Chapter 475 - Duty

Leon loosened and tightened the fingers of his sword hand around the hilt.

Again and again.

The movement was small enough that most wouldn’t notice beneath the plates of his gauntlet, but it kept his hand ready. His back stayed straight, his gaze moving over the gathered crowd while the words of the imperial official speaking from the platform passed over him.

The entire Order of the Imperial Solar Knights was gathered here today.

Fifty of the empire’s finest knights, hundreds of palace guards, the full strength of the Royal Guard, and enough high-ranking wizards to overrun a small nation in a day.

No one would be called a fool for thinking there was little any one enemy could do against a force like this. But it was the duty of a knight sworn to the empire and His Majesty to remain vigilant regardless.

Leon had no intention of falling into the trap of overconfidence again.

His eyes moved over the vast crowd of nobles, officials, merchants, guild representatives, foreign dignitaries, and servants of the Crown.

Forces had been mustered all across the empire for today. Elystead was heavily defended, but it wasn’t the only place under guard. Every major imperial settlement, every completed pylon, and many of the Kilnstones had a knight order stationed nearby for protection, supported by mages from at least one tower. Imperial legions, Shields Guild detachments, local levies and guards, and private retainers had all been folded into the broader defensive plans.

In the worst case, they expected an all-out assault on every front by the Hallowed Cabal and the Tribe of Sin.

But even if that happened, it wouldn’t stop the establishment of the Empyreal Barrier today.

Whatever else occurred, the empire’s enemies were about to lose one of the greatest advantages they had wielded against it.

Leon continued paying little attention to the speeches as the appointed time drew closer. His gaze stayed on the crowd, the edges of the platforms, and every line of approach between the guests and the imperial family.

Most of what he saw was ordinary.

Nobles speaking in low voices. Merchants glancing at the arrays around them. People craning their necks for a better view.

Then, just before the establishment was set to begin, Leon’s gaze caught on a pair of amber eyes.

Baroness Scarlett Hartford looked at him with that same unreadable expression she always wore.

Leon held her gaze for a few seconds before looking away.

…There was a part of him that felt ashamed for having stayed silent while she was declared a hero of the empire and awarded honours that even the most accomplished knights might spend their whole lives chasing without ever receiving.

He knew Scarlett better than most.

He knew she was far more than appearances suggested.

He knew she couldn’t always be trusted.

And he knew that she had been in Beld Thylelion.

The leather beneath his gauntlet creaked faintly as his grip tightened around the hilt.

Leon hadn’t liked standing there as Scarlett was lauded, not knowing her true intentions or loyalties. But he had sworn an oath to Her Highness, and an oath was not something a knight set aside because his pride found it inconvenient.

Even if it stung.

Even if the situation itself was born from his own inability.

That was the part that sat worst with him.

If he had been stronger, if he had understood more, then perhaps he wouldn’t have needed to accept secrecy in the face of Scarlett’s mysteries.

But who among the Solar Knights would have been enough?

The captain?

Leon’s eyes shifted briefly towards the older man standing a short distance away.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

He shook his head lightly.

There had been no shortage of talk among the order about Scarlett. Leon had lost count of how many questions he’d been asked about her, and those questions had multiplied several times over in the last day after they were informed of the Dragon of Devastation’s death.

He felt as awkward as ever answering them.

Many doubted Scarlett’s abilities. To them, it sounded absurd that a baroness most had only been vaguely familiar with until a year ago could be responsible for slaying an ancient dragon.

Their suspicion was reasonable.

It was a feat that belonged in legend, and even with all the attention Scarlett had drawn recently, it strained belief to imagine her standing at the heart of something like that. Even if the entire Order of the Solar Knights worked together, Leon wasn’t confident they could slay such a beast.

The claim sounded exactly like the sort of thing an ambitious noble might seize upon to raise her own name.

It was far easier to believe that Scarlett had taken credit for another’s feat.

Except Leon didn’t think that was what had happened.

He still remembered the flames he’d faced.

His body remembered them.

