Saturday, July 30, 4 S.E.

  Leonidas walked alongside his companions in satisfied silence, hands in his pockets, and the vast array of supplies in his [Spatial Backpack] barely touched. Despite their expectations, they’d barely needed the plethora of foodstuffs and other paraphernalia they’d brought with them collectively for the Rite of Ascension, and now they returned with them to Dawnhaven simply out of a lack of desire to be wasteful.

  The Party, barring Leonidas, had redeemed their [Platinum Chest]s with great enjoyment. Synthra had received a [Skill Tome] she’d been unable to make use of until Elite, though she’d been ecstatic regardless, and Aylar had found a massive amount of Experience and Platinum Coins in hers, pushing her up two levels almost immediately. Bardulf had earned a new, powerful pair of shortswords, and Parnym had received a ring which drastically increased the potency of his Healing in short bursts.

  Leonidas himself had deferred his chest, worried—especially after Aylar had redeemed her own—that he would accidentally trigger his Tribulation then and there. He’d been glad to see his companions enjoy their rewards, but there was no rush for him. He had more important things to do, first.

  Bardulf and Parnym strode to the left of him, discussing what sounded like longships as the Shadowblade excitedly told the Mender about his plans to be a Viking, and Parnym kept looking at him with a mix of curiosity and what appeared to be a genuine worry for his sanity.

  Synthra, meanwhile, walked with Aylar slightly ahead—arm-in-arm with the Queen-Potentiate as they exchanged whispered discourse that Leonidas couldn’t make out without overtly closing the distance to eavesdrop. Judging from the occasional glances the women threw back at him, paired with Synthra’s intense focus on Aylar, he could reasonably guess what it was they were discussing.

  Hell, not like I even care. This day couldn’t get better.

  They’d left the [Rite of Ascension] Dungeon shortly after Aylar, the last to undergo her Tempering after himself, had completed her transition to Adept—at which point Bardulf had boisterously congratulated him on taking the next step in their relationship. Mortified, Leonidas had turned toward Synthra immediately, only to see the Sorceress hugging Aylar so tightly that the new Queen had been doing a mix between patting her back and begging to be permitted to breathe.

  As opposed to upset, as he’d feared, Synthra had been ecstatic—both outwardly and through the shine of her mind-glow, and Leonidas had finally come to the conclusion that he did not understand women at all.

  Since then, and their departure from the Dungeon—which had promptly sealed itself behind them like it had never existed—the women had been glued together like velcro straps, while Parnym and Bardulf had wrangled as much information out of Leonidas as possible before finally relenting and leaving him to his own thoughts.

  Thoughts that, primarily, centered on Aylar and what it all meant for his future.

  He still hadn’t proposed to the new Queen officially, and he knew why: it was a step that required more than an impetuous declaration of loyalty, and one that he needed to consider carefully. The visions of the arches had given him, given all of them, more than enough insight to understand what awaited in the future if decisions were made without consideration—a mistake that Leonidas had no intention of repeating.

  He needed to consider every facet of what they were to do moving forward, and what he was to do, specifically. Dawnhaven had some critical inequities that Leonidas, Aylar, and the rest of them now knew were irreconcilable—but how to fix them was not something he yet had the answer to, only the vaguest and most faintly outlined idea. He needed more time to think.

  The added benefit of having four Adepts in their Party now, as opposed to none, was the fact that few of the local manabeasts had any desire to tangle with them. Contenders or Elites from deeper within the forest might have, but they’d studiously avoided those known areas. The few lower-rank manabeasts that had tried to attack them had been killed so quickly that the rest had thought better of the attempt, and their trek from the Dungeon back toward Dawnhaven had been relatively uninterrupted.

  It was that very peace of mind, in fact, which had allowed Leonidas to take stock of his updated [Profile].

  With his [Defier of Heaven] title, the seven levels he’d gained from both the preparatory hunts and the Rite of Ascension rewards themselves had resulted in a net increase of seven points to his Willpower Attribute, raising it to 60. He’d also invested the fourteen extra points he’d gained as a result of his increase to raise his Strength to 39, his Charisma to 26, and his Intelligence to 30—adhering to Ceruviel’s plan for his development.

  By the time he reached Adept and undertook his next Tempering, he’d have enough points with the remaining two levels to bring his Charisma to a satisfyingly rounded 30 as well.

