With the fourth of the Serpentine Isles at their back, Sigebert’s fleet made fairly good time. That didn’t quite make up for the late start, though, for it had taken the entire rest of the previous day following the battle to clean up. All of the krakens that Jormun had unleashed upon them had been hunted down or scattered—the two that had helped to cover his escape had been strung up above a pair of the larger war galleys as grisly trophies. The pirates in the caves that Alix had sealed had also been dealt with thanks to Legion engineers collapsing the entire caves instead of just the entrances. No Legion troops were ever put in harm’s way.

However, for those successes, severe casualties had also been reported. More than two thousand injured, and at least a quarter of that number dead. Four war galleys were destroyed completely, three more so severely damaged that they were no longer battle ready. Several more had taken lighter damage, and Legion engineers were busy patching up those holes. Several dozen of the smaller ships that made up the fleet were now decorating the bottom of the sea.

Still, Sigebert’s fleet was a powerful thing. Both dreadnoughts were still completely functional and in perfect condition, and dozens of war galleys were still at Sigebert’s command. Their engagement with Jormun had been a victory, but given that Jormun had gotten away, Leon still couldn’t feel that good about it.

He spent much of the remainder of that day resting in his quarters, quietly mourning the loss of both his armor, and his flight suit. If things kept going like this, he’d have precious little left to defend himself with. He might even have to go hat-in-hand to the flagship’s quartermaster and beg for some loaner Legion equipment, and that was not something he wanted to do.

He supposed that he’d have to make do with what he had or rely more heavily upon his skill in battle to survive. He was fairly confident after his last engagement when he’d managed to kill Jormun’s light mage, but the fact that he had yet to truly battle the pirate himself was worrying him a little. He didn’t like that uncertainty, he had no idea how well he’d fare in a fight with the man, but at the very least, he knew that he would be at a disadvantage. If they were on the water, Jormun would have all the seas to fight Leon with, while if they were on land, Jormun had that massive hammer that had once been the possession of a vassal Despot of Jason Keraunos, the last Storm King.

But Leon also had his Adamant blade, his bow and all the accompanying spell arrows, and even access to demonic magic, should the need for it arise. Xaphan’s power was still a little too much for him to handle, however, and his left arm ached when he considered the possibility of invoking eighth-tier magic with only seventh-tier strength to control it.

While his body rested, Leon’s mind was constantly whirring with possibilities to make up for these shortcomings. Enchantments filled his mind, and how he might make use of them. He hadn’t the time to make anything truly extraordinary, but at the very least, he might be able to make a few more spells. He also had a few more unenchanted silver bands that he could inscribe enchantments onto.

As he thought about those, he was also reminded that he still had a weapon that he’d never tested before ready and waiting for use. Leon was loath to test it in battle just in case it didn’t work and people died because of that, but if it did, then he might be able to cancel out at least a portion of Jormun’ water powers. About the only he knew for certain was that the silver band would likely break upon its first use, giving him just one shot. With the rest of silver bands, he might get one or two more.

However, early in the morning of the next day, after the fleet had already gotten underway toward the last of the Serpentine Isles, Leon was interrupted in his enchanting work by a lady knight, a young-seeming woman with fifth-tier strength and the insignia of a Tribune upon her uniform.

“What is it?” Leon asked as he met her in his cabin’s common room, with Alix, Marcus, and Alcander alongside him. They were fulfilling one of the most important jobs an entourage could: be seen with their leader, giving him more authority than he might otherwise have. Maia, however, didn’t much care for any of that, and so she was draped over Anzu in the griffin’s cell, quietly reading and generally ignoring everything else that was going on around her.

“I’d like to ask for your help,” the knightess said. “It shouldn’t take long, perhaps an hour or two. Is this a good time?”

“That depends on what kind of help you need,” Leon replied with a wry smile. “I’m not about to go and clean the privies, but if this is important enough, I’ll certainly give it it’s due consideration.”

“Thank you,” the knightess said. “We’re not going to ask you to help clean the privies, though I’m sure that those who were assigned those duties would’ve been ecstatic for the help. Instead, I was hoping to speak with you for a few minutes about that prisoner you took during the battle.”

“Ah,” Leon said as he remembered the dark-skinned man he’d pulled from the wreckage of one of Jormun’s ships. The man was clearly not of Serpentine Islander descent, and he’d been dressed magnificently. That, combined with his fifth-tier strength, had led Leon to assume he was someone worth capturing. “Is there an issue with him?”

