Leon stood in the center of his villa, not entirely sure how to proceed. Valeria was still in his guest room, but he could tell that she was awake; she was staring at the ceiling, eyes wide open, clearly thinking about something important. Given everything that had happened to her over the past few days, Leon couldn’t blame her for being a bit sleepless. She’d at least gotten some sleep for a couple of hours after their previous conversation, though.

But even though she was awake, Leon didn’t know how to approach her. She now knew that Adrianos Isynos had killed Artorias, even if Leon lied to her about the most damning details. He hadn’t intended to let even that much slip at the time, though, and he knew that he’d have to be very careful about bringing that topic back up, just in case she connected the dots and realized who he really was.

‘Or maybe I could just tell her who I am and see what she does,’ Leon thought without the slightest trace of seriousness. As much as he enjoyed Valeria’s presence during their time in the Knight Academy, it would take some exceptional circumstances for Leon to tell anyone anything about who he was or where he truly came from.

Still, it was an entertaining thing to think about. He wondered how she would react if she knew the truth. Elise claimed that Valeria liked him, but Leon doubted that that would have her choosing him over Justin. Assuming that was what he even wanted her to do.

With mounting frustration, Leon ran his hands through his hair, groaned, and made his way into the villa’s meditation chamber. He sat down and cast himself deep into his soul realm. It was time to train, but Leon knew that it wasn’t training that he needed right now.

Opening his eyes on his throne, Leon lightly jumped down and exited the lantern, finding Xaphan burning down below him. While working on his Mind Palace, Leon had decided to throw Xaphan a bone and converted his bare platform into a proper pavilion, first by changing the material of the platform from white stone into sparkling black granite polished almost to a mirror shine, then covered the whole platform surface with a dome supported by eight marble columns painted black on the bottom half and blood red on the top half.

Then, after expanding the area of the platform a bit to make more room for Xaphan, Leon depressed it down in the center, creating a pit where Xaphan could burn at his leisure. As a finishing touch, he placed a railing-baluster in between the columns—he didn’t think Xaphan was in any danger of falling from his pavilion, and Leon figured the demon wouldn’t have been injured even if he did, but it made for a pleasant aesthetic improvement with this finishing touch.

The demon was as satisfied as he could be with these measures, and he was at least a bit more comfortable than he had been. Leon didn’t know how demons usually decorated their own dwellings for comfort, and with Xaphan perpetually on fire, he had no ideas on that front, either. At the very least, Xaphan didn’t complain, so Leon considered it a job well done.

Flying down to the ‘fire pit’ that Xaphan now perpetually sat in within his pavilion, Leon sat down in a nearby chair and asked, “So, how’s it going, demon?”

Xaphan, lost in the midst of a healing meditation he entered into while Leon spoke with Elise, barely even acknowledged Leon’s presence for minutes. It was a long and awkward silence, but at this point, it was one that Leon was used to. He passed the time with gazing out over the halls of his Mind Palace that he’d constructed so far.

He’d mostly finished the outer layer of the top half of his Mind Palace, with halls encircling the lower portions of his mountain. A few smaller halls were closer to the top, and space had already been set aside for small forests and gardens. Of course, aside from murals and structural decorations, the halls themselves were mostly bare and unfurnished. Only a few of the rooms actually had any furniture in them, let alone anything of particular note.

Now that all of that was done, Leon’s main problem was finding something to do with all of this space, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to do that before or after he began work on the underground half of the Mind Palace. If he were to be honest, he found the idea of actually filling these halls and their myriad rooms with stuff to be quite daunting. There were, without exaggeration, more than a thousand rooms just in what he had constructed so far, spread out over half a dozen primary halls and more than a dozen secondary halls.

It would take him a long time to give each of these halls purpose and to fill them according to that purpose. How long, he couldn’t say, but he knew that he had a lot of work ahead of him on that front.

