The Storm King

Chapter 547: Jormun’s Jungle Art Project

Leon and the marines made it to the sacked town without any further difficulties. It was so easy and uneventful that it almost seemed like the one explosion that had killed one of the two Tribunes officially leading the force was some kind of fluke or accident.

But Leon knew better than to think that. As far as he was concerned, that was Jormun’s doing, probably by some kind of trap spell since Leon hadn’t been able to identify any nearby archers or other pirates that might’ve been responsible.

It angered Leon greatly that he’d been hit by the explosive spell, but it almost angered him even more that Jormun didn’t do more to resist their movement—it was almost as if the man was toying with them, showing them that he could strike and kill them when he wanted to, but refusing to do so. Leon was not into the idea that his column of marines made it to their destination by Jormun’s grace. He would’ve felt better if they’d had to fight some Islanders or something, anything to earn their advance. It felt to Leon a lot like Jormun was rubbing his power over them in their faces with that one singular mine.

As it was, no other traps were encountered, nor were any Islanders at all seen. All of the farms in the town’s hinterland had been seemingly abandoned before the marching column came through. There wasn’t a single exception.

If he had more time, Leon would’ve stopped to check these places out more thoroughly, but he hadn’t been able to spare the time. The fleets had been close to outpacing him and the marines after they’d been forced to stop to deal with the injured following Jormun’s bombing, so he’d had to hurry everyone past the farms without much in the way of investigation aside from cursory scans with his magic senses.

Upon reaching the town ruins, all of that hurry seemed pointless. There wasn’t so much as a single intact building anywhere to be found; all of the wooden structures had been razed to the ground, leaving little but piles of ash and blackened timber, and their proximity didn’t change anything. There’d been some hope that there’d been people hiding in the ruins who’d reveal themselves as the Legion approached—this was a Bull Kingdom colony, after all.

Leon could only sigh as his magic senses swept across the ruins. He could see no survivors anywhere.

As he stood staring out at the destruction, the remaining marine Tribune came forward and almost apologetically asserted his authority, getting the marines to keep moving down to the remains of the docks. Leon didn’t argue, he simply led his small squad to the top of a small cliff nearby that overlooked most of the town, keeping an eye out for anything that might be unusual or might indicate an attack by Jormun.

“This place…” he heard Alix mutter in horror once they could all finally take in the scale and completeness of the town’s destruction. Leon shared her horror; even when towns were brutally sacked, it was incredibly rare—at least to Leon’s knowledge—that settlements like these were so completely destroyed.

“What kind of hells-spawned people could do this?” Alcander said, adding to Alix’s sentiment.

Leon sighed again and simply answered, “Jormun.”

—

As night fell on the island, the town looked very different. The Legion engineers who had been almost the first off the ships had demolished most of the ruins in short order—there hadn’t been much need to collect evidence, not with the town so destroyed—and then quickly raised a simple, if large, square stone fortress in the town’s place. The docks were rebuilt in less than an hour with the earth mages doing most of the heavy lifting.

By the time they were done, the Legion had a good strong point from which they could secure the rest of the island.

However, during all of the construction, there had been no sign of Jormun, his pirates, or any other Islander, for that matter. The Fleet Legates wasted no time in sending out scout ships to the other two settlements they wanted to check out, including the seat of the island’s ruling Earl, but as it was, the Legion fleets were seemingly all alone in this little corner of the Serpentine Isles.

Leon found it terribly creepy, which made him restless. As a glorified mercenary, he had little to do as the Legion ran around getting their fortress set up. They didn’t know how long they might stick around on the island—In Basina and Theuderic’s case, they were under direct orders from the King to reimpose his suzerainty over the island, and that could take a while. Leon and Sigebert, however, were only there to find and recapture Octavius, of whom they had seen even less than Jormun.

But Leon had to admit that he’d barely even thought about Octavius during this journey. The Prince seemed so inconsequential, especially after Leon had met Turiel and the man’s true identity came to light. He just had an awful feeling that whatever Jormun’s true goal was, it was a hell of a lot worse than setting himself up as a King over the Serpentine Isles, and every minute he spent not doing anything in the Legion camps was not just a minute wasted, it was another minute for Jormun to continue putting his plans, whatever they may be, into motion.

