There are many myths and legends surrounding the popular folk hero Leon Fou Bartfort. Very little of his early life was properly documented, while the veracity of any and all accounts of his adventures are called into question when one realises how many iterations and retellings they have been filtered through.

If one ignores the common folktales and local legends, most of what we know about Bartfort comes from his final adventure. This story has been adapted and embellished time and time again, into novels, theatre, poetry, and most famously the 'Leoniad' by famed novelist Natsume. While the text worships Bartfort as a god and blatantly exaggerates his accomplishments it is also one of the the most accurate accounts of his life on record, as Bartfort apparently dictated large portions of the adventure to her first hand. Scholars consider the most definitive version of the epic to be the version edited jointly by King Julius of Holfort, Empress Ariana of Arbezela and Queen Shirley of Invictus, who rules the country he founded to this day.

Many believe this version to be just as unreliable as the first, as though the three of them attempted to paint Bartfort as fallible and flawed they still treat him with the reverence and awe of everyone else. King Julius in particular was notorious for constantly (and presumably accidentally) calling him Dad in public.

The Leoniad is split into two parts: the first deals with the fallout of Bartfort's bargain with the fae dragon Tirnoch, while the second is about how he met the fallen angel Trias, about how he met me, and about the three wishes he promised me. It does not reveal nor even hypothesise as to how Bartfort and Tirnoch met, nor does it explain what Bartfort was doing in the Faelands in the first place. This has been rectified in recent years by the increased trade and cultural exchange with the Fair Folk, who have numerous tales to share of a dark stranger with dark circles around his eyes and a bad personality. Compilations of these stories have been noted to trace a straight line through the Faelands to Tirnoch's location, leading historians and cultural anthropologists to speculate that Bartfort deliberately entered the Faelands for the sake of hunting her down.

The earliest part of Bartfort's life on record - published after the Leoniad but occurring much earlier - was recorded by Empress Arbezela in her memoir 'In the Footsteps of Beowulf' shortly before the start of the Great Dragon Plague, detailing his disastrous love affair with the Goddess of the Dead. If Tirnoch (being a dragon herself) were responsible for this Plague, it would explain Bartfort's displeasure.

The book is written in first person, as Bartfort purportedly related the tale to her over several nights when asked why he had suddenly appeared in her court. The start of the book describes how Leon is drafted into service by Julius Rafa Holfort, who desires use of his ship in order to compete in a race. It specifically states that he will be cleared of his crimes if he does so, but neither Bartfort nor the Empress explain what these crimes are. It has been discovered by researchers at Holfort University that almost everyone in the capital experienced joint amnesia, losing several months' worth of time. When King Roland awoke he saw Bartfort's allies standing in his throne room with weapons drawn, leading him to assume that they were assassins. They fled the scene, uncovered the Lost Item he uses as a ship and apparently became pirates for a year before the Prince came to them with his offer.

Here, then, is Bartfort's Original Adventure. Whereas the Leoniad is split into two parts, this tale is split into three. Prince Julius kept meticulous journals of his life, and discovered after Bartfort's banishment that he had actually met him during his lost time. The second part occurs during the true blank: the point where Julius temporarily abandoned his journals, and something happened to the people of Holfort that wiped their memories clean when it was over. The third is Bartfort's year on the run, which ended with a violent clash with an individual mentioned in Julius' journals.

This is where my own studies begin, as I travelled through the Holfortian countryside collecting folktales and local legends left behind in places he is known to have visited. My aim was to piece together these three lost fragments of history, to understand the man who one day showed up on an Empress' doorstep with a wild tale and an intimate knowledge of the demonic cult infiltrating her household.

Again, a lot of these were made up. It is fairly well known that at this point in his career Bartfort had not yet had sexual relations with the Goddess of the Underworld, which let me discard a fair few of them. It's this one, however, that I believe came first.

Characteristically, it was all his fault.

Huan Strongarm: A Bartfort Folktale, by Lufas Maphaahl

An old man wanted to ask Leon for a favour. He didn't know it yet, but this was the worst thing that would ever happen to him.

Aesik was a pleasant man, if a bit stern, and on this particular day had stopped to chat to Leon as he worked in the field. Although he was wearing peasant clothing he was a retired knight, entitling him to a last name.

His surname was Griffith, though only Leon got the joke.

He had a wrinkled, bearded face and a jaw that wobbled in the way that old people sometimes did. At his hip was a sword with a serpent coiled around the hilt, which Leon had always wanted to swing around.

"Can you believe it?" Aesik was saying. Leon jolted awake, having gone on a mental tangent involving bacon, chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches.

"No," he said honestly. "Can you?"

"It's been three months!" Aesik was now gesticulating wildly, and the way the sentence rang familiar led Leon to believe that he had been constantly repeating it while he wasn't paying attention. "Three months and not a single letter! Does he even care about me? I raised that boy as if he were my own, and this is the thanks I get?"

