The capital of the Bull Kingdom had changed little in Leon’s time away. Most of the damage done by the civil war had been fixed, and he could see a few new monuments built in prominent places in the city, but other than that, it was essentially the same as it had always been.

Leon arrived with only Anzu to accompany him. When he left Ariminium, both Aquillius and Constantine had offered to arrange worthy escorts for him, but he wasn’t in the mood for taking a weeks-long tour of the Kingdom. He respectfully refused and, while flying under his own power, reached the capital before evening the day he left Ariminium.

He already had a place to stay lined up with Ajax, who’d replaced Emilie as the Heaven’s Eye Tower Lord of the capital, but before heading over to the Tower, Leon took Anzu down into the noble district.

It was easy enough to find his old villa, which he’d left in the hands of Heaven’s Eye before leaving. He’d been told that it had been sold fairly quickly, so he wasn’t surprised to see a family of wealthy aristocrats living within it. He had Anzu stop about a thousand feet above the villa, simply looking down upon it, losing himself momentarily in his memories of the place, from the attack by vampires during his and Elise’s housewarming party, to the last goodbyes he’d said to Elise before springing August from prison and beginning the Kingdom’s civil war. He remembered their return to their home following the conclusion of the war, and saying goodbye to it again after the campaign in the Serpentine Isles.

All-in-all, for the amount of time he’d owned the place, he’d lived in it remarkably infrequently.

“Do you remember this place, Anzu?” he asked as they floated above it, Anzu having changed to his human form so he could speak.

“Better than I remember Ariminium,” he replied, his voice colored in the warm hues of nostalgia. “My stable’s gone.”

Leon half-grimaced, half-grinned. He’d built quite the nice stable for Anzu when he was growing up, but apparently, the new owners had other plans for that space. Now, the place the stable had once occupied was a recreational pavilion, while the dock in the backyard of the villa on the Naga River had been greatly expanded, allowing a fairly large yacht to be moored at the villa.

It wasn’t long before both were satisfied with having this taste of nostalgia and made their way to Ajax and the Heaven’s Eye Tower.

Ajax had noticed their arrival in the city—Leon had felt several other powerful magic senses sweep over him and Anzu, so he knew that their arrival was hardly a secret, not that he intended for it be one in the first place—and had come down to the ground-floor lounge to greet them. It was a fairly splendid affair, with plenty of attendants making a big show of his presence, while many of the nobles in the lounge craned their necks to see him. He saw a few relatively familiar faces, and by the looks of things, many of them recognized him, as well.

Not that he bothered himself too much with them. Instead, he embraced Ajax, introduced him to Anzu, and then allowed himself to be whisked away to Emilie’s old palace, which Ajax had taken over after Emilie’s promotion.

He’d intended to head to the Royal Palace the following morning, but apparently that wasn’t quick enough for some people, for when Leon emerged from his night-time training with Anzu, Dame Minerva had shown up, with a whole bevy of hangers-on. When he left the Bull Kingdom, Leon hadn’t ever expected to see her again, but he was glad that he did, though he kept the depth of his power unstated.

Together, they reminisced, swapped stories of what they’d done in the past couple decades, and had a fairly good time. Their dynamic had never been overly warm, but Leon enjoyed catching up with her, and hoped he could do so at least one more time before one of them died.

‘Probably going to me,’ Leon cynically thought, considering his occupation the trouble he tended to find himself in.

After Minerva, he visited the Royal Palace, and there he found that things were peaceful, stable, and overall much better than when he’d left. Without Octavius, and with King Julius returned stronger than ever, factionalism in the court had been largely eliminated. Combined with the greatly diminished landed aristocracy—Julius was still working on revoking titles and land—meant that the court was more united than Leon had ever seen it.

Leon made his way to the palace on foot, deciding to show some amount of respect since he was now here as an adult guest rather than as an apathetic teenager. It didn’t take the guards along the bridge to the capitol island long at all to wave him through their defenses, and then escort him to the palace proper. Fortunately, Leon wasn’t subjected to the splendor of the court, and was instead brough to one of the King’s private sitting rooms.

The King himself was overjoyed to see Leon, no doubt greatly aided by Leon’s apparent physical resemblance to Kyros, his grandfather. The King was still eighth-tier, and from what he could sense of his aura, Leon didn’t think the King was ever going to make it to the ninth. He’d made too little progress in the past seventeen years.

Leon and the King spoke with each other about not much at all for a while before August joined them, along with his wife, the former Duchess of Vesontio, and their daughter, a girl born only two years before. She was a little timid around Leon, but August and the Duchess both greeted him warmly.

August had made quite a bit of progress, Leon noticed. Not only was he acting more like a Prince—his time as Crown Prince and having won the civil war apparently having given him far more confidence than Leon had ever seen in him—he’d also ascended to the seventh-tier. Leon was a little surprised, but was happy for the man. If he was anything like his father, though, his Royal duties would eventually grow too cumbersome for him to make much more progress, unless he reformed his government and delegated much of his power and responsibilities.