Eventually, Leon found himself on the fairly low and relatively simple walls of the fortress, staring off into the island’s nearby jungle. Jormun and his pirates were out there somewhere, he could feel it in his bones. There was no way in the hells that a single explosive mine was the extent of Jormun’s plans for resistance on this island, the man was doing something with all these missing people.

Leon wasn’t sure how long he spent on the battlements. He’d gone up almost as soon as they had been erected and stayed up there until sunset. He gave his squad some time to rest after their march, but Maia stayed with him as he stood up there, staring into the distance, using his magic senses to sweep through the jungle slowly and methodically, looking for anything at all of note.

The jungle was large and dense, though, and it would take days for him to examine everything within his range. Still, he couldn’t help the boredom and the sitting around. By the time the sun made contact with the horizon at the edge of the plane and started to slip down under it, Leon was sorely tempted to just leap down from the walls and venture out into the jungle to see what he might be able to find the old-fashioned way.

Before he could do anything with that temptation, however, he noticed Gaius walking along the ramparts, slowly making his way toward Leon’s position.

It took a few minutes, but once the blond nobleman drew close, Leon turned his attention away from the jungle just long enough to give Gaius a quick nod of acknowledgment.

“Leon,” Gaius responded as he took up a position next to Leon, leaning on a merlon as he stared in the opposite direction as Leon, his eyes taking in all the ships of the Bull Kingdom as they set up their nightly patrols.

They silently stood there for long minutes, no one else but Maia around, their closest company a handful of marines in the nearby towers.

“So,” Gaius, said, breaking their awkward silence, “Sir Sigebert’s curious as to why you haven’t come down, yet. He almost sent me to fetch you and bring you in to the meeting that he and the rest of the Fleet Legates had.”

“I clearly wasn’t needed for it,” Leon replied with a detached tone, his attention still on the jungle and occasionally turning back to the nearby farms. “I would’ve just gotten in the way. I’m just a mercenary, I’m not here to dictate strategy to the Legates.”

Leon felt more than a few twinges of guilt; he knew that had to brush up on his experience in the management department, but his heart just wasn’t in it right now. He’d never be able to focus even if he were down there, not with the specter of Jormun looming over everything. Such an attitude couldn’t last, Leon knew that, but he still needed the time to unwind a bit.

“You still stepped on a few toes by not showing up,” Gaius replied, his tone light and not accusatory. In fact, he seemed almost amused at Leon’s apparent snubbing of the Fleet Legates.

Leon took a deep breath as he finally turned his full attention toward Gaius. “As I said, they don’t need me for their little get-together. They’re more than capable of making the decisions on their own. I’m just here to provide a little extra muscle if Jormun’s seventh-tier mages make problems of themselves. I’m sure that their meeting was riveting, but I’d rather spend my time doing what I can to find Jormun.”

“Hey, I’m not passing judgment here, I’m just making some conversation.” Gaius raised his hands in an almost defensive gesture, as it to block Leon’s anger, but he wore a sarcastic lopsided smile at the same time.

Leon took a deep breath and turned back to the jungle for a brief second. With the sun so low, the jungle beneath the trees had turned practically pitch-black, but that hardly made a difference to Leon’s seventh-tier senses. Still, nothing out there caught his attention, not even the jungle wildlife that he could see.

“Did you need something, Gaius?” Leon quietly and calmly asked.

“Nothing specific,” the nobleman admitted. “Mostly, I was wondering if you needed something.”

Leon cocked an eyebrow and glanced back the other man, his golden eyes seemingly piercing right into Gaius like the lance of a mounted knight in a full charge. And yet, Gaius didn’t flinch, he stared right back at Leon, defiant in his resistance to Leon’s unconscious accusing pressure.

“Do I really look that out of sorts?” Leon asked, his tone still even and calm. He even glanced at Maia and gave her a self-deprecating smile. She responded only with a shrug.

Gaius replied, “You’ve been up here for hours, staring off at not a damned thing. I think I’m warranted in asking if you’re all right.”

Leon slightly grimaced, but he didn’t try to avoid the question. Gaius seemed sincere enough, and Leon reluctantly admitted that he probably did seem a bit out of sorts to everyone else.

