Blades met, filling the air with the song of clashing steel.  The combatants grappled, exerting their strength against each other, trying to gain an advantage.

A grin spread across Leon’s face as he pushed against Valeria, his training blade locked against hers.  His expression was reflected on her face as her lips were turned up in a wild grin.

Neither was using much of their power in this duel, as difficult as that was for a tenth and eleventh-tier mage.  They wanted their skills to speak for themselves, and for the most part, they were.

A pivot saw Leon gain the advantage as he redirected Valeria’s glaive instead of meeting it head-on.  Valeria recovered quickly enough to just barely block his follow-up, but it took two exchanges for her to regain her footing.  When she did, she started making more aggressive use of the butt of her weapon, meeting Leon’s blade with her own while going after his legs with the other end.

With more grace than a dancer, Leon avoided her strikes, though it prevented him from pressing any advantages he had in strength and leverage.  He refused to disengage, however, since his fighting style emphasized aggressiveness and remaining on the attack.

A flurry of blows were exchanged, and several tiny mistakes were made, imperceptible to the mortal eye, but more than exploitable by both sides.  By the end of the first bout, both Leon and Valeria had taken their fair share of hits.

“… I think that puts me in the lead?” Leon stated with a wide grin as Valeria rubbed her wrist where Leon had struck her with the training blade.

“You were keeping score?” was her sarcastic response.

A shrug was his answer.

“Points don’t matter,” she glumly said.

“I agree,” Leon replied.  With a wink and roguish grin, he added, “Unless I’m winning.”

“For now,” she challenged as she slid back into a ready stance.

With a laugh of anticipation, Leon assumed one of his family’s own ready stances with his sword held in a high guard, ready to bring down in a powerful strike.

For several minutes, his focus narrowed until he only saw Valeria.  Everything around them melted away, leaving her every movement and expression all he could—or cared—to see.  The way her silver hair flashed in the light of the relatively small training of his portable villa was entrancing, the gleam in her sapphire-blue eyes was intoxicating, and the deadly focus with which she wielded her weapon was enthralling.

‘I love this woman,’ Leon thought to himself as he deflected a blow and lunged to capitalize on the opening he’d created in the split second before she closed it.  ‘I wish my father could’ve…’

At the thought of his father, Leon’s mind wandered, and his blade slowed just enough for Valeria to spin away and bring her glaive back up.

She launched an assault upon him which he dodged, blocked, and deflected, but his concentration had broken.  When the light caught her hair, his mind turned to Justin.  When she pressed against his defenses, instead of meeting her with equal vigor, he flickered between striking back with deadly intent or dodging away.

In the end, their bout was finished when she managed to hook part of her glaive on his sword and pull it out of his hands.

“That’s it!” she definitively exclaimed, though she looked far from pleased.  Leon had stopped keeping track of the score, though he had enough lingering numbness to think that he might’ve lost that round.

Valeria stared intently at him, a growing frown passing over her face.

“Leon,” she said, her voice echoing slightly in the otherwise empty training room, “what’s wrong?”

Leon softly snorted.  “When I’m with you?  Nothing.”

The training glaive hit the floor, dropped so that Valeria could walk over to Leon and lay her hands on his shoulders.  She wasn’t as tall as he was, but with certain doubts creeping into his head and the intensity of her stare, she seemed to tower over him.

“What’s wrong?” she repeated, her tone more demanding.  With her stare alone, she made it clear she wasn’t going to let this matter drop.

Leon sighed.  “It’s… it’s been a month since we arrived.  A month since… Justin left.”

Valeria’s hands on his shoulders tightened.

“We’ve still not heard anything from him,” Leon stated.

“No, we haven’t,” she stated, her stare breaking as the projected window suddenly seemed to become much more interesting.  After taking a deep breath, she turned back to Leon.  “The Nexus is a large place.  We shouldn’t be worried about a month-long break in communication.  He’s probably laying low, getting back into contact with trusted friends, or maybe he’s still traveling.  It can take us weeks to cross Aeterna, and the Storm Lands alone utterly dwarf Aeterna in size.”

