Indentured servitude to the Ilian Empire. If Leon were forced to, he’d have to admit that it wasn’t that bad of a prospect as his independent streak insisted it was—though, it wasn’t an onerous duty. He and Anastasios had come to an agreement as they were on their way back to Leon’s villa that Leon’s priority was Heaven’s Eye, and that any work with the Empires would come second.

Of course, second did in no way imply ‘never’; for someone like Leon, second priority was still very high on his to-do list.

Beyond that, he and Anastasios merely chatted as the Imperial carriage brought them back to Leon’s villa, followed by Anastasios’ rather long and rather put-out retinue. He hadn’t told any of them that he was going to meet Leon on his own, and when his yacht arrived in Occulara, his retinue had gone a little crazy at his disappearance, something the old man seemed to enjoy watching.

Leon didn’t have nearly enough room for the Lord Protector’s entire retinue, though, so as the man himself got settled in, he chose half a dozen attendants and sent the rest back to Occulara to post up in an Imperial property, their desperate cries to not leave him alone in Leon’s villa falling on deaf ears—or, perhaps not-so-deaf ears, if Anastasios’ amused smile as his retinue left was anything to go by.

As the retinue vanished down the road, Leon was thus left with Anastasios, two ninth-tier mages, and four fourth and fifth-tier mages working under them in his living room while the rest of his villa scurried about ensuring that all of Anastasios’ party’s baggage was properly secured, under the supervision of the head of Leon’s household staff. Also present in the living room was Leon’s entire family, while his retinue were ‘training’ nearby, just in case they were needed for anything at all.

“Once again, Lord Protector,” Elise said now that they were properly alone and Anastasios was clearly making himself comfortable, “it’s an honor to have you here in our home, though I’m not sure it’s up to Imperial standards…”

“Nonsense!” Anastasios boomed. “This place is lovely, Lady Elise.”

“Just ‘Elise’, please.”

“If you insist. Quite frankly, I love what’s been done with this place. The clean décor, the soothing atmosphere that your farm brings, and a wyvern sleeping just outside! You must know that having wyverns as war beasts is exceedingly rare, even in my Empire…”

“She’s not a war beast, Lord Protector,” Leon replied.

“Please, while we’re in your home, just ‘Anastasios’. If you’re going to insist on first-names, then it must go both ways!” Anastasios’ retainers looked to him, scandalized, but he cut off any words of argument they may have had with little more than a silent glare.

“That’s very generous of you. As I was saying, Red isn’t a war beast, she’s one of my retainers. She’s still getting used to human society, though, and has little care for our customs, so if you want to interact with her, be sure to expect little courtesy. And possibly an attempt on your life.”

One of Anastasios’ ninth-tier guards growled in response, “Sounds like you need to break your pet in better…”

“Sounds like you need to find somewhere else to sleep,” Leon said, his tone light and pleasant, but his aura writhing with killing intent.

The ninth-tier mage glared at him, then went ram-rod straight as he was lifted into the air, courtesy of Anastasios’ magic.

“We’re guests here,” the Lord Protector intoned, his voice rumbling with disapproval. “Even under normal circumstances, such disrespect is entirely unwarranted, and even less so here. Return to the city and stay there until further notice.”

Without waiting for the ninth-tier mage to reply, Anastasios telekinetically opened one of the windows and quite literally threw the offending mage right out of Leon’s villa.

Leon, for his part, couldn’t help but stare at the raw display of both authority and magic. With barely any physical movements, Anastasios had completely man-handled a ninth-tier mage, and the ninth-tier mage had been able to do exactly nothing about it—probably out of both genuine helplessness in the face of Anastasios’ power, and more social helplessness in the face of Anastasios’ position.

And Leon couldn’t help but dream of a day when he could do something similar.

“Let’s get down to business, then,” Anastasios said. “However, as delightful as this place is, Leon, why don’t we talk somewhere more comfortable?”

Leon glanced around at his rather lavishly appointed living room, briefly meeting Elise’s, Maia’s, and Valeria’s eyes, all reflecting his mild confusion. Hadn’t Anastasios just proclaimed this place to his liking?

“Do you have a bath here?” the Lord Protector asked.

With a grimace at what the old man was implying, Leon answered, “Nothing particularly big, but we do have a couple of recreational pools.”

“Then let’s discuss things over a swim,” the Lord Protector suggested, and Leon, seeing nothing more than his own personal discomfort with the idea, didn’t refuse. Besides, even though they’d reached some accord back in their previous short negotiation, having the Lord Protector as comfortable as possible might net him a better overall deal.

—

Leon stood in the shallow end of his pool, quietly using his water magic to prop himself up on something that resembled a lounge recliner. He was still wearing attire suitable for relaxing in a pool, keeping everything from his hips to his knees covered.

Anastasios, on the other hand, was swimming back and forth in the large rectangular pool, using not a spark of magic, as naked as the day he was born. They were the only two in the pool, reserving the sight for Leon’s eyes only, something he was both grateful and bitter about—he wouldn’t want to curse anyone else, yet he wished his burden could be shared.

