“All right, what is it?” Narses asked in annoyance as he and Leon re-entered the observation room.

Leon, before answering, glanced out through the enchanted glass and noted that Valentina at least didn’t look particularly bored anymore, but neither did she look anything other than relaxed.  They’d only been questioning her for about twenty minutes, but she looked utterly unfazed by anything Narses had said.

“I have an idea for how this interrogation can play out,” Leon explained as he turned his attention back to Narses.  “I was hoping you’d let me take point from here on out.”

“You want to take the lead?” Narses asked skeptically.  “That might not be the best thing to do given your current relationship with the Director…”

“Given that Valentina attacked you, I don’t think you heading in there is all that advised, either.  Conflicts of interest and all that…”

“True,” Narses conceded.  “I did have to pull some strings to get in there with her.  But what is this idea that you have?  Explain it to me, and if I like it, I’ll send you in there…”

---

Valentina’s eyes turned to Leon as he walked back into the cell, her demeanor having slipped back into one of obvious boredom as he’d explained his idea to Narses.

Leon met her gaze without hesitation, but instead of sitting down at the table and immediately launching into his pitch, he instead began to pace around the room, examining it thoroughly.  For the most part, he focused on the enchantments he could sense flowing through the walls, but he also paid some attention to the sheer starkness of the cell in contrast to her rather rustic, but still rather luxurious in its own way manor.

He was right about to address her when Xaphan finally spoke up about what he was about to do.

[Leon, you’d better not make any promises on my behalf…] Xaphan warned him.

[I’ll make whatever promises I need to in order to defeat Amon,] Leon responded.  [Just roll with me for a while on this one, we’ll get through it together.]

[With your record?  That’s about as reassuring as a tidaryk declaring that they can handle a carenilorian.]

[I have no idea what any of that means.]

[Unfortunately, we’re reliant on your ignorance, aren’t we?  We’re fucked.]

With that, Xaphan went silent, and Leon, after putting in the titanic effort required to resist rolling his eyes, finally managed to refocus on Valentina.

“It’s quite the slide in quality, being in here,” he observed.  “I saw your manor.  Not exactly to my tastes, but it was much more comfortable than this…”

Valentina didn’t say a word, but he could see her subtly tracking him throughout the room, keeping an eye on him without moving her head too much using the mirrored side of the one-way glass.  Still, he was able to see the slight tightening around her eyes and mouth, and he heard the momentary hitch in her breathing.

“Do you miss those creature comforts?” Leon asked.  “Personally, I could live out in the forest in little more than a shack if I have to, but someone in your position might feel different.”

He continued to pace, and she continued to track him and remain silent.

“Where are you from, Valentina?  Your file said Beloran.  I’ve never been there, myself.  Is it beautiful?  I’ve heard very little about the place.  I assume that your manor was built in Beloran style?  It has some appeal, I have to admit.”

Leon rambled on, not so much expecting Valentina to respond as he was just poking at her defenses, getting her prepped for his main assault.

“I have to admire this cell, though.  I understand that this might be a bit insensitive given your circumstances, but as an enchanter, I just can’t help myself.  I’ve never seen this kind of anti-magic used before.  I mean, back where I come from, they use manacles and chains that can interfere with a mage’s ability to use magic, but this kind of anti-magic field wasn’t something I thought anyone in the Empires could set up.  It’s truly an astounding piece of magical engineering…”

“It is…” Valentina muttered in agreement.

Leon smiled in response, and when he made eye contact with her, he found her smiling at him with something resembling pride.  Given her sharp and gaunt features, she looked downright predatory given how she angled her head and narrowed her eyes.

“Is it your work?” Leon asked, happy that she was finally speaking.

Valentina took a deep breath, then nodded in confirmation.

“It’s wonderful to behold,” Leon remarked as he fought to contain how amusing he found it to be that she was being restrained with her own enchantment work.  “It’s quite efficient, too.  Spectacular, simply spectacular.  I’ll have to take some notes before we leave.  How long ago did you work on this?”

Valentina stared at him for a long moment before answering, “About sixty years ago.”

“Sixty years, huh?  Not that long in the grand scheme of things.  It’s still more than long enough that I would’ve assumed this kind of enchantment would’ve permeated throughout the entire Ilian Empire, at least, but this is the first I’ve seen it.”

