Claudia, Marcus’ older sister, looked quite a bit like him: rather tall, though not overly so; sharp eyes that didn’t wander; dark brown hair cropped short; tanned skin that spoke of long days spent in the sun; and a body that had been obviously trained for combat. She matched Marcus in magical power, but given there was almost two decades between them, Leon thought that Marcus would be passing her by quite soon.

She rolled up to his villa in a fairly small carriage and without entourage, but Leon, Elise, and Marcus met her out in his front courtyard anyway, treating her as an esteemed guest. From there, Leon escorted her inside, and then to his largest inner courtyard where they could speak.

“I love your home,” Claudia politely gushed as she was escorted through the villa’s halls. “It feels like I’ve gone back home a little bit…”

“We were a little nostalgic for home,” Elise replied. “It just felt right to bring a little bit of it here with us.”

“It has to have been expensive…” Claudia wondered aloud.

“Fairly so,” Leon answered. “There aren’t many quarries nearby that cut white marble of decent quality. We had to get much of the stone used in the façade imported.”

Claudia grimaced as they entered the inner courtyard and could see all the marble on display—and there was quite a bit to see. She didn’t have too long to take it all in, though, as Leon gestured over to a small square of couches and tables waiting for them, with plenty of fruit and drinks for them to pick at during their meeting.

As they sat, Claudia and Marcus on one side of the central table, Leon and Elise on the other, Leon decided to cut right to the heart of her visit. “So, how’re things in the Bull Kingdom?”

Claudia had been fairly friendly up to that point, but as they got down to business, her demeanor shifted quite sharply, her eyes narrowing and smile thinning. “Things have been going quite well since you left.” Her low tone sounding almost sarcastic, as if it were Leon’s absence that caused the Bull Kingdom’s prosperity.

Ignoring that implication, Leon simply said, “Wonderful to hear. Talfar’s invasion, Trajan’s death, August and Octavius’ disagreements, and the campaign in the Serpentine Isles led to great suffering for the Kingdom, it’s good to hear it’s been on the mend.”

“Yes, we’ve been at peace for these past few years,” Claudia continued. “Our fleets and Legions have been rebuilt and our defenses have been restored. Our suzerainty over the Northern Vales and Serpentine Isles has crystallized, and our economy is growing again. All-in-all, the Kingdom’s future is looking bright right now.” Claudia seemed to be bragging at this point, taking a great deal of pride in the Kingdom’s restoration. Leon could understand that, but she stared at him quite strangely the entire time, as if the most important thing to her was his reaction.

“Has the volatile political situation stabilized?” Elise asked while Leon stared back at Claudia, wondered just what was on her mind.

“Yes,” Claudia swiftly replied.

Marcus quickly interjected, sounding a little nervous, as if he were expecting them to start fighting at the drop of a hat. “I-It seems like there haven’t been any revolts since the remnants of Octavius’ faction finally surrendered. The power of the nobles has been crushed, and their lands have mostly been confiscated by the crown. It seems like much of the Kingdom’s prosperity is due to the immense wealth this has generated for the Bull King, allowing him to finance the reconstruction.”

“Smart man, that Julius,” Leon observed. “Would’ve been easy, I think, to just give those titles back out to people he liked and kept the status quo—same system, just new management deal. Harder to implement change. How has your family been handling all this change, if I might ask?” Leon smiled at Claudia, hoping to prod at her a bit for her attitude so far. He didn’t want to start an actual fight, but she was just rubbing him the wrong way.

“Quite well,” Claudia answered, her statement accompanied by a slight smile from Marcus. “We’re wealthy, and even without our titles, that hasn’t changed.”

“Fantastic to hear!” Elise exclaimed as she subtly pinched Leon’s arm, a silent signal to get him to back off.

Leon complied, asking, “And the Royal Family itself? How has August and the King been doing?”

“Happy and healthy,” Claudia responded. “His Majesty formally declared August the Crown Prince about a year after your departure, and has been slowly handing off more and more responsibilities to him these past few years. King Julius is still quite healthy, but it seems to many that he’s preparing for retirement.

“August himself wed the former Duchess of Vesontio, and they already have two children.”

“Already?” Leon asked, his surprise genuine. “Good for him!”

“He certainly works fast,” Elise said with a pointed, though still loving smile sent Leon’s way.

Leon returned it with a smile of his own, and he hugged her tighter against him, Marcus and Claudia forgotten for a moment.

He was about to ask more questions when he suddenly felt a burst of intense killing intent erupt from the sky seemingly out of nowhere. He barely had time to summon his magic power before his villa shook down to its foundations as the earth itself seemed to try and swallow it whole. Enormous cracks opened out in the fields that spread around the villa, destroying many crops and causing many of Leon’s workers to run for their lives.

The wards on his villa remained strong, however, and even though Leon could hear and sense much damage being done to his home, it largely remained intact under this onslaught.

“Get back!” he roared as he shot to his feet. His body blazed with silver-blue lightning and his magic power reached up into the sky, forming storm clouds in a moment. He cast his magic senses upward, hoping to catch a glimpse of the course of the killing intent he’d sensed, and when he saw it, his blood ran cold.

