Justin sat in his box staring down into the sands of the arena long after just about everyone else in the arena had left. He could think about nothing but Leon’s lightning, and how similar it had felt to him, how startlingly powerful it had seemed compared to other fifth-tier lightning mages that Justin had encountered. On the surface, it had appeared barely different compared to the power of any other lightning mage, but Justin had felt something sacred about that Leon’s lightning, something that could banish the dark. It was a trait of magic that he was intimately familiar with.

‘That boy must be of House Raime…’ Justin thought to himself, but a sense of deja vu was hardly concrete proof of that. However, as he sat there thinking it over in his head, it suddenly struck him just how much Leon resembled Kyros Raime, from his black hair to his long, straight nose and chiseled features. Leon even seemed to be about the same height as Kyros.

Of course, his appearance was little more than circumstantial evidence, as Justin had met countless people who resembled Kyros Raime in some form or fashion, but when added to the lightning magic that Leon displayed, Justin couldn’t help but start to be convinced of his suspicion.

Justin sat in his box for a long time mulling these things over, and it wasn’t until the arena had been otherwise cleared of spectators that he realized the games were over and he departed for his villa.

When he arrived, two hours or so after Leon first leaped into the arena, the stout man was already waiting for him with a preliminary report. Without a word, both men went straight to Justin’s office, which Justin had heavily warded to keep whatever was discussed within private.

“Talk to me,” Justin said as soon as the door was closed and they were sealed off from the rest of the world.

“That knight’s name is Leon Ursus, he’s from the Northern Vales…” the stout man reported. He quickly went into what information his contact in the Royal palace had at hand, including Leon’s record at the Knight Academy, the brief couple of weeks he spent at Fort 127, his subsequent reassignment to the Diplomatic Corps, and ending with his transfer to Prince Trajan’s retinue and his actions thereafter.

“So,” Justin said once the stout man was finished, “this boy came south from the Northern Vales right after Timetheos’ team vanished up there?”

“Yes,” the stout man confirmed, his face momentarily twisting in a deep frown. Timotheos’ disappearance left a significant hole in the Isynian forces, and it hadn’t yet been filled. The rest of the mages that had gone with him were replaced easily enough, but seventh-tier mages didn’t just grow on trees. What was more, Timetheos was a friend to most of Justin’s immediate subordinates, making him that much harder to replace.

“Then… this Leon Ursus…” Justin muttered in thought. He had long ago learned the name of Artorias and Serana’s son, and since Leon checked all those boxes, he figured Leon was most likely his primary target. However…

“What should we do about this?” the stout man asked.

“… Give me an hour or two to think,” Justin said.

The stout man nodded, then left Justin’s office.

Justin wasn’t averse to killing if the need required it. He didn’t enjoy it, and he most certainly didn’t seek it out if it wasn’t necessary.

But even then, his mission was to kill Serana’s son and husband. There wasn’t much wiggle room in that regard. If Leon was willing to leap into the arena to defend a gladiator sentenced to death by a Prince, though, then Justin didn’t particularly want to kill him.

The silver-haired man sighed as he sat down behind his desk and leaned back, his thoughts turning to about a decade and a half ago, when he had first begun his investigation.

Back then, he had little information to go on, and accessing Artorias’ destroyed villa wasn’t easy. Still, Justin had plenty of gold and silver from Lord Kamran, plus the assistance of powerful friends that he’d brought with him to Aeterna. Building a spy network turned out to be almost comically easy with a few silver coins in the right hands.

But his spies turned up nothing after two years of searching. In the end, Justin could only assume one thing, that Kyros was giving his son and grandson shelter. As he closed his eyes, Justin remembered everything that happened that day like it had only been that morning.

—

Argent Palace was a beautiful palace complex, even to Justin. He couldn’t help but feel terrible for what he knew he was about to do to it. He hoped that House Raime would be reasonable, but given what he was there for, he was certain that violence was inevitable.

Before that, though, he would need to establish his power.

The palace was in the center of Teira, with a private park encircling it that belonged to House Raime. The main administrative center of the palace complex was built on the highest point of the city, though given how flat the Great Plateau was, that wasn’t saying much.

Justin and his two comrades, the stout man and the tall man, approached the front door of the palace completely unseen. There were hundreds of people on the road between the palace and the rest of the city, but when the trio was in their shadows, they might as well have been invisible.

It was only when they finally reached the door that they emerged into the light, startling several dozen people around them who were waiting to be granted entrance to the palace. They were dressed all in black and their faces were concealed, though, so this attention didn’t bother any of them in the slightest.

Justin tried to use his magic senses to gauge how warded the door was, but his magic power was scattered as soon as it came into contact with the door. With a sigh, Justin began to channel his magic.

‘I’ll just have to go all out, then,’ Justin thought to himself as the surrounding temperature suddenly dropped. With a wave of his hand, Justin summoned three ice-cold globes of water that hovered in the air behind him, and the people around the palace instantly scattered, the more faint-hearted of their number screaming in fear.

