The first thing Leon noticed upon being shown into the room where the envoys were waiting was their auras: the weaker one was, startlingly, of the eighth-tier, while the stronger was powerful enough that Leon couldn’t identify his tier.  He momentarily froze in the doorway, stunned by the level of power that had arrived.

The weaker of the two, almost paradoxically, looked like he should’ve been stronger—he was a giant of a man, standing head and shoulders above Leon.  He was dark of skin, possessed a built physique that put marble statues to shame, and had deep black eyes that Leon could easily see someone getting lost in.  His handsome features were like stone, stoic and unmoving, almost masklike, not even shifting as Leon entered the room.

The other man, however, seemed almost the exact opposite—tall, but not overly so, with a much thinner, lither build.  His skin was lighter, though still much tanner than a Bull Kingdom native, and he had some of the warmest, friendliest brown eyes that Leon had ever seen.  Other than his aura, though, he didn’t possess much in the way of looks that Leon, at least, thought were particularly attractive, though he lit up with charming glee as Leon overcame his initial shock at sensing their auras and took a few more steps into the lavish conference room.

“Ah!” the stronger one said good-naturedly as he rose from his seat and hurried over to take Leon’s hand in his own, to Leon’s mild displeasure.  “Wonderful!  Wonderful!” he said so warmly that Leon found himself unable to hold onto his light antipathy at the unwanted physical contact.  “So good to see you, my friend!  Let’s talk, let’s talk!”

“Uh, do we know each other?” Leon asked as the stronger man almost pulled him further into the room and steered him toward one of the chairs closest to the head of the conference table.  The weaker of the two envoys wasn’t sitting, instead choosing to lean against the wall and glower at everyone as they filed in and took their seats.  Leon, however, barely noticed his attitude, so captured was he by the stronger.

“No, we’ve never met,” the stronger man said, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, can it?  Can it?”

Leon disagreed, his criteria for considering someone a ‘friend’ was rather high, and someone he just met, even if strong and friendly, wasn’t yet a friend to him.  However, out loud, he simply said, “Friends at least know each other’s names.  I’m called Leon, born of House Raime, but just ‘Leon’ will do.  No titles or styles, if you please.”

“If that’s what pleases you, then so be it!  So be it!” the stronger man said, punctuating his sentence with a booming, amiable laugh.  “You may call me Ambrose!  Likewise, no styles, no titles!  No styles!  No titles!”

Ambrose, instead of sitting directly at the head of the table, sat directly across from Leon, with the head seat between them.  However, because he didn’t sit there, no one else did; even the Legate of the ship, who entered in Leon’s wake, sat further down the table.  Maia and the rest of Leon’s retinue sat further up, with Maia herself taking a seat directly to Leon’s right.

What followed were several long rounds of introductions.  The weaker of the two envoys never spoke a word, though Ambrose introduced him as ‘Zaff’.  The name caught Leon’s ear, and he gave the eighth-tier man another once-over.

As he did, he noticed that the man seemed strangely familiar, though not for his appearance, but rather his aura.  In fact, the more that Leon stole quick glances at him, the more his stoic and unchanging face seemed almost literally masklike, and a quiet suspicion began to grow in his heart, but that suspicion, if assumed to be true, only led to confusion and a torrent of questions flowing through Leon’s mind.

The rest of the introductions went by fairly easily, with Ambrose warmly greeting even the weakest of Legion knights who’d entered the room, not only acknowledging even those squires and secretaries who stood by the wall instead of taking seats, but even having short, pleasant exchanges with them over how they were dressed or what he could glean from their aura.  Ambrose didn’t even blink when Maia refused to speak to him out loud, and instead merely identified herself as ‘Naiad’ using her mental communication, taking it entirely in stride and only offering her a couple cordial compliments.

By the time Ambrose directed his attention back to Leon, everyone in the room had been thoroughly disarmed by his affable demeanor, and it was like his power and what he represented had been forgotten.  However, all of that came roaring back when he said to Leon, “It’s simply wonderful to have the opportunity to meet all of you today!  Simply wonderful!  However, as much as I would love to continue speaking with all of you like this, we must see to the business that brought me here.  To business!”

