Breathing came slow and heavy as Leon ran his hands along the jewelry arrayed before him. Each one had been heavily iterated on over the past few weeks, with Nestor lending his own particular talents to the endeavor, ensuring that Leon’s work met the dead man’s rigorous standards.
These were going to be his primary tools for infiltrating Kamran’s palace. The amulets were his disguises, concealing his and his team’s aura and appearance, though their ability to do so wasn’t eternal—they’d be on a time limit once they got inside the palace. The rings and bracelets were also more than decorative, with Nestor adding much of his own runework to them, to hopefully subvert any wards that Kamran was likely to have.
With the dead man himself joining Leon’s team as his ‘personal golem’, a guise they’d used before, Leon was confident that any runework that Kamran had set in their way could be dealt with. With his thirteenth-tier power, he could also create copies of these pieces of enchanted jewelry for anyone else who might be joining them.
Satisfied enough with what he and Nestor had made, Leon drew the jewelry into his soul realm and left the workshop he’d been using in his palace. There was less than a day remaining until the time came to depart, and he wanted to use that time well, spending it with those who weren’t accompanying him eastward.
Maia was the first on that list, as while the river nymph wanted to come with, Leon’s disguise enchantments weren’t playing well with her physiology, and she would be much harder to conceal. There had also been some incidents between some new settlers from the planes and her river nymphs, so keeping her close to Artorion was necessary to keep the peace. She wasn’t happy, but she’d accepted the decision.
The second person was Elise. She supported Valeria wholeheartedly, but even though she’d been training hard, no one, not even the woman herself, wanted to test her skills in such a high-stakes environment. She would hold the city until Leon returned—a role that he already knew she excelled at.
He was leaving most of his Paladins behind, too, wanting to travel lightly and quickly, without drawing much attention from anyone who might theoretically know him. He was already going to be leaving behind a bit of a trail as he leapfrogged his way to Torn Sky far in the east, asking those Storm Lords he knew from Belicenion for permission to pass through their lands with Lumenite, but that didn’t mean he wanted to advertise his presence once he reached his destination.
Of his closest warriors, Alcander, Zhang, and Daryun were the only Paladins joining him on this journey. In fact, no one else he didn’t consider family would be joining them on this eastern excursion.
Aside from Valeria and Nestor, Cassandra was the last person that Leon allowed to join them. He’d wanted their party lean, but not understrength, and his golden-haired wife had insisted that she join them. In the end, Valeria had been the one to convince, and after an intense duel before the young Stormborn Oak at the center of Westmount, Valeria had come around to letting Cassandra come with.
Though… Leon doubted the duel had anything to do with it—she just wanted an excuse to let Cassandra come with, and the duel was as good as any other.
As Leon left the workshop, he inhaled the crisp mountain air, relishing the scent of home. The tree sprites had made many of the trees, flowers, and other decorative plants that filled the valley aromatic, and the air was filled with that floral sweetness at almost all times. The smell changed somewhat the further west one went, though, since the oak trees that were turned into thunder wood had an earthy, cedar-like scent to them that Leon had learned decades ago was becoming a popular decorative scent in other parts of his Kingdom.
But as he immersed himself in the feeling of home, he felt a magical tremor further up the mountain, and when he projected his magic senses to find out what it was, he found Valeria back at the Stormborn Oak, sitting by the spring between Westmount’s nine peaks. He didn’t even think; his feet turned in Valeria’s direction and bore him toward his silver-haired wife.
As he drew closer, he studied her, wondering why she was out here alone. He could guess, but knowing for sure was certainly better.
She sat calmly, staring into the clear mountain water. Her feet were bare and soaking in the spring, while she summoned her power and created rabbits, squirrels, and other small woodland critters out of water to run and dance around her. By the time Leon drew close, the Origin Spark had dimmed to near-nighttime, casting the entire valley in deep reds and oranges that made Valeria look almost like she was made entirely of gold.
Neither of them said a word as he joined her at the edge of the spring. With a thought, his boots were pulled into his soul realm, and he slowly sank his feet into the water while the water creatures that Valeria had conjured dove beneath the surface and returned their water to the spring.
Leon studied her closely, noting the tightness around her eyes and the restlessness of her fingers, constantly clenching and unclenching in the dirt as if she missed the memory of holding a glaive. There was tightness in her shoulders, and Leon noted that her breathing was elevated despite her lack of movement.
While he could’ve sat with her in silence for hours, he shifted close enough to brush his shoulder against hers, then asked, “Excited?”