  The passive 25% increase to his Attributes from his Initiate rank’s hidden amplification meant that, as it currently stood, Leonidas was actually the strongest among his companions, even if only by a small margin, when factoring in [Title]s and [Trait]s—a fact that all of his companions had been good-naturedly exasperated to realize, even when accounting for the new 50% increase they gained from their own Adept rank amplifiers.

  It still slightly confused him why the System didn’t actively show the passive increases gained with each subsequent rank of Tempering, but he supposed it would probably skew the numbers. The difference was felt, after all, in every way that mattered—so the lack of quantified numerological absolutes didn’t leave the same sting it probably should have.

  Of course, number-go-up still remained a beloved element of his, even years since he’d last read a LitRPG Progression Fantasy Novel.

  I wonder if Reclaimer ever got finished…

  Realizing he’d never be able to peruse the internet for WebNovels again very nearly killed a small, nerdy part of him, but he took a breath and shook his head.

  Maybe Kairi still has my He Who Fights With Monsters or Unbound physicals…

  What he wouldn’t do to have Jason Asano or Felix with him right then.

  A moment later, realizing they’d probably just argue over whether Australia or Florida was more dangerous in a System Apocalypse, he shook his head.

  Sometimes fiction was best left to fiction.

  His eyes refocused on the present moment a second later when the forest began to noticeably thin as they advanced on the borders of the farm-heavy heartland around Dawnhaven, and his enhanced [Psionic Focus] picked up a ripple of anxiety from Aylar and Synthra ahead of him. Leonidas’ head turned left, and he whistled to Bardulf and Parnym, who snapped their heads to him and then followed his gaze when he jerked his chin toward the girls.

  A pair of nods met his gesture, and the pair took off at a jog, joined a moment later by Leonidas as the three of them collapsed toward the leading pair and reformed their party with swift discipline. Their time in the wilds had drilled the instinctive response into all of them, and Leonidas was pleased to see that the discipline hadn’t eroded simply because of the trials, no matter how much they lingered in their collective subconscious.

  When he found his place among his friends, the Archon stepped forward wordlessly, glancing at Aylar and Synthra and then out through the trees toward whatever had given them their anxious spikes.

  It didn’t take him long to understand.

  A full Lance of the Dawnguard stood waiting for them, each and every single one adorned in blue ribbons and cloaks, facing the forest in a posture that very much did not engender a belief of friendly reception. Leonidas’ eyes narrowed at the sight, and he glanced back to his companions.

  “This is a problem,” he said flatly, looking across them all.

  “You can say that again…” Bardulf muttered, using the phrase Leonidas had taught him. “How did they know where to find us?”

  “It’s the most direct route from the forest,” Parnym answered immediately, tightening his grip on his staff. “The Duskguard patrol here, too, during the Dusk Watch. I wonder how long they’ve been waiting here? A full Lance like this would be noticed if it went missing—unless they altered the patrol roster.”

  Leonidas wondered the same as they surveyed the awaiting Haelfenn, but it was Aylar who spoke next.

  “This is Braedon’s work,” the Queen-Potentiate said quietly. “We have the right to authorize these sorts of deployments and modify the patrol routes, as part of our duties as potential Monarchs. I assume he’s picked the loyalists he could find and dispatched them here to either capture us or delay my return. He may be trying to consolidate power before I re-enter the city.”

  “We never should have wasted that week hunting…” Synthra muttered, folding her arms under her bust and glowering. “We may have been able to avoid this if we hadn’t.”

  “We didn’t know what we’d face in the Dungeon,” Aylar said with a shake of her head. “The hunt was the right choice. We may have needed those levels, every [Rite of Ascension] is different. There was no way to know we wouldn’t be knee-deep in combat. Hindsight is advantageous, but we cannot doubt our choices now. We have to think of a way past this.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Bardulf asked when she finished. “I could try to slip past and get help from the Duchess or the Guild…”

  “That’s probably our best option, but I highly doubt they haven’t noticed—yep,” Leonidas said, watching a golden-edged, silver-armored form peel away from the formation at full sprint. “That’ll be a runner for your asshole brother, Aylar.”

  Synthra cursed under her breath, and Leonidas narrowed his eyes.

  “You know, if I could trigger my Tribulation, it’d probably handle this—”

  “No, you’d be too vulnerable,” Aylar overruled immediately with a sigh of frustration. “Damn it. We’re so close!”

  “There has to be a way to get Aylar past them,” Parnym muttered, his usual awe-stricken deference to the Queen-Potentiate’s titles forgotten in the midst of the emergency. “We didn’t do all those trials just to be stymied here by a bunch of Dawnguard wankers.”

