Back in Leon's room, once the room was empty and the house had settled into its evening quiet, Leon maneuvered himself onto the wheelchair, crossed to the door, and locked it.
Simple precaution. The last thing he needed was someone walking in mid-summoning and having questions he wasn't ready to answer yet.
With that done, he initiated the summoning process, as he could feel that the door was already active to be summoned again. Just as previous times, the door appeared with the same drama in the immediate surroundings.
Unremarkably, yet another skeleton warrior stepped out of the door, wielding identical weapons to the others. With that done, Leon could only look in quiet disappointment. He was expecting something else, something more powerful, but then again, thinking about it, getting swarmed by an army of peak grade 1 skeleton warriors wasn't so bad, they could still do a lot of wreckage to monsters like that.
'I still need to test a few things, though.'
The army was growing, slowly, one greatsword skeleton at a time. He stored the skeleton in his summoner's space, and with the summoning completed, the door disappeared like it always did.
He wheeled himself back to unlock the room.
The door burst open the instant the lock disengaged, catching the wheelchair full on and sending Leon off it and onto the floor with an impact that went straight to his leg. The pain arrived immediately, complete and radiating, and he pressed both palms flat against the floor and breathed through it while his vision went briefly uncooperative.
"Oh come on." The words came out with gaps between them. "Damn."
"Leon!" Alyssa called out as he bashed in, but then turned her gaze away from him, scanning the room while moving all around.
Alice rushed over to Leon who was still on the floor, supporting him to sit as she too surveyed the room. "Are you alright?"
"I was." He looked up at Alyssa, then pointed at his cast. "Have you heard of knocking? You almost gave me a matching set."
She understood what he meant, but didn't respond or offer an apology. "What was that energy coming from here a moment ago? I could have sworn I felt it." She questioned, looking intently at Leon.
Leon let Alice help him back onto the bed, settled his leg carefully, and exhaled. Seeing no need to hide it, he spoke, "that was my summon. I'm sure you know the details already." He said, stretching out his hand and calling forth one of his skeleton warriors.
Both sisters went still.
Alyssa's eyes went wide in surprise as she saw that it was indeed a summon. Alice was just as surprised, and just at that moment, several people rushed into Leon's room, men and women all wearing suits. Leon was taken aback by their appearance, he didn't expect the government to hide even in their house.
"It's fine." Alyssa raised one hand, voice carrying the flat authority of someone accustomed to being listened to immediately. "No danger. You can return." Alyssa gave an order, and after a moment of staring at the skeleton, they all left. Seeing the look in Leon's eyes, Alyssa explained dismissively.
"They work for us," Alyssa said, catching Leon's expression. "You don't need to worry about them."
'I almost forgot we were rich,' Leon thought.
Within that short moment, Alyssa was already circling the skeleton, examining it inch by inch, while Alice didn't approach, afraid it would do something to her. At this point, Leon was really curious to know just what kind of summon Alice had. Normally, those with strong summons were confident, and so was the case in reverse.
"I thought it was just another rumour and didn't bother confirming, but it looks like you really did summon an undead skeleton warrior." After studying the skeleton more, she turned to Leon. "And the phenomenon recorded?"
"It happened," Leon confirmed.
Alyssa didn't say anything more, but Leon noticed the flash of shock in her eyes, even though it was only for a moment.
Alice shouted in joy, tackling Leon on his bed in the name of a hug as she rejoiced. While Alyssa didn't do anything to restrain Alice, Leon was more uncomfortable than happy about the character of his sister being genuinely happy for him. 'She does know that she isn't a child anymore, right?'
He patted her back and called it done.
Leon dismissed the skeleton once the moment had passed and cleared his throat. "Is mother not around? I was sure she'd run here worried."
"She left earlier for a meeting." Alice answered.
"Yes, and she won't be back in a few days either."
"Oh I see." Leon, curious of what kind of summons his stepsisters had, asked directly. "What are your summons?"
Alyssa tilted her head slightly. "You want to see them?"
"If that's possible."
