“I’ll make sure she doesn’t take you again,” I promised Leona.

I took in a deep breath and let it out, collecting my thoughts.

"First, we need to find out who that woman is and how she realized what you are. And then... we'll figure out what to do next,” I said.

I set Leona down on a table and sat across from her on one of Elda’s chairs that had seen better days. It was embedded with black mana stones, but it still creaked under my weight.

“What do you remember?” I asked. “If we work backward, we can prevent your capture in this round. You fell asleep after drinking the mulungu tea, and that was the last I saw you in the previous round. Where did you go after that?”

Leona pulled in her long golden wings and recounted the events of the day she was captured with a trembling voice.

“When I awoke, you were gone and unresponsive to my mind calls,” Leona said. “I waited but got hungry and decided to fly out into the city. The last couple of times that I went out, there was a small restaurant there that was more than happy to let me sample their food. So I went there like usual.”

“Which part did you fly to? East or west?” I asked.

Depending on which side of the capital she was on, it could help narrow down the culprits.

“West,” Leona replied. “The restaurant was called Lunar Petals.”

I made a mental note to look into it in case there was anything suspicious about the restaurant itself.

“That’s where I came across that woman.” Leona shrugged weakly. “She seemed really nice. She kept ordering food and letting me eat it all. I don’t think she touched it at all herself, although it might have helped. She was so skinny. You could practically see her bones.”

Leona’s voice grew quieter.

“But then I started to feel sleepy. She suggested I take a nap and eat some more after I woke up. It seemed like a great idea, but when I woke up, I was inside a cage in the form of a phoenix.”

Tsk.

I ought to have warned Leona not to take food from strangers. It was the most basic of things all children learned, and yet it didn’t even cross my mind to warn her about it because she was a phoenix. Moreover, she was disguised as a baby chick. These two notes had made me overly comfortable and unconcerned about her safety when she went out on her own.

“I tried to use my powers to get out, but it didn't work,” Leona’s voice broke. “Nothing I tried was working. It was as if my powers were completely taken away.”

I reached out and wrapped my hands around Leona, petting her.

“If you were in the form of a phoenix, it sounds like your disguise magic came off as well?” I asked.

“Yes! As I said, none of my powers were working. I’ve never had that happen. None of my ancestors’ memories had anything so scary either. I didn’t know what to do!”

Leona’s golden eyes glistened with renewed tears.

“Shhhhhhh,” I hushed and leaned over the table, bringing her body in close to my chest again. “You are safe. We’ll figure out what trick she used on you and prevent her from capturing you again.”

Once Leona seemed to calm down again, I pulled away to renew my questions.

“I know it’s hard, but try to remember about the place where you were being held hostage,” I said. “If we can figure out where you were, we can prevent you from ending up there again.”

Leona’s eyes glanced up and to the left, and I could see her mind working on remembering.

“It was dark. The windows all had thick red curtains, and the little light that came through from the outside was thick with dust. There were cages everywhere, of all sizes. But they were empty, except one other cage that held a snake, but it was dead asleep the entire time I was there.”

I bit my lips. The description hardly narrowed things down for me. And the red curtains part was useless; the Game changed the visuals each round.

“What about the sounds?” I probed. “What did you hear? Or smell? It could help me figure out where the building was located.”

Just because Leona was captured in West Genise did not mean she wasn’t moved east or even outside the capital entirely.

Leona’s eyes blinked, and looked sideways to her left.

“It was quiet. I couldn’t hear anything from the outside, but the building did creak a lot. Ah, and there was a low DUN sound that came now and then. Probably every hour.” Leona scrunched up her nose. “As for any smells, there was a weird musty scent like an old piece of wood that has been laying out in old water.”

I nodded my head at this.

Now we were getting somewhere.

The DUN was likely a nearby clock tower; there were several in the city spread out to cover their own district. Then based on the creaking and scent, it must have been an old building with a leaky roof that had allowed for water damage and mold.

