so Leon just chalked it up to Jormun just being very convincing with his act, or there was an aspect to this whole situation that he was missing, some reason that Jormun was so interested in him beyond simply being the only seventh-tier mage that accompanied the Legion to the Isles.
And Leon felt like he knew why: his Inherited Bloodline.
Far behind Leon, another great light began to shine, but from the way it twisted and turned as it shone on the walls made Leon realize that it wasn’t some static light that changed the spatial properties of the tunnel. He took the chance to slow down enough to glance back over his shoulder, and immediately turned back around and kept running as fast as his lightning-enhanced legs could carry him.
He’d seen a bright white light that was coalescing into the shape of a massive serpent with a long curved horn jutting out from its forehead. The amount of magic that Leon could sense within it was staggering—more than enough to seriously screw him up if not kill him outright.
“This one looks like fun,” Jormun said thoughtfully. “And it’s not even the most powerful one that I can use right now. Looks like there are a ton of things I can use on you and your friends if I wanted—and even more that were activated by your presence, Leon. Seems like my Ancestors and yours hated each other fiercely.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Leon roared as he sprinted down the spatial passage in the vain hope of reaching the end before that serpent finally finished forming and came tearing down the tunnel after him.
[Stop running!] Xaphan shouted into Leon’s mind. [You’ll get nowhere! That fuckstick pulling the strings isn’t just going to open the door for you if you reach the end! Take a breath, collect yourself, and rip your way out! You have to do it! Use your lightning, it shouldn’t be too difficult! You should still end up close to either your fish girl or that other hanger-on!]
Leon gritted his teeth, groaned in frustration, then raised his left hand and conjured a lightning bolt.
“What are you—” Jormun began before Leon brought the bolt crashing down upon the floor of the spatial tunnel.
Immediately, the tunnel shook like it was experiencing a powerful earthquake, and the lights behind Leon began to flicker. The serpent forming even paused for a moment as Leon’s magic began to interfere with the magic of the tunnel.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you…” Jormun cautioned as Leon fought to remain standing amidst the tunnel’s shaking. “Who knows where you might end up, and no matter where you go, I’ll still be able to reach you…”
Leon screamed incoherently as he conjured another lightning bolt and slammed it into the ground again, causing cracks to spiderweb out from where he stood, and the shaking in the tunnel grew more intense. Leon wasn’t able to stay on his feet, and as the lights behind him began to flicker even more, he fell to the ground. But he wasn’t done, and he raised one of his legs into the air, channeled a huge amount of lightning magic into his foot, and brought his heel back down onto the ground with as much force as he could manage given his position. It wasn’t as powerful a strike as his lightning bolts, but the magic transferred into the tunnel was still quite powerful. The shaking reached a breaking point as the lights behind Leon winked out, along with the coalescing serpent, and the tunnel began to rip itself in two.
Leon instinctively hung on for dear life as the cracks in the floor of the tunnel began to widen, but eventually they grew too large too quickly for him to hang on, and he found himself falling into the black void that surrounded the tunnel.
He couldn’t help but scream as the sound of wind roaring in his ears overtook everything else. The world went dark, he couldn’t hear anything, and he spun over and over himself in the featureless black abyss the tunnel had left him in when it shattered.
He tried to don his flight suit, but his magic wasn’t able to reach outside of his body, leaving him stuck with only his armor. He couldn’t even project his magic senses or conjure lightning as he fell through this seemingly endless abyss.
After about five minutes, Leon started to have thoughts running through his head that maybe he might die here, that he might just spin out and be lost forever in this dark place, but as soon as these thoughts passed through his head, he hit soft ground.
Leon still spun ass-over-teakettle, all of the momentum built up during his fall coming to a rapid and painful stop as he plowed his way through…
‘… Is this grass?’ Leon thought as he finally came to a stop. His entire body was in sharp pain, and he could barely move, but his eyes were open, and though his face was pressed against the ground, he could see a few hints of sunlight peeking through the grass that now wound through his helmet.
It was warm, but temperate, about what Leon would’ve expected in the Bull Kingdom’s Central Territories—or in the Serpentine Isles. He could hear birds singing, insects buzzing around, and the soft roar of a distant beach.
