The Storm King

Demon magic… It was faint, but Leon could sense it.

[Xaphan…] Leon whispered into his soul realm. [Do you sense this, too?]

He felt his demonic partner’s magic senses pulse out from his body, and a moment later, Xaphan replied, [Yes. It’s faint, but an adherent of a demon has been here.]

[Can you tell which demon? Was it Amon?]

[I can’t tell with that kind of accuracy, this power has decayed for too long. What’s more, I can sense the power of two demons…]

Leon frowned, only able to sense the one. [Well, no matter who they are, we’ve got a problem…]

Without wasting another moment, Leon called his retinue together with the leader of the Heaven’s Eye security team and told them of what he’d found.

“Fucking demons!” Alix vehemently spat. “Oh, umm, no offense, Xaphan, if you can hear me…”

[Fucking humans…] Xaphan whispered.

“If there are vampires active in the city,” the security team leader said, “then we have to inform Heaven’s Eye and the Empire. Blood sacrifices cannot be allowed under any circumstances.”

Leon looked up to the team leader. “I’ll do that personally.”

---

Leon stared at the Director, his golden eyes hard and stern.

The Director sat behind his desk, his hands folded in front of his shadowed face, quietly thinking.

Eventually, the Director said, “You have my support. Find these vermin and root them out completely. Demonic contracts are acceptable in general, but such attacks like these are beyond what is acceptable. As one of my Hands, I empower you to do whatever is necessary to burn this infestation out of my city.”

Leon smiled. “It shouldn’t take too long…”

---

“‘Whatever is necessary’?” Anna quoted as Leon led her and the rest of his retinue out of the Hexagon. “He really said that?”

“He did,” Leon confirmed. To the rest of his retinue, he said, “We’re heading to the city’s central archives. I want to look into everything that has to do with demons and vampires in this city!”

“That might be a lot, boss!” Alix replied. “Given how accepting the people down here are of such things, I’m sure there are potentially thousands of people with demonic contracts, and each of them might have dozens or hundreds of records!”

“We’ll get some help, and we’ll narrow things down!” Gaius energetically responded. “We have to find our people!”

“Agreed!” Leon almost shouted, and he led his people to Occulara’s central records building, confident with the Director’s backing.

He was honestly a little surprised at the Director’s willingness to give him free reign to find Marcus and Alcander and ruin those who’d taken them, but the cynic in him claimed that the Director was just trying to curry some favor now that Leon had learned that the Director knew his identity and had some kind of plans that involved him.

But right now, he didn’t care. He just wanted to find these vampires or demon worshippers or whoever they were and set them aflame.

Perhaps it was because of this single-minded determination that he didn’t notice Anna’s mildly conflicted expression just behind him, or the murderous glint in her eyes, as well.

---

As dozens of scribes and bureaucrats brought them hundreds and thousands of papers, Leon shouted orders not only to them, but to his retainers and the couple dozen paper-pushers that he’d enlisted for help in this investigation.

“Focus first on new arrivals in the city! If I were planning an attack on someone connected to a Hand of the Director, then I’d want outside muscle, not people who live in the city! Following that, look into anyone close to my people! Business partners, friends, neighbors, see if any of them have any known connections to demonic magic!”

It was a place to start, but Leon was gratified to see his orders being carried out. The Director, up to this point, had rarely sent him on any jobs that required interacting much with Heaven’s Eye on this scale, so he wasn’t used to seeing his status as a Hand being given quite so much weight. However, seeing not a single person question his order, and instead just jumping right into action to carry out his will, put a proud grin on his face.

An hour passed as his people searched through the records and collated data, but just as Leon resigned himself to waiting, Anna approached him, a frown on her face.

“What is it?” Leon growled, noticing that she came to him with empty hands.

“Mind if we speak in private?” Anna asked, casting a quick glance around the room. She didn’t, however, direct that glance at any of Leon’s other retainers.

“… Sure,” Leon said, getting to his feet and leading Anna to an office just off the conference room that was the locus of his look into the records.

Once there, and with the door shut and privacy wards engaged, Leon sat down with Anna just across from him, looking more than a little nervous. Leon didn’t push her, recognizing that she was wrestling with something in her own mind, though he did have to fight not to grow at least a little suspicious given the timing of her strange behavior.

“There… are things you have to know…” Anna eventually said. “I just… don’t know how to explain them…”

Leon nodded, replying, “Is this about your parents?”

Anna froze a moment, then slowly nodded. “Yes. No. Yes, but tangentially, I guess.”

Leon took a deep breath and waited further as Anna took another pause. He remembered her and Helen telling him that their parents had been killed by vampires, but he wasn’t aware of any real particulars. Neither woman spoke much about the topic, something that Leon could readily empathize with, and he never pressed.

“Leon…” Anna finally said, “vampires… are within Heaven’s Eye.”

Leon blinked. “Vampires?” he asked. “Not just demon contractors, but full-blown vampires?”

