Above the Rajah’s palace in Kaia, Leon’s power warped the air and pressed down upon the palace’s wards.  Even though he couldn’t see into the palace and examine the wards himself, just based on how his power interacted with them and how they responded to his power, he knew what they were and how they were likely designed.

Several of the more fortified towers around the palace he guessed acted as locus points for the wards, where most of the actual enchantments had been inscribed.  He tightened his power around those towers.

The towers shook under the titanic pressure.  The magic lanterns within flickered and died as lightning flashed in the sky above.  One tower was crushed, another splintered at the base and fell, and a third Leon simply knocked over as he would a tower of sand with an errant wave of his hand.  The wards protecting the palace weakened substantially, and Leon was confident he could brute-force the rest.

He took a deep breath and transformed back into his human body just as ballista bolts flew past him.  He’d sensed them being launched, but the wind kicked up by his storm was so powerful that accuracy was impossible; the bolts missed him with no effort on his part to avoid them.  The Lance-like weapons on top of the city’s towers, on the other hand, slowly turned in his direction, and he paused in his assault upon the palace.

A dozen bolts of lightning fell upon one Lance before it could fire, slagging the metal machine completely.  His eyes swept across the city toward the next, and every elephant between the towers was struck by another bolt, flash-frying the beasts and the weapons and crew they carried.  The second tower fell just as magic power was poured into the Lance, and the weapon exploded as it still attempted to fire even as its barrel slagged.  A shot from a third tower went wide over Leon’s shoulder, but it was more than close enough for him to see that it was a mass of molten stone about as powerful as a Flame Lance from the Bull Kingdom.  Leon smiled grimly and hit that tower with three dozen bolts of lightning, shattering it down to its foundation and leaving everything else as little more than ash and blackened metal.

No other Lance towers were in range, and Leon tried to refocus on the tower, but hundreds of mages took to the sky—wearing, he realized, the latest generation of flight belts that he’d designed for Heaven’s Eye.  Feeling a little personally insulted, he drew Iron Pride, then swept it below him, and a hundred mages fell, lightning bolts rendering them charred corpses.  He’d targeted the stronger mages, and the weaker mages not hit by lightning were caught in the shockwave from the thunder, and still died or were knocked unconscious.

Leon scanned the city for further distractions, but with the storm intensifying from his power, killing intent, and worsening mood, those protectors of Kaia still outside were more preoccupied with seeking shelter than contesting his actions.

So, back to the palace he turned.

The wards were barely operational now, as evidenced by the rainwater pouring through the halls and small streets of the palace complex—the enchantments meant to channel and redirect rain into sewers and drains having completely failed.  Leon gathered his power and after a moment, let it spill forth, crashing upon the remaining protections that the palace yet maintained.

And in a dramatic flash of light, the wards shattered.  The sounds from within the palace, till now muffled, joined the cacophony raised by the rain, thunder, screaming city residents, and terrified animals that already filled the air.  Leon was able to parse through almost all of it and heard from the large central building capped with a huge, gilded, flower bulb-shaped dome, which sparkled with every flash of lightning that illuminated the city, the cries of desperate men, though they were speaking in one of several common Indradian languages that he didn’t understand.

Reasoning based on how desperate they seemed to be and the splendor of the building their cries were coming from, he identified it as the place where he would find the Rajah.

Leon clenched his fist, his power then wrapping around the base of the gilded dome.  The palace complex in its entirety shook, innumerable cracks reaching up from the palace’s foundations.  The screaming from within intensified as some of the smaller and more isolated halls collapsed.  The dome shuddered and the palace’s pale yellow stone fractured and fell away; the walls around the dome partially collapsed—Leon sensed quite a few earth mages using their power to desperately keep the building as a whole from being shaken apart—but the dome stayed right where it was, held aloft by nothing more than Leon’s tenth-tier power.

