Chapter 1054: The Void

“Leon! My friend! It’s been too long! Too long!” Ambrose sprang from his chair the moment Leon entered the room where he’d been waiting and rushed over, pulling a surprised Leon into a brotherly hug.

“Ah, Ambrose,” Leon murmured awkwardly. It had been fifty years—more than half his lifetime—since the last time he’d seen the man, and he wasn’t familiar enough with the man for such an embrace.

Ambrose, however, ignored his discomfort for a few seconds longer. “How have you been, Leon? I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve achieved Apotheosis! And so soon! So soon!”

Finally, the aged immortal released Leon, and the Thunder King was relieved to see that the door had fully closed behind him, preventing anyone else from witnessing that exchange.

“I have. You say ‘soon’, but I say ‘finally’.”

Ambrose held up a finger and clicked his tongue in disagreement. “Fifty years is nothing to you, now, young man. When you get to be my age, that amount of time can pass in the blink of an eye! A blink of an eye!”

“I’m not that old, yet.”

“Yet. Yet. But let’s set all of that aside for now! How have you been doing over these short decades?”

Leon bitterly grinned at how flippantly Ambrose referred to the passage of time. Those fifty years had been a long time for him, and though he’d not gone out on any world-changing or life-defining adventures in those years, they had still been important years.Finnd new chapters at novelhall.com

But he schooled his expression and answered as pleasantly as he could. “Quite well, Ambrose. I have ruled a prosperous Kingdom, I am surrounded by my family and friends, and I have achieved that which I have been looking forward to for so long.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful! All ought to be jealous of such a life! But... where you plan on going, there are many others just like you, aren’t there?”

Leon’s eyes narrowed as a sly smile wound its way to his face. “And where would I be going, exactly, Ambrose?”

“The Nexus! The Nexus! Don’t play with me now, Leon, not when I have awaited your visit in vain! Why haven’t you used that twig, might I ask?”

“It was never the right time. It’s a one-use item, so I should be damned ready for the Nexus when I use it.”

“Nonsense! Nonsense! If you ever need more, I shall give you more! You are always welcome in my Tower! Always welcome!”

“You’re too generous.”

“I believe I have not been generous enough, actually! Not generous enough!” An excited grin made its way onto Ambrose’s face. “Tell me, Leon... Tell me, have you tried to fly beyond the boundary of Aeterna, yet? Now that you’ve acquired origin power, you are capable of flying out into the Void unencumbered...”

“Funny you should ask that because I have... not. I’ve never even tried flying to the boundary.”

“What a shame, what a shame! Come! Fly with me!”

Without waiting for a response, Ambrose snapped his fingers and the wall opened into an adjacent hallway. A second finger snap had the wall of the hallway open onto a courtyard.

Leon could only stare in dejection at the ease with which Ambrose circumvented his defensive wards. His power had entered the stone like the wards hadn’t been there, moving the stone as easily as Leon might manipulate a single bolt of lightning, or a mortal might toss a pebble.

‘Such is how post-Apotheosis mages operate, I suppose.’ Leon followed Ambrose out through the holes in the walls he’d made, waving his Tempest Knights back as he did. He told the guard commander that he’d return shortly before joining Ambrose in the courtyard. With one last forlorn look at his bypassed defenses, Leon thought, ‘Going to have to figure something out to deal with origin power...’

“Now, let’s fly!” Ambrose declared before freezing and following Leon’s eyes. “Oh. Ah! Wait!” A third time Ambrose snapped his fingers, and all of the stones he’d moved returned to their original positions. In but a moment, Leon’s palace was completely fixed, not a stone out of place. With his new senses, Leon could even tell that all of his wards were intact, too. It was like Ambrose had never made those holes at all. “Now let’s fly!” Ambrose repeated more definitively and shot into the sky.

Leon sighed, and with some reluctance, followed the Grave Warden into the great blue yonder.

They moved at a fantastic speed, but for mages of their power, it was more than manageable.

From only a few dozen feet above, Ambrose called out, “Have you ever contemplated entering the Void without the aid of an ark before, Leon? Have you?”

“Yes! But I’ll admit that I’ve never considered what the Void actually does to a person, so flying through it has always been more fantasy than informed speculation.”

“Just do as I tell you, then! Follow me!”

