The Storm King

The private room that Elise took Leon to seemed more like a private lounge than a room in which to conduct business.  Several luxurious sofas were arranged around a large glass table; the marble floor tiles were polished to a near mirror shine; there was a minibar in the corner filled with all kinds of multi-colored drinks that Leon had no doubt could get even a mage of prodigious power inebriated; tucked away behind a curtain of black silk was a sliding door to a large bathroom complete with shower and bath.

“Please, Leon, make yourself comfortable,” Elise whispered to him as she steered him into the room and toward the nearest sofa.

Leon wasn’t sure how to respond, so he remained quiet.  He had no idea why this girl was treating him as she was, and nothing in his past had ever prepared him to deal with such a situation.

Once Leon sank into the sofa cushions, glanced back at Elise, who still held his gold card.

“Uh… what now?” he asked.

“I’m going to pass this card by our managers downstairs,” she swiftly answered, her alluring smile deepening as it became increasingly obvious the effect that she was having on him.  “Once we confirm the information on it, we’ll have the vaults and accounts that are tied to it—however many there may be—brought up here and opened up to you…”  Elise indicated an open section of the floor from which Leon could detect a few strands of magic power—a telltale sign of enchantment.  “This is where they’ll appear from.”

“And… will you be coming back?” Leon hesitantly asked, inwardly cringing at how it sounded coming out of his uncharismatic mouth.

Elise held her hand up to her mouth and nobly giggled.  “Of course I will, I wouldn’t leave you here alone!  I’ll return to help you with anything you need once I get everything in order, OK?”

Leon apprehensively nodded.  The only thing he wanted more than for Elise to hurry back was for her to not come back at all, though the latter was losing ground to the former every time he looked at her.

“I’ll be right back, Leon, please don’t go anywhere,” she whispered seductively, then began sashaying over to the door.  As she pulled it open and stepped through, she paused just for a moment before the door closed to send one last enchanting smile over her shoulder, which had Leon’s heart beating in his chest like it wanted to break free from its fleshy prison and follow her wherever she wanted to go.

As the door closed, Leon let out a breath that he’d been unconsciously holding.  He slapped his face a couple of times to make sure that he was, indeed, still conscious and not stuck in a dream, and he felt just how heated his cheeks had become.  As he inspected himself further, he suddenly became very aware of just how dirty he was from the journey south, and he was immensely grateful that the private lounge had its own bathroom.  He quickly got up and scurried over, taking every second he’d been given to clean himself up a bit and to prepare himself for Elise’s return.

With every passing moment, his anxiety settled, and his desire to not see her died with it.  Soon enough, there was nothing he was looking forward to more than her return.

---

Elise’s smile didn’t fade when she left the lounge she’d left Leon in.  Instead, it transformed from one of seductive playfulness to one of pure amusement, happiness, and delight.  Nearly all of the people she interacted with were local nobles, and their training in etiquette and diplomacy meant that just about all of them were suave, confident almost to a fault, and not shy about pursuing what they wanted.  She had endured just about every attempt at flattery and flirting that could be seen under the sun of Aeterna, to say the least, and she was more than a little tired of being constantly pursued by young noblemen—and occasionally noblewomen—who each thought themselves a gift from the Ancestors for the targets of their pursuit.

However, she had never once seen anyone as… innocent and easy to see through as Leon was.  He was completely overwhelmed by her, and his attraction was obvious.  Adding onto that his power and his possession of a gold card, which under any other circumstance was an object only held by members of Royalty—nobility and other elites were typically awarded a silver card, while commoners would be given a card made of thin but durable enchanted wood—ensured that Leon made almost as strong a first impression on Elise as she had made upon him.

And this time, she was the one who was acting as the playful seductress instead of her usual more aloof and far more dignified demeanor.  It was a nice change of pace, in her mind, even if it did start as simply a way to have some fun at the expense of the attendants who had been so quick to dismiss someone so young, yet possessed of third-tier power.  Were it not for the dust from the road covering him and the simple clothes, she knew they would’ve immediately thought him the scion of a noble House and been all over him, eager to please and to bring him whatever he needed on the off chance that he might’ve taken them into his harem.