With a slow nod, Leon silently acknowledged her point, yet his heart of hearts wasn’t convinced.  “A month is still a long time without communication,” he pointed out.  “If there were complications, he should’ve let us know.  He has the latest model comm slate, he should be able to remain in contact with us from anywhere in the Storm Lands.”

“He’s probably busy,” Valeria offered.  “I’ll call him today.  See if I can get in touch with him.”  Her fingers dug into his shoulders.  “He hasn’t abandoned us.”

“I can’t help but wonder…” Leon darkly whispered.  “If he were to sell us out to Kamran…”

“No!” Valeria loudly interjected.  “Not even for Mother!”

“We don’t know that,” Leon argued.

“I do!  He wouldn’t do that!  We’re his family!  I’m his daughter!  He wouldn’t abandon me!”  Her words grew more insistent and distraught the more she continued.  In that state, Leon thought that it might be the wiser choice to let the matter drop and only broach it again when Justin’s absence had grown more pronounced.

However… an intrusive thought entered his mind and wouldn’t leave.  He opened his mouth to let it out, though he felt he might regret it later.

“He’s done it before.”

Valeria’s expression froze, and after a moment, she released Leon’s shoulders and took a few steps back.  Though her eyes remained locked on him, they’d glazed over, as if she were seeing something else entirely.

Continuing, Leon said, “When you were employed as one of Princess Cristina’s guards, you had stable employment and prospects for advancement.  Your life was stable.  You didn’t need him, or so he said.  So he went north, leaving everyone behind but his most trusted followers.”  Leon stared back at her, impressing upon her the seriousness of what he was going to say.  “He got his followers killed, and he was captured.  Maybe he hasn’t fallen out of communication for no reason.  Maybe he’s not betraying or abandoning anyone.  Maybe…”

He left what that next ‘maybe’ to the imagination, and almost immediately regretted it.  Valeria averted her gaze, looking almost heartbroken.

“He’s not… he’s coming back,” she insisted.

As she turned away, Leon only needed one moment of thought before he approached her and wrapped his arms around her from behind.  Her body trembled, and one of her hands went to her eyes while the other came to rest over one of his.

“It’s only been a month,” she said in a shaky voice.

“It’s only been a month,” Leon repeated.

“Too soon to make any judgments,” she stated.

“Too soon,” he agreed.  “Just… my own dark thoughts left to fester without any other information.  We can wait a while longer.  Like you said, he’s probably busy reconnecting with people he hasn’t seen in almost a century.”

“Having been… having been exiled might be getting in the way…” she stutteringly added, sounding a bit choked up, though her body was starting to relax into Leon’s embrace.  “He’ll be back.”

Silence fell for a moment, and Leon’s eyes turned to the projected window.  He stared at the sunlit—or Sparklit, as it was—redwood-covered mountains and their canopy of blue leaves.  He idly thought that there wasn’t enough green for his liking, though the blue leaves at least helped to remind him of home.

With a deep sigh, he whispered to his silver-haired wife, “I don’t think he’s abandoned us, no matter what my… fears might put in my head.  I don’t do well in the dark like this.”

Valeria turned around in his arms and laid her hands against his chest.  She nestled her head into the crook of his neck and admitted, “Neither do I…”

They stood like that for several minutes more, with only one thought running through Leon’s head as he held one of the women he loved most in the world close.

‘You’d better be making progress, Justin.  If you aren’t…’

---

Of all the possibilities that origin power opened up to Leon, he thought that wisp creation was perhaps the most profound.  It was a difficult process, but thankfully, he had a master in wisp creation to help him.

Over the past few years, Nestor had not only coached him in wisp creation but tools to aid him had been salvaged from the palaces in the Sundered Lands.  Most of the wisps that helped operate the Nestorian Drives were created by Leon, while the salvaged Thunderbird Clan wisps were largely modified and repurposed for use in ancient Thunderbird Clan arks.

