Leonidas left Ceruviel’s mansion with a pace that seemed leisurely, but was a carefully crafted falsehood honed over hours of practice. It permitted him a rapid but discreet advance through the Peacock District toward the Terran areas of the Residential Quarter, and though it would fool most eyes, to anyone who understood the cadence of a [Duelist], his movement would be an alarm bell—but he had to take that risk, given his own lack of consideration had caused the entire situation. He kept his hands in his pockets out of habit and idly thumbed the [Spatial Storage Ring] on his right hand as he moved.

  Ceruviel had provided him with potions, but he hoped he wouldn’t need them.

  Dawnhaven’s streets remained vibrant with midday activity, and the city’s bustle offered Leonidas a sense of reassurance through its familiar routine as he merged with the flow of pedestrians. The few hawkers allowed in the Residential Quarter called out in both Haelfennyr and English, repeating their pitches in each language while individuals of various races gathered at cafes and eateries, both indoors and outdoors, reflecting the city’s amalgamating culture.

  The aroma of Alteran spices blended with the scents of Terran condiments in a surprisingly alluring way as he walked through, causing Leonidas’ mouth to water as he passed. He had to come back and try the damn food. That was a must. Maybe he’d bring John and Sonya with him as an apology. Not even Ceruviel could argue that it would probably be a great idea.

  The beauty of the Residential Quarter, even during midday, was how insanely eclectic the fashion was. Neo-Terran, Victorian Modern, Gothic Chic, Adventurer Chic—also known by Leonidas as MMO Clownsuit—and more fashion choices were rampant within the city.

  He barely caused a stir with his own fashion choices.

  He could have been anyone, at a glance—just another well-dressed fop out for a stroll—if not for the little pauses he kept taking to turn or cock his head, as though listening to distant music. The minds around him shimmered like haloed beacons in his perception, highlighting countless points of awareness, overlapping until they became a sea of variant colors.

  He dismissed his concern for anyone seeing him or thinking he might have been mad—truthfully, he probably was a little mental after Elatra—and instead turned his attention further inward, allowing his [Psionic Focus] to settle over him entirely. The sensation was familiar now: faint pressure behind his eyes, a tingle at the tip of his tongue as if he were tasting spatial awareness, and the quiet certainty that if he pushed even a fraction harder, he could move past the ephemeral barrier that locked him out of others’ minds.

  He just needed to find that one last step to take.

  Ceruviel had given him the broad strokes but refused to provide him with the minutiae.

  Learning it myself might make it more rewarding, but that doesn’t change the fact that it sucked ass.

  The route to Chevalier Lane took him across a series of smaller avenues where the Residential Quarter’s grandeur, close to the Peacock District, began to soften into something more domestic and modern. The buildings lost their ostentation, the shops became fewer and farther between, and the people walking the streets started to look less like they were on vacation, and more like survivors trying to remember when the world made sense.

  Leonidas’ eyes tracked possible ambush points, movement patterns, and random minutiae of the world around him without conscious input from his brain, the way he’d once tracked similar information in Elatra. To some degree, it annoyed him that he still defaulted to battlefield thinking, even when immersed within a city with clean streets and no demonic horde battering at its gates. He had left Elatra behind, and had worked to keep that part of himself in check—but he still found the scars of those five years coming to the fore at the oddest of times.

  It was enough to sour his mood to the point that he almost hoped for a fight.

  A Dawnguard patrol crossed the street ahead of him, and Leonidas felt his shoulders tense even before he consciously registered the blue adornments on their armor. They weren’t sprinting, which meant they weren’t responding to a specific alarm anywhere, but they were moving with a clear purpose that told him they were hunting for something—or more likely, someone.

  Leonidas kept his gaze on them in an expression of affected boredom, his posture casual as he drifted with the crowd through the laneways—all while hating down to his rumbling [Cataclysm Core] that he had to play at being disinterested at all. If it had been Elatra, he’d have charged in and started smashing skulls until he learned what he wanted. Instead, knowing he could not afford the possibility of facing multiple Adept and especially Contender rank cultivators, no matter his strength, he let them pass, counted their number, and noted the speed at which they marched.

  Ceruviel’s reminder about a bubble of power returned to his mind as he watched the Dawnguard patrol vanish, and with a grimace, he pulled a small thread of Psi and channeled it to create a thin, impermeable field of power anchored around himself. The effect of [Psionic Force] at low output was subtle, and Leonidas felt the immediate isolation it created around the space. More than that, it was efficient, and his Psi restoration easily kept up with both [Psionic Force] at low intensity and [Psionic Focus], by some miracle.

  Keeping it moving with him was far more difficult the denser it was, but as thin as he’d made it, it was manageable.

  I should have done it at the fountain, he thought to himself with self-castigating annoyance. I should have done it the moment John and Sonya started speaking.

  Now he was paying for that lapse with concern, and he hated knowing it was a valid concern.

  The Dawnguard were hunting, and he might have put those kids right in their sights.