“Nothing too important,” the knightess hurriedly explained. “He’s just not cooperating. Sir Sigebert believed that this man may have insider knowledge of what Jormun’s plans are on the next island, and what kind of forces that the pirate still has at his disposal, so he ordered the man interrogated. That job was assigned to me, but I haven’t been getting anywhere with him. I was hoping that he might be more willing to speak with the man who saved him instead of me.”

Leon’s grin turned a little bitter and self-deprecating. “I… I’m not good at this sort of thing,” he admitted. “If you need someone stabbed or fried, I can do that without much issue, but asking me to help with an interrogation is… well, I don’t think I’ll be as helpful as you might think I’ll be…”

“He’s not even giving me his favorite color, he could do nothing but tell you to ** off and you’ll still be more successful that I’ve been—he won’t even spare me the words,” the knightess replied with a shrug. “Most of Sir Sigebert’s other knights are off doing other things that the fleet needs seeing to before we catch that fish-**er again. No one else is going to have the time to speak with him, so if you’re not going to help, we’re just going to have to end the interrogation.”

“You don’t have to twist my arm, I’ll help,” Leon playfully replied. “Though, just out of curiosity, if he doesn’t give me anything, what’ll happen to him?”

“Headsman’s been earning his keep these past few hours—that man was not the only pirate we fished out of the seas, and they’ve all been sentenced to death by Sir Sigebert. If he doesn’t say anything to save himself, he’ll just be one more pirate on the block. He doesn’t seem to care, though, he barely even acknowledges my presence when I go and see him, even when I threaten him with this.”

Leon nodded. “Take me to him.”

—

The brig on Sigebert’s ship was, like all the rest of the cabins onboard, small and cramped, though the prisoner Leon had taken—perhaps due to his status as a fifth-tier mage—had been given one of the larger cells. It was just barely big enough to accommodate a bed, a toilet, and a washbasin.

However, when Leon arrived at the brig, the man wasn’t in his cell, and instead, the knightess escorted him to a nearby interrogation room. They didn’t enter immediately, but instead worked through their strategy first.

“… and he hasn’t given you anything, yet?” Leon asked. That was basically what the knightess had already told him, but he wanted confirmation before heading in.

“Not even a name,” the knightess replied. “He’s barely even spared me more than a few cursory glances, let alone engaged with my questions on any meaningful level.”

Leon nodded. “How far is this going to be taken? Is this going to get rough?”

“I don’t expect it to be,” the knightess answered. “Not a lot of point in beating him, so we generally avoid doing that. If he doesn’t talk, then so be it; to the headsman he’ll go.”

Leon shrugged and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I honestly don’t think I’ll be of any help, but I’ll do what I can.”

“I think if you take the lead, you’ll do fine,” the knightess countered. “You saved his life. That has to count for something.”

Leon shrugged again, and the two entered the interrogation room.

The room was utterly bare, bereft of anything that could even remotely be considered decoration. In the center of the room was a table with two chairs, with the prisoner already sitting in one. Surrounding him were four guards, each holding onto the end of a chain that glowed with magical runes inhibiting the prisoner’s use of his magic. These chains were connected to manacles around the man’s ankles, wrists, and neck.

The prisoner himself was looking surprisingly well given the state he was in the last time Leon had seen him. His golden armor and silk clothes had been exchanged for a gray one-piece outfit that had no more decoration than the interrogation room, and his fancy sword was nowhere to be seen, but he otherwise looked quite well. When he briefly glanced at the door to see who was entering, his eyes were bright and intelligent; his straight black hair was fairly long by the Bull Kingdom’s standards; his strong jawline was covered in black stubble; his ebony skin seemed healthy and absent visible wounds; his body still radiated the robust aura of a fifth-tier mage, even if it was being kept in check by the Legion restraints.

The knightess walked over to a corner and leaned against a wall. Leon noted that the man didn’t once look at her—he only looked at Leon once before turning his eyes back to the wooden table in front of him, but he at least acknowledged Leon’s existence. The knightess got no such courtesy.

Leon quietly sighed and took the other seat.

“Can you give me your name?” he neutrally asked.

The dark-skinned man blinked, but otherwise neither moved nor spoke.

“Have you been treated well?” Leon inquired.

Again, silence was his answer.