Three figures hovered over his villa, all radiating auras greater than his own. All were dressed similarly, and with similar austerity. They wore ill-fitting brown robes and all had shaved their heads clean of hair. They were powerful, but the man in the center radiated the kind of pressure that Leon had only ever felt from Anastasios, the Grand Druid, and the Sunlit Emperor.

It seemed that the Emperor-figure of the east had finally come to pay him a visit, and his villa was suffering for it.

‘Had to happen while Anastasios was in the city, didn’t it?’ Leon thought as fear and anger went to war within him for the position of dominant emotion.

Leon could feel these three’s power suffusing the earth around his villa, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that they were responsible for this attack on his villa. Without hesitation or any expectation that he would be able to do much against them, he summoned the biggest lightning bolts he could from the clouds above. Clearly sensing what was about to hit them, the two ninth-tier mages raised their hands and conjured a pair of simple iron bars above themselves. Leon’s called lightning then fell from the sky, but the powerful golden bolts, aimed at his villa’s assailants, were wrested from Leon’s control and struck the iron bars.

Leon scowled, able to feel the lightning magic within those bars. He felt insulted and degraded that his power could be so easily redirected, but he did his best to keep a cool head.

Instead of following up, he glanced at his companions. Marcus already had his armor on, a bow in hand, and an explosive arrow nocked. Claudia had retreated further into the villa, covering a terrified Elise, who’d also donned her armor. The rest of Leon’s family and retinue were already moving towards him, and it looked like Maia was going to reach him first.

But with two ninth-tier and one tenth-tier mage above him, Leon wondered if they’d reach him in time…

That thought had barely crossed his mind before the tenth-tier mage plummeted like a meteor, smashing into the center of Leon’s courtyard so hard that it sent cracks spider-webbing from corner to corner.

Without hesitation, Leon conjured a silver-blue lightning bolt and hurled it at the mage, intending to hopefully consume his attention as Elise retreated. His blood filled with lightning and adrenaline, and as the bolt left his hand, he roared into his soul realm, XAPHAN!

The demon didn’t respond verbally, but Leon felt his fiery power open up, and without hesitation, he pulled on that thread that connected them. A moment later, Xaphan erupted into being at his side, while at the same time a water dragon carrying Maia came roaring over the rooftop, depositing the river nymph on Leon’s other side.

Only a moment later, Marcus’ arrow and Leon’s bolt reached their target, but the tenth-tier mage hardly seemed to care as his skin hardened into black stone. The power of Leon and Marcus’ attacks didn’t even chip off a pebble from their tenth-tier assailant.

Maia’s water dragon charged, barreling through the courtyard as its own outer body froze into icy plates, while Xaphan conjured a hundred burning bats in the air to follow.

The courtyard’s marble floors, however, erupted upward, spikes and shrapnel tearing the ice dragon and fire bats to pieces, the magic making them up forcibly dissipated. Maia’s serpentine dragon practically vaporized while Xaphan’s fire bats simply vanished.

The tenth-tier mage then began walking forward as calmly as if he were just taking a leisurely stroll, the marble spikes bending around him as if they were terrified of getting in his way. The man flicked his finger and the ground beneath Marcus cracked open, but the villa’s wards flared and the crack didn’t open wide enough to swallow him up, giving him plenty of time to leap backward and nock another arrow.

For the first time, the man spoke, his voice seeming to resonate within the earth and stone beneath and around Leon’s group.

“Lay down your weapons and surrender. None of you are responsible for this Devil, whose lineage must never spread.”

In unison, Leon conjured the most powerful bolt he could and hurled it at the mage, Xaphan unleashed a hellstorm of fire, Maia summoned a dozen ice spears and launched them, and Marcus let his arrow fly with one of Leon’s most powerful spells attached.

However, the marble in front of the mage curled upward like bent sheet metal, shielding the mage from Leon’s bolt. The marble exploded backward, but the man simply clenched his fingers and conjured a more powerful wall, the thing barely snapping into place to block the fusillade of additional magical strikes.

“Keep it up!” Leon shouted, and Marcus pulled more spell arrows from his soul realm to fire, Maia conjured another ice dragon to snake around the stone wall in a flanking action, and Xaphan kept up the pressure with his demonfire. Leon, meanwhile, took the risk to glance upward, noting that the two ninth-tier mages hadn’t made another move. He could sense the lightning magic swirling around the iron bars floating above them, and after noting that the tenth-tier mage seemed more than willing to wait a moment for their barrage to peter out, he shifted his target.

Leon reached upward with his magic, sending the vast majority of it into the clouds above. This wasn’t missed by the two ninth-tier mages, but what they did seem to miss were the few strands that he snaked into the iron bars. They’d pulled his bolts in with lightning magic, and he wasn’t going to allow that.

Two more bolts fell from the sky a moment later, and Leon snapped the relatively unprotected enchantments on the iron bars at the same time. The bolts struck the bars, the heat from his lightning flash-melting them, and both ninth-tier mages had to suddenly use their magic to prevent molten iron from falling down upon them, clearly not expecting Leon to subvert their lightning defenses.

