Leon quietly regarded his retainers as they trained. Magic training was over, so they were mostly brushing up on their martial skills, having largely paired up to spar. Tikos and Helen were the only two exceptions, the two having other business to attend to.

Of particular interest to him was Anzu, as the young griffin was still learning the ropes of fighting whilst in human form. He’d paired Anzu up with Gaius, trusting in the older man to give Anzu a good foundation for Leon to later refine, and so far, he hadn’t been disappointed. Anzu, while strong and quite the tough opponent in griffin form, was something of a pushover in his human form if he wasn’t using magic.

Of only slightly less concern for Leon was the fact that Valeria had paired off with Cassandra. The two weren’t sparring with anything close to their usual level of intensity, but as far as Leon could tell, they were still saying much to each other just through the movements of their blades. What they were saying to each other, though, he could only guess at. Regardless, they seemed largely at ease with each other, which Leon found encouraging.

The rest of Cassandra’s guards hadn’t quite integrated with Leon’s retinue, and he was fine with that. Cassandra wasn’t exactly in his retinue, either, and he wasn’t going to ask her sworn protectors to answer to him when he had his own subordinates to handle his business.

Anna was one he spared some attention for, as well. As far as he could tell, she was doing better after their trip back to the Sacred Golden Empire. Not back to how she’d been before the operation that saw Narses the Black killed by her own hand, but better than she’d been in that operation’s direct aftermath.

His comrades from the Bull Kingdom were right as rain to his eyes. Gaius was enjoying his time with Anzu, Alix was as energetic as she always was, Marcus was quiet and contemplative—though that was no different from his usual state—and Alcander was sparring with his wife, Sofie.

Sofie wasn’t in Leon’s retinue either, but she occasionally participated, Leon allowing her to do so as a favor to her, Alcander, and to Narses the White. She wasn’t getting any Hesperidic Apples, but neither did she have to answer to him in any capacity.

Red was the only one who was training alone. She had no interest at all in learning martial skills and so devoted her time entirely to sharpening her fire magic, and even heaping a little bit of wind magic on top as well.

And Leon wondered who among them he would bring to the Sky Devil’s Hell. He didn’t want to bring everyone with him, especially since some of his retainers had their own jobs to do—in other words, Tikos and Helen at the very least were likely being left behind to continue their work. He was even considering leaving Nestor behind if the dead man didn’t insist on accompanying him.

Anna… he wondered if he ought to leave her with her sister. While she was doing better, he didn’t want to take her away from her sister or her girlfriend just yet. Besides, while her Attican Snapper and, to a lesser extent, her two wyverns were old and big enough to fight, her manticore was still a cub and needed plenty of attention.

‘Yeah, need to leave her behind…’ Leon thought to himself.

As for the four that had followed him from the Bull Kingdom, he struggled to think of any reason to leave them behind. In fact, the only reason that was stopping him was the possibility of having to leave them back in the Sky Devil’s Hell for any reason, for with his avian form and corresponding invisibility ring, he felt like he could pretty easily travel to and from Kataigida with relative ease compared to them.

But, after a lot of thought, he realized that he couldn’t leave any of them behind. He needed backup down there that wasn’t tied to any of the Ten Tribes, and Alix, Marcus, Alcander, and Gaius were restless anyway without having official positions in Heaven’s Eye. The only real concern was how Alcander was going to do when separated from Sofie for an indeterminate time.

As for Red, she was one that Leon had decided to bring along almost from the very beginning. An eighth-tier wyvern was a powerful ally to have.

‘She needs to earn her keep anyway,’ Leon thought with a light, sarcastic smile as he watched the wyvern-in-human-form sway around like she was dancing, several rivers of fire flowing about her at the same time. The sheer destructive potential contained in those rivers was belied by the grace and elegance with which Red wielded them.

Anzu… Leon grinned, knowing he wasn’t going to be leaving Anzu behind on this one.

Leon sighed. Anshu, as his resident retainer of less than legal means, was going to be coming with him whether he wanted the man to or not—and Leon had to admit that he rather wanted the Indradian with him this time. But with all that, now he had to decide on his ladies.

As it was, he was thinking Valeria and Maia would come with him, while Elise and Cassandra would stay behind, at least for the time being. He had a bad feeling that his time on Kataigida wouldn’t be without violence, and he didn’t want to leave Elise vulnerable around a bunch of unknowns. Cassandra, on the other hand, was an Imperial Princess. Given the state of war that was raging between technically all four Empires and the Ten Tribes, bringing Cassandra to Kataigida was too obvious of a mistake to make.

He just felt terrible about it. He’d be marrying Cassandra soon, and then only a matter of weeks later, he’d be leaving for the Ten Tribes, and he didn’t know when he might be back. While he was already set on the decision to leave her on the continent, the thought of telling her his decision sent a shiver running down his spine.