The sea of fire that had swallowed his aura, overpowered his sword, and proven years of discipline wanting against a woman who had barely seemed to exert herself.

It was a difficult truth to accept, but if it was Scarlett…

Perhaps it really was possible.

Perhaps she truly had slain an ancient dragon.

Leon didn’t think any of those thoughts showed on his face.

Even so, Captain Crowder seemed to catch something. The man gave him a brief, steady nod, as if to remind him that the only thing that mattered now was what stood before them.

Leon drew in a slow breath.

The captain was right.

The wizards had started moving into position.

Those on the platforms split apart, with Dean Godwin, Arch Wizard Ainsworth, Arch Wizard Smithies, and Lady Blackwood already gathered on the central platforms, while others moved to marked points throughout the court, spacing themselves along the paths of the larger spellwork.

The arrangement was too large for Leon to follow in any meaningful sense, but he didn’t need to understand the magic to appreciate the complexity.

“Hmph.”

Captain Crowder let out a gruff sound, his brow tightening slightly.

Leon glanced at him, then at the faces of his fellow knights.

Similar expressions had appeared on many of them.

They were all growing tense.

Leon felt it as well.

There was something in the air.

It wasn’t danger as he was used to feeling it in the field. More like a faint dissonance at the edge of the senses. Something his aura reacted to, but his mind couldn’t quite define. It was so slight that he might have dismissed it as imagination if the others hadn’t reacted too.

Yet none of the mages seemed to have noticed anything.

In fact, no one but the knights present showed any reaction at all.

From the corner of his eye, Leon watched Captain Crowder exchange a series of silent signals with Sir Tavion.

The Royal Guard captain’s helmet shifted slightly. A moment later, he stepped closer to His Majesty and leaned in to murmur something.

The emperor studied him for several seconds, then shook his head.

Sir Tavion remained still for a moment before stepping back and signalling to Captain Crowder.

The captain’s expression grew more severe.

He looked to Leon and gave the order.

Leon received it with a salute, fist pressed to his chest, then stepped down from the platform and approached his adjutants, Dame Trista and Sir Hilliard, to pass the captain’s instructions along.

While the wizards got started with their magic, the Solar Knights stationed across the court shifted positions.

Some moved closer to the wizards. Others placed themselves among the crowd, taking positions where a sudden attack would cause the most harm.

It wasn’t the standard arrangement for an event like this. By ordinary protocol, the Palace Guard would attend to the guests, while the Solar Knights’ highest duty remained the safety of the imperial family.

Today, they were going against procedure because an imperial decree had been given beforehand.

Leon returned to the platform as the array carved into the ground pulsed and mana spread throughout the space. Crystals brightened and pylons stirred, with great runes forming in the air around the central platforms, one after another.

He didn’t watch the working itself. He kept his eyes on everything around it.

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That strange dissonance grew stronger.

The barrier formed and passed over the court. For an instant, Leon felt faint pressure against his aura, but it moved on before he could properly judge it, eventually spreading beyond the palace walls and out over the capital.

A few minutes later, the forming barrier shuddered.

Leon paused and looked towards the wizards.

They looked satisfied.

The court filled with murmurs.

Then the world lost focus.

Leon’s sword was in his hand before the first cry finished rising from the crowd. His aura surged, gold light running along the blade as the captain drew beside him.

The Royal Guard moved at the same time.

The Mammoth stepped in front of the second princess, one arm covering half her frame as his massive sword came free. Dame Iyana’s sword flashed, frost gathering along it as she took position before the crown prince. Dame Leandra, Sir Dariel, Sir Tavion, and the remaining guards closed around His Majesty in a ring of steel.

Captain Crowder’s aura rose, forming a barrier of protective golden light around the platform. Several nearby officials and ministers hurried closer to avoid being left outside it.

Then the hollow openings appeared.

One formed next to Sir Kellan near the lower edge of another platform.

The knight turned, sword rising.

That was all the time he had.

The opening swallowed him.

There was no movement Leon could follow.