After a moment’s pause, Leon whispered, “Restless.”

“Hmm?” Gaius responded in confusion.

“I’m restless,” Leon clarified. “Some of the people I was responsible for were killed today, and instead of finding those responsible, I continued on like nothing happened. More than that, Jormun is still out there, doing who the hells knows what with Octavius…”

“Concerned about our dear kidnapped Prince?” Gaius sarcastically asked. “I’m not. Personally, I say that no matter what happens to him, it’s not enough.”

“We don’t know what’s happening, though,” Leon pointed out in a slight growl. “He should be a head shorter right now; instead, for all we know, Jormun has been serving him blue-claw lobster on a silver platter every day and hosting him in a golden palace.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you? That was a pretty ridiculous scenario, as far as things go…”

“No, I don’t really think that’s what’s happening. But Jormun needed Octavius for something, otherwise he wouldn’t have acted when he did. He wouldn’t have done what he did. Why break out a Prince from the Royal dungeon and flee here? If he wanted to be a King as everyone seems to think, why did he not just stay here and solidify his base instead of provoking the Bull Kingdom? That would’ve been a much more productive use for his time if that’s what he wanted.”

Gaius nodded and said, “It’s a little strange, I admit. But then again, Jormun doesn’t quite seem all there in the head, if you know what I mean. He hasn’t exactly behaved as if he takes us seriously. He had the perfect chance to cut off the head of our task force, and yet he didn’t take it.”

Leon scowled. “Maybe that means he’s crazy. Maybe it means what he wants isn’t political. Maybe it means we don’t know what the fuck he really wants. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I just want to find him, cut his damned head off, and then drag Octavius back to the capital so his daddy can give him his spankings and then we can all just move the hells on.”

Just saying those words out loud had Leon feeling like his stomach was about to fall out of his body. It did nothing to alleviate his dread; if anything, his dread had only grown.

“What do you want to do about it?” Gaius quietly asked.

“I want to get off this damn wall and go find that damn pirate,” Leon growled through clenched teeth. “I don’t like this… this waiting. This waiting to be attacked. This waiting for Jormun to make the next move. If you ask me, this focus on the people of the Serpentine Isles is misplaced right now. We need to find Jormun and end him. These Isles will never fully submit to the Bull Kingdom if he’s still around.”

“If Jormun has support among the people, then we have to work to do something about that,” Gaius pointed out, his fairly flat tone making it clear that he wasn’t so much disagreeing with Leon as he was simply giving some obligatory advocacy for the other school of thought. “Besides, the people on this island may know where he’s hiding. Reaching out to them and getting them to work with us might bring us to Jormun and Octavius even faster.”

“Maybe,” Leon conceded. “I’m not good at that, though. I’m better in the wild, tracking down my enemy and putting them down.”

“Yeah, speaking from personal experience, you’re pretty damn good at that,” Gaius replied with a chuckle. “But, listen. No one wants this to be over more than I do. I spent more than a year working for that shit Prince Octavius. I know exactly how bad he is, and in hindsight, I probably could’ve saved the entire Kingdom a lot of grief by doing something about him before he could assassinate Prince Trajan and kick off a civil war. I want to head out there, too, and bring all of this to an end.”

Leon nodded in agreement, though he knew what Gaius couldn’t do such a thing. He was still a knight, essentially fulfilling the same role he’d filled when he had squired for Octavius. He was a hostage meant to keep his family in line until King Julius could reassert his authority. He was still answerable to the Fleet Legates in all the ways that mattered, he wasn’t free enough to just leave the fortress and go pirate hunting.

But Leon was—or, he at least thought himself free enough to do so.

“How about this,” Leon said as his patience started running on empty, “I’ll head out there with my people and scout out the interior of the island a bit, maybe head back to those farms we passed by earlier today. See what I can find. Sigebert and the others can continue with getting set up here. With the fleet just offshore and thousands of marines in camp, Jormun would be a fool to attack, so it’s not like you need me here. And I’ll never be too far that you can’t signal me with a flare. If I don’t find anything, then I’ll come back and focus on the more social aspects of this campaign tomorrow.”

“I… don’t think that would fly with the Fleet Legates,” Gaius responded with a frown. “They don’t typically like people going off and doing their own thing.”