‘Am I… back out on the island?’ he wondered as he tried to move his battered body. Immediately, Leon winced in pain, but as far as he was able to tell, none of his bones were broken. His right hand was still mangled and burned with pain, but the rest of him seemed reasonably intact.
[You seem fine,] Xaphan observed. [You might want to get up. Fuckstick will likely know where you are soon, and he won’t wait for you to get your bearings.]
Leon groaned as he struggled first to a sitting position, and then to his feet, where he took stock of his surroundings.
He was in a glade in the middle of a fairly thin forest, full of the same flora and fauna that Leon had grown familiar with in the Bull Kingdom, ruling out him being in the Serpentine Isles. However, the landscape itself seemed a little different from what he was used to in the Bull Kingdom, consisting of lightly forested rolling hills and, as Leon saw when he projected his magic senses, vineyards and terraced farms to his north.
A couple of miles to his south was a villa with blatantly Bull Kingdom architecture, all columns, white marble, and red roof tiles. That sight alone showed him exactly where he was: presumably, he was in Gaius’ ‘trial’, or wherever the temple had whisked him away to.
Leon broke out into a fast jog as he made for the villa. As he moved, he couldn’t help but marvel at his surroundings. As far as he could tell—and being a man with his skillset, he could tell quite well—this place was real, not some kind of illusion. The wind on his face, the insects that crawled around in the grass, and the birds in the trees, all of it contributed to the feeling that he was actually in a forest, not walking through some kind of illusory space. His magic senses spread out far in this place, and he could easily imagine that he could walk back to the Bull Kingdom’s capital if he wanted to.
His family’s power surging through his brain helped with that impression, proving about as well as he could that his mind wasn’t being influenced right now.
[What is this place?] Leon asked Nestor and Xaphan.
[A marvel of magical engineering,] Nestor whispered in awe.
[Tangible, but not necessarily real,] Xaphan answered a little more helpfully. [If I had to guess, I’d say this is a space not dissimilar to your soul realm—some kind of small demiplane layered over your home plane using spatial magic—it’s outside of the universe, and yet not. Not easy to wrap your head around, but that’s about the best way I can describe it without getting extremely technical. What I can say even easier, though, is that I cannot possibly guess as to what purpose this place serves.]
[Jormun mentioned that the temple was designed as some kind of trial for servants of the Serpent,] Leon replied. As he did, he held out his and grabbed a handful of a bush, tearing it off as he ran past. He rubbed the leaves in his hands, crushing them between him fingers and snapping the twigs they were attached to. He could detect no signs that they were illusory or unreal.
[The exact functions are impossible to guess without seeing the underlying enchantments,] Nestor breathed in excitement. [However, the sheer scale of this place is incredible! Keep an eye out, young Raime, whatever being made this was easily the match for the most powerful and knowledgeable of our old Clan. This is… well, I hesitate to say this given where in the universe we ar—we were—but this is magic on the scale of divinity! Perhaps some kind of leftover from the Grave Warden? Some remnant or echo of the Primal Gods that were interred here…?]
Nestor quietly trailed off as he started muttered to himself various possibilities of how this space was created. Leon tried to pay attention, but the man soon went completely silent. He didn’t sound worried, but Leon had a slowly rising sense of creeping dread. Running around a forest was a far sight better in his opinion than being caught in a spatial tunnel or completely empty chamber with that colossus, but he couldn’t help but remember the hint of possible divine power that he’d sensed at the ritual site on the second island.
The power that had built this place was so far beyond him that he could barely even conceive of it. His most impressive feat was cobbling together a haphazard method of making himself fly; this was essentially a world unto itself.
And it seemed like Jormun had at least some degree of control over it. That control clearly wasn’t absolute, for Leon had been running through the forest for about five minutes after falling out of the spatial tunnel and the pirate hadn’t seemed to have found him, but Jormun had still demonstrated that he could do things like activate the colossus of the serpent-man and activate the defenses of the spatial tunnel.
