Chapter 62: Three years later

Day 30, eleventh month of the Vermilion calendar, year 2019.

Leon was fourteen now.

Three years had passed since they left Oden, and the journey toward the forest where his mother was born had not been straightforward. Not even close.

Money had been the first problem. Carriages, food, repairs and inn rooms drained their pockets faster than they could fill them, and more than once they had been forced to stop and live as adventurers for months at a time, taking quests and hunting monsters to gather coin and supplies before they could move again.

The second problem was the empire itself.

The conference had ended without a real solution. The nobles argued, the mages argued, and in the end the only thing that came out of it was fear. People were stopped from moving freely, and security tightened across every road and gate.

Every year the restrictions grew worse. Checkpoints appeared where there had been none. Papers were demanded and questioned, and sometimes a carriage would sit in line for a full day before anyone looked at it. Many times they were stuck inside towns and cities for months, waiting for permission to pass.

Somewhere along the way, they had become a kind of family.

Dio Larek had also never spoken to Leon again. There was no voice in his head, no strange dream, no pillar in the dark. At first Leon had waited for it, tense every time he closed his eyes. But the silence stretched on for years, and slowly he stopped bracing for it.

The weight of that day had eased, bit by bit, and he was starting to genuinely have fun again. He had grown, too, in height and in power. Compared to the boy who had run into a field of undead, he was a completely different mage.

On this evening, he sat in a tavern in the town of Astria.

It was a town close to the east of the empire, but somehow still sitting near the center of the map. The tavern was a bit high class, with warm lanterns, polished wooden tables, and a bard in the corner playing something soft on a lute.

Leon, Kira and Sophia had picked it on their second night in town and kept coming back, because they liked it.

Now that Leon was fourteen, he was counted as an adult, and he could drink with them. So he did.

Mark did not like it here. He had said it felt too bougie, and he preferred the cheap local places, where the floors were sticky and nobody looked at him twice.

That was another thing.

Mark had gotten worse over the years. Even though he was still an efficient fighter, and the party was a strong one, he only fell more and more apart. They had picked him up from brothels, where the owners complained that he had beaten the women who served him, and the group had been forced to pay for the damage.

They had bailed him out of prison more than once, standing in cold stone corridors at dawn while a guard dragged out the keys. They had done their best to help him set himself right, but he refused every time.

His flames were the biggest part of it. He could no longer use them the way he used to, because only one of his hands worked now, and it was a skill that he had invested his whole life to learn. Without it, he felt like half a man.

The others understood. They were patient with him, because he had lost an arm and could never get it back. They had even invested a lot into finding a place that could give him another hand, and eventually they had found one. They had been saving up for it ever since. When they left this town, they planned to use that money and finally help him.

Leon picked up his cup and drank.

"Hahh!" He slammed it onto the table and let out a loud, satisfied noise, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Look at you," Sophia said, smiling over the rim of her own cup. "Now that you can drink, you act like you’ve been doing it for years."

"It’s great," Leon said. "Why did nobody let me do this earlier?"

"Because you were ten," Kira said flatly.

"Technically, I was ten then, and now I’m fourteen, which is a huge difference."

"It’s four years."

"A huge difference," he repeated, and Sophia laughed so hard she had to put her cup down.

They talked and joked for a while. Kira stole a piece of bread from Leon’s plate, and he pretended not to notice. Sophia told the story of a merchant who had tried to overcharge them for a single horseshoe. The bard finished one song and started another.

Then the door slammed open.

A young man ran in, panting hard, his chest heaving. He looked around the room wildly until his eyes landed on their table. He was a boy about Leon’s age, one who helped them carry their things from time to time in exchange for a few coins.

"Leon! Miss Sophia! Miss Kira!" He gasped out the words. "It’s Mark! He got into a massive fight!"

The smile fell from Sophia’s face.

"Where?" she asked, already getting up.

"The tavern down by the east gate! Please, hurry!"

They did not waste another second. Leon dropped a few coins on the table and ran out with the others behind him. The streets of Astria blurred past in the cold night air, lanterns flickering as they ran. The noise reached them before they arrived, a roar of voices, breaking glass, and wood splintering.

They burst into the tavern, and the scene hit them all at once.

Mark was in the middle of the room, bloody and swaying on his feet, his lip split and one eye already swelling shut. Around him were at least ten men, all of them swinging at him, and he was fighting back with everything he had, his one good hand and his metal one swinging wildly. Tables were overturned. Chairs lay broken on the floor.

"Kira!" Leon yelled.

"On it!"

Kira thrust her hand forward, and a gust of wind exploded across the room. It slammed into everyone at once and threw the brawlers off their feet, crashing them into the walls and tables.

Leon followed up immediately. He raised his hand, and ice spread across the floor in a flash, crawling up the legs and arms of the men on the ground and pinning them in place. They yelled and struggled, but they could not move.

"That’s enough!" Sophia shouted, her voice cutting through the room like a blade.

Silence fell.

An older woman came out from behind the counter, pushing past a broken table. She was the tavern owner, her face red with anger and her arms crossed tight over her chest.

"That one started it," she said, pointing straight at Mark. "He came in drunk, picked a fight with the first man who looked at him, and look at my place! Someone is paying for this."

Leon bowed his head slightly. "We’ll pay. I promise. Every coin."

The woman studied him for a moment and then nodded stiffly.

Leon and Sophia moved to either side of Mark and lifted his arms over their shoulders. He mumbled something under his breath, his head hanging low. Kira cleared the way as they started toward the door.

They had only taken a few steps when something fell from Mark’s coat and hit the floor with a soft thud.

A black pouch.

Everyone looked down at it.

Leon knew it instantly. It was the pouch where they had been keeping the money, the money they had saved for months and months to get Mark a new arm. He bent down slowly and picked it up.

It was light. Far too light.

He loosened the string and opened it. There was nothing inside.

The air froze.