“Good thing I don’t answer to them,” Leon replied with a cheeky smile. He’d already been paid his silver coin, so it wasn’t like the Legates had much power over him. “Besides, I don’t need the idea to fly with them when I can do that myself. Do me a favor and make sure Sigebert knows what I’m doing…”

Leon then turned toward the camp and leaped down from the battlements, Maia only a step behind him.

“Leon, wait!” Gaius called out as he held out his hand as if trying to reach over and stop Leon, but he was far too late, Leon had already run into the tents.

—

It wasn’t too difficult for Leon to find his squad. The tents set aside for him and his people were closer to the center of the fortress where the command tent was, but instead of going there, he went to a section of the camp near the inside edge of the walls closest to the shore; that’s where the marines and sailors had their designated relaxation zones. An area had been set up filled with bars, tables, and even a small stage for people to play music and a ring for people to spar with each other if they so desired.

It was a relatively strange sight for Leon, he’d certainly never seen something like this in a Legion camp on land, but he supposed he’d never spent much time in a fortress like this aside from the Bull’s Horns, and neither had he spent much time with sailors and their accompanying marines.

After taking a moment to look around, he swiftly found Alix just about ready to bare-knuckle box a man twice her size with a murderous look in her eyes while Alcander stood just behind her, a derisive sneer on his face directed towards the marine that had seemingly aroused Alix’s ire. Marcus, meanwhile, was only about a dozen feet away absorbed in a game of cards with about a hundred silver sitting in a pile between him and three other players.

“… and say that again! I fucking dare you!” Alix shouted, her voice backed by her fourth-tier power easily carrying over the loud din of the rest of the gathered men and women. Leon even felt a wisp of killing intent wafting through her aura.

The hulking brute she was shouting at put on a brave face, but Leon could see his knees subtly shake, his third-tier aura flagging slightly. However, he was in front of the rest of his squad, and they were shouting and hollering at Alix and Alcander, so he couldn’t just back down.

“Keep talking, girly, and I’ll have you bent over one of these tables!” the man shouted, his voice cracking almost imperceptibly and betraying his lack of confidence in his ability to follow through on that threat.

With a smile, Leon and Maia approached the group. He was tempted to just let things take their course—watching his former squire kick the marine’s testicles up into his throat would’ve been entertaining, if nothing else—but he wanted to get moving outside the walls as soon as he could.

“What’s going on here?!” Leon thundered, the smile on his face disappearing as everyone around turned in his direction. He had to fight a little bit harder to keep his face stoic and serious when he saw a handful of the gathered marines and sailors pale slightly upon seeing him.

“Leon!” Alcander called out, his eyes subtly glaring at the marine from the corner of his eye. “We were just about to teach some of these squids a few things about respect. You in?”

Leon glared at the marine opposite Alix, and he could swear that if the man hadn’t been supported by more than a dozen at his back, he would’ve passed out in terror. Leon couldn’t tell if the marine—or anyone else there, for that matter—could recognize him apart from his obvious and unhidden power, but as it was, all the blood drained from the man’s face and sweat began forming on his brow, so whether or not the marine knew who he was hardly mattered, Leon had already achieved his desired effect.

All it took were a few menacing steps for Leon to get in the man’s face. The marine was a little bit taller than Leon, but compared to the latter, he seemed no bigger than an ant. He shrunk down at least an inch under the weight of Leon’s aura and sweat began to drip from his forehead and down the end of his nose.

“You making trouble for my people?” Leon growled.

“Uhhh…” the man mumbled, and said nothing more, meekly backing down.

Leon raised one of his hands and brought it to the marine’s cheek. The marine flinched, but Leon just ended up patting his cheek like he would pet a dog’s head and drawled, “Good.”

“He was being a bit of a dick, Leon,” Alix said, her eyes staring daggers at the marine.

“Then make it quick, we’ve somewhere to be,” Leon replied as he stepped away and started walking toward Marcus. He heard the sound of a fist meeting a cheek resound through the area, immediately followed by at least two dozen people groaning in sympathy and mockery for the marine and in celebration of Alix’s swift and efficient strike.