Justin lunged forward, his water cutting through the hinges of the door and the lock like a knife through butter, shaking the entire entrance hall and ripping the doors off their hinges. The doors collapsed inward, crushing a couple of people beneath them. The water was fired with such force that after slicing through the door, it almost exploded into the atrium like shotgun blasts, killing dozens more in the atrium.

The innumerable wards protecting the door from just such an attack had been almost worthless before Justin’s magic power.

Almost instantly, the three were surrounded by the palace guards, but Justin’s crew were so obviously powerful that the guards refrained from attacking or speaking.

“Please surrender, we’re not here to kill you,” Justin said, his voice echoing throughout the atrium, his aura towering and putting enough pressure on the guards to convince them that attacking these interlopers would not end well for them.

Mustering every ounce of courage he could, the sixth-tier leader of the Raime knights that guarded the entrance to the main palace building replied, “You surrender first!” His voice cracked halfway through his demand, though, making him about as intimidating as a yelping puppy.

Instead, Justin requested with as much politeness as he could express given the circumstances, “I would like an audience with Archduke Raime if that would be possible.”

By now, almost all of the civilian survivors of the initial attack had fled, leaving Justin’s crew alone with the guards.

“And what business, may I ask, do you have with me?” asked a deep, silky smooth voice from above.

The upper floors all opened up into the atrium, with a grand staircase leading up to them. When Justin looked up, he saw the handsome face of Archduke Kyros Raime staring back at him over the bannister of the third floor.

Kyros was an old man, though it wasn’t that apparent just from looking at him. He had a full head of pitch-black hair with not a hint of gray, his skin wasn’t any more wrinkled than any other middle-aged man, and his body seemed almost like it was nothing but corded muscle, which was apparent even when the Archduke was fully clothed. He was tall, but not unusually so, and his eyes were as black as night.

What was most striking about him was his vigorous aura, and when Justin sensed it, a broad smile broke out over his face.

“Isn’t this a surprise,” Justin said, “I heard you were only a seventh-tier mage!”

Kyros’ mostly-stoic face betrayed no surprise, but rather, intense wrath that was kept under the Archduke’s complete control. It wasn’t that Justin could see through his power that angered Kyros, rather it was the attack on his home and the murder of his people that enraged him so.

“State your purpose,” Kyros repeated with significantly less politeness.

“I’m looking for your son, Sir Artorias,” Justin stated, his tone conveying how wide the smile on his face was behind the black featureless mask. “Or is it ‘Lord’ Artorias? I can’t keep these damn titles straight!”

“Why do you seek my son?” Kyros asked, his smooth voice taking on a hard and dangerous edge.

“I seek not only your son but your grandson as well,” Justin said. He then turned his head toward the atrium’s second floor, where a young man had just exited the throne room and stood at the top of the first flight of the grand stairs. He looked much like Kyros, though his aura was much weaker, closer to the mid-sixth-tier if Justin were to make an educated guess, and his features were softer and younger.

“If you want to find my little brother, you’ll be doing so over my dead body,” Alexander Raime stated, his eyes expressing as much anger and hatred as it was possible to express.

“Come now, there’s no need for such threats,” Justin said. “Artorias made a mistake mating with that saurian bitch, all I want is to make everything right. Their child must die, but Artorias himself needn’t.” Justin had never met Serana, so his barbed comments were a little much, in his opinion. Still, he knew that marrying Serana had been the reason for Artorias’ exile from Teira, so he used that language in the hope that it would raise Kyros’ opinion of him.

“No one will lay a hand upon my blood, not while I yet draw breath,” Kyros growled, the entire building shaking under the force of his words and dashing Justin’s hopes. It didn’t matter what language Justin used, he had still attacked Argent Palace and killed many of Kyros’ retainers, solidifying him as an enemy in the mind of the Archduke. Besides, he was there to murder Kyros’ son, and that was beyond unacceptable.

Justin’s smile changed into one of understanding and appreciation, rather than confidence. He’d heard that Kyros had exiled Artorias for marrying Serana, so he’d hoped the Archduke would at least cooperate with him, assuming he wasn’t harboring Artorias and Leon, which Justin felt was incredibly likely given his lack of results over the past two years.

“I understand your position,” Justin softly said. “If anyone attempted to bring harm to my daughter, I think I’d wipe out their entire family. If this were normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be here, but I have a duty to kill your grandson. Please, if he’s here, let me do my duty and we will leave, we need not get violent.”

Justin didn’t believe that Kyros would agree. He didn’t think anyone in their right mind would agree to give up their grandson to be murdered by anyone, let alone a stranger that broke down their front door. Still, he had to ask.

Just as Justin thought, Kyros simply said, “My son and his son are not here. If they were, I would never give them up. They are my boys, and anyone who would bring them harm will die by my hands.”

The Archduke was done talking. Kyros reached into his soul realm and called forth a long silver spear. Below him, Alexander did likewise, retrieving a massive two-handed sword.

“Kill them,” Kyros ordered, and the knights, having taken this time to compose themselves, charged at Justin’s party.

With a wave of his hand, the stout man fired hundreds of small lights, like tiny stars, and killed half of the knights in an instant. The tall man called forth his own sword, and after channeling his light magic into it and coating the blade with a twenty-foot-long beam of golden light, cut down the other half of the guards with a single slash.

