Leon watched Ariminium slowly recede as the massive Heaven’s Eye ship slowly pushed its way up the Tyrrhenian River, bearing him and his followers away from the Bull Kingdom, possibly never to return. Already, the ship had passed by Florentia, officially leaving the borders of the Bull Kingdom.

It put Leon in quite the mood, watching this stage of his life fade into the haze of distance as the ship sailed on. It seemed that his mood was fairly obvious, because while the others had gone below deck to get re-settled into the ship, several of them came back topside not long after, joining him at the back of the ship. The first of them, surprisingly, was Alix.

“Hey there, boss man,” she said as she slid into place beside him, leaning on the guardrail and fixing her eyes on the shrinking Ariminium. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going,” Leon said noncommittally.

Alix nodded and went silent for a moment, seemingly content to simply share this moment with her friend and commander. But once that moment was over, she glanced at him and asked, “Anything on your mind worth sharing?”

Leon sighed. He then waved his hand back at the Trajan’s former city and said, “Kind of. Can’t really put my thoughts into words. I suppose I’m just feeling a little sad that something’s ending, and excited that something’s starting, and those sides are fighting in my head. Whichever is dominant depends entirely on the moment. Right now, I guess I’m just feeling a little more melancholic.”

“I get that,” Alix whispered. “It’s not like we’ll never return, though. Even when we go to the Nexus, we’ll be able to come back at some point, won’t we? This is ‘see you later’, not ‘goodbye’.”

With a shrug, Leon said, “I’m not so sure I want to come back. You have family here, don’t you?”

“I do,” Alix confirmed.

“I don’t,” Leon remarked. “Just bones. House Raime was one of the foremost noble families of the realm for thousands of years, and Thunder Kings for thousands of years before that. So many members of my family lie dead in Teira that an entire other city could be built using their bones as foundations. But no one living. Everyone who I might’ve considered coming back to visit are… well, kind of coming with us right now.”

“You don’t even want to visit Minerva?” Alix asked.

“No,” Leon definitively stated. “We honestly weren’t that close. We’re friendly, but not friends.”

“Then when I come back to visit my family, you come with me to visit your family’s tombs,” Alix suggested. “They’re both in the Northern Territories, so we can easily go together!”

She smiled at him radiantly, and Leon was suddenly terribly grateful that he had her as a friend.

“Not a ‘goodbye’,” he murmured, his eyes turning back to Ariminium. “Just a ‘see you later’…”

Alix nodded and clapped him on the shoulder.

“And, hey,” she said, “if we come back and find that August has run the place into the ground, we can knock him about a little. Get a little justified payback for that war we got dragged into for him.”

Leon chuckled and playfully pushed his former squire. “That might be fun.”

“’Might’ be?” Alix challenged. “I’ll have you know that I’ve been hoping to get a chance to kick that soft Prince black and blue! Boy needs to harden up, I say, if he’s going to be ruling a Kingdom!”

“I think his father will have that taken care of,” Leon stated. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see him equal to the Paladins if we ever come back, so if you want to give him those kicks, you’ll have to train like hells to catch up!”

“Oh I’m going to do it,” Alix declared, though with more mischievousness than seriousness. “Mark my words, Leon, I’m going to kick that Princeling so hard in the ass someday that he’ll be tasting my toes for years to come!”

A voice sounded from behind them, “That would be fun to see.” Leon and Alix glanced back and were met with the sight of a smiling Valeria as she leaned against the guardrail on Leon’s other side.

She wore largely the same clothing that she was used to: a loose sky blue tunic and tight dark blue exercise pants. However, unlike usual, she was actually wearing jewelry; around her neck was the gold amulet set with a glowing sapphire that Leon had looted from Mansur’s corpse. This was the accessory that had allowed the Samarid to turn invisible and evade Leon’s detection until the moment he hurled the fatal fireball that claimed Khayu’s life. Since Maia and Elise both had their invisibility rings, Leon gave Valeria the amulet so that she would have similar capability.

The ring set with a dozen rubies, on the other hand, Leon wasn’t sure what to do with. As far as he could tell, the ring acted as a kind of magical battery. He could certainly use it, but he already had the amulet given to him by Elise as a wedding gift which fulfilled a similar function. Giving it to Asiya was a sore temptation, but he hesitated; he didn’t want it to come across as insensitive. She’d lost her father, and Leon blamed his own complacency. Giving her the ring would feel to him like blood money, and he was sure it would be taken as a rude gesture, as if he were trying to buy his way out guilt.

To an extent, that was exactly what he wanted to do: give Asiya a great gift, and hope that that might help make up for his mistake. But he knew as well as anyone that a lost father was utterly irreplaceable, and if Justin had tried to give him such a gift as a way to apologize, Leon would’ve been incensed. Their situations weren’t identical, of course, but Leon was unable to come to any decisions regarding what to do with the ring, so now it just lay in his soul realm gathering dust.

