Gaius froze as Leon walked into the council chamber. All the hate he held for the other man was still there, though it was now mixed with strange feelings of muted gratitude and guilt after Gaius’ behavior during their time at the Knight Academy. In the end, even after Leon’s eyes swept over him and displayed signs of recognition, Gaius was unable to do anything.

But it was also the middle of the council chamber, hardly the place for greetings.

For Leon’s part, even though he recognized Gaius, he didn’t do much more than take note of his presence. He disliked the nobleman for having his fellow trainees assaulted early into their cycle at the Knight Academy, but after more than two years, his feelings weren’t strong enough for him to have much of a reaction to Gaius’ presence.

Leon’s indifference might’ve once infuriated Gaius, but now, the nobleman couldn’t honestly blame Leon for his lack of reaction. In fact, Gaius couldn’t think of anything he could possibly say to Leon that could communicate his complicated feelings, so he felt it was for the best that he remained silent and avoid Leon as best as he could for the foreseeable future, at least until he sorted himself out.

But Gaius wasn’t the only person there to recognize Leon. His arrival was obscured by the fact that he was accompanying three Princes, but as the latter took their seats at the council table—Antonius didn’t have a seat, so he had to wait for one of the nearby scribes to pull one up—more and more of the council members began to realize that he was in the room. By the time he took his place leaning against the wall behind Trajan, both his presence and status in Trajan’s retinue were unmistakable, and no one wanted to question him for fear of provoking Trajan’s anger.

There was one exception. After the Spymaster so quickly listened to Trajan’s orders that explicitly went against his own, Octavius had been unconsciously looking for something to publicly criticize Trajan about. He had been tempted to say something snide about them being late, but he was grateful that Leon was here so that he had something more legitimate to complain about.

“Ah, my uncle and brothers are finally here, all we’re missing is Herculanus and we’d have a veritable family reunion…” Octavius said with a sarcastic smile. But as August was about to reply about how he had left out their sisters, Octavius continued by looking at Leon and asking, “Sir ‘Leon’, was it? My uncle must have quite the good opinion of you to bring you here.”

“Leon is one of my most trusted knights, he’s here as my adjutant,” Trajan replied, saving Leon from the need, which the younger man was grateful for. Now that Octavius had drawn attention to him, all eyes in the room were drawn in Leon’s direction. After his appearance in the Royal Court with Lapis, as well as his and Elise’s almost public declaration of their relationship during the triumph, almost everyone in the room already knew his name.

“It’s your right to bring someone with you Uncle, but surely there were better choices than a Valeman?” Octavius asked with a slight narrowing of his warm brown eyes, the pleasant smile on his lips never wavering.

Instantly, the temperature in the room dropped as many of the powerful members of the council began to leak killing intent at the revelation that Leon was from the Northern Vales.

Taking her cue from Octavius, Floriana, the Countess of Lindinis, said, “Barbarians do not belong here, Your Highness!”

“Indeed,” the Consul of the Central Territories agreed, “his presence demeans these storied halls!”

With their Prince giving them direction and emboldened by two of the most powerful nobles present, several other council members began to make similar remarks.

“Your Highness,” the Primarch of Lineage hall began, addressing Trajan, “is it not in poor taste to bring a barbarian to this meeting?”

Leon felt his face grow hot, but he kept it as stoic as possible. He didn’t have much sympathy for the Bull Kingdom’s government, nor for its nobles. He was still human, though, and it strung more than he would’ve predicted for so many people to reject him out of hand.

Trajan glared at the wizened old man, dressed in simple crimson robes with a golden chain set with rubies around his neck, and was about to retort, but another noble beat him to the punch.

“This sacred place is sullied by that barbarian’s presence!” the Count of Tarsus, the richest man in the Central Territories shouted. “He should be-”

Trajan slammed his fist down upon the council’s table, instantly silencing the Count as well as anyone else who felt the urge to speak up. Silence fell upon the council chamber for several agonizingly long seconds, and Trajan asked in a dangerously temperate tone given his obvious fury, “Does anyone else wish to add their voices to those just heard?”

Trajan glared around the room, making eye contact with every person seated at the table. No one could meet his gaze for longer than half a second, and neither did anyone speak up.

“To be clear, it is not for any of you to decide who I do and do not bring with me when a meeting is called. Sir Leon Ursus is one of my most trusted subordinates, and that is where this matter ends!”