Valeria grinned, but there was sadness in the expression that nearly broke Leon’s heart in two. “I suppose you could say that,” she replied. She let out a long breath through her nose, then turned slightly so that she could rest her head on his shoulder. Silver hair, braided loosely and leaving much of the hair around the crown of her head loose, brushed against Leon’s nose and cheek, but he didn’t move.
“We’re going to get her out of there,” Leon whispered. “We’ll bring her back here, her and your father. Even if it makes enemies out of the entire Storm Lands. Even if we have to go to war with the whole damned Nexus.”
Her head turned, and without raising it from his shoulder, she looked up at him, her sapphire eyes glittering as the Origin Spark’s light slowly turned to moon-silver and the rest of the sky darkened. Her sad smile returned, and she said, “That’s what I’m worried about.”
Leon tilted his head in curiosity. He didn’t ask why. She was feeling doubts—doubts that had once filled his own head.
“You’re her daughter,” he said, his voice low and comforting. “After so long apart, you’ll have to pry her away from you with a team of Ulta suits. You’ll wish for the days when you could do anything at all without her clinging to you, trying to make up for all that lost time.”
“Your mother wasn’t so clingy.”
“You and I have very different recollections of those first few years.”
Valeria softly chuckled, but didn’t look all that comforted. “I know nothing about her,” she said. “My father has given me his vision of her… but he only knew her for a few years, and they never lived together. They were married, but they were never together, not like we are. And… I wonder if, in her absence, he might have built her up? How much of what he told me about her can I take as fact, and not the wishes of a man who hasn’t seen his wife in centuries?”
Leon laid a hand over hers, letting them both rest on one of her thighs. “They got together in the first place and maintained their relationship for several years despite the risks. I think they knew each other pretty well, even if they never shared a house or a bed for longer than a night.”
“I still wonder about her,” Valeria responded as her eyes turned out to the almost mirror-like spring. “Even if my father gave me the complete truth… So much time can change people. Time on its own is enough to change people, let alone time in the company of someone like Kamran. We can’t know what he’s filled her head with.”
Leon didn’t respond even as she paused, knowing that she had more to get off her chest.
“My father spent so little of his life around her, and she around him. They were still relatively young when they married. And I… I have lived my entire life without my mother in it. No one, maybe not even her, can say how she’ll react to meeting me. To having me show up in her palace to free her from her confinement. What if she’s… different from what I expect? What if she rejects me? What if she hates me?”
She paused again, and this time, Leon knew that she wanted him to say something.
“I thought many similar things when I thought about my mother,” he said. “For so long, she was just an idea. I had only ever known my father, and they had spent even less time around each other than your parents did. For a long time, I didn’t even know that she was confined by my grandfather, and I could only imagine why she didn’t come back for either of us.”
Leon closed his eyes as he remembered those days, when he had a name and only whatever nightmares his mind could conjure for a mother. He wrapped his arm around Valeria and held her close.
“It was… it was a relief knowing that she had sent Fain to find me,” he continued. “A confirmation that she was trying to meet me. That she… wanted me…” He took a deep breath and tightened his hold around Valeria’s shoulders. “It will be no different for your mother. Maybe… maybe we should temper our expectations a little bit—I doubt that she’ll be too thrilled with a bunch of strangers barging into her chambers during a holiday… But I know you, and there isn’t a person in existence who would ever reject you, let alone your own mother.”
Valeria snuggled deeper into his embrace, her hair shining as brightly as the moon-like Origin Spark above. Not even the occasional flash of red lightning from the Stormborn Oak slowly growing in the center of the valley took away from her ethereal, almost unreal beauty.
“No one can know that,” she repeated. “But I love you for saying it.”
Leon nuzzled her head, breathing in her soft jasmine scent, and planted first one kiss, then another to her head.
Valeria continued, her voice slow and wavering slightly with deep worry. “My entire life I’ve been building this up in my head. Now that it’s almost here… now that we’re finally going to get her… I’m terrified to face it. To face her and see the woman and not the image I’ve built of her in my head.”
Leon leaned back, taking her with him. With their feet still slowly kicking in the spring, they lay on the soft grassy bank and stared up at the dark sky. The silvery Origin Spark dominated the black firmament, but, glimmering in the distance, they could see the great works built on the Nexus’ other continents. Further northwest, Leon could even make out the points of light on Arushae, the continent dominated by the dragon Clans.
“I’ll be right here,” he said to her. “Right here, every step of the way. For whatever you need.”
She snuggled into him and wrapped an arm around his chest, using his arm like a pillow. She didn’t say anything more. She didn’t have to.