Ambrose accelerated and Leon was forced to follow suit. Miles and miles they rose into the sky, the air thinning and cooling rapidly. Fortunately, Leon had no need to fear the lack of air or the temperature of high altitude.

[No need for that. No need. I have taken the liberty of doing that beforehand.]

Leon’s golden eyes turned to Ambrose in mild confusion. [How? You don’t leave the Divine Graveyard, right?]

[My apprentice is out in the universe searching for any sign of Planerend. And if word of a freed Primal Devil travels, then it will inevitably travel to the Nexus. So, he occasionally stops by to check in with those powers who make the Nexus their home. It was a simple matter to ask him to take a few days and look for possible spots for you to set up. I have a list of possible sites. Take it. Take it.]

Ambrose took out a crystal the size of Leon’s index finger and handed it to him. Leon took it but didn’t use it just yet. Instead, he turned back to Aeterna, gazing upon the plane that had been his home for so long.

He would likely think of the plane as his home for as long as he lived.

[Would you... object to me returning, on occasion?]

Ambrose silently laughed. [Of course not! We are friends, are we not? We are friends!]

A small smile spread across Leon’s face. [Yes. Friends. I suppose we are.]

With Ambrose, Leon remained in the Void for a while longer. When Leon tired of simply staring at Aeterna, Ambrose goaded him into traveling through the Void as fast as he could. With origin power and without air resistance to get in his way, Leon found that he could travel much faster through the Void than he could outside of it—so much so that if he ever wanted to return to the Bull Kingdom, it would undoubtedly be faster to travel through the Void rather than making a straight journey. By the time Leon started to tire, his relatively small reserve of origin power taxed hard from flying so far and so quickly, he’d found that he could push himself so fast that he could go from Stormhollow to the Bull Kingdom’s capital in less than an hour.

‘Not fast enough to easily travel between planes, though,’ Leon speculated. There was a reason arks were used even by post-Apotheosis mages, after all.

[Come, let us return,] Ambrose stated. [It’s been some time.]

Leon nodded. The sun, burning so brightly that even he had to squint slightly to look upon it, had moved even farther and faster than he had, telling him that he’d been gone for a few hours. So, he and Ambrose began making their way back to Stormhollow.

Their return journey didn’t take long, and upon their return, Ambrose asked to stop several thousand feet above the palace.

“Leon,” he said, “don’t be a stranger. We have much I’d like to talk about, and not just about your sojourn into the Nexus. My Aeterna is your home, or such is how I’d like you to think of it. You are always welcome, in my hall or on my plane.”

He laid a hand on Leon’s shoulder and smiled, his plain features alight with fondness and friendliness.

“Nothing demands that your departure be permanent. Nothing demands either that all of your people must follow you, or all at once. This is their home, too, and that must be kept in mind. But we can talk about that later. For now, I believe an old friend is waiting for you...”

Leon followed Ambrose’s gaze and laid eyes upon Clear Day. The tau was in his aged human form, sitting on a terrace quietly sipping tea. His red eyes were narrowed with delight, but they did flicker upward every now and then, and when he noticed that he’d been noticed, he raised his cup to them.

“Known Clear for long, have you?” Leon asked.

“Clear? Ah, the name he must be going by, now. Yes, I’ve known him a long time. In the long span of time that Aeterna has existed, a grand total of seven people have achieved Apotheosis upon it. Clear was the fifth. You are now the eighth.”

“What happened to all the others?”

“Of those seven, only Clear and my apprentice remain with the living. One died when your Clan invaded the plane. Two more died in the Nexus when it was learned they were from the Divine Graveyard—remind me to talk about that, later. The remaining two died when they sought to invade my tower without my leave.”

“Brutal.”

“It wasn’t. I made short, clean work of it.”

Leon softly snorted. He briefly looked northward, noting that Anastasios and the Grand Druid were now past Raven territory and speeding ever closer.

“I should get back to work. But thanks for this, Ambrose. This has been an experience I didn’t know I needed.”

Ambrose nodded again. “Any time, Leon. Any time. Analyze what’s on that crystal I gave you, and get back to me. Think about what you want for the future, and where Aeterna might fall into those plans, then get back to me. Get back to me.”

With that, Ambrose gave him a needlessly formal and ceremonial bow, then vanished.

“I will,” Leon said to empty air. “I will.”