Chương 1273: 1303 - Ordering Thoughts

"… and when he came running into my room, he dove under my bed to hide! Fifteen of my father's guards burst in after him, demanding to know where he went, and where he'd stashed my father's favorite mantle!" Serana laughed, a nostalgic smile painting her face in warm colors.

"They almost dragged Ryker out by his ankle, but he managed to hide behind me for a little while." Leon smiled despite himself.

"What did you do?"

"I did what any good older cousin would've done: I lied and shouted until my father arrived to personally 'punish us'. That 'punishment' wound up being twelve circuits of Morgaun's Peak—training, ostensibly, but my father used it as a way to bring our family closer together." Serana's smile slipped, and she added, "I don't regret leaving home to adventure my way through the universe. It led me to your father and gave me you. But… I regret that my family fell apart when I came home.

My mother was killed fighting Kamran, and my cousins taking me from you and your father irreparably tore our relationship open. And my father… He never recovered from Mother's loss."

"Given the way all of you are now, I'm almost surprised there were good times before," Leon said.

"They were all too brief," Serana said with a nod of her head. The two fell silent, their thoughts remaining unsaid as they advanced into the valley between Westmount's nine peaks. With his mother now in Artorion, Leon wanted to show her everything about what he'd built. Nyra was busy settling in and, if the reports were accurate, challenging all of his Paladins to duels, while Serana was far more interested in staying with him. When she wasn't with him, she was bothering the Great Black Dragon.

She wasn't getting far, but it hadn't even been a week since Leon brought her to the city; he imagined her enthusiasm and anger would both die down when their Ancestor continued being his usual difficult self.

'Though… he still intends to train me… I can probably force him to do the same with Mother…'

"So," Serana said, interrupting his thoughts, "where are you taking me?" Leon smirked.

"I'm not going to ruin the surprise that easily. You'll see when we get there. And, I think, understand why I've put up so many wards hiding it from view." Serana smiled impishly.

"All right, keep your secrets…" Together, they simply enjoyed the journey in the wild without encumbrance—no servants, no guards, no ladies-in-waiting, just the two of them. Leon's wives and brother would've been with them, but Leon decided to send them on ahead, wanting to have a bit of time alone with his mother now that she was back in his life. To that end, they moved slowly, walking along the path that Leon had made cutting through the heavily forested interior of Westmount.

He didn't think the surprise was truly all that surprising; the glow of the Stormborn Oak that he'd planted could be seen from anywhere within Artorion. Even through the foliage above them, it was impossible to mistake the fact that they were now getting close to the source. As the floating mountain bore his palace, which was both his residence and the center of his government, Westmount was extremely well-warded against all imaginable threats.

This deep into the interior, however, many of those enchantments had fallen away. Leon could see through it all since his blood had been keyed into the ward scheme, but for Serana, there was one last layer of defenses just ahead of them, marked by a line of shin-high stone, that kept what lay beyond hidden from magic senses. The moment they stepped over it, they were assailed by the scent of sweetness, the aroma beckoning them onward, all while the golden glow grew stronger.

Despite this, Serana kept her power restrained until they finally reached their destination, and she gasped at the sight. The Stormborn Oak sapling was there, eye-catching despite barely surpassing Leon in height. Its bark had recently turned a brilliant gold color, which shone brightly every time the sapling was struck with lightning from the nourishing enchantment array that Leon and Tikos had devised.

The leaves that adorned its thin branches weren't yet teleportation portals, but they were dark in color and ringed with dark blue, and given the magic Leon could sense within them, he knew it was only a matter of time before they matched the 'leaves' of the tree's progenitor. The rest of Leon's family awaited them on the promontory that the Stormborn sapling had been planted on, which had become a favorite place for them to spend time when craving privacy.

The water of the mountain spring around the promontory remained as clear as ever, the surface nearly mirror smooth. There were no pavilions or walkways or anything at all save for the path Leon and Serana were on, which itself terminated at the edge of the spring's clearing. Everything there was pure wilderness—or at least, as much as Leon could preserve.

"What… is that?" Serana asked, pointing not to the sapling as Leon expected but instead to a dark figure emerging from the forest. Leon immediately recognized the thin body, bark-like skin, large triangular head, enormous black eyes, and foliage hair of a tree sprite. It wasn't Tikos, but that came as no surprise since Leon sensed Tikos within the Stormborn sapling, likely ensuring the tree remained growing strong and healthy.