If it’s in that poor a condition, it has to have been located on the eastern side of the capital. This was, of course, still assuming she wasn’t taken outside the city.

“What about the woman, anything else you recall about her?” I asked. “She visited you, I presume? What did she say to you then?”

Leona’s body tensed up again.

“It must have been a day later when she came by. She told me that I was going to be sold off in an auction in four days.” Leona's voice wavered as she spoke. "She said that I was the surprise crown jewel of the auction and would go to the highest bidder."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I frowned at this.

She was taken on the tenth day of the Round. And roughly four days from then would have been the start of the Summer Festival of Lights.

There were likely many auctions taking place at that time, as the three-day festival brought visitors from across the continent. However, I happened to know of one black market auction that would have been the ideal place to sell off a phoenix. My memory went to the golden invitation I was given in the previous round.

It was the one The Spiders ran, the mage auction that the man from The Gilded Siren invited me to in the previous round. Aristocrats and those with enough cash and lack of morals attended this yearly event to obtain their mages. The festival allowed for the perfect cover.

Tch.

Yes, Leona wasn’t a mage, but what better space to sell off a rare and priceless phoenix than an auction such as this? And the woman did say Leona would be the crown jewel. What better crown jewel than a phoenix?

“It’s highly likely that whoever it was that captured you are chummy with The Spiders syndicate. Or part of them,” I said. “And what of the woman? Anything else you can recall about her visually apart from how skinny she was? For example, what was her hair and face like?”

Leona shook her head.

“No, unfortunately, I never got a good look at her,” she said. “She had a veil that covered her face that hung from a giant yellow hat. But her hands were very pale.”

My blood ran cold at this description. To be fair, the Game’s visuals changed each round, but I noticed that there were some details that remained the same no matter what round.

It couldn’t be.

“Leona, what about her voice? What was the tone of it like?” I asked.

“It was deep,” Leona said. “It had a booming tone to it, like a large drum.”

I rubbed my temples. The artifact-induced headache had been present since this morning, but it suddenly felt worse.

Damn it.

I didn’t know for certain, but this strange woman sounded awfully like The Alchemist. I had already experienced one close call with her in this Round, and that was one more than I ever hoped to have.

She was a terrifying mage, and I always knew this based on her unique interrogation methods, but to think that she was powerful enough to capture a phoenix with such ease?

I licked my lips.

And how did she even realize that Leona was a phoenix in the first place?

***

“Young master Luca,” Remlend was waiting beside Henry outside Elda’s workshop. “This arrived for you.”

In his hands was a red envelope.

I knew what was written in it without even bothering to open it, but I did so nonetheless. My fingers undid the seal and unraveled the velvet-like parchment paper. I scanned over the familiar curving penmanship by my grandmother asking that I visit.

“Remlend, pack one of the travel carriages. We’re leaving for the Town of Ascot in two hours.” I ordered.

“Very well.” He glanced up at my head but didn’t say anything else and headed out.

"Young master Luca, why do you have a baby chick on top of your hair?" Henry asked. “It’s not from that phoenix egg, is it?”

"Of course not, Henry. What a silly thing to assume." I waved him off and walked away.

I didn’t need anyone getting any ideas about Leona’s whereabouts, especially when there was already a dangerous person who had managed to capture her in a previous round.

"Ah, will you remain within the manor until it’s time to leave?" Henry hurried after me. His eyes remained looking at the top of my head.

“No,” I frowned.

I realized that I still had one matter to take care of before we needed to head out.

“I need to visit the Ashford Bakery before we leave,” I said.

Even though Natalia Ashford wasn’t nearly as good as Freida Stran, she was still an exceptional resource and had her own unique usefulness.

I just hope she’ll be available. It’s really only just one matter that I need to urgently ask her about.

“Very well, in that case, I’ll arrange for the carriage to be ready to go,” Henry said. “I’ll meet you in the front shortly.”

