Odyssey of the Guardian Emperor

A pair of white and golden eagles soared high in the sky, rainbow-coloured crests atop their heads. From afar, mere specks, yet up close, each one was at least the size of a small elephant. Their powerful wings relaxed in the controlled gales of their element, only flapping when necessary to stir the winds with aether meant to bend them to their will.

Accompanying them was a large white lion, flying beside them with the help of a majestic pair of snow white wings, spread out even wider than the Heaven-Crested Eagles.

Unlike the Eagles, though, the lion didn't fly as effortlessly. When the eagles flapped their wings, they rose much higher, bending the wind to their will and sailing high beyond the clouds with minimal effort. The lion, however, masterfully caught these gusts of wind and flapped thrice as hard to keep up with the Heaven-Crested Eagles.

All three remained invisible to the naked eye, hidden by a powerful Concealment Spell, as well as the power of a silver-haired girl's Inborn Ability.

Seated on the lion were Alaric and a large man, both dressed in black armour and wearing the faces of their aliases, Alistair and Leon. The world ignored them, as expected. This way, Alaric's presence was concealed, and the spell keeping the crew unseen was not rendered useless.

On one of the eagles sat a boy wearing at least five bracelets on his arms. Troy gripped the Eagle's feathers hard and kept his eyes closed, muttering under his breath. Grun'am growled, but that only seemed to make the boy grip his feathers tighter, hanging on for dear life. They were locked in a stalemate.

On the other Eagle, however, sat two girls, one with copper hair and the other silver.

A carriage down below could be seen entering the Barren Mountains, heading in a different direction, straight for the Tower of Seekers. Just like Alaric had suggested, the group had split in two, and the rest were headed to the Tower to conduct further research on the Dungeon of the Sun before deciding on whether to hunt down the Sun Gauntlet or wait for Alaric to complete his Tempering Ritual.

Lucy sat in front of the former assassin, her shoulders tense. By now, they were all aware of the tension between the copper-haired beauty and Alaric. The two had not said a word to each other since the start of the journey.

"So…" she began.

"You want to ask me about Alaric?" Scarlett cut her off with an icy tone, "Forget it."

"I'm sorry, Scarlett, but I can't do that," Lucy answered.

"And why the hell not?"

"Because you're the one who decided to come on this journey with us to support Alaric, only to get into a fight with him before we even set off. That's not a good start, and if you can't work things out, then you'll be regretting this decision for a long time.

"There is nothing to talk about," the copper-haired girl growled through her teeth.

"Then tell me why you denied his offer to dance," Lucy asked.

"How do you know that?" Scarlett asked, but the girl's silence told her what she needed to know, "You all know, don't you?"

Lucy answered, "Why wouldn't we? He was seen walking away from you when the thunderclouds rolled in."

Scarlett scoffed, folded her arms across her chest and looked off to the side, "I don't have to explain myself to you."

Kair'ak sighed below them, "Are humans always this complicated in their resolutions?"

"Sorry you have to watch all this, Kair'ak," Lucy rubbed circles in the Eagle's feathers, drawing a satisfactory hum from her, "If I may ask, how do your people resolve misunderstandings?"

"We hold something we call the Duel of Wind, a contest of power. It is easier to speak with your fists than with your words. That's just a saying my father told me growing up."

"Does it work? The Duel?" Lucy wondered.

"Life is simple on the battlefield. You kill or you're killed. In the Duel of Wind, you let your fists fly and fight for survival. There is no room for cheap tricks and lies. Just the cold, hard truth of those hurt and those misunderstood," the Eagle responded.

Lucy nodded, "What if it makes it worse? What if the Duel of Wind only drives a wedge between two people?"

The Eagle chuckled deeply, "If a simple duel is enough to drive friends apart, then they were never friends to begin with. I have a friend whom I've challenged to at least a dozen duels. Each duel reminds me of how strong our bond is."

Lucy was silent for a while, mulling over the Eagle's words and relating them to their current situation. She knew Scarlett had no chance of beating Alaric in a duel, but she also knew Alaric would never harm her. "I can see how that could solve this problem."

"I'm right here, you know," Scarlett snapped at the two, "And I'd never fight Alaric. He'd beat the crap out of me."

