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“Is it over?!” Anna shouted from behind the tree, where she was still taking cover with the unconscious Helen, Alix, and Anshu.

Leon, still in a state of shock from the battle and coming down from his adrenaline high, needed a moment to process what he’d just heard, his eyes still locked on his blade, where he’d felt his fire burning strangely, and from where he’d seen just enough black fire erupt that he couldn’t just discount it as a hallucination.

But as if sensing his strange mental state, from behind, Xaphan nudged him, the demonfire that coated his obsidian body not even singing Leon’s shirt.

Thus prompted, Leon rapidly blinked, turned in Anna’s direction as if only now realizing what she’d asked, and loudly responded, “Seems to be!”

He wasn’t able to sense anything out in the swamp, and his magic senses were still projected, but just in case, he turned his attention back outward to reevaluate their surroundings.  Those vampires had come out of nowhere and nearly killed the lot of them with their artillery magic.  The swamp around them testified to the strength of the magic thrown against them, looking like the site of a massive battle with nearly all greenery burned away for hundreds of feet.

Coming back to his senses, Leon then turned to look back toward the Heaven’s Eye convoy, and to his immense relief, it seemed that not only were they fine, but it seemed that they’d caught wind of the battle that had just happened; half a dozen small boats filled with powerful mages were already making their way in their direction, and he could feel Maia coming closer even quicker than the boats were.  Fortunately, it seemed that Damien Makedon had stayed with the convoy—while Leon wouldn’t have minded having another eighth-tier mage with him, he was of the mind that the convoy needed to be protected more than he did right now.

“Get back in here,” Leon said to Xaphan.

“Blunt that tone, boy,” Xaphan responded testily, though he still shrank down into a bead of fire and rocketed back into Leon’s chest.

With a deep breath, Leon then turned back toward Anna, wondering just how in the hells he was going to explain his demonic partner to her.

Rather, he knew how he was going to do so, but he more dreaded what her reaction might be.  Fortunately, she wasn’t exactly panicking right now, despite Xaphan having been right there in plain view not a moment before.

Deciding not to waste any more time, Leon summoned his water magic and, with some struggle given his relative inexperience with the element, froze some of the swamp water into an impromptu raft.  He then got on the raft and continued to use his water magic to propel it over to the tree he’d left his retainers on.

“Hop on,” Leon ordered Anna.  “I’ll try to explain everything on the way.  We should be safe, now, and Heaven’s Eye is already sending reinforcements.”

Anna nodded and complied without complaint.  For all his dread, Leon appreciated her professionalism.  She doubtlessly had a thousand questions, yet she was keeping battened down, for now.

Together, Leon and Anna pulled Helen, Alix, and Anshu onto the raft.  Leon had to continuously use his water magic to keep them upright for the weight wasn’t distributed evenly, but he was able to start pushing them back in the direction of the convoy.

“How are they doing?” Leon asked, indicating the three unconscious members of his retinue.

“I applied those healing spells, but they’re still out, obviously,” Anna replied.  “I think that my sister has a few tinctures that help people recover from physical trauma like this, which would’ve woken them up, but she mostly keeps her completed potions in her soul realm, so…”

Leon hummed in displeasure.  His healing spells weren’t the best at waking up the unconscious, but at the least they should’ve healed any damage that those artillery strikes had done.  His retainers should start waking up any moment, now.

“Remind me to ensure that everyone has some of those tinctures, and whatever other healing potions that Helen can furnish us with,” Leon noted to Anna.  “I don’t care if I need to spend a million silvers buying the materials, we should all have the proper medical supplies for situations like these.”

“Makes sense,” Anna replied.  “Those healing spells of yours are pretty good, though.  Do the rest of your people have them?”

“They do.”

“Then we can wait a hot minute, can’t we?”

“I suppose we can.”

“Good, because I have some questions…”

Leon steeled himself for Anna’s barrage of questions, and he wasn’t disappointed.  In the five minutes it took for a water dragon to erupt out of the swamp and deposit a furious Maia onto their raft, Leon had barely managed to get a word in edgewise as Anna asked question after question, thought out loud, and in general, vented over this experience.  She seemed to relax more and more with every word she spoke, though, so Leon didn’t push to interrupt.  He just took this time to organize his thoughts as much as he could.

When Maia appeared, though, he spent a good few minutes calming her down and making sure she understood that the danger had passed.  She wasn’t that thrilled that she missed all of the excitement, but what was done was done.

She was at least able to refine the raft a little, curling the sides up until it resembled a proper boat and ensuring that no one was in any danger of sliding off into the swamp.  She also took over driving the raft toward the convoy, leaving Leon free to answer as many of Anna’s questions as he could.

He kept his explanation fairly light on details since he knew that he’d have to go over most of this again with Helen and have to explain what had happened out in the swamps to the rest of his family and retinue, but he did what he could to immediately alleviate some of Anna’s burning curiosity.

He told her about Xaphan first, and to his surprise, she didn’t seem all that shocked or offended at the idea that he’d partnered with a demon.