’Leon, huh?  I don’t think I’ll be forgetting you anytime soon,’ she thought, briefly wondering just what circumstances had led him to this point.  Whatever they were, she found herself feeling some amount of gratitude for them.

She quickly composed herself as she entered the magic lift.  Whatever she thought about Leon could wait.

The sixth floor of the Heaven’s Eye Tower was entirely taken up by the offices of the account managers.  Their job, for the most part, was to supervise the smaller Heaven’s Eye banks throughout the city and the rest of the Great Plateau, but when a noble came here wanting to access their account, it was always one of these managers who facilitated it.

Elise strode off the magic lift as soon as it arrived, took a cursory glance at the desks, and immediately began making for the first account manager who didn’t seem busy, all seduction and playfulness in her attitude gone so quickly it was like it had never been there.  Right now, she was all business.

Her arrival didn’t go unnoticed, and just about everyone briefly stopped what they were doing to stare and wonder just what brought someone of her rank and stature down here, where usually only attendants came.  If she had some business with them, then under normal circumstances she would’ve just issued a summons and any one of them would’ve been more than happy to go to her instead.

“Lady Elise!” her chosen idle account manager exclaimed as she stopped at his desk.  “To what do I owe the honor?”

“I need whatever vaults and accounts associated with this card prepared to be opened and brought to room three on the seventh floor,” she said, her tone commanding but not overbearing.  She wasn’t impolite, but she wasn’t wasting time with pointless pleasantries.

Elise held out the gold card that she’d taken from Leon, and the manager’s eyes almost bulged out of their sockets when he laid his eyes upon it.  The only thing he could think of was, ‘Did one of the Princes come to the city?!’

He gently took the card, knowing full well that the wealth associated with it was likely orders of magnitude greater than all the money he’d ever make in his lifetime.

Every account was given a sixteen-digit alphanumeric ID, but the card the ID was printed on was so heavily enchanted that it couldn’t be read by anyone without a lens that only one of the account managers would possess.  The manager pulled out his lens and examined the account ID.

All the blood in his face immediately drained away.  He read the ID again just to be certain, then shuffled around in his desk and took out a piece of paper.  He compared the ID on the card to what was on the paper, then looked back at Elise.

“Who gave you this card?” he asked somewhat timidly as if he were afraid of angering someone he could not afford to piss off—he was still new, after all, and it would only take one word from Elise to see him fired from Heaven’s Eye.

“Is there a problem with it?” Elise asked, her tone turning sharp.

“My lady, this account was recently locked, as we detected the death of the last member of the family that held it.”

“Oh?”  Elise frowned.

“Whoever brought this card likely obtained it through dishonest means and is now attempting to steal those assets.”

Elise continued frowning.  She didn’t get that kind of vibe from Leon.  She was certain that he was no murderer, thief, or graverobber, but she also knew that appearances could be deceiving.  Still, she was inclined to believe that Leon was on the up-and-up.

“What then do we do?” she asked, her even tone starting to take on a hint of annoyance at this unexpected hiccup.

“There is a protocol for this, and it isn’t like it’s guaranteed the card bearer did something shady or illegal.  The last account holder may have simply given the card to a friend or passed it on to a child that isn’t in our records.  Regardless, we’re going to need a drop of blood from the card bearer.”  The manager took out a tiny steel needle and a glass orb, then stood up, making for the magic lift.  Elise’s frown deepened, but she followed closely behind him.

The two were completely silent as they made their way back to the room that Elise had left Leon in.  Elise intimidated the living hells out the manager, despite her not doing anything to warrant such fear, but he kept his mouth shut.

When they arrived at their destination, Elise took a moment to compose herself, regain her elegant bearing and a light, noble smile, then pushed the door open.

---

Leon cursed himself for his foolishness.  He should’ve gotten a room at an inn somewhere and cleaned himself up before going to Heaven’s Eye!

