Ash’s POV
To be completely honest, whenever Leo started giving out his lectures, I kinda just tuned him out. I love the guy, he’s amazing, and super smart and funny, but I just cannot understand the vast majority of the things he’s passionate about. He’s tried teaching it to me procedurally, starting from the most basic of basics, then gradually making his lessons more complicated, but….I just can’t wrap my head around it. I just don’t see how one place being warm and another being cold is what makes wind, or stars in the night sky actually being way bigger than the entire world, just really far away, or literally anything out of his mouth when he starts talking about ‘waves’. I mean, I trust him basically implicitly at this point, so I’m pretty sure that whatever he’s talking about is actually correct, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever really understand it. I mean shit, the fact that he made a spell that forced lightning to fall naturally, without actually being magical lightning, demonstrates that he actually does know what he’s talking about, but when he tried explaining the mechanics of the spell to me, the whole concept of ‘positive and negative charge’ went straight over my head.
I think he picked up on my complete and utter inability to comprehend the complex topics that he was discussing, because when our watch ended and it was time for all of us to get back on the road, and it was just the two of us alone in a carriage again, he dropped them. Instead, he started asking me about my plans for the capital, the things I wanted to buy if I found them at the Bazaar, how my own personal projects were going, and even, though I know he didn’t particularly care to hear idle gossip, how I was feeling about the whole Mike situation. All in all, we chatted about nothing important, and just simply enjoyed each other’s company.
It was something very rare to experience when you’re friends with Leo. You have to remember that Leo doesn’t actually experience his thoughts the way that I do. When I’m thinking about something, I hear my own voice in my head, speaking the words that I’m thinking. Leo doesn’t have that voice. For him, thought is a vague sort of flowing pressure, and he has pretty much no way to access it except to actually speak it out loud and listen to what he’s saying. I thought back to the time where he didn’t actively translate his thoughts into words before sending them into the telepathy link. I can’t imagine living a life where you’re so completely lost, you don’t even know where your own conscious mind is.
However, if you ask Leo to just start speaking, 9 times out of 10 he’ll start explaining something that I just can’t conceptually visualize, despite his best efforts. A few months ago, I’d actually run this test, just while he was walking silently, asked him to start speaking, and he immediately launched into a full demonstration where he brought out a bunch of cloth, and told me to imagine that they were ‘the fabric of SpaceTime’ and tried to explain gravity as ‘curvature brought about by large quantities of mass displacing this fabric’. What’s more, he then completely negated his own explanation by trying to explain a completely different theory of how gravity works, this one being based on ‘particles’ he called ‘gravitons and gravitational waves’. From what I could understand, I think he was just thinking about two conflicting ideas and trying to figure out which one he supported and believed in.
All of this to demonstrate: Leo just doesn’t think about simple things. It’s like whatever makes it so that his mind doesn’t give him the voice that I have also happens to make his mind work on a completely different scale than mine does. Like I have the mind of a person who lives in towns and only thinks in terms of those towns, but he has the mind of a person who lives in the universe, and accordingly thinks on a cosmic scale. So for him to dumb down his idle conversation and actually talk to me about something as universally insignificant as me trying to get over the boy I liked? It sent a warm feeling of appreciation through me, as I realized that the man beside me was fighting his own nature out of concern for me, whether he himself realized it or not.
After a while though my warm feelings started to fade, as annoyance filled me instead. Normally, when our shift ends, we’ll chat for a little bit, then go to sleep, but Leo just kept the conversation flowing, not letting me actually fall asleep. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and said,
“Dude, look, I love you, but shut the hell up and go to sleep. After fighting all of those bandits how are you not exhausted?”
Leo froze and made the same slight grimace he always made when I casually dropped the word ‘love’. According to Sophia, he apparently isn’t used to people demonstrating positive emotions towards him, but I shouldn’t stop letting him know he’s important to me. I think she hopes that eventually he’ll get used to being appreciated and wanted around. After a moment, he answered the question,
“If we go to sleep now then by the time we wake up we’ll be arriving at the Capital and it’ll be night again. If you want to actually walk around the capital and look around or shop, you need to be awake during the day. This means that the two of us need to shift our sleep schedules so that we are awake during the day and sleep at night, and unfortunately the easiest way to accomplish that is to stay up until we reach the Capital, get a room at the Adventurer’s Guild, warp over to the subspace, then sleep during the night, so that when we wake up, it’ll be morning and everyone else in town will be awake as well. Now, we could wait to shift our sleep schedule until we reach the Capital, but I figured that you’d prefer to just do it on the way there. Or am I wrong?”
Oh. Dang. I kinda completely forgot that people generally sleep at night. All at once the warmth of appreciation came back, as I realized that he’d thought about all of this solely for my benefit. After all, it doesn’t really matter to him what time it is, since if nothing was open, Leo would be completely fine just spending the entire day working in his shed in the subspace.
