Leon remained vigilant as he and his people followed closely behind the Evergolden warriors. Their truth rings were active, dispelling all illusions before them, but they did nothing to help fend off mental attacks, and the high probability of being teleported away wasn’t something they could easily, if at all, combat.

So, it was with more than a little apprehension that they passed through the rough outer boundary of the warded zone. Instantly, the opaque wall of light in front of them vanished, revealing the outer warded zone.

There wasn’t much to see, however. The warded zone was quite large, and the outer zone, as far as Leon could see, was simply room for the zone’s many wards to layer upon each other, and to act as a an obstacle in and of itself, forcing anyone trying to penetrate the wards to walk miles and miles through potentially hostile territory.

The inner warded zone was much smaller, only about ten miles from east to west and about seven from north to south. That part of the zone included the site that Cassandra had tried to scout out, so Leon assumed that was the remains of his Clan’s research facility.

Onwards he led his people, keeping careful watch over the ambient magic and ensuring that his own truth ring remained active at all times. It was slowly but steadily growing harder to do so, though. Ancient runes were reliant not only upon magic power, but the willpower of the one using the rune, and since the illusions of the warded zone were themselves created with ancient runes, Leon, armed with his truth ring, was contending against whatever was maintaining these wards. And, if Xaphan’s theory was correct, that thing was probably the central intelligence that had magically dominated the minds and bodies of just about everything within the forest, including non-sentient things like trees. By all accounts, this warded zone had been here since the time shortly after his Clan’s fall, too.

Something that could occupy the forest for eighty-thousand years, evading the prying eyes of the Sacred Golden Empire and not letting even stories of its existence, only that of its dominated minions, escape its wooded dales, was something that was not going to be easy to counter, Leon knew.

His suspicion grew more and more prophetic as they advanced, and the wards on his retainers’ helmets activated, protecting them from mental attack, and their truth runes flickered, the magical light they glowed with struggling in the face of their opponent.

Leon himself felt increasing pressure, as if something existed just out of sight and was pressing on his eyes, narrowing his vision. However, every time he shifted his gaze, whether or physically, magically, or metaphorically, he’d see nothing. Whatever was there, if it was anything at all, evaded his discovery, but the pressure continued to grow, and his ability to maintain his truth rune grew more and more strained.

After about twenty miles, their group approached the great walls of the inner warded zone. The white light that made up the dome shone brightly as it reached toward the heavens, exerting great pressure just by existing. The greater pressure by far, however, was upon their truth runes. The illusions returned with increasing frequency, and several times, Leon and Cassandra had had to physically stop one of their number from leaving the group as the mental attacks found purchase within their subordinates’ minds.

However, for all that, they’d made it through the forest and now stood close to the foot of the inner zone’s dome-shaped magical wards.

Leon was tempted to suggest they stop to rest, but his pragmatism prevented him from doing so. It was hard enough to keep his people moving in the right direction, and he had lightning that could free the mind from magical influence. His people were growing more and more strained the longer they stayed in the forest, and while they’d lost no one yet, the longer they stayed in range of these wards, the longer they were vulnerable to it. The best chance they had to find an opportunity to rest was to pass these inner wards and hope that these defensive enchantments relented once they were inside.

Of course, Leon was sure there’d be other, more active defenses inside, but they’d deal with that when they came to it.

Cassandra led the way right up to the ward’s wall, and only stopped once there. She glanced back at Leon, her face largely hidden by her helmet though Leon could still see her eyes slightly squinted with the effort of maintaining her own truth ring and mind-shielding wards.

“Ready?” she shouted to him, her tone still energetic and challenging despite the pressures they were under.

Leon glanced at his people.

Anzu he was most worried about, as he wasn’t sure how the griffin would adapt to using his ring. However, he was pleasantly surprised to see that Anzu was doing quite well with his truth ring secured around one of his front talons.

Most of his retainers were likewise doing well enough, but Anna, Alix, and Alcander seemed to be having some trouble. In the case of the latter two, it was mostly just fatigue building up; they were generally a little flightier, and didn’t focus as well as everyone else. However, when they glanced at him and nodded, he knew they were still good for a while yet.

