“This is a magnificent ark, Despot Raime,” Perenelle purred as the group reached an appropriate sitting room to relax in.

“The pinnacle of the Thunderbird Clan’s arksmithing… circa eighty-thousand years ago,” Leon replied with a grin.

“Sticking with that story?” she pressed. Then, with a shrug, she said, “I can entertain it.”

“It’s no story,” Miuna sharply retorted, showing more vehemence in her denial than even Leon was preparing to bring. “I’ve seen his power for myself.”

“You’ve shown her your power?” Perenelle responded as she shot Leon a faux scandalized look.

Miuna simply huffed and turned away, while Leon smiled noncommittally, and Valeria, standing next to him, slid her hand into his.

“Why don’t we get comfortable?” Elise said, hoping to break the mildly confrontational atmosphere. “Have a seat and I’ll see about having some refreshments brought in!”

“That won’t be necessary,” Perenelle said.

At the same time, Akasi, practically vibrating, shouted, “That sounds great!”

The two then glared at each other, silence passing between them for a moment before Elise said, “I’ll have some brought just in case, anyway. Water, ambrosia, something stronger, maybe some snacks…”

“We’re not staying for long,” Perenelle said through clenched teeth.

“We’re enjoying your hospitality for as long as it’s available,” Akasi countered, their eyes not leaving the other despite both addressing Elise and the rest of the room.

Miuna cut in with a quick, “We made plans to visit the temple and pay our respects to the man who forged the age we now live in. And after that… maybe Thousand-Flower Garden? What do you think, Mizuno?”

The woman in question, instead of finding a comfortable seat or joining the conversation, had spent her time quietly examining the projected murals on the wall, her fan still in front of her face. She’d paused on one in particular depicting one of Leon’s Ancestors standing triumphantly with his sword raised above a dozen kneeling figures, each one looking and dressing differently. It was the penultimate scene in a mural that depicted some war fought long ago, with the Thunderbird Clan emerging from the conflict triumphant with at least a dozen new vassals.

“I’ll go where you go,” Mizuno quietly whispered.

“Darling,” Miuna said as she leaned over on the armrest of her seat, “Mimi, we’re in Khosrow’s Fane, one of the most beautiful planes in all the universe! You were so excited to visit just a few decades ago! What happened?”

Mizuno’s eyes flitted in Leon’s direction before settling back on Miuna. “Nothing,” she said unconvincingly.

Miuna sighed and returned her attention to Leon. “She plays coy, but she definitely wants to see this place.”

“She’s scared of you, Despot Raime,” Perenelle said. “And I can see why. A man who professes possessions of one of the most dangerous and violent bloodlines in recorded history defeated a Despot of the King’s Ocean when he was only a Strategos!”

Akasi bounded over and exuberantly asked, “What are you going to do to her, you beastly man? Tear her clothes off and deprive her of her chastity in a fit of—”

“That’s enough,” Miuna interrupted with an apologetic look sent Leon’s way.

“Our husband,” Cassandra coolly said as she interposed herself between Leon and Akasi, “is no beast.”

“He claims to have some beast in him, doesn’t he?” Perenelle asked, her tone almost a mocking facsimile of innocence. “The Great Lord did leave his Law behind, and approved of the Canticles of Hormizd… should we just ignore that?”

“You can judge me by my actions,” Leon almost growled even as Valeria, Maia, Cassandra, and even Elise tensed as if readying themselves for a fight.

“I am a Basilissa, and you only a Despot,” Perenelle frigidly retorted. “I’ll judge as I please.”

“That didn’t go well for Basileus Triyr,” Leon said. “He attempted to steal this ark and even my wives in a duel on Voidshore. A duel he lost.”

“I’ve heard of Triyr,” Perenelle responded, unimpressed. “You beating him doesn’t mean much to me.”

“You boasted of his prowess just a moment ago,” Elise said.

“That was no boast; I simply gave reasons for my shy friend’s fear. Wholly understandable reasons, in my opinion. Were it not for our fair Princess vouching for you, I’d rather have you on the end of a stake of night ice than in the same room as me.”

“Perenelle!” Miuna exclaimed.