Sir Kellan was simply gone.

And in his place stood something roughly his height, wearing the notion of armour and holding the notion of a sword. It didn’t look real. Leon’s eyes wanted to slide away from it, as if his mind kept trying to correct the shape and couldn’t.

His stomach dropped.

A sharp crack split the air as part of Captain Crowder’s barrier gave way without warning. A dozen more hollow shapes descended on the platform from nowhere.

Leon raised his sword as one crashed towards him.

It was caught somewhere between a cube and a sphere, its edges changing every time he tried to focus. When it struck his blade, the force was like being hit by a charging Stonesnare. His bones complained through the armour, and his boots scraped half a step back across the marble.

Worse, the thing didn’t stop at the point of contact.

Its empty form pressed around the sword, trying to slide past the steel and reach him directly.

Leon drove his aura through the blade.

Dawn-Edge Severance.

Light burst from his sword in a shower of golden arcs. The strike forced the entity back two steps, but nothing more. No wound or split, or any sign that the attack had harmed it at all.

Leon’s heart clenched.

What were they facing?

A second blaze of gold fell from above as Captain Crowder’s sword came down from behind the thing. The blade bit into the hollow shape like an axe sinking into old, stubborn timber.

For a heartbeat, even the captain’s strike stalled.

Then his aura flared.

It gathered around the sword and pressed down, growing so bright that Leon had to look away. Finally, the entity split beneath it. The platform shook as the force of the blow tore a deep scar through the marble.

But the entity didn’t disappear.

The strange space it had occupied remained there, almost like a permanent wound in the air, with a trailing line of gold running through it.

Leon watched it, waiting for some movement. But it didn’t come.

“Leon—!” Captain Crowder warned.

A thunderous crackle sounded behind them.

Leon turned before he had time to think.

Bulwark of the Egis.

A curved barrier of light formed in front of him just as an arc of bristling lightning slammed into it.

Leon clenched his teeth.

A shard of lightning pierced the barrier and reached his sword, driving through his arm and shoulder. His boots ground against the platform, and the barrier flickered hard enough that, for one moment, he thought it would fail completely.

Then the lightning ended.

His eyes locked onto a hollow shape standing on one of the other platforms.

This one vaguely resembled a person in robes, though only generously.

In the end, it was more like Leon was staring at nothing at all. Its head was too indistinct, and everything about it felt empty, even as the space around its hands crawled with the same crackling light it had just hurled at him.

Another Solar Knight—Dame Jolee—moved to engage it, her aura spreading into a cage of light that closed around the thing and checked its next attack.

Leon turned back to their platform.

He had to help His Majesty’s Swords defend the imperial family.

The Mammoth had lifted the second princess onto his shoulder, one hand locked firmly around her waist while the other swung his massive sword like a warhammer against two formless entities closing in on them. One of them was nearly his size, a humanoid shape with too many shifting contours. Each time his sword struck, the air buckled around the impact.

Dame Iyana had fashioned a fortress of ice around herself and the crown prince. Bird-like hollows threw themselves against it again and again, shattering pieces loose faster than the ice could reform.

And His Majesty—

Leon’s eyes widened.

His Majesty was gone.

He had been there a moment before. Leon was sure of it. But now the space where His Majesty and the three remaining Royal Guards had stood was nothing but a hollow absence, larger than the others and completely unmoving.

Captain Crowder grabbed Leon by the pauldron.

“Find Lady Blackwood. Without His Majesty and Sir Thorne, she’ll be needed to activate the palace defences.”

“But His Majest—”

“I refuse to believe he’s dead.” The captain’s voice cut through the noise around them. “The Swords will find and bring him back. Trust them. Our duty is to make sure His Majesty’s will is carried out and that Elystead doesn’t fall.”

Leon stared at the man for a breath too long, but then nodded. “Yes, Captain. I will—”

A sharp snap sounded.

The space around Captain Crowder shifted.

Leon moved on instinct.

He shoved the captain away.

“Leon—!”

The captain’s voice cut off.