On another note, his soul realm had grown to a diameter of almost two miles. He knew that the border for the seventh-tier was ten miles, so all else being equal, he would have about a fifth of the power reserves of the weakest of seventh-tier mages. That didn’t quite translate into direct magic power and battlefield prowess, but if he and the weakest of seventh-tier mages were to have a contest of pure magical endurance, the seventh-tier mage would beat him five times over.

Xaphan’s flames began to flicker and roil, and Leon allowed his attention to return to his demonic partner.

“Did… you say something, boy?” Xaphan growled with some irritation at the interruption.

“Just asking how it’s going,” Leon said as nonchalantly as he could manage.

“Fine on my end, slowly but surely regaining my lost power,” Xaphan muttered.

“Have you been enjoying this new chamber?” Leon inquired as casually as he could.

“It serves its purpose and is far cozier than what this platform was before,” Xaphan answered.

“There anything I can do to make it better? What do your dwellings out in the Void even look like?”

“I’m not entirely sure about other demonic realms, but the Plane of Fire that most Fire Demons reside upon is about what it sounds like: an entire plane made up mostly of fire,” Xaphan explained. The demon could make a guess why Leon was here, but he was willing to indulge the young human in his distraction for the moment.

“Really? How does that even work? Is there anything solid around, or is it just all fire everywhere?”

“We couldn’t well exist as a civilized people if we had no tangible materials,” Xaphan said as he adjusted his position to better suit the conversation; he could tell that this might be a long one, what with how Leon was fidgeting, and that he might not return to his healing meditations for a little while. “Think of it as an ocean made of fire. Fire Demons ‘swim’ through this ocean as a fish would through the water. Much like an ocean, the Plane of Fire has a bottom and most of the lesser demons who live there work in the mines extracting physical resources for their betters. Adding to our material wealth are a host of other lesser planes that encircle the Plane of Fire, which many of the more powerful demons will transport from other parts of the universe. Many other demons who are summoned by humans into the Nexus’ sphere of influence will bring back other items and resources, and sometimes material from the Nexus will be flung off into the edges of the universe during its Reconstitution.

“To put it simply, young human, we’re not as resource-poor as it may seem.”

“But you still need blood and worshippers? Or is that just to satisfy lust for power?” Leon asked, finding the entire concept of demon society fascinating, despite everything else that was going on right now.

“I suppose you can think of it that way,” Xaphan said as his tone turned bitter and spiteful. “Most demons have little imagination and are unable to summon the ambition to rise to the top as I did. Other worthless degenerates simply believe that no amount of power is too much, and so whore themselves out to the dregs of humanity just for a few drops of blood. Rarely do the more powerful demons do such things unless they’re truly bored or their lust for power overwhelms their reason.”

Leon chuckled a bit at Xaphan’s fairly harsh words. He knew that his partner had a strong dislike for blood sacrifices, and he was perfectly fine with that behavior. The last thing he wanted was a greedy demon demanding worship and sacrifice. Before he could ask Xaphan any further questions, however, the demon gave him a curious look and changed the topic of conversation.

“What are you doing here, boy?” the demon asked.

Leon paused for a long moment, wondering how exactly he should phrase his current problem.

“Valeria is still in my villa,” Leon said as he looked away from the demon and started to nervously fidget. “I’m not sure how to handle her, I don’t know what I should feel about her, and I don’t think that ignoring her as I have been is a good long-term plan…”

“You like this girl, do you not?” Xaphan asked as he had several hours before, only this time his tone was far stronger and demanded a proper answer.

“Not particularly,” Leon said. “Or, at least, not in a romantic way. She’s strong, driven, and enjoys a good fight as much as I do, and her looks don’t hurt, either. So… I suppose I should say that I could like her romantically if we were to get to know each other better.”

“As I recall, you had a bit of a crush on her when the two of you were in the Knight Academy…”

“A fleeting thing, gone soon after leaving for my squireship,” Leon replied.

