“… and then… he just laid there! With a look… of utter confusion!” Alain recalled in between bouts of boisterous laughter.
“That horse was a nightmare,” Leon said defensively. “He wouldn’t do anything I told him to!”
“Yeah, buddy, it was entirely the horse’s fault!” Charles said with a wry smile.
It had been three weeks since the Bluefire riots, and Leon and Alix had spent most of that ti training. However, when they had ti, they spent much of it with Charles, Henry, and Alain, as they were now. The five had gathered in one of the small private lounge areas of the latter three’s barracks building and were busy regaling Alix with stories of when they were in the Knight Academy.
This would be sothing frowned upon by other knights, given that it might lead to Leon and Alix becoming too informal with each other, but Leon really didn’t care much about that. It had already been indicated to Alix that Trajan would accept her into his retinue when she reached the third-tier and Leon knighted her, so the two treated each other more like friends and comrades than leader and subordinate or teacher and student. Still, the biggest reason why they were eting Charles, Henry, and Alain in their barracks was to get away from the disapproving looks of the knights in the barracks adjacent to the keep—not to ntion the latter three flat out refusing to go anywhere near so many high-ranking knights who could make their lives difficult just for being there.
“I have to admit,” Alix said, “that it’s sowhat hard to imagine Sir Leon being that bad at anything. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you fail so completely at anything, Sir. Plus, you’ve obviously gotten better at horse riding from what I’ve seen.”
“Well I’m hardly going to advertise what I’m bad at for all the world to know,” Leon said with a wry smile. “And I think that horse was just not trained very well, those horses that we took on that vampire hunt were much… tar, I guess is the word… More docile and much easier to handle.”
“You’re going to ride Anzu when he gets bigger, aren’t you?” Henry asked as if the answer weren’t obvious.
“Of course!” Leon replied, his smile growing wider from the pride he had in his little griffin.
“You’d have to be blind to not see that little thing’s going to be a real war machine when he gets older,” Charles noted.
Sensing everyone’s attention shifting to him, Anzu tried his best to lt away behind Leon’s legs. Leon reached down to try and comfort the griffin, but as he did so, he felt sothing that he hadn’t noticed much in the past year: Xaphan’s attention. Ever since he started training his magic sense, he started being able to perceive when Xaphan was awake or not, even when the demon wasn’t actively watching what he was doing, so he knew exactly how much Xaphan had been concentrating on his recovery in recent months; it was so much, in fact, that they’d barely had more than a single conversation with each other since coming back from the giant’s crater.
But now, Leon felt Xaphan not only wake up from his ditative trance but project his magic sense out of Leon’s soul realm to figure out what he was doing.
[Need sothing, demon?] Leon asked curiously.
[Felt that, did you?] Xaphan responded with both mockery and surprise as if he couldn’t decide which he wanted to convey. [I was only trying to figure out what you were doing and if this was a good ti to talk.]
“Well, you’ll never catch my ass riding anything other than a horse! It’s practically asking for to be eaten if I were to try anything more exotic!” Henry exclaid.
[We’re clearly not talking about anything particularly important,] Leon observed. [I’m guessing that what you want to talk about is important, so why don’t you lay it on ?]
[I… I ha…] the demon began, but he cut himself off several tis. It was clear to Leon that what Xaphan wanted to talk about wasn’t easy for him to say, and Leon felt certain that he knew why.
[Does this have anything to do with your not making much progress over the past year and a half?] Leon asked with a mocking tone that was much less ambiguous than Xaphan’s had been only a mont before.
As if through gritted teeth, Xaphan responded with a terse, [Yes…]
[And you need sothing from in order to give you a kick in the pants, so to speak?]
[That’s a rather crude way of putting it.]
[Is it inaccurate?]
[I… suppose not…]
As Leon spoke with the demon, the conversation around him continued. Charles, Alain, and Henry seed to be paying far more attention to Alix than they were to Leon, which he understood given Alix’s looks. Compounded with Leon’s usual taciturn nature, which the forr three understood well enough from the Knight Academy, Leon felt comfortable completely tuning out of their conversation for a while.
[All right, demon, before we get started talking about what you need, I’ve a condition,] Leon said with a serious tone.
[And what might that be?] Xaphan asked with so apprehension.
[Back when we were in the cave hunting that vampire, you recognized the demon that appeared in the bonfire. I haven’t pressed you for much information in that regard, but I think it’s ti that you told a little sothing about this ‘Amon’ guy.]
Almost an entire minute followed without either Leon or Xaphan speaking. Leon was dead set on getting so answers out of Xaphan about his history with that other demon, and Xaphan could tell through their link that he wasn’t going to just let this go, even if Xaphan refused to speak.
Finally, Leon heard a long sigh and a sense of resignation coming from his soul realm.
[Very well, but I would prefer if we were to discuss what I need first,] Xaphan said.
[That’s fine,] Leon replied, [but don’t think that I’m going to let you off the hook.]
[Perish the thought,] the demon responded with sarcasm.
[So, what do you need? Another potion?]
[Not this ti,] Xaphan said. [Since you’re now a fifth-tier mage, we don’t need to resort to such crude thods as you drinking a potion and forcing the magic down into your soul realm. No, now we can simply get materials and you can essentially deliver them to directly by absorbing them into yourself.]