With a dismissive snarl, Leon hurled the dome away, exposing all beneath it to the wrath of the storm above—to his wrath.  He didn’t throw the gilded dome far, and it crashed down upon one of the larger buildings of the complex, causing the dome to almost disintegrate on contact and the other building completely crumble under the force of its landing.  Leon hardly noticed, however, as the sight of five hundred of the finest mages in the Indra Raj was revealed to him.

With hardly a second to spare, magic began flying upward—lances of light, spikes of stone and ice, razor-sharp wind, fireballs, and even a few golden lightning bolts.  One particularly interesting seventh-tier mage conjured from his arm a dozen tendrils of darkness that reached upward to swat at Leon’s hovering form.

But Leon paid little heed to any of it, save for the attacks from the few lightning mages in the Rajah’s court—he struck them with bolts of silver-blue lightning, sending them crumpling to the floor as little more than vaguely-human shaped piles of ash.  Instead, he focused almost entirely on the sole eighth-tier mage of the bunch.

The Rajah.

He was dressed in a gorgeous coat of pale yellow silk and clean white brocade that was accumulating dust stains from the collapsing palace.  The coat was trimmed with gold and woven into the brocade with gold thread were flowers and plants important to the Raj—spices, Leon presumed.  In the center of every golden flower in the brocade were glittering gemstones of every color.  Upon the man’s head was an elaborate crown that covered almost his entire head, though it left his face open.  Shaped almost like a helmet, the golden crown was decorated with circular and floral patterns, and much like his brocade, gemstones had been snugly embedded into the center of every one of the crown’s flower patterns.

The Rajah himself cut a less impressive figure.  He wasn’t ugly, but his features were softer than Leon had been expecting.  He was clean-shaven, with olive-toned skin that was only a little paler than most of the others in the chamber, and a rather thin and slight build.  His eyes, however, burned with defiance as he did his best to overpower the wind of Leon’s storm and attack with blades of compressed air—to no avail.

Leon zeroed in on his target, and his titanic power crashed down upon the entire group.  Hundreds of mages were forced to their knees and their attempts to stop him fizzled out under the pressure of his power.  Leon then wrapped a few threads of power around the Rajah and effortlessly lifted him into the air.  He shot upward, dragging the Rajah behind him, and plunged into the black storm clouds above.

The Rajah was buffeted by wind, blinded by lightning, deafened by thunder, and soaked by rain and the clouds themselves.  But thousands of feet above, when he and Leon pierced through the final layer of storm clouds to hover in bright sunlight, he recovered quickly.

“What… is this?!” he had the wherewithal to demand in Aeternan common as he vainly struggled against Leon’s power restraining and holding him above the sea of black clouds below them.

Leon hovered closer, letting his power compress his captive from all sides and his killing intent destroyed all willingness of the man to resist him.  It worked as the Rajah’s attempts to free himself went from spirited to merely token, and his expression fell from defiant to barely concealed terror.

“Let’s have a chat…” Leon whispered dangerously as he leaned in closer.  He traced the man’s chin with a finger until he hooked his fingertip beneath the Rajah’s crown.  He hardly needed much strength to pull the crown right off the Rajah, despite the snug fit, and let it fall into the clouds lapping at their feet.

He smiled inwardly as the Rajah stared back at him, his attempts to restrain his terror failing as the symbolism of what Leon had just done hit him.

“Do you know who I am?” Leon asked as the clouds below rippled from a fresh wave of lightning and thunder.

The Rajah mutely nodded, his eyes drifting from Leon for only just long enough to glance below.  Leon smiled.  He hadn’t been expecting that response, but he was fine with not having to introduce himself.

“Anshu Bodhi Rahulani…” Leon whispered.  “Where is he?”

---

The cuffs dug deeper into Anshu’s wrists, but he didn’t care.  The cell hadn’t stopped shaking, and it had gone on for long enough that whatever was happening was not something he ought to dismiss.  Something was going on, and some small part of him dared to hope that it might benefit him in some way.

He couldn’t do much more than tug at his chains, however, as the powerful enchantments of his cell kept him powerless.  More than that, his torturers had made sure that the wounds he sustained before and after the battle he’d lost hadn’t healed properly, so pain burned within him no matter what he did.