“Not in her case, I think…” Xaphan murmured as he lost himself in thought. “I once counseled you to remain distant from her for your own safety. However, you now possess a far greater amount of power, both personally and in your connections. Through me, you have even more… Perhaps it’s time to get closer to her…”

“Why would I do that?” Leon asked, though he could think of a few good reasons why getting closer to Justin’s daughter could be beneficial, if incredibly risky.

“Subvert her intentions. Play upon her affections. Get close enough to her that she willingly gives you information about her family and, if it comes to it, chooses you over her family.”

“Sure, and while I’m doing that how about I invite a snake into my home and contract a werewolf to watch over a flock of sheep…” Leon sarcastically replied, though his voice was quiet and a contemplative frown crossed his face. He didn’t like Xaphan’s idea; he wasn’t that manipulative, and neither did he want to be. Besides, manipulating Valeria as Xaphan was suggesting was far beyond what knew he was capable of, especially when looking at it from a skills perspective.

Go slowly, then, a voice said inside Leon’s head, and he turned around to see the Thunderbird perched on a boulder near the entrance to Xaphan’s pavilion. Having this woman so close to you could be a great blessing, one that shouldn’t be thrown away so quickly. You can use that to seek your revenge…

As she spoke, the Thunderbird quickly morphed into her human form clad in light golden robes and stepped into the lantern.

“You barely have any idea of who your enemy is, you don’t even know if this ‘Justin Isynos’ truly is the man responsible for your family’s death.” The Thunderbird drew closer to Leon, standing over his sitting form like a statue of a goddess towering over a temple supplicant. “Even if he was the weapon used, you don’t know how big his organization might be, where he comes from, the motivations behind his actions, or anything, really. To pass up on his daughter almost literally falling into your lap would be… unfortunate, to say the least…”

Leon groaned. He hated the idea of using Valeria like that, even if she was his enemy. Perhaps that was naïve of him, but it was just how he felt. He could stab his enemies a thousand different ways, but such deceit just didn’t sit well with him.

‘But it might not be necessary…’ Leon suddenly thought to himself. He could honestly see himself becoming close friends with Valeria given their mutual interest in enchanting work and enjoyment of battle. Neither of them were particularly social, not even very loud; Valeria was the person who was most like himself that Leon had ever met.

If they were good enough friends, he might even be able to be completely honest with her, and she might reciprocate in kind.

‘A pipe dream,’ Leon thought, almost laughing at himself for thinking of it. Still, with both Xaphan and the Thunderbird advocating for him getting closer to Valeria, Leon was hard-pressed to refuse, even if he thought it wasn’t the best idea.

“Very well, then, I’ll go and talk with her…” he said, rising to his feet. The risks that this decision came with scared the hells out of him, but there was an undeniable part of him that was also excited and thrilled at the idea.

“Best case scenario, you find yourself another wife who can add to your growing power,” Xaphan said with some pride in Leon’s choice.

“Worst case scenario, she immediately goes to her father, tells him who I am, and they murder me,” Leon countered as he made for the throne at the top of his mountain, making it clear enough without stating it outright to the Thunderbird that he wouldn’t be training this day.

Despite this, a smile crossed the Thunderbird’s bronze face, and she briefly glanced off into the mists where she could feel the other being out there watching.

‘While we’re taking risks… I might as well go take one of my own…’ she thought, ignoring Xaphan completely as she transformed back into her avian form and took flight. ‘You’d better appreciate this, boy,’ she thought to herself as Leon settled back into his throne. ‘I loathe asking other beings for help, especially this contemptuous bastard.’

As Leon’s consciousness returned to his physical body, the Thunderbird vanished into the Mists of Chaos, leaving Xaphan alone. Rather than return to his meditations, though, Xaphan decided to stay awake for a while and see how Leon’s situation turned out. He had to admit that watching things like this was quite entertaining, and he had to restrain himself from teasing Leon as he was so fond of doing.

For his part, when Leon awoke in his meditation room, he released his magic senses and saw Valeria up and about in her guest room. She seemed to be getting ready to leave, and Leon knew he hadn’t much more time.