“I speak the truth,” the Basilissa said, her eyes not wavering from Leon. “Beasts occupy different parts of the world than does mankind. It is for the best that we do not mix. Isn’t that right, Mimi?”

Mizuno had dropped her eyes to the floor for a good portion of the exchange, but when called out, she locked eyes with Leon and showed her eleventh-tier grit by slowly nodding in agreement with Perenelle’s declaration.

Wrath blazing in her eyes, Miuna rose to her feet, but Leon beat her to the punch this time.

“That is your opinion to have. I am in no mood to make excuses, nor do I see a point in justifying myself to you. Your judgment means nothing to me, same with your opinions. Now, I’ll call an escort, and you may depart from my ‘magnificent ark’ without trouble.”

Perenelle let her mask drop fully, her expression shifting into one of scorn and derision. “Mizuno,” she said, drawing the other woman’s attention for a moment before it fearfully returned to Leon, “why don’t we get out of here and leave our fair Princess to her courting? I fail to see any reason why she’d want this mongrel relying on age-old glories for power, but her tastes are not my business.”

If she had been expecting Mizuno to jump at the chance to leave, she was disappointed as the woman shifted her gaze back to Miuna as if looking for permission. The entire room, in fact, did the same, everyone wondering how Miuna was going to react.

The Princess herself was quiet, her amber eyes glittering with anger and sorrow. After a number of seconds, she rose with catlike grace and said to Leon, “I apologize for this. I’d hoped for a more gracious meeting, but it seems my friends have some opinions I hadn’t expected.”

“We have been perfectly up front with you about this mistake of yours for years,” Perenelle whispered. “It was you who refused to listen to reason.”

“Enough,” Miuna hissed, and Perenelle finally shut her mouth. To Leon, she added, “Shall we catch up later when tempers aren’t so high?”

“That… might be for the best,” Leon said. “You may feel free to enjoy our hospitality at any time. As should any friends of yours, assuming they don’t mind sharing a roof with a man with a little extra power in his blood.”

“You’re more than that,” Mizuno murmured, a bolder look crossing what little of her face that was visible. “I’ve heard… that you are a beast, just taken human form!”

“We’re leaving,” Miuna immediately said, and she took Perenelle and Mizuno’s arms and made for the door, Akasi trailing just behind.

“Sorry about this,” Akasi called back. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re cute!”

Such were her last words as Miuna forced their group out into the private atrium on the other side. Her handmaidens were already there waiting, Elise having sent a signal the moment Miuna decided to leave. With them, along with a force of female Tempest Knights, they’d be escorted back outside of Storm Herald, where the rest of Miuna’s enormous party of traveling companions awaited her.

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Leon and his ladies, however, remained where they were.

“What two-faced cunts,” Cassandra venomously spat as she threw herself onto the nearest sofa, her ruby eyes locked on the door as if she could see through it and incinerate Perenelle and Mizuno with her gaze alone.

“That might be strong for a pair of Ocean Lords,” Elise said almost automatically. “But I don’t disagree with the sentiment.”

Leon smiled in spite of the disastrous meeting, his eyes momentarily landing on Valeria and Maia.

“We should kill that one,” Maia said aloud.

“Which one?” Cassandra asked.

“The loud-mouthed one,” Maia clarified, her aura spiking for a moment with killing intent. “The timid one is harmless.”

Cassandra clicked her tongue. “I could take them. That judgy bitch had soft hands. Basilissa or not, she doesn’t fight.”

“Let’s be thankful that we won’t be finding out, yeah?” Leon said as he took the seat next to Cassandra, who immediately took the opportunity to cuddle up against him. It was a race for his other side, and Maia emerged victorious. Elise was happy to cuddle up beside her, though, while Valeria put them all to shame and silently sat in Leon’s lap.

“They could be dangerous,” the silver-haired woman said.

“We’ll deal with them if they become problems,” Leon calmly responded. “They’re Miuna’s friends. After all this time, I think we can at least trust her to keep her friends in line. At least now we’re not still sharing the same room with them.”

Valeria frowned as Cassandra asked, “You’re asking us to trust the woman trying to steal you away?”

