When Leon levitated out of his transformation enchantment’s pit, he found the Thunderbird waiting for him, perched on a nearby cliff. He slowly hovered toward her, then set down at her side and waited for her to speak first.

He stared out at his soul realm for a long time as he waited, enjoying how the omnipresent light that emanated from the Mists of Chaos so far away softly illuminated this mountain vale. It felt like the mountains around the vale were themselves surrounded by a misty storm, and Leon couldn’t help but relax whenever he took the time to quietly look out over the place.

Finally, the Thunderbird spoke. “Your soul realm has healed nicely. You need to focus on growing it again.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Leon replied, his tone neutral and unemotive. He knew that this wasn’t why the Thunderbird was here—or at least, not the only reason.

“Continue to build up power within yourself,” the Thunderbird instructed, her yellow avian eyes remaining trained on the distant mists. “Exert some pressure on the boundaries of your soul realm and build up the land around this vale. Like a muscle, you can’t overdo it, but the more you exercise, the faster you’ll grow.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Will the enchantment I made for Xaphan to absorb the Mists of Chaos work for me?”

“I suppose it will, but it would require quite a bit of tweaking. If you pull in too much of the mist, you’ll cause your soul realm to implode, or worse.”

‘What’s worse than a soul realm implosion?’ Leon wondered, but he didn’t ask it aloud. He wanted the Thunderbird to get to the point.

Because of that desire, the conversation died down for a moment.

After that moment of silence, the Thunderbird said, “I felt something shift in here, like the tiniest of earthquakes. An immense amount of force, but not easily seen on the surface. What did you do?”

“Is it not obvious?” Leon asked. He’d been tremendously excited when he first saw that quick burst of black fire, but his excitement had died down as the hours passed without a repeat performance. But now that he was speaking with his Ancestor, all of the excitement came roaring back. “I finally managed to consciously channel some of the Great Black Dragon’s power! I called upon my fire magic and was answered by black fire!”

The Thunderbird finally glanced down at him as he beamed up at her, his face alight with delight. Her avian face, however, might as well have been carved from stone for all the emotion it showed.

“I thought so…” she whispered. “That certainly felt like some kind of shift within your blood, some tiny little thing, like a pebble falling down a mountainside that starts an avalanche…”

“Is this a bad thing?” Leon wondered, his tone shifting to anxious wariness. “I don’t really feel any different, stronger or otherwise. It was just a moment, a quick pulse of power that I wasn’t able to reproduce.”

The Thunderbird replied, “Channeling such powers is like flying; when done once, you always remember how. It’s just a matter of getting comfortable with using that ability. That momentary summoning of black fire was but the first of many summonings, I think. How did it feel at the time?”

Leon smiled, relaxing with her lack of concern. “It was… kind of… well, I don’t really know how to put it into words. It felt liberating, though even that isn’t quite the best way to phrase it. It felt like there was something deep within me, in the core of my being, that slept, but for just a moment, it stirred, its eyes flickering open, and its power was released. But after that, this ‘sleeping dragon’, I’ll call it, passed right out again, and didn’t stir no matter how much I poked and prodded.”

“Interesting,” the Thunderbird whispered. “I don’t think I’ve ever really heard it described like that before. Maybe because of his suppression…?” She trailed off, leading Leon to think that she was mostly just talking to herself as she pondered what he’d said, so he decided to add a little bit more context.

“It was just a feeling I got, I don’t actually think there’s a real dragon in me. It’s just… another aspect of me, another part of me that I don’t have conscious control over. Maybe it would be better to say that I managed to flex a muscle I didn’t know I had, but I’m still not quite in control enough to do it again—though, obviously, this is far more complicated than just a muscle.”

“Indeed,” the Thunderbird agreed. “But have you finally figured out why you haven’t been able to conjure black fire until now?”

“I think I have,” Leon said, pride filling his voice. “It was the simplest thing, honestly. I kept calling for the black fire, imaging that it would be the hardest thing ever to do since I have to actually try to conjure fire when I want to. But that same effort isn’t needed for your lightning, it just comes naturally. To oversimply, I’d say I was trying too hard, and had to let it come as naturally as your power does when I call upon it.”

“That makes sense,” the Thunderbird said, though her tone was somewhat subdued and almost morose.