For the next several hours, we spoke about nothing in particular again. We had a fun little argument when I mocked his hoodie, another when he made fun of my rough and uncomfortable shirt. We talked about his Markings, and whether they looked more like spiderwebs or cracks in his skin. We engaged in the absolutely critical discussion on how Duke used the bathroom while he was locked in that suit of armor for hours on end. I came up with some new nicknames to replace Mr. Bear, since he apparently wouldn’t be wearing his old cloak any more, and he threatened to retaliate by calling me Little Miss Meowth.
As we talked, the sun made its journey through the brilliant blue sky, large tufts of soft white clouds occasionally causing the bright light of day to dim slightly. Yet as the sun began to set, dipping below the vast and distant horizon, its golden rays struck the stray clouds, causing brilliant streaks of gold to run through the soft luminous white. When I saw this, I instantly recognized it, and pointed out the similarity of the cloudy sunset with Leo’s Aspect Manifestation.
“Fascinating. So that’s where the imagery comes from, but what do clouds have to do with stories? And according to Sean, specifically stories about people?”
As brilliant as Leo was, he apparently couldn’t find the connection between the two dots. Frustrated, he turned his attention away from the soon to be night sky, and tilted his head downwards to get a better look at the road in front of us, courageously facing his fears and putting the giraffe pulling our carriage in his line of sight.
“Hey, I think I see the Capital.”
I stuck my head out of the opposite window and looked forwards. Off in the distance, a truly monstrous mountain loomed over us. It seemed as though the earth had greedily sought to claim the sky, and reached up to grab it. Off in the distance, to the right and left of the large mountain in front of us, were smaller masses, signifying that what we were looking at was not a solitary mountain, but the beginning of an entire mountain range. The light of the setting sun was positioned perfectly to fully illuminate the face of the mountain that we were approaching and…
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About halfway up the mountain, there was something of a false peak. A great shelf of land and stone that seemed to stretch the entire distance of a small town. However, instead of a small town, the thing that was built upon that mountain shelf was a glorious and beautiful castle, shining radiantly in the disappearing rays of the evening sunlight. A fascinating combination of powerful, imposing towers and gently sloping domes gave an impression of a sort of gentle firmness, like a powerful warrior delicately holding a fragile infant. Below the shelf where the castle was built, small pockets of houses were constructed on the side of the mountain, trailing down to the mountain’s base. Each pocket of houses were approximately the size of another average sized town, and there were dozens of them. Then, at the base of the mountain, buildings stretched out an impossible distance, countless homes and shops covering miles upon miles of land, bigger than any town I’d ever laid eyes on. And every single building seemed to be constructed with at least two stories, truly showing just how many people lived in this Capital.
Looking back at the magnificent building overseeing it all, the castle itself seemed to give off a bluish white glow, similar to…
“Is that entire place made of Spectral Quartz?” I asked Leo, who for some reason was nodding gravely.
“It’s a show of economic strength as well as physical might. To even survive the constant soul damage of being in there, you have to be stupidly strong. Hell, even just being near it would probably be enough to kill you. That way the palace can also serve as a sort of ranking system, where your societal station is determined by how close you can physically get to the palace before you straight up just die, hence all of those sub-towns on the mountain, leading from the Capital to the palace.”
I was confused at the serious tone he adopted. “And what’s wrong with that? It’s a kingdom after all, so someone has to run it. Isn’t it only natural that the people in charge are the strongest?”
He shook his head. “That might work for small villages or beastkin packs, whose biggest concerns are monsters and rival towns or packs, but for a relatively safe Kingdom of this size, the people at the top should be the ones who make the best and smartest decisions. In order to make it to the top here though, the people in charge have probably spent their entire existence thinking about ways to accumulate more power and military might. This means that the entire Kingdom is being ruled not by leaders, but by warriors. This indicates that if they have any sort of problem with another group of people, their most likely response will be to engage in war over it.
“Also, consider how they have to deal with small children. After all, babies can’t really survive soul damage. When a woman gets pregnant, is she banished to the lowest rungs of society, and can only increase her station along with her child? Is the father banished along with them? Or do they have an entire system where families at the top have people working for them at various societal stages, so that as the child grows stronger, they move between different Family houses in the hopes of one day being strong enough to reunite with their parents?
“All of this combined indicates that the Kingdom’s Capital is a factory for elite warriors, who have been raised since birth to pursue strength above all else.” As he finished his deductions, Leo returned to his seat inside of the carriage and stroked his beard, thinking about the potential political climate of the town that we were visiting.
“But why does that have to be a bad thing? Isn’t it good that the Kingdom’s Capital is strong enough to protect the Kingdom? Isn’t that what makes it safe? I just don’t understand why you seem worried about it.”
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing, you’re right. However, remember that here, all crime is punished by execution. Throughout history, pretty much every Kingdom ruled exclusively by the warrior elite has been tyrannical, and their ‘justice system’ indicates that this Kingdom isn’t any different. And the thing about tyrannical rule? It never ends well.”