So, all told, he’d be taking a fairly substantial group with him, by his standards: Alix, Gaius, Alcander, Marcus, Red, Anshu, Anzu, Valeria, and Maia. To a large extent, it was a bigger group than he wanted, even though he knew that for a retinue to accompany their Lord in a dangerous situation was the point of their employment. His instinct to take care of the Sky Devils on his own was clashing with his knowledge that he should be using his retinue more than he was and that not bringing anyone with him on his journey to Kataigida would be a terrible insult to all of their abilities, and their dedication to him.

He sighed, supposing that this was going to be his team for the upcoming mission. With that settled, he supposed the only thing left to do was to make sure his more critical projects were finished on time.

—

The air filled with a sweet smell and the leaves of Tikos’ hair fluttered despite the lack of wind.

“Ready are these,” Tikos whispered through its voice-amber as it indicated the row of twelve oak trees in front of it. It turned its enormous black eyes in Leon’s direction and added, “None magics have made different trees; only controls for testing.”

Leon nodded in understanding. They were only running one quick test to establish a baseline; experimentation would come later after Tikos could examine what was left of the trees.

They were in another private grove that Leon had purchased and set aside for the creation of thunder wood. It was a fairly magic-intensive process, and one that required Tikos to raise trees for at least several months; even then, they’d be left with significantly less thunder wood than Leon could hope for. To try and increase their yield, Leon and Tikos had decided to try and take the Iron Needle out and see if the Universe Fragment could help in that respect.

The only problem was that it would require testing on some of the oak trees that Tikos had spent months raising, but that wasn’t that great of a loss given the sheer number of trees that Leon had the tree sprite growing in this grove. Losing a few dozen trees to test a potential new process for thunder wood creation was more than worth it in Leon’s mind.

So, Leon prepared himself and began retrieving several standing stones from his soul realm. Numbering only six, none were taller than he was, though all of them were slightly wider than his shoulders. Their smooth, polished surfaces had been covered in runic carvings with most of the glyphs including at least a few lightning runes.

Leon placed all but one of these standing stones around the first of the trees they were going to experiment upon. Then, he assumed his position next to one of the standing stones. He reached out with his magic power and began feeding it into the stones, steadily activating their many enchantments. Directed and empowered by the enchantments, his power rose into the air and settled around the uppermost branches of the tall single-trunk oak.

At the same time, Tikos had been tending to the oak, its power inundating the trunk as it placed a lotus upon it, the lotus’ roots wrapping tightly around the tree and anchoring it to the larger plant.

Once Tikos stepped back, Leon’s power coalesced around the tree, forming tiny, yet thick and dark storm clouds that wound around the tree’s leaves. Since his power was contained by the standing stones, wind started whipping about the tree in a tight and rapidly-accelerating cyclone. Rain began spilling from these storm clouds, flooding the tree’s roots but not escaping past the boundary set by the standing stones.

Leon waited only a moment longer before a bright purple lightning bolt arced out from one swirling cloud and into another, singing a few leaves but not touching any of the tree’s branches.

‘It’s ready,’ he thought as he moved into his final position, where the final standing stone would’ve been placed under normal circumstances. Were he acting under those normal circumstances though, this process might’ve taken half an hour or more to create just to render less than one-tenth of the oak tree’s wood into thunder wood, the rest burning away into ash.

But now, he had the Iron Needle, and with it, he theoretically had absolute control over all lightning, though putting theory into practice was proving harder than he’d hoped.

He conjured the Iron Needle from its gold tube within his soul realm and held it between the fingers of his right hand. Then, he extended his hand and began to use his magic to will all of the lightning within the clouds to converge upon the oak tree. His magic raced along his arm, into his hand and fingers, through the Iron Needle, and then out into the world.

This particular grove had been warded quite heavily against outside observation, Leon having devoted many days and hundreds of talents of silver to its construction, let alone the months he’d spent on its design. Yet, for all that protection, Leon felt for the first time that it was inadequate as the brightest and biggest bolt of purple lightning erupted from his contained storm and slammed into the oak tree.

The tree was immediately cut in half, most of its leaves and outer branches disintegrating into black ash. The bolt continued downward, splitting the earth and carving a small trench half Leon’s height into the ground, the trench walls being dyed black by the heat of the bolt. What little remained of the tree fell apart, almost shaken to pieces by the thunder that accompanied the lightning bolt. Even Tikos, behind the circle of standing stones and thus behind the protective wards Leon had placed upon them, was knocked off its feet and hissed in pain. The air was tinged with the comforting stench of ozone and the worrying stink of corpse rot, the former from the lightning and the latter from Tikos’ displeasure.