Leon’s eyes narrowed and he felt suddenly awkward at her relative lack of expression. “Is that… all right?” he asked, feeling almost like a child asking an adult if he’d done something bad.

“It’s quite all right,” the Thunderbird immediately responded. “Objectively, this is something to celebrate, but…” As she trailed off, her body shifted and in a flash of light, she was standing beside Leon in her human form, her bronze face not looking all that thrilled. “But I can’t help but feel some jealousy at all of this. It’s a good thing that you have such power in your blood, especially since you’re finally starting to come into it. This is a good thing.”

“You’re not saying that to me,” Leon observed.

“No, I’m not,” the Thunderbird replied with a mysterious smile. “It often requires me to repeat it to myself.” She turned to face him completely, then laid both hands down on his shoulders. “You are my last living descendant, the last person who carries my power. If you were to die without ever having children, then my power and legacy will vanish from the universe. I will die my final death, and there would be no one left who could carry on my memory.

“Because of this, I think I’ve grown kind of possessive of you, Leon, and protective. You are all I have, while the Great Black Dragon has so many descendants that he can afford to ignore you completely. I’ve put much effort into training you, and it brings me no small amount of joy to see how far you’ve come in the past decade-and-a-half. Your command over my power would’ve made you a rising star in my Clan just a universal cycle ago, before the Clan fell from grace. All sorts of rewards and resources would’ve been thrown at your feet to encourage your growth, and power and position within the Clan would’ve been yours for the taking; whatever position you might’ve wanted would’ve been yours.

“But this isn’t a universal cycle ago, and my Clan has been reduced to just you. You, and some long-forgotten and long-abandoned ruins, picked clean or fought over by carrion. And you have often professed your lack of desire to reclaim through birthright what once belonged to your ancestors—to me and my descendants—while simultaneously striving hard to claim the power that the Great Black Dragon has denied you. It… makes me happy to see you starting to succeed, but I also can’t help but wish you had the same willingness to invoke your blood claims on what used to belong to my Clan.”

Leon went quiet for a long time when she finished, though while he wanted to step away from her to think for a moment, her hands remained on his shoulders, keeping him right there in front of her.

“I… get what you’re saying,” Leon replied. “It’s not an indictment of you—far from it, actually. I value your power and your lessons beyond measure.”

“But you don’t seem to value what my Clan left behind. You moralize over it and reject what should be yours by right.”

Leon grimly smiled and said in a self-deprecating tone, “What right do I have to do that, hm?”

“You have all the right to do so, it’s up to you what help or resources to make use of. The claims are yours to press, and if you don’t want to, then so be it.”

Leon’s smile thinned. “If I had to say why in any objective sense, I suppose I just don’t like being handed things.”

“A foolish attitude for someone in your position to have.”

“Maybe, but it’s just how I’m wired. Something that’s held away from me, that’s been denied to me, I will exert great effort to unlock. But if it’s handed to me, well… I don’t know, really. I know that I’ve been harsh on the Clan in the past. For good reason, I think, but I won’t reject it outright—I’m still trying to rebuild it, after all, for however much I might not be naturally inclined to do such things. But the Great Black Dragon just kinds of pisses me off, and taking his power that he’s tried to deny me gives me such a visceral feeling of pleasure that it’s hard to compare it with anything else.

“But give it time, Ancestor. When I get this thing figured out and use it to the point of nausea, when it no longer becomes new, when it no longer becomes something that has been denied to me, then I think my fascination with it will ebb. It’s just behind a big, locked door with an irritating sign on it that says, ‘No Leons allowed’. Honestly, ** what’s actually behind that door, I just want to get in there because I’m not supposed to!”

The Thunderbird finally cracked a smile and chuckled under her breath. “Maybe I should’ve been more aloof, then?”

“I think you were plenty aloof,” Leon disagreed. “Only appearing to me when I finally reached the sixth-tier isn’t the sort of behavior I’d like to encourage. If anything, I would like it if you were a little more open and ‘around’, so to speak.”

She chuckled again, but louder this time. “Are you saying that you want me to appear more often in your soul realm?”