“Just one moment, Ambrose, if you will,” Leon interrupted, a little bit of iron in his voice.  “You identified yourself and your partner, but didn’t say where you were from.  Which of the Empires do you represent?  Or do you claim to represent them all?”

Ambrose readily replied, “We hail from the Ilian Empire.”

The Four Empires bordered a great inland sea, and Leon knew the Ilian Empire to be the empire on the western side.  He didn’t know much of the Four Empires, and the only dealings he’d ever had with them had been meeting the doctor from the Sacred Golden Empire, the Empire in the north.  However, he did know that Heaven’s Eye was based in the city of Occulara, which was within the Ilian Empire, giving him some hint as to the power dynamics within the empires.  As far as he knew, the Sacred Golden Empire was the agricultural powerhouse of the four, while the Ilian Empire was the richest and most magically advanced.

The Sunlit Empire to the south of the inland sea he knew essentially nothing about, save for it apparently having many lightning mages, which intrigued him, while the Sentinels, the empire to the east of the sea, was even more mysterious.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Leon pressed as he leaned forward in his seat, “but do you have anything that might prove your claim?”

“Leon…” Gaius muttered from a few seats down, but Leon quickly silenced him with a stern look.  The ship Legate, however, he couldn’t quiet so easily, and the Legion knight interjected immediately after.

“The envoy’s credentials checked out, at least as far as we were able to confirm.”

Leon wondered just how much they were able to confirm, given the status of the fleet and their communication issues, but with the way that many of the Legion knights were staring at him with pleading eyes, Leon decided to simply take Ambrose at his word and leaned back in his seat.

So, naturally, he was fairly surprised when Ambrose conjured a metal ring from his soul realm, so large that it was worn around his three middle fingers on his right hand and was wider than his fist.  The plate of the ring was adorned with an exceedingly intricate design of some kind of bird of prey whose wings appeared to be on fire.

Leon knew absolutely nothing about Imperial heraldry, so the design was largely lost on him.  However, the ring emanated a strong aura of magic, strong enough to have the hair on the back of Leon’s neck standing on end.

Ambrose said, “These rings are given to all who serve the Ilian Emperor.  This was given to me by the Ilian Emperor personally.  Given personally.”

Leon took a deep breath, then shrugged.  He still doubted, but after a quick glance back over his shoulder at ‘Zaff’, who still silently leaned against the wall, he figured that they should just get on with it.

“All right, Ambrose,” he said, “what has drawn the attention of the Ilian Emperor?”

“The appearance of a Great Horned Serpent,” Ambrose answered.  “Such creatures were long considered extinct, having been hunted down and exterminated over fifty thousand years ago.  They are exceedingly violent by nature and unfailingly brutal in behavior; they pose enormous threats to all of civilization on Aeterna, and so seeing one appear after so long—and one so large and possessed of ninth-tier strength, at that—has many people back home, and in the other Empires, greatly concerned.  Many people, greatly concerned.”

“I can see why,” Leon said.

“There were also other things that drew attention during that fight, such as that black bird, the demon, and Lady Naiad, here,” Ambrose continued, nodding at Maia with a broad smile on his face.  “Suffice it to say, His Imperial Majesty wanted to know exactly what was going on out here, and so he sent me.  If anything needed to be done to resolve the situation, I was empowered to do so.  Situation resolved, no matter what.”

Leon returned the smile, though his was far colder than Ambrose’s.  “Sounds like your Emperor took this situation extremely seriously if he gave you permission to do whatever you thought necessary.  Many would abuse that power, and few would ever appreciate it, especially those who live in these parts who might not want outside interference…”

“Are you one of those people?” Ambrose asked.  “Dislike interference?”

Leon’s lips thinned as he pressed them together for a moment.  “Not me, specifically.  I’m actually the opposite—I would’ve loved to have your support just a few days ago.  Would’ve made all of this so much easier to deal with.”

“Then I apologize for not moving sooner,” Ambrose said with a brief lowering of his head.  “Apologies.”