For a moment, Leon regretted not spending any further time with Elise, Maia, and others that he felt were deserving of at least a few minutes, but as he felt Valeria shuddering with suppressed tears, those regrets vanished. Valeria needed him more than anyone else right now, and there was no way in any hell that he was going to leave her until she was ready to let him go.
He felt like he was going to be lying there for a while longer…
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The departure of their group came with little in the way of fanfare. Leon had informed all of his High Ministers about what he was doing, and they, along with his Queens, had arranged for everything that needed to be done. No one knew how long he was going to be gone for—he could be back in a matter of a week or two, but none were so confident that they’d bet on it. Still, they’d be needed to hold down the Kingdom until he was back, and given how soon the fleets were going to be deploying to the planes, Leon knew that they had their work cut out for them.
So, as they assembled in Nestor’s lab, they weren’t surrounded by crowds wishing them success, cheering for their King in what they knew would be a successful endeavor. Instead, they almost stole their way into the lab, working to make sure that only those who needed to know were aware that they were leaving.
Of course, a Lumenite strand leaving Artorion was hardly a subtle thing, but those were common enough these days that no one would bat an eye at it, even one leaving from Nestor’s lab.
Leon arrived with Valeria, Cassandra, Alcander, Zhang, and Daryun. Nestor was, to no one’s surprise, already there and fully prepared with a dozen ‘support’ golems that would also accompany them. These golems, despite being inhabited by wisps instead of giants, were more than capable of putting up a serious fight, and their beautiful, almost human-like features belied the danger they posed to anyone who tried to do them harm.
Along with Nestor, they found Clear Day waiting in the lab. Though he wasn’t joining them, he at least wanted to be present—the rest of Leon’s wives, Paladins, and High Ministers had bid him goodbye in private before he and his group left Westmount.
“Clear,” Leon said with a friendly grin.
“King Leon,” Clear replied. “Right and ready?”
Leon glanced at those with him. Valeria smiled with far more confidence than she’d shown the night before. Cassandra flexed her aura and laughed, her confidence more genuine than Valeria’s. Alcander, Zhang, and Daryun likewise flexed their auras, but kept their professional demeanors even though no one else was around to see and subsequently judge them for letting them slip.
“We’re ready,” Leon replied.
“You haven’t forgotten any gifts?” Clear asked.
Leon rolled his eyes. “Who do you take me for? Some ungrateful snake who doesn’t know how to bribe his friends to let him use their Lumenite pads?”
Clear gave him a knowing smile, and Leon didn’t need him to give the rebuttal voice to know what he was saying.
“I have plenty of gifts ready,” he added.
“And spare Lumenite?” the tau asked. “It won’t do for our King to be stranded so far away without a way to get back…”
“I have more than enough Lumenite,” Leon stated. “I also have… other ways to move. Now, old man, are you going to keep assuming I’m a child that needs to have his luggage checked?”
“Forgive me for that,” Clear replied. “I’m… perhaps a little regretful that I won’t be joining you is all. I’m sure you’ve received no shortage of complaints about how I run my diplomats…”
Leon grinned, knowing that he could’ve built a paper mountain or two from all the complaints sent up to him due to Clear’s constant checking of the diplomats’ readiness. That paper mountain, however, was of no consequence given the effectiveness of those very diplomats, who were, at least in part, only so successful because Clear so heavily enforced his high standards.
“We’re ready,” Leon said definitively.
Smoothly transitioning to his goodbye, Clear replied, “Then I suppose there is nothing left for me to do but to wish you good luck and goodbye. Though of the former, I know you will have no need, and of the latter, I’ll make it brief.” He nodded to Valeria, trying to impart some of his confidence to her before turning his eyes back to Leon. “Good luck, my friend. You are facing a monster earlier, I think, than anyone might have wished.”
“You’re right,” Leon said. “We won’t need that luck. Skill has us covered completely.”
Clear chuckled softly. “So it does. Then I wish you goodbye—all of you—and look forward to that day two or three weeks from now when you return, your little prison break successful, and Kamran’s eye thoroughly blackened.”
He bowed, then made his way to the door. When it shut behind him, the entire group heading east was left alone. It may have been a good time for some words of encouragement on Leon’s part, but he’d barely opened his mouth when Nestor cut in.
“Let’s get going. I’m not one that relishes traveling, and I want this over with as soon as possible.”
“Virtuous men are patient,” Leon replied. “But I suppose you’re not wrong. We’re all ready, aren’t we?”
He glanced around at the others, noting that each of them nodded back at him.
It was time, then. Time to make their way east, spring Valeria’s mother from Kamran’s palace, and then return as quickly as Lumenite could bear them—hopefully without Kamran himself any the wiser…
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