The river nymph was nowhere to be seen—not that he had been expecting her to be, given her skill in concealment. Two guards equipped with invisibility rings had been killed with ice magic behind Leon, so he knew that she was still around, but now that Tiberias and his guards were dead, she had seemingly vanished, leaving not even a puddle by the road.

With a sigh, Leon set about looting the bodies for anything that could be taken. He trusted that the eighth-tier Naiad was fine, and he had little time besides. His lightning magic was bright and loud; the entire noble district probably heard what he had just done.

To that end, he figured that looting the bodies would make this seem like a robbery. He doubted anyone would seriously believe that given that this was the middle of the noble district and Tiberias had some powerful guards—one fifth-tier and three fourth-tier, including the two invisible guards—but he wasn’t going to make it easy.

Plus, he wanted the rings or whatever made those two guards invisible, which he assured himself wasn’t the real reason he was digging around in their pockets.

He figured he had ten minutes before the Legion could arrive. The real time was probably closer to twenty, but he wanted to leave as soon as possible, so he erred on the side of caution. Besides, he couldn’t guarantee a Paladin or someone else of that caliber wouldn’t come down and complicate this. No one had for the vampire attack on his home, though, so he was confident that he still had a few minutes to spare.

Leon scoured the dead and the carriage for whatever could be taken, and he was pleasantly surprised by with he found. Two more invisibility rings, several thousand silver coins, and four expensive-looking swords from the guards all went into his soul realm, and Leon stuck around no longer.

However, just as he was about to activate his own invisibility ring, he saw in the estate right next to the ambush point a great pillar of ice erupt from the villa’s roof while a huge serpentine dragon made of water wrapped itself around it and carried someone to its peak.

—

Naiad watched Leon dispatch the carriage driver and the first guard with great interest from her puddle. His lightning was potent, and there was a strength in it that sent a shiver running down her spine. Whether that was fear or something else entirely she didn’t know, but it was captivating.

Her decision to have Leon as her mate was reinforced in her mind, as there was no way she was ever going to let that power go.

Despite her seeming inattention, though, Naiad kept a close eye on the surroundings. When Leon kicked in the door of the carriage, Naiad saw a pair of guards appear behind him—revealed from a few stray sparks that bounced off his armor when the guard in the carriage tried to hit Leon with fire magic—so she instantly fired a pair of ice spikes that hit the guards in their necks, severing their spinal cords and killing them both before they could so much as widen their eyes in surprise, let alone do something to Leon with their drawn blades.

Naiad rarely used ice magic. It was derived from water magic, but Naiad greatly preferred using actual water when she used her power. Given that she was a creature of the water, that was natural, as solid objects like ice were much less effective in the deep underground lakes and rivers of her home, at least compared to using the water itself.

Still, when above ground and out of the water, she could fire off a couple of ice spikes in an instant, whereas any equivalent water magic might take a fraction of a second or two longer. Naiad wasn’t particularly sentimental, and when it came to killing her enemies, she didn’t play around. She used the fastest, most efficient method she had available.

If her mouth hadn’t become water, she would’ve smiled in pride at how quickly she killed those guards and in derision at how easily they fell. It might’ve even been comical if anyone had been there to see it since a pair of ice spikes had seemingly appeared out of nowhere above her puddle by the side of the road and so quickly killed a pair of fourth-tier mages.

It had been a long time since she had to seriously fight, perhaps even as much as a few decades since her last battle until her aiding Leon’s return to the Bull’s Horns and again at his villa during the vampire attack. It was exhilarating to once again use her magic in such ways, especially so since her magic flowed through her body with little effort. Even weeks after finally sleeping with Leon, her magic didn’t seem to be slowing back down.