Anna nodded again. “I told you that my mother worked for Heaven’s eye, right?”

“You did.”

“Well, I learned something about her death from her best friend…”

“Who is this friend?” Leon asked.

“The Sacred Golden Empire’s current ambassador to the Ilian Empire,” Anna responded, and Leon briefly remembered the woman, having met her briefly during his trip through Ilion ten years ago. His meeting with Anastasios had rather overshadowed all other meetings that he’d had that day, but he still remembered the ambassador quite well, as well as the heated conversation she’d had with Anna and Helen.

“What did she tell you?” Leon asked, his tone deepening and growing more menacing.

“That the vampires who killed my parents work for Heaven’s Eye, too.”

There was a loud knock at the door, but Leon kept his attention fixed squarely on Anna.

“Are you sure about this information?”

“I trust the ambassador with my life.”

Leon nodded. “And I trust you.”

Anna looked down for a moment, appeared to blink rapidly, and then looked back up to meet Leon’s gaze. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

“Did you get any more information that can be used?”

Leon didn’t even entertain the possibility of not going after the killers of Anna’s parents, especially not if they were now acting against him and his people.

“Just that they were working in the city of my birth around the same time as my parents’ deaths, though whether that came before or after, I’m not sure.”

There was another knock at the door, but softer this time, and Leon’s eyes finally flickered over in the door’s direction.

“Let’s take care of this; maybe it’s related. I think you’re aware that I have my own issues with vampires?”

“Very aware…”

“Then let’s take care of this, and then see if we can launch a bigger investigation into Heaven’s Eye. I think the Director would be more than willing to indulge any request I can think of to keep me around, to be honest…”

“And are you planning on sticking around? I got the impression from that meeting you had with the Director that you were thinking of leaving Heaven’s Eye…”

“I was, and still am. But no decisions have been made. That there’re vampires infecting the guild even strengthens both sides, to leave or to stay…” Leon rose from his seat, and Anna followed suit. “We’ll get these bastards. Burn them all alive.”

Anna finally cracked a shallow smile. “Burn them all… I think I can live with that.”

Leon smiled in turn, and finally opened the door. On the other side, he found himself looking at Gaius and Talal, both looking mildly impatient.

“Leon!” Gaius exclaimed. “We found something promising!”

“Show me!” Leon ordered, and Gaius and Talal led him and Anna over to the table where a Heaven’s Eye scribe was arranging several papers.

“Over here is a report from Heaven’s Eye in Argos,” Gaius explained as he directed Leon’s attention to a certain stack of papers. “A man was arrested, tried, and executed for the crime of making blood sacrifices to a shadow demon. This was five years ago.”

Talal then took over the explanation, drawing Leon’s attention over to another set of papers. “And over here is a report on Marcus and Alcander’s neighbors. A woman named Kassia who lives directly next to Marcus happens to be the sister of that demon worshipper.”

“That sounds like a lead,” Leon growled, his simmering anger threatening to boil over now that he had a potential outlet, but he took a momentary pause. “The demonic power I found in Alcander’s place was fire, though. I’m guessing Amon’s, but neither I nor Xaphan can say for certain. I didn’t sense any trace of darkness magic, though, whether human or demon.”

“It’s all we have, so far,” Gaius said with a shrug.

Leon frowned, nodded, and then waved over one of the representatives of the local Heaven’s Eye security forces. To him, he ordered, “Bring this woman in. We need to speak with her.”

---

Leon glared at Kassia’s door, his retinue just behind him and three Heaven’s Eye security teams behind them. The sun was low in the sky, now, and a couple hours had passed since identifying Kassia as a person of interest. Despite Leon’s orders to bring her in, however, she remained at large, with the security teams unable to find her at her home or at her recorded place of employment.

It was with some mixed feelings that Leon learned she was missing, too. On the one hand, he couldn’t deny the possibility that whatever had happened to his retainers had also happened to her, and that her brother being a known demon worshipper didn’t necessarily mean she was one, too. On the other hand, it made him extremely suspicious that she couldn’t be found.

Unfortunately, the security teams lacked the authority to simply knock her door down and search her residence, but Leon, as a Hand of the Director and specifically empowered by the Director to conduct this investigation, wasn’t so restricted.

Standing before Kassia’s door, Leon reached out with his magic power. He found that the defensive wards protecting Kassia’s home were robust, relative to the houses around hers—including, he noted, wards against magic senses—but not for him. His power and knowledge of enchanting had all of her wards worth noting shattering after he struck the roof of the building with a single lightning strike, and his magic power enclosed around her door.

With the energy of a man who’d found even this small outlet for his wrath, Leon telekinetically tore Kassia’s door right out of its frame and stormed inside, the rest of his people following suit.

He paused in the atrium, letting the security teams flood inside, shouting and demanding that anyone inside show themselves. But Leon could already sense that the building was empty. All of Kassia’s wards were in ruins, and his magic senses flooded the place, revealing to him a home that was almost devoid of meaningful furnishings. A bed was still around, as were a few chairs and tables, but there were no decorations, no food in the kitchen, and no clothes in the closets. It looked almost like a house that was move-in ready rather than a house that was currently occupied.

