When Leon thought about war, he imagined an incredibly intense conflict, something that would grind thousands of warriors into bloody meat on a daily basis. For the most part, that was accurate to the kind of lightning wars that he had experienced—even the war with Talfar was over in a matter of weeks, but it still left tens of thousands dead.

This war, however, was surprisingly peaceful, at least after the violent first week-and-a-half was over.

After the Central Consul retreated from the pass leading to Ironford, a month passed in relative peace. During that time, both sides continued to muster their forces and shore up their alliances, but there wasn’t a lot of excitement between them. They settled into an uneasy status quo, with August controlling the Eastern Territories, Octavius with the Southern, Western, and Central Territories, and both sides jockeying for the Northern Territories, which remained largely undecided apart from a few notable exceptions, such as Count Whitefield and Marquis Grandison.

Leon’s part in all of this was relatively small. He didn’t have the bureaucratic skills to help Minerva out with the logistics of getting fifteen Legions and a small army of nobles ready for a war, though he contributed where he was able to, mostly acting as a supervisor for units running training battles.

But that hardly filled his days, and it left him with a great deal of time to think and reflect on all that had happened during the past few months. Trajan’s death, Naiad’s departure, his relationship with Elise, his relationship with Valeria, his decision to continue the fight with Minerva, and even Gaius’ interrogation, all of it turned about in his head and refused to leave, no matter how much he wanted them to.

He returned to training with the Thunderbird, which he had put on hold during the hectic two weeks or so following the flight from the capital, but she knew that something was wrong…

—

The Thunderbird easily deflected Leon’s almost painfully slow slash and countered by sweeping his lead foot out from under him with her own. Leon hit the soft padded mat of the training room he’d built in his soul realm, with nothing hurt but his pride.

“You’re distracted,” the Thunderbird said with a sharp glare. “Your mind is elsewhere, not here with me.”

Leon groaned in frustration and struggled back to his feet where he returned to a rather sloppy stance.

The Thunderbird, naturally in her human form and dressed in a pure white tunic and tight pants that matched, derisively snorted and lunged at him. Leon attempted to block her attack and found himself knocked onto his ass for his trouble.

“Why am I continuing to bother if you won’t do me the courtesy of actually paying attention?!” the Thunderbird demanded, while from outside the training room Leon could vaguely hear the sounds of his demonic partner snickering at his repeated knockdowns—Xaphan’s pavilion wasn’t too far from Leon’s private residence he built near the top of his mountain, and the demon could easily see into Leon’s dojo with his magic senses.

“Give him a break, he’s only human!” the demon shouted from outside, his deep resonant voice sounding muffled in the training room.

The Thunderbird didn’t give Xaphan the satisfaction of a verbal response, but she did exert enough power to slam him into the stone floor of his pavilion.

“You lost against another lightning mage, that is unacceptable,” she growled as she glared at Leon.

For his part, Leon rose to his feet and made no excuses for himself. Sertor was much older and more experienced than Leon, but he knew that the Thunderbird wouldn’t accept that as an excuse—he’d had his ass handed to him too many times in the past month over that particular failure for him to continue making excuses.

“I will ensure that you do not lose again,” the Thunderbird continued, her voice softening as she stared at Leon, her yellow avian eyes picking up on the fact that it wasn’t Leon’s loss that was weighing on his mind so much. “Speak up. Something is distracting you. What is it?”

Leon stared at the wall for a moment as he thought about how to respond. Admitting to mistakes wasn’t something he ever found that difficult, but when it was something so personal, it was still hard to give voice to them.

“I… I got a letter from Elise yesterday, and I just… Well, with her, and the whole situation around Naiad, and then me running off out here…”

“You’re rambling,” the Thunderbird interrupted, sending a bolt of lightning arcing through the sky above the open-roof dojo, the sound of its thunder shaking the entire mountain.

“Sorry, it’s just that I don’t really have the words to properly describe what I’m feeling…” Leon said.

“Take it slow, I’m not going anywhere. How about this, start with this letter, what was in it?”

“Nothing too earth-shattering,” Leon said. “However, it wasn’t so much a great revelation that was in it that got me thinking, it was more the tone, plus a few small details. She mentioned that our home was seized by Octavius and that Heaven’s Eye was under great scrutiny to support Octavius in this conflict, or to at the very least, stay neutral.

“But it just got me thinking, and I realized that this wouldn’t happen if I weren’t around. Elise wouldn’t be under so much pressure, she wouldn’t have had her home taken by the state, and her family wouldn’t be facing the scrutiny of a Prince.”

