Naiad ascended the stairs to the summit of the Great Pyramid. It was a long climb, but her eighth-tier body made it with ease. As she drew closer to the blue light that surrounded the peak, it steadily grew softer until it vanished entirely just as she passed through it.

The blue beam of light that connected the altars of the two pyramids, however, remained as bright as ever, and it gave Naiad a terrible feeling of being watched. Ever since she was little, she always thought that there was something in that beam, something trapped or sealed and that it was always watching her.

But whatever gave her that feeling wasn’t her focus; the figure that, even to her eighth-tier senses was almost completely obscured by the blue light, was all that she looked at.

“Maia…” the figure whispered in the sing-song language of the river nymphs, her voice gentle and soothing despite the power it needed to project itself through the dense water that surrounded them. “Welcome home…”

The figure twisted, still unrecognizable as anything other than a black silhouette in the blue light, but Naiad knew exactly who it was—her mother, Pleione. After all, Naiad recognized her mother’s voice, and no one else save for one of Pleione’s power could claim so high a position with all the other eighth-tier Naiads so far below.

“Mother…” Naiad whispered out loud, her voice coming as almost a shock to her after going so long without speaking.

Naiad drew closer to the figure, and the figure calmly strode forward to greet her in turn. By the time the two embraced, Naiad could see her mother perfectly well, even backlit as Pleione was by the beam of light.

Pleione was much paler than Naiad, showing that she hadn’t contented herself with the usual Talfar fare that the rest of the Naiads of her generation had, given Naiad’s skin tone. She was also just as nude as Naiad was, and apart from their differing skin tones, the mother and daughter were almost identical. Were it not for that one difference, the two could’ve been mistaken for identical twins, with their broad, heart-shaped faces, piercing blue eyes, long, light brown hair, and well-endowed hourglass figures.

“Maia…” Pleione whispered as she cupped Naiad’s cheeks. “I know you can’t have come back here without good reason, but please just let me take a good look at you, it’s been so long since you last came here…”

Naiad acquiesced, remaining still and silent for about ten seconds as her mother took in her every detail. She hadn’t changed too much since she left Saron almost a century ago, but she indulged her mother anyway; she’d learned long ago that it cost her little to indulge her mother like this while keeping her happy, and Naiad wanted Pleione happy right now, rather than the wrathful goddess that she often used to assert her dominion over the rest of the river nymphs.

Pleione stared into Naiad’s eyes, but her magic senses swept over the entirety of Naiad’s body, taking in every detail of both her physical state and that of her magical aura.

“Mmm,” Pleione hummed in satisfaction, “not a single trace of gorgonism. You’ve finally found a mate, then? And it seems that he’s even marked you as his if that ring is any indication…”

“That’s… what I’m here to talk about…” Naiad whispered as her cheeks reddened slightly and she dropped her gaze downward until she was staring at the ring on her finger, the invisibility ring that Leon had given her after looting it Tiberias’ guards.

“Oh?” Pleione responded, her expression going from one of delight to one of apprehension. “Has this person made you sad?” Killing intent came pouring out of Pleione in such amounts that the water around them began to freeze.

“No!” Naiad protested, trying to allay her mother’s furious reaction, knowing full well the hell that Pleione could unleash if she were truly angered. “It’s not like that… I just want to talk!”

Pleione took a long, deep breath, and retracted her killing intent, allowing the temperature around the two to return to normal. She also made a quick hand gesture to the rest of the watching Naiads far below them, telling them that everything was all right, despite her brief outburst.

“What do you need to talk about?” Pleione asked once she regained her serene demeanor. She calmly leaned back in the water around the two, with the water dense enough at these depths to hold her up like a chair without her power keeping it from doing so.

Naiad, however, remained standing. “He… asked me to be a part of his family…”

“I see…” Pleione replied. She leaned forward after a moment of thought and whispered more to herself than to Naiad, “So this boy wants to take you from me…”

“I’m not yours, mother,” Naiad replied. “Was that not clear when I left?”

“You didn’t leave me, little one, not when you move barely a few long-counts away into a cavern that I built for you!”

