Chapter 1284: Death

‘Where’s Clear?’ Leon wondered as he turned away from the keep’s central ward pillar, the runes defaced and rendered nonfunctioning. The keep’s primary wards and the monitoring enchantments below them had been cleanly sabotaged, but it left him somewhat short on time as someone was bound to notice the steadily weakening magic in the walls. Moreover, whoever was monitoring the keep would shortly realize that their enchantments had been destroyed. ‘They wouldn’t bring him here for a trap, would they?’

He quickly rose to his feet and made for the door, ready to call his people off. After all, no one in their right mind would bring someone like Clear to this place just to use him as a trap. But with his certainty that this was a trap rising by the second, he decided to leave and try to find Clear another way.

“We’re leav—” he began as Serana, Maia, and Red fell in behind him, but he was interrupted by a mental ping from Cassandra.

[Found him,] she whispered into his mind.

Leon froze, his hand outstretched toward the door. [You’re certain?]

[I’m looking at him,] Cassandra dryly replied.

“Leon?” Serana quietly asked. “What’s wrong?”

Scowling deeply, Leon answered, “This is probably a trap. But Cassie’s found Clear.”

“If it’s a trap,” Serana replied with a confident grin, black fire curling around her fingers, “then we’ll burn our way out. No one captures a dragon.”

In that, they could agree. Leon nodded and made brief eye contact with Maia and Red, where he saw similar sentiments reflected. “All right,” he breathed. “Let’s get our tau and return to Storm Herald.”

He opened the door and slipped into the hall, the three ladies close behind him. He was tempted to do away with stealth, but decided to maintain it for the time being. ‘It’s still worth keeping quiet. Let them break it if they must.’

A pulse of his magic senses located Cassandra—or rather, the signature of her armor since she was still invisible—hovering at the rear of the keep, close to one of the windows. Leon led his team back through the halls until they emerged into the courtyard, where he took flight. A quick hop over the rear wing of the keep reunited him with Cassandra.

“In there,” she whispered as she sensed his approach. Though he couldn’t see her, he imagined she was pointing into the window she hovered next to.

Doing as bid, Leon peered through the crystal-clear glass and saw not a dungeon but what looked like a medical ward. Six beds with clean white linens were on the far side of the ward, only one of which was occupied. Clear was that occupant, but he appeared unconscious. By his bed with a grave look was an aged sixth-tier healer, his face lined by stress as well as age. The healer stood by Clear’s shoulder, his hand on the tau’s head, while at his feet stood another man. When this other man spoke, Leon immediately recognized his voice as the man arguing with Princess Deianira’s representative only a few minutes ago on the other side of the keep.

“… whatever you need to. This man cannot die. Not here. Not on my watch.” His words were muted, the privacy enchantments still partially holding on even as the keep’s wards failed one by one. That didn’t stop Leon’s heart from nearly stopping as he processed the man’s words.

The healer exasperatedly replied, “What’s been done… I don’t know if this can

be healed! This isn’t entirely in my hands!”

“Just…” First Voice, as Leon had come to know him, sputtered. “Just… do what you can. Whatever means we have available, do it. If this man dies… It will not be due to negligence.”

Leon had heard enough. Clear was in danger of death. The rest didn’t matter.

With raw strength, Leon smashed through the window, the lingering magic in the wall disrupting his invisibility. First Voice and the healer didn’t have a moment to react as Leon shot across the room with electric alacrity and drove his fist into First Voice’s stomach. A pulse of lightning rendered him unconscious so quickly that he didn’t even have time to groan as he was thrown into the wall and fell to the floor, limp.

The healer, on the other hand, immediately fell to his knees and pleaded, “Please spare me! I am only a doctor! I have done my best for my patient!”

Leon’s blood boiled, hot and thundering in his ears. It took a herculean effort not to smite the healer right then and there, but he managed it. The rest of his and Cassie’s team flitted in after him as some curious shouts from outside filtered in. They were down to minutes at most before a more conventional alarm was raised, now.

“What happened to him?” Leon growled as he approached Clear’s bed.

The tau was unconscious and pale, his aged features making him look almost dead. The silver hair atop his head was gone, shaven off, while what looked like nails had been stuck into his skull, each one blazing with power.

“He was brought here like this…” the healer said. “He was held in the dungeon, but his heart stopped momentarily about ten minutes ago… I have used every scrap of knowledge I have, but…”

Leon held up a hand, silencing the healer immediately. He then gently took Clear’s head into his hands and carefully turned him a few times, allowing him to better examine the nails stuck into his shaven head. How long the nails were, he couldn’t say, but each one was fairly thick, about a quarter the width of one of his index fingers. Carved into the head of each nail was an ancient rune, and the more Leon saw, the more his blood chilled.

Each rune was a slightly different variant of the same ‘Lord’ rune that had been carved into the head of the Wailing Dirge and the creature he fought at Kavad’s Lance.