"No respect," Leon agreed. He was walking a fine line between continuing his work and pretending he was paying attention. This suited Aesik just fine, as he was more interested in talking than in being listened to.

"Do you want to know what he said the last time we met?"

"It's why I'm here."

"Something's wrong."

Leon blinked and stopped what he was doing. It was like Aesik had finally ground up enough XP and levelled up his storytelling skills between sentences. "What was wrong? Why would he say that?"

"No, I mean right now. The birds have all gone quiet; that means monsters are near."

"Aw, hell!" Leon dropped his hoe and picked up the sword and rifle left by the field for just such an occasion. The sword was sheathed and attached to a belt, which he strapped around his waist before loading the rifle from the box of bullets beside it. "It's always when I'm in the middle of something!"

"Every time," nodded Aesik sympathetically. "You keep an eye out while I ring the… Oh, there it is!"

He said this in the tone of someone finally spotting the last difference in a Spot the Difference puzzle.

The monster was huge and leonine, with massive, feathery black wings a good twenty five feet across. Its mane was an autumnal red and its teeth jutted painfully from between its lips, while a scaly black tail trailed through the sky behind it.

"Ring the warning bell," ordered Leon. "If you see my dad, tell him it's a manticore."

"Yes, sir."

"And that it might have a poisonous sting on its tail."

"Got it."

"Which it might be able to shoot at people rapid fire."

"Holy crap!"

"Just go! Go now!" Leon raised his gun as Aesik hobbled away, the monster now almost on top of him. He didn't have time to brace himself and almost fell over when the barrel kicked against his shoulder, hitting the manticore in the wing and instantly neutering its ability to fly. "Whoa balls!"

Leon threw himself to the side before the screaming creature could crash into him, accidentally saving himself from being mauled by the second monster sneaking up behind him. It was another classic: a chimaera, the kind with one lion head and one goat head with a serpent for a tail. The two children of Typhon tackled each other head on, erupting into a snarling mass of fangs and claws.

"Wait, Typhon didn't have any manticores. Shut up, brain!"

All this happened so fast that Aesik was barely eight feet away by the time Leon raised his gun for a second shot.

"Sorry dude, the other guy's already wounded," muttered Leon, squinting down the barrel at the bickering beasts. Neither of them was doing much damage to the other, so it made sense to take the opportunity while he still could. "You probably weren't going to use those anyway."

All three of the chimaera's heads screamed as Leon shot it in the ballsack, kicking the surprised manticore away before lunging at him with a snarl. He managed to jab the barrel of the gun into the lion-head's eye; the monster howled as it cooked in its socket, the gun still red hot from being fired.

He tossed the rifle away as the chimaera backed off, drawing his sword instead.

"Please don't have impenetrable skin please don't have impenetrable skin please don't have impenetrable skin please don't have impenetrable skin…"

The blade instantly shattered against the chimaera's face.

"Fuck!"

Leon rolled away as the chimaera dove at him, leaping with such ferocity that it crashed into and through a nearby shed. "Lord Leon!" Aesik had stopped to unsheathe his sword, and was now waving it over his head in an effort to catch his attention. "Use this!"

The sword skittered across the ground, stopping well short of Leon's position.

"Dammit, Aesik! You had one job!"

"I'm old, jackass! What did you expect?" Aesik flipped him the bird and hobbled off, once more attempting to ring the warning bell.

Leon ran for the fallen weapon, not daring to glance at the monster for fear that it would slow him down. He ran so fast he almost overshot, losing his chance to stoop and pick up. He managed to hook his foot under the blade and kick it into the air, grasping the hilt and ducking left under the assumption that one of the monsters was right behind him.

He was completely right; the chimaera was lunging at his back when Leon spun away, raising Aesik's sword above his head. The snake-head at the end of its tail had just enough time to see him coming before he severed it at the base, thrashing and hissing in the grass for a moment before going still.

"Damn," Leon muttered respectfully. "That's some good steel."

The chimaera squealed and limped away, blood gushing from the stump of its tail. Leon was about to finish it off when an ominous hiss caught his attention: the manticore was still there, raising its scorpion tail above its head. A low, threatening growl was echoing out from its throat, and dozens of smaller spines were beginning to sprout around the primary sting.

"Uh oh."

Leon sprinted away as the spines fired like bullets, embedding into the ground and tracing an accurate path of where he fled towards the fields. Mud banks had been raised around the edges to prevent the soil from being washed away by the rain, providing excellent cover from the manticore's needles.

Leon threw himself into the mud, scrabbling in a panic and pressing his back against the bank. He screamed as some of the barbs hit the barrier of earth behind him, quickly pulling in his feet as a few more landed just short of his toes.

The barrage ceased as the manticore waited for him to come out. Leon stayed where he was, now smeared with wet mud along his back and legs.

