Leonidas stepped out of Ceruviel’s mansion the next morning with a satisfied smile on his face and inhaled the scent of blooming lilacs. Settling in John, Sonya, Elise, and Patrick had been a relatively painless affair. Once the family had been shown the amenities available in Ceruviel’s estate, they’d all but fallen over themselves thanking the Duchess for her benevolence, which had been exactly the right way to win Ceruviel’s indulgence. They had been settled in the western wing of the mansion, assigned several staff, a security detail of Latherian Knights, and had tutors arranged—to teach all of them—for both Haelfennyr and general social education.

  Ceruviel had impressed upon Patrick and Elise the importance of comprehending the world they now lived in, especially in relation to Haelfenn politics, and Elise had been swift to agree—especially knowing the power that social awareness could bestow. She had promised to ensure her husband and children took the education seriously, which had pleased Ceruviel greatly. She seemed to have taken a liking to the Terran woman’s quiet competence.

  John had officially been given several ‘tests’ to pass before Ceruviel would accept him as a Squire, including evolving his Ambition. While Leonidas could tell—with great amusement—that John had wanted him to be his teacher, he had reminded the disappointed teenager exactly how legendary Ceruviel was, and that they’d be ‘brother students’ by her hand. The idea of being able to say that the ‘legendary Achilles’ was his ‘Senior Brother’ in the nomenclature of Cultivation seemed to make the young Knight more than agreeable.

  And so Leonidas found himself, after a long night of helping the Matthersons and Sonya feel welcome and comfortable, leaving Ceruviel’s estate with only two sleeps left before he was due to depart for Aylar’s Rite of Ascension and his first Dungeon Delve. To say he was excited would have been a mild dishonesty, but interested was certainly apt.

  He pondered that while he stepped out of the gates—returning the salutes of respect from the Dagger of Duskguard on security detail—and wandered down the private street Ceruviel’s mansion resided upon. Tarnys would have normally come with him to lead the security team Ceruviel had assigned to him, but Leonidas had deferred the option, with the logic that no one stupid enough to attack him was going to be strong enough to succeed.

  Ceruviel had called him an idiot, of course, but he’d been stubborn.

  She’d relented, but had said if she didn’t hear from him in three hours, she’d find him herself—which meant she’d miss out on her nap, and he knew that would mean he’d get hit. Again. Thankfully, his [Psionic Focus] meant he could navigate relatively quickly through the city, while avoiding anyone that might give him actual trouble.

  The good news was that Leonidas knew his destination already: he was bound for the Adventurers’ Guild to check in on things and ensure he was fully prepared for what was to come. It also meant he could have a message sent to her from the guild, ameliorating her need to hunt him down in a sleep-deprived rage.

  As a bonus and a reward for finding both a future Archon and Saintess, Ceruviel had awarded him a stipend of 200 Aetherium for his use, which was fantastic, though it did leave him spoiled for choice. It seemed a waste to just spend it on potions, and he hardly needed a Weapon or Armor. He planned to speak to Sinalthria and see if they had anything either for sale or worth recommending from the store.

  Either way, he’d have plenty of time to dwell on it.

  His journey from Ceruviel’s mansion to the Adventurers’ Guild took him through the meat of the Peacock District and the greater breadth of the Residential Quarter, where he was able to observe the various peoples of Dawnhaven going about their lives. The population of Dawnhaven was, at best estimates from Ceruviel, somewhere around one hundred and thirty thousand souls—a majority of them Terrans, either native survivors or refugees who had fled to the city in the four years since the Incursion.

  Of that number, just under 10,000 served in some formal military capacity. The Royal Army comprised the bulk of that force, numbering roughly 6,800 soldiers, supported by the elite Dawnguard and Duskguard—each a little over a 1,000 strong—and the Royal Guard, whose 300–odd members were drawn from only the most exceptional cultivators of the colony’s Haelfenn populace.

  At first glance, the Royal Army’s structure had been baffling until Leonidas realized the underlying logic was pure Altera-Elatra in synchronicity. Everything was built from tens, but commanded in fours. Strange, but consistent. Ten soldiers formed a Dagger. Four Daggers made a Lance. Four Lances a Cohort. Four Cohorts a Banner. And four Banners, finally, formed a Legion.

  Once he’d grasped that, the rest fell neatly into place—far more elegant than the terminology suggested, though still not the sort of system a Terran commander would have devised. It left an overlap of 900 for officers, logistics personnel, medics, artificers, and other support roles and staff that such a large force required. While it was a pinprick compared to the militaries that had once dominated pre-Incursion Earth, the joker in the deck was cultivation.