"A tree sprite," Leon said.

"Native to Aeterna as far as I'm aware. Naturally proficient in nature magic, they help everything in this valley grow. They've proven invaluable in ways I can't even begin to describe, but I'll give it a try: without them, we wouldn't have thunder wood or any related amber. And without either of those, my Kingdom probably wouldn't have reached the Nexus at all by now."

"I've seen many of your servant Clans…" Serana responded.

"I wasn't expecting something so… inhuman." Leon cocked an eyebrow, not quite liking what he heard there.

"Do you object to them?"

"No," she replied.

"I'm just surprised. Something like these 'tree sprites' would be slaves if they found themselves in the care of other Lords." Leon frowned deeply. The tree sprites, as far as he was concerned, were his people now, and that entitled them to his protection.

"Anything that tried something so untoward would find themselves at the end of my blade very quickly." Serana didn't verbally respond, but Leon sensed her approving smile. As they approached the Stormborn Oak, Elise practically leaped forward to help explain what it was, how they found it, and everything else that Leon had already, though in lesser detail, told Serana about. Leon, meanwhile, went to the tree. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Tikos," he whispered. The sweet smell in the air intensified as the tree sprite stuck its head out of the trunk of the lightning-drinking tree.

"Leon," it replied. Its head was larger than it had been when Leon first met it, and its eyes seemed more expressive, the bark skin of its face creasing and folding more as it grew in power. Leon wondered if it would take human form at some point or if it would remain a tree sprite forever. He was fine either way, but he couldn't help but wonder anyway.

"How's life?" he asked with a wry grin. From the ground sprouted a rock just tall enough for him to comfortably sit on, which he promptly did—he'd conjured it for that very purpose.

"Life grows," Tikos said slowly, the words it spoke from its voice amber coming in a more human cadence. As reclusive as tree sprites were, these long years had more than given Tikos time to better learn the Nexus's common language without even needing a Stone of Many Tongues.

"Time passes and roots run deep." The leaves that made up Tikos's 'hair' rustled, and Leon smelled jasmine.

"Good," Leon replied.

"Have you and your people needed anything while I was gone?" Tikos creaked a bit as it stepped out of the Stormborn sapling, revealing its now towering height. The tree sprite dwarfed all others that Leon had seen at just over ten feet tall, though it hadn't retained its lithe form. It also moved slowly, its tenth-tier aura not granting it anything remotely close to the speed that Leon would've expected of a human mage of that power. Tree sprites weren't that mobile when they reached their elder years.

They entered their trees and remained within until they reached the end of their days and merged with their host tree. Tikos was one that Leon was hoping would buck that trend. If he could help it to achieve Apotheosis, then at the very least, he hoped it would continue living forever, even if trapped within its Old Tree. If he couldn't, then he'd have to think of something else, as he wouldn't want to leave Tikos behind during the Nexus's next Reconstitution.

"Light, water, and warmth," Tikos slowly intoned.

"We have this. We need nothing more."

"If that should change…" Leon said leadingly, knowing that it almost certainly would.

"We will ask you," Tikos said reassuringly, its leaf hair rustling again and bringing the scent of lavender.

"Your aura feels stronger," Leon said as he walked around the tree sprite, letting its aura wash over him.

"Are you close to ascension?"

"… Yes," it answered, causing Leon's heart to almost skip a beat.

"Hints of power have settled in the valley, blown in like seeds on the wind. Motes from your 'star condensers'." Leon still cringed a little whenever the name for his origin power-creating wireframe devices was brought up, though by now he'd accepted the name.

"They've… helped," Tikos stated.

"That makes a degree of sense," Leon said, his mind already racing. Motes of origin power leaking into the valley meant inefficiencies in the star condensers, but adding origin power to the ambient magic in the Artor Valley also seemed beneficial to some degree.

'There's something there, isn't there? Fix up the condensers, but make something else that can spread origin power through the valley? How safe would that be? How magic-intensive would that be?' He forced his mind to halt there, though not without making a mental note to look into that, either himself or task a Raven if he found he lacked the time, as was likely.

"What happens if you manage it?" Leon asked. The large tree sprite looked off into the forest for a long moment, seeming at once both intimately human and utterly alien. Finally, it said, "I don't know…"

"If you become immobile…" Leon whispered. Tikos turned to face him.