“… Partnerships with demons isn’t exactly uncommon in the Empires,” she explained.  “It’s not exactly encouraged, and there are pretty strict rules against blood sacrifice, so most of the more unsavory parts of being aligned with a demon are still illegal, but, at least in the Sacred Golden Empire, having some light, water, and earth demons contracted with our ruling class is partially responsible for our great command of nature magic.”

“That’s… surprising,” Leon whispered.

“I can imagine,” Anna responded.  “The Empires are powerful, and they’re… civilized.  Many of the outer Kingdoms are too weak to enforce their rules, and are too steeped in superstition to recognize the good that humans and demons can affect if they work together.”

[Hmmm, I think I like this one,] Xaphan murmured from Leon’s soul realm.

Anna continued, “That such a powerful demon is in your corner is, if anything, an encouragement to me.  Granted, I don’t have much experience with demonology, but I’m not going to judge you.  From the sounds of it, you’ve needed that power before, and it certainly came in handy today.  How could I be angry that you had the power to save our lives?”

Leon nodded in understanding, though he was still reeling a bit from shock.  If contracts with demons weren’t illegal in the Four Empires, then could he spend more time researching the connection that his contract with Xaphan had forged between them?  Could he and Xaphan devote more overt time to growing their respective powers?

He couldn’t say right now, but he was excited to find out.

With that tangent taken care of, Leon proceeded with his explanation of the day’s events, and their implications.  He and Xaphan didn’t need to confirm with each other to be certain that this attack was the work of Amon; the demonic power used by the vampires had been familiar enough to both for that to be apparent.

Amon had made another move against him and Xaphan, and it had nearly succeeded.  It seemed that Xaphan’s claims that Amon had better things to do than retaliate against them for the exposure of his channeler were a little inaccurate, to say the least.

“Is this going to be a more frequent occurrence?” Anna asked, her voice sounding almost anticipatory than anything.

“You sound excited at the idea,” Leon observed.

Anna flashed him a wry smile.  “I’m a hunter.  Fighting exotic creatures does excite me.  I’m not too fond of vampires and I try to exterminate them whenever I can.”

She continued to sound upbeat, but Leon detected a slight undercurrent of bitterness to her voice.  He almost wanted to call her out on it, but decided against it.  He wasn’t sure what he was hearing, anyway, and if she didn’t want to explain it, then he wasn’t going to pry.

Anna continued, “Monsters born of man are typically the most exhilarating opponents to face off against.  Werewolves, vampires, mad mages, they’re all the most personally rewarding to bring down, I’ve found.”

“Gone on many hunts against such beings?” Leon inquired.

“A few,” Anna stated in what Leon suspected to be an understatement.  Before she could elaborate, or Leon continue with his explanation, Anshu began to stir.  At almost the same time, Helen began murmuring and turning over in a clear indication that she was about to wake up.  Alix was still out of it, but Leon didn’t hold that against her—the other two were fifth-tier, while she was only fourth.

As Leon and Anna helped Helen and Anshu to wake up and get their bearings, the force that left the Heaven’s Eye convoy finally met up with them, and then turned around to escort them back to the ships.

Leon was rather determined not to leave the convoy again until they reached the Ilian Empire.  A group of three seventh-tier vampires was a powerful force to throw against them all on their own, let alone the rest of the vampires that had joined the attack, but he couldn’t possibly imagine that it was all that Amon could wrangle together.  He could easily imagine that next time it might be three eighth-tier vampires, or maybe even something worse.

Regardless, it was clear that Amon hadn’t forgotten them, and there could easily be a follow-up launched against them if they weren’t careful.  Better to travel in the largest group they could until they reached the safety—at least, Leon hoped—of their destination.

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“… and that’s about what happened,” Leon finished narrating, his family and retinue listening with rapt attention as he concluded his story of what had happened earlier that day.  He hoped this was the last time he’d have to tell this story, at least for a while; he’d gone over it with Anna, then with Helen, Anshu, and Alix when they woke up, then again with Emilie and Damien Makedon upon arriving at the convoy, and then again with the rest of his retinue and family.  He was quite tired of talking, by this point.

No one spoke in the immediate aftermath of his story, almost as if no one quite knew what to say.  Elise and Valeria, however, had each taken one of Leon’s hands at different points during his retelling, and now seemed almost silently determined not to let go of him for a while.  Maia, meanwhile, had made it clear enough that she wasn’t going to leave Leon alone for a while, though she wasn’t trying to physically inhabit the same space as he was like the other two were.

“That was… quite the story,” Marcus eventually whispered, breaking the silence that had fallen over the small lounge on the yacht that they’d all gathered in.  “If it had come from anyone else, or if I hadn’t felt the power radiating from that fight all the way over here, then I might’ve thought the person telling that story a liar…”

“We don’t doubt you, though,” Alcander cut in, and Marcus nodded in agreement.  “If anything, this just underscores how important our training has to be from here on out.  Even if we were there, we wouldn’t have been anything other than a ball and chain around your ankles.  We’re only fourth-tier; you’re eighth-tier.  We can’t do anything other than slow you down…”

Leon wanted to object, but what Alcander was saying wasn’t wrong.  The enemies that he was facing completely outmatched anything that his retinue could bring to bear.  Only Maia was strong enough to stand against vampires like this in the same way he was able to.