“It’s based on some pieces of Sky Devil magic that we reverse-engineered,” Valentina explained.  “We don’t fully understand the principles behind it, but we could reproduce it on a relatively small scale.  This place, for all your praise, is about all that Heaven’s Eye is capable of.  The Empires likely have similar facilities, but this ‘anti-magic’ is expensive and not as efficient as you seem to think.  They’re not cost-effective.”

“That’s surprising criticism,” Leon noted.  “Are you not happy with what you managed to accomplish?  After all, even this much is still quite the accomplishment…”

Valentina went quiet again, and Leon was momentarily nervous that she was going to refuse to answer his question.  However, after what seemed to be some intense thinking, she eventually said, “That was before.  After I… forged my contract with my patron, I had to reprioritize my ambitions.  I re-specialized from anti-magic enchantments to blood magic.”

“Was there anything in particular that you were trying to accomplish?” Leon asked.

Valentina shrugged.  Leon lightly frowned, having asked in earnest.  Sixty years was before the Director had started working with the vampires, as far as he was aware, which meant that the vampires had been operating within Heaven’s Eye for longer than he’d admitted to Leon.  And whether or not the Director was aware of that, he found that concerning.

Leon contemplated that for a moment before launching into something a little more immediately relevant.  “How did you get mixed up in all of this, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Valentina sighed again, but this time, she actually answered him, to his delight.  “I… sought out the vampires in a… a moment of weakness.”  She paused for a second and stared at her reflection in the one-way glass.

Leon nodded and stopped pacing, choosing instead to stand between her and the glass.  Her eyes drifted upward to meet his, and he said, “I forged my contract seeking power.  I was weak at the time, and homeless, and saw signing a demonic contract as an easy way to gain power.  I won’t lie, Xaphan’s power has come in handy quite a few times, but it wasn’t quite what I imagined.”

“They never are, are they?” Valentina commiserated.  “You were lucky, it seems.  Xaphan seems to abhor human sacrifice.”

“You know him that well, do you?”

“I was… told.  By my patron.”

“Amon?”

Valentina didn’t answer, but this time, from the desperate way she looked at him, Leon figured that she simply couldn’t, at least not without suffering severe consequences.  But he already knew that Amon was behind this.  That demon had its hooks too deeply into this plane and was too personally invested in Xaphan’s death for it to be anyone else.

“I have a question that I hope you can answer, then,” Leon said.  “It’s fine if you can’t, but I’m hoping you can.”

Valentina’s expression quickly slid back into a stoic smile, which Leon took as her allowing him to continue.

“I’ve been dogged by Amon’s vampires for a long time,” Leon explained.  “If you had gone north twelve or thirteen years ago, you could’ve ended me with a thought, or a casual wave of your hand.  There were a few powerful vampires that Amon sent after me, of course, but given the force he seems to command on this plane, I would’ve thought he’d send more.  If he wanted Xaphan dead so badly that he invested into a large vampiric network on this plane, then why have his minions come at me piecemeal?”

Valentina’s smile turned to a light frown.  “Demonic contracts aren’t all the same,” she explained.  “I can only speak to what my patron demanded of me, not what was demanded of others.  But what I understand is that contracts are just that: contracts.  They spell out specific terms and conditions in return for power.  Just as your patron doesn’t demand you make human sacrifices, others can have their own terms.

“When you look at it like this, it’s easy to understand why a demon would find it easier to control weaker mages and force them to do the demon’s bidding—these weaker mages will usually agree to contracts with harsher stipulations, oftentimes being little more than slaves to their patron.”

“But that wasn’t you?” Leon asked.

Valentina smiled again.  “I was a little savvier in my negotiations.  I am only required to ‘support’ other vampires my patron sends after an enemy.  I’m not required to fight them for my patron, and my patron can’t force me to do so.”

“Can’t your patron just break the contract?  Wouldn’t that kill you?”

“Possibly, sure,” Valentina conceded.  “However, consider how much time and effort and power a demon will invest into a person.  Think of my power and position.  It’s rarely as simple as ‘do what I want or die’, and more trying to get your pieces to do what you want without being forced to destroy them.  If my patron were to get rid of me, then he’d lose out on what I can offer and all of the power he’d invested into me.  Go ask an arrogant investor how willing they are to give up on investment.”

“Is that not a concern now?  Isn’t he going to lose you right here?”

“That depends,” Valentina said with a smirk.  “Demons can be impatient, arrogant, and petulant, and some might’ve immediately killed me off for getting captured.  My patron has a sword over my neck and I’m just waiting for it to fall.  As for why it hasn’t yet, I can’t say.”