“I see, that’s how it’s going to be,” Leon said as he smiled with resignation and slouched down in his chair, letting any pretense of formality vanish. “That makes things easier, I guess. I’ve a few more questions for you, and if you don’t want to answer them, that’s fine. We don’t need your answers. When I’m done, these guys holding your fetters will escort you to the headsman, and all of this can be over. Sound good?”

Leon detected a few fluctuations in the man’s aura, and his eyes casually flitted all over the table, but other than that, the man remained silent.

“All right, then let’s continue,” Leon said with dissonant serenity. “What has Jormun been up to on these islands?”

No answer.

“What sort of things was he doing on that island in particular?”

Nothing.

“How many pirates does Jormun still have at his beck and call?”

Silence.

“How many of your fellow pirates were killed when the caves they were waiting in were collapsed?”

That finally got a reaction, muted thought it was. The man’s face momentarily began to contort in a light scowl, but he quickly mastered himself and maintained his stoicism. Leon had to respect him for that, though he did note that the man scowled precisely when he was called a pirate.

‘Seems like he doesn’t like that label,’ Leon thought to himself. ‘I can lean into that, I think.’

“What was your position on your ship? You seem quite capable, and you were clearly well-equipped; you must’ve been a high-ranking pirate among the others on your ship.”

Again, the man twitched when Leon called him a pirate, and he decided to call him out on it this time.

“You don’t like being called a pirate, do you? Does it irk you that you’re being lumped in with them?”

The man’s stoic façade cracked just a little bit, and he glared at Leon before averting his gaze again.

“What would you rather I call you?”

The man grimaced, but didn’t say anything.

“You can call me Leon, if you please. Are you even capable of speech? Is that a power at your command?”

“Do I look like an unthinking beast to you?!” the man suddenly shouted, his eyes blazing with white light as he tried to rise in anger, but the four Legion marines holding his chains kept him down in his chair. His voice, while raised, had also been quite deep, though instead of the usual gravelly nature of voices that deep, his was much smoother and more suave. He, at the very least, had the pride of a nobleman, which, in Leon’s mind, would certainly explain his dislike of being called a pirate.

Leon didn’t even flinch in the face of this outburst. He just sat in his chair, smiling at the prisoner as the chains did their job, swiftly suppressing his magic and forcing the arcane light in his eyes to fade.

“You look like a man who lost a battle,” Leon quietly stated, which seemed to replace much of the man’s affronted anger with surprise. “Though, I have to say, you’re looking at least better than you did when I fished you out of the wreckage of your ship.”

One of the man’s eyebrows rose slightly, and he asked, “You’re the one who saved me from that disaster?” He spoke with a fairly thick accent that hadn’t been immediately apparent when he’d shouted. Leon couldn’t place the accent, but the man was obviously fluent in this language given his confidence in speaking it—Leon understood that the Bull Kingdom didn’t have its own bespoke language, and instead used Aeterna’s language of trade for everyday communication. That other places often had their own casual languages used amongst their people was something that Leon was still getting used to—he might’ve been able to pick up on Jormun being Turiel if he’d been able to notice the man’s lack of unfamiliar accent.

“Yes,” Leon answered. “I was pursuing Jormun, but when the man escaped, I decided to take a quick detour. I noticed that you were still alive, and given your attire, thought you must’ve been important. So I grabbed you and made for the surface.”

The man lightly frowned, but he nodded in acknowledgement. “I saw you fight. It was quite a magnificent sight. Very spectacular. Might I know your name?”

“I don’t know, how many names do you know?” Leon asked with a grin. “My name is Leon Raime.”

“I am known as Anshu Bodhi Rahulani,” the prisoner stated with pride dripping from his voice.

“A grand name,” Leon politely responded. “Is there more to it? Does it carry any special meaning?”

Anshu smiled. “I am Anshu. My father was Bodhi. Our family, the Rahulanis, are descended from Rajahs of the Indra Raj.”

“You’re a Prince?” Leon asked in surprise. He knew that the Indra Raj was a large and prosperous nation far to the south. Both it and the Bull Kingdom occupied the extreme western edges of the continent of Aeterna, but whereas the Bull Kingdom was secluded in the north, the Indra Raj was its mirror in the south. However, whereas the Bull Kingdom was isolated by the Border Mountains, the Gulf of Discord, and the deserts south of the Samar Kingdom, the Indra Raj was heavily connected to the trade network of the entire plane. Not many nations on the continent could hold a candle to the power of the Four Empires, but if there was one that could, Leon had always heard it said that that one was probably the Indra Raj.