"Figures these things would attack when no one else is around," he grumbled miserably. "How did the chimaera even fly? It doesn't have wings!"

The warning bell rang out in the distance, but Leon could now see the manticore's shadow; its tail was raised above its head - probably to shoot at him if he came out - and its shadow was slowly growing across the mud as it came closer.

"I can't believe I'm about to die." Honestly, Leon felt more resigned than afraid. "At least I'm not going to fall down the stairs again. That would suck."

"Leon Fou Bartfort?"

"HOLY FUCKING-"

Leon was almost scared out of his skin when the spirit appeared in front of him. There was no sound, no flashy special effects, it was just there. It was far taller than a normal human being, and was made of pulsating purple energy that crackled with black lightning. It had four arms tipped with huge clawed hands that matched its huge clawed feet, and had no recognisable facial features besides its immense, demonic horns.

The manticore immediately opened fire. The spirit simply raised its hand and froze the needles in midair, which was probably a hint that it wasn't to be messed with.

"I have no intention of telling you who I am," it declared. "Nor will I grant you any other context."

"Oh," said Leon faintly. "Okay."

"I am here on behalf of your future self," it explained, immediately contradicting itself. "I promised to grant you one ability as thanks for a vow fulfilled, but you claimed your past self needed it more."

"Yeah, well, he… I was probably talking about those monsters over there."

"One would assume," the spirit nodded solemnly. "The name of the power I have for you is Strongarm."

Leon blinked. "So… it increases my arm strength?"

"Not exactly. Your future self compared it to Kendo Rappa."

"From My Hero Academia?"

"Precisely," nodded the spirit. It placed one hand on his head, and suddenly Leon knew how to magically rotate his shoulders in order to throw impossibly powerful punches. "It's good to see that you being a moron hasn't changed."

"What?"

"Nothing." The spirit straightened up, then paused thoughtfully. "You should probably practise eating without hands."

"What!"

The spirit vanished as abruptly as it arrived, causing the floating needles to resume movement and fly off into the distance. Leon could tell by its shadow that the manticore wasn't moving, presumably just as confused as he was.

"Well that was weird," he muttered. He threw a few experimental punches: the wider range of movement in his shoulders let him throw hands at a machine gun rate, though that didn't feel like it helped much against a ranged opponent. "Now what do I… Wait."

Leon picked up a stone and hurled it over the bank, his new ability causing it to fly with such force that neither he nor the manticore could track it with their eyes. The monster's wing exploded as the rock flew straight through it, sailing off out of sight. It squealed and backpedalled, almost falling off the landmass as it backed over the edge. It began frantically scrambling to climb to safety, but the blood loss was clearly starting to get to it.

Leon brandished Aesik's sword and prepared to cleave in its skull, but he was interrupted by a leonine roar; the chimaera had bounced back from the loss of its tail and was ready for round two, rearing back on its hind legs and spitting fireballs from its lion-head.

It was thankfully nowhere near as accurate as the manticore was with its barbs, and Leon was able to easily duck around them before leaping through the air and stabbing Aesik's sword into the lion-head's throat. He braced his feet against its chest, drew back his fist and looked the lion in the eyes.

"Want to know what a punching bag feels like?"

At impossible speeds he punched the chimaera in the face, hitting it dozens of times before it had time to take a second breath. In moments its skull had completely caved in, its thrashes of pain throwing Leon across the ground while the sword remained embedded in its neck.

He pulled himself painfully to his feet; the goat-head - due to possessing its sole remaining brain - was now in full control of the chimaera's body, stomping at the ground and glaring at him as it psyched itself up to charge.

Leon just gestured to bring it, discreetly casting a strengthening spell on both arms. "I'd say I'd eat you for breakfast, but we both know your crappy meat isn't good enough for me."

With a furious bleat the chimaera charged him, only to get unceremoniously punched in the face. It hit the dirt like that one rhino from 300, leaving a long rent in the dirt. Leon stood over it and punched it rapidly in the face, accidentally snapping off one of the goat-head's horns.

"Oh," he said mildly. "That makes things easier."

He picked up the severed horn and drove it through the chimaera's throat, pinning it to the ground as its eyes bugged out of its head from the sudden agony. Leon stepped back as it thrashed in pain, only moving to retrieve Aesik's sword when all movement had ceased.

"Why didn't I do this in the first place?" he wondered aloud, giving the blade an experimental yank. "It would have been way easier than using the horn to-"

Leon screamed as the manticore abruptly tackled him, pinning him to the ground and snapping its jaws inches from his face. He forced it back by keeping his hands on its shoulders, kicking at it with his legs in a desperate attempt to free himself.

When the manticore reared back he punched it in the chin, slamming its lower jaw into its skull and sending a shock directly into its brain. With the creature stunned Leon dragged himself under its belly where its fangs couldn't reach, gripping its fur with one hand while he rapidly punched it in the gut with the other.