Naiad scowled, but she didn’t back down. She glared at Pleione and made it clear with her aura alone that she was willing to fight to back herself up. Pleione’s aura towered over hers, dwarfing it so completely that Naiad hadn’t the faintest idea how powerful her mother was. Pleione could be the weakest of ninth-tiers, or she could be the strongest of tenth-tiers—she could even be stronger, and Naiad had no way of knowing.

“Oh, enough, dear. I’m only playing with you, you make the most adorable faces when you’re angry!” Pleione said as any trace of hostility in her voice, face, and aura vanished like they were never there, and she leaned forward with the most welcoming and enthusiastic of smiles and continued, “So, tell me about this boy that’s caught your eye. Is he strong? Is he cute?”

“He possesses the blood of the Thunderbird,” Naiad simply replied.

Pleione froze in abject shock as her eyes darted down to the friezes flanking the road that lead to the base of the pyramid. Specifically, what caught her eye was one of the largest carvings on the beast side, behind only a handful of dragons and several other creatures—a carving of a huge raptor with its wings spread, surrounded by lightning and with a pair of topaz eyes.

“… Are you sure…?” Pleione asked. “That bloodline was supposed to have been exterminated thousands of years ago…”

“I’m sure,” Naiad replied, not entirely sure why her mother was acting like this, but understanding that Leon’s blood was, perhaps, far more important than he seemed—at least to her—to realize.

“Dear, you take that boy and you don’t let him go,” Pleione suddenly ordered. “To mate with a man with an Inherited Bloodline is one thing, but his… is stellar…”

“What do you mean?”

Pleione glanced back down at the friezes one more time before she answered. “I’m not entirely sure, to be honest, but I do know that the descendants of the Thunderbirds were powerful enough to have once ruled this entire plane! They were almost all killed eighty thousand years ago for reasons I don’t know of, but the power in their blood is… beyond powerful! If you have the chance to give your daughters that blood, you must take it!”

“So… for no other reasons than Leon’s blood, you’re saying that I should go back to him?” Naiad asked, her face warping with indecision, skepticism, disappointment, and a hundred other negative emotions.

Pleione almost shouted back, ‘Yes!’ in response, but seeing and registering what was going through Naiad’s mind by seeing these expressions caused the words to die in her throat. She sighed, laughed, and said, “You know, you really remind me of myself sometimes. And I mean that as a compliment.”

“I’ll try to take it that way,” Naiad said back, though neither woman knew if she was being sarcastic or not.

“So, tell me about this boy, then, with more detail than simply what he can give your daughters.”

Naiad sighed, then began filling her mother in on Leon’s physical characteristics and all that both of them had done since they had met in explicit detail, and she didn’t neglect to mention Elise.

“That’s… quite the story, kid,” Pleione said once Naiad had finished. “I’ll admit, I never thought about other women like that, but if it makes you happy, I won’t question it.”

“I hadn’t either, but… Getting with Leon is a package deal with Elise. It’s both or none, so I chose both, and have since experienced more than I would’ve ever thought possible.”

“Sounds like a tough situation to maintain,” Pleione said. “Were I in your place, I think I would’ve just pushed this ‘Leon’ boy down and taken what I wanted.”

“I know, but it didn’t work when I tried it. He resisted.”

“And that’s the part I still don’t quite believe. He isn’t blind, is he? Why would he resist? Your father didn’t when I stole him from his palace…”

“But he had Elise. Like I said, both or neither, so I had to negotiate with Elise first.”

“… Well, I’m glad that things eventually worked out, at least for a while. Are you pregnant?”

“… No,” Naiad quietly admitted.

“That’s a shame,” Pleione whispered in response.

The two sat there in silence for a long few seconds as Naiad waited for her mother to say something else. Pleione, however, seemed to lose herself in thought for that time. Once she returned to herself, any frivolousness on her face was gone, replaced with deadly seriousness. If her daughter had come all the way back to cold Saron from the warm bed of her mate, then the least Pleione could do was to take this situation as seriously as Naiad was, even if her joy at finally seeing her daughter again after so many decades made that a bit difficult.

“You’ll be going back to him,” Pleione matter-of-factly stated as she turned her eyes back toward her daughter. “It doesn’t matter what I say or do, you’ll be going back. Any breath I use trying to convince you to stay would be wasted.”