“I’m saying that I’m hoping when I finally do get around to having children, that you won’t be quite as aloof as you were with me. I can’t imagine I’ll make a good father, and they’ll need a better example than I can give them. I’m sure you’ll prove a greater mentor than I could ever be.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, boy, and don’t make assumptions about how you’ll fare as a parent until you have some experience as a parent under your belt,” the Thunderbird said as she finally took her hands from Leon’s shoulders. “Speaking of children, what kind of timetable are you looking at? Building the Clan isn’t just retaking all of our former holdings, you know…”

Leon’s smile dimmed slightly into something that more resembled a grimace. “Honestly, I don’t know. All of this recent business with Amon’s vampires has shown me that things still aren’t safe for me and mine on this plane yet, and if I were to have kids, I wouldn’t want to leave this plane until they were adults who could accompany me. And what if they were to marry before we left and started having kids down here? I would worry incessantly about them when we reached the Nexus! I… I don’t know.”

“You’re overthinking things. I’m sure your mates would like to have children someday, perhaps even soon. That water girl of yours has even researched it quite a bit, hasn’t she?”

Leon quietly nodded; Maia had memorized every single book from his family’s archives that contained even the slightest trace of information about typical reproduction rituals that his Clan partook in. Having even a single Inherited Bloodline made it harder to have children, and Leon had two, so he’d long made his peace with not having kids for a while, yet, but Maia had done all she could to figure out how his more immediate ancestors had gone about solving this issue.

“I’ll talk it over with my… mates, then,” Leon said. “In the meantime, there’s a certain research facility north of here that needs my attention, so I should head out and start planning that out.” He gave the Thunderbird a beatific smile. “After all, I need to show you that I value your—our—Clan, and that I’ll strive to take what’s been left behind, don’t I?”

The Thunderbird just smiled back him. “You don’t have to show anything to me. I’m just an old bird who’s proud of what you are, already. But… I suppose I would like to see a little more effort on your part to reclaims what was once mine…”

Leon laughed and said his goodbyes. It was time to compound his success with the black fire with planning out his expedition to the Sacred Golden Empire.

—

“All right, tell me about this place in detail,” Leon said, gesturing to the map of the Sacred Golden Empire on the table in front of him. His only company was Anna, whose extensive hunting and traveling experience, and childhood spent in the Sacred Golden Empire more than qualified her to tell him about the region they were about to venture to.

“First off, the most important feature of the Sacred Golden Empire is the Neilos River, running down the entire length of the Empire from north to south, right into the Central Sea. Nearly all of our most important cities are located along the river.”

“That makes sense,” Leon replied, staring at the map. The Neilos River was dotted with settlements, whereas more outlying areas of the Empire were somewhat more sparsely populated. “It’s a lot like the Ilian Empire, in that respect, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Anna hesitantly agreed, averting her gaze for a moment. “However, maybe don’t say that to anyone in the Empire? They don’t much appreciate being compared…”

“Ah, I don’t mean any offense…”

Anna furiously shook her head. “No, it’s fine for me, I don’t much associate myself with them anymore. But there are quite a few people who take their citizenship in the Sacred Golden Empire very seriously, and even insinuating that the Ilians are anything like, or anywhere close to them, can be enough to provoke a fight.”

“Consider that duly noted,” Leon whispered with a thoughtful look. “What else can you tell me about your people that you think I should know?”

“You, specifically?” Anna asked with a cheeky smile. “I’d recommend staying away from most of our leaders, but I think you’re already going to be doing that…”

“Without a doubt.”

“Good. Our city administrators are known as ‘druids’, and aside from administration, their most important duties are to tend to our sacred trees that form the core of our civilization. They’re an often depressing, and usually utterly boring sort, who won’t even give us the time of day when we pass through, I think.”

“Your people didn’t seem quite so dour back in the Scorched Fields,” Leon mused aloud.

“Those were courtiers around the Imperial Princess, not druids,” Anna explained. “There are other public offices other than druids, but since druids are both political and spiritual positions, they tend to have more than enough concerns as it is. Best not to add to their headaches, else they’ll add to ours in return.”

“All right, I got it: leave the druids alone.”

Anna smiled and nodded. “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I think we should talk a little about where you want to be going.”

“I’m all ears.”

“How many maps of my homeland have you seen?”

Leon frowned and thought about it for a moment. “Many, I suppose,” he replied.

Anna hummed in thought. “This ‘lab’ you’re looking for is located in the middle of a deep forest, the Prota Forest, you know that?”

“I did,” Leon said, having to contain his excitement. “I was actually looking forward to getting back into wooded lands, if I can be honest.”

“Maybe temper that excitement a bit.”