A moment later, before he’d even reached Marcus’ table, Maia was joined beside Leon by Alix and Alcander.

“Could’ve taken him without your help,” Alix insisted, though she wore a muted smile on her face that betrayed her happiness with the result.

“Of that I have no doubt, but I want to get us moving,” Leon replied. Once he’d finished, they’d reached Marcus’ table, and Leon didn’t even hesitate to grab the back of Marcus’ chair and spin him around in the dirt.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Marcus shouted in alarm, having apparently missed Leon and Maia’s arrival due to being so absorbed in his game. “What’s going on?”

“Stuff. Let’s go,” Leon said as he started to drag Marcus away, chair and all.

Marcus squalled in surprise as he twisted in his chair to grab his share of the silver on the table before Leon dragged him away, to the protestations of those he’d been playing with. But with Leon there, no one actually tried to stop him.

“What’s happening?!” Marcus asked as he stuffed his silver into the satchel at his hip and rose from the chair to follow Leon on his own feet.

“We’re heading out tonight, I want all of you suited up for battle,” Leon said.

—

Alix, Marcus, and Alcander weren’t particularly happy. They’d gotten a few hours of rest, and then Leon dragged them back out of the walls to trudge through the jungle instead of relaxing in the fortress drinking and fighting and gambling, as they’d been planning on spending their evening.

Gaius, too, wasn’t happy, but Sigebert, perhaps knowing that he couldn’t stop Leon and didn’t even want to try, had ordered him to accompany Leon’s group as he’d been doing since they’d arrived at the Serpentine Isles. Gaius had met Leon and his squad at the fortress’ main gates.

Now, with Leon, Maia, and Anzu, all of them were making their way around the walls of the fortress.

“Why are we going this way?” Gaius asked as he walked just behind Leon. “The farms are the other way…”

“I’m aware of that,” Leon replied. “No doubt we can learn something if we go back and give those places a closer inspection, but this town had, what? Five thousand people living in it? More than that?”

“Something like that,” Gaius replied. “About one and a half thousand families, I think…”

“Right. And how many remains did we find when the town was demolished?”

Gaius almost answered before he caught himself. “I, uh… don’t know. I don’t think anyone said. At least, not while I was around.”

“No human remains were found here,” Marcus said from behind them. “One of the engineers I was playing cards with said so. Not even a single scorched skeleton anywhere. No survivors, either. It’s like this town’s inhabitants just vanished shortly before it was burned to the ground.”

“Right,” Leon said. “I doubt they vanished, and that many people don’t just disappear without leaving some kind of trace. Maybe they were all loaded onto boats and taken away as Jormun’s slaves or something of that nature, I can’t say. But what I can say is that if they were taken away on foot, then I’ll see some evidence of it. I just have to take a look.”

Many of the traces left behind of what happened to the town would’ve been destroyed by the town’s demolishing, but the Legion engineers hadn’t gone too far with it. The fortress wasn’t as large as the town, so after demolishing all the burned ruins, they didn’t have to clear any of the jungle away from the walls for security purposes. So, all Leon had to do was inspect the tree line and see what he could see. He wasn’t intending to stray so far away from the walls that he could be cut off from Legion support, but he felt like taking a quick look to see what he could see.

Scouts, of course, had already been sent out to get the lay of the land around the fortress, but as far as Leon knew from watching with his magic senses, they’d mostly focused on the shoreline, where the habitable land was to be found, placing extra emphasis on the seemingly abandoned farms. There hadn’t been much inspection of the jungle itself, which Leon thought to be an oversight. Putting himself in Jormun’s place, if he wanted to get a bunch of people to disappear over land, he’d have them travel through the harsher terrain first to throw off any pursuers. Jormun, of course, could’ve used ships to transport the townsfolk, but Leon had to check, just in case.

So close to the walls, no one was particularly stealthy, and neither did the early evening darkness stop them—all of them were powerful enough to see perfectly fine in the dark, especially with the clear island skies letting the bright moon and countless stars shine down on the jungle as they crawled higher into the sky.