After everyone was done praising each other for their magical accomplishments, Leon spoke of the south, and to a slightly lesser extent, what Cristina had been getting up to down there. She’d been thriving down there, and the King and August both were quite grateful to the work she’d done in raising opinions of the Bull Kingdom, directing more trade to their Kingdom that helped them rebuild after the civil war, and in acquiring for them skilled workers and various technical designs for them. She had, almost single-handedly, cut years off the estimate that the Bull Kingdom had for how long it would take to rebuild, and provided the Bull Kingdom additional resources with which to strong-arm the few remaining landed nobles into giving up their land and titles.

Leon’s meeting with the Royals on their own couldn’t last forever, and after a few pleasant hours spent with them, the Paladins that he was familiar with arrived. Brimstone, Bronze, and Penitent he was passingly familiar, and on good terms with, but it was Roland more than anyone that he’d been interested in seeing again.

The man had only been sixth-tier when last Leon saw him, far too weak to hold his position as a Paladin. August had appointed him to his position, but after the King awoke, Roland was kicked from his position, becoming just a high-ranking knight in August’s retinue.

Leon remembered Roland expressing some insecurity about this in a couple of the brief meetings he’d had with the man, and felt some remorse in hindsight about how wrapped up in his own business he was to overly care about Roland. He was greatly surprised and happy to see that, in the past seventeen years, Roland had managed to ascend to the seventh-tier and join the Paladins properly, with the full blessing of the King.

Three more Paladins had been added to their ranks in the past few years, all knights who’d distinguished themselves in the civil war—which Leon understood, for nothing built power faster than fighting in a magic-rich environment, like a battlefield. However, he wasn’t personally familiar with them, so he understood why they mostly stood off to the side while he caught up with the other Paladins.

Leon was invited to stay for dinner, which he and Anzu gratefully accepted. Throughout his conversations that day, everyone had commented on his albino friend, with Leon having to explain just who Anzu was, and that he’d taken the griffin as his little brother. There was quite a bit of confusion and happiness, with Minerva, Roland, and August in particular having been relatively well-acquainted with Anzu before Leon’s departure from the Bull Kingdom. As a result, Anzu had had to suffer through some embarrassing stories of his childhood several times that day.

But all that faded away for a new embarrassment as the King threw a feast to celebrate their visit, and made Anzu just as much of a center point for the local aristocrats and high officials to take notice of. Leon had improved his mingling skills a bit since his time in the Bull Kingdom, but he still stuck close enough to Anzu to almost burst out laughing every time some aristocrat tried to bribe Anzu into reproducing with them or a female family member, clearly hoping to bring some kind of Inherited Bloodline into their family.

Anzu wasn’t having any of it, though his response was far more anxious than angry, and he did his best to fend off the hordes seeking his seed.

Fortunately, Leon was able to get them out fairly quickly. They were still Heaven’s Eye, after all, and couldn’t associate too closely with those in politics. Besides, while Leon was interested in catching up with everyone, the nostalgia of returning to the Bull Kingdom was quickly wearing thin as King Julius’ courtiers did their level best to suck up to him more than their peers.

By the time Leon and Anzu returned to Ajax’s palace, they were both mentally exhausted, and each decided to actually get some sleep the rest of the night. When morning came, they returned to the Bull King’s palace for only two things: to say their goodbyes, and to request permission to wander around Argent Palace for a while.

Julius, of course, gave his permission, and while he was clearly disappointed Leon had only stayed for one day, he gave him a Royal sendoff, having his Royal Guard accompany Leon out to the front courtyard and personally flying with Leon until he and Anzu had left the capitol island.

As the Bull Kingdom’s capital vanished behind them, Leon sighed. His time there was short, and it was good to understand that these people hadn’t completely collapsed in his absence—and were, in fact, seemingly thriving—but he had no intentions of stopping back there on his way home. He intended to fly in something of a circle, stopping in Teira as he went north, then in Vale Town, then turning east and hitting the Forest of Black and White. Once he was done, however his quest for the Iron Needle went, he intended to fly almost directly south, through the Frozen Mountains and into the Border Mountains, to visit the stone giants. A day or two in their presence, and then it was back to the Ilian Empire and Occulara.

A good plan, he hoped, and one that shouldn’t be disturbed.

He rather felt like kicking himself when that thought crossed his mind, but he ignored it and focused instead on the flight ahead of him.

—

Teira was, just as the capitol, essentially identical to when he’d last seen it. The city just as lavish and Argent Palace just as ruined. This time, however, Leon didn’t bother giving anyone a heads-up that he was there. Instead, he flew down directly into Argent Palace.

As he entered the seat of his family for at least twenty-five thousand years, and probably since the fall of his Clan eighty-thousand years ago, he took notice of the security enchantments. They’d gotten him into a spot of trouble when last he was here, but now that he was older and more skilled in enchanting, he was easily able to subvert them without setting any of them off. As far as the soldiers in the ruined palace’s various security stations around its perimeter were concerned, Argent Palace was just as deserted as it had always been.