Leon sighed. “I’m guessing this forest is haunted? Or infested with dark and dangerous creatures? Or just really rough and hard to move through?”

“Yes.”

Leon fell silent, his smile frozen on his face, neither growing nor shrinking.

Almost every single point on Nestor’s map had turned into a city. If he had to guess, it was because the infrastructure left behind by his Clan made settlement in these areas much easier than they would otherwise be.

’Or maybe they just built their facilities in already settled locations…’ Leon theorized.

Regardless, only a small handful of the most important sites established by the Thunderbird Clan on Aeterna hadn’t become cities in the millennia since, and the lab that Nestor had told him about was one of those few.

“What sort of dangers exist in this forest?” Leon asked. “Is this map accurate for scale?”

“The map’s reasonably accurate, yes,” Anna replied.

Leon lightly frowned. The forest that contained the lab was quite large, being perhaps as big as the Bull Kingdom’s Central Territories. While it was only a small portion of the Sacred Golden Empire, it was still a large region by nearly any other metric.

“Many creatures call this forest home,” Anna explained. “It’s the one place other than the uninhabited regions in the far northeast of the plane where manticores still freely roam. Other than that, there are numerous species of venomous snake of varying sizes, owls and other birds large and powerful enough to threaten arks, and protan foxes, incredibly intelligent creatures with great power over fire.

“And all of that’s not even getting into the more exotic dangers.”

Leon cocked an eyebrow in interest. “Exotic?” he echoed, his tone packed with intrigue.

“This region is infested with tree sprites, tribes of goat men, and green, man-eating giants.”

Leon blinked in surprise. “All right. I know what tree sprites are, we had those where I grew up. But what in the hells are goat men and these giants?”

“Myths, mostly,” Anna admitted. “However, no one’s ever been able to settle in that forest, and all attempts to clear it out have been met with failure and death. Often, entire work crews sent to try and clear out portions on the periphery, or try to set fires to burn the forest, are attacked and killed by something. There are occasionally survivors, telling of men with the legs and horns of mountain goats, and of giants four or five times the height of men made of leaf, vine, and wood.”

Leon’s eyes widened in understanding, and then narrowed in greed.

“Have you heard of the stone giants in the north?” he asked.

“I’ve heard a few things,” she said. “Mostly from you and your people from the north. I admit some curiosity, but I’ve never really given them much thought.”

“What may not have been shared,” Leon responded, “is that those stone giants—yes, they’re real—are very similar to these ‘green giants’ you describe. Maybe they’re related? Some kind of golem?”

Anna smiled and shrugged. “You’re the expert here, not me. Just because no one lives there doesn’t mean that the forest hasn’t been explored, though. It’s just that no one’s ever found any lab, or any other man-made structure, really. Just a lot of things that are really **ing powerful and really **ing hate humans sticking their noses in their woods.”

Leon nodded and turned his attention inward. He knew from Nestor that the Thunderbird Clan hadn’t thought much about the local resources of Aeterna when they arrived, but established this research facility to study the local flora and fauna anyway. It didn’t have any golem manufacturies that he knew of, but he supposed that maybe some of this was the result of the research carried out there.

“Well, I wouldn’t really call myself an expert, and the only detailed explanation I have of the place is horribly out-of-date, so I suppose we’ll learn more when we get there.”

“I suppose we will,” Anna agreed.

The two continued to plan their upcoming journey, plotting out their route, how long it ought to take, and what they might expect to run into along the way. Leon noted that they could us the Neilos River to get close enough that they probably wouldn’t need to arrange any transport once they left the yacht that Anshu and Talal had arranged for; they’d be able to just fly the final leg under their own power.

As they were planning, however, Talal interrupted them with a reminder to Leon that he had an appointment for lunch with Emilie, and that a report from the investigation teams in charge of Kassia’s interrogation had finally arrived.

Leon eagerly asked for the report, but his heart sank when he learned that not only had nothing new been learned, but despite their best security precautions, Kassia had been murdered the night before. No one knew how it had happened, and they had no evidence other than the deed itself that there had been any breaches in security. Access to her had been tightly controlled, too, and only the interrogators had been in to see her since she’d been taken into custody.

Their last living lead was gone, and with it, much of Leon’s hope that they’d be able to root out these vampires without the Director’s help.

And he couldn’t help but wonder if the Director had had something to do with this…