Leon snorted. “First of all, I’m not something that can be stolen. Second, there’s nothing to fear on that front; I’m not giving any of you up for anything, not even for all the Titanstone in the universe.”

Valeria wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, even while Maia and Cassandra sought out his neck, while Elise whimpered quietly at her distance from him. She made up for it by nuzzling into Maia, and for a moment, Leon thought that all five of them were going to have some fun—a rare thing given Valeria’s tastes.

But before their hands could even wander, a sharp knock came at the door, immediately obliterating the building atmosphere.

When Leon disentangled himself from his ladies, fixed his clothes, and answered the door, he found Anna and Clear there looking rather worried. It seemed Archelaus had gotten in touch and asked for help: there was a Storm Lord in danger.

---

“This is it?” Leon asked as he and Gwarim came to a halt above a small villa at the edge of the fane.

Since flight in the fane was illegal over a certain limit, both were invisible, Leon using the enchantments in his armor while Gwarim had put on an arm ring. Both could still sense each other, however, since Gwarim shared with Leon a finely-carved wooden ring, the grain of the wood forming a cloud of bats. Gwarim wore a matching ring, which allowed them to mentally track and communicate with each other even when invisible, without disrupting that invisibility.

“Yes,” Gwarim said as he dropped a little further down.

He and Leon were alone, Archelaus having asked for them, specifically, and only them. He claimed that he wanted their group to remain small, just in case Leon and Gwarim were inclined to march on the fane with the considerable military forces they each had at hand. Given how many other Lords were at the fane, let alone any hidden defenders of the fane that no one knew about, Archelaus had thought that even to help him, attacking the fane with such numbers would only invite more problems.

Leon disagreed; he’d fight the entire damned plane to get Archelaus out of whatever jam he’d gotten himself involved in, regardless of the consequences. But at Archelaus’ request, he left everyone else behind, traveling to the villa accompanied only by Gwarim.

The villa was small, amounting to only three wings surrounding the front courtyard, though it featured two balconies that projected off the edge of the demiplane, their railings just against the demiplane’s terminus line.

The two descended, and when they got low enough to be ‘in the courtyard’ instead of ‘above the villa’, enchantments flared and their invisibility was disrupted. Neither panicked, however, as passing that line of magic also revealed Archelaus standing in the courtyard where he seemingly hadn’t been a moment before.

“Archelaus!” Gwarim called out, though he moderated the volume of his voice given the nature of their meeting. He shot down and landed in front of the man himself, Leon following suit a moment later. “What is happening?! What trouble is so sensitive that you couldn’t tell us before?!”

Leon gave him a questioning look, reinforcing Gwarim.

Archelaus sighed. “You can relax here, this place is heavily warded. Come inside and you’ll see for yourself.”

Curious, Leon and Gwarim followed Archelaus inside.

The villa was nice on the outside, following the same general design trend that filled Khosrow’s Fane. However, the interior was completely bare, bereft of even decorations on the walls. It looked like no one had resided in the villa for many years. Archelaus led them into one of the back rooms where a table and some chairs had been assembled, though nothing particularly fancy.

More importantly, Leon spied the back of a feminine figure almost hanging off the railing. Long blond hair spilled down her back, only held in check by a lazy ponytail. Her clothes—a short-sleeved tunic over tight trousers that ended in shin-high boots—were generally fine, but hardly impressive by Nexus standards, while what bits of skin Leon could see showed a healthy tan. A large bottle rested next to the woman on the railing, while her forehead rested on the railing. Whatever was in the bottle had to be impressive, Leon noted, given that he sensed a twelfth-tier aura spilling from the woman in erratic bursts, a far cry from the calmer and steadier auras of the sober.

“You’ve met her before, I believe, Gwarim; so Leon, let me introduce you to Ingrid, Despotissa of Luthergard. Forgive me for not delving too deeply into her many titles right now.”

Luthergard, Leon recalled, was a significant fortress city about twice as far northeast from Archelaus’ capital city of Archelion as Artorion was to the west. She and Archelaus were close enough to regard each other as neighbors, given that two of their Strategoi bordered each other.