  Leonidas and his companions glanced at the Mender in surprise at his words, and after a moment, Parnym flushed.

  “I read it in a book,” he muttered, earning a quiet, tense round of laughter from them.

  “Well, you’re not wrong, Parnym,” Leonidas said grimly, and clapped the Duskguard Mender gently on the shoulder. “So how the hell do we solve this puzzle?”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “We need something to force them to stand down,” Aylar murmured with quiet certainty. “Something they can’t refute, even in the face of my brother’s orders.”

  “We can’t use your new status,” Synthra muttered, “that’ll just incense them. They’ll see their golden ticket eroding before their eyes.”

  “Were they less in number, I would suggest simply using Achilles, but…”

  Leonidas glanced at Bardulf in amusement and shook his head.

  “No, Aylar’s right. We need something they can’t say no—”

  Leonidas’ eyes widened, and his upgraded Intelligence paid dividends.

  “Uriel’s token!” he said with quiet self-recriminating remembrance. “I still have it!”

  All four of his companions turned to him when he spoke, and Leonidas withdrew the House Aventus token from his [Spatial Storage Ring], looking down at it and then up at his friends. A wave of relief spread through them, and crucially, Aylar nodded in agreement. “That will work,” the Queen-Potentiate said with agreement. “Assuming we have enough time to make use of it.”

  “As for that,” Leonidas said immediately, and began summoning his warplate and sword, “give me five minutes.”

  Questions danced between his companions’ eyes until his armor appeared, and then their expressions shifted to smirks.

  This is going to be fun, Leonidas thought to himself with a hidden grin.

  A little over five minutes later, they put their extremely loose plan into action.

  Leonidas led the way out of the forest with Aylar and Synthra in tow, while Bardulf and Parnym diverted—doubling back into the woods to enact the contingency Aylar herself had commanded.

  The Dawnguard Lance tightened formation when they approached, and Leonidas knew why immediately.

  He was cycling.

  Thunder roared overhead as Psi and Cataclysm Mana swirled around him in a storm, externally expressed to his greatest ability as he rotated both energies through his channels and brought the full aesthetic force of his power to bear—enough to, even if for a moment, give the Dawnguard pause; long enough, hopefully, for them to be forced to see reason.

  The trio advanced until they were ten meters shy of the forward-most member of the Lance, whom Leonidas recognized as the Lance-Master themself: a tall, noble-featured Haelfar woman with the marks of rank on her gilded warplate. None of the Dawnguard had their weapons drawn, but their hands were poised at their hilts, and he could see the ripples of wariness flooding their mind-glows.

  The legend of the Archons is a weapon all on its own.

  Ceruviel’s words came back to him in the moment, and he chuckled quietly under his helmet. How right his Mentor had been.

  “{Halt!}” the Lance-Master commanded, her voice tense as she appraised the three of them with hard, bright green eyes.

  Leonidas came to a slow, languid halt as Aylar and Synthra stepped up to his flanks, playing the part of looking both unamused and annoyed in equal measure. Forward expression was key, and the trio had to demonstrate more confidence than was reasonable—they had to force the pause in the Dawnguard’s sense of certainty.

  “{By whose authority do you intercede with our path, Lance-Master?}” Leonidas demanded, his voice filled with all the reverb and menace his Mana and Psi could create. By mutual agreement, he would be doing the talking. Aylar had yet to sit the throne, and acting as the Princess-Royal would only weaken her position later, even if only slightly. They had to rely on Leonidas’ status for this part.

  “{I am Lance-Master Verity Durandal, here under orders of the rightful King, Braedon Eldormer, to remand the renegade Princess-Royal and the rest of her conspirators into custody, pending investigation on charges of treason against House Eldormer and the nascent Kingdom of Dawnhaven.}”

  Leonidas’ eyebrows rose in surprise under his helmet, and he momentarily felt himself oddly impressed by her statement. That was a truly bold assertion, and more than that, it showed desperation on Braedon’s part. They’d never be able to hold Aylar long enough for a real investigation—not unless they never expected it to get that far.

  Of course, he thought with cold anger, Braedon doesn’t intend her to live long enough for it to matter.

  So, it had come that far already.

  “{By what evidence do you purport to charge a member of the Royal Line with treason, Lance-Master?}” Leonidas demanded out loud instead, while revving his [Cataclysm Core] and producing another crackle of punctuating thunder in the clear skies above.