“She’s gone,” Leon furiously growled to his retinue.

---

“If I had to guess,” said one of the highest ranking Heaven’s Eye security officers that Leon had taken command of, “I’d say that our suspect fled sometime thirty-six to forty-eight hours ago. With the warding placed upon the house and her reported power, the ambient magic power indicates that no one had been in there for at least a day.”

Leon nodded as he glanced around at the rest of his retinue and the leaders of his security teams and investigators. More than half a day had passed since he’d been informed of his retainers’ disappearances, and his wrath was back to a low simmer rather than explosive heat. After investigating Kassia’s house and locking it down in case she returned, Leon and most of his people made their way to Heaven’s Eye’s central archives.

“Find her,” Leon growled. “Any known acquaintances, any additional properties she may have, anything at all. That she’s missing too can’t be a coincidence.”

One of the other security team leaders immediately responded, “I have my team already chasing down her work colleagues and other professional acquaintances. We’ve gotten a short list of some of her personal friends, as well as some of her favorite haunts.”

A third security team leader added, “She has no family to speak of, but she apparently dated a member of Heaven’s Eye a couple years ago. I’ve called him in for an interview.”

Leon nodded. “Anything suspicious about him?”

“Nothing that I can see,” the third team leader replied. “Fairly squeaky-clean. Kind of plain and boring, if you ask me, but what interests me is that he had some access to our records department.”

Leon’s eyes narrowed and he briefly glanced at those investigators representing Heaven’s Eye’s records bureaucrats, none of whom met his gaze.

The third team leader continued, “He was too low-rank to have access to any particularly sensitive records, but he could’ve certainly given her fake IDs.”

“Or,” Gaius pointed out, “she could’ve used his credentials to get IDs of her own made.”

“If she does have alternate identities,” Talal added, “then she can do quite a bit to hide from us. Purchase property using those fake IDs, live in plain sight. Even have completely alternate lives if she wanted.”

“No fake ID can be that perfect,” Alix argued. “Heaven’s Eye has scarily comprehensive records on pretty much everyone who lives in this city. Those can’t just be faked, can they?”

“No,” said one of the records investigators. “There would be some signs, and the file would likely be pretty sparse, depending on how often that particular ID is used. There are some filters we can use following the interview with the ex-boyfriend.”

“Where are her favorite haunts?” Leon asked the second security team leader, drawing a few looks of surprise.

“We’re still getting some lists,” the team leader said, not fazed in the slightest by Leon’s question, “but already we know that Kassia seemed to enjoy fishing and playing various sports. She was even a regular at a cardio-focused gym near her residence and seemed to prefer late-night exercise.”

“That makes a degree of sense,” Leon murmured.

“She’s only third-tier,” Gaius said, following Leon’s train of thought without him having to explain too much, “but if she prefers to go out at night, then it might strengthen the idea that she’s a contractor with a shadow demon.”

“Doesn’t rule out fire, though,” Anna pointed out.

“No, it doesn’t,” Leon said. “She could be either, but right now, I’m more in agreement with Gaius. She might be a shadow demon contractor. So we should concentrate on recent IDs with little information, and possibly properties or other connections to places with easy access to escape routes that a mage with darkness magic might be able to exploit.”

“What could distinguish such a place from anywhere else?” the youngest of the team leaders asked the room.

“Wide, open spaces,” Leon answered. “Places that might be dark even during the day. Anywhere with plentiful shadows and not many people.”

“We’ll get right on it,” one of the records investigators replied.

There wasn’t much left for them to say, so Leon let everyone return to hunting down any leads that they could possibly find. He mostly waited for information to come in, watching as the leaders of the various teams that he’d pressed into this investigation slowly narrowed the search down.

But night eventually came, and though he didn’t want to stop just yet, Leon recognized that not many leads would be coming in while most of the security teams rested. Even the bureaucrats had to have some time for shut-eye, so late in the evening, Leon finally left the central archives building and brought his retinue back to his villa. No one else was going to disappear on his watch.

He was a little surprised to find that the four retainers he still had with him—Anna, Anshu, Gaius, and Alix—didn’t once argue with his decision to have them live with him until all of this was over. He made sure they were settled in as comfortably as he could on such short notice, though.

Elise and Helen beat him home. They hadn’t been able to find a suitable place for the golden apples yet, but that wasn’t something that was even on his mind right now. The land was out there, he wasn’t even slightly worried about that. The only thing on his mind was finding his missing people and showing those who’d taken them just how foolish of a decision they’d made was.

It was a fitful night; Leon didn’t once try to sleep, despite Elise and Maia’s attempts to bring him to bed, and spent the entire night worried about Marcus and Alcander, hoping that when he found them, they wouldn’t be cold corpses drained of blood from some twisted demonic ritual.