Under normal conditions, she might take that as a sign that either she was already pregnant, or that sex was all that was required to drive away her gorgonism, prompting her to leave Leon since he seemed to resent her presence. However, she could tell that she wasn’t pregnant, and she wasn’t going to risk leaving and feeling her magic slow down again a few months or years down the road. She wasn’t about to abandon Leon, only to later come crawling back. If she did, she might have to resort to force, and at the rate he was growing, that wouldn’t necessarily work out so well for her.

No, she fully intended to stay for as long as she could, for as long as Leon and Elise would let her.

As she thought about these things, she suddenly felt a subtle wave of magic wash over her. She was still in her puddle form, but she knew exactly what that was: magic senses, and from a powerful mage, stronger at least than the Paladins she was keeping an eye on. Naiad released her own magic senses back in the direction the wave had come from, noticing a suspicious man on the roof of one of the nearby estates watching what was happening. He was cloaked in shadow, but she saw him all the same, her eyes piercing through the inky black veil of darkness like it wasn’t even there.

He was clad all in black, had his face concealed, and his eighth-tier aura towered over all those she had seen so far in the Bull Kingdom. In fact, to her knowledge, the only other aura that she had ever felt that could exceed his was that of her own mother back in Saron.

Needless to say, her guard immediately went up. They were of similar power, and that meant he was a grave threat, especially to the weaker Leon. Naiad burst out of her puddle faster than even Leon’s lightning magic could take him and sprinted through the trees, over the outer wall of the vast estate, and toward the mysterious watcher so fast she practically flew.

—

Justin Isynos wanted to keep an eye on Leon. However, he ran into an issue regarding Leon’s power, that being that no one he could send to watch over the boy at this point could do anything of substance without exposing themselves to his magic senses. It would take a powerful mage who could watch him without discovery and who possessed enough skills to not be seen in turn by Leon during their observation.

Normally, Justin could have some of his weaker subordinates keep an eye on Leon’s house from a warded location and have a few spies in the Royal Palace keep an eye out for him that way, but when Leon was on the move, Justin needed more than a bureaucrat or a weak mage hiding behind defensive enchantments. Unfortunately, with the loss of both the tall man after the vampire’s attack Leon’s villa and the loss of Timotheos years ago, he was left critically short-staffed in that regard.

This left him with two potential subordinates: the blond woman and the short man. The blond woman, Rhea, was coordinating his spies in the Kingdom, so she hadn’t the time to spare for such a task. Alexandros, the short man, was on a mission in the Northern Vales personally continuing the investigation into the disappearance of Timotheos and his entire team, so he wasn’t anywhere close to the capital to perform this task.

And that left Justin himself. He was the only man capable of keeping an eye on Leon without serious risk of discovery, so he handed off much of his work in the Royal Palace to his secretaries and assistants–while simultaneously vowing to hire more of these subordinates to free him up to do more of this kind of work—and took off for the Aeneas estate.

The estate itself was quite well protected, but that meant nothing to a man like Justin. He easily infiltrated the place and kept Leon in sight for as long as he could. He was more than a little disturbed with how close Leon seemed to be with his daughter, but Justin kept his emotions under control. Valeria was a grown woman, now, and Justin wanted her to live her own life and not be caught up in his own work. Still, he knew that he’d have to talk with her about Leon again one of these days, to warn her not to get too close to the young man, and maybe even to press for information.

But that could wait until he at least had more information, more confidence that Leon was his target. Justin occupied himself with simply observing Leon’s behavior during the party while wishing he was more skilled in darkness magic. He could avoid detection with his shadows and move extraordinarily quickly with just his meager skills with the element, but stealth and speed were not the main draws of darkness. At its core, darkness magic manipulated the mind, creating illusions and trapping people in their own heads, among other things. Justin had heard that at more advanced levels, it was even possible to read people’s minds, control them like puppets, or even force knowledge into someone else’s head.

Of course, Justin knew that if he wasn’t mistaken about Leon’s ancestry, then it would hardly help in this matter. The Thunderbird’s ‘holy’ lightning was famed in the Nexus for its ability to scatter darkness magic and power in defending the mind.