Still, there wasn’t much to see. Damp jungle ground and a whole lot of greenery, plus the incessant buzzing of insects and the occasional staticky sound of Leon blasting some tiny flying bug that strayed too close. But, in a way, that was almost a good thing because it meant Leon didn’t have to spend much time looking for trails; five thousand people traipsing through the jungle would’ve left quite the footpath that would’ve been impossible to miss. But that wasn’t to say that Leon got careless, he still spent sufficient time examining the tree line for any signs of recent human activity, and he set a slow pace so that he could properly inspect the land in front of them for any additional traps that Jormun may have laid out here.

Unfortunately, he still came up short. About all he managed to find were a few small hunting paths that clearly hadn’t been used in a while and were far too small to have been used by so many people.

He almost called the search off in favor of heading back to the farms where the trail was much warmer, but something stopped him. It was a strange feeling that he’d missed something obvious, something that was now almost calling to him.

Frowning, Leon led his group back in the opposite direction a short ways despite the muted grumblings of his companions. As he walked over ground he’d already covered, quietly examining the ground they passed, he didn’t see anything that he’d missed, however.

Again, he almost called off the search in order to move on, but as the thought crossed his mind, he heard the beating of feathered wings in his ear before the thought could transform into words.

Leon looked around and saw the same bird—at least, he thought it was the same bird—that he’d seen in Kraterok. It was perched on a nearby tree, its Thunderbird-like feathers shining in the moonlight, its yellow avian eyes locked on him. Leon stared right back, briefly wondering if he ought to call out to the creature to test whether he was right or not in recognizing its obvious intelligence. It had followed him so far, after all, and seemed strangely fixated on him, almost as if it could sense his heritage.

Or so Leon justified it in his head for he couldn’t immediately think of any other explanation for the bird’s strange behavior.

Before Leon could say anything, though, the bird briefly looked down at the ground around the tree, then took off in flight deep into the jungle, leaving Leon rather perplexed.

But Leon did as the bird seemingly bid, and glanced down, noticing the subtle signs of a hunter having passed through the area, though not recently. With a narrowing of his eyes, Leon followed the trail a little bit into the tree line, eliciting questions from his companions, to which he merely responded that he wanted to investigate this trail a little bit.

He didn’t find anything of note, but he felt like that bird had been trying to tell him something. He didn’t know what it was trying to imply—he thought that it might’ve been related to Jormun’s whereabouts, but the trail it was telling him to follow didn’t seem to line up with that hypothesis, no one had used the trail in more than a month, perhaps even more than two as far as Leon could guess.

But there was still an undeniable sense of trust that bloomed in Leon’s mind for this bird. It had to know who he was, or at least have some kind of idea. It could sense his power and was responding to it, that had to be what was happening.

Leon quickly cast his magic senses further into the jungle, trying to follow the bird’s flight path. He didn’t have to look far, for the bird was only about two hundred feet into the jungle, perched on the branch of another tree, staring back at him, clearly waiting for him to catch up.

“Let’s head this way, at least for a little bit,” Leon muttered to the others as he led them deeper into the jungle.

“Why? Notice something?” Gaius asked.

Leon was about to mention the bird’s strange behavior, but he caught himself. For some reason, he didn’t think that the bird would be considered compelling evidence, and he didn’t want the others to think he was leading them on a wild goose chase. So, even though he didn’t really want to and didn’t much see too many benefits in doing so, he replied, “Yeah, I think there’s something here…”

The others didn’t question him after that. His skill in the forests were undeniable, and though these weren’t exactly the forests he was used to, he was still the unquestioned expert in this field.

Leon led them into the jungle. Anzu, being the largest of them by far, had a little bit of trouble making it through the underbrush, but with a little bit of applied wind magic, he was able to cut his way through. Everyone else had few problems following Leon’s lead.

For his part, Leon didn’t pay too much attention to the path they were on. He’d occasionally glance down long enough to see that they were still on the old hunting trail, but for the most part, he paid most of his attention to the bird, watching as it flitted through the trees, landing and waiting for him to catch up before taking off again and leading him and his people further into the forest.