It seemed that the wisps that Leon had made had been insufficient if Nestor’s diagnostics were true.  His wisps had performed well enough, but they’d simply not been numerous enough to handle operating the Nestorian Drives.  If he wanted to minimize the risks in jumping from Aeterna to the Nexus, he needed to not only make more wisps, but he also needed to have them shipped back to Aeterna.

To aid in the former, he’d enlisted Anastasios, Eva, and Clear Day.  Clear Day was happy to help with little prodding from Leon, while Anastasios and Eva were only slightly less amenable.  They preferred to join in exploring this region of the Nexus, but Leon heaped on the guilt by reminding them they’d hitched a ride with him and by siccing Cassandra on Eva.  To add a little personal incentive, he also reminded them that creating wisps was an incredibly useful power, and they’d struggle to find someone better suited to teach them that power than Nestor.

In the end, in the few weeks since their arrival, Leon had arranged to have all four post-Apotheosis mages in Artorion work to create wisps for him for at least an hour per day.  Given the complexity involved in creating wisps, he was only able to make one in that time, while Anastasios and Eva were struggling to even get that far.  Clear Day, on the other hand, seemed a natural at it and was able to make two wisps per hour.

It was to the point that Leon even felt a bit jealous and rued keeping wisp creation just to himself over the past year or so.  It had seemed prudent at the time to keep such knowledge as compartmentalized as possible, but now that he’d lost people and arks over not having enough wisps, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d still have a full expeditionary fleet if he’d shared the knowledge with Clear Day before Nestor brought him his report.

Maybe then Sofia, Alcander, and hundreds of other families wouldn’t have had to mourn so soon after beginning their expedition.

To get his mind off the guilt, Leon threw himself fully into his work, concentrating only on making wisps during those times every day, and sometimes even going over the needed time.  The sound of Anastasios and Eva exchanging barbs with Nestor had been entertaining at first, but they were a distraction he didn’t need.  Reinforcements would come from Aeterna in a little less than a year, and he wanted them as prepared as possible.

To that end, he blocked out the sounds of good-natured bickering between Anastasios and Eva, ignored the expectant artificial gaze from Nestor, and the wild magic around Clear Day, and concentrated entirely on the work in front of him.

The tools required for efficient wisp creation were varied but largely amounted to a series of enchantments that helped to trap and channel magic as needed, leaving a mage free of that mental burden when they imbue the wisp with its tiny spark of life.

Leon started with summoning lightning magic and laying his hand upon a runic circle inscribed upon a sphere of storm crystal in front of him—while thunder wood amber was better for giants, the storm crystal was not only more pliable but also more abundant thanks to the Iron Needle, making it more useful for this step.

Silver-blue lightning arced from his fingers and over the sphere.  Runes flared to life and Leon’s magic power was absorbed into the dark glassy crystal.  Beneath the crystal’s surface, Leon could see what looked like clouds condensing and lightning bolts flashing within, which only grew more frequent the more power he channeled into the crystal.  It took nearly half an hour for the crystal to become ‘charged’ with as much magic power as was needed, which amounted to a significant amount of power on Leon’s part.

Early in his wisp creation lessons, Leon had asked why he couldn’t simply use magic in the environment for creating wisps, but Nestor had explained that he needed power that resonated with himself.  It was his origin power that would animate the wisp, and the more compatible the magic that would make up the wisp’s body was with his origin power, the more likely his attempt would be to succeed.

The storm crystal was resting upon a stone table with a surface polished to an almost mirror shine.  Marring that smooth surface were thousands of tiny runes that were so precisely inscribed that Leon had to be careful not to brush against them even with his fingers.  The smallest imperfection even from wearing smooth the edges of the inscribed runes could impair his chances of success.  Unseen beneath the surface lay no small amount of Titanstone and Lumenite arranged into runic patterns.