  Leonidas turned down a narrower lane as the Residential Quarter’s more common signage began to appear in clean Haelfennyr and English both, and the street names shifted into a blend of Terran practicality married with Alteran traditionalism. Chevalier Lane was not too far from Ceruviel’s Mansion, just as his Mentor had said, but distance was a different beast when every second felt borrowed—or when time seemed to be flowing against you.

  Leonidas’ footsteps became quieter and more measured as he tapped into his enhanced Dexterity, his stride became longer with his enhanced Agility, and the world around him slid into focused assessment as he let himself settle into his Battle Meditation. If anyone with half a brain had heard the Alphas that John or Sonya had offered him, then the smart move wasn’t to wait for Ceruviel and Aylar—it was to secure both teens and make sure nothing happened until his backup arrived.

  When he finally saw the curve of Chevalier Lane ahead, the first thing that struck him was how eerily absent life was for the early afternoon. The lane was far too quiet for midday. It was the kind of quiet that didn’t feel peaceful, so much as strangled, like someone was holding the activity by its proverbial throat.

  Leonidas slowed without conscious thought, his eyes scanning doorways and windows as his Battle Meditation guided him, and his senses stretched outward in a careful net of probing awareness.

  It was only because of his [Psionic Focus] that he abruptly felt what he was after—a sharp, tremulous mind-glow flaring near the far end of the street, frantic and familiar. Alarm rippled through his meditative awareness, and Leonidas walked on with calm, casual purpose, looking around with all the innocuous indolence of a visiting friend or mildly unfamiliar neighbor as he traversed the length of the lane toward the caldersac at its end.

  Leonidas moved with a calm, casual gait—shoulders back, spine straight, and hands tucked into his pockets as if it were a typical day and he were an at-ease visitor. Meanwhile, his gaze darted to each domicile and home along the street with careful assessment, [Psionic Focus] resonating out enough to actually overtake his Psi recharge with how hard he was pushing it. He had plenty to burn, but he wasn’t sure how much he’d need in the minutes to come, so he kept a weather eye on his consumption.

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  Chevalier Lane curved gently to the left as he walked, lined with modest townhouses that wore their new-world sturdiness openly. Leonidas took in the details without appearing to do so. There were little signs of Terran stubbornness everywhere—potted plants that should not have survived the turbulent mana of even the fourth year of the Incursion, when it was allegedly more settled; a hand-painted number on a doorframe; a wind chime fashioned out of scavenged metal that still dared to sing in the breeze; a doggy-door for a pet that likely hadn’t survived the Incursion, but had a family or owner that was waiting for it just in-case.

  It was the sort of street that made him think of his childhood, of innocence and youth, and the sound of morning news in the kitchen while his mother corralled him and Kairi for school. The memory was so twisted and out of sync with the System’s new, enforced reality that it felt like a deliberate act of malicious mockery.

  Somewhere in those houses were people trying to pretend they weren’t living inside a post-apocalyptic maelstrom of a world, and for a moment, Leonidas hated them for their ignorance, their cowardice, and their refusal to accept reality.

  But only for a moment, and then he let it go when his Battle Meditation shook.

  Hate took too much from his focus, deep inside, and he needed all of it to stay alert—to keep Elatra at bay.

  We all have our madness, he self-recriminated mentally. They have their disassociation, and I have Elatra. God knows, I’d rather have their disconnect than mine.

  He found number 17 moments later as he walked, by the neat strip of blue paint along the doorframe and the cheap, cheerful lantern hanging from a hook near the porch. The curtains were drawn closed, but not tightly, and he could sense a mind-glow just behind the window—his eyes spying a shadow that vanished the instant his eyes settled.

  Leonidas did not look directly at the window again.

  Instead, he slowed just enough to seem like he was examining the construction method, or counting the houses out of idle curiosity and boredom. His [Psionic Force] barrier remained steady, his [Psionic Focus] intensified, and he let his mental awareness thread into number 17 without hesitation.

  The mind-glow he had sensed flared again, closer and more potent now, and it wasn’t a single mind, he realized, but two—one sharp, masculine, and grim with panic; the other softer, worried, and feminine.

  Leonidas’ jaw tightened, and he fought the urge to swear out loud. He had been a damned fool not to contain the conversation at the fountain, and now Ceruviel had all but spoken reality into being: someone was after Sonya, John, or both.

  Someone else could have heard those Alphas, could have connected the dots, and could have decided that a young woman with the potential to shape divine quests was a prize worth gunning for. Knowing what he did about noble Alteran obsession with genealogy as well…

  The thought made his [Cataclysm Core] hum again, eager for violent restitution, and Leonidas kept his hands in his pockets in white-knuckled fists to stop himself from doing something impulsive.

  A sound reached him abruptly, thanks to his tribulation-enhanced hearing and the focus of his Battle Meditation; muffled, quickly smothered, like someone had cut off a shout with a hand to the mouth. Leonidas’ entire body stilled, and he took in a slow, steadying breath. The street remained empty, with no dramatic bad guys soaring in with cloaks and mouths to dement or suck at his soul; no obvious guards with blades drawn; no goblins shrieking down the thoroughfare.

  The lack of anything was, aside from being a tension-raiser, also just weird.