“Why wait so quietly, then?” Leon asked.  “I can offer you a way out, potentially.  Break your contract with Amon and sign on with Xaphan instead.  Work with me instead of against, and you might just accomplish what you wanted when you signed on with Amon in the first place.  What was your ambition, by the way?”

Valentina sighed, then with the resigned tone of one who’d already accepted that this was her end, explained, “I’m a researcher.  An alchemist and an enchanter.  A healer and an artisan—and much more besides.  It’s rare that I’ve ever found a field of study that I didn’t want to at least learn the basics of, but there’s only so much time in the day, isn’t there?”

Leon smiled and nodded, finding some common ground in that particular gripe.  It had taken him ten years of dedicated study to gain even some modest skill in blacksmithing, while he’d studied enchanting as much as he could nearly all his life.  There was so much more that he wanted to learn that after reaching the eighth-tier, he’d barely ever slept.  He wasn’t entirely sure why Valentina had launched into this non-sequitur, though.  Hells, he was already disappointed that she’d barely reacted to his offer.

“But,” Valentina continued, “Apotheosis represented a way out of that dilemma for me.  Immortality.  Such a concept holds great appeal for one like me who constantly feels like she’s running out of time.  I reached the fifth-tier myself.  I needed some assistance from others in my social circle to reach the sixth.  I knew in my heart that I would likely never reach the seventh.  So I went looking for someone who might help—a process that wasn’t easy given how unwilling I was to stop my studies and projects.

“Eventually, though, that search bore some fruit.  I failed many times, but those failures eventually led some vampires to contact me and make an offer.  I initially refused, but after some years without success or progress, I contacted them again.  And this time, I accepted their offer.  I made a contract with my current patron and did things that I don’t look back on fondly.  But I gained the power I sought, and bought myself a great deal of time.”

Leon nodded.  He would want specifics later, but for now, this was a good start.  “Is that all you wanted, then?  To achieve Apotheosis so that you could further your studies without ever having to end?”

“I want to know everything, Leon Raime.  I would move mountains if there was even a scrap of knowledge in it for me.”

“Really?” Leon said.  He almost brought up the Thunderbird Clan and the knowledge he’d taken from the archives beneath Teira, but he remembered Narses was still in the observation room.

‘Better to use something else as a bribe,’ he thought.

“Xaphan can give you power and knowledge,” Leon said.  “But more than that, he can give you freedom from certain death.”

“Do you have the power to guarantee that, Leon Raime?”

“I do.  By word or by sword, I can guarantee it.”

“You’d fight for me?  I’ve tried to have you killed before.  I’ve kidnapped your people before…”

Leon’s smile thinned greatly.  “Oh, we’re going to be revisiting those admissions later, but they don’t change my offer.  Make no mistake, however, I’m not asking you to join my retinue.  All I’m saying is that, in my experience, being affiliated with me leads to a longer life expectancy than being affiliated with my enemies.  And if you’re with me, then we can both substantially profit.”

Valentina leaned back in her seat and sighed as she seriously regarded Leon.

Leon just sat there, drinking in her attention and projecting an air of confidence and power.

After several long seconds, Valentina said, “Let’s go over the precise details of what shifting my contract to Xaphan might require…”

---

Leon was madly grinning as he walked back into the observation room, but he paused a moment as he noticed Narses still staring at Valentina through the one-way glass and the two Heaven’s Eye guards walking out into the hallway and closing the door behind them.

Before he could say anything, Narses said, “Do you trust her?”

“Not in the slightest,” Leon replied, glad to see in his demeanor that Narses wasn’t angry.

Valentina hadn’t accepted his offer, but after liaising with Xaphan a bit and offering up a framework for the magical requirements to cut her contract with Amon and sign one with him, she’d at least not turned him down.  Leon felt quite good that she’d eventually accept his offer—assuming Amon didn’t fry her to a crisp, first.

At the same time, she’d given him some good intel on a couple of nearby vampire cells—including one that coordinated with some werewolves out in the Ilumerian Wetlands.

He was grateful that Amon didn’t seem to be paying that much attention to her, and when he’d brought it up, she’d merely said that her patron had many vampires contracted to him throughout the universe, and that she was rarely actively monitored.  Perhaps that was why she was a little more willing to speak, but Leon couldn’t say.  It seemed to him, however, that if she had just a little more time to think, then she’d be on his side.

