As with the rest of the Ilian Empire, flight in public spaces was illegal. Leon couldn’t transform into his avian form and fly around as he pleased, he couldn’t ride Anzu places unless Anzu remained on the ground, and he couldn’t really use a flight suit when he was off private property.

At least, he technically couldn’t.

In the years since he’d arrived in the Ilian Empire, however, he’d learned that the law was more nuanced than simply outlawing all flight. Arks were allowed, though given that the only users of arks were Imperial governments and Heaven’s Eye, that exception hardly mattered. More relevant were wheelless carriages, for they technically flew, even if only a few feet off the ground. There were various laws and regulations that governed their capabilities, preventing them from exceeding certain limits, but simply put, Leon discovered that so long as he flew no higher than six feet off the ground, then flight was technically allowed.

As he strode out of his villa, he sent a quick mental command to Anzu to meet him out front. The griffin bounded out of his stable a moment later, the building now practically palatial to match the rest of the villa instead of being the relatively simple building that it had been. Anzu was growing more and more intelligent, and he needed more than just a relatively bare room, now.

The griffin came to a stop at the gate, beating Leon there by a matter of seconds. Leon paused a moment to run his fingers through the griffin’s white feathers, and Anzu bent down to nuzzle his beak in Leon’s hair. His bright red eyes sparkled with intelligence, if not sapience, and his aura radiated the strength equivalent of a sixth-tier mage.

Anzu wasn’t wearing his saddle, and neither did Leon intend to put one on. Instead, Anzu was just going to be his ‘escort’, of sorts.

“Let’s head into the city, I’ve some business with Sid,” Leon said to his griffin. Anzu chirped and flapped his wings a few times, and the two walked out of the gate, which closed behind them, ensuring that Leon’s villa remained sealed and protected.

Once out on the country road, Leon stopped for a moment and summoned his magic power. However, instead of changing his mana to one of the magical elements, he kept it element-less. What he was about to do would work better that way; not even using wind mana would work better, for the ambient magic power around Leon was more than just wind.

He reached out with his magic senses, though instead of using them to see and hear great distances, he instead used them to survey his immediate surroundings, feeling around and analyzing the magic around him. Then, he seized control of all the magic in his near vicinity and brought it all in closer to him. He felt it settle around him like a glove, or perhaps a harness. With all of it wrapped around him like a glove, he gently lifted himself up, and his body started to rise off the ground. He ascended several feet into the air, and then stopped, hovering in the air seemingly without any support at all.

He'd seen this sort of thing several times in his life before—perhaps most notably during his lessons with the Thunderbird where she taught him how to control the local weather by seizing control of the ambient magic power—but it wasn’t really until the party he attended in the palace of Ilion that he really got an idea of what he could do with element-less magic power. During that party, he’d seen Lord Protector Anastasios freeze a man while he was just about to lethally strike a Forest Watcher. The man had been frozen mid-swing as if the Lord Protector had actually flash-frozen him. However, instead of doing anything so flashy, the Lord Protector had simply used his element-less magic power to seize control of the ambient magic power, and used the projected and conquered power like another limb, wrapping it around the man and exerting physical force upon him, putting him completely under the Lord Protector’s control.

Leon’s mind had been preoccupied with other things at the time, so he hadn’t quite realized the significance of what he’d seen, but after some time to stop and relax after reaching Occulara and being taken on as a Hand of the Director, he’d frequently found himself reflecting on the events of that day. One thing that had struck him about six months after the purchase of his villa was just how physical the Lord Protector’s display of magic power had been, and Leon couldn’t help but wonder just what else such a technique might be capable of. It took him more than a year of practice to get it down right, but he began to realize that his element-less magic was hardly as useless as he’d always assumed; using it in this way basically gave him telekinesis. There were some limits to what he could do with it—for instance, doing what the Lord Protector had done to the sparring man was essentially impossible unless the person on the wrong end of the technique was significantly weaker than Leon was, at least on the order of two or three entire tiers.