Justin followed Leon when the latter left the party. He passed no judgments on the younger man for his abrupt and curt departure, and he kept a healthy distance between them, ensuring that Leon wouldn’t realize his presence. Like this, Justin saw Leon high-tail it to the ambush point and wait with Naiad.

Naiad’s emergence from her puddle took Justin completely by surprise. He could see that she was an eighth-tier equivalent being, just like him, so he immediately put more distance between himself and her. He didn’t think she’d be able to see him, though. Still, her aura was magnificent to behold; her power was clearly potent and a major threat to Justin.

He immediately understood why the tall man disappeared. If Leon had a woman like this on his side, then there wasn’t much Justin could do to harm him without bringing every ounce of power he could possibly muster down upon Leon, likely destroying any standing he had with the Powers That Be in the Bull Kingdom in the process.

Justin had known that Naiad had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, but to be told of her power from his weaker subordinates and to see it with his own eyes were two very different things. It made him contemplate retreating and relying on more conventional—and riskier, given how many people he’d have to hire—ways to keep an eye on Leon. Additionally, it called into question much of his current information network if this woman could pop into existence like she seemingly had. There had been no warning, no possible clue of which Justin was aware that this woman had been around before the recent vampire attack on Leon’s estate.

Although, now that Justin was thinking about it, depending on how long she had been watching Leon’s back, it might explain Timotheos’ disappearance in the Northern Vales. Timotheos’ team would’ve been largely untouchable by most people in these parts, but if they had encountered the woman up there, then they likely would’ve met their deaths at her hands.

Justin gritted his teeth in frustration, knowing that things were far more complicated than they seemed. If Leon Ursus was Leon Raime, then it would take a serious operation to take him down, especially in light of Justin’s recent losses and his unwillingness to recruit and curry favor with the stronger members of the local elites. It would likely take every person he had left that he trusted to do the job of killing the boy. Making matters worse was Leon’s relationship with Valeria, which Justin wasn’t privy to. Justin had no idea how to deal with that.

As he thought about these things, Leon began his ambush using magic that, while admittedly surprisingly powerful, wasn’t too remarkable from that of an average lightning mage, Naiad killed the invisible guards, and then noticed him. So wrapped up in his own thoughts was he that he didn’t even notice Naiad speed toward him, passing through the trees on the side of the road and over the walls of the estate that Justin had been watching from. He didn’t see her charge until she was right in front of him, preparing to reach into his shadow and pull him out of it.

In a panic, Justin let loose with a quick blast of ice. It wasn’t as powerful as it could’ve been, but it still obliterated the roof he and Naiad were standing upon and showered her in thousands of tiny blade-like ice fragments.

Naiad was too powerful for this attack to harm her in any meaningful way, but she was still sent reeling due to the speed with which Justin was able to respond to her appearance. She didn’t retreat, but her stagger bought Justin enough time to let loose with another attack.

He sent his magic power coursing down his legs and into the ground, creating a platform of ice upon which sat his shadow. This platform then burst out of the ground and carried his shadow a hundred feet into the air. Without additional information, Justin hesitated to fully commit to fighting Naiad, so his immediate concern was to escape. With his darkness magic, he was confident that he could retreat unseen, even with this massive monument to their blisteringly quick engagement. In fact, he was hoping that Naiad would hesitate to close with him with such an obvious symbol of their battle now rising into the air.

However, this wasn’t enough to stop Naiad. She knew that this pillar of ice wouldn’t draw any more attention than Leon’s thunderous lightning, so she instantly responded with something eye-catching of her own. She raised her left arm, transforming it into water. This water then fell upon the ground, where it exploded into the form of a great serpentine water dragon. The dragon rose, wrapping its body around the ice pillar as it did so.

Naiad stood upon its head, regenerating her left arm in the moment it took for the dragon to reach the top of the pillar.