[Let’s get to specifics,] Leon suggested, wanting to hurry this along so he could get the answers to the questions that had been burning in his mind for weeks.
[You’re going to need a diamond about the size of your thumb and four sapphires each about half that size,] Xaphan inford.
After waiting a brief mont, Leon asked, [Is that it? Because I actually already have all of that in my vault back in Teira…]
[That’s right, you do,] Xaphan said as it dawned on him just how many gems Leon had that he’d completely forgotten about. [But, they’re way back in Teira, how are you going to get them here?]
[I’ll write to Elise and ask about policies in that regard,] Leon said. [Even if they’re not able to open the vault without my presence, I’m sure that Heaven’s Eye can loan so sapphires and a diamond until I can get back up to Teira.]
[I don’t doubt that, sleeping with the daughter of the woman who’s in charge of their entire operation in this Kingdom probably helps,] Xaphan said with the smile on his face evident from his voice alone.
[So, is that it? Just the sapphires and the diamond?] Leon asked.
[You already have everything else that’s needed, which is to say spell paper and ink,] Xaphan said.
[Wonderful!] Leon exclaid. [So now that that’s taken care of, let’s have a little chat…]
[You don’t want to know what the materials are used for?] Xaphan asked in what, to Leon at least, was an obvious attempt to delay talking about Amon.
[Nope,] Leon instantly replied. [You’ll tell what to do when the ti cos, so why waste ti now?]
The demon sighed again. [Very well, might as well just jump right into it,] he said. [There isn’t that much to say, really; Amon and I were rivals that competed for the Lordship that I eventually won.]
[Right, I rember you saying sothing about there only being seven Lords for each magical elent, and a single Prince for each elent as well in demon society…] Leon said.
[Correct. The last Lord had been missing for one hundred and fifty thousand years, and so was pronounced dead by the Prince of Fla. This opened that Lord’s seat for any ambitious demon to take. Amon and I were the two who lasted the longest in the Prince’s challenges.]
[But I felt your anger and fury and hatred when you saw Amon in the bonfire, he couldn’t have just been so random demon you competed against one ti,] Leon ntioned.
[… The tasks assigned by a Prince to determine a Lord aren’t quick and simple, especially if the Prince isn’t raising soone up to fill the seat. I don’t want to get too deep into the nitty gritty details, but suffice it to say that after five hundred years of fighting against each other in just about every manner conceivable, things between myself and Amon got bitter and personal.
[At first, things remained fairly cordial, and we even got sowhat friendly for a ti after we began to respect each other’s power. However, as ti went on, and it beca increasingly clear that the battle for Lordship would co down to myself and him, we started attacking each other’s power bases. Our followers and our families died in droves. By the ti I was declared Lord of Fla, Amon’s family had been devastated, and mine wasn’t much better.]
[You have a family?!] Leon asked incredulously.
[I did,] Xaphan corrected with the hate in his voice almost tangible. Leon wisely shut up to allow his partner to continue.
[When the competition was over, my power base had been ravaged. Still, in the end, I had won, I was the Lord and he was a corpse. I enjoyed my ti as Lord, but that ca to a swift end when the Storm King’s little bootlickers summoned here.]
When Xaphan ntioned his summoning, Leon’s eyes perked up. He was a little confused as to how a Lord of Fla, one of the highest beings in demon society, could be summoned so easily. But, rather than interrupt, he filed that question away for later.
[You know that I’ve spoken to the Thunderbird before, don’t you, young mage?] Xaphan suddenly asked.
[You’ve told that before, yes,] Leon answered.
[It told that, despite only being gone for eighty thousand years—not even the traditional hundred thousand—Amon has usurped my title as Lord! Sohow, he survived even though I saw him dead at my feet! I ripped his core from his chest and threw his body into a star!]
Leon couldn’t help but be more than a little irked that the Thunderbird seed so much more willing to speak with Xaphan than to him, but he held his tongue on that subject. He doubted that this was the ti to bring it up.
[I see,] Leon said. [Well, that does make a lot of sense, then, that’s not the kind of overkill that I would expect anyone to return from…]
Xaphan furiously grumbled a little, but Leon couldn’t make out anything the demon said.
[Anyway, thanks for telling sothing of your past,] Leon continued, [I’ll get right on those enchantnt materials you want.]
[And who said they were for an enchantnt?] Xaphan asked with forced mischievousness.
[What else could they be used for, especially at the power level we’re at?] Leon countered.
[A great many things, you’re just far too weak and limited in your knowledge to know about them!] Xaphan arrogantly retorted.
[Oh, but the great and mighty demon Lord Xaphan is enlightened in this subject?] Leon asked, playfully jabbing at his partner’s pride. [You sure have never indicated as such before and have even admitted that you know just about nothing if it doesn’t include fire.]
Xaphan understood that Leon was trying to get his mind off Amon, and he eagerly seized the chance. The two partners bickered back and forth like that for a while until it beca inconvenient that Leon wasn’t participating in the conversation between his friends around him. However, Leon did have a few last words to share with Xaphan before he let the matter drop completely.
[One of these days, and that day may be far off, I’m going to want so specifics as to what exactly you and Amon did to each other,] Leon said. [We can drop it now, but know that I am expecting a story…]
Xaphan didn’t reply, and after several minutes, Leon felt the demon’s attention drift away until Xaphan fell back into his healing ditation.
User Comments
0 comments from readers