Valeria and Alix continued to bemoan the choices of Octavius and August that led to the civil war, but Leon didn’t pay much attention, letting his attention turn back to the shrinking city behind them, and the departure from his life so far.

Before too long, though, soft, loving hands wrapped themselves around his waist, and he felt someone leaning into him from behind. He didn’t have to turn around to know that it was Elise, but he did anyway to press his lips against hers. Neither said a thing, with Elise only giving Alix and Valeria loving smiles as her greeting. But then she turned back to Leon, and with a smile on her gorgeous face, she took one of his hands and led him onward.

Leon and Maia had a magical connection, so they could sense each other’s emotional states with reasonable clarity. Leon and Elise, however, had no such magical connection; and yet, they didn’t need one. Elise knew what was going on in Leon’s head, and Leon knew what was going on in hers. As a result, despite her seductive smile and her leading toward the yacht’s interior, he knew that she wasn’t looking for sex. Instead, she led him through the ship’s halls to the covered front of the ship, where the main leisure areas were located. She led him to a private lounge several floors up, one with huge crystal-clear glass windows that gave unparalleled views of the course ahead.

It was only when they stopped in front of those windows that Elise finally spoke.

“Look forward, husband, not back,” she said as she squeezed his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. She didn’t need to say anything more.

Leon smiled and squeezed her hand back, and whispered, “I love you.”

Elise lightly giggled, her love not needing to be said aloud for Leon to know how she felt.

The two stood there in silence for hours, just watching the land they passed, watching the verdant fields by the Tyrrhenian River gradually give way to starker, sandier deserts as they moved south. Soon enough, Ariminium passed out of sight as the hills and haze of distance obscured it.

They’d finally departed from the Bull Kingdom, not to return for a long time, if ever.

—

Leon sat in the yacht’s training room, staring at Gaius sitting just a few feet in front of him. The rest of the retinue was busy training, but Leon wasn’t doing too much supervising right now, preferring instead to put in more time practicing Xaphan’s mental communication technique. Gaius, needing a break from his own physical training, volunteered to have Leon try and communicate to him while he meditated.

So, Gaius sat cross-legged in front of Leon, both facing the other, but Gaius’ eyes were closed as he practiced altering the flow of magic within his body. Consequently, his aura was quite pronounced, which helped Leon greatly with his efforts to learn the new technique. That, Xaphan had told him, was the key to using his technique.

It had been explained to Leon that it was almost a kind of forced auditory hallucination—just as he could use his magic senses to ‘hear’ sound that wasn’t close enough for him to hear it with his ears, he could use his magic senses to make someone else hear what he wanted them to. Magic senses worked by projecting one’s magic power in a wave, and having it resonate within the magic contained within one’s spine, creating sensations that approximated a projection of physical senses. Leon had to learn to use his magic power to mimic the way magic senses resonated with someone.

It was only the first step of the technique, though. It would be useless using it on someone who didn’t share any common languages with him since any projected ‘noise’ he made would be unintelligible. It was also easily countered by someone who didn’t want to be communicated with thusly, thus crushing Leon’s first thought at being able to make people see and hear whatever he wanted them to, trapping them in a hallucination. They’d know what was going on if they were powerful enough, but no matter what, every mage, no matter how weak, would be able to ignore him if they so wished.

But such resonance was only part of the technique. Xaphan spoke directly into his mind, and could do even before their contract; the demon hadn’t simply made him hear his voice. In order for Leon to truly learn this mental communication technique, he’d have to learn at least a little bit about darkness magic—a prospect that made his skin crawl.

He had experience with darkness magic, and none of it was particularly pleasant. The Talfar vampire Bran had used darkness magic and had caused Leon to lose himself in terrible nightmares. More recently, and more obviously, was everything that had happened in the Serpentine Isles: the krakens used darkness magic to instill fear in their prey; the Primal God used darkness magic to screw with Leon’s mind; and the Serpent’s Temple used darkness magic to raid Leon’s thoughts and conjure a hostile image of his father.

Suffice it to say, Leon wasn’t thrilled that he’d have to learn darkness magic.

It was then that the Thunderbird spoke up, pointing out that Leon needed not just a great depth of knowledge, but also great breadth, as well. All great mages, she’d reasoned, had some ability to use all of the magical elements, if only to further their understanding of the universe as a whole. For Leon, if he ever wanted to create a perfect defense against mental intrusion—and Leon very much wanted to create such a thing—then learning about darkness magic was the most important step. He had to know the tool his opponent might use against him if he were to properly counter it, not merely rely upon the Thunderbird’s cleansing lightning, which while able to protect his mind against darkness magic, wasn’t perfect by any means.