  If someone had done this cleanly, they would have watchers, and watchers did not always stand on street corners, but for him not to detect anyone? Something was going on, and instinct told him to get the hell off the street. Leonidas breathed in once, slow and steady, and let his gaze soften and put a mild smile on his face as he pivoted slightly, taking in the houses opposite 17 without looking like he was taking in anything at all.

  There—a mind-glow that roiled with disciplined observation, situated in the house directly across the street from John’s own. One watcher was standing near the window of the opposite house. He marked the Haelfar mentally, and then turned and casually waltzed toward the front door of number 17, hands still in his pockets.

  As he closed the door, a more tightly controlled mind-glow hit his sensory net, and he fought and resisted the urge to sigh in annoyance. There was a Haelfar assassin waiting for him on the other side of the door. That was annoying. There were four human mind-glows near him as well, though Leonidas sensed terror in the latter four quite distinctly.

  Leonidas’ lips curved into a faint, humorless smile, because he finally had what he needed: confirmation that this was not ordinary fear, and that someone was calculating their moves to elicit its existence. The Haelfar behind the door would be an issue if he weren’t careful, but he was less worried about them than the Untempered civilians also inside the house.

  “Well,” he murmured to himself in English, voice low enough that even his own bubble seemed to swallow it, “that answers that.”

  Leonidas closed the distance to the door at number 17 as if he had every right to knock, and he let the movement be slow and visible, as an invitation to any potential assailants. It would be better for them to act now, he rationalized, where he could mitigate the collateral damage. If they were going to try to seize the children, they would probably tighten their grip the moment they realized an unknown element was present, and that was precisely what he wanted; better a panicked enemy now than a patient one later.

  No takers? Damn, I guess I’ll have to move first, then.

  Leonidas raised his fist, hovered it near the door, and then knocked three times loudly and deliberately, his [Psionic Focus] mapping the mind-glows inside against the edges of his perception. The sharper one—John—was furious beneath the fear, and the softer one—Sonya—felt like shaking hands. Two more glows were readily apparent: an older masculine one that seemed to be equal parts fearful and angry, with a protective streak to the rage, and an older feminine glow that seemed scared, but determined, with a similar protective texture to the thoughts.

  He had not detected them immediately, as sad as it was to admit, because they were just too weak and lacking in mental vitality.

  A fifth presence moved in the house, coiled in a way Leonidas had learned to recognize from Ceruviel; it was a mind that did not act impulsively but instead proceeded with caution—a more professional one. Something also seemed to be faintly distorting his psionic senses, though that could be any number of things, from training to [Aetherium] items available on the Store.

  He wasn’t as strong as Ceruviel by any measurement, and as such, was far easier to ‘fool’ when it came to psionics.

  If they were prepared for his strength, then they thought they were ready for him specifically.

  The thought made him want to laugh within his Battle Meditation.

  If they only knew.

  Leonidas’ mind rolled over possibilities as he realized Ceruviel’s arrival estimate might be optimistic. Potentially two hours was a long time, and whatever patience he had left was already beginning to bleed away.

  The door to number 17 opened abruptly as the older, masculine mind-glow approached, and a balding Terran man, one Leonidas guessed to be in his early forties, stepped out with forced calm, his eyes widening a fraction when he saw Leonidas standing before him, confusion evident on his features. He wore plain clothes in the form of a dark sweater, jeans, and Crocs—but his hands were too steady, his stance too ready, and Leonidas saw the faint stiffness of someone attempting to avoid shaking in the stolid stillness that the other human embodied.

  Behind the older man, just inside the entrance hall, a woman clutched a small kitchen cleaver with white-knuckled hands, her face pale and set in a determined glare. Leonidas felt the raw panic pouring off her in waves. The man tried to smile, but it came out brittle, and he seemed to try to move to hide Leonidas’ view into the house before realizing that the extreme height difference made it a losing proposition.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, voice tight. “We… we don’t want any trouble.”

  Leonidas’ eyes slid past him into the house, and he caught a glimpse of John in the hallway beyond, shoulders squared as if he were trying to become a wall. Sonya stood behind him, half-hidden, her eyes wide and luminous. Leonidas kept his expression mild, instead of speaking immediately, and instead gave the older man a warm smile.

  His right hand rose to his lips, where his forefinger pressed against them, and the man blinked at him in confusion.

  A moment later, Leonidas spoke in a soft voice.

  “No trouble from me,” Leonidas murmured gently. “But I think you already have some from others.”

  The man’s eyes widened, and he nodded just slightly.

  The windows of the house exploded outward at the same moment as Leonidas felt multiple mind-glows ignite in response to the nod—whatever had shielded them dissipating—and a grin flashed onto his lips as he let his [Cataclysm Core] roar to life in his dantian.

  "Get inside," he instructed. "Get behind something."

  The large man looked to the windows and the leather-adorned Haelfenn assuming combat stances, then back to Leonidas, and did as he was instructed without more than a "Good luck".

  Leonidas barely noticed as he felt his Cataclysm Mana roaring through his channels.

  Finally, he thought with bloodthirsty relish. I can let loose on some fuckers that really deserve it.

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