“Given the power of Heaven’s Eye, this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, to be honest,” the Thunderbird muttered. “I think you might be—”

“I know that it isn’t that big of a deal to them,” Leon said, interrupting his ancestor, much to her chagrin. “But that’s not the point. The point is that I have made myself a part of Elise’s life, and by extension, a part of Emilie’s life. And yet I’ve done so little. They have done so much for me, and I haven’t even the faintest idea of how to pay them back for their generosity.”

“Does any of that generosity have to be paid back?” the Thunderbird asked. “Speaking from my own great experience dealing with the many men of the harems I’ve had in the past, whenever I’ve given them gifts or done them favors, I never expected anything in return, for the pleasure of their company and their cocks was enough.”

Leon visibly cringed. He didn’t want to hear about something so private from his ancestor.

Moving past sex talk as fast as he could, he replied, “I get that, but I feel like a freeloader. I want to give something back, even if it’s something they could easily get themselves or that Heaven’s Eye can procure with a snap of its mighty corporate fingers. I just want to do something that shows Elise how much I love her.”

“If you could give something back to me, I’d be ever so thankful!” Xaphan shouted from outside, his face still held against the stone floor by the Thunderbird’s aura. “I’d settle for being able to stand back up!”

“Hmmm…” the Thunderbird hummed as she thought, not paying any mind to the shouting Xaphan. “Getting a present for your primary mate, is that all that has been on your mind, boy?”

“No,” Leon admitted. “There’s been a lot, actually. I’ve been thinking about Naiad, Gaius Tullius, and other things.”

“And your training? Has that entered your mind at all?”

“Yes, but I confess that it’s taken something of a back seat to the rest.”

The Thunderbird sighed and resigned herself to the fact that Leon was done with training for the day and that she now had to attend to his psychological needs.

‘If he weren’t my only descendant remaining, I wouldn’t bother with this…’ she uncharitably thought.

“All right, what about your other mate?” she asked out loud.

Leon, after returning his sword to his vault, freely said, “I was unfair to her. And unkind, I think, given how helpful and undemanding she’s always been.” After speaking his piece about Elise, he found it much easier to speak, the Thunderbird’s somewhat exasperated expression notwithstanding. “I forced her to make a decision… and she ran. If she were still here, I could’ve solved this entire thing. I could’ve just walked right into the palace and killed Octavius then and there. Earthshaker would’ve been made a head shorter, and then I could’ve left this damn Kingdom behind.”

His words were harsh towards the Bull Kingdom, but his face was regretful rather than hateful and vindictive. It was clear enough to the Thunderbird that whether or not he actually felt that way about the Kingdom, it was being colored more by his own anger at how he treated Naiad than anything else.

“Why did you treat her that way, then?” she asked.

“She tried to force herself on me when we first met,” Leon answered. “But… in the end, when she saw that I didn’t want that, she backed off. After that, she was nothing but helpful.”

“Was the decision you forced her to make necessary?”

“I think it was. We were about to go to war, and I wanted to know how she felt. We never really talked about it before…”

“Sounds like you were a bit of an idiot,” the Thunderbird said with the faintest hint of a smirk playing at her lips.

“I can’t argue with that, as I reflect on my actions, I find myself being far too passive. I think I should’ve acted more and waited less. All of these things with Elise, Naiad, and even how I’ve been since Trajan was murdered…”

“What set off all of this self-reflection? Unless it just came out of nowhere…”

“No, I think it came after speaking with Gaius Tullius…” Leon quickly filled the Thunderbird in on Gaius’ circumstances as they had been explained to him.

“And you saw your situation in his? Being forced to participate in campaigns that you didn’t believe in?”

“A bit, yes.”

“But you chose to be here.”

“I did.”

“Have the reasons for that choice changed?”

“Hardly. Trajan wanted to see this Kingdom thrive, to see it at peace and its people happy. What kind of person would I be if I were to leave while it’s in the midst of a civil war kicked off, at least in part, by his murder?”

“Sounds like you have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing, so what’s with the second-guessing?”

“It just… it doesn’t feel like my future is here, you know?”

“Of course, it isn’t! If your future was in this backwater, then I wouldn’t bother training you and resign myself to the fact that my clan has come to an end! I would never have revealed myself to you and demanded that you reach the sixth-tier so that we could speak properly! I would’ve let you continue in peace, probably to be killed somewhere along the way like the rest of the baseborn plebeians that call this cursed graveyard their home.”