"Well, not in here." She looked around the room. "When we go for the dungeon raid, I'll show you properly. But…" She held out her hands lazily, palms facing upward, and two spheres of fire appeared above it, the size of two basket balls, without ceremony, dense and orange-white, radiating heat that Leon felt clearly from the bed. She held them for a moment, then extinguished them before anything in the room had a chance to respond to the temperature. "My summon is a Phoenix," she said simply. "You'll see the rest when there's space for it."
Leon nodded. Then he looked at Alice.
Alice smiled at him with the expression of someone who was slightly embarrassed and slightly proud simultaneously, but more of the former. "Mine is a dragon," she said.
Leon was shocked to hear this.
"A named one," Alyssa added.
Leon looked at her, then back at Alice. "Named?"
"I suppose you don't know what it is. Well…" Alyssa went ahead to explain.
Named summons were the kind of thing that existed in the historical record the way certain legendary events existed, something you read about and filed under real but distant and possibly fiction. These creatures were not named by their summoner, but arrived with a name already belonging to them, which meant they arrived as individuals rather than as creatures awaiting direction.
"His name is Kragsnok, a legendary Flame Dragon, as he would call himself, a living myth" Alice said, with the particular expression of someone describing a relationship that was equal parts wonderful and completely unmanageable. "He has his own opinions about things. When I summon him, he generally does what he wants." She paused. "So I can't really show you. It's a bit risky."
"She can't control him." Alyssa said plainly. Kragsnok was just too powerful, and Alice could not control it yet. Having its own will and full consciousness meant it chose to do what it wished once released, and some times, she would even struggle to unsummon it.
Leon looked at his younger stepsister sitting on his bed in this enormous estate, and thought about the Grade 1 skeleton warriors currently residing in his summoner's space, and felt the particular weight of the contrast settle over him without any commentary required.
"And mother?" he asked. "What does she have?" After hearing of his siblings' greatness, it wouldn't he strange if his stepmother was also just as broken.
Alice and Alyssa exchanged a brief look. "Her summon is a water spirit," Alice said.
Leon kept his expression neutral.
"Don't," Alyssa said, reading him accurately. "She's Rank 4. I dare say, she is amongst the most powerful Rank 4 summoners in our country."
"What rank are you?" Leon asked.
"Five," Alyssa said.
Leon absorbed that with little surprise. In fact, it would have been strange if she wasn't.
Alyssa was amongst the top twenty summoners in all of Varen, a country of significant size and power globally, and a population that had been producing summoners for generations. At her age, that was not a small thing. That was an extraordinary thing.
He swallowed a thick bolus of saliva and looked at Alice.
"Also five," she said, then added, with the honest self-awareness of someone who had made peace with a complicated situation, "though I'm not very useful."
A Rank 5 summoner describing herself as not very useful because her summon had its own agenda and wasn't particularly interested in following instructions. Leon thought about that for a moment and decided it was actually a reasonable assessment of the functional gap between rank and application.
Hearing all this, he could understand. He looked at his own situation from the outside. The biological son of the national hero of Varen, surrounded by a stepmother who was Rank 4 and stepsisters who were both Rank 5 at practically the same age as him, and yet he had nothing to show for it while they awakened early due to superior talent. The public comparison would have been automatic and merciless, and the original Leon had been living inside it since he was old enough for people to start forming expectations.
He understood, with more texture than before, what that accumulation must have felt like.
Alyssa stood at some point shortly after and said she had things to attend to. No particular ceremony to the exit, just a decision made and acted on. Leon watched her go and thought she was probably the most self-contained person he had encountered in either of his lives.
Alice on the other hand stayed.
They ended up talking until the clock had moved well past the point where staying made any practical sense. She talked about the months he had been gone, about their mother's worry, about small things that had happened in the estate that she had apparently saved up to tell him when he came back. Leon listened and asked questions and filled in the gaps of a life he was still reconstructing around the edges.
By the time she finally stood and said goodnight, it was past midnight. She paused at the door and looked back at him with an expression that was simply glad he was there.
"Goodnight, Lili," she said.
Leon managed not to react to the name.
"Goodnight, Alice."
She smiled and closed the door softly behind her.
Leon lay back in the dark, sighing deeply. "That door better give me something good soon."