Leon sighed.  “I apologize as well.  I don’t much like dealing with dignitaries and the like, and I fear I’ve let my displeasure poison my demeanor.”

Before Ambrose could respond, Leon launched into another brief explanation of exactly what happened over the past couple of months, starting with the need for the Legion to retrieve Octavius, and ending with the death of the Great Horned Serpent—at least, as it had been explained to him, for the memories of his time as the Black Eagle were still rather fuzzy.  He glossed over the appearance of Xaphan—among a few other important details that he didn’t want to spread—unsure how Ambrose would take it, though given who he thought ‘Zaff’ to be, he assumed it probably wouldn’t turn out too bad.

By the time Leon had finished his brief rundown, Ambrose had leaned in onto the table and propped his chin onto his folded hands.

“That’s quite the story,” he said.  “Quite the story…  Tell me more about this place with the pyramids, if you would.  Sounds like a remarkable place, and I’m curious how this ‘Jormun’ discovered it, and about the being you say resided down there…”

Leon went into a little more detail, but he got the strange impression that Ambrose wasn’t quite as into the place itself so much as Jormun and the Primal God within.  His eyes wandered a little more when Leon described the immense pyramid-filled cavern, but were locked on him the entire time he spoke about Jormun and his relationship with the Primal God.

“… so it seems to me that it either influenced, or co-opted the serpent cult that existed on these islands, which then allowed it to influence everyone here once its seals were weakened.”

“But,” Ambrose countered, “if it influenced that cult, then why didn’t it break out then?  Why not?”

Leon gave him a lost look and emphatically shrugged.  “No clue, I wasn’t there.  Maybe those Three Heroes had something to do with it, reinforcing the wards, I’ve got nothing.  Maybe you’d have more luck going to investigate the site yourself.”

“Maybe I should, maybe I should,” Ambrose mused as he leaned back in his seat.  “It sounds like this thing was rather interested in you…”

“If you’re asking me why, I can’t tell you that, either,” Leon said as naturally as if he were telling the truth.  “Maybe it was because I’m the strongest of the warriors sent from the Bull Kingdom.  Maybe it just wanted another seventh-tier mage to play with.”

“It transformed one seventh-tier mage into a Great Horned Serpent, by the sounds of it,” Ambrose pointed out.  “Could it have had similar intentions for you?”

Leon shivered slightly, and then shrugged again, but this time he closed his eyes and sighed as he did, trying to make it look like he was forcing on a tougher façade than he felt, as if he were actually disturbed by Ambrose’s suggestion.  “Have no idea,” he said.  “Glad I made it out before it could try.”

“How exactly did you do that?” Ambrose pressed as he leaned back onto the table and stared into Leon’s eyes.  “You were a little light on the details during your explanation, and I would like a little more elaboration.  You also didn’t really talk about that bird.  Or that demon.  Or those angels.  I’d like to know more…”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” Leon said, his tone turning frosty.  “That demon came out of nowhere, and I had little interaction with it apart from fighting that giant snake with it.  And that bird is even more of a mystery.  We don’t even have its body to examine; it was dragged below the waves with the serpent—its wing had been stuck on the monster’s horn, you see…  Both are probably kraken food at this point, if not a meal of something even bigger…”

Ambrose stared at Leon, smiling the whole while, his eyes narrowing into a knowing look, and Leon felt like the man could see right through him.  However, he knew that if there was one key to lying, it was to stick with his story until given concrete proof.  He had no reason to trust Ambrose, even if he did suspect that Zaff was Xaphan, and he wasn’t going to just hand over potentially sensitive information to just anyone.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help to you,” Leon said to Ambrose after a few quiet, awkward seconds.

“Are you sure you can’t help me?” Ambrose asked.  “Are you sure?  That bird, at least…?  Nothing happened surrounding it?  No one transformed into it in the same way that this ‘Jormun’ was transformed into that serpent?”

Leon’s stomach sank into his feet as he realized he’d probably said too much in his explanation, but at this point, he was committed, and even if this man knew exactly what happened, Leon wasn’t going to admit it to him.