  A Legion of 2,560 soldiers seemed like a pittance when compared to the usual Battalion or Division sizes of the Army of the former United States. When the average ability of each of those 2,560 soldiers allowed them to shrug off bullets, however, and punch a regular person’s chest concave; the numbers started mattering a hell of a lot less.

  “Rome would’ve kicked the barbarians back to the Stone Age with cultivators,” Leonidas mused as he crossed through the border of the Residential Quarter and Prosperity Quarter, and glanced up at the nearby shape of the Dawnhaven Arena. Memories percolated when he did, and he could almost imagine the dark stain of Tribulation storm clouds roiling above its circular top.

  Hopefully, never again in such a public space, he thought, realizing that another Tribulation was inevitable, and that all he could control was the location.

  Preferably somewhere with minimal chance for collateral damage.

  Recognition became somewhat more common as he passed the immediate Arena surrounds, and more than a few calls of “Hail Achilles!” or “Forward the Black Knight!” chased him through the crowds, drawing out conciliatory waves of his hand and wry smiles as he was taken note of. The saturation of people made it more bearable, given he could partially vanish into the crowd, but his larger-than-Terran-average height and lack of obfuscation—he hated wearing a hooded robe outside of winter, thanks to Elatran Summers—meant he stood out like a sore thumb.

  “Good morning, Earl Latherian,” half a Dagger of Royal Army soldiers greeted him as he passed, and drew a nod from Leonidas in return. He’d known that his reputation had spread to the Army rapidly following his defeat of the Hydra, but he’d never had a chance to really investigate what that looked like. If the positive looks he received from the six soldiers were anything to go by, though, it was probably quite beneficial. The Army had far less reason to care about the Thronehold’s succession politics. It was almost entirely outwardly-focused, while leaving internal matters and the immediate security of the city to the Dawnguard and Duskguard.

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  The Royal Army was a hammer, not a blade.

  It was only deployed when something needed to be pulverized.

  When he left the Arena region and pushed deeper into the Prosperity Quarter, the sounds of hawkers and the calls for patronage from various businesses became a regular chorus of noise within the area, and even the wide and spacious thoroughfares—through which more than a few carriages rolled—could not fully ameliorate the determined shouts of entrepreneurs.

  The people of Earth, it turned out, were highly adaptable merchants.

  Many of the shops, stalls, and eateries were owned and operated by Terrans—either people that had owned the business before the Thronehold took over the area and reshaped it, or people that had opened businesses with the Crown’s money, during the first two years of aggressive attempts to coerce the native people into using System-based currencies like Copper, Silver, Gold, Electrum, and Platinum. It had worked well, but only because the culture of the United States had always been mercantile and capitalistic—so much so that the Alterans had not been quite ready for how competent Terrans were.

  There was a reason the Merchant Council in Dawnhaven was primarily and almost entirely comprised of Terrans, where every other form of governance was almost entirely Haelfenn.

  His eyes danced across a pair of patrolling Dawnguard in resplendent plate, and he noted the small blue additions to their armor with a roll of the eyes. Everywhere he looked, the pendulum seemed to be swinging more and more towards Braedon’s perceived inevitable victory in the succession contest—all because the idiot had bitten onto Ceruviel’s lure hook, line, and sinker.

  Leonidas was one of the only people aware that his Mentor had baited the younger of the two Royals into a mad dash out of Dawnhaven toward a supposed Rite of Ascension dungeon, which in reality was little more than a slightly-above-average Delve. It would waste weeks of time, enough so that Aylar could enter the real Dungeon—courtesy of the Guild’s discretion in keeping it secret—and claim the title of Queen-Potentiate before Braedon knew what was happening.

  The thought was reassuring, the natural follow-through was less so.

  I can probably take Braedon down, but if I do, Aylar and I…

  Leonidas grimaced and pushed on through the crowd toward the now-visible shape of the distant, marbled Adventurers’ Guild building, while his eyes idly scanned the area around him. Was he really prepared to marry Aylar? He was only twenty-five, and she was around the same age, as far as he knew. Cultivation meant their lifespans would be of little consequence, especially with him on the Path of Divinity—but there were other factors, as well.

  Like an heir. Children. A Family.

  The thought made his cheeks flush, and he idly reached up to tug his collar.

