The Storm King

Things returned to some semblance of normal for Leon in the days following his questioning by Lucius, though that didn’t mean that his life was without stress. After those questions about Tiberias, Leon fully expected there to be some follow-ups, because, at least in his mind, they shouldn’t have asked those questions without having some suspicions about his role in the nobleman’s death.

Fortunately for Leon, nothing came down for him, but after about a week it became clear that he was stressing about the wrong thing.

The first inklings Leon had that something in the capital was going wrong was when Alix and several other familiar knights showed up at his front gate, frantically ringing his doorbell. Leon, of course, let them in, and Alix practically ran into his villa, leading the three others she had with her.

Understanding that she didn’t want to talk out in the open, Leon ushered them inside without a word and didn’t take his eyes off the gate until it had closed completely and sealed the temporary gap in the villa’s defenses that it made. Then, he turned around and hurriedly followed Alix inside.

“What’s going on?” he asked, wasting no time with pleasantries.

“Shit’s goin’ downhill, fast!” said one of the knights, a young third-tier woman who was clearly from more rural regions based on her accent.

“People are being arrested left and right!” Alix loudly said. “We don’t know where it’s going to end, but they’re clearly targeting Prince August’s supporters! Minerva has the rest of the retinue getting ready for something violent, and she sent us to make sure you were ready, just in case!”

“Does she think anything might actually happen to us?” Leon asked as he conjured his sword and black armor out of his soul realm, almost as if he thought something was about to attack the villa.

“No! Nothing like that!” Alix quickly said, soothing some of Leon’s fears. With the exception of perhaps Elise, Alix was the person who knew Leon best in the city, and if his readied armor and weapons weren’t proof enough, she could tell from his body language and rapidly focusing aura that he was ready to storm the Royal Palace if necessary.

“We’re not goin’ ta war, least not yet,” the other third-tier knight said.

The remaining two knights kept their peace, though they were both weaker than Alix and the other knight according to Leon’s magic senses. He knew none of their names, but their faces were familiar enough that he knew they served under Dame Minerva.

“There’s… something else,” Alix hesitantly said.

“Here?” the other knightess asked in mild exasperation.

“Now’s better than later,” Alix replied.

“Explain,” Leon demanded, having no patience for games when a major enough play was being made that August’s people were being arrested.

“An arrest warrant was made for Justin Isynos,” Alix said as she carefully studied Leon’s reaction. She expected something fairly subdued, some small indication that Leon would know what that meant, but the reaction she got was much stronger than she had anticipated.

“What?!” Leon shouted loud enough that his villa seemed to shake.

“Yea, an’ people were sent ta his villa, an’ he was gone!” the other knightess explained, seeming to defer to Alix’s judgment when it came to giving Leon the details.

“Define ‘gone’.”

“Packed up and left, seemingly,” Alix said. “No furniture in his home, no servants, no Isynos, it was an empty villa! Even the yacht he had docked in the lake was gone!”

Leon stepped back from the conversation a bit, a hand on his chin as he thought about what this meant. Clearly, Justin had been tipped off that he was going to be arrested, as Leon hadn’t heard anything about him leaving before this. Leon quickly projected his magic senses, searching his surroundings for the people that had occasionally watching his home, and sure enough, they were all gone.

There were a couple different ways that Leon could interpret this news. The first, and the most ignorantly hopeful, was that Justin had packed up and left the city for good, never to trouble Leon again. More likely, he was simply moving him and his underground with his identity possibly compromised, and that would make him much more difficult to track. Leon had derided a great deal of peace of mind knowing that the Spymaster and some of Trajan’s knights had been keeping an eye on Justin’s movements, but with him gone, there was no guarantee where he was or what he was doing. With Naiad out of the picture, that meant bad things for Leon. The situation might even devolve to the point of needing to rely on Xaphan’s power, and that wasn’t a bridge that Leon was willing to cross just yet.

But then, something else occurred to Leon, something almost as disturbing as Justin’s apparent disappearance.

“Why tell me this?” Leon asked.

Alix stared at him for a moment, an odd look appearing on her face for a brief moment. She was one of the few people in the Bull Kingdom who knew his identity, thanks to a careless comment made by Emilie, and she likely had an inkling of why Leon was so interested in Justin. She put on as appeasing a look as she could, and said, “We were ordered to do so by Dame Minerva. She knew that you were involved in whatever Prince Trajan was doing in regard to keeping an eye on Justin Isynos’ movements. We weren’t given any more information, but I believe that Dame Minerva is expecting some kind of report on that matter once we get to the Royal Palace.”

Leon frowned a bit. “Any particular reason why she’s interested in this matter or is it just because he’s gone?”

“I can’t say for certain, Sir,” Alix responded.

Leon gave the others an exaggerated shrug to try and tell them that the matter with Justin Isynos wasn’t that important, but it had mixed results. They didn’t quite know the severity of what Leon believed Justin was guilty of, but they could tell that it was an important matter. Fortunately, they also knew that this was above their pay grade, and they asked no questions of Leon about the matter.

“Well, then, no more time to waste,” Leon said. “How quickly do I need to get to the palace?”

“As soon as you can,” Alix replied.

Leon, despite the situation, couldn’t suppress a smile. “I don’t suppose any of you are clear on matters regarding flying in and out of the Royal Palace?”

A few eyebrows went up in interest, but only Alix answered.

“You have to report to the first gate on the bridge to the palace island, and you’ll be grounded from there on,” she explained. “If you don’t, they’ll probably try and shoot you down. It’s highly illegal to fly within a thousand feet of the palace island.”

“Oh,” Leon said with more than a hint of disappointment. He could understand that, even with flight being a terribly uncommon ability, it still wasn’t unheard of, and that the Royal Family and the Bull Kingdom’s government, in general, didn’t want people freely flying around the Royal Palace. If they did, it would kind of defeat the purpose of trying to control people’s entrance and exit to the palace by funneling them over the one bridge.