"You've got that right," Kair'ak let out a crack of laughter, "He would wipe the floor with you."

Scarlett turned to look at Alaric, even though he was invisible. Her well-trained senses allowed her to detect disturbances in aether, and Alistair's aether patterns were something she'd memorised a long time ago. The former assassin knew where to look.

Did she need the Duel of Wind to know what was on Alaric's heart? She remembered him to be kind and gentle, but even as they'd mounted the Eagles at the start of this journey, he'd looked quite irritable.

"But enough of that. Rest, humans. You've had a long day," Kair'ak said to them. A gentle breeze of wind rustled through the eagle's feathers and tussled the girls' hair in comforting waves. Scarlett's eyelids slammed shut, like the muscles keeping them up had gone limp. She knew for a fact that the warm breeze was anything but ordinary. Her thoughts grew muddled, and she settled into a gentle sleep.

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Alaric sat on Aslan with a sour expression. The clouds below them were soft and white, untouched by the darkness of his emotions because of the Face Mask on his face. While it messed with his Aether Circulation, he wasn't bothered by it, and yet his current irritation persisted like an itch he couldn't scratch.

"Still mad at Scarlett?" LionHeart's voice broke the silence. Alaric looked back at the big man, then at the girl on Kair'ak's back, both of them appearing as translucent silhouettes of themselves seated atop translucent flying beasts. His expression softened, if only by a little. The big man couldn't be further off the mark.

Everyone should have been invisible, and yet, unlike the others, he could still see everyone, though they appeared mostly translucent. Spells of the Constellation of Revelation seemed to have a weak effect on him, just like Lucy's Inborn Ability. This realisation had struck him shortly before they left Melbourne, and at the time, he'd thought, 'I wonder why I'm resistant to Delphi's spells.'

The thought had echoed through his bond, only to go unanswered by the guardians in his In-between. Sabre offered some opinions, but the true answers remained with Alia, and none of the beings in the meadow was about to get close to her and ask. This was where his irritation came from.

He sighed, trying to keep his mood from affecting his friend and protector, "No, I'm not mad at Scarlett. It's my guardian, Alia. She's… ignoring me."

"Really?" LionHeart's eyes went wide. "She doesn't seem like the type."

"I wouldn't put it past any guardian to ignore their master once in a while," Alaric answered matter-of-factly. Humans weren't the best at following rules and were all bound to anger their guardians at some point. Not to mention how they were fond of acting impulsively.

LionHeart wasn't fully convinced, "Well, I thought she was an exception. I have nothing but respect for that knight. Speaking of which, I know a thing or two about being ignored by a guardian. I can help," The big man smirked behind the boy. "So, what did you do? I'm assuming she's not the kind of guardian to just ignore her master, even when she's angry."

"Trust me! This would hurt a lot less if I was the cause of her silence."

"What happened?" LionHeart's curiosity rose.

"WorldHammer said something about her past, and she got really mad. She wouldn't even look at me after that." He responded.

"WorldHammer?" LionHeart strained.

"Right," the boy's eyes widened in realisation, "He's the battle guardian I took from Finn."

LionHeart furrowed his eyebrows, "I still don't follow. You… took Finn's guardian from him?"

For the next few minutes, the big man's face filtered through various impossible shades of white as he listened to Alaric explain this bizarre ability that made him the sole owner of three guardians instead of one, as well as the reason he blacked out in the backyard. Of course, Alaric wouldn't tell something like this to just anyone, and LionHeart understood that he was to take this information to his grave, but that didn't make it sound any less unbelievable. It was like each sentence that came out of Alaric's mouth was a contradiction of what the big man had come to know and believe to be true.

The In-Between. Finn's two guardians. Alaric's power to take the one he wished. The Guardian Emperor's Authority. It was enough to send the man's brain into a spiral.

"So, you can hold as many guardians as you wish in this… In-Between realm at any time you want?" LionHeart took a stab at rationalising the information.

"I don't think I can hold too many… and haven't you ever heard of the In-Between? Don't you visit yours?" Alaric asked.

[ A guardian must first invite their master into the In-Between for them to gain access to it. I was planning on doing that during the Tempering Ritual. ] Aslan pitched into the conversation.