‘And which Triyr used against me…’ he noted coldly.

His immediate instinct was to tear the nails out of Clear’s head, but he hesitated as he reached for the nearest one.

From behind, Cassandra appeared. [Leon… we need to go!]

Leon nodded, then gingerly lifted Clear out of the bed. Without so much as acknowledging either the healer or the stirring fortress commander, he returned to the broken window and lifted off. He ignored the shouts of alarm as he launched into the sky, followed by the rest of his and Cassandra’s teams.

[Val,] he pulsed to the rest of his people. [We found him. We’re leaving.]

[On you,] Valeria replied as she, Daryun, Anzu, and Anna shot after them, quickly falling into silent formation. Clear’s condition was evident, and the seriousness of the situation was felt by everyone.

As they flew away, the fortress behind them swarmed like a kicked-over ant hill, but Leon paid it no mind. He’d deal with the consequences once he returned Clear to competent healers.

Unfortunately, they barely made it a hundred miles before a group of mages, thirty strong, made their presence known as they moved to intercept. In the lead was a fourteenth-tier mage, and accompanying him were three thirteenth-tier mages, six twelfth-tier mages, and nine eleventh-tier mages. Leon maintained his course, slowing down only once this new group interposed itself between him and his destination.

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“HALT!” the fourteenth-tier mage called out as they drew to within a mile. “BY THE ORDER OF THE SUN KING, YOU ARE ORDERED TO HALT!”

Leon slowed further, but he didn’t stop completely. In his arms, he could feel Clear’s aura sputter and begin to fade.

“THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!” the Anax roared as he donned glittering armor, the rest of his entourage doing the same. “HALT!”

His instincts screaming at him to just blaze past, Leon allowed his rationality to win out this one time. He passed Clear off to Zhang beside him, who fell to the back of the group and conjured a protective magical shell around him and the dying tau.

“This is an emergency,” Leon responded to the Anax, still not coming to a halt. Though he spoke in a low tone, he knew that the Anax could hear him. “Get out of my way.”

“YOU WILL SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY!” the Anax further demanded. “VIOLENCE AGAINST THE SUN KING’S OWN WILL NOT BE TOLERATED! REMOVE YOUR ARMOR AND LAND AT ONCE!”

Behind his closed-face helmet, Leon grimaced, regret flashing through his heart. He hadn’t come to Belicenion to make trouble, but he wasn’t going to lie down and let trouble be made for him. He’d explain himself to the Sun King when this was over.

With no doubt in his mind, Leon drew Iron Pride. The Anax made to do the same, a shining spear of Adamant appearing in his hand. The mages at his side prepared themselves for battle, too.

Leon didn’t wait for them. He charged, his body blazing with power. With such wrath bubbling within him, his lightning emerged black as pitch, searing his own flesh as it emerged. But Leon hardly even felt the pain as he crashed into the Anax.

The sky seemed to crack as his power exploded. The Anax’s entire party was enveloped in black lightning, and to a man, they screamed. Agony tore their throats as lightning threw them to the earth.

In the blink of an eye, Leon grounded the entire interception party. He glared down at them imperiously as they were lost in the dust clouds kicked up by their forceful landing.

“Keep moving!” he shouted to his people, who catapulted past him. He fell in behind them, protecting their rear as the Anax and his followers returned to the sky. They looked much the worse for wear, but ultimately, even such an attack wasn’t going to keep so many post-Apotheosis mages down for long.

Leon still smiled in satisfaction as the group gave him and his a wide berth, following closely enough to keep an eye on them but not close enough to overtly threaten. Leon’s group wasn’t challenged again, and they returned to Storm Herald without incident. Notably, Leon didn’t even detect a single pulse of magic senses reaching his group, leaving him even more certain that this had been a trap.

‘Deianira…’ he balefully thought, ‘you will regret this. One day. One day…’

—

Death.

It was the end of one’s journey, the final moment of existence in the world, before…

Before… what?

No other question had captivated Veles so. For years beyond counting, he had studied death. Observed it. Met it. Ventured down the pale rivers of the Aesii to see what lay at the end.

He still lacked the answers he sought, but he had learned much of death itself. Its power was anathema to life; still where life was energetic, dull where life was vibrant. Veles knew this; he knew that death was a power that could be seen and felt, but never directed, never wielded. In the history of the universe, few had died and managed to return, and death had left its mark upon them all.

So immersed was Veles in his studies of death that its powers had suffused his being. He lived with one foot on the banks of life, while the other sank into the river, never to be removed. As a result, that power had tied itself inextricably with his being, obscuring him from the eyes of the truly living, the eyes of those who have never laid eyes upon the river of death…

So it was difficult for him to remember to render himself invisible as he fulfilled his friend’s request and followed Leon Raime, keeping an eye on him, watching him closely. The young man had seen him, yet he didn’t bear the same curse as he did. He knew death, and yet, he was part of the living world.

