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The Redspark Forest was his destination. The trees of this forest, he could see with his magic senses, appeared quite similar to the immense trees of his new home, with reddish bark and immense size, though the leaves of those trees were cloudy white rather than dark blue. He couldn’t say for certain how much of the forest was made up of these similar trees, however, for much of the forest’s interior was shrouded in a dense storm, within which bright flashes of red lightning could be seen.

It seemed the storm there was an eternally raging thing, which itself didn’t appear that uncommon in the Storm Lands—the place, whether due to the number of strong lightning mages or not, was steeped in lightning magic, and as a result, the weather wasn’t that hard to enrage. The storm Leon called around the Artor Valley, for instance, was still going even though he was no longer there.

This storm in the interior of the Redspark Forest, however, didn’t seem to be natural, or whatever passed for natural in the Storm Lands. Rather, there was a crescent of high hills on the northern side of the forest that reached down the eastern and western sides and seemed to hold in the power of the forest. The trees, Leon guessed, perhaps generated lightning magic in some way, and the geography of the area kept much of that magic trapped, which then led to the storm.

Such was merely guesswork on his part, however, for his party was only two days into their four-day-long journey to the largest town he could see on the forest’s outskirts. To give his weaker followers some time to rest, he’d taken to landing for a few hours at night, which was fortunately all that was needed.

During the rest period of the second day of this journey, he found himself sitting on a boulder on the hill his people encamped upon. They were far into the Shaded Plain, with Treasure Lake to their south, and Krizos, the largest city in the area, on its shore. The Bolt Mountains lay further east, and just beyond them to the northeast lay Redspark Forest.

The Shaded Plain lived up to its name, with ghostly gray grass that reminded him rather unpleasantly of Arkhnavi. That plane, however, had the excuse of having been poisoned by the foul magic of a Primal Devil. This plain, bereft of any plant life save for this eerie gray grass, was another kind of disquieting. The wind hardly blew over it, too, and though the Origin Spark burned just as brightly above it as everywhere else in the Nexus, the plain was cold and lifeless. Leon couldn’t even sense any animal or insect life.

A large lake lay to the north, with cold, unnaturally still waters. Fog drifted across the mirror-like surface, and when Leon turned his magic senses upon it, he couldn’t but feel like it was turning its attention back upon him. The Lake of the Lost, it was called, and while Leon was desperate for the power to save his new city, whatever power lay in that lake was not one he wanted to so much as cough at, let alone attempt to seize for himself.

The enormous floating mountain further north, however, was Kavad’s Lance. It was almost as if a great pillar of earth the size of a dozen mountains had been lifted into the air and frozen there for all of time. Wind howled around it in another eternal storm, and a thousand smaller bits of land from the size of an overlarge boulder to small mountains flew around it at varying speeds.

Though the central floating mountain was rather lance-like with how it appeared to taper off near the top, it was an actual lance that the mountain was named after, which, if legends could be believed, awaited a worthy wielder at the mountain’s peak, obscured in clouds too magically dense for Leon’s magic senses to penetrate.

The journey to the Redspark Forest was fairly long, but if he was lucky enough to have time left over from seeing the Stormborn Oak, then Kavad’s Lance would come after that. The weapon was rumored to be powerful enough to be the reason why the mountain floated, and the legends of the weapon—and the one who could claim it—greatly enticed Leon. Such power would be a great boon to defending his new home.

Further to the east of Kavad’s Lance lay the gargantuan castle of the Seventh Iron Order, beyond the Paleholt, a deep, dark forest of pale white trees that Leon shivered just looking upon, though he wasn’t sure why.

He wasn’t able to contemplate long on the mystery for just as he turned his eyes upon the Paleholt, intending to plan his route to the Seventh Iron Order if he had the time after visiting Redspark Forest and Kavad’s Lance, Gaius, Alix, and Valeria approached his boulder, their mere presence pulling Leon out of his thoughts.

“Something the matter?” Leon asked.

“Does something have to be, Leon?” Alix asked, her tone playful even though she and the other two wore rather serious expressions.

“Lately, it seems so,” Leon murmured. Without giving them a chance to respond to that statement, he asked, “What’s got you three looking like you’re walking through a graveyard?”

“I’d almost say we are,” Gaius stated as he nodded to their ghostly surroundings.

Without missing a beat, Alix added, “The camp is set up and the Tempest Knights are getting some rest. We’ll be ready to go whenever you’re ready to get out of these creepy grasslands.” Indeed, behind them, several large tents had been erected. One of them was for Leon and his ladies, in which he could sense Maia already relaxing.

Leon nodded gratefully. “I’m hardly thrilled to be here, too.”

“Aren’t you?” Valeria asked with a knowing smile.

With a faux-wounded look, he shot back, “You believe me a liar? My own wife, disbelieving of my words?”