But he ignored that as his cell shook once more, dust raining upon him from the ceiling.  If he held his breath and strained his ears, then he could hear the faintest sounds of… something outside, but it was indistinct.

‘Shouting, maybe?’ he wondered.

His heart beat faster as yet another tremor shook his cell, and any question about what was happening outside of his cell was put to rest; it was definitely screaming, and the cause was getting closer.

Loud bangs could be heard, muffled by distance and the prison itself.  There was something familiar in those bangs—in those peals of thunder—but he clamped down on the part of him that connected those dots.

‘Why would he come for me?’ Anshu reasoned.  ‘I abandoned him.  I lost.  What use would Leon have for a worthless smuggler?’

His cell shook again, and this time, came with a clap of thunder loud enough to shake off the dust accumulating on his shoulders.

‘He doesn’t need me to command Silver Spear,’ Anshu continued reasoning with himself.  ‘He has thousands of men more worthy than me for that.’

He was alone.  Such was the fate for those who lost.  The Rajah would keep him alive only as long as he wished, and then Anshu would be expelled from the land of the living.  It was a terrible thing, to live at the whim of his greatest enemy, but Anshu had accepted it.

And he certainly wasn’t going to believe that anything was going to free him, for if he was wrong, it would crush him.  He would give in fully to despair and seek any way he might be able to deny the Rajah a satisfying execution.  Ending his life on his own terms would be his one last act of defiance, and it wouldn’t accomplish anything at all.

The cell shook again; thunder echoed off the walls, the stench of ozone reached Anshu’s nose, and the screaming outside stopped.  His cell door normally fit flush with the wall, ensuring he couldn’t see through any cracks.  No light was allowed to reach him in his cell.

The tremors, however, had been strong enough to lightly crack the walls and damage the door enough that a thin sliver of light crept in past the hinges.  That light shone for only a moment before someone stepped in front of it, blocking it from entering Anshu’s cell.

While he did his best to control himself, Anshu still felt terrible disappointment.  For a moment, he’d seen light, and then surely a guard or someone had stepped in front of it to keep him feeling hope.

And then the door was torn away from the wall as if by the hand of some wrathful giant, revealing a male figure framed by a halo of light standing in the doorway.  Anshu couldn’t see any of his features, but in the figure’s hand was a longsword sparkling with silver-blue lightning.

His jaw dropped and tears erupted from his eyes.  Any resistance he had to believing what was happening vanished.

Leon had come.  The Thunder King had come.

Anshu smiled, then collapsed into himself.  For so long he had forced himself to stay as strong as could be, to deny his torturers the delight of having him scream, to maintain his defiance even at the cost of longer time spent under the knife or upon the rack.  All it took was one glimpse of Leon, however, and all his hope returned.  He relaxed, and all that he’d been subjected to hit him at once.  Any energy his body had left was expended, and he closed his eyes, consigning himself to the land of dreams.

---

Upon a stone mountain overlooking the southern coast of Aeterna, Leon waited.  The environment was beautiful, with enormous mountains that seemed to sprout from the ground like pillars before tapering slightly at the top.  It was clear from whence the Indradians had been inspired to build their temples.

Surrounding the mountains were storm-battered jungles and sunbaked beaches.  Cutting through the thick trees was a dense river system upon which many powerful cities had been built.  These cities, separated from each other by the thick jungles, were the Free Cities of the Tam to the south of the Indra Raj.

‘Maia’s father came from one of these cities,’ Leon silently noted.  ‘Chola, wasn’t it?  Maybe I’ll bring her here if she cares enough to visit.’

Leon wasn’t waiting near any of those cities, however.  Instead, he’d found a nice quiet mountain to wait upon and then posted up on a soft, mossy boulder.  Not too far away hovered the Rajah, looking quite worse for wear.  After seeing how roughly Anshu had been treated, Leon hadn’t been too gentle in dragging the Rajah along with them, though he didn’t otherwise treat the man poorly.  That would be for Anshu to do, Leon reasoned.