That had to change.

When Leon imagined heading into the Four Empires, he’d thought that one of his biggest priorities would be to hunt down any potential legacies that the Thunderbird Clan may have left behind, to claim for his own.

Now, however, he realized that his priority had to be elsewhere.  Even if there was extreme power just waiting to be claimed at the sites that he was intending to visit from Nestor’s map, he could always compensate for not having them.  There was always more power he could gain by his own merits rather than seeking to loot it from the corpse of the Thunderbird Clan.

His retinue needed his attention more.  If he was to be a proper King, then he couldn’t rely only upon the strength of his own arms, and occasionally recruiting some powerful person as he advanced through the tiers.  He couldn’t afford to leave behind valuable talent like Marcus and Alcander.  If he had to pursue his own goals a little slower, or even put them off indefinitely to ensure that his retinue wasn’t left behind, then so be it.  That was a decision that he had to make as their leader.

None of his retainers could’ve stood with him against those vampires.  None of his retainers were able to stand with him of their own power against Jormun.  None of his retainers could’ve helped him against Nestor during his expedition to the dead man’s lab.  If he’d been forced to confront Justin before the man had lost his powers, none of his retinue could’ve helped him.

There would be more enemies, and he didn’t want to stand against them alone.  He didn’t even want to stand against them with just Maia and Xaphan at his side.  He wanted to have his whole damned retinue with him, supporting him and ensuring his victory.

It seemed that Alix could read the emotions on his face, because as the room fell into silence, she quietly said, “We’re with you, though, Leon.  Or at least, I am.  This isn’t the first time that Amon has sent his bloodsucking goons after us, and it won’t be the last.  The next time he does, I’m going to kick their fucking teeth in!”

Leon couldn’t help but chuckle as Alix slowly worked up more and more passion.  He hoped she could maintain that enthusiasm, because she’d need it.  As far as he was concerned, their leisurely cruise down to the Ilian Empire was over.  From now on, they’d have to devote as much of their time as possible to training.  He couldn’t say when Amon might strike again, but it would most certainly be before they were ready.  It was his responsibility to ensure that they were as ready as they could be.  If they weren’t, then he might start losing retainers before they even reached the Nexus, and that idea wasn’t something he could abide.

On a more personal note, he felt the Great Black Dragon’s power when he struck down those vampires.  He almost thought he was mistaken, but he remembered the edge of his blade having black flame.  He needed to look into that more, too, and see if it was at all possible to coax that power out more often.  It was extremely potent, and if he could call upon it as easily as he could the Thunderbird’s lightning… well, the Great Black Dragon might not be so happy, but at this point, Leon couldn’t care less.  If anything, right now, the fact that the Great Black Dragon was denying him that power only made him want to unlock it even more.

Quietly, he gripped Elise and Valeria’s hands with a bit more strength.  They all had much to do, and they needed to start immediately.

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Almost five months had passed since they’d left Ariminium.  They’d had some adventures, gotten into trouble, and almost died.  But the convoy had finally come within sight of one of the most powerful nations on Aeterna.

More specifically, they’d reached the final stretch of this leg of their journey, the river that led out of the Ilumerian Wetlands and into the Empire proper.  The environment around them was slowly getting drier and less densely wooded, there were more and more ships around carrying goods to and from the Imperial heartlands, and with his magic senses, Leon could see the land filling up with more and more homesteads.

But most eye-catchingly, especially to Leon as he stood on the prow of the yacht with his family close by, the moon high in the sky, was the orange glow in the distance.  It was so bright that even here, miles and miles away from its source, the stars struggled to be seen.  Only the brightest stars in the sky could be seen through all of that light pollution.

And with his magic senses, Leon could see what was causing it.

Less than a day’s journey upriver was a city—a proper city, but the likes of which none of them had ever truly seen before.  Its size was something that they hadn’t seen since leaving the Cortuban Alliance, possessing a population of at least a quarter million by Leon’s estimate, but that wasn’t all.  It was a marvelous place, an obviously planned settlement built in a grid layout, with expensive, high-class homes on the outskirts, affluent shops to service their inhabitants all around, and with much taller buildings in the city’s core.  There, ten-story-plus buildings were the norm, built of golden metal and black, perfectly reflective glass, positively glowing with magic power to Leon’s magic senses, the enchantments wrought within them more extensive than any he’d sensed before in a civilian building.

And there were so many of them, rising up from the ground like the fingers of buried golden giants, grasping at the heavens.

The people living in that city, despite being on the periphery of the Ilian Empire, almost as far away from the state’s center of power as they could be without leaving the Empire, still lived with a quality of life that was unmatched in any of the Kingdoms in the northwest.

Finally, after so long, they had reached the Ilian Empire.

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