But even with that limitation, the utility of the technique was still immense. One of the biggest perks was that since the technique used element-less magic power, he could still use it even when he called upon elemental power—to use elemental magic, he had to change his element-less magic power into an elemental form to produce the desired magical effect. Such a thing was impossible to do so with more than one magical element at a time; it was impossible to use to use multiple magical elements at once without the aid of magical items. However, this process always left some mana element-less within his body, and he could use that element-less magic power in his blood at the same time as elemental power, greatly increasing his combat potential with the discovery of this technique.

Even after almost eight years of using the technique, though, Leon was still getting used to it—it was like learning to use a new limb, but without the benefit of flesh and nerve to give him tangible feedback. He could fly and manipulate large objects in fairly simple ways, but he still lacked the fine control over the technique that he greatly desired. However, the fact that he could fly without transforming made the entire enterprise worth it, even if he never improved further—though he still intended on improving, the technique was simply too useful to leave at such simple telekinesis.

It didn’t take much more than a thought for Leon to start flying down the road, still low enough to the ground that he wasn’t violating any laws or regulations of the Empire. Anzu ran just behind him, and soon enough, the two had reached significant speeds. They lived about fifty miles south of the Scamander River, but Leon and Anzu reached their destination only a few blocks away from the river in only an hour—and that was after having to slow down once they got into the denser and much more traffic-heavy city. Even though he was just flying around, he didn’t have much trouble dealing with all of the horseless carriages, because even if people were annoyed that they had to drive behind just little old him, they still had to make way for Anzu.

Not that he thought anyone would be imbecilic enough to actually yell at him when he so obviously powerful, but he’d found that putting someone in a metal horseless carriage had a tendency to turn otherwise normal, well-adjusted people angry, reckless, and stupid.

Upon arrival, Leon made straight for Sid’s workshop, leaving Anzu in a nearby stable—horseless carriages were the norm in Occulara, but there were still a few places around that catered to more eccentric mages who wanted other, more living means of transportation. His blacksmithing instructor was waiting for him as soon as he stepped out of the magic lift, almost tackling him her greeting was so enthusiastic.

“Leon!” she shouted as she practically appeared in front of him, nearly knocking him over. “Is it done?!”

Leon suppressed a grin and nodded.

“Show it! Show it!” she chanted as she took his arm and started pulling him towards a nearby table.

Leon’s ability to suppress his smile began to falter. Sid had always been this enthusiastic about her work, and she had nearly limitless energy. The passion she had for her work had kept Leon going during those moments when his progress stalled, or he ran into creative roadblocks.

It had cropped up in his enchanting work, but it was his growing skill in blacksmithing that had really thrown his perfectionism into stark relief. This wasn’t merely drawing a bunch of runes on a piece of paper, with little cost aside from time invested into his work. He could make a mistake drawing a rune, and while he’d be annoyed, it was hardly the end of the world. Blacksmithing was a far more expensive art form, both in terms of time and material costs. There were periods during his studies that he was unable to really get started on any projects for fear of making a mistake and having to start over, but Sid’s encouragement had helped him through those times, ensuring that he kept soldiering on.

Leon, after being dragged over to the table, brought out the blade he’d finished only a couple hours ago, and let Sid look it over.

“Very nice, very nice,” Sid whispered as she took the blade in hand and began to experimentally swing it around. “Fantastic balance, very durable… These enchantments etched into the steel, are they of your creation?”

“They are,” Leon confirmed.

“Thought so,” Sid replied. “This couldn’t have been the work of normal Heaven’s Eye enchanters, they have a tendency to reuse glyphs that they’ve already confirmed work. They can make some fantastic enchantments pretty damned quick if they want to, but their commissions are never as perfect as they could be with all the cobbling together of enchantments from different pre-designed glyphs.”

Leon just shrugged. He’d examined some of Heaven’s Eye’s work in the past, but not nearly enough to really get an idea for any patterns. For the most part, Nestor, Xaphan, and the Thunderbird were instructors enough for him. For the first year he spent in Occulara, he had gone to a few lessons with several different enchanting instructors, but all of them were either too demanding of Leon’s already limited time or were simply not good enough to teach him. As a result, while getting an enchantment instructor was one of the conditions Leon had given the Director for his employment, he’d eventually dropped that particular request. Heaven’s Eye had some truly skilled and talented enchanters, but they were rank amateurs compared to Nestor, anyway.