‘No use crying about it now…’ he forlornly thought as he hurriedly washed his face.  He had contemplated making use of the shower that was in the bathroom, but he wasn’t sure how much time he had, so he settled on a quick wipe down of his face and getting a change of clothes.  He was halfway through the latter when he heard the lounge door open.

“Leon?” he heard the soft, melodic voice of Elise call out.

“Uh… in here!” he responded, his voice shaking in nervousness and embarrassment.

“Ah, is there anything you need assistance with?  I’d be more than willing,” he heard her say, her voice teasing and playful.

“No!  No, I’m good, doing just fine!” he replied as he threw a dark green silkgrass shirt over his head.  He didn’t bother to put his snow lion coat back on, and instead just stuffed it and the rest of his dirty clothes into his pack.

When he left the bathroom, he found Elise and the manager standing there, Elise looking gorgeous and confident, the thin and balding manager looking like he’d rather fade into nothingness rather than continue to be there, a reaction that Leon could understand since he was so close to Elise yet seemingly so ignored.

As if to spite that impression, Elise said, “I’m terribly sorry, Leon, but we’re going to have to run a quick blood test to get you access to the vaults and accounts associated with this card…”

Leon hesitantly nodded.  Blood magic was one of the most reliable methods for determining someone’s identity, but that didn’t mean that he was excited about it.  The only reason he nodded at all was because of the Heaven’s Eye Merchant Guild’s sterling reputation.

Elise flashed him a radiant smile, then turned towards the manager and nodded.  She had Leon hold out his hand while the manager drew the steel needle and pricked Leon’s finger.  Leon hardly felt it, and it didn’t seem to leave a wound, but the needle still came away with a single drop of blood.  The manager brushed the needle against the glass orb in his other hand, which Leon noted must be heavily enchanted, as the drop of blood passed through the glass like it wasn’t even there and hovered in the exact center of the orb.

The manager nodded respectfully to Leon, then made for the door.  Elise smiled again at Leon, squeezed his hand, then made to follow.

“We’ll be right back, I’m sorry again for this inconvenience,” she breathed.

“Do-Don’t worry about it!” Leon replied, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, for Elise giggled again and departed, leaving Leon alone to feel like a complete fool all by himself.

---

With Leon’s blood in the orb, Elise and the manager made their way down to the fourth floor of the Heaven’s Eye Tower, quite possibly the most unused floor in the entire Tower, since it wasn’t a place that patrons of Heaven’s Eye were allowed.

The fourth floor of the tower was taken up by the Heaven’s Eye blood mages.  Blood magic had a terrible stigma associated with it, with most magicless mortals thinking that it was only about sacrificing to demons or killing people to use their mana to power magic rituals.  In fact, vampirism could only be contracted through overindulgence in the more repulsive sides of blood magic.

But blood magic had far more benign uses that can’t be ignored, such as identification and oath swearing.  Swearing blood oaths was an uncommon practice, though, with most people only ever swearing them with the people they most trusted in the world.  Even innocent people accused of crimes they didn’t commit were often more willing to face the judgment of the Arbiters than to try to risk swearing a blood oath, for the words they swore to could always hurt them more than an Arbiter’s verdict.

When Elise and the account manager arrived on the fourth floor, there was only a single blood mage behind the desk.  Not many accounts were so tightly secured as to require this level of identification, so the few blood mages who work in the tower generally divide themselves into shifts, so there is rarely more than one blood mage behind the desk at a time.

Elise didn’t say a word to the on-duty blood mage, instead letting the manager take the lead, for he knew these parts of the protocol better than she did.  The manager gingerly put the gold card and the glass orb on the desk, spoke a few words, then waited as the blood mage left the room.

Fortunately, this process wasn’t very complicated.  The blood mage returned after a few minutes holding a bird claw carved from solid gold.  Gripped within the talons was another glass orb, about the size of an orange.  The blood mage very carefully placed the claw in the center of a magical formation carved into the desk, then placed Leon’s orb right next to it.