“I have to check,” Valeria continued. “If I don’t keep an eye on you, you might do something like flying out to that lake and getting into trouble.”

With a touch of ironic sarcasm, Leon waved off her statement and said, “Me? No, I would never.”

Valeria joined him on the boulder, sitting close enough for their shoulders to touch. Gaius and Alix, meanwhile, stood nearby, their fingers interlaced. R

“So,” Leon said after a moment of silence, “what’s really going on? Unless you three are just here to join me in brooding over the near future?”

“It’s the future after the near future that concerns us,” Valeria responded softly.

Leon sighed. “Shatufan.”

“In part,” Valeria confirmed. “What we did… I don’t take back what I said about it being necessary. But…”

As she trailed off, Gaius picked up where she ended. “It’s unstable. We left the city too quickly. Jamshid succeeded in taking over thanks to surprise, some well-placed allies, and our backing. But Manuchehr managed to escape, as did many of the Azadan. Along with the intensifying riots breaking out when we left…”

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“We’re not done with Shatufan,” Leon stated gravely. “We took what we needed. We didn’t have time to stay, as much as we should’ve. Artorion needs us more. What we’re doing now is more important than a single city.”

“We’re… still going back to Shatufan, though, right?” Alix hesitantly asked.

“Like I said, we’re not done with the city,” Leon repeated. “We introduced instability to the city. It’s our duty to… it’s my duty to return stability to it.”

“Is this… going to be our strategy going forward?” Gaius asked. “Taking what we need from others and abandoning them afterward?”

Leon bit back a more scathing response. He knew Gaius was asking about more than just this adventure and the crisis it was intended to avert. “We… we have to establish ourselves more in the Nexus,” he finally said. “Mercy and morality are privileges of the strong. And here, we are not strong. The Thunder Kingdom can afford to be merciful and moral on Aeterna. Here, if there is no other way to get what we need, then we will take what we must. And no more than what we must.”

Gaius didn’t look satisfied, but he nodded in acknowledgment anyway.

“I wanted our hands to remain clean for as long as possible,” Leon continued. “But… this was always inevitable. Conquest, I mean. And by that, I mean that after Shatufan, I intend to unite all of the Far West under my crown. I don’t intend to challenge Archelaus to the east, but all of the Far West will be our foothold here in the Nexus, the first step in restoring my Clan to its old position.”

“I will continue to support that with all I have,” Gaius said. “I just hope that we do so in a way that we can boast of to our Ancestors in the afterlife.”

“Is sweeping through the Nexus with blood and battle not something to boast of?” Leon asked unseriously.

“To some, perhaps,” Gaius replied.

“Not to us, I hope,” Valeria whispered. “You would be too much like Kamran.”

Leon scowled at the name. A moment later, he wrapped his arm around his silver-haired wife and held her tightly against him. “We’ll have to wait and see how the other cities of the Far West respond to us. But even now, I will say that I have no intention of ever becoming that callous.”

“If you do…” Valeria whispered threateningly, a hint of both playfulness and deadly seriousness in her voice, “I won’t stand idle. If I cannot show off my husband with pride, then I will not have a husband at all.”

Leon smiled and pressed his forehead briefly against hers reassuringly. “If I couldn’t be a man you could be proud of, then I would strive with all I have to become one. You, however… could be the worst, most vile woman in all the universe and I would still want you at my side.”

Valeria burst into amused laughter. “I doubt that. If I… killed a baby or something, you’d look at me differently.”

“Nope,” Leon replied with an impish smile on his face. “I will accept you in all your baby-killing, genocidal ways. Want me to destroy a city for you, my Queen? I will present to you the severed heads of a hundred Kings if you would but give me a crumb of your love.”

Valeria laughed again and gently pushed him, though not nearly hard enough to remove his arm from around her shoulders, and he only pulled her right back once she lowered her arms.

“Flirting in public…” Alix observed disbelievingly. “Filthy boy!”

Leon looked around at the desolate Shaded Plain, the ghostly grass glinting in the Origin Spark’s faux-moonlight. Their party was alone in one of the most desolate locations Leon had ever had the displeasure of traveling through. The rest of their party was resting in enchanted tents, giving them more privacy than the vast majority of humanity would ever enjoy.

“You know what?” Valeria asked before Leon could voice his sarcastic response. “I don’t want to hear it from you, Alix. Or do you need me to chastise you again for what I’ve repeatedly caught you and Gaius doing in closets and unused rooms of the palace?”

Leon’s eyebrows rose at that, having never heard of such a thing before. Gaius’s face went beet red, though, telling him all he needed to know about the truth of the matter.

Alix, meanwhile, seemed set on being more blatant. “Could you? A little chastisement can really get me going, as I’m sure this stud knows.” She pinched Gaius’ arm and gave him a sultry grin.