“Right… well, it does kind of seem like I’m wasting my time by staying, even if it is to fulfill my obligations to a dead friend. There’s just so much going through my head about what will come next that I’m having trouble focusing on the here and now.”

The Thunderbird stared at her last descendant, her eyes sharp and piercing, and sighed. “You’re still only twenty years old. Take the time to broaden your horizons, to live in the moment, and to make sure that when you leave, you do so without regrets. Your Prince Trajan had great expectations for you, and you can fulfill them later when you start to build a power base in the Nexus. You have plenty of time ahead of you for other things.”

Leon frowned, his general sense of unease not abated.

“Listen, boy,” the Thunderbird said with uncharacteristic tenderness, “when a mage achieves Apotheosis, they essentially become immortal. They do not age—in fact, they will age backward until they reach their physical prime, assuming they weren’t in their prime when Apotheosis was achieved. And yet, immortals rarely live for longer than a few thousand years, for the weight of all that time is immense, far more so than most are able to bear. Few things will kill an immortal faster than apathy and boredom.”

“If they’re immortal, how do they die?” Leon asked without too much seriousness.

“Usually in ritual suicide, or by getting others to kill them. When someone abandons all desire to live, it’s not unheard of for them to abandon all respect for the rule of law—though, fortunately, it’s mostly those who leave nothing behind that go to such extremes. If they have a family, they’ll usually choose to end things by their own hands.”

Leon grimaced. He didn’t think he’d ever choose suicide, but he wasn’t even fifty years old, yet, let alone five hundred or five thousand. “How many of our clan have claimed their own lives?”

“Many…” the Thunderbird whispered as she stared at nothing in particular. “All of my children grew tired of life, and all of my grandchildren, too.”

Again, Leon frowned. If the Thunderbird existed within them, then she likely would’ve seen all of her family members being crushed under the weight of the years they had lived and then taking their own lives. It suddenly made a bit more sense to him why she had always been so aloof to the rest of his clan, only revealing herself to him, when he was the last one alive who carried her power.

In a blatant change of topic, the Thunderbird said, “I’m making some progress with your request to learn how to transform into a similar kind of being as myself.”

“Oh? What kind of progress?”

“Nothing that will bear fruit in the near future, I think, but…” The Thunderbird didn’t look at Leon, instead choosing to continue to stare at the walls of the dojo.

However, unlike a few moments before when her eyes were unfocused and distant, now they seemed to be locked on something specific, though Leon had no clue what it could be. There wasn’t anything in that direction except the Mists of Chaos, so he could only assume that whatever she was seeing was in her head.

Continuing, the Thunderbird said, “I had to apply some principles I learned from other Primordial Beasts, but I think that when it’s ready, it will work. It will require greater power than you currently possess, though, so don’t go slacking off just because I’m making progress!”

“Thank you for going so out of your way for me,” Leon humbly said, and he meant every word. “I don’t know how I could ever repay you for this.”

“Prove yourself worthy of it. That will be enough,” the Thunderbird replied. “Now, have you come to any conclusions regarding your problems? Or are we going to sit here and play at therapy for a few days?”

Leon stifled both a chuckle and a frown. He didn’t know what kind of conclusions he could’ve drawn in so short a time, but his head felt a bit clearer now and felt ready to continue with his training.

“I’ve decided to continue with this war,” he said. “I don’t have to stay, but I’ve put far too much of myself into this to just up and leave so abruptly. If I did, I’d regret it forever, and you specifically told me to avoid regrets. I’ll see this place that has been… well, not good, but at least somewhat decent to me returned to peace, and in doing so honor Trajan’s memory. I’ll also kill Octavius and the Earthshaker Paladin because ** those two.”

“Good,” the Thunderbird said approvingly.

“I’ve also thought about the issues with Naiad and Elise. If Naiad ever returns, which I think she will given what I can feel from the power she left within me when we made our contract, I’ll do better. I’m fairly sure that I love her, and I want to make her a part of my family. And as for Elise, well, I think I can start by showing how much I appreciate her. In that vein, I could use some advice from your end…”

“We’ll see,” the Thunderbird coyly replied. “What did you have in mind?”

Leon smiled and told her.

“You can’t buy your way out of guilt or into someone’s good graces,” the Thunderbird said. “Or, at least, I don’t think you’ll be able to do so in this case. Either way, I like it, and I will render what assistance I can.”