When the blood mage activated the formation, the two orbs slammed together before any of them could blink.  It was a good thing these orbs were so heavily enchanted because they would have shattered into dust had they been normal glass.  Elise and the account manager had seen this ritual done before, but they had never seen such a strong reaction.  The blood mage himself panicked a little, before activating a few runes carved into the edges of the formation.  The two orbs unstuck themselves, but the two drops of blood could be plainly seen pressed up against the glass, clearly attracted to each other.

“What was that?” the account manager asked quietly.

“Hmmm…”  The blood mage thought for a moment before answering.  “There are three possibilities for such an intense reaction.  The first is that the blood you brought me is from the same person as our sample.  The second is that these samples are from identical twins.  We can rule those out, as the orbs were no longer stuck after I activated these runes.  The last possibility, and thus the only possibility, is that they share an Inherited Bloodline of an Ascended Beast.  Regardless, these two samples are from close relatives, separated by no more than two generations.”

The blood mage quickly filled out a short document, and gave it to the very relieved account manager, while Elise was lost in thought.

‘A gold card, stronger than second-tier at a young age, and an Inherited Bloodline?’  Her face scrunched up in confusion and mounting worry.  ‘Who are you, Leon?’ she wondered.  Equally mysterious was that gold bird claw, which she’d never seen before.  She couldn’t imagine who could’ve been so important to warrant it, for not even the Bull Kings were given such ostentatious holders for their blood orbs.

When they returned to the magic lift, the account manager set it for the top floor.  Elise was so lost in thought that she didn’t even notice until the lift doors opened.

She turned to give the account manager a confused and exasperated look, assuming this to be just a stupid mistake, but he just walked past her and made for the huge doors at the end of the hall.  She quenched her annoyance and followed, knowing that whatever the manager was doing, he wouldn’t be troubling the Tower Lord unless this situation was more important than she realized.

The doors opened on their own, and with odd silence given their size.  The room beyond was an enormous dimly lit circular chamber, largely empty save for a few pieces of furniture, a gargantuan firepit in the center of the floor, and a desk at the other end of the chamber, shaped into a half-circle around a plain-looking chair that was facing the doors.  The man sitting in the chair seemed middle-aged, though he had run this branch of Heaven’s Eye for at least two centuries now.  He was so strong that even the account manager, who wasn’t even of the first-tier, could feel the hair on his body stand up from this man’s passive magical aura alone.

He looked up from the papers on his desk, with a face as expressive as stone—at least, until his eyes momentarily landed on Elise, which softened his expression for just a moment.  But it was only a moment, and when his professional demeanor returned, he asked in a gravelly voice that seemed to echo in the account manager’s mind and made him a little weak in the knees,  “What do you want?”

It took a moment for the manager to compose himself in the Tower Lord’s presence.  “My Lord, that vault you ordered locked last week, a young man has arrived with the card associated with it.”

The only sign that the Tower Lord was surprised was a slight momentary narrowing of his eyes before he extended his hand.  The manager understood exactly what he wanted, and with as much respect and deference as he could, handed over the gold card.  The Tower Lord glanced at it, his eyes easily seeing through the myriad enchantments placed upon it.

“Anything else?” he growled.  The manager wasted no time relaying the results of the blood test, handing the Tower Lord the document from the blood mage.  The Tower Lord examined the document with far more care than he did the card, then casually leaned back in his chair.

“Have this account’s vault brought to the waiting room.  I’ll go meet this young man myself.”

The manager’s eyes widened in shock, as did Elise’s.  The young fire-haired woman couldn’t help herself and muttered, “Uncle…?”

“This is the account of a very special family of clients, it would only be proper for me to greet the new account holder in person.”  He rose with almost unnatural grace and seemed to glide across the shiny marble floor towards the doors.  Elise hurried after him, with the manager not far behind.

Elise and the Tower Lord got off the lift on the seventh floor, while the manager took the lift further down, to make the arrangements for Leon’s vault to be sent to his waiting room.

Elise and her Uncle, the Tower Lord, swiftly crossed the distance between the lift doors and the entrance to Leon’s waiting room.  But upon reaching it, the Tower Lord paused and glanced at Elise, letting his face break out into a fatherly smile.

“Tell me, little Butterfly, what is your impression of this young man who brought in this card?”