"Ah," Alaric nodded.

There was a bit of silence before LionHeart spoke again, "We'll circle back to this 'In Between' thing. Alaric, you're saying you've been irritated this whole time because Alia isn't talking to you?"

"Yes," Alaric breathed, "To be honest, she's usually my voice of reason when I'm stuck and when I was talking to Scarlett earlier, I just didn't know the right words to say. I know now that I've relied on Alia for a lot of things, including cleaning up my thought process, and sometimes, messes. Surprising as this might sound, that's not something I want to change."

LionHeart nodded, "I can only half-understand what you mean. Aslan has been a big help since opening up to me… but by the time that happened, I'd already learned to do everything myself. I'm not an expert on this subject, though I do suspect that learning to be independent of your guardian must feel like a betrayal."

Aslan didn't respond to this while Alaric nodded, rubbing a hand through the lion's fur. Without meaning to, the lion had let out a sad purr. The bond he shared with LionHeart was a fragile one that was going to take a while to strengthen after everything they'd been through.

"Past wounds will always leave scars, big guy. Just be sure to create new memories in place of the old ones."

The lion purred in contentment. He'd been through the lion's memories, so he knew how he felt about everything his master had just said. If Aslan could go back and change everything, he would.

LionHeart allowed a small, sinister smile to bloom on his face, "Sorry to change the subject, but about the lovely maidens you danced with. Who's your pick?"

'Classic LionHeart!' Alaric rolled his eyes. "I didn't pick any, for your information."

"Oh really," LionHeart responded, "They seemed perfectly… well-bred."

There was a short moment of silence before the two of them burst into laughter. As it turned out, LionHeart had been paying a lot of attention to Alaric's shenanigans and had a lot to remind him of, all in good fun, of course. Alaric spent a good chunk of the journey after this with a red face.

The Barren Mountains loomed ahead, and before long, the Eagles dived beneath the clouds, shedding the Concealment spell and re-introducing them into the mountains. Alaric couldn't help the smile on his face when he saw the unique, gigantic nests that were homes to the large birds.

They flew deeper into the mountains and passed the largest nest that Alaric had helped fix. It was at this point that he furrowed his eyebrows. 'Where are we headed?'

Grun'am and Kair'ak flew in sync, leading them deeper into the mountains with purpose. They sped up, and Alaric felt a shift in their demeanours. Something was about to happen.

The number of nests grew, and their positioning became less strategic. This deep into the woods, some of the nests were built on the ground.

The wind picked up, capturing Alaric's attention. The nests took a back seat in his mind as the eagles continued flying straight. Upon making a turn, Alaric's breath hitched at the sight of the largest cyclone he'd ever seen in his life. The column of wind spun in place, piercing the veil of clouds above it and wrenching it into a spiral of dark cotton, lightning flashing in the vicious rotations of the storm devil. And yet, despite his fear, Alaric's gut remained perfectly fine.

'An illusion?' he wondered, but then again, his resistance to spells of the Constellation of Revelation was high enough that he didn't believe an illusion would be this good at fooling him.

The sibling eagles didn't slow down.

Grun'am was the first to approach, flying straight into the spinning twister of death with no hesitation. As he plunged into it with a screaming boy on his back, a golden light cracked open and swallowed them right up.

Kair'ak followed right after, diving into the same spot Grun'am had vanished into.

[ Hold on tight. ] Aslan's deep voice rumbled through their minds before he dived for the spot as well.

Alaric's heart skipped a beat. He feverishly muttered a spell to shield the three of them, then closed his eyes. His aether channels burned at the sudden summoning of aether, but he kept the spell going.

He half-expected his body to smash into a wall of wind and braced himself for the impact.

There was turbulence, the sound of thunder splitting the heavens, and he definitely felt the lion's rippling muscles flex from under him, but nothing happened. If anything, the turbulence came to a standstill, and the feeling of warm sun kissed his face, prompting him to open his eyes.

His mind popped.

They weren't in the Barren Mountains anymore, or at least, that's what he would have liked to believe. Alaric was treated to the view of a vast fertile land with a city built right into the middle of it. Great trees grew around the city built from wood, metal and cobblestone.

'A pocket dimension?'