"Before I take that final step… return me to Kataigida. Or another place in the planes, if you wish. I do not want to linger on forever, but I will remain as long as you need me."

"I am indebted to you, Tikos," Leon said.

"Your loyalty and friendship are the stuff of legends."

"I merely repay you," Tikos replied.

"You, who have given me so much. I believe you've said before, 'this is what friends do'?" Leon laughed softly.

"Indeed. Indeed."

With a sigh, Leon almost collapsed into the chair in front of his work desk in his soul realm. It was blissfully empty, unlike his desk back in the physical world, which Lucianus had not hesitated to fill with various petitions that had accumulated while he was on Belicenion. Most of them were from the new planes, too, which had been escalated by their Planarchs, mostly to seek guidance on how to interpret various conflicting laws and clarification regarding policies for the newly-conquered planes.

The desk didn't remain empty for long, however, as Leon summoned several large papers over to him. Upon these papers were inscribed various notes to himself, sketches for new enchantments, and other miscellaneous thoughts and ideas that had come to him over the past few months that needed organization. Most of it had to do with the myriad arks he'd seen during the Games. Thousands of Lords, all bringing arks that were slightly different in design, some of which had features that he wanted to steal.

'Or something more valiant and honorable than 'steal',' he thought as he began the process of prioritizing his various ideas.

'A King doesn't 'steal'.' Stealth was a useful feature, but to a degree, it was a problem already solved, as he had access to stealth enchantments. But should those enchantments fail, then there were other backups he could fall back on, some of which were as simple as painting the exterior of the arks black, something so simple he hadn't even thought of it until seeing black arks on Voidshore. The runes targeting bloodlines also intrigued him in many ways, most of which were negative.

The ability to prevent a mage from using power in their own blood was… It disturbed him and reminded him unpleasantly of the Wailing Dirge. The monster at Kavad's Lance was similarly marked as he recalled, and the Wailing Dirge was seemingly involved with Khosrow's cultists. There were connections here that he didn't want to believe existed, but caution demanded he take them seriously.

After all, it seemed to him that a tremendous amount of work had already gone into developing this kind of magic, and unless he wanted to believe that he'd somehow found the only two locations where such research had been conducted, he thought it was likely other such experiments might be found. Many, even, if he'd found two just in the Far West of the Storm Lands alone.

As an extension of that magic, he wondered if there was some way to make one immune to these runes, or if there was a way to reverse-engineer these runes to create an enchantment that hit anything that did not have an Inherited Bloodline. He knew for a fact that there were runes that made Inherited Bloodlines stronger—beyond the simple fact that there was an ancient rune for everything —since one had been the core of the original transformation enchantment.

Figuring it out might be another way to get around whatever restriction kept him from taking the form of the Great Black Dragon… For as valuable as that was, however, a better jump drive was likely to be his greatest priority. The Leonine Drives in the ancient Thunderbird Clan arks were leagues ahead of the Nestorian Drives in all of his current arks. This was likely to be his next great proj— His hand halted, the simple piece of charcoal that he liked to write with almost pressing a hole into it.

His eyes had run over a small note in a corner of one of the note sheets, reading,"The One Rune: infinite simplicity for infinite uses." An errant thought that he'd thought worth recording. It was good he did, too, as he'd had it moments before going to meet Archelaus, Gwarim, and Nuertis as they visited him in Storm Herald during the Games, and had almost immediately put it out of his mind over those few hours with his new friends. The 'One Rune'.

A name he'd given the concept in a fit of pique, though he was certain it had other names in Nexus scholarship—he doubted that he was the first to come up with the idea. That no one seemed to have succeeded in it was telling, though.

'Ancient runes have broader definitions the simpler they are. The broader their meanings, the more power is needed to accomplish a task. The more complex the rune, the narrower the meaning, the less power is needed. So… infinite simplicity means infinite uses, right? But would that mean infinite power needed to accomplish something?' The One Rune was an idea that crawled over his brain like a thousand ants.

There were so many better uses of his time than chasing something like this, but he simply couldn't help himself. A single rune that could do anything seemed like…

"Leon," Xaphan crackled from behind him. Leon had been so taken by his thoughts that he hadn't even realized the fire demon had approached, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Ah! Xaphan, yes, right, what is it?" The demon fixed him in his white gaze, the yellow fires of his body burning brightly. The words he spoke made Leon's blood run cold.

"It's time I left."