Time seemed to stop as Leon tried to process the words that Alix was saying. His heart rose into his throat, his blood thundered in his ears, and he asked, “What was that?”

“Prince Trajan has been ambushed by… someone!” Alix said, her voice quivering in anger, grief, and a thousand other related emotions. She then took a deep breath under Leon’s steady, but rapidly darkening gaze, and said as calmly as she could, “Leon… he’s been killed…”

Leon’s face began to twitch—his facial muscles not quite sure what expression they should settle on—and his eyes began to burn. He managed to keep his eyes dry, but he stumbled back toward the door, poked his head back into his villa, and shouted, “Elise, something’s happened to Prince Trajan! I-I… I have to go see what’s going on!”

Elise’s hesitant, slightly confused voice responded moments later, “Um, all right, should we wait for you?”

“No!” Leon curtly responded as he turned back to Alix. “Where?!”

“This way!” Alix almost shouted as she turned back toward the gate and began to run as fast as she could sustain out into the noble district, Leon hot on her heels.

From within the villa, Elise watched with concern etched into her face, a deep frown carving its way down toward her chin. Leon had left so quickly that he hadn’t even closed the door or the gate, which for someone as private as he was, said a lot about his current state of mind.

“Something happened to Trajan…?” Elise softly muttered to herself as she watched Leon and Alix quickly vanish into the rolling hills of the noble district. She closed the door and the gate behind Leon, then, with a terrible dread settling into the pit of her stomach, she returned to the dining table where Naiad was waiting.

The river nymph had heard everything, and her gaze was deadly serious.

“Can you see anything?” Elise asked. She’d grown quite a bit closer to Naiad over the months, and the two were now quite comfortable being around each other. Not quite as much as either would be with Leon, but they were easily at the point of being relatively close friends, even if neither would openly admit to it.

Naiad paused a moment, letting her magic senses sweep over the entirety of the city. There were many places she couldn’t see as they were warded against magic senses, but she could still see quite a bit—enough that it was impossible for any single person, even someone as powerful as she, to parse the wealth of information at her fingertips.

I… cannot, not without more information, she quietly responded. It was a city of millions, there was no way she could find what she was looking for without narrowing down the scope of her search.

“Can you sense the location of any members of the Royal Family?” Elise asked. “Or perhaps the Paladins, the seventh-tier mages in the city?”

It seems all those who carry the blood of the Sacred Bull are in warded locations, they cannot be seen, Naiad said. As for seventh-tier mages, I can only see two, and neither are Paladins.

“Who can you see?”

Members of local magic guilds, Naiad explained. Two old women, neither particularly capable of much given their advanced age, I’d say.

Elise nodded in understanding. The capital had many magic guilds to see to the magical needs of the city, and some were quite powerful. She was acquainted enough with them through her duties with Heaven’s Eye to know who Naiad was speaking of, the leaders of the two most powerful local guilds, and knew that they weren’t involved in politics in any meaningful way, despite their power.

It was the long-standing policy of the Bull Kingdom to recruit all seventh-tier citizens of the Kingdom into government positions, but exceptions were always made if the mage wasn’t fit for such duties. People like these two women—and Caecilius, the founder of the Bluefire Guild before them—who ascended late into their lives and weren’t overly skilled in combat were usually left to enjoy the fruits of their labors during their twilight years without such obligations being forced upon them.

“Keep an eye on Leon, then,” Elise said. She twisted the emerald ring on her finger, contemplating going after Leon, but she decided against it. She was in no danger, and though she was concerned, she was also patient. She didn’t have to be around him all the time, and if things got violent, she knew she wouldn’t be of much help. Naiad, on the other hand…

As if she could see Elise’s thoughts, the river nymph said, If anything were to happen to Leon, I’ll go to him immediately. No power in the city can touch him while I’m here.

Elise’s frown lightened up a bit at this confident statement, but she knew that it wasn’t entirely true. The Paladins working together could likely take Naiad, and there was the matter of the man she tangled with during Leon’s ambush against Tiberias. Naiad’s power brought them a great deal of safety that not even Heaven’s Eye could provide, but it didn’t make Naiad, Elise, or Leon untouchable.

—

Leon and Alix tore through the streets, their mage limbs propelling them onward through the early-morning crowds on their way to the place Trajan had fallen. Leon himself was recognizable enough within the city after his appearance in the triumphal games, so no one was foolish enough to get in their way, even as they pushed through crowds or simply jumped up to and ran across rooftops if that was the faster choice. Much of the city wasn’t built on a grid, so running over buildings and jumping over entire streets was rather common, made even more so since the route Alix took them on crossed through older, more densely inhabited, and less well-laid-out residential and commercial zones.

It was also illegal, but Leon hardly cared about that, though. All he cared about right now was seeing with his own eyes what Alix was too shaken up to describe to him. He had to bite back a bit of frustration at the speed they were going, but there wasn’t much he could do with Alix only being third-tier. He simply clenched his teeth and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

Eventually, they found their way to a section of the city that had been completely locked down by the Royal Legions, with hundreds of soldiers in battle dress keeping the civilians away or otherwise analyzing the site of the ambush. All it took to get past them, however, was a quick flash of Alix’s Legion ID and Leon to release a bit of killing intent, and the soldiers let the two through without hassle.