“Shit…” Leon said in awe as he stared at the purple lightning that momentarily danced about his fingers. He didn’t spare the oak tree one look as he turned toward Tikos, abandoning his position as he ran toward the tree sprite. “You all right?” he asked.

“Better will be,” Tikos stated as it rose to its feet, its leafy hair looking a little less animated than usual, though the corpse-y smell dissipated.

Leon grimly smiled and clapped Tikos on the shoulder before they both turned to the obliterated oak tree.

“Intending on power such, were you?” Tikos asked.

“No…” Leon murmured as he glanced back down at the Iron Needle. It sparked with what to Leon seemed like the equivalent of nonchalant whistling, but how he arrived at that impression he couldn’t say.

The tree had been quite thoroughly savaged, but with bolts of golden lightning almost lazily reaching up into the clouds of the contained storm, Leon knew that they’d succeeded in creating at least some thunder wood.

“That was… fast,” he observed.

“Needle has cut many minutes from process,” Tikos said more clinically.

Leon nodded in appreciation at not needing half an hour anymore, assuming their yield was good. He cut off his power to the standing stones and the storm quickly dissipated. At the same time, Tikos’ power entered the ground, and the soil around the tree’s remains shifted about like quicksand, closing the scorched rift and elevating the blackened wood. A moment later, the burned wood crumbled under pressure from Tikos, leaving several long, thin, lightning-bolt-shaped branches of thunder wood, perhaps as much as Leon and Tikos had ever managed to make in a single batch.

“Yield has increased,” Tikos said as the sweet scent of happy satisfaction filled the air once more.

“By a significant amount,” Leon said. “I think… Let’s try that again, but without the stones.”

“Is wise that?” Tikos inquired.

“I’d… recommend finding some cover, but I think… I think the Iron Needle can replicate that purple lightning. The stones do most of the heavy lifting with containment, but if it’s only lightning then I should be enough to keep it contained even without them. And with just the Iron Needle, then we may not need the storm…”

“Willing to try,” Tikos whispered as it backed way up.

Leon waited for it to prepare itself as he pulled their newly-made thunder wood into his soul realm. Then, he faced the next tree.

Once Tikos was ready, having stepped into a massive tree at the center of the grove, Leon aimed his hand again and closed his eyes. He sent his magic power rushing down his arm again, this time willing the Iron Needle to fire off the same purple lightning it had just summoned. He barely got the thought fully formed in his head when the Iron Needle sparked and another tremendous bolt of purple lightning shot out, not only cleaving through the tree Leon had meant to hit, but also shattering the three closest trees around it from its accompanying thunderclap.

Tikos was fine, to his relief, and as the cherry on top, nearly half of the intended tree had been turned into thunder wood.

“Bit much, maybe?” Tikos asked as it left its tree.

“Maybe,” Leon agreed as he stared at the Needle in his hand. While it was extremely convenient that he could create the purple thunder wood-making lightning with it without any setup, showcasing the fact that the Iron Needle was responding to his will, fine control was still beyond him.

He and Tikos quickly secured the recently-created thunder wood and turned their attention back to the remaining trees. However, Leon ruminated on his lack of control the entire time, and even the veritable hill of thunder wood they made that day was able to lift that particular weight on his spirits.

It was clear that he needed to put more emphasis on his new sword than he had been, especially given the Iron Needle’s clear willingness to follow his will…

—

Leon hovered in the sky, the coast of the Ilian Empire far below him.

He was alone, his body buffeted by strong wind and swept by freezing rain. The great Central Sea was rough and prone to storms, but where anyone else might see that as a bad thing, in these storms, Leon’s blood sang. He was long past the point of natural storms putting him into a fugue state, but he still felt most relaxed and at peace when hovering just above a cloud, rain and wind and lightning and thunder raging all about him.

But right now, despite the strength of the storm—and the proportional power that flooded through him—he had to focus on his task, for he didn’t fly a couple hundred miles from home just to immerse himself in a storm.

No, he’d come here to see to the hunk of enchanted iron and other trace metals that were lying in a large crucible he was telekinetically holding in front of him transformed into something greater than the sum of all its parts. He was warding off lightning attempting to strike the crucible, but with the enchantments he’d laid upon it, it was tiring work, for the crucible had been specifically designed to attract natural lightning.

Are you ready, Leon? the Thunderbird asked. The storm is reaching its peak, your window will be narrow.

I am, Leon replied. His education with the Thunderbird had long since included the process for forging Adamant—or, he supposed, the processes for its forging, for there were many—but the one his Ancestor was most familiar with was sky forging. Leon’s armor, though infused with his blood, wasn’t Adamant, merely a pale imitation and unable to seamlessly channel his power and will. True, sky-forged Adamant would be like his own body, responding only to his will and that of his blood descendants.

With a deep breath, Leon prepared himself for his first attempt at forging true Adamant.