With that unpleasant thought, we spent the rest of the carriage ride in a contemplative silence, and the sun outside eventually completely disappeared beneath the horizon. As the darkness of the cloudy night sky grew denser, we finally arrived at the outer ring of buildings, where the Traveler’s Station was located, which included the Adventurer’s Guild where we all received our payment for the job we had completed. Due to the fact that Leo had given me as much money as my soul could carry from the bandits he’d defeated, I gave my portion of the reward to him, but he insisted that he would just be holding onto it for now, and would give it back when I was strong enough to take it. As we were getting ready to all go pick out our various rooms and finally go to sleep for the night, X and Duke came over to us, with a Guild receptionist walking alongside them.
“According to Lord Xavier, I hear that you single handedly defeated an army of over 100 bandits, is this information correct?” Leo nodded and replied:
“Yes, that's accurate. May I ask why it’s relevant?”
“Your plate indicates that you are Wood ranked?” The receptionist asked.
Leo looked at his wrist and chuckled, “Oh yeah, I forgot rankings are a thing. To be honest, this is actually technically the first job I’ve ever completed. I was just wandering around alone for a long time, so I’ve done a lot of stuff, but the only job I’ve even accepted since officially registering was escorting the merchant huh.”
The receptionist laughed good naturedly along with Leo and replied, “Well if you’re good enough to wipe out an army on your own, then we can’t really have you stay at Wood rank.” He then slipped the wooden plate off of Leo’s wrist and replaced it with one made of Spectral Quartz. “According to Adventurer’s Guild regulations, I can’t just immediately promote you to Steel rank, but I can at least help you skip Bronze. I hope this is to your satisfaction?”
A tone of confusion escaped from Leo, “Yeah, that’s cool, but just like that? You just believe that I did in fact solo an army despite….this?” He asked, gesturing to his half naked state and his blindfold.
The receptionist gestured towards X, “Lord Xavier is not only a City Lord here in the Capital, but is also a Steel Ranked adventurer. If he’s vouching for your abilities, then I have no reason to doubt them. Besides, between you and me, all powerful people have their own quirks and issues. It’s the downside to being one of the strongest in any room you happen to enter.”
Leo nodded along, “Okay, that tracks. Thanks man, are we good to head to our room now, or do y’all need anything else?” Once we got the okay, Leo and I headed down the hall, and claimed the first empty room we found. Then, Leo warped us into the subspace and….
A streak of brilliant white rushed past me and knocked Leo to the ground. Turning to look, I saw Sophia, still wearing Leo’s hoodie, laying on top of him, arms wrapped tightly around him, pinning his arms to his sides, and Leo lying under her, desperately struggling to force air back into his lungs. While he was working on breathing again after having the wind knocked out of him, I said to Sophia, “Hi Soph, we’re home, and missed you too.” Leo responded with more choked coughing and nodding of the head.
“You’re an Asshole, all those times you came by to grab something from your shed, you could have mentioned it beforehand, I could have met you there and at least gotten a hug.” The immortal demon pouted. She was truly a devious one, airing all of her grievances while the man in question was physically incapable of drawing enough breath to form a reply. It fell to me to defend Leo’s honor, so I shot back,
“To be fair to him, you know as well as I do that he doesn’t exactly plan his day to day life. He probably had no idea he’d be coming here until he was already standing in his shed.”
Sophia stood up, her arms still wrapped around Leo as he managed to start breathing again, but now was being awkwardly carried by someone significantly shorter than himself, his legs making his spine bend backwards, so he awkwardly tried to bend his knees to bring them above his waist, stabilizing him. All this seemed to do though, is make his abdomen flex, putting more pressure on his bruised lungs, sending him into another coughing fit.
“That’s not the point! The point is I missed him and he’s an asshole.” She firmly stated, as we started walking towards the house.
“P-Put….Me….Dow-own” Leo finally managed to work out, demanding through his coughs. Pouting even more heavily, Sophia complied, but then wrapped her arms around Leo possessively from behind, hugging his waist while allowing his arms to be free. Leo gave a sputtering laugh, then slipped one arm behind himself, wedging it between him and Sophia, then used that to move her in front of him, then used his other arm to scoop her legs out from under her, lifting her up in his arms, and Sophia happily moved her arms to wrap around his neck. Meanwhile I was simply impressed that he could carry Sophia while clearly still somewhat struggling to breathe.
After we entered the house, Leo immediately made his way over to the couch and set Sophia down on his lap, leaning back and taking his first deep breath since entering the subspace. As he focused on recovery, I made my way over to the kitchen to grab myself a simple snack. Returning to the living room, I sat down on the other end of the sofa and struck up a conversation with Sophia, and we talked for a little while about how apparently Vern had discovered that Sophia’s been stealing games from her for the past two years, and they had a big confrontation about it.
After about half an hour of idle chit-chat, all of the exhaustion from the full day and a half I’ve been awake caught up with me, and I left to my wing, so that they’d be free to engage in all of the carnal debauchery they wished. As I was leaving, Leo called out to me, “I’m planning on sticking around here tomorrow, but did you make any plans to meet up with Mike or X?”
“Nah, you’re good. Tomorrow we chill around the house, then the day after we go meet up with everyone? We can definitely use changing our sleep schedules as an excuse.”
Leo nodded, replying, “Sounds good. Night.”
“Good night guys.”