As for Anshu, he rested not too far away in a patch of soft grass, covered in powerful healing spells that knit together his rent skin and mended shattered bone.  His aura was weak and seemed damaged enough that Leon worried Anshu had fallen back to the seventh-tier, but there wouldn’t be a way to confirm that until the Indradian awoke.

And so, Leon waited.  He kept the Rajah with them, keeping him silent with an ancient rune and immobilized with his power.  Three days passed before Anshu woke up.

When Anshu finally returned to the waking world, he calmly stirred for a moment before springing to his feet, his eyes wild, his terribly weak aura roiling and churning as he tried to summon his power.  After only a moment, though, he fell to his knees, all energy in his body expended by that one brief movement.

Only then did he turn his eyes and register Leon and the Rajah there.

“Le… Leon…” he whispered, his voice hoarse and gravelly.

“Drink this,” Leon ordered, throwing Anshu one of Helen’s most potent healing potions.  “And then this,” he added as he threw his retainer a potion to restore some of his power.

Anshu was weak, but he managed to catch the bottles, open them, and drink.  He sipped at first, but he soon drained the bottles with a few massive gulps.  Only once every last drop had passed his lips did he refocus on Leon and the Rajah, some life returned to his body, though hardly bringing him back to full strength.

“You… saved me,” he said, sounding amazed even through his still-weak voice.

“You’re one of my people,” Leon stated simply.  “Until I decide otherwise, you are under my protection.”

The simple statement had Anshu nearly in tears again, and only the sheer revolting notion of weeping not only in front of his King but also in front of his most hated enemy kept his eyes dry.

“Thank you…” he rasped, the meaning he packed into both words no lesser for his lack of vigor.

“No need,” Leon replied, waving as if to brush aside Anshu’s gratitude.  “This is only to be expected.  I allowed you to leave, after all.  What kind of King would I be if I allowed my people to be treated so terribly, despite your actions?”

Anshu breathed deeply, relishing the clean air and sunlight, but he had no idea what to say.  How much Leon had risked coming after him and attacking the Raj was not lost on him, and the fact that the Rajah was right there only made things much more complicated, diplomatically.

“Listen, Anshu,” Leon said.  “I’m sure you have much going through your head right now.  Lots to process.  But that can be done on the flight back to Kataigida.  Right now, know this: I don’t care about the repercussions.  The Rajah is right here.  Do whatever you wish, and then we’ll return home.”

With a wave of his hand, Leon summoned the weapons and armor that he’d made for Anshu.  He’d been enraged when he found all of it in the hands of the seventh-tier mage watching over the prison.  That particular man had met a violent and painful end, and Leon reclaimed the gear.

Anshu reached out and weakly grasped the hilt of his blade.  He glared at the Rajah and forced himself to his feet.  His legs were unsteady, but he stalked over with all the strength he could muster.  The Rajah, unable to speak, faced Anshu with a frustrating amount of dignity, raising his head as high as he could manage as restrained as he was.

Anshu wasn’t sure what to do even as he approached the Rajah.  He looked the man in the eye, the man who had executed all of Anshu’s family all because one of Anshu’s family members slept with the Rajah’s daughter.  He’d longed for this moment for decades, but now that it was here, now that he had to follow through, he hesitated.  So much to consider, and he’d only just woken up.

Had his rebellion succeeded, his homeland would’ve been fine.  He’d worked closely with the Prince of Tosali to ensure that there would be a smooth transition of power should they win.

But they didn’t, and all those plans were worthless.  He didn’t want to see his homeland reduced to ruin by killing their Rajah without a plan.  And yet, neither could he allow the Rajah to escape unpunished, and the only fitting punishment for what Anshu had suffered was death.

Worse, Anshu considered how it might reflect upon Leon in the international—and especially the Imperial—community should the Rajah’s life end now.

Anshu, though, was a decisive man, and he didn’t spend too long considering the pros and cons of the situation.  He looked the Rajah in the eye and made his choice.

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