  “{The evidence will be presented upon Aylar Eldormer’s lawful arrest, Terran,}” the Lance-Master said in a voice that was remarkably steady, despite her almost involuntary eye-flicker toward the heavens and back. “{This is not a matter you—}”

  Leonidas growled midway through her words, and he let his aura speak for him, crackling and snapping with scarlet lances of lightning and violet sparks of psionic power.

  “{You are speaking to an Earl, Lance-Master, and of the Princess-Royal of Dawnhaven,}” he reminded her in a coldly imperious tone. Confidence was everything. “{I had thought better of the Dawnguard than to forget proper protocol simply because of a desire to bootlick.}”

  Verity compressed her lips into a line at his words, and the Dawnguard behind her shifted in a mix of anger and, based on his read of their mind-glows, culturally ingrained embarrassment. Sycophants they might have been, traditionalists to a one as well, but that came with the double-edged sword of caring about those traditions. They couldn’t very well denounce what he said without betraying their own beliefs.

  “{Be that as it may… Earl Latherian,}” Verity continued in a tighter voice, “{this order comes from the highest authority, and so I must insist you lay down your arms and—}”

  “{No,}” Leonidas declared flatly, slamming his blade into the grass before him and resting his hands on its pommel imperiously. At his side, Aylar and Synthra played their parts perfectly, adopting mirrored looks of haughty disapproval.

  “{...there is a Lance of us, Archon,}” Verity said after a moment, her eyes flicking to his Psiblade and then back to his helmet. “{You cannot fight all of us, not even with all the tricks at your disposal.}”

  “{I have no intention of fighting you, Lance-Master,}” Leonidas said honestly, his voice dripping with scathing indictment of the idea. Truthfully, with [Cataclysm Overdrive], he probably could defeat them all—but that would trigger his Tribulation, and that would be potentially lethal for everyone involved, including his companions.

  The Lance-Master’s expression flickered with surprise, and her mind-glow rippled with caution.

  “{I am glad you see reason,}” Verity said a moment later. “{We will proceed with the arrest and—}”

  “{I said I would not fight you, Lance-Master. I did not say I would permit this farce to proceed,}” Leonidas cut in again, and earned another ripple of frustration mingled with an echo of uncertainty from the Haelfenn formation.

  At that point, they were being held back from a violent escalation purely by ceremony and tradition alone, as well as the mild disbelief of what it was they were actually doing, which they knew as well as Leonidas, Synthra, and Aylar did: soft-staging a coup.

  “{You have already admitted the futility of fighting us, Archon. What possible chance do you have of stopping us?}” Verity demanded, the mask of ordained authority slipping as her frustration leaked through.

  It wasn’t Leonidas himself they feared. He knew that. It was what Ceruviel would do to them if they harmed him. That would only matter if Aylar was alive long enough for Braedon to remain uncontested, of course—a problem they likely expected to rectify swiftly. Once the new King ascended, the Duchess would be defanged. At least, that was probably the theory he’d have in their shoes.

  Instead of answering directly, however, Leonidas lifted his left hand and conjured [Psionic Force] to lift the House Aventus sigil badge above him and forward, floating amidst another peal of dramatic thunder so the Dawnguard could look upon it. He said nothing immediately, instead allowing them to recognize it for what it was—signalled almost the second it happened by the wave of shock across their collective mind-glows.

  “{That is…!}”

  “{We march unimpeded under the auspices of Dawn-Lord Uriel Aventus, the Duke of Morning, Arbiter of Law, and Regent-Paramount of Dawnhaven,}” Leonidas said as his eye-lenses flared with focused mana in a flash of crimson punctuation. “{Do you deny the validity of this seal, Lance-Master Durandal? Will you defy the embodied will of your own true Lord and Master?}”

  Silence met his words as the weight of the challenge blanketed the Dawnguard, and Leonidas’ [Psionic Focus] revealed far more than the helmed faces revealed by themselves: doubt, uncertainty, reassessment, caution, fear. Ceruviel was one thing—they could, theoretically, handle that because of Uriel, if Braedon was made the lawful singular inheritor. But if Leonidas were walking under Uriel’s aegis, that changed the dynamic completely.

  The entire situation was reframed politically.

  It implied Uriel had known of and sanctioned Aylar’s excursion.

  It also implied he was expecting their return imminently.

  Leonidas focused on the moment when the doubts and worries hit critical mass, then used his insights to finally move toward the killing stroke.