Anna, however, was another story—she herself was doing just fine, especially given the trouble she’d had using the truth ring initially. Rather, it was her Attican Snapper that was having more and more difficulty. Leon hadn’t given it its own truth ring as it wasn’t nearly intelligent enough to use the thing. But Anna had dominated the creature with her onyx bracelet, giving her complete control over its mind.

That control clearly had its limits, though, as the creature seemed to be affected by the mental intrusions of the zone’s wards, and keeping it moving in the right direction was clearly something that Anna was struggling with. For all its bulk and physical might, the snapper was probably going to be nothing more than a liability in combat, Leon realized. He had half a mind to order Anna to return to camp with the beast, but at this point, he didn’t think that was strictly necessary.

“You doing all right?” he asked Anna, just in case.

She smiled at him, her lips thin from the mental strain, and replied, “Doing just fine.”

“You look about ready to keel over,” Gaius said in a worried tone, and Leon noticed his eyes flitting over toward Alix as well. Alcander, it seemed, didn’t warrant too much concern on Gaius’ part, though Marcus was already by his friend’s side, checking in on the large man.

“I’m doing better than I look, I’m sure,” Anna said, waving off everyone else’s worry, including that of her sister. Alix didn’t say anything, but she nodded along with Anna.

So, trusting his people to know their limits, Leon turned back to Cassandra and said, “We’re ready.”

The seventh-tier Evergolden mage, it seemed, had checked her own people in the same time, and after she nodded to Cassandra, the Princess grinned like a madwoman.

“Then let’s get to it,” she said, and she immediately began striding toward the white wall only a few hundred feet away, its shining light visible even this far away in the dense, primeval forest.

When they reached it, Leon couldn’t help but marvel at the expression of power. He could hardly imagine just how much magic power was flowing through the ancient runes that had created this thing. The ongoing power costs had to be enormous.

He didn’t get much time to ponder it as the Princess barely broke stride as she reached for the light wall.

“Your Highness!” the seventh-tier Evergolden mage called out, causing the Princess to freeze, her fingertips mere inches from the wall of the dome. “Who knows what this thing can do! We should treat it with more care!”

“I agree,” Leon said, joining the seventh-tier mage. Without waiting for the Princess to say anything, he conjured his telekinetic stone into his gauntlet and grabbed a small pebble from the ground. It was lightly dusted with moss, but was otherwise clean enough. Leon sent the stone flying through the barrier, though he intended the maintain his hold over it as long as he could. To his surprise, the barrier didn’t break his hold over the stone.

[Interesting…] Nestor murmured from within his soul realm. [It seems the barrier isn’t physical, but is instead merely concealing what lays beyond it. Bring that stone back here, let’s see what’s become of it.]

Leon complied, but when the stone reappeared, he was shocked to see that it had been completely cleansed of moss.

“It cleaned it?” Alix asked, sounding rather out of breath.

“No,” Leon grimly responded. “It destroyed all of the moss on the rock.”

[I agree,] Nestor said, his tone just as grim.

“How do you know that?” Cassandra demanded. “Did you sense something happen? Or are you just familiar with these kinds of defenses?”

“I just used my eyes,” Leon easily responded as he pulled a long weed out of the ground. It was about three feet long, and using it like measuring stick, Leon stuck it into the barrier. He’d intended to hold it there for a couple seconds, but the plant matter essentially vanished as soon as it came into contact with the barrier, accompanied only by a quiet sizzling sound. The weed’s stem was left slightly smoldering and much shorter.

“Shit,” Marcus whispered, and it seemed his sentiment was shared amongst everyone else, from what Leon could see.

“Best not touch the barrier,” Leon said to the Princess, brandishing the now much shorter weed as proof.

For her part, while her expression was obscured, she took a few quick steps away from the barrier and appeared to eye it warily.

“Well, what are we supposed to do now?” Helen wondered.

Leon pondered her question. The light was clearly not physically blocking anything, but it burned fiercely enough to completely incinerate plant matter. He wasn’t familiar enough with light magic to know all of what it was capable of, but he did have an anti-light magic gem, which he immediately conjured into his gauntlet.

Without waiting for anyone else, Leon activated the gem and directed it against the barrier.