With Trajan’s stance made abundantly clear, Octavius refrained from saying another word, and without him, none of his nobles did either. This matter wasn’t big enough for Octavius to truly get into conflict with Trajan over, this small public disagreement was enough for him, at least for now.

For his part, Leon wasn’t so offended that he’d carry much of a grudge, but the nobles had made a terrible first impression upon him. Throughout all this, Gaius was staring at Leon with an incredibly strange look. Not only was Leon a knight despite Knight Academy traditions, when Gaius examined his aura out of curiosity, he found that he could barely sense it all.

‘He’s fourth-tier already?!’ Gaius incorrectly thought to himself in shock. If he understood what Leon’s actual power level was, then he would need a large team of specialists to pry his jaw off the floor. Many of the nobles who had spoken out against might have been the same if they had realized just how young Leon was, but appearance wasn’t the best way to judge the age of a mage after the third-tier.

Hoping to get everyone to move on, Antonius said, “Sir Leon’s place of origin doesn’t matter, that’s not why this meeting has been called.” With a look, Antonius handed the explanation over to Trajan.

“After some digging by my nephew,” Trajan said with a nod sent Antonius’ way, “it has been discovered that vampire attacks have been on the rise for the past century at least, and more than half of them whose elements were identified were users of fire. There has been some circumstantial evidence that it was one demon to blame for this, but regardless of whether that’s true or not, what is certain is that there is a vampiric crisis in this Kingdom, and it needs to be addressed.”

When he was finished, he saw more than a few skeptical looks from many of the council members, most notably from Floriana and the Consul of the Central Territories—the latter most likely because he and his subordinates were mostly responsible for the recording of Legion activities, so this rise in vampiric activity was happening under his nose. Making his mood even worse, that Trajan called an emergency meeting of the advisory council rather than bringing the issue directly to him spoke volumes to everyone around the table about Trajan’s confidence in the Central Consul to deal with the problem.

After Trajan was finished, Antonius then began to outline the evidence he and Leon had collected. Leon remained quiet and was quite content with neither Antonius nor Trajan giving him credit for helping to uncover this issue, as he had had quite enough attention for the day.

Antonius finished his spiel in about ten minutes, and Trajan asked, “Any questions?”

“Do you truly think this is all the work of one demon?” asked the Count of Tarsus with a look of extreme doubt. He clearly didn’t think much about this issue.

“I have it under good authority that it is, though I haven’t any direct evidence to support it,” Trajan responded, to Leon’s muted delight.

Tarsus wasn’t of the same mind as Trajan, and asked, “How is this worthy of summoning all of here on such short notice? So, a few dozen vampires have been killing peasants, there’s always going to be more of them, so this hardly deserves such attention.”

With gritted teeth, narrowed eyes, and some leaking killing intent, Trajan responded, “We need to address this now, before things spiral out of our control. Vampirism has been on the rise, that much is beyond question, and it is up to this council to deal with that threat until my Royal Brother emerges from training.”

His invoking of the King made a few of the high officials nod in agreement, like the Chancellor and the Spymaster, but many of the nobles were unimpressed. Even if they hadn’t yet been informed of the King’s infirmity, they still greatly enjoyed the increased freedoms that came with having an absent monarch and didn’t appreciate the reminder of their feudal duties to him as the King’s vassals.

“This isn’t a threat, this is a joke,” Avidius, the Central Consul grumbled. He spoke softly, though he made little attempt to hide his voice or his contempt for these proceedings. “One or two dozen vampire attacks in a year is hardly something that requires the attention of this council.”

“These attacks have been growing in intensity for years,” Trajan testily responded, his black eyes turning to Avidius, the Consul of the Central Territories. “That they haven’t been noticed yet is an incredibly worrying sign…”

“What are you saying, that my Legions have been collaborating with these leeches?” Avidius inquired with faux-politeness, his own eyes meeting Trajan’s with little fear.

“I’m saying nothing, simply that it is your purview to analyze the information sent back from the other Territories, and that those you have doing that job are letting important details slip through the cracks.”

Trajan glared at Avidius, but it wasn’t until Prince Octavius, whom he was sitting to the right of, said, “There’s always some information that gets missed. I can’t blame the Central Legions for failing to realize this when they have so much to keep track of. And I most certainly don’t believe that there are any soldiers within our ranks who cooperate with such monsters.”