He left his meditation room and, with as little hesitation as he could manage, walked right to her door and gave it a loud knock. He could through his magic senses see her pause as she was getting herself more presentable and stare at the door for what felt like a long time.

“Valeria,” Leon said just loudly enough for his voice to carry through the door. “I’d like to talk, if possible. And… apologize…”

He saw her quickly pull her silver hair back into a loose ponytail, straighten out her clothes which had wrinkled while she was lying down, and stiffly walk over to the door.

As she quickly opened it, her neutral expression broke down into one of sorrow and remorse, and she said, “I’m not sure you should be the one apologizing, given what one of my family members did to your father…”

Leon closed his eyes for a moment to keep a handle on his emotions, which wasn’t that difficult under normal conditions but under these circumstances was a titanic feat, and he briefly sighed.

“I spoke too quickly, I shouldn’t have sprung that on you like that,” he whispered. “We had an amicable relationship while we were in the Knight Academy, and I’m hoping we might return to that.”

Valeria stared at him, her eyes taking in every detail of his stony exterior, from his moderately tanned skin to his golden eyes. She sensed no deceit in him, and she subsequently nodded.

“I’d like that, too,” she softly said before giving him an inquisitive look, silently asking him where he wanted to talk.

“Can you talk and fight?” Leon asked.

That question got an unintentional smile out of Valeria, one she found incredibly difficult to suppress.

“I can,” she said, and Leon led her to his and Elise’s training room. It was set up much like a dojo, with a sparring ring in the center, washbasins near the door, and weapon racks lining the walls. The ring in Emilie’s estate was a raised platform of wood, stone, and cloth padding, and though Leon had a preference for sandpits after training with Trajan at the Bull’s Horns, he wasn’t able to convince Elise to allow their sparring ring to be turned into one—she believed, and rightly so, Leon had to admit, that if such a sandpit were to be created, sand would then get everywhere throughout the villa.

Upon arrival, Valeria immediately went for a short glaive with a pale white blade, a training weapon that was enchanted to stun instead of causing real damage. Leon chose a bastard sword of about equal size as his family’s Adamant blade. Then, the two walked into the ring together and faced off.

It was essentially a repeat of their very first proper interaction when Leon had challenged Valeria to a duel in front of the rest of the third-tier trainees of their cycle in the Knight Academy, only instead of a spear, Valeria now wielded her preferred weapon. Additionally, any trace of drunkenness that she had a few hours before was now gone; whatever the alcoholic substance was that had put her in that state clearly lacked the power to keep her fourth-tier senses dulled for too long.

However, as Leon stared into her clear, sapphire-like eyes, he realized that he was going to have to hold himself back a bit. She couldn’t use elemental magic, and it wouldn’t be a fair fight if he were to perform such magic when she could not. While she had accepted his challenge despite knowing the difference in their power, Leon wanted a clean fight, so he stifled his power down to the fourth-tier as best as he could. He wanted this to be a contest of skill, not power.

“How have things been going for you, recently?” Valeria suddenly asked as she readied herself for battle, striking a powerful defensive posture. “You let me whine about my life, but I never got to ask you how yours was going…”

“Things have been very busy,” Leon said, following Valeria’s lead in not talking about everything he had told her about Adrianos and his father. He was willing to let that topic lie for the moment, but he was determined to bring it back up before the day was done. “Prince Trajan is go-… dead… and Prince August has been arrested. It looks like Octavius is seizing power, and all it’ll take for him to do so is for the courts to rule against Prince August.”

Leon settled into his own stance as he spoke, easily taking up one of House Raime’s offensive stances, only changed a little bit by the Thunderbird’s instruction. His feet were set widely apart, his left foot forward while his right prepared to lunge. His blade was raised at his side and pointed straight at Valeria, ready to stab forward. Valeria, in contrast, kept the blade of her glaive out in front of her with her feet spread and her center of gravity lowered. Even with Leon’s greater strength, she was ready to block and deflect his attacks, to let him attack her at his discretion.