Still, flying at least to the bridge was going to be more than far enough.

“Why are you asking?” Alix asked, her eyes wide with excitement. She knew what he had been working on for months, but she wanted him to confirm it for her.

“Come and see,” Leon said, but instead of walking out of the back door like she thought he was going to, he led her back toward the front door, closely followed by the other three knights.

Lounging in the stable was Anzu, sleeping almost literally spread-eagled over his huge cushy bed, his legs twitching and his beak clicking in his sleep—he was probably dreaming about hunting. It hurt him to disturb his not-so-little-anymore buddy, but Leon knew Anzu would love to do this, so he silently indicated for the other knights not to get too close, and then he gently began to shake Anzu’s wing shoulder.

Anzu was deep in sleep, and it took a moment or two for him to fully wake up, and when he did, he shot straight to his paws, his now enormous wings spread, and his head raised in preparation to peck out the eyes of whoever had disturbed his sleep. However, when he saw Leon standing before him, he immediately calmed down, retracted his wings, and nuzzled up to his human, his show of affection nearly pushing Leon right over.

“Is he…?” Alix began, her eyes practically shining like stars despite the circumstances under which she had come to Leon’s place.

“He’s ready,” Leon replied, a rare unabashed smile on his face. “Help me with his saddle.”

A few minutes later, Leon, the four knights, and Anzu were standing in his front yard, Leon atop Anzu like a horse, his legs tucked in right behind the griffin’s wings and reins in his hand. Anzu himself had both a saddle and what almost seemed to be a helmet that the reins were attached to.

“Where should I go once I get to the palace?” Leon asked, practically gloating at the star-struck gaze of the other knights. Anzu himself seemed to be enjoying the attention, too—either that, of he was just eager to take off, as his wings were furling and unfurling in a way not unlike that of a runner stretching their legs.

“Find Dame Minerva, she should be in Prince Tra- I mean, in her office,” Alix responded, her answer bringing her joy at seeing Anzu ready to fly back down to dour seriousness.

“I’ll see you there, then,” Leon said. He then rubbed Anzu’s neck and whispered, “All right, Anzu, let’s go.”

That was all the encouragement Anzu needed, and he immediately began to run forward and spread his wings. After only a couple dozen feet, the griffin flapped his wings, creating a great burst of wind magic that sent both him and the riding Leon soaring right over the outer wall of the villa. With another flap of his wings, Anzu carried Leon and himself even higher, high enough that the unnatural wind current that suddenly seemed to appear under Anzu’s wings didn’t interfere with anything below them.

Despite everything going on, for the few minutes it took Anzu to carry Leon over the noble district and to the bridge to the palace, Leon was happy. The wind blew through his hair, he could feel his weight shifting around in response to Anzu’s movements, and it felt like the sky belonged solely to him and his griffin.

But it couldn’t go on forever, and not even five minutes after taking off from his villa, Anzu brought Leon back down in the square in front of the bridge where carriages were to be parked—only mounted animals could be brought over the bridge without special permission, and even then, they couldn’t go further than the stables.

It was a smooth ride, and Leon only had to direct Anzu with a few vocal commands—Anzu was quite the smart animal, and that was all he needed to know where Leon wanted to go. Once on the ground, he only needed a single command to begin trotting over toward the first gatehouse at the end of the bridge.

Leon and Anzu made for a conspicuous pair, with the dozens of people in the square staring at the two of them. Griffins were rare mounts in the Bull Kingdom, but fortunately, no one tried stopping Leon or Anzu until they approached the gatehouse. Even then, a quick flash of Leon’s Heaven’s Eye ID got him through the gate. Ten minutes later, Anzu had been left in the palace stables and Leon was walking through the front gates of the palace.

Immediately, Leon could tell that something was up in the palace. Even in the main entrance hall, people were rushing from one place to another with an urgency that Leon had only seen following Trajan’s death. He didn’t stop to try and listen in to any conversations, though, and simply flashed his ID again to the guards at the door and made his way to Minerva’s office.

Upon arrival at his destination, he found the halls and rooms surrounding Minerva’s office packed with knights from Trajan’s retinue, nearly all of them armed and armored as if expecting that someone would try to storm their small section of the palace.

These knights parted to allow Leon in his distinctive black armor to pass, and he reached Minerva’s office without difficulty. He found the knightess behind what had once been Trajan’s desk with all the remaining sixth-tier knights in Trajan’s retinue in the office as well.

“Finally, we’re all here,” Minerva said once Leon closed the door behind him.

“What’s going on?” Leon asked.

“Dozens of August’s retainers have been arrested over the past day alone,” Minerva explained, and no one in the room so much as blinked at her lack of formality when speaking August’s name. “It should be obvious that someone’s making a move, and it’s undoubtedly Octavius. We don’t know who might be next, so I wanted everyone ready to resist.”

“If someone comes to arrest us, we’re going to resist?” Leon asked, his question dripping with both anticipation and apprehension. Arrests could always be walked back, and charges dropped, but actively fighting against anyone who would come to arrest them would be rebellion.

“They’re not going to take any of us,” Minerva declared, her sharp eyes sweeping over the rest of the knights in the office. “Octavius and Earthshaker killed Prince Trajan, they won’t get any more of us!”

Leon gave her a skeptical look, as did many of the other knights in the room. If things did get violent, then people would die on both sides. It was effectively impossible to follow through on her declaration, but it was the sentiment that counted, and it was at least well-received by the majority of the remaining command staff of Trajan’s retinue.

Before anyone else could add their voices to hers, a messenger burst in through the door and cried out, “Prince August has been arrested!”