“I’m sure,” Leon simply replied, and Ambrose responded by continuing to stare at him for several more long seconds.

“Very well,” the envoy said with a shrug.  “I suppose I have what I came for; the bird and the Great Horned Serpent are dead; the ocean nymph seems to be—”

Leon felt a flutter of anger flow through Maia, and Ambrose paused for a moment.

“—Ah, my apologies, My Lady, the river nymph isn’t a threat.  I suppose that just leaves the demon to be found; we can’t have something so powerful just running around unaccounted for, can we?”

The Legion knights in the room muttered their agreement, and while she didn’t look at him, Leon did feel Maia’s attention fixate on him for a moment.  He took it the same as if she’d given him a worried look, and he squeezed her hand reassuringly beneath the table.  This at-least-ninth-tier envoy didn’t seem to be pressing them, so he figured if they just kept their mouths shut, everything would be fine and the envoys would leave in short order.

However, he was hoping he’d get the chance to speak with ‘Zaff’ before they left—he wanted to know if Xaphan was all right, and the more he thought about, and the more he observed ‘Zaff’s’ aura, the more he was convinced his guess was right.

He briefly tried to mentally communicate with Xaphan through their contract, but he didn’t receive a response, and Zaff didn’t let any indications slip that he’d heard Leon…

Fortunately, he felt like his theory was essentially proven when Ambrose rose and said, “I ought to get going, but might I ask for a few moments of your time, Leon?  My companion would like to have a few private words with you.  Might I?”

“Sure…” Leon awkwardly stated, encouraged but surprised that Ambrose would just come out with such a request.

“Wonderful!” Ambrose exclaimed.  “Simply marvelous!  Well, then I’ll get going first, and leave you with this, Leon.”  Ambrose waved his hand and produced a card about the size of both of Leon’s hands put together.  It was made of some kind of stiff paper that Leon could feel was lightly enchanted to increase its durability, and written upon the card was what seemed to be an introduction.  “I’m always on the lookout for talented mages, you see,” Ambrose explained.  “If you ever find yourself in the Ilian Empire, look me up—that letter has my address, and will serve as proof of affiliation if I’m not around and you’re greeted by my servants.”

Leon felt a few hidden strands of killing intent coming from the Legion Legate, but they were quickly clamped down on.  He supposed he understood the reaction—Leon was no longer a Legion knight, but there was still lingering attachment among the Legion to him, and yet here was someone whom they couldn’t really compete against blatantly headhunting him.

Leon stashed the letter of introduction into his soul realm, and Ambrose strolled out of the conference room with hardly an ounce of worry etched upon his face.  The rest of the Legion knights slowly made to follow suit, and Leon had to hurry his own retinue along to follow them.  They protested, but after just asking them to wait outside and giving into Maia’s demand to stay, he was left mostly alone with ‘Zaff’.

As soon as the door was shut and the enchantments blocking their voices from reaching outside, ‘Zaff’ dropped all pretenses and said with the familiar voice of Leon’s demonic partner, “Leon, I need to get back into your soul realm right now, this illusion is starting to fade!”

“Xaphan?” Leon asked, and ‘Zaff’ responded by letting his aura spill forth without any deceptions.

Leon smiled as he recognized his frie—as he recognized Xaphan’s unmistakable aura.  Xaphan wasn’t a friend, he told himself.  He was just a partner and an important weapon in Leon’s arsenal.

With a nod from Leon, ‘Zaff’s’ body began to immolate right there in front of Leon and Maia, shrank down into a bead of fire no bigger than a finger, and rushed into Leon’s chest.

There was some concern within Leon that this was a trick, but he felt the power shared between him and Xaphan flutter, and he knew his demonic partner had returned.

[Ahhh,] Xaphan muttered as Leon watched him settle back into his pavilion.  [Good to sit back down, even in this rustic-ass place.  Seriously, Leon, that old Mind Palace you had was so much classier, you ought to tear this shit place down and go back to the old one.]

Leon’s jaw immediately clenched so tightly shut that he felt like he was at risk of cracking several of his teeth.

‘Yep, that’s Xaphan,’ he thought.

—-

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