Leon had no practical reason for coming to Argent Palace. Xaphan was in a healing trance, the Thunderbird wasn’t around, and Nestor was back in Occulara, so the only one Leon was sharing this moment with was Anzu, who had less knowledge of his Clan or this palace than even Leon did. The archives were empty, and the buildings a crumbling ruin.

Still, Leon walked around the shattered paths and broken pavilions, between obliterated buildings and gardens that had gone for more than three decades without care. He committed every broken stone, every destroyed statue, every smashed mosaic to memory, marveling at how colossal the complex was even as devastated as it were. Not for the first time, he wished he could’ve seen it in its prime.

It wasn’t even close to being feasible to rebuilding it, and Leon didn’t think it was possible, but there was a large part of him that wanted to try. He hadn’t the resources or the land to do so, but that didn’t change anything. He felt little when visiting the ruins of his Clan elsewhere, but walking around Argent Palace, poking his head in and around the ruins, he could almost feel the his Ancestors watching him, walking with him, helping him to feel like he wasn’t alone, the last of his Clan in all the universe.

Anzu didn’t say much during their stop in Teira, and when Leon expressed interest in staying the night in the ruins, he didn’t object. Together, they sat on the biggest pile of rubble and watched the sun set. They watched the moon dance across the sky, stared back at the unmoving stars, and waited for the sun’s return.

As the sky in the distance started to brighten, Leon decided he’d had enough, and with only one backward glance, urged them onward. The Iron Needle wasn’t going to claim itself, after all.

—

In a welcome break, Vale Town as not as Leon had left it. His father had died and Leon had gone south more than twenty years ago, and the steady trade with the Bull Kingdom had livened the place up considerably. The Bull King had affirmed the Kingdom’s longstanding alliance with the Brown Bear Tribe, and upheld August’s trade agreements. Hakon Fire-Beard was dead, and no tribesman had managed to unite the Valemen in the other Vales enough to threaten anyone else.

In these two decades of relative peace, Vale Town had thrived. It looked larger by half than when Leon had last seen it, and from what he could sense, the subordinate Greenhand Tribe had gotten quite a few additional farms going to feed all the new people without doing appreciable damage to the vale. The markets were livelier, most of those people Leon saw were dealing in silver rather than bronze or copper or kind, and there was quite a bit of silkgrass on sale.

Turning his gaze to the expanded upper distract that lay around the large hill in the center of the city, Leon noticed that there were quite a few large homes; no longer could barns be found around the Torfinn’s longhouse, just waiting for Bull Kingdom knights to visit and be insulted by, but instead there were small, rustic manors encircling the longhouse.

Also encircling the longhouse was a far more robust wall of stone than the one that had been there before, looking almost like Legion engineering to Leon’s eyes. Torfinn’s longhouse, too, had been somewhat renovated, with the addition of several large outer buildings that Leon guessed were granaries and a new, larger barracks.

Leon landed in front of the longhouse with Anzu at his side in griffin form, unconcerned with the weak Tribesmen around him who reeled back, startled at his appearance. He recognized none of the warriors who stood guard, those he remembered from his childhood nowhere to be seen, but within the longhouse, he did recognize the Chief of the Brown Bears, and his Thanes. They were all considerably older, now, with Torfinn’s fourth-tier thanes looking fairly elderly. Torfinn himself seemed still hale and hearty, though his brow was a little more winkled, there were crow’s feet around his eyes, and there were a few wisps of gray in his beard.

But as Leon strode unchallenged into the longhouse, it almost felt like he was walking back in time. The familiar smell of mead and roast chicken, the sounds of warriors boasting of their accomplishments as they feasted, and the dull thumps of fists on flesh as two third-tier warriors decided to solve some disagreement with violence.

Most of all, Leon heard Torfinn’s bombastic laughter as Freya whispered something to him at a table. Freya had aged quite gracefully, her golden-blond hair only having a few wisps of silver in it, the scars on her face joined by only a couple of subtle wrinkles, and her mannerisms were significantly less flirty than they had been.

Asbjorn and Harald, whom Leon hadn’t seen in even longer than Torfinn and Freya, were in a corner quietly drinking from curved horns, the new lines on their faces much more distinct than Freya’s. They were clearly slower and more affected by time than Freya was—which track with Leon, as they were older. They were all fourth-tier mages, so they likely had quite a few years left, but to Leon, it was yet another reminder that time spared no one.

And yet, as his aura subtly flexed and waved, Anzu at his side, both of them standing in the door, the longhouse went silent and Torfinn glanced in his direction. The fifth-tier Chief of the Brown Bears smiled in glee, sprang to his feet, and shouted, “The little lion is back!”

And for the first time since reaching the Bull Kingdom, Leon felt just a little bit like he was being welcomed back home.