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Chapter 526: Introspection

Leon’s heart was conflicted as his group returned to Teira. The weight on his mind from the thoughts he’d had in the control room of Xaphan’s prison had eased a little, but the problem persisted. In the end, he hadn’t taken the power crystal from the prison. He didn’t feel like he needed it, and that he’d go further without it.

Just setting aside the moral quandaries that the events of Nestor’s lab had left him with, he was still left with the realization that he needed to do things on his own. He couldn’t allow himself to rely upon the scattered remains of his Clan, the detritus that hadn’t yet been picked clean by the rest of the plane’s inhabitants after the death of Jason Keraunos and the rest of the higher-ups of the Thunderbird Clan.

Of course, this now left him in a peculiar position. What could he do about his family’s archives? What was to be done about the remainder of the marked points on the Cradle’s map? He’d been told that there was a possibility that at least three of those points hadn’t yet been found, though that was hardly guaranteed. He felt like it was best to assume that none of the facilities at those places had been plundered and that dangerous magical knowledge like the enchanted vines that imprisoned and drained people were still out there in the world. Perhaps even other prisons with trapped monsters just waiting to be unleashed, or other such calamitous facilities. Nestor’s lab had held a fragment of the damned moon that had been inundated in the power of a Primal God for so long that it now emanated that power in quantities large enough to poison Nestor, a powerful and skilled mage. Leon couldn’t even begin to guess what the Thunderbird Clan might’ve hidden around Aeterna.

Putting things into perspective, Leon wasn’t sure what the right call to make was. He could take the books and knowledge there, but how was that different from not taking the power crystal? Even his new realizations that had killed his desire for the power crystal hadn’t damped his desire for the knowledge entombed beneath Argent Palace.

He justified it in his head that knowledge was pure, it didn’t matter where it came from or how it was acquired, and that taking what was beneath Argent Palace would be fine.

But that wasn’t to say that he liked it. Learning about his family was something that he was interested in, and he didn’t mind standing on their shoulders; rather, it was being lifted up by them that he was having trouble with, even if people like Nestor and the Thunderbird were perfectly willing to pick him up and lift him as high as they could. He wanted to learn and grow by his own means, he wanted to stand on his own as his own man. There had to a middle ground in there, but the best he could come up with was to eschew most of the material benefits of his Clan while learning as much as he could from them.

It wasn’t an easy decision; he’d already accepted so much, and so much was just a physical part of him that he couldn’t control. He couldn’t imagine relinquishing his family’s sword even though accepting it while giving up on the power crystals was a hard thing to reconcile with his new wants and needs.

At the very least, he wasn’t going to use the power crystals, and he no longer had any desire to take anything physical from any of the remaining Thunderbird sites that he might find. As beneficial as anything he might find could be, he needed his future family to have better foundations than the bones of a fallen Clan, especially one that could be capable of the crimes Justin had accused them of. He didn’t want the baggage that would come with the Thunderbird Clan’s revival.

He didn’t say much about his concerns to Elise, Valeria, or Maia. He trusted them completely, but he barely felt like he’d sorted out his thoughts and feelings on the subject, yet. He had to work through some of this on his own, first, so that he could at least properly articulate what this new problem was. He’d get their opinions when he was ready to talk, but for now, it was his problem and his problem alone.

So, he hadn’t taken the prison’s power crystal. He’d made up some excuse about not being able to remove something so large—he was fortunate that none of the others could move it, either—so he and his group had just left it there. He’d assented when Elise said they ought to send a Heaven’s Eye expedition out to secure the place, but before they’d left the prison, Leon had done his best to shut the entire place down and destroy any enchantments that he found personally objectionable. He’d had to stoop down and ask Nestor for help identifying what he needed to do, but if it kept the worst parts of his Clan’s enchantments from falling into anyone else’s hands, even people as trustworthy as Heaven’s Eye, then it was worth it.

He was loath to see the same enchantments that had imprisoned Justin and Xaphan spread throughout the plane.

Valeria also hadn’t given him an answer yet, and he wasn’t really expecting one anytime soon. They hadn’t had much of a chance to talk in private, and he figured that she needed more time to think over all that had happened during the past few months. He could still remember that moment they’d shared in Calabria when she’d kissed him, but a single kiss hardly meant much.

Regardless, if it was time she needed, Leon had no problems giving her all that she needed.

When they rolled into Teira with their horses and carriages—for which they’d had to make a detour to Clear Ice Fortress to pick up given their alternate route south—everyone was quite exhausted. It had been a long couple of weeks, and at least in Leon’s case, he wanted nothing more than to find the most comfortable bed he could and collapse into it, preferably with Elise and Maia beside him. From what he could tell, everyone else, including the members of their Heaven’s Eye escort, wanted something similar.

Fortunately for Leon and those accompanying him, Ajax was more than willing to assist. When they arrived, the Tower Lord was incredibly accommodating with getting Anzu set up in the stables, Justin settled in his private medical quarters, and giving Elise, Maia, and Leon the same wing of his palace that they’d stayed in when they’d last been in the city. Valeria, too, had been given the same rooms, but she’d opted to stay with her father, at least until she could get a preliminary report from the healers about his condition.

So, it was a quiet night for Leon, Elise, and Maia. Their fatigue kept them from being too physically intimate, but they celebrated their return to civilization in their own way. When the morning came around, they were all about as rested and ready for the day as they could be.

Ajax was nowhere to be seen when they finally hauled themselves out of bed. The palace servants told them that apparently something had happened in the south that forced him to go to work early, but given how unhurried and unconcerned everyone was, Leon and Elise brushed it off. Ajax would let them know if it were something that would concern them. Instead of worrying about that, they instead got in a late breakfast and set off with Maia to Argent Palace.