He dashed away toward the manor instead of the stables, however.

Ah, he probably needs to arrange for Nirre and Blake to come with me on my journey through the Humton Forest.

“Peep!”

He won’t die this time, right?

Leona echoed my thoughts.

“No. I’ll make sure he’ll be unhurt this time around,” I said. “I promised you that last round, after all, didn’t I?”

“Peep!”

Good. But on another very important note… this isn’t the same day that you hatched me as before, is it?

“No, it’s the second day,” I said.

I suddenly felt nervous, realizing that I may have messed up since Leona remembered the previous round.

So that means that you attended that royal banquet without me??

“Well, yes. But it was really more of a ball; the food wasn’t the main attraction—”

“Peep!” Leona cut me off.

But the first thing you mentioned about it is the food! You know just how good it was!

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She stomped her tiny foot on my head a couple of times.

You went without me?? How could you!

“I’m sorry!” I replied. Albeit deep down, I felt relieved that Leona was feeling angry instead of frightened and depressed.

I’d take an angry Leona over a sad Leona any day.

Sorry doesn’t cut it! First, you left me alone to be kidnapped, and then you deprived me of one of life’s greatest pleasures—

“PEEP!” Leona suddenly cried out.

CAKE!

I looked to my right and realized that the stupidly massive cake that Chase Daylan had brought over was still sitting in its crystal box atop a cart. However, rather than being out in the middle of the courtyard, it was now in the shade of one of the sheds.

I smiled.

I guess the servants had no idea where to move it and had decided to simply store it here, away from curious eyes.

As for Leona, she had already lunged off my head and was fluttering over the cake.

“Peep!”

It says, ‘I’m sorry.’ Don’t tell me… is this cake for me?

Her voice in my head was full of delight. It was hard to even imagine that she had been trembling and sobbing about having been abducted just a few moments ago. An angry Leona was better than a sad Leona, but a happy Leona was the best of all.

Perhaps I ought to keep an arsenal of cake on me at all times.

“You can eat it all,” I said. “We’ll be leaving for a couple of days, but the crystal encasing will keep the cake fresh for ten days, so you can finish it when we return,” I recalled Chase’s words.

“Peep!”

Nonsense. I will take it with us.

That’s when Leona did something I didn’t think was possible. She swallowed the cake whole. Crystal box and cart and all.

It was as if her beak detached, and an optical illusion trick had been performed before my very eyes. The cake was there one moment, and then it was gone. It made less sense the more I tried to understand it.

“You…. ate the whole thing…?” I gasped out. “How? And… the box? The cart?”

I darted my head around to make sure no one had seen this. Luckily it appeared we were alone.

Hmpt. Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t eat it. I just put it in my stomach for safekeeping to be eaten at a later and more convenient time. And I am happy to share it with you.

Leona fluttered back to me and sat on my shoulder. She didn’t even look the least bit fuller than before.

“Isn’t that the same thing?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure if I put something in my stomach, it would count as having been eaten.”

Leona’s golden eyes rolled.

“Peep!”

Don’t compare the stomach of a phoenix with that of a mere human. Storing something and eating something go in entirely different compartments. And phoenixes can store many things in our stomachs.

I stared at Leona’s little yellow body of fluff.

“Do you mean to tell me that you could eat a sword and store it in your stomach?”

Well, eating a sword hardly sounds all that tasty, and swords are scarcely of any use to a brilliant phoenix such as me, but yes, if I needed to, I could store one in my stomach.

“What about something bigger? Like a carriage?” I asked.

You underestimate just how wonderful and magnificent phoenixes are. I could store hundreds of carriages in my stomach if I so wished. But I personally prefer storing food.

I stared at Leona with a new set of eyes. I always knew she had a bottomless pit for a stomach, but I never even imagined that it was actually like a bottomless pit.

“Phoenixes really are wonderful and magnificent,” I muttered.