The top of the pillar was wide enough for both Naiad and Justin to stand a comfortable distance apart, but Justin hadn’t yet emerged from his shadow. Still, Naiad’s response to his magic and the water dragon wrapped around the pillar prevented him from escaping without leaving the shadow—his shadow had to remain somewhat connected to the ground, he couldn’t use it to fly or to jump—so he waited for her to reach him.

When Naiad stepped off the dragon, she did so with a wide, challenging smile and staggering confidence. She was ready for whatever Justin would use next, and her killing intent poured out of her, informing Justin just what she was willing to do if they truly fought.

Justin had to grudgingly admit that Naiad had him beat in this area. His aura had spiked, his magic power flooded his body, but Naiad’s killing intent still hit him like a brick wall; his hands began to shake, and his magic power noticeably slowed within him.

Before Naiad could continue and attack him first, Justin suddenly asked, “Who are you, and why are you attacking me?”

Intrigued, Naiad raised an eyebrow and said directly into Justin’s mind, though at this point Justin was about all out of shock, I could ask you the same. Why are you watching me and my mate kill our enemies?

If it weren’t already apparent, Justin now knew without a shadow of a doubt that Naiad was firmly on Leon’s side, and he knew that her power easily rivaled his own, if it didn’t outright exceed his. He couldn’t help but sigh, both due to her power making it prohibitively difficult to reach Leon and because of Valeria’s apparently close relationship with him.

Still, Justin’s power lay not only in the magical kind, and his mind worked lightning-quick.

“That young man is a friend of my daughter,” Justin quickly and unthinkingly said. “I was only trying to evaluate him, to see if he’s worthy of that relationship. If he were an evil person, I would want to know so I could protect my daughter from him.”

Naiad nodded in understanding, though she didn’t lower her guard in the slightest. At their level of power, to do so when in such close quarters would be suicide.

Makes me nervous when you don’t show your face, she said, her tone dangerous and threatening. What she wanted was clear.

Justin weighed the risks of exposing himself here. About five minutes had passed since Leon had begun his ambush, but that was enough time for powerful eyes to turn in their direction. The last thing he wanted was to be seen here. If he absolutely had to fight, though, he was certain he could take Naiad in a straight fight, but it would be flashy and destructive, and there’d be no way he could maintain his cover if he went all out.

He acted immediately. He’d gotten too used to being essentially untouchable here and panicked when Naiad showed her dangerous power; with more time to think, he knew that his panicking mouth had already said too much and to say any more would only compound that mistake. However, permanently silencing Naiad wasn’t a guaranteed—or even feasible—option, so his priority was to escape as quickly and painlessly as he could.

To that end, a pair of ice spikes about three feet long burst out of his shadow toward Naiad, one aimed at her head and the other at her heart. Naiad simply held up her hand, stopping both ice spikes in the air with a dismissive smile. However, both ice spikes then exploded and vaporized, bathing the top of the ice pillar in thick, light-obscuring mist.

Naiad dissipated this cloud of mist almost as soon as it appeared, but that most brief moment of time was enough for Justin’s shadow to slip over the edge of the platform and blast a hole in Naiad’s water dragon with a blast of ice from the pillar they stood upon. Justin’s shadow slipped down through this hole, back down to the remnants of the estate’s roof, and disappear into the city.

Even with Naiad’s powerful magic senses, Justin seemed to vanish. Darkness magic was the best option for mages seeking stealth, and Justin showed this trait off quite well. Naiad scowled as she waved her hand once more, shattering the pillar of ice into millions of pieces that further disintegrated as they fell; the pillar of ice seemed to collapse into snow and melt away into the wind. Naiad herself didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, her water dragon repaired itself almost as soon as it was destroyed and got under her feet to gently lower her back down.

She momentarily considered trying to track Justin down, but since he was far more preoccupied with escape than with battle, she decided to play it safe and link back up with Leon instead. She guessed that he would want to know what had just happened.