They didn’t send word ahead, but Leon didn’t feel it was necessary. The writ he’d received from the King gave him unfettered access to his family’s old palace, and he intended to use it regardless of what the guards protecting the ruins thought.

Naturally, the guards disagreed. Leon and his two companions were forced to wait more than an hour before they were finally allowed access to the site, though the guards insisted on sending an escort with them. Leon then insisted that they be left alone, and things got a little bit tense. It wasn’t until he let a few stray arcs of silver-blue lightning dance across one of his hands that the guards finally realized who they were dealing with and stood down. The guard commander, in particular, had something of a starry-eyed look as he stepped aside and let them pass, though the entire encounter put Leon in no mood to stay and talk.

He knew that there’d probably be quite a few rumors spread about him as a result of these actions, though he didn’t much care; while he was about ready to set aside his identity as Leon Ursus and reclaim that of Leon Raime, he wasn’t about to shout it from the rooftops.

Argent Palace had been surrounded by a private forest when it was intact, and in the almost two decades since its destruction, the forest had started to get a little overgrown. This, however, led to a pleasant sense of isolation as Teira almost completely disappeared behind them, with even the intense and otherwise omnipresent ambient sounds of the second-largest city in the Bull Kingdom being eaten up by the dense flora surrounding the ruins.

Leon’s small group walked silently, for the most part simply basking in the sudden private and wild surroundings they found themselves in. It was almost completely silent around them, with even the usual sounds they might hear in a forest being strangely muted. It was relaxing, like an unexpected but much appreciated nature hike through a reserve located in the middle of a dense city.

But then Argent Palace itself came into view, and Leon started to feel a little regretful that he hadn’t brought either Valeria or Justin. He would’ve loved to discuss with the two of them what had happened the night that Justin’s battle with Kyros ruined the palace, but he supposed that he could always return another day for that conversation. Today was not going to be the day to reminisce about his family’s downfall, but rather to learn about the height of its glories.

Leon slowly guided his lovers through the maze-like remnants of Argent Palace; past the grand entrance of white stone—now shattered—and immense atrium of stark white marble—utterly ruined as it was—that even now shone in the late-morning sun; past the more public areas of the palace that were filled with the remnants of both tight corridors and small offices of the lower administrators, and the grander halls, meeting rooms, and courtyards designed to show off the splendor of House Raime. Nearly all of it had been reduced to barely chest-high walls and piles of rubble, but there was enough of a skeleton left to be able to appreciate some of the majesty the palace once had. Finally, Leon led them to the private areas of the palace, the areas that he had passed through when he’d infiltrated the palace four years ago.

Little had changed since then. The palace was still magically dead, with absolutely none of the grand enchantments that had once filled the place still functional. Still, they walked with very little talking between them. The palace grounds had a tremendously somber and muted ambience to it that encouraged silence, even in the middle of a bright a sunny day, and it was a difficult thing to break.

When viewed from certain angles, the palace seemed almost intact, with Alexander’s—Leon’s uncle and the older brother of Artorias—private apartments in particular seeming almost ready for someone to move in. However, the great rents in the earth, broken stone and gutted buildings that were revealed when their angle changed ruined that illusion. Many of the smaller, presumably less magically fortified buildings were little more than piles of rubble almost hidden beyond overgrown gardens. Somehow, the battle between Justin, Kyros, and Alexander had obliterated the entire palace complex without exception.

Now that he was older and had more time to look around, Leon wondered what it would’ve been like to grow up here. He wondered if he would’ve met Elise when she came north, if they would’ve walked through the extensive gardens or spent time together in the gorgeous pavilions scattered throughout the complex. He imagined learning to fight and to ride in the yards, studying magic, history, philosophy, and all the other things that would’ve been expected of him in the outlying buildings. He thought about waking each day to these surroundings and how his life would’ve been different.

Perhaps most of all, Leon thought about his father, and the mother, uncle, and grandfather that he’d never met. He at least had a vague idea of what the latter two looked like if only by looking in the mirror or seeing some of the fragments of statuary laying around the palace, but he wondered what it would’ve been like to grow up here with an intact family.

Not for the first time, Leon momentarily had the thought of returning to Ajax’s palace and driving his family’s sword into Justin’s throat for depriving him of this, but he resisted the temptation. It was easy to blame the man, and Leon certainly did for a great deal of what had happened here, but he knew that the greater threat was Kamran.

Pulling him out of his reverie, Elise slid her hand into his and squeezed. She didn’t say anything, but when Leon glanced at her, she flashed him a dazzling smile of support. It was more than enough to bring Leon back to reality and to continue leading her and Maia through the ruins toward the old private residence of the Raime Archdukes and the Thunder Kings before them.

The building was utterly ruined, with almost no trace of what it once was visible from the pile of shattered marble and red ceramic roof tiles that it was now. But the private training yard behind it still looked pretty good with a mosaic of House Raime’s old crest in the center. Leon simply had to kneel in the center and channel his magic into the right place and the crest—a stylized eagle-like bird with talons extended and wings outstretched—began to sink into the earth and slid to the side, revealing the marble staircase below that led down to the archives.

“We’re almost there,” Leon said with some trepidation. He could remember that there were a few intact defensive measures down there, but he didn’t think they were all that robust. Rather, he was more worried about what he was going to do with everything in the archives than he was about Elise and Maia following him down there, especially with Maia’s power supporting them.

“Let’s see what’s down there!” Elise cried, her voice thick with adventuring spirit.

Maia was a little more subdued, but she smiled at the two of them and said out loud, “I’m quite curious to see what’s down there…”

“Then let’s go see it,” Leon said as he led the two down the stairs to his family’s archives.