As it was, though, Anastasios, for all his advanced age, hadn’t let his body go to the hells. His skin was a little loose, but beneath that was a well-built body banded in thick muscle. Leon supposed he could understand why the Lord Protector hardly cared about being naked before someone else; he supposed if he still looked that good at the Lord Protector’s relative age, then he would want to show off, too.

“… and I have no problem running a little interference with the Sentinels,” the Lord Protector said as he swam by Leon, their conversation passing largely uninterrupted after they’d got into the pool. “Of course, that will come with its own problems…”

“I have no problem with sharing some benefits with them, or with the Sacred Golden Empire” Leon replied. “It wouldn’t be quite fair, otherwise. If anything, it would only provoke conflict, between both them and myself, and with them and you. After all, if your Empire is the only one receiving any benefit, then there’s going to be quite a bit jealousy, isn’t there?”

“Indeed,” the Lord Protector grumbled.

“I get that you might want to keep any benefits that I can provide you to yourself, but you have to understand that I’m going to be doing this not for you, but for me. I still don’t entirely trust you, especially after being treated like a commodity to be bought and haggled over.”

“It hasn’t been that bad, young man! If the Grand Druid and I were to really get serious about recruiting you, there wouldn’t have been much you could do to turn us down!”

Leon bitterly smiled. “Well, we can all be grateful that no one has spoiled a potentially beautiful working relationship, can’t we?”

“Given what I’ve heard, that’s quite the accomplishment, young Raime, and seems to be in spite of your actions rather than because of them.”

“Really? Where’d that come from? I haven’t been that bad, have I? I’ve been both civil and peaceful!”

The Lord Protector laughed, frustrating Leon a little bit more. “Don’t worry too much about it, kid.”

Leon took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. ‘If I’m to be the next Storm King,’ he silently reasoned, ‘got to rise to these provocations less.’

Aloud, he asked, “So, what sort of things did you have in mind that you needed my help with? If it’s small enough, I wouldn’t mind giving you something as a show of good faith.”

Anastasios paused in his laps and, floating there in the pool’s deep end, he smiled quite widely. In a flash of light, he practically exploded out of the pool and, without even the slightest bit of apparent concern for his lack of clothing, he made a bit of room on a nearby table that had been covered with refreshments and conjured a tightly bound scroll.

Curious, Leon exited the pool with significantly less aplomb and gave the scroll a good once-over.

It was an ancient thing, looking like it would’ve crumbled to dust had it not been diligently seen to. The yellowed paper looked like it had seen quite a bit of magical reinforcement ensuring that it remained in as good of a condition as possible. But it was still old and Leon hesitated to touch it.

When he finally poked at it a bit and inspected the seal of thick red wax, he found that it had been sealed with the image of an owl, its body in profile but its face stared directly out from the seal. Leon could feel a relatively large amount of magic flowing through the seal, but not nearly so much that he would’ve thought it was something that needed his help.

“You really need me to get through this seal?” Leon asked, incredulity dripping from every syllable.

“The seal has been enchanted to destroy the scroll if forced open,” Anastasios explained. “We’ve managed to subvert these kinds of enchantments, but the failure rate is unreasonably high, and I’ve made the decision to stop that practice. Who knows how much knowledge we’ve lost already?”

“How many such sealed scrolls do you have?” Leon asked, hoping the number wasn’t that great.

“Around three hundred thousand,” Anastasios replied, clearly enjoying the stunned look on Leon’s face. “That’s not even counting what the other Empires have, or what may be lying in private collections, or those that have yet to be discovered.”

Leon lightly scowled and probed the seal with his magic power, trying to investigate it a little more closely, but to his surprise, the seal reacted immediately to his power and popped right off the scroll.

The Lord Protector didn’t hesitate for a moment, snatching the scroll up and, almost paradoxically so, gently unraveling the paper. He wore the expression of a child unwrapping a present, wondering just what might be within. However, as the decayed ink became visible, that glee quickly morphed into disappointment.

“Looks like a logistics report,” he said as he laid the unraveled scroll on the table.

Leon’s curiosity wasn’t deterred, and he leaned down to examine the scroll. Indeed, it was mostly just a fiscal report on just what materials were being shipped and to where. Given the societal and geographic changes to the plane over the previous eighty-thousand years, though, place names and specific logistics reports weren’t that useful.

Interesting to some, of course, but designs for some secret Thunderbird weapon of mass destruction this was not.

“Three hundred thousand scrolls; they can’t all be gems,” Leon grumbled as he stepped back from the table, doing his best not to react at all to Anastasios’ state of undress as he turned his attention back to the Lord Protector.

“True,” Anastasios said, before quickly shifting tacks. “Anyways, Leon, it pleases me that you’re being so cooperative. So long as you stay well away from the Sky Devils, then in a few decades, all of this unpleasantness should blow right over.”

Leon smiled. He didn’t verbally agree, but he nodded and let the Lord Protector read whatever he wanted into that gesture.

