The Branch Leader nodded slowly, his cold eyes softening as he ran a hand over his thick silver beard. "It appears this young man is far more impressive than I originally anticipated. A survivor of the Brightsword lineage, and the sole chosen heir of Master Green Leaf..."
Even a powerhouse of his towering stature, isolated deep within this border command, had heard whispered legends of the old eccentric known as Green Leaf. In the Branch Leader's personal estimation, that old reclusive physician had been a truly bizarre but deeply admirable anomaly—a man who spent his long life treating the broken and the poor without ever demanding a single copper coin, fiercely believing until his dying breath that health was a universal right rather than a tool for commercial exploitation. He had been a free, wild soul who answered to no empire.