There just weren’t enough hours in the day for all the training that Leon had to do, though. He had personal lessons with the Thunderbird who was still teaching him how to manipulate the weather. He had lessons with Nestor in the arts of enchanting. He had resumed lessons with Xaphan regarding fire magic and now the mental communication technique. He had to monitor the progress of his retinue and ensure that he spent enough time with them that they would continue to see him as their leader—and to head off any conflicts that may arise within their ranks, which seemed fairly likely to him if only because Anshu continued to keep himself separate from everyone else. He also had to carve out time in his day for spending some quality time with his wife and lovers, for the last thing he ever wanted to do was to neglect them and find that they were falling out of love as a result.

His schedule was packed, in short. Fortunately, as an eighth-tier mage, his need for sleep wasn’t what it once was, and though he still enjoyed sleeping and falling asleep cuddled up with Elise and Maia was an unparalleled joy, he made the choice to start sleeping much less, leaving him with more time to devote to his training and studies. Four less hours of sleep a day could make the difference between life and death, and when viewed from that lens, Leon felt a little better about it.

Though that wasn’t to say he was happy about it, but he could make that exchange for greater power. He was still barely twenty-one, and an eighth-tier mage. All others of his power level were likely decades, if not centuries older than he was, and their significantly greater experience meant that for all his advantages, he was likely outclassed and out-equipped by all of them, who’d simply had so much more time to train, learn, and acquire various objects to augment their power.

He saw that clearly enough with Jormun—though he and the pirate were technically on par with each other in terms of power, the pirate was just so much older and so much more experienced with using his power that Leon had to acknowledge that he never really stood much of a chance against him. Time would bring experience, though, and time was certainly something that Leon felt he had much more of; and he was intent on using as much of it as he could shoring up his magical foundation so that he wasn’t nearly so outclassed by those he was supposed to be equal to.

In that respect, as much as he hated the idea of being leashed and trapped by it, he was minutely grateful that the extreme growth of his soul realm from his first transformation had forced him to stop his gain in magical power for a while. He still didn’t know how long it might be before he could continue to grow it without tearing his soul realm apart from the strain, but at least it forced him to stop and grow his skill rather than his power.

For the moment, Leon focused only on the first step of learning Xaphan’s communication technique, the part where he tried to use his magic power to get Gaius to hallucinate his voice. It was damned difficult, for Leon had to project magic power in a way that was identical to Gaius’ aura, and to do that, he had to be absolutely conscious of every aspect of Gaius’ aura, every little eddy and current of power that emanated from his body. Even a tiny difference would prevent the technique from working.

He made several probing attempts, trying to magically shout ‘hello’ into Gaius’ ears hoping that the other man would hear him, but he was unsuccessful every time. He wasn’t deterred, though, and kept on practicing for days. The yacht was slowly making its way up the Tyrrhenian River, and wouldn’t reach its destination for a few days, yet, and he intended to use every scrap of free time he had all to himself to practice this. For all that Xaphan and the Thunderbird had claimed that this technique was useless in most practical ways, it was still a fine way to practice his skills in fine magic control.

So, for days, that’s what Leon did: practicing manipulating his projected power, while Gaius sat opposite him, quietly meditating and focusing on trying to learn to wield elemental magic. Unfortunately for him, he’d settled on learning earth magic, meaning that Leon was next to no help in teaching him how to use magic.

By the time the Heaven’s Eye yacht had carried them as far as it could, Leon hadn’t managed to get ahold of the technique, though he’d learned a great deal about manipulating his aura—enough that he was confident he’d learn the technique by the time their caravan reached Occulara.

For the moment, though, he was glad for the break. As dedicated as he was to expanding his magical skills, he still needed at least some time to relax. To that end, he wanted to explore the city a little with his family and retinue, but he was stopped by his mother-in-law, who needed to go over their schedule.

In short, they had arrived at the point where the Samar Kingdom’s borders met with Asturias to the east and the Cortuban Alliance to the south, a group of five allied petty Kings who’d banded together to fight against the Samar Kingdom to the northwest, the Kingdom of Asturias to the northeast, and the Halcyon Federation to the south and west. The border they were at was relatively peaceful, but Emilie indicated that it wasn’t always so, for Asturias and the Cortubans were almost perpetually at war. Fortunately for their caravan, hostilities these days were mostly relegated to the east—a mountain range separated Asturias and the Alliance, and the only two passes through it were here along the Tyrrhenian River, and one much further east where the northern mountain range met another mountain range that separated the civilized world from the bleak and almost lifeless Screeching Desert.

Leon wondered why the war hadn’t spilled out into this western pass, and all Emilie could guess was that the threat of Samar’s intervention was keeping this region fairly peaceful, but stating that the possibility of the war spilling out over here was the main factor in her decision not to stick around too long. But they still had to arrange travel for more than a thousand people, so they had to stay for at least a few days.

Grateful for even that much time off a ship, Leon went to meet up with his people and spend some time in a brand new place.