Of course, he’d never met someone from there, and it was thousands and thousands of miles away, a terribly prohibitive distance even by the standards of powerful mages or Heaven’s Eye, so his information was likely decades, if not centuries out of date, if it were ever accurate at all.

Anshu paused a moment before answering, “No, but we are distant relations to the current Rajah.”

“Interesting,” Leon said. “And how is it that a relation of the Rajah is this far away from his home?”

The pride on Anshu’s face slipped just a little bit.

“One of my cousins… got too close to one of the Rajah’s daughters. He was caught trying to climb through her window one night, and the Rajah was so insulted he exiled my entire family.”

“That’s… quite the extreme reaction,” Leon whispered.

Anshu shrugged. “The Rajah did what any man would do if he caught someone attempting to seduce a woman of his household, I hold no grudge against him. My fool cousin on the other hand…”

It was Leon’s turn to shrug. “Mighty generous of you. Were I in your place, I think I’d hold a grudge for a very long time.”

“As would be your wont,” Anshu replied.

Leon nodded, and the two were quiet for a few long seconds before Leon turned his attention back to the point of his visit.

“So, listen… I need to know what Jormun’s specific plans are. I know what his goals are, but knowing how he’s going about them would be most helpful, and how much support he still retains. Any information you can provide in that vein would be appreciated.”

Leon glanced back at the knightess who was lightly smiling, though the smile seemed a little bitter. Leon guessed that it was because Anshu was speaking so readily with Leon, whereas she hadn’t even gotten a single word out of him.

“It’s worth noting,” Leon continued, “that if you don’t cooperate, then the Fleet Legate—the admiral of this fleet—will likely sentence you to death as a pirate. It won’t matter how well you served Jormun or how he recruited you; you’ll be made a head shorter in short order. Giving us the information we request will go a long way to convincing the Fleet Legate not to send you to the headsman.”

Anshu briefly glared daggers at the knightess before turning back to Leon.

“I’m not opposed to giving that information,” he said.

“You seemed like you were opposed earlier,” Leon couldn’t help but mutter.

“You sent a woman to speak with me,” Anshu replied, his tone fairly flat as if he were stating something eminently obvious. “I was insulted. It’s no shame to answer your questions after your victory, but to speak with an unmarried woman outside of the home would tarnish my honor greatly.”

Leon reeled a bit from that explanation, and he detected a few brief hints of killing intent winding their way through the knightess’ aura before she clamped down on it. She’d been casually leaning against the wall throughout the short interrogation, but now he heard her shift her position into one that was both more formal, and more hostile.

“I see…” Leon whispered, not bothering to hide the shock and judgment on his face. “That’s a… well, that’s an opinion you have, I guess. I’m not entirely sure how to respond to that. I’m not even entirely sure I know what you mean…”

Leon thought he knew what Anshu meant, but he gave the man the benefit of the doubt.

His charity was immediately rewarded with disappointment when Anshu said, “A woman’s place is at home raising her husband’s children, or helping to raise her younger siblings. Not out on ships away from her father, brothers, or husband. It’s certainly not fighting in wars, either.”

“Yeah, I thought that’s what you meant,” Leon replied. “Seems a bit weird to me; this far north, women have the right to do just about anything men can.”

“No society is perfect,” Anshu replied with a shrug.

“Uh huh…” Leon replied with uncertainty. He didn’t much like the opinion that Anshu had just shared, but it wasn’t his job to punish the man, and neither did he much think it his place to try and correct his attitude. Jormun was the battle he needed to focus on—though, after stating such opinions, Leon had a feeling that the likelihood of Anshu getting a pardon from Sigebert had dropped significantly. There were plenty of women onboard the ship in high-ranking positions who would probably be insulted at Anshu’s opinions and advocate for him receiving a visit from the headsman. “Moving on from bizarre and insulting cultural differences,” Leon continued, “let’s get back to Jormun. Will you tell me what I want to know?”

“You saved me when my ship sank,” Anshu stated. “If the price for that is giving up Jormun, I can do that. He did a great service for me, which is why I followed him, but it was nothing compared to saving my life. What do you wish to know?”

A smile began to creep back across Leon’s face. “Everything you can tell me,” he said.