“Sounds like a lot to deal with,” Valeria said, her mouth curling into a smile of anticipation as she waited for Leon to begin.

She didn’t have to wait long, as only a couple seconds later, Leon lunged forward, the point of his blade aimed right at Valeria’s sternum. However, his strike had little power behind it, and it was slow by Leon’s standards. It was a probing strike; Leon remembered sparring with Valeria and knew that she was quite skilled, so he wanted to test her defenses rather than go all out immediately.

Valeria almost followed through as Leon’s sword brushed past her body, but Leon quickly hopped back just out of reach of her weapon.

“I’m just glad that I’m not dealing with it…” he muttered as he took his stance again. That one strike told him all he needed to know: his strength as a sixth-tier mage was far beyond what Valeria could deal with in a straight fight, and that brought him a surprising amount of sadness and disappointment. His fights with Valeria had been one of the few highlights of his entire time at the Knight Academy, and now they couldn’t fight on the same level anymore.

Unexpectedly, Valeria suddenly lunged forward and swung her glaive almost like an ax, bringing the blade crashing down toward Leon. However, Leon simply raised his own blade and blocked it. Without hesitation, he struck Valeria in the stomach with his free hand, causing no lasting damage but throwing her back and forcing all the air out of her lungs.

Valeria quickly recovered, as Leon didn’t press this advantage.

“What are you… going to… do, then?” she asked in between gasps as she refilled her lungs.

“Not sure, yet,” Leon honestly replied. “Might let things play out. Might not. Either way, I think there’ll be quite a bit of bloodshed in my near future.”

“Do you need some help?” Valeria asked, simply standing there in the ring, not retaking her stance. “I don’t have any more responsibilities to carry out in the Royal Palace, anymore… and besides, you’re now a high-ranking knight. Having a retinue of your own is expected, no?”

Leon gave her a contemplative look as he thought about her request. It took him completely by surprise, but he did his best not to show it. Just a day ago, he’d have turned her down immediately, and probably wouldn’t even be sparring with her right now. However, after his chat with Xaphan and the Thunderbird, he trusted their belief that the risk was worth the reward.

She was a strong fighter, of that much he was aware. Not quite enough to take him on with their massive power disparity, but she was immensely skilled and a dedicated magic practitioner. He could tell that she was approaching the threshold for the fifth-tier; it wouldn’t be much longer before she could start flinging fireballs or whatever her chosen element would be.

“Why?” he asked after a few quiet moments. “I don’t doubt that other retinues would kill to add you to their ranks, so why ask me, a relative nobody?”

“I trust you,” she replied, the smile she had worn since their spar began softening. “I would like to consider you a friend, and what’s more… if my family really did do such harm to yours… then I owe you… Adrianos had left my father’s service by the time he went north with the Paladin Roland, but still, he bore our name, and so we have to take responsibility for his actions. In the absence of my father, I would like to take this responsibility upon myself.”

Color touched her pale cheeks as she spoke, a bright red that spread from her cheeks all the way out to her entire face until she had almost taken on the color of a tomato.

From the way his cheeks heated in response, Leon knew that the effect was mirrored in his own face.

“You have no idea who I am…” he murmured so softly that she had to strain to hear him.

“I do, though,” she disagreed. “I may not know much about the details of your life, but I know who you are…”

‘Not exactly what I was talking about…’ Leon thought to himself.

“You are loyal and protective of those whom you consider to be your responsibility,” she continued. “You are at least a good enough man that Elise, one of my best friends and a woman whose opinion I trust completely, has entered into a relationship with you. You are a powerful warrior and mage, and from what I saw of you during the FTX back in the Knight Academy, you’re a great leader.”

Leon almost rolled his eyes.