“There are still some areas you need to improve in, though,” Sid continued as she held the blade up to the light and channeled some of her magic into it. “A few tiny spots where the steel wasn’t mixed well enough, and the folding pattern is still a little random. The coloring from heat tempering is also a little dull and stark, and there’s not a lot of blending between the blue and the gold. A lot of this can easily be solved once you finally start—”

“—Start getting a handle on earth magic, yes, yes, you’ve said that many times,” Leon interrupted with playful exasperation, having heard Sid advocate for learning earth magic on enough occasions to be rather tired of it. “I’m working on it, I’m working on it. Believe me, I’d love to manipulate metal with nothing but my own magic power, but there’re only so many hours in the day, you know? I have too much on my plate as it is.”

“Do what you will, but you know my opinion,” she nonchalantly replied as she gave the sword another complete once-over, her eyes glittering with excitement.

She handed the blade back to Leon, her expression practically glowing even with her criticism.

“For what few imperfections I can see, that blade will still serve its wielder well, regardless! I can tell it’s quite powerful and will last a while, I’m sure the commissioner will be well pleased!”

Leon smiled unabashedly, not even trying to restrain it. He took pride in his work, he couldn’t help it.

Sid asked, “Did you name the weapon?”

Leon fought the urge to snort. “By the Ancestors, no. Naming weapons is tacky and only invites ridicule and embarrassment. What if I named this weapon ‘Victory’, or something like that? Just asking for an ironic curse.”

“Don’t let superstition get the better of you, Raime,” Sid said as she slipped into more lecturing tones. “A name can give a weapon a good sense of purpose and intent, and that can have measurable impact on the magic it might channel. Besides, having a name in mind when you start can even help you to focus on what you want the weapon to do. Solidify its purpose in your mind, and you’ll find that the design will come to you more easily.”

“That sounds a little like superstition to me,” Leon replied. “Who measures the impact of intent on creating weapons? I knew what I wanted to make without giving it a name, and I think it’s turned out quite well. Besides, is it on the smith to name the weapon, or is it on the wielder? Whose intent matters more? What if I named this sword ‘Blood Drinker’ or something similarly gruesome, and the person who commissioned the sword instead wants to name it ‘Protector’ or something? Leave it to the commissioner to name the sword, they’re the one using it.”

Sid sighed. “As a blacksmith, I think it’s a better philosophy to design with the commissioner’s intent in mind, and then name accordingly.”

“The commissioner didn’t exactly give me much to work with,” Leon pointed out. “The instructions I was given amounted to ‘make a sword’. What can I glean from that?”

With the smug look of having Leon prove her point, Sid replied, “In that case, the smith’s intent is all that matters! Why don’t you give the sword a name right now? It’s finished, so it’s only a formality, but why not?”

She gave a hard smile, and Leon realized that she probably wasn’t going to let this go. He knew her well enough at this point to be familiar with her stubbornness. She was tougher than the steel she worked when she set her mind to something.

With some reluctance, Leon glanced at the blade in his hand. With its gold edge and focus on fire and light enchantments, he immediately thought of a name, though he really didn’t want to give one to the sword. It didn’t much fit the eagle theme he’d given the hilt, but if it got Sid off his back, then so be it.

“Sunlight,” he said.

Sid smiled. “A good name. Gentle, but strong and bright. Perfect for the commissioner.”

“Speaking of,” Leon replied as he sheathed the blade and started wrapping it back up, “who is the commissioner? All I know is that they’re from the Sacred Golden Empire.”

“And that’s all you’re going to know,” Sid cheekily replied. “This was a part of the agreement, the commissioner didn’t want their identity to be known to the smiths working on any of the weapons they were commissioning.”

“If they were commissioning multiple weapons, then why the need for secrecy?” Leon asked, though he didn’t actually mind too much if he didn’t know who exactly was getting Sunlight.

“It’s just the way they wanted it,” Sid explained with a dismissive frown and helpless shrug. “Something about only using the best of the commissions and not wanting people to get upset if they ever see the commissioner, and they’re not using their weapon. Or so it was explained to me, anyway, the real reason is not for me to guess at.”

“So they’re that powerful, then?” Leon said as he shot Sid a quick grin.