Alexander roared and charged at Justin. His body almost exploded with silver-blue lightning, and Justin, instantly seeing through the source of that power, was so stunned at the sight that he almost didn’t defend himself. At the last second, Justin managed to summon a wall of ice between himself and Alexander, saving his life.

From above, Kyros leaped over the bannister and dropped to the ground with an earthshaking crash behind Justin’s team. Justin spun around to face the Archduke while the stout man and the tall man faced Alexander.

Justin and Kyros were about evenly matched, both being eighth-tier mages. However, Justin’s side was much stronger, as both of his subordinates were of the seventh-tier while Alexander was only a sixth-tier mage.

The battle that followed was quick and brutal. Justin and Kyros’ fight launched them out into the rest of the palace complex, with blasts of ice and silver-blue lightning shattering the outlying buildings. Alexander’s speed managed to keep him alive for a while, but he was eventually killed when said opponents brought the building down upon him.

It took the stout man and the tall man a few minutes to recover despite the power gap between them and Alexander; it wasn’t for nothing that House Raime was considered the strongest in the Kingdom, only exceeded perhaps by the Royal Family.

When Justin managed to bring Kyros down, he didn’t finish the man off right away. Instead, he stood above him, Kyros bleeding from a hundred wounds and Justin from almost as many, and said, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry it had to be this way. I truly do wish it could’ve been different. But I have no choice, I must do this…”

And Justin put his blade through Kyros’ heart, bringing an end to the Archduke. Kyros’ eyes never left Justin’s, and the latter could see an ocean of rage and hatred within those pitch-black eyes. Justin deserved every drop of it, and it killed him to know that.

“My Lord!” the stout man called out as he and his partner caught up with Justin outside of the main palace building. “We have to leave right now if we don’t want to have to deal with this city’s peacekeepers!”

But Justin didn’t move. He stood there, blood and mana flowing out of his body almost unchecked, and said, “These people had an Inherited Bloodline. I believe they are remnants of the Thunderbird Clan!”

That statement sent a shockwave running through the other two men, and they instantly knew why they had so much trouble with Alexander. No traditional lightning mage of comparable power could’ve held out so long against their combined strength.

“I thought their lightning looked strange,” the tall man said with a look of disgust on his face.

“It doesn’t matter if they’re sub-human!” the stout man hurriedly replied. “What matters right now is to get away from here to maintain our cover!”

Justin sighed, knowing that his subordinate was correct. But even as he and the other two made their escape, leaving Argent Palace and everyone who didn’t escape in time almost completely obliterated behind them, he still thought about Kyros’ silver-blue lightning. It gnawed at him, knowing that now, he’d no longer be able to let Artorias live. All those related to the Thunderbird had to die, just as all those related to Serana’s clan had to die.

Such were his orders, and they could not be disobeyed.

—

Justin opened his eyes, his recollection over. Doing Lord Kamran’s dirty work wasn’t something he took any amount of pleasure in, so he had never told his Lord that the Thunderbird Clan still existed, even so diminished. That was a rebellion he could afford. To let Leon and Artorias live was not.

Justin was not a hammer, annihilating a problem along with everything around it. No, he was a scalpel, surgically removing problems with as little collateral damage as possible.

With that determination set, Justin’s mind was made up. He summoned the stout man back into his office to pass along his decision.

“There is a possibility that Leon Ursus is not Leon Raime, correct?” Justin asked.

“There is a possibility…” the stout man conceded.

“We will not kill him until we have irrefutable evidence,” Justin said, offering no further explanation no matter how long the stout man stared at him.

Of course, he could understand the stout man’s questioning look, as they were only one or two murders away from going home, but Justin’s mind was made up. Lord Kamran had his wife, but Justin still had his principles, and the two weren’t necessarily opposites. He’d find and kill Leon Raime, but he’d spilled enough blood on the way.

“Keep Leon Ursus under strict surveillance,” Justin said. “If we find proof that he’s Leon Raime, then we’ll capture him and interrogate him for the location of his father. Even if he doesn’t tell us, we’ll still kill him.”

Justin hoped that if that scenario came to pass, that Leon wouldn’t speak. If Lord Kamran didn’t know that Artorias was of the Thunderbird line, then Justin wouldn’t necessarily have to kill him.

But things rarely went according to Justin’s desires. His current situation was proof of that.

“But, be careful,” Justin replied, deciding to offer a much more compelling reason that he hoped would prevent any of his subordinates from doing something rash against his orders. “Timotheos went missing, and if this ‘Leon Raime’ is at fault, then we have to proceed with great care…”

“Yes, My Lord,” the stout man replied, his face momentarily twisting in fear of whatever might have killed Justin’s second-in-command. He knew that even after three years, he wasn’t as strong as Timotheos. He turned and left Justin’s office, wasting no time in getting to work putting Leon under surveillance.

Justin, too, got back to work, but in his case, it was drafting a few accounting documents for Prince August. It was a useful distraction from his other, more distasteful job.