“Castor led the Snow Lions, not me,” he protested. “And I haven’t had much experience leading anyone since. In fact, I’d say I’m nowhere near as good as you seem to think…”

The only real leadership experience he had post-Knight Academy was at Fort 127, and even then, Leon didn’t think he acquitted himself well, even though all of the people under his pseudo-command made it out alive.

“How about this,” he said before Valeria could say anything more, “you tell me why your family came to the Bull Kingdom in the first place, and I’ll consider your offer.”

Valeria’s body and facial expression couldn’t have possibly frozen faster. Leon got a bit of a kick out of seeing her so quickly put out of sorts, but he also knew that it was too soon to ask for that kind of information and that him giving voice to it in the first place was probably a mistake.

“Well,” he said, trying to salvage the situation a bit, “I didn’t think you’d have a strong reaction to such a simple question, and it makes me quite a bit more curious. However, if you don’t want to tell me, then that’s fine. If I were to take you into my service, whatever that would entail, I would want to get to know you better.”

Valeria slowly nodded, her exterior thawing a bit as she accepted his follow-up.

“It’s… nothing,” she quickly said. “It’s fine. My father and I were entrusted with a mission, and we cannot return home until it has been completed. To my limited understanding, it isn’t going well.”

“What is this mission, exactly?” Leon asked, looking suspicious but doing his best not to appear too invested in her answer.

Valeria bit her lip and averted her gaze. Her stance, already relatively relaxed since they had essentially stopped their sparring match without saying a word about it, dropped even further.

“It’s not something I particularly want to talk about,” she whispered. “Suffice it to say, we were tasked with something truly vile, and the only saving grace that I can think of is that it, by all accounts, seems to be impossible. We will never accomplish our task, and that means we will never return home, and I will never meet my mother. We were exiled from our home in all but name.”

Leon blinked in surprise, the last part of her statement resonating with him in a way that he never thought it would. It wasn’t that great a leap in logic to take the rest of her statement as confirmation that it was her family that was responsible for the fall of his own, not that he needed much more than what he had already. Still, it was the bit about her mother that truly struck a chord within him, and he was almost unable to formulate a response.

“Your… your mother…?” he asked.

“She was taken from us and has been held captive since only a matter of months after I was born,” Valeria explained. “As we cannot complete our task, we cannot rescue her, nor can we negotiate for her release. So long as our task remains incomplete, we will remain here, and so long as we remain here, she is lost to my family.”

Leon’s eyes uncontrollably turned downward as an unexpected empathy for Valeria bloomed within him. He sighed as any thoughts of turning her down vanished from his mind. Her dilemma was one that he knew all too well.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” he said. “I never knew my mother, either. My father would never speak of her, and to this day I don’t know if she’s dead or alive.”

The two weren’t that far apart, and as soon as Leon said this, Valeria dropped her glaive, took a few steps forward, and pulled Leon into a warm embrace. Very hesitantly, Leon returned her hug, letting his own sword fall to the floor as well. Neither spoke again for several long minutes.

When they finally parted, Valeria’s eyes were wet, but she quickly wiped them with her sleeve before any tears could fall.

“I’m sorry, I’m not usually like this…” she said, chuckling at herself a bit.

“It’s fine, neither am I,” Leon responded. “I’ll take you up on your offer, though. If you want to be a knight in my service, then I’ll gladly take you in.”

Valeria nodded enthusiastically, her sorrow fading from her face as she did so.

“Thank you,” she said. “I will fight with you wherever you need me!”

“Thank you,” Leon said back to her. Inside, he was completely shocked at how all of this had turned out. Both Xaphan and the Thunderbird had advocated for trying to get closer to Valeria to try and get some information on her and her father, but he never thought it would go so well so soon. Already he’d gotten more information from her than he ever thought he would’ve. He was glad for it, but he couldn’t push for any more, not now. There’d be time enough for that later, and right now they were on a thin time crunch; they had a mere two weeks to get a few things in motion just in case August’s trial didn’t go well. “We’re going to have to sit down and have a long chat about what exactly this will entail, but before that, I already have something that I could use your help with…”