He wondered what having her with him might do for him.  By all accounts, she was a highly capable enchanter, and one that, as of late, had specialized in fields that he’d never dabbled much—blood magic in particular.  He would never have her in his retinue, of course, but as a researcher and enchanter in his faction was worth considering.

Bringing him back to the conversation at hand, Narses said to him, “I don’t trust her, either.  But I didn’t get the impression that she was lying at all during your little chat.  I’ll have my people run down the leads she’s given us.”

With a nod, Leon responded, “One stuck out for me…”

“Oh?  Which one?”

“That one small vampire cell she mentioned operating within the Screeching Desert piqued my interest.  It just so happens that that desert is right next to the Cortuban Alliance, and I ran into something rather interesting the last time I was in the Alliance…”

Leon quickly filled Narses in on the channeler he’d discovered beneath the main arena in the Cortuban Alliance’s capital city.

“That’s interesting,” Narses whispered.  “I’ll give that one priority.  Vampires seem to be operating everywhere these days…”

“I kind of figure that, while it seems that way, it’s more just the fact that we’re becoming aware of them.  They were always here, we’re only now seeing them.”

Narses scowled.  “True.  I just don’t like how much it’s exposed about Heaven’s Eye.”

Leon nodded in understanding.  “Find anything from that hand that the Lord Protector gave me?”

“It belonged to a vampire caught by the Ilian Empire just a few months ago.  Fairly weak and from a small cell.  Otherwise useless for us.”

“Damn,” Leon muttered.  Given the engine Anastasios had given him at the same time, it seemed clear to him now that the hand was meant only as a statement of intent rather than for any practical purpose.  After a few moments of silence, Leon asked, “Will you be briefing the Director on all of this?”

“Gods no.  Or, not yet, anyway.  I need to verify a few things about that shit sack Rufus, first.  If the Chief of Magical Research and Development is in bed with vampires—and it’s looking more and more like he is—then we have to be prepared to deal with him.  Given what’s happened these past six months, I’m not sure the Director would allow Rufus to be touched, no matter what he claims he’s doing.”

“We’ll deal with him, one way or another.”

Narses smiled and nodded.  “Of course we will, Leon Raime.  And once all’s said and done, we’ll DRINK!”  Narses threw his head back and laughed in a manner most maniacal, but Leon could tell it was mostly just a venting of emotion.  He had to admit, though, that it was good to see Narses acting just a little more like he’d been back at his party before the expedition north.

Silence settled around them, and both stared through the window at Valentina, who’d mostly gone back to leaning back in her chair looking bored.  However, Leon noted the way her eyes flitted around the room and could tell that she was thinking quite hard about something, and a curious thing suddenly occurred to him.

Breaking their brief silence, Leon observed, “You seem quite fine with me trying to reel Valentina in.  Would you mind if I ask why?  Didn’t she attack you in your own home?”

Narses scowled again, then shrugged lightly and said, “She was with the party, but never actually attacked me.  She actually surrendered once I killed the rest of the vampires she was with.  From the way they acted, I think they expected her to take a more active role in the assault than she did, which I suspect is why they tried in the first place.  She was the only one among them stronger than the seventh-tier, and if she weren’t with them, I’m not sure they would’ve been so bold as to attack my home.”

Leon frowned in thought and nodded.  That tracked pretty well with his impression of Valentina so far.  A fighter she didn’t seem to be, and while she had power, that wouldn’t help much against a peer.  He wondered if the reason she didn’t fight against Narses was because she knew she couldn’t win, or if she simply didn’t want to try.  Having power was not the same as having the will to use it.

He supposed whether or not he recruited Valentina into his slowly-growing Kingdom would depend on the answer he eventually got to that question.  She’d never be a part of his retinue, but it would be a waste to lose her skills when it wasn’t necessary to do so.

After another moment of silence as Leon turned over that small observation in his head, he and Narses departed the prison, and the guards took to their posts again.

For now, Leon had to wait while Narses ran down those leads and as Valentina mulled over his offer.  He also had to get Xaphan on board with the offer if she accepted, but he thought that he might just be able to do so.  But at least for a little while, he thought that he might just have a few days to rest, relax, and prepare for the next moves he and his side would make.  Rufus, he figured, had the makings of a powerful enemy, but he thought that if they moved quickly and boldly enough, then they might just be able to take him off the board entirely.

—-

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