Naiad nodded.

“I suppose, then, that it also doesn’t matter if you have my permission or not… but you have it, anyway. Consider any outstanding obligations you have to Saron fulfilled, assuming you didn’t before…”

“What about all of you?”

Pleione glanced away from her youngest daughter and down to the rest of the Naiads below. Three of them were nearly identical to Naiad in everything, including skin tone. Those were Naiad’s sisters. The rest of the Naiads were more distantly related, though they all referred to themselves as sisters since, under their Empress, they were all equal.

“I had hoped that you would be the one to succeed me,” she quietly confessed. “However, if your place is up there in the world that humanity has wrought, then so be it. I will content myself with one of your sisters. I’m just happy that you didn’t follow in the footsteps of my foolish youngest sister and embrace gorgonism after all this time without finding a mate …”

Naiad smiled and rushed forward to hug her mother. “Thank you!” she said into Pleione’s ear.

“Just do me one favor, my dear,” Pleione said as she hugged Naiad back.

“Anything,” Naiad whispered.

“If what you say is true and this Leon boy gains enough power to bring his clan back from oblivion, then spread our people as well. The two of you ought to have many children over the years… Oh, and if you make sure they know where they come from, I’d appreciate that, too. I’d like to meet my grandchildren one day.”

“I will,” Naiad whispered back.

“Good,” Pleione said. “Now, how long has it been since you last saw this boy?”

“More than a month,” Naiad answered.

Pleione sighed in thought, and said, “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to keep you here for a little while longer. There are a few things about our kind that I was saving to teach you for when you returned, and now that you’re back, I’d like to get started so that you can return as soon as possible…”

—

It took weeks for Pleione to impart everything that she knew to Naiad. It was a significant breadth of information, everything from the most esoteric theories on where river nymphs came from to good methods to increase power once Naiad found where her limits lay—as she wasn’t human, the training methods of humanity wouldn’t do her much good.

Those weeks were more than enough time for Pleione to dread the moment when they parted. It wasn’t enough time for a mother who hadn’t seen her daughter in so long, and she couldn’t help but feel melancholic as she watched Naiad walk back toward the edge of Saron, quite possibly never to return.

Naiad loved Leon. She never outright admitted that to Pleione, but Pleione could see it in the way Naiad’s eyes glittered when talking about him and hear it in her voice when she told her mother about the past year or so. Pleione knew that Naiad didn’t have to admit it to her, she only had to admit it to herself and Leon. After these past few weeks, Pleione hoped that Naiad understood that, and though she never confronted Naiad with it, she made sure Naiad knew that river nymphs of her intelligence and power mated for life.

There would be no other mates for Naiad after Leon. There had been no others for Pleione after Naiad’s father, nor before. There may be other women in their shared bed, but since Naiad couldn’t have children with them, Pleione didn’t think they’d count—though she was certainly curious as to what Naiad’s relationship with them might look like.

At the very least, she knew that if anything happened to keep her daughter from the only true mate Naiad would ever have in her life, then she’d use every ounce of her power to gain vengeance on Naiad’s behalf, even if she had to massacre every single person on Aeterna in the process.

It wasn’t quite official, yet, that Leon and Naiad were mates. Naiad still had yet to tell Leon her true name, and at least until that happened Leon would never know the sound of her voice, but that was a technicality that Pleione didn’t think mattered to anyone involved. As far as Naiad was concerned, she and Leon were already mates, even if her emotional turmoil of the past couple of months had shaken that certainty a bit.

Pleione sighed, lay back in the water, and turned her eyes upward toward the beam of blue light looming above her, connecting the altars of the Great Pyramid and its inverted counterpart. The magic powering that great ward was stronger than even Pleione could reasonably estimate, and the thing it contained demanded such strength. She had hoped that Naiad could have helped her to watch over it, but it seemed that it would never be.

That was fine, Pleione thought. She’d make do with the others below her. The thing in that light could never be freed, no matter what it was, but it was her place to watch over it and the rest of the pyramids here, anyway.

Such was the most important duty of the river nymph Empress.