The world vanished.

So did everything else.

There was no sensation. No cold, no heat, and no pressure. For a moment, Leon had no body, no direction, and no way of knowing if his eyes were open or closed. He could still feel his grip around his sword, somehow, but that felt infinitely distant. Like the memory of holding it rather than the thing itself.

Was he…dead?

The thought sprang from some deep recess of his mind.

Then the world answered by throwing him onto hard rock.

The impact drove the breath from his lungs. Pain ran across his ribs, and his head struck the ground hard enough to fill his ears with ringing. A groan left him as he forced air back into his chest.

He tasted iron.

For several seconds, he could do nothing but lie there and breathe. Then his fingers moved, and they found the hilt of his sword still in his hand.

Good.

Leon pushed himself to one knee, then to his feet. His legs were unsteady, but they held. He drew a rough breath as he took in his surroundings.

He…didn’t know where he was.

It was dark, like an ever-present dusk that clung close to the uneven ground and the formations rising from it. Interspersed throughout that dim landscape, both distant and closer by, were splashes of colour. Lights that barely pushed through the darkness. Some small. Some large. Some steady, others flashing in sharp bursts.

He couldn’t tell how far the space stretched. The horizon, if there was one, was lost beneath the same haze as everything else.

Leon started to tilt his head back, trying to look above him.

Something in his body stopped him.

An ice-cold warning seized his spine, so sudden and strong that his breath caught again. It told him he was on the verge of seeing something that should not—could not—be seen by man.

By the time he forced his body back under control, he couldn’t tell how long had passed. His breathing had quickened, and sweat slicked his brow, making his hair cling to his forehead.

Leon looked down at his sword.

He touched one finger to the flat of the blade, drawing his aura through it in a thin line of gold.

His pulse steadied.

He narrowed his focus until the world was no larger than the steel in his hand.

The emperor had gone missing. It was possible this was where he had been taken. Leon didn’t know the way out, and he didn’t know what rules governed this place. But that was no excuse for a Solar Knight to waver.

He raised his gaze again, keeping it level.

One of the lights flared brighter than the rest. It wasn’t too far away, and something about its cyan shade felt familiar.

Leon drew aura into his legs.

Step of the First Dawn.

His body offered its protests, but he ignored them.

Stone cracked beneath his first step, and he shot forward across the dark ground. The air here didn’t move the way it should, and distance felt uncertain, yet he simply kept running.

After a while, the cold reached him, and he recognised that there was aura within the lights he was approaching.

Soon after, he saw Dame Iyana.

She stood in the middle of a broken field of ice, her helmet gone and her dark hair streaming behind her in a long tail as she moved. Facing her was a creature Leon had only read about in old bestiaries.

A great four-legged beast, crouched low but with a wide body, it had hide thick enough to turn aside siege bolts. Its shape almost resembled a swollen toad, but a pair of insect-like appendages grew from its back, each longer than three men combined and heavy enough to tear through stone.

A Bogmaul Behemoth.

According to accounts, they had once been common in the Faywilds. The early emperors had put considerable effort into wiping them out, and none had been seen in generations.

Dame Iyana slipped past one of its appendages as it slammed into the ground, carving a wide swathe through the rock. Her sword turned in her hand, and the blade cut into the appendage. It found a seam where her frost had already worked its way beneath the hide. Her aura followed the sword without any waste, and the limb was severed in one stroke.

The beast let out a deep, strangled bellow.

Dame Iyana’s aura did not stop there. It ran into the wound, travelling up the length of the appendage towards the creature’s back.

A wet crack sounded.

The beast used its remaining appendage to cut the first one off at the root before the aura could reach its main body. The severed length fell to the ground and shattered into frozen pieces.

It had recognised the danger.

Looking closer, Leon saw two similar wounds already cut into its back.

Dame Iyana clicked her tongue as the creature leapt away with a heavy crash. Then she turned her head as Leon arrived.

“Sir Leon,” she greeted.

“Dame Iyana.” He stepped up beside her. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“No.”