Ingrid groaned at the noise and shifted, only to hit the bottle and knock it off the edge of the railing. It passed the terminus line and started to float away, only for Ingrid to suddenly raise her head and snatch it with a quiet, “No!” Some of the clear liquid within the bottle had escaped into the void, however, to her dismay. A quick swig of what was left seemed to soothe her spirits, however, and she slowly turned around with not a trace of sober coordination. “Heeeey,” she said with an almost slovenly wave.

“Ingrid,” Gwarim growled. “I remember you! By Khosrow’s cock, woman, what happened to you?!”

She groaned again, the hand that wasn’t holding her bottle leaving the railing to rub her forehead. “Meeeen! Stupid men

!” she loudly slurred before collapsing with her back against the railing and taking another swig.

“Maybe we should take that bottle away…” Leon suggested.

“I tried,” Archelaus said. “She just summoned another one.”

Leon frowned even as Ingrid looked up and gave him the dirtiest look imaginable, marring her classically beautiful features more than the dirt and sweat of all things had.

“What. Happened.” Gwarim rumbled, his patience thinning.

“I found her singing and drinking and breaking things about a mile down the road. Given what she was singing and muttering about when we left, I gather something happened with her husband…”

“He left!” she shouted, a hiccup escaping her lips as she tried to add to her statement. She groaned and finally managed to get out, “… For a gusty, busty whore!”

“Her husband had an affair with a Gale Lord,” Archelaus clarified. “Or so I’ve been able to ascertain.”

“He left!” Ingrid angrily shouted before breaking down into tears. “He left!”

Gwarim turned back to Archelaus. “My friend… I’m all for helping out my fellow Storm Lords, but is this something that we need to handle? Drunk on… what is that? Smells like fermented krillick venom? Drunk or not, she’s a twelfth-tier mage and can take care of herself!”

“Old friend,” Archelaus exasperatedly said, “think on it for a moment, would you? And then try and contain your surprise when I tell you that she was being tracked by several monks dressed alike those who nearly killed Theron.”

Gwarim’s gaze sharpened, as did Leon’s.

“Why target her?” Leon asked. “Is she a vampire too? Doesn’t seem pale enough for that…”

Ingrid hiccupped again before giving Leon a lopsided grin. “Th-thanks, cutie…”

Ignoring her, Archelaus said, “She bears a bloodline. It’s called something more elegant in her language, but in Nexus common it’s something like ‘the fox with lightning paws that jumps over the moon’.”

“Moon—hic—Moon-Jumping Fox,” Ingrid said. “Fooooox.” She grinned for a total of a quarter second before bursting into tears again.

“Yes,” Archelaus simply replied. “Anyway, the monks followed us as I tried to get her out of there. I managed to lose them in the streets, but they’re still out looking for us. It would be for the best if we’re able to get her back to one of your arks. Or even to Ramin’s.”

“Is she one of Ramin’s Despots?” Leon asked.

“No,” Archelaus replied, “but her Basileus and Ramin are both sworn to Anax Alderion. She can find sanctuary there, if that’s where we decide to take her.”

“No!” Ingrid shouted through her tears. “Ramin’ssssa bitch. A dumb b-bitch with a dumb face!”

“What in the name of her Ancestors did she drink?” Leon asked.

“Want sssome, cutie?” she asked, holding the bottle out for a moment. Leon shook his head, to which she shrugged and took another swig.

“My ark’s closest,” Leon said.

“Not by much,” Gwarim responded. “But I’m fine with that. Maybe you’ll actually show me around that thing when we get her there!”

“You’re on,” Leon said with a grin. His face then turned serious as he contemplated the problem.

They had to get this woman, drunk off her ass, several miles through the city, back to the Lumenite bridge connecting the city to the arkyard where Storm Herald was waiting, and into the ark itself, all without being stopped by the monks that were after them. Leon didn’t know how many there were, and given the way they dressed, he didn’t rule out the possibility that the more ‘normal’ monks of the fane were in on whatever was going on, too. If they made the wrong move, violence would become unavoidable, and that would call down all kinds of problems onto their heads. Still, the possibility of not helping Ingrid out didn’t once cross his mind.

‘Going to have to do this quietly,’ he thought. He closed his eyes and sighed. ‘This is going to be a pain.’