The barrier flashed even brighter for a moment as Leon’s magic washed over it. As far as Leon could tell, the barrier was weakened, but it was still strong enough to maintain itself. Only a moment after using the gem, the barrier looked like it hadn’t been hit with anything at all.

“Maybe if it were concentrated a little more,” Valeria thought out loud.

“Maybe…” Leon concurred.

[Nestor, what are you able to see?] he asked. [Is this made with an ancient rune, too?]

[Undoubtedly,] the dead man replied. [Such defenses are powerful, but prone to failure under persistent pressures. You’ll not be able to bypass this shield by going around, over, or under it, but brute-forcing you way through isn’t out of the question.]

[If it’s made with ancient runes, can an ancient help?]

[Don’t mistake ancient runes, boy,] Nestor admonished. [They’re enchantments like any other, just less precise and more limited in scope, if more powerful. Ancient runes can’t only be countered with more ancient runes; modern runecraft can do whatever you need it to.]

[I hardly think we have much time to devise a strategy for that,] Leon replied as he glanced around at his fellows. The Evergolden mages were clearly rapidly growing tired, and the flickering of their truth rings were growing more intense. He guessed that they’d probably have to turn around if they weren’t able to get through this barrier in less than fifteen minutes. It was hardly as much time as he would’ve wanted, but that’s what he was comfortable with waiting.

[Ugh, the impatience of youth,] Nestor blatantly derided. [Fine, fine. Open yourself to me.]

Leon, for just a moment dropped his mental defenses. His armor’s defenses could handle things just fine, but he was now powerful enough in darkness magic and mental defensive techniques that for his soul realm passengers to impart their knowledge to him now required his consent.

As his defenses went down, he felt a quick, sharp pain in the front of his brain, which immediately faded as the most complex ancient rune he’d ever seen appeared in his mind.

Ancient runes weren’t like modern runes, which were fixed and static. There were only a set number of runes, though just about anything could be achieved by combining them in certain ways. In that way, they were much like letters, and even formed the basis for all the written languages that Leon had seen. Ancient runes, however, were another story. Every concept had its own bespoke rune, meaning there were a theoretically unlimited number of runes that existed, each one representing every concept and idea that could possibly be imagined, and all those that couldn’t. Given the way that ancient runes required intent and willpower to function, though, most of these runes overlapped with simpler designs.

For instance, if Leon wanted to open a lock, he could simply use an ‘open’ rune. However, a rune for ‘open lock’ also existed, and would probably work much easier than the simpler ‘open’ rune, requiring less willpower for him to exert and lowering the power requirements to open the lock.

The rune he now saw pictured in his mind was quite complex, far more so than he’d been hoping for. He supposed he could use an ‘open’ rune—he already knew what it was, having used it during Nestor’s brief mental invasion when the dead man had invaded his mind back in his lab—but against the specific and directed ancient rune that would be required to forge this barrier, he doubted he had the magic power or the power of intent necessary to break through. To break through this obstacle, he’d need something more directed and specialized.

“Give me a moment,” Leon said as he kneeled on the ground, “I might have a way to get through this thing, I just need to whip up a spell…”

As Leon cast his consciousness into his soul realm, he heard Cassandra complaining, “If you could do that, then why did you wait until now to make it?!”

The first thing he did when he reached his soul realm was to roll his eyes, but he didn’t have much time to waste on the Princess, and so jumped up and ran over to his work tables and started on inscribing the rune Nestor had given him onto spell paper.

The rune was complex, but Leon’s hand was practiced, and he was motivated. Less than ten minutes later, he was back in his physical body, the spell in hand.

“What is that?” Cassandra asked as Leon stood up.

“A key,” Leon replied, not intending to get any more specific, and he ignored the Princess’ attempts to get him to explain.

He walked over to the edge of the barrier and held out of the spell. He couldn’t press it against the barrier without it getting incinerated, so he held the paper about half a foot away, and then channeled his magic power into the spell paper.

The curving, flowing rune on the paper flashed with power, and Leon focused his mind on boring a hole into the side of the barrier. At the same time, he activated his anti-light magic gem with his other hand and focused its power on the area of the barrier right in front of the spell he was holding up.

The surface of the barrier in front of him began to flicker as magic power crashed down upon it, causing the smooth surface of the light barrier to ripple like liquid.

But it didn’t fail.