  It wasn’t as if he didn’t find Aylar attractive. What man wouldn’t want her? She was tall, toned, curvaceous by Haelfar standards, and had a pair of eyes someone could drown in. She cared about her people, Haelfenn and Nyrfenn both, and she was warm—genuinely warm, in a way few people he’d ever met were. Aylar was kind, she was duty-bound, she cared, and she was outrageously beautiful.

  But he didn’t love her, and that was the biggest impediment to it all.

  Because he had already loved a woman who looked so much like her.

  Because he was relatively sure Aylar didn’t love him either.

  Thoughts of Lyara danced through his mind, and Leonidas locked his jaw, pausing to clear the memories with stubborn Willpower and the application of his enhanced Intelligence, recalling the logical truth that while Elatra had happened, while Lyara, Caricus, Bjorn, Miranda, and everyone else he’d met had been real, it hadn’t been reality. They were people, but the world was false, and that meant—hell, he didn’t even really know what that meant.

  It meant he was still fucking confused, is what it meant.

  A sudden bump into his shoulder broke Leonidas’ focus, and his reactive tension ramped immediately, resulting in him reaching out to snatch the offending individual by the throat and hoist them off the ground before he realized what he was doing. His left hand, instinctively, had withdrawn to his hip—and a [Psikinetic Blade] had manifested in his grip, ready to drive into the interloper’s jugular.

  It took him a moment to realize he’d picked up a dark-skinned Haelfar Adventurer.

  Why didn’t I sense them with [Psionic Focus]...?

  It took him a moment longer to realize someone was urgently shouting his name.

  Leonidas turned to see Bardulf of all people waving his arms desperately while running toward him, shouting his name, and then turned back to the Adventurer—a relatively thin, tall individual with ashen skin, petite breasts, and a pair of lambent orange eyes. She, he realized belatedly, was eyeing him while gripping his wrist as her face steadily purpled from a lack of air.

  Leonidas released her hastily, and the not-quite-Haelfar dropped with a strangled gasp of air, waving off aid from nearby people as she glared up at him.

  “{What is your problem?}” she demanded, her voice a rasp.

  “{I apologize,}” Leonidas said distractedly, and stuffed his hands into his pockets, as much for comfort as to hide the fact they’d started to shake. “{I was distracted. Foul memories. Forgive me for the insult I caused.}”

  The ashen-skinned Haelfar stared at him for a long moment, and then seemed to decide something and slowly nodded. “{This time, I shall.}”

  “{Thank you,}” Leonidas murmured, and turned to see Bardulf waving at him with a grin now, instead of panic. “{I would stick around, but I think I am needed. Pardon me, and my apologies again.}”

  His would-be victim’s lumescent eyes shifted from Leonidas to Bardulf, and she cracked a smile that seemed almost brittle.

  “{I understand. Fare thee well, Terran.}”

  Leonidas nodded at her as she departed and turned to face Bardulf fully when the half-lycanus Shadowblade finally reached him.

  “ACHILLES!” the other man said jovially. “I knew I smelled you! I thought you were going to break that Svartfar in half!”

  “Svartfar?” Leonidas asked with a return to form, as Bardulf’s infectious happiness seeped past his broody mental walls. “Dark Elf?”

  “Yes! Dark Elf! Aha, I learn something new in this English. Yes indeed! Svartfar. Yes. Terribly mysterious sort, those ones. Hard to smell. Harder to read. We see the occasional loner wander in now and then to seek work, and they are known to be friendly to the Guild across the Nexus. Very talented assassins and shock troops, the Svartfenn. Ah, the Dark Elves.”

  “Here I thought I’d seen everything…” Leonidas muttered and turned his attention fully toward Bardulf. “But, it’s been too long! I haven’t seen you since that day after my Tribulation, and I barely remember any of that night. How are you? How’s your dad?”

  “Ha! He is well, as am I. Come, come! The Guild Mistress will no doubt wish to see you, and so will Synthra. We are to set off soon, yes? A glorious undertaking!”

  “Jeeze, Bardulf, don’t scream it for the world to hear,” Leonidas said warily.

  The Shadowblade just laughed enthusiastically and wrapped an arm around Leonidas’ neck, happily discussing the fantastic meal he’d had for breakfast, and immediately enquiring about reports of Leonidas facing down a complete Dagger of the Dawnguard. Between the questions, the enthusiastic welcome, the good company, and the man’s general Bardulfness, Leonidas could almost forget the oddity of his prior encounter.

  But why? He asked himself as he glanced back with a frown. Why couldn’t I sense her mind-glow?

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