Taking Octavius at face value, despite knowing that there would be much more to this if he were only to look for it, Trajan moved on and cast his gaze around at the rest the council. At the very least, the council chamber in the middle of an emergency meeting wasn’t the place for him to launch an investigation into corruption and incompetence.

“Does anyone have any suggestions?” Trajan asked the rest of the council members. He and Antonius had done some brainstorming, but they hadn’t come up with much that couldn’t be summarized as ‘what we’re already doing, but more’.

“We could put out notices to the largest magic guilds in the Kingdom,” suggested Tacitus, the Chancellor. “The Legions can’t scour this entire Kingdom for vampires, but we can enlist guild mages to assist us in this endeavor. Doubling the bounty on vampires ought to do the trick.”

“There are a few magical rituals we can perform to seek out demonic power,” said Laurus, the Chief Steward, almost stopping Leon’s heart in the process. “They’re expensive and of fairly limited range, but we should be able to find all traces of demonic power around the major cities in the Kingdom if we use our resources correctly.”

“Vampires are often given shelter by organized groups of criminals,” Publius, the Spymaster said. “I’ll put the word out and see if that doesn’t bring me any useful leads. Even one or two vampires can lead me to more simply by sharing the power of the demon they worship.”

“All good ideas, we’ll need to do everything we can,” Trajan said. There was little disagreement from around the table after the three top officials in the Kingdom came on Trajan’s side. The elder Prince himself gave August and Octavius a steely look and said, “I expect us all to be on the same page on this issue. Get the word out to the Consuls, increase patrols in the countryside, investigate the smaller villages especially, and hunt down any trace of vampirism that can be found.”

August immediately exclaimed, “For the sake of our Kingdom, I will do this!”

“As will I,” said the Second Prince. With the pressure now on him, Octavius couldn’t disagree even if he wanted to.

“We also need to send word to the nobility, so that any vampires we might miss can’t find sanctuary in their lands,” Antonius mentioned.

“August, Octavius, I’ll leave that part to you two,” Trajan said, his tone brokering no argument from either of the Prince-Regents.

With that, everything that absolutely needed to be discussed had been. Everyone was on the same page, and all that remained was to work out logistics and to coordinate between departments. The meeting went on for about half an hour more as the council members debated how best to use and share their resources amongst themselves, to varying levels of enthusiasm. Many of the landed nobles, in particular, weren’t happy that Trajan was so dominant in the council chamber. Even the few nobles that sympathized with August were getting a bit upset that the younger Prince was letting Trajan take so much of a lead in matters of state.

As the meeting drew to a close, Trajan settled on a timeline. “The triumphal games will begin a few days. Once they are over, we will launch into our operations to root out this vampire menace. I want every demon-worshipping bastard within this Kingdom put to the sword!”

“Yes, Your Highness!” many of the council members responded in unison, including the high ministers. The nobles on Octavius’ side joined in, though their acknowledgment of Trajan was significantly less enthusiastic.

And with that, the meeting was over. The council members departed to begin their arrangements, and Trajan and Leon returned to the former’s office.

“Will I be sent out against these vampires when they’re found?” Leon asked in a neutral tone.

Trajan simply replied, “No.” He honestly couldn’t tell if Leon was disappointed or overjoyed with his decision, but he wasn’t going to back down either way. Leon returned from his last mission mostly dead and missing an arm. Trajan had no intention of letting that happen again. “Go home,” the Prince said to Leon. “If I get you killed, your lady will never forgive me. Go home and train, so that when I am eventually forced to send you again, whenever that may be, you won’t come back in pieces.”

Leon nodded, then made his way to the door. With one last glance back at Trajan, who was stretching his tired body on his couch, Leon left the Prince’s office, picked up Anzu just outside the central palace building, and then went back to Emilie’s estate.

Not even ten minutes after he left, Trajan received a message from August. After the meeting, Trajan thought that it had something to do with the vampire situation, but when he opened it and saw what it truly was, he almost blacked out in anger.

August had issued a formal invitation to Leon to watch the upcoming triumphal games from the Royal box, joining all members of the Royal Family that might attend, as well as the Paladins and a select few other high nobles, in a place of prominence where practically the entire city could see him.