Leon concentrated, pushing with all the willpower he could muster, silently asking and ordering the barrier to fall before him. He didn’t expect the barrier to respond, but after a moment, he felt his magi being pushed back as something began to resist him.

Any doubts of an intelligence of some kind being within the barrier faded from his mind as the warded zone’s defenses began to actively resist him. The magic powering the barrier pushed back, exerting great pressure. However, he could feel the barrier starting to give way, regardless.

After about ten seconds, the barrier cracked. At twenty feet long, it was a small crack compared to the entirety of the barrier, but a crack was a crack. Two seconds later, another crack appeared, making an X right in front of Leon. And then a third crack appeared a second later, and then a fourth.

At fifteen seconds, a section of the barrier about ten feet wide shattered in front of Leon, exposing what was beyond for them to see.

Leon didn’t pay much attention, but he guessed it must’ve been spectacular, if the gasps of surprise from behind him were any indication.

“Get through!” he shouted, his voice straining with exertion as he kept the spell and antimagic gem going. The spell, however, was beginning to gray, the magic flowing through the paper causing it to start burning. “I can’t hold it much longer! Get through!”

Everyone began rushing past him, with Anzu and Alix the last to go. As she passed him, Alix shouted, “Last one! Just waiting on you, Leon!”

Leon gasped, then ran forward, the spell bursting into flames in his hand. Without the spell, it was only his antimagic gem keeping the hole open, and even with it being more directed, it wasn’t enough. The barrier flashed with power, and Leon dove headfirst into the hole, his heart racing from the labor he’d just undergone.

As he passed the plane of the barrier, he tucked and rolled, and just barely managed to get inside before the barrier slammed shut behind him.

Leon rolled to his feet, and immediately froze at the sight of what was before him, just past a few hundred feet of quickly thinning trees and other flora.

Instead of a densely packed wooded region, as he was more expecting, with profound secrets secreted away in its darkest corners, he found himself standing at the edge of an enormous bowl-shaped depression, resembling a crater in the forest floor. The depression was enormous, spanning at least five miles wide in every direction.

Rising from the center of this depression was the single largest tree he’d ever seen, reaching at least half a mile into the air. It didn’t seem to have one main trunk, with dozens of smaller trunks splitting off only a couple hundred feet off the ground, causing the tree to appear wider than it was tall.

The tree itself was black, with bark the color of the night sky, and sparkling with something that resembled stars, too. A dense cloud of ethereal blue leaves surrounded the tree, each one translucent yet giving off faint blue light that radiated mind-bending magic power. Coursing through around and through the leaves were enormous bands of multicolored light, forming what Leon could recognize as ancient runes of titanic complexity within the branches. He counted at least a dozen of the massive ancient runes at the top of the ethereal tree, but he was certain that there were far more.

Surrounding this tree were a dozen more trees, each sprouting from twisting, tangled masses of roots at least fifteen feet thick that arced above the forest floor dozens of feet in the air. These trees, while immense, looking tiny compared to the great tree in the center, with their branches and leaves bending inward as if reaching for the great tree. These trees were a little more mundane, with brown bark and green leaves, though they still positively glowed with magic power to Leon’s magic senses.

More concerning, however, were what lay at the foot of these trees: hundreds of wooden huts, none taller than three stories—villages that looked like they could house thousands of people. Walking through the streets of these villages were goat men, though none engaging in anything that Leon would consider normal villager behavior. He couldn’t see any farms or commercial zones, these goat men were simply walking through the streets and occasionally walking into empty buildings—there weren’t any anti-magic sense wards set up, so Leon could see that nearly all of these buildings were empty. Only a few were inhabited, and even then, only by goat men who’d laid down on the wooden floor and appeared to be sleeping.

Additionally, standing almost invisibly amongst the throngs of goat men, and among the twisting roots of the smaller great trees were hundreds of plant giants. They didn’t seem to be doing much other than standing guard—or so Leon assumed—but their sheer numbers were intimidating enough.

“What is all th—” Leon began wondering aloud, but he caught himself when he realized that he was alone. No one else stood with him. His retinue was gone, Anzu was gone, the Evergolden escorts were gone, Cassandra was gone. Maia was gone. Valeria was gone.

He stood within the barrier, alone.