Curiosity burned within him, the question of just what had happened with Leon inspiring more emotion within him than he’d felt in a long, long

time.

He followed Leon throughout his time on Belicenion, always close at hand, never seen. Though he was only twelfth-tier, death had so great a hold on him that most magic simply passed through him. It was only Leon that he had to hide himself from, and that was easy enough.

He’d watched Leon closer than even his wives had, drinking in his aura, searching for the source of death that gave the young man his sight. If he could figure out the source, then he might…

The possibilities were enticing, to be sure, but whenever his thoughts turned toward them, he cut himself off. He’d focus on the possibilities once he knew more. Until then, he kept himself curious, but not desperate. Or rather, he tried. The more he felt of Leon’s aura, the more intrigued he became.

He figured out the young man’s lineage long before he’d publicly revealed it. Leon’s connection to the Thunderbird was, of course, no great secret as the young man proclaimed it frequently, but he made no such proclamations regarding his draconic heritage. But Veles knew it easily; the power of the Great Black Dragon, once experienced, was not easily forgotten. Not to him, at least, who could see the ripples and currents of life and death.

In short, he knew that it was not from Leon Raime’s blood that he’d learned of death. The Thunderbird’s power was bright and radiant, banishing the dark and maintaining the purity of thought in its wielder. The Great Black Dragon’s was darker and more malevolent, but it started and ended at destruction, pure and relatively uncomplicated. It was unique in that it ignored death; those caught in the Eye of Calamity ceased to be, not even reaching the far side of the Aesii rivers, and the Doomfire inherited by his descendants carried hints of that power. But for all that, that power was not death.

There was something else there, some other source that concealed itself even from his eyes—something he hadn’t thought even possible until he encountered Leon.

And then, as he followed and bore witness to the rescue mission Leon led, he finally found what he’d been looking for—or a trace of it, at least. Lightning, blacker than the Void, carrying traces of death with it. Death, wielded in the hand of a living man, a man suffused with life, a man so far from the Aesii that he couldn’t even hear the running current as it slid over the rocks.

So stunned was Veles at the sudden display of impossible power that he remained where he hovered even as Leon vanished in the distance. He wouldn’t have spared Anax Unax a single look under normal circumstances. The man was a Sun King loyalist to a fault, a bootlicker of the highest order. He wouldn’t have moved without the Sun King’s direct word—or, perhaps, that of his daughter, if she said the right things—and Veles couldn’t care less about the Sun King.

But he gave Unax and his followers an inspection as he fell in beside them in their pursuit of Leon. He brushed against one’s shoulder and whispered into another’s ear. He maintained his invisibility since Leon was still nearby, but otherwise, made his presence known to Unax and his vassals.

None realized he was there. Leon touched them with death, and they could not see him.

‘This requires study,’ Veles thought, glee causing his heart to hammer in his chest harder than it had since… he honestly couldn’t remember. Since he was yet wholly and completely a part of the land of the living, at least. ‘Show me more, Leon… Show me how far you can wield death. Show me if it can be mastered. Show me… where you found that power…’

—

With clenched teeth, Leon watched his healers extract the nails from Clear’s head one by one. There were seven in total, each one long enough to pierce deeply into Clear’s brain. If the tau had been a mortal human, he would’ve died almost immediately after the first was hammered into his head, but he was a post-Apotheosis level creature, and that bestowed toughness that kept him breathing, at least until this point.

All seven nails were removed quickly; though they were inscribed with ancient runes, the nails themselves were not heavily enchanted otherwise. Whatever these ‘Lord’ runes were supposed to do, they were the only magical functions that the nails possessed.

“Will he live?” Leon asked the lead healer as they convened after removing the nails.

“Strictly speaking… yes,” the healer said. “The brain… so long as his magic body remains intact, the brain damage will heal. But so long as he remains unconscious…”

“We won’t know if his magic body is intact,” Leon finished gravely.

The healer nodded. “We’ll need time. We’ll heal what we can. Clear Day will either awaken soon… or not at all. At that point… decisions will have to be made.”

Leon’s eyes narrowed with anger, and the healer rushed to clarify, “I don’t mean now, Your Majesty! I only mean… that we all ought to be prepared, just in case.”

A sigh forced its way past his lips, and Leon turned his eyes back to Clear. “Do what you can. Do all that you can.”

The healer bowed his head before returning to the unconscious tau. Leon listened to him directing the treatment for a few more minutes until Anna tentatively walked into the small surgery room.

“How is he?” she whispered as quietly as she could so as not to disturb the healers.

“That remains to be seen,” Leon answered.

Anna’s face fell, but then after a moment, she said, “The Sun King is here.”

Leon was tempted to ignore him. However, as much as he had a duty to Clear, so too did he have a duty to everyone else he’d brought to the Games.

“I’ll see him right away…”

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