Several times, large predators came near them. A giant snake with a head the size of a carriage and fangs longer than Leon’s body; some long reptilian thing with a spiked tail, bulbous eyes, a long snout, and more teeth than Leon’s entire party combined; a huge green cat with black tiger-like stripes, fangs that extended down past its jaw, and claws like black steel; a boar bigger even than Anzu and with tusks that would’ve made a bull elephant shrivel in shame. These creatures were all powerful, at least fifth-tier and a couple even stronger, but none of them even seemed to notice Leon’s party. It was a good thing, too, because while Leon and especially Maia were stronger than all of them, he didn’t want to waste the time dealing with them. But Leon could still appreciate why the Serpentine Isles had such a small population and why civilization hadn’t seemed to have penetrated further into the jungle. If these were the beasts on the outskirts of the jungle, he shuddered to think what might be lurking even deeper.

After following the bird about a quarter mile into the jungle—just at the edge of where Leon would’ve forced himself to call everyone to halt and turn around—it eventually revealed its destination, the thing it had decided to show Leon. At first, though, Leon was unable to recognize it. To his magic senses, it almost looked like the bird had landed upon nothing at all, as if it were perched on air. There was clearly something there since he could feel something pushing back against his magic senses, something that was somehow keeping itself invisible without entirely scattering his magic senses and immediately alerting him to its presence.

As Leon approached and finally pulled into visual range, he froze in shock.

The bird had landed in the middle of a tiny clearing barely large enough for Leon’s entire party. Still, despite the clearing’s small size, the moon still shone down upon it through an unnatural hole in the jungle canopy.

In the center of the clearing, upon which the bird had perched, were three large wooden planks each at least ten feet long, all nailed together in the center to create a star shape. Tied and nailed to the planks at the wrists, waist, and ankles was a human skeleton, not so much as a single strip of flesh still attached to its body, its bones brown with dried blood, its head upright and staring back at Leon as if it were still alive.

For a moment, Leon almost addressed the skeleton, its hollow eye sockets seeming to follow him as he forced himself out of his brief moment of visceral shock and carefully approached the corpse, but he quickly realized that it was truly dead, and its upright skull had simply been propped up against the back of the vertical plank. The others followed suit, all of their eyes locked on the skeleton, curses muttered under their breath. Only Maia and Anzu retained their composure.

As he stepped close, Leon wondered just how the skeleton was staying intact, for not even at a closer view did the skeleton reveal any flesh. It just lay against the planks, lifeless and unmoving, yet somehow not just falling to the ground.

After a moment, Leon’s eyes fell upon the planks themselves. They didn’t immediately seem to be anything to write home about, but as Leon slowly circled this grisly display, ignoring the questions and reactions of his companions for the moment, he saw that all three planks had been heavily enchanted by burning runes into their backs. It wasn’t a complicated enchantment, but it made it so that this… whatever it was, couldn’t be seen with magic senses.

But as Leon was examining the runes, he noticed a second enchantment hidden within. It didn’t seem dangerous, so when the others started to approach the corpse, drawing closer to it than Leon did, he didn’t immediately start to panic. Seeing the runes suddenly glow with white light gave him a bit of a scare, but there wasn’t enough magic within the enchantment to present any kind of danger.

And it soon became clear what the enchantment did. The skull slowly turned its head, the bones of its neck creating a horrific grinding sound as did, while most of the fingers of the corpse’s left hand curled, until it was pointing and looking directly to its left.

Leon and his squad instinctively followed its gaze with varying expressions of horror, but no one saw anything out in the trees. Leon projected his magic senses in that direction, but again, saw nothing. However, whomever had set this up clearly possessed knowledge about how to hide things from magic senses, so Leon didn’t immediately assume that there wasn’t anything in that direction.

But he didn’t start moving in that direction. He intended on following the corpse at some point, but he’d gone as far as he was willing to without returning to the fortress and get some support.

“We’re going to head back,” he slowly said to his people. “Or, someone needs to head back. I don’t want to leave this thing here and have it disappear on us. Most of us will stay behind to keep an eye on it, how about—”

“Leon!” Gaius suddenly shouted, and Leon, surprised as he was, paused a moment to look at the blond nobleman.

Gaius was staring not at the corpse, but at the sky, barely visible through the trees apart from the unnaturally circular hole in the canopy directly above the crucified corpse. Leon followed his gaze and saw a strange red haze in the air. Without any clouds for the light to bounce off, it was dim, but Leon easily saw what caused it.

This was a flare sent up by the fortress. The task force was under attack.