For now, though, Leon put that out of his mind. He couldn’t do anything to Jormun right now except react to whatever he did, so there wasn’t much use in worrying about it. He could only prepare for the worst and deal with what was in front of him. So, Leon began to focus on the villa, the only building around for miles—the vineyards and farms hadn’t even a single mud hut among them.
As he approached the villa, Leon began to take in its scale. It was easily one of the largest country estates he’d seen, covering dozens of acres without even taking into account its massive and extensive gardens. However, relative to its size, Leon couldn’t see that many people around. One or two here and there, but for the villa’s size, Leon could easily imagine it having at least ten times as many people just working as staff, let alone its residents. In the nearby vineyards, as well, Leon could sense an odd lack of people. Everything looked pristine and well-maintained, but there just weren’t nearly as many people around as he would’ve thought.
[Are the people I can sense illusions?] Leon asked Xaphan and Nestor.
[I’d imagine so,] Xaphan replied. [If this supposed to be some kind of trial, I’d think that whoever built this place would’ve used darkness magic to read the mind of the person or people undergoing it, using their memories to design the world they found themselves in and to populate it with people they know. Makes it more believable to your feeble human minds.]
[You saying that demons aren’t so susceptible?] Leon asked, a hint of challenge and defensiveness in his voice.
[That’s exactly what I’m saying, I’m glad you were able to pick up on my extremely subtle subtext with your feeble human mind,] Xaphan smugly replied, but Leon only smiled. He and Xaphan had been together long enough that he could tell when the demon was being serious and when he was just being an ass for the sake of being an ass.
Ignoring Xaphan’s subsequent remark, Leon asked, [Should I be worried that my presence will mess with the trial? Will things start appearing out of my head?]
[I doubt it,] Xaphan said. [If I had to guess, I’d say that once this world was built and populated, then the changes that could be made to it by anyone other than the original ‘architect’, or ‘trial-taker’, or however you want to call them, would be limited. So, worrying that a lightning pigeon would appear just because you showed up or this place suddenly turning into your worst nightmare isn’t warranted. That being said, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that your presence might change some things. This place is using darkness magic to manipulate minds, so keep your mental defenses up and stay on your toes. Don’t take anything you see or hear or feel for granted—this isn’t the normal, static world you’re used to, no matter how identical it may seem.]
[Got it,] Leon replied as he finally started to close in on the villa. He entertained the idea that this place was just a random villa filled with random people that were thrown in only for the trial’s ‘believability’ or something like that, and had no overall significance to his goal, but he was going to check the place out first and see what he could see.
He jogged fairly quickly out of the forest, and as he did so, the ring on his finger began to glow with green light as he faded from view. He wasn’t sure what he was going to find, but without any subordinates that might need to follow him, Leon wasn’t going to take any chances by being visible. He could stay invisible with his ring almost indefinitely, so as far as he was concerned, without the need to command, there was little need to remain visible at all.
As soon as he arrived, however, it almost seemed like it wasn’t even worth being so cautious. Leon paused at the northern-eastern edge of the villa complex, taking a few moments to examine in greater detail everything that he could see with his magic senses. Perhaps most notably, he couldn’t see any guards anywhere in the villa aside from a handful at each entrance. It wasn’t just the villa’s serving staff that was anemic, the guards were, too.
However, there were a few buildings that were warded against magic senses. That didn’t strike Leon as particularly odd, this was a place that looked more than wealthy enough to have robust defensive enchantments, so he decided to stick to the assumption that there were plenty of guards around at all times, or at the very least, that whatever power had summoned this place into being could also summon more guards, perhaps even at a strong enough level that they could threaten him.
‘Remaining invisible is for the best,’ Leon thought to himself as he crouched down and prepared to infiltrate the villa. Just before, he scanned the everything within range of his magic senses one last time in search of either Gaius or Maia. This was apparently one of their trials, and if he had to guess which one, he’d guess Gaius’, but he couldn’t see either one, so he kept his assumptions in check.
No matter what, though, it seemed clear enough that the way forward was to be found somewhere inside this villa, so without further ado, Leon leaped up and over the villa’s surprisingly unenchanted outer wall, and began his infiltration in earnest.
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