“I’m not saying any more!” Sid insisted. “Now, it’s not a day for your instruction, so you’d better get on out of here, kid! I’m sure someone like you has much better uses for his time and wasting away in a dreary workshop with little old me!"

“Time with you is never wasted!” Leon waxed with great aplomb.

“Sure, sure,” Sid dismissively replied, though a smile had still bloomed on her face.

“But I have to ask… Aren’t you forgetting something?” Leon continued as he rubbed his index and middle fingers against his thumb. “I didn’t do all that work out of the kindness of my heart, you know, and I went to some expense getting the materials needed to finish this piece…”

“Of course, of course,” Sid replied, and she conjured several huge ingots of a dark, smoky gray metal on the table—special, magically treated iron perfect for his purpose. Leon eagerly grabbed them and pulled them into his soul realm. He’d gone too long without armor, and now he was finally starting to have enough faith in his skills to give creating a new suit for himself a serious try.

Leon walked back to the lift with a huge smile on his face. He’d had some fun with the exchange, and he had some new materials to play with, but his purpose was finished; the blade had been dropped off and would now be delivered to the commissioner, and he’d received his payment. It was time to focus on the next task at hand: the ‘haunted’ house that Talal had found.

Leon fetched Anzu from the stable, and the two of them took off for the location that Talal had given Leon. It was on the north side of the Scamander River, so Leon and his griffin had to cross one of the city’s gigantic bridges. In his experience, a bridge was an extremely important strategic object, and much of the defensive value of a bridge was lost if whatever it spanned had too many points of crossing.

However, the Scamander was replete with bridges—just another subtle reminder of Ilion’s power. They were so unconcerned with invasion or armed conflict in their heartlands that they’d built enormous bridges all along the river that huge armies could use to cross with ease. These bridges were tall, but highly magically advanced, with only the ends of the bridge being made of actual physical matter. The entire central half of just about every single bridge was made of magical light, which could be shut off to allow ships to pass through, assuming the ships couldn’t just go under the massive constructs.

Leon had gotten fairly familiar with most of the Ilian Empire’s infrastructure, by now. As the Director had indicated, he wasn’t called on that often to fulfill his requests. In fact, over the past ten years, Leon had only spent an average of two months out of the year away from his home and family, usually running some errand or fetching some highly valuable material for the Director’s personal use.

His favorite job to this point was about five years after he arrived in Occulara, when the eggs of the wyverns that roosted in the mountains just east of the Indra Raj started to hatch. The

Scorched Fields between these mountains and the many Pegasi States were often incinerated when the new wyvern parents left their aeries to hunt for food for their young. Wyverns had a five-year-long reproductive cycle, so this usually happened twice per decade, leading to regular enough fiery devastation to give the Scorched Fields their name.

When this happened, warriors from all over the plane were usually called in to help contain the wyverns and stop them from doing too much damage, and Leon had been one of those warriors during the last hatching. His proudest moment during that hunt had been when he knocked a seventh-tier wyvern out of the sky with a single bolt of lightning, striking it in the head and killing it instantly.

The time for another hatching was coming soon, probably in the next few months, and he fully expected to be called up again to head down there, and he was looking forward to it. It would do him and his retinue some good to get out of Occulara, they didn’t do that enough as it was. There was only so much he could do to keep them motivated when they sat on their asses for most of the year.

But this year was going to be different. Over these past ten years, he’d gotten settled into Occulara, secured his position within Heaven’s Eye, and expanded his skills a great deal. His soul realm was healing quite well, leading him to estimate that he’d be able to start growing in power again in less than a year. He’d even spent some time exploring his bloodline, and while he’d never managed to get his black flame to manifest again, his skill and power with fire magic had progressed by leaps and bounds.

In other words, he was confident that it was time to start looking into some of the points on Nestor’s map. The lab in the north, the former capital in the east, and the Titanstone foundry in the south. The arsenal here in Occulara so far hadn’t turned up much, leading him to think that it had truly been completely destroyed, but he had higher hopes for the other three locations. After this year’s wyvern hunt, he was planning on finally venturing out to investigate these locations.

But before he could do any of that, he had to look into this ‘haunting’. For all he knew, it was a sign that something from the arsenal had survived destruction.

Or perhaps it was nothing at all.

Regardless, Leon was ready to start digging when he arrived at the haunted villa.