The scene was an absolute mess—the street had been torn apart by powerful magic, armored bodies were strewn about all over the place, and the surrounding buildings had been trashed, likely by the same magics that had destroyed the street. All of the bodies were of people that Leon at least vaguely recognized as Trajan’s knights.

Leon couldn’t help but do his own bit of evaluation as he took in the sight while Alix pulled him onward toward the nearby warehouse. Most of the damage to the surrounding buildings had been concentrated on the upper floors, indicating the attack had come from there. That he could neither see nor sense other bodies around clearly indicated who had won in the encounter, even though Trajan’s knights had clearly managed to retaliate—assuming they hadn’t attacked first. Given the level of damage surrounding the knights in the street, Leon felt it unlikely. The warehouse was probably the site of the main ambush, though, since his magic senses couldn’t penetrate its wards.

His evaluation was cut short as Alix led him into the warehouse, equally trashed as the street outside, and filled with even more Legion knights. Leon recognized many of the people inside, including the Paladin Roland, several ministers under the three high officials, a few nobles that he’d seen in the Royal Palace, and a number of knights in Trajan’s service, including Dame Minerva.

Leon started walking right over to Minerva, but it wasn’t until he got close that he realized she wasn’t paying any attention to what was going on around her. The cleanup of the warehouse, the removal of the other handful of knights, and the movements of various Legion investigators all went unnoticed by her, for her attention was taken up by something on the ground.

Something that Leon could see was human-shaped, though it was quite large, almost seven feet long and almost inhumanly muscled.

Leon’s heart grew heavy as he slowed down. His heart rate, already accelerated from the run over, began to beat even harder as it became clear exactly what had so captivated Trajan’s second-in-command. It was Trajan himself.

Numbly, Leon approached Minerva and stared down at the fallen Prince. Every second that went by brought new memories to the front of his mind of when he and Trajan had trained, of Trajan’s anger when he returned from his foolish solo attack on the Talfar army, of when Trajan had taken Leon aside to try and instill in him some measure of restraint for their enemies. To kill his enemies was all well and good, after all, but there was a place for mercy. Such was true for the rioters in the Guild district of Ariminium, at least.

Trajan lay on his back, his armor shattered and scattered all over the warehouse, his blood pooled beneath him, dark red and without a trace of magic power. The Prince had been dead for hours; his body was cold, his skin stone grey, and his once handsome face was stuck in an expression of grief, reluctance, and wrath.

It brought back to Leon’s mind uncomfortable memories of the last couple days of Artorias’ life. He’d never quite felt about Trajan as he did about his father, but Trajan had provided some structure, some responsibility to Leon’s life.

Now, there seemed to be nothing, and the more Leon stared down at Trajan’s lifeless body, the more that hole seemed to grow. What little loyalty Leon had for the Bull Kingdom was entirely couched in his loyalty to Trajan, the man who had taken the young knight under his wing and gave him purpose other than simply to gain power enough to seek revenge. That purpose had been to make the Bull Kingdom a beacon of light, peace, and prosperity, to bring safety to its people, to wet his blade in the blood of the monsters who would disturb that peace.

Leon hadn’t internalized that purpose too well—and, with Trajan’s body at his feet, Leon felt more than aware of that—but he’d done what Trajan had asked when he could. Trajan had promised to help him with whoever wiped out House Raime, but their relationship wasn’t transactional; the Prince had accepted Leon into his retinue and essentially took the younger man as his apprentice. Leon had been expecting he’d be serving Prince Trajan in his retinue for years more, and even with the hunt for his family’s enemies and his desire to find his mother, Leon hadn’t been too opposed to staying in the Bull Kingdom for a while longer to learn from the Prince.

“What… happened?” he heard himself croak. It hadn’t been his conscious intent to speak, but it was a question on his mind anyway. Even with Trajan right there, it still didn’t seem real.

“I… don’t know,” Minerva said, her voice as hoarse as Leon’s. “I got word that the Prince was out investigating word of an attack on you, but he never returned to the palace… We found him a little over an hour ago…”

For the first time, Leon glanced over at his fellow sixth-tier mage. Minerva’s fine, sharp features were clouded and stoic, her black hair fallen around her face, and her aura was calm. For all intents and purposes, she appeared solemn and grieving, but not so much as to invite wild speculation. However, to Leon’s eyes, she appeared to be little more than a husk. She wasn’t a passionate person by nature, but she had always moved and behaved with purpose and energy, at least in Leon’s experience, nothing like the shell that now stood before him.

“We have to find who did this, we have to…” Leon mumbled, not entirely sure what he was saying. He was just talking to talk, to try and distract both himself and Minerva from what they were staring at.

Minerva didn’t respond, she just stared down at Trajan, her eyes glazed over as if she wasn’t truly there.

And then, from within the remnants of Trajan’s armor, a dull red light began to shine. It was very dim, so much so that only Leon and Minerva were able to see it.

“You needn’t speculate about who did this, I heard the whole thing,” whispered a soft, familiar voice, barely audible enough for the two knights to hear.