Without giving them a moment’s pause, Leon called a dozen more bolts from the sky apiece, each one striking the ninth-tier mages, and since they were hovering in the sky, they took the full brunt of Leon’s magic.

The flash of his lightning was blinding, the thunder was so deafening that it shook the villa’s weakened foundations, but the ninth-tier mages fell from the sky, their brown robes all but burned off and a few small burns and bloody gashes torn into their bodies.

But they landed on their feet next to the tenth-tier mage, their eyes burning with fury, their killing intent flooding the villa.

“Monster!” the tenth-tier mage roared as his stony shield exploded outward. Expecting something like this to happen, Leon reached into his villa’s wards and activated a light enchantment he’d hoped to never have to use. A shield of white light snapped into place between the columns forming the courtyard’s peristyle, separating Leon’s group from their assaulters. At the same time, he conjured the enchanted gem that allowed him to telekinetically manipulate stone and attempted to deflect the incoming rain of sharp stone, while reaching for the tau pearl and attempting to get it to form another shield of light in front of him and his people.

His enchanted gem did next to nothing, though given he was competing with a tenth-tier mage for control of the stones, he wasn’t surprised. His villa’s light shield held a little better, but each stone, none bigger than Leon’s palm, struck with force great enough to blast the columns into dust, and the shield collapsed after only half a dozen impacts. Leon watched practically in slow motion with lightning rushing through his body as hundreds more stones rocketed towards him and his people, until a the last possible second, another shield sprang up between them, this one powered by the acquiescing tau pearl.

The pearl’s shield didn’t collapse under the onslaught, the stones exploding upon it with such force that Leon went sliding backward with every impact. Marcus, Xaphan, and Maia followed him back, staying behind the pearl’s shield.

After three agonizingly long seconds, the stones stopped impacting the shield, and the tau pearl dropped the shield of its own volition.

Leon, breathing dreadfully hard, stared defiantly at the three who’d assaulted his villa, but as the tau pearl’s shield finished dissolving, all three were staring at him with what looked like the deepest shock and surprise that they could express.

For several long seconds, no one moved, Leon’s side summoning all the power they could, while the ninth-tier mages went from staring at Leon to staring at the tenth-tier mage, clearly seeking guidance.

However, before the tenth-tier mage could give any, a voice boomed from Occulara so loudly that it sent a wave along Leon’s storm clouds and echoed for miles further.

“KEEPER!!!”

Leon recognized the voice of Anastasios, and he felt no small amount of relief as the Lord Protector crossed from the deepest part of Occulara to above Leon’s villa in a matter of seconds, his body glowing like a new sun above Leon’s home.

Following him just a second later were four more ninth-tier mages, all riding in flying chariots and armed and armored to the teeth.

“STAND DOWN!” Anastasios roared.

The two ninth-tier mages that were assaulting Leon’s villa looked once more to their leader, doubt more clearly entering their eyes, and after one of the tensest moments of Leon’s life, the tenth-tier mage held up his hand, silently telling them to stand down.

As they relaxed, Leon did not, and neither did his people. But a fraction of a second later, Anastasios appeared between them, his back to Leon as he glared at the three who’d assaulted the villa.

“You have violated our peace, Keeper,” Anastasios growled, his aura and killing intent easily matching that of ‘Keeper’. “Explain yourself.”

“You have harbored the enemy of all life on Aeterna,” Keeper replied as if he were merely discussing the weather. However, his attitude quickly shifted into an accusatory glare, his white pupilless eyes still seemingly staring right at Anastasios. “It should be you explaining yourself, instead…”

“This is my Empire, and those within it are my responsibility,” Anastasios growled. “You have no power here to do as you please. Depart immediately, or you will suffer my wrath.”

Keeper remained stoic, hardly visibly reacting, but he seemed to glare back at Leon and deliberate with great care. After almost five seconds, he simply nodded, and he, with his ninth-tier comrades in tow, rose into the air and began roughly northeast. Anastasios’ four ninth-tier mages followed them, apparently ensuring that they were actually leaving.

Only then did Leon allow himself to start relaxing.

“Marcus,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “See to Elise and your sister.”

Marcus nodded in thanks and ran in their direction.

Without another word, Leon looked to Xaphan. The fire demon nodded to him, but a quick suspicious glance to Anastasios was all Leon needed to know that the demon was still good to go, if need be. Xaphan then shrank into a tiny ball of fire and shot into Leon’s chest, returning to Leon’s soul realm.

Maia, Leon didn’t for a moment consider sending away. However, he did remove his helmet and sent a message to the rest of his family and retinue, letting them know that the danger had passed, at least momentarily. He also sent a message to the head of his household staff to get an accounting of the damage and get the rest of the staff organized.

Only when all that was done did he turn back to Anastasios, who in that time had turned around and approached him, but kindly waited until Leon was done getting reorganized.

“Thank you, Lord Protector,” Leon formally stated, his composure now regained.

“Think nothing of it, Leon,” Anastasios replied. “But I think we should have a quick talk, no?”