“I figured not.”

He raised his sword towards the beast. “You wouldn’t be opposed to me lending a hand?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Divided Blade’s Quintessence.

His aura sharpened inside his sword.

The Bogmaul Behemoth was dangerous. There was no question about that. But with three of its appendages gone and two swordsmasters standing before it, it didn’t last much longer.

The beast’s hide turned aside most strikes, and its weight made every charge a threat. Twice, Leon had to move aside rather than meet it directly. Once, Dame Iyana froze one of its forelegs to the stone long enough for him to cut into the joint. After that, its movements slowed significantly.

Finally, Leon used Crownlight Restraint to hold it in place for a single breath, which was all Dame Iyana needed.

She stepped in along a ridge of frozen aura, her sword passing through the creature’s neck with the same cold precision she had shown before. Its head struck the stone and broke apart into frozen fragments.

The body followed a moment later.

Leon lowered his sword.

Dame Iyana descended from the ice and walked up to him, showing no emotion on her face.

“How did you get here?” Leon asked, sheathing his sword.

“I was swallowed by one of those things,” she said, lifting her sword and running her palm along its length. The frost and blood vanished without a trace.

“What about the crown prince?”

“I don’t know. I forced him aside.”

Leon frowned.

One of the mages who had been swallowed had left behind a hollow shape that attacked them. If the same had happened to him and Dame Iyana, then the people left behind might be fighting some of their strongest allies…

But the same hadn’t happened with the emperor and the other Swords, had it?

Had that mage not been swallowed at all, or was it different?

“Sir Leon,” Dame Iyana said, interrupting his thoughts.

He turned to her.

She pointed into the distance, towards another concentration of light. This one was farther away than the one that had led him here, but it flared brighter than most of the others. Gold, white, and several harsher colours struck against each other in quick succession.

Leon blinked as he realised that every light must be a fight. The darkness made it impossible to make out details, and he couldn’t tell whether one set of lights came from spells, aura, or something else, but regardless, there were too many of them.

How many people had already been dragged into this place?

“That’s the captain,” Dame Iyana said.

Leon focused on the distant light she was pointing at. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t make out anything specific.

“How can you be sure?”

“I simply am.”

“…Alright.”

There were other lights closer by, and people in those fights might need help. But if that truly was the captain of the Royal Guard, then His Majesty might be there as well.

It pained Leon to leave possible comrades behind. But none of them would thank him for choosing them over the imperial family.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Dame Iyana nodded.

The two of them moved. Dame Iyana kept pace without issue, and they passed several lights along the way. Once, Leon saw the edge of a battle where a man-shaped figure wielding fire fought something too thin and many-limbed to be human. Another time, a burst of green light painted the darkness to their left before vanishing completely.

He wanted to turn towards each of them, but he didn’t.

The light ahead grew brighter.

So did the noise.

At first, it was only distant impacts. Then came the crack of stone and the heavy pressure of aura pushed to its limits. The ground beneath Leon’s feet grew more broken the closer they came. Long scars had been carved through the rock. Sections had been crushed inward. Other pieces stood at odd angles, as if parts of the bedrock itself had been lifted and dropped again.

Then a blow landed somewhere ahead, and the entire ground lurched beneath them.

Leon caught himself with one foot and kept moving.

Whatever was happening there was no ordinary fight.

A few moments later, they crested a rise of fractured stone, and Leon saw who was responsible.

Sir Tavion stood at the front, armour battered but sword raised, his aura drawn impossibly tight along the edge of his blade. Dame Leandra was to his right, one arm hanging limp at her side. Behind them, Sir Dariel knelt with one fist braced against the ground, blood darkening the armour at his side.

Facing all of them was one opponent.

A woman.

Leon had read the accounts from those few who had survived meeting her head-on, but they had never done her justice. They had described her appearance well enough, but words on a page could not capture the feeling of standing before her. The absolute certainty that what looked like a person was something far worse.

Her name was one the empire knew well, however. She was one who always introduced herself to powerful opponents.

Vail.