With a quick, awkward cough, Gaius swiftly demanded, “How about we not talk about personalthings where our son might hear?”

“But we can talk about them wherever he can’t?” Alix asked with a teasing smile. “That’s good to know… for later… Besides, don’t try and tell me that you haven’t talked about personal things with the boys! Isn’t that right, Leon? He hasn’t kept his mouth shut around you, has he?”

Leon wasn’t sure how to respond. Alix was still being light-hearted and playful, but Gaius looked like he kind of wanted to die.

“This is a battlefield I do not want to be on,” he said. “How about we both just agree not to discuss sex right this very moment?”

“Ugh, fine,” Alix agreed in an exaggerated huff.

Gaius breathed a just as exaggerated sigh of relief.

Valeria, meanwhile, snuggled closer to Leon and laid her head on his shoulder, joining him in watching the ghostly grass wave in what little wind blew over the Shaded Plain.

---

Leon and his party quickly passed through the Shaded Plain and over the northern stretches of the Bolt Mountains. They dodged storms and monsters, though none so strong as to have given them much trouble even if they hadn’t. Once on the other side of the mountains, they turned northeast, making for the only settlement of much note on the southern edge of the Redspark Forest, a city of perhaps twenty thousand people.

Not a large city in Leon’s estimation, but at this point, it was more than double the size of Artorion, the thought of which only spurred him on with greater urgency.

The city sprawled across the rolling fields south of the forest, with wide streets and buildings made of the red wood of the forest on its northern edge. Farms stretched to the south, though none were particularly large. It was the very picture of small city Nexus life, with the ever-raging storm to the north and the red lightning that illuminated it serving as an incredible backdrop for the region.

As Leon and his party approached the city, a group comparable to theirs in size flew out to meet them. Most of them were armored as thickly as the Tempest Knights, though none could compare to the two giants in Leon’s entourage. Only one—their leader, Leon judged—was dressed in a civilian manner, with a long brocade coat over clothes of rich, unknown material. Most of the greeting party was only sixth or seventh-tier, but the leader was of the eighth.

“King Leon!” the leader called out, a smile spreading across his aged face, his long gray hair blowing in the breeze spilling out of the forest. “Welcome to Redspark!”

“You know who I am?” Leon asked in surprise as he slowed to a hover about ten feet away from this man. His party behind him spread out to a more defensive formation, with only Valeria and Maia joining Leon before the welcoming party.

“I have heard of you,” the man called out.

“Only good things, I hope,” Leon responded with a good-natured smile.

The man sprouted a thinner, more reluctant smile. “Some good things.”

Leon’s smile died, though he suppressed a grimace.

“Why have you come to this city?” the man asked.

“To see with my own eyes the Stormborn Oak,” Leon responded.

“Few have ever done so,” the man replied. “Given your… predicament, are you sure you have the time for such flights of fancy?”

Leon gave him a withering glare. “Are you sure you have the right to judge me?”

“No one is above judgment, least of all Kings. And least of Kings, conquerors.”

A dreadful silence descended upon them for a moment, and Leon wondered at the possibility of violence breaking out.

And then the man smiled. “You are welcome in Redspark, so long as you maintain the peace. Expeditions are regularly sent into the forest. All are permitted to join, though if you wish to brave the forest before then, no one will stop you. For now, please allow me to show you to rooms that we have already prepared for you.”

“Already prepared…?” Leon asked in shock.

“We have been watching you approach for hours, now,” the man explained. “And friends in Shatufan told us of your intended visit.”

Leon scowled internally. While he was hardly surprised that someone of his power was being tracked, he thought that such a small city would know where he was or what he was doing with this level of detail—which he had to admit wasn’t much, but he still felt it was far more than they should.

For the moment, though, he said, “I graciously accept your offer of hospitality. I hope to learn all I can of the Redspark Forest and the Stormborn Oak, if you would be so kind as to educate me?”

“I cannot,” the man admitted. “But there are others who possess greater sparks of knowledge than I. I shall send one such person to your accommodations.”

Interjecting, Valeria asked, “And what is the name of such a generous and welcoming man as stands before my Royal husband?”

The man smiled and formally responded, “If it be me whom you describe with such glowing and honorable terms, then I have the pleasure of being Yurkij, son of Mandach. By sanction of Strategos Vellaris, I am the Watcher over Redspark, the gate to the Redspark Forest and the last stop for pilgrims seeking the Stormborn Oak.”

“Well met, Watcher Yurkij,” Leon replied.

Further introductions were had, though Yurkij insisted they take place as they flew into the city. For whatever reason—and Leon could certainly think of a few—it seemed that Yurkij didn’t want them wandering around the city or hovering over its hinterland.

Not that it mattered that much to him; this was only a brief stop before he sought out the Stormborn Oak.