  “{This does not need to go further than this, Verity,}” he said with a more personalized address, focusing on the Lance-Master intently. “{You have acted at the behest of a desperate Prince, aware of his own failing fortunes, and seeking to weaponize the honor and loyalty of Dawnhaven’s defenders for his own selfish need to escape his sinking ship. The Dawnguard need not be sucked into the distortion of his collapse.}”

  Leonidas took a step forward, and the token remained steady as another rumble of thunder echoed above to underscore his words.

  “{Stand aside, Lance-Master. Stand aside, sons and daughters of Dawnhaven. This fight is already lost—there is no sense in you falling upon your blades for a selfish fool. You are, all of you, better than such subversive, underhanded attempts on behalf of a man who has already alienated both Regents.}”

  The moment hung on a knife-edge when he spoke, and Leonidas watched the Dawnguard carefully, tracking their mind-glows as his words rolled across them, and he saw uncertainty and conflict rippling through them. Uriel’s sigil had, as he’d hoped, turned their thoughts on their heads. The Dawn-Lord was the symbol of Alteran perfection to them. To attack a group under his aegis was cultural heresy.

  The tension was on a knife’s edge, like a spinning coin ready to fall on one face or the other. He waited, watching, and let his words do their work.

  Then, abruptly, the shoe dropped. Someone cried out, “{Liar!}” in outrage.

  The Dawnguard’s ranks rippled in shock.

  Two of the Dagger-Masters broke ranks, charging toward Leonidas.

  And with a shocking turn, Verity took them down with a violence of action that momentarily stunned him.

  The Lance-Master moved like a bolt of lightning, slamming the first man down with a kick that echoed with steel-on-steel, and smashing the second woman to the ground with a pivoting punch a moment later, her fist aglow with power as she smashed her into the earth and then stared down at them both, her eyes faintly widened by disbelief in her own decisive actions.

  The Dawnguard stilled at the scene, and Leonidas heeded his instincts, remaining silent as Verity slowly turned to look at him, Synthra, and finally Aylar.

  “{...I have served Uriel Aventus for a century,}” Verity said finally, her voice low, tense with self-doubt, but notably lacking in hostility. “{Braedon offered us a path toward preserving Altera in this new world, but perhaps that dream died the day we stepped through the portal and found ourselves elsewhere.}”

  The Lance-Master straightened as she spoke, and her eyes glimmered with tears, not out of sadness, but out of acceptance—out of epiphanous realization that broke apart an illusion she’d desperately held onto for far too long. He could read it on her mind-glow; a resignation toward inevitability that killed some deeply held hope within her.

  “{I will not fight the rivers of fate any longer,}” she declared in a voice that carried self-assured release, and after a moment, lowered herself to a knee while facing Aylar. When she did, the Dawnguard hesitated for only a moment before following her example: dropping to the grass in a wave of clanking warplate.

  “{I will not betray everything that I swore to uphold,}” Verity said raggedly. “{Not like this. Not for this. Forgive me for my actions, Your Royal Highness. Forgive my Lance. We were blinded, consumed by a desperation to remember past glories now lost… and I am sorry for our overzealous lack of reason. The Dawn-Lord trained us to be better than this.}”

  Leonidas glanced at Aylar, and the Queen-Potentiate stepped forward, step after step, until she stood before Verity—staring down at her in consideration.

  A moment passed, and then Aylar bent, taking the woman’s hands and bringing her to her feet.

  “{This new world challenges us all, Verity Durandal,}” Aylar said finally, while still looking down into the shorter woman’s eyes. Leonidas sometimes forgot that Aylar stood taller than almost every other Haelfar woman, only beat out by Synthra’s draconic lineage. “{By your own actions, you have shown your honor. If you seek forgiveness, I ask you only this: will you ensure our safe passage into Dawnhaven? I would be most relieved for the presence of such loyal patriots as I make my final march as Princess, after completing my [Rite of Ascension].}”

  Leonidas tense at her words, and then finally relaxed, a moment later, when he saw the answer in their mind-glows before Verity ever spoke—a mix of awe, certainty, and horrified realization at what they were actually recruited to do. When that realization morphed into anger, with none of it directed at Aylar, he knew the outcome before Verity finally spoke.

  “{Yes… Your Majesty,}” the Lance-Master said with relief shining in her eyes, and a smile that told Leonidas Aylar had won her irrevocable loyalty. “{It would be the honor of our lives.}”

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