Over the table were numerous metal arms holding rings primarily made of iron, some with bronze adornments, and all with Lumenite within.  The rings had varying sizes ranging from small enough to use as a bracelet to large enough to almost use as a doorway.  Each of these rings was inscribed with yet more runes.  All of these rings were angled away from the table for the moment, but their time would come shortly.

With the storm crystal now filled with sufficient power, Leon began using elementless magic to power the table’s runes.  His magic seeped beneath the surface, and when it reached the Titanstone and flowed to the Lumenite, the runes illuminated with arcane light.  A multi-layered, yet invisible magical shield appear around the storm crystal, and when Leon felt it, he called upon his origin power.

He didn’t need much, only a tiny spark—he was only creating a wisp, after all, not an entirely new lifeform.  As small as the spark was, though, it shone like a star when it emerged from his fingertip, and when it sank below the surface of the storm crystal, all traces of the inner storm within the crystal vanished, replaced with nothing but the purest, brightest light.

Leon withdrew his control, and the crystal shook a moment as it struggled to contain the power within.  The shield around it kept it stable, but Leon quickly pulled a few of the iron rings down to further add stability and take the pressure off the crystal itself.

It took a few minutes, but eventually, the origin power settled within the crystal, and the light within dimmed slightly—just enough for Leon to see a few arcs of silver-blue lightning within, showing him that his magic was still there surrounding the origin power.

With the power now stable, he had to merge it, forming something of a body using the magic and origin power.  Since it was all his power, though, this step was fairly easy.  His spark of origin power merged well with his lightning magic; he could sense the change when it became one harmonious whole rather than a simple mixture of magical energies.

Now, he had to give it thought, intention, instruction.  Wisps weren’t able to innovate, they could only do what they’d been instructed to do.  Fortunately, Leon didn’t have to worry too much on that front—if it were all up to him, it could take days just to teach a single wisp how to make a few quick relevant calculations, or how to operate simple control enchantments.  He had the iron rings, however, and the enchantments inscribed upon them included a few helpful ancient runes.

He lowered four of the larger rings, leaving the storm crystal surrounded by seven different rings all at different angles and pitches.  With another expression of power, tens of thousands of runes along the larger iron rings illuminated, and he concentrated on the power he stored in the crystal.  He opened it up to the information within the rings, the power of the runes that would bestow certain information upon it.

His origin power took shape, absorbing this power, learning what it needed to so that it could help his ark pilots operate the extraordinarily complex machines safely.  Like a sponge, it absorbed information, imprinting that knowledge upon its core of origin power like runes inscribed on the surface of a marble.  The more information it ‘learned’, the more aware it became.

Leon knew he was finished when all of the latter iron rings ceased glowing.  He lowered one final ring, the smallest of them inscribed with only four ancient runes, and channeled his power into it.  These were basic rules, morality that the wisp had to follow, priorities that it would have during its ‘life’.

As these priorities were given, Leon couldn’t help but start to sympathize with Nestor’s view of wisps and how they relate to the giants.  What he’d made couldn’t be considered a living creature, even if it had some measure of power to think and do work.  It could only do as instructed, it couldn’t think for itself.  Even animals had a greater capacity for learning and innovation than the wisp he’d just made.

But even though it helped him to understand Nestor’s position, Leon still thought of the giants as living beings, since they seemed so much more than mere wisps.  They could learn and build new things.  They had desires of their own, they—

Leon had his idle musings interrupted by a terribly loud alarm ringing from the northern pass into the Artor Valley.  He immediately projected his magic senses, and what he saw sent chills running down his spine and fiery wrath coursing through his blood.

He saw one of his scouting frigates flying as fast as it was capable of back to the valley, pursued by a huge fleet of small and medium-sized arks, none of which belonged to his Kingdom, and all firing Lance-like weapons at his frigate.

It seemed some other unidentifiable hostile power had come to his doorstep.

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