It roared in pain, writhing uselessly in futile efforts to catch him. In a moment of brilliance it rolled onto its back, forcing Leon to roll with it until he was riding its chest.

He just scoffed. "Why thank you, asshole!"

Now in a mounted position, Leon began raining blows down on the manticore's face. Strongarm wasn't doing as much damage as it did in the hands of Kendo Rappa - presumably because he was about a million times more buff than Leon was - but it was still leaving the monster's face a bloody ruin.

When its back arched beneath him, Leon realised that the manticore was about to jab him with its tail; he ducked to the side and narrowly avoided being skewered, grabbing the stinger before it could be pulled away.

Man and beast struggled in a stalemate; the manticore couldn't get up while Leon was mounting it, and Leon couldn't release the stinger for fear of being jabbed with it.

"Yep. Shouldn't have bothered getting out of bed this morning."

And then with a paternal battlecry Balcus was there, holding Aesik's sword in his hand. With insulting ease he clove the manticore's stinger from its tail, causing it to scream in pain. Leon was still holding the stinger in his arms, and almost lost his balance when it was cut off.

"Let me guess," he taunted. "Attached to it? Fine! Take it back!"

He rammed the stinger into the manticore's mouth, muffling but not completely cutting off its snarls. Rather than use his new ability, Leon simply stomped on the stinger's stump; the tip tore through the back of the manticore's throat and pinned its head to the ground, its voice cutting off with a final, unpleasant gurgle.

"Leon!" In an instant, Balcus reverted from murderous barbarian warrior to panicked dad. "Are you okay? Did they poison you? ARE YOU HURT ANYWHERE?"

"I'm fine," he nodded. "They got it worse than me."

"That doesn't mean I can't worry!" Balcus insisted, his eyes suspiciously moist.

"Please don't cry."

"I'm not crying!"

"Dad, please, do not cry."

"Am nod cwyin!" Balcus blubbered, rubbing furiously at his eyes with the back of one hand. Aesik had finally arrived with reinforcements, armed mostly with spears and rifles tipped with bayonets. He had found the time to put on a heavy looking suit of armour, which he was far too old to be cavorting around in.

"Baron!" he called. "Lord Leon! Did we miss the battle?"

"Yep," grunted Leon. "More importantly, why are you wearing that? You know what your nephew would say if you hurt yourself!"

"Bah!" snorted Aesik. "You youngsters should-"

He suddenly stopped, his eyes bulging from his head as he clutched at his chest. He fell to the ground with a strangled cry as the militia crowded around him, Leon supporting his back as Balcus shouted at them to give him some room.

"Dammit, Aesik!" Leon snapped, already following his father's lead as his eyes began to tear up. "What were you thinking? We had plenty of men to throw at this! You could've stayed home!"

Aesik gave him a shaky smile. "I lived a fool, and now I'll die a fool. An old martyr's dream made me fight. Please, can you bring me my sword?" Balcus brought his ancestral blade and laid it in his arms, where he cradled it like a child with their favourite toy. His eyes fell on Leon, whose sleeve he grasped with shaking hands. "I beg of you, Lord Leon, bring my sword to my nephew Earis!"

Even though he had just brought him up, Leon struggled to remember who he meant. "Earis? But… Aesik, you're not going to-"

"My grandfather's grandfather made this sword and died long ago on the main continent," Aesik interrupted. "He was your ancestor's standard bearer and the greatest warrior in his village. The blade is ancient, but I've cared for it well." His eyes became bleary and forgetful. He held the sword above his head, squinting as the sun reflected off the blade and covered his eyes. "Look," he whispered. "Look how it gleams in the sun!"

"You can do it yourself," Leon insisted. "Come with me to Holfort! You can deliver it yourself!"

"Holfort?" he snorted. "Never! The blood of my ancestors sanctified this soil. I will die here or live forever. But the dead have no use for swords." Aesik gently pushed the weapon into his hand, and this time Leon took it. "Give this blade to my nephew. He lives… Yes, he lives in Holfort."

He took a rasping breath, his eyes once more becoming unfocused.

"Do you see the serpent coiled around the hilt?"

They were the last words he ever spoke.

They were like the first tolling of the bell.

Like the first nail in the coffin.

Like the first domino of thousands.

Quest: Aesik's Sword

Summary: The first side quest offered in the original Summoner for the PS2. The protagonist (Joseph) finds Aesik mortally wounded after trying and failing to fight off the raiders attacking his village, and his dying request is to deliver his ancestral sword to Earis in the capital city of Lenele. Earis gives Joseph his old Bastard Sword as thanks.

Whether or not the Earis of Holfort is willing to offer the same reward as the Earis of Lenele is irrelevant. If the spirit is to be believed, pretty soon he won't need it.