—

“So, you’re telling me that you want to get into contact with the Sky Devils?” Anshu asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” Leon replied.

The two were secretly meeting in Leon’s new apple orchard only a day after Anastasios’ arrival in Occulara, upon which had been built several buildings dedicated to the maintenance of the apple trees that were already starting to sprout up and down the property, thanks to Tikos’ power and Elise’s management skills and green thumb. The Hesperidic Apples were taking a little longer, but Leon was confident they’d start sprouting, too, now that their seeds had been planted and Tikos had taken root at the heart of the orchard.

But none of that pertained too much to why Leon had visited the orchard. Instead, he’d ensured that the orchard’s small office building had been heavily enchanted to serve as a private meeting place, of sorts. As such, he’d met Anshu here, confident that none could overhear their conversation. Entry and exit to the building were still fairly open, but that was what invisibility was for, as far as he was concerned.

He and Anshu needed to meet fairly frequently if their partnership in this venture was going to work. And since Leon was encouraged by the Jaguar’s reaction to his power, he was hoping that the Sky Devils’ seizure of the Sword would make getting in contact with them a little easier.

“Don’t go too out of your way, though,” Leon quickly added. “I understand that you have other things on your mind, and the war down in the southern seas is going to complicate matters greatly.”

“There’s an understatement,” Anshu growled. “Besides, with the number of Imperial and Pegasi ships that are going to be trying to keep the Sky Devils bottled up on the Sword, I can’t imagine any Sky Devil ship making it to the Pegasi States undetected. No Sky Devil is making it to the mainland for a while, despite their recent success. That much I would bet my name on.”

“Just keep an eye open for any opportunities,” Leon said, unconcerned with the potential wait. “Anything to do with the Jaguar that I mentioned before, especially.”

Scowling, Anshu asked, “Are you asking me to help them in establishing a foothold on the mainland?”

“No. Only if the Jaguar himself needs to get here are you to directly help him. Otherwise, just try to get in contact. Don’t get too discouraged if it takes a while, too. I’m ready to wait for this.”

“Good, because you’re going to have to wait. Disregarding the navies of the Empires, Pegasi States, and the Raj and Free Cities between them and us, even with Sky Devils all over the Sword, they’re not going to take too kindly to any mainlander, even a smuggler, mooring off their new island. Making peaceful contact won’t be easy at all.”

“Just do what you can,” Leon replied. “I can’t ask for any more or less.”

Anshu sighed, but in the end, nodded in agreement.

—

Leon and Anastasios spoke at great length frequently over the next few days. Rarely, however, was the topic about business. Instead, Anastasios seemed quite eager to hear stories of Leon’s childhood and his adventures and tribulations in the Bull Kingdom.

Leon indulged the old man fairly well, but he didn’t get too detailed when it came to matters regarding his family. He never mentioned the Cradle, for one, implying the stone giants to be natives to the plane rather than descended from Thunderbird golems.

For his part, Anastasios regaled Leon with stories of his youth, though many of the tales were so outlandish that Leon didn’t quite know what to believe. He was quite skeptical that the young Anastasios would’ve indulged in women quite as much as the old Anastasios was claiming, but he supposed if the man had been a relative of the previous Emperor, then it did make some kind of sense. It wasn’t like Anastasios had been a nobody before becoming Emperor, and he had quite likely indulged in some of those unstated social privileges at some point.

Leon found himself enjoying the Lord Protector’s company quite a bit more than he’d expected, and found little reason to complain over unlocking the occasional scroll for the man when he asked. There were many other things that Anastasios could ask of him, after all, and the Lord Protector always allowed him to read what was on the scroll after unlocking it. So far, Leon hadn’t unlocked anything particularly juicy or sensitive, yet.

But he didn’t spend all of those few days around Anastasios—in fact, he only spoke with the man for a few hours each day. Leon had quite a few other things that demanded his time, and perhaps the biggest one was getting a handle on being the new Chief of Magical Research and Development. He spent some time with Valentina, too, and these two things had his knowledge of some of his more neglected elements rising by leaps and bounds. He even visited Sid during this time, receiving her congratulations, while at the same time being forced to endure another lecture on the importance of earth magic to a blacksmith.

He didn’t have much time to himself, unfortunately, but that time was slowly increasing as Talal and the new department heads got settled into their new roles and took much of the workload off Leon’s shoulders. With this slowly increasing personal time, Leon enjoyed the company of his family and retinue. Over the past few months, he’d started to fear that he was neglecting them, and that he couldn’t abide by.

Elise, Maia, and Valeria were more than happy to share his time, of course, and his retinue was enthusiastic and encouraged with his return to directing their training sessions.

Many things had happened over the course of the past few months, but Leon finally allowed himself to relax a little bit, comfortable in the knowledge that he had an ally in Anastasios and that Director had ditched the vampires. He had the opportunity to slow down and consolidate his gains, and he was going to use every second of that time that he could. He just hoped nothing drastic happened that might change his plans in the next few years.