Leon stood before the Heart-Stabbing Hawks, soaking up their attention. He had thousands of eyes upon him and could sense many more pulses of magic senses from powerful mages not physically present in Raikoraki. Surrounding him were his retainers, with Valeria and Maia standing at his shoulders. Anzu paced behind them, occasionally flapping his wings in what Leon was sure was a griffin expression of dominance. Red was conducting her own intimidation campaign as she circled the open gathering hall in her wyvern form, walking on the ground like a bat, her body too big to fit inside.

The Eagle and Jaguar elders who’d accompanied Leon to the city didn’t join him on the dais. Instead, they sat in the elder’s seats in front of the dais, though making sure there was enough room between them that everyone knew they were of separate Tribes.

None of the Hawk elders joined Leon on the dais, though he did recognize Rain-Dancer, the eighth-tier Hawk elder who’d visited Raikos just over a week ago. Of all the Hawk elders, though, Leon didn’t see a single one who was ninth-tier. The Hawks were relatively small compared to most of the other Tribes, but he knew that they possessed at least one ninth-tier mage, so he couldn’t help but wonder where they were.

He took some time to make eye contact with most of the Hawk elders, but the silence in the chamber stretched out quite awkwardly, made even more so as more and more Hawk tribesmen filtered out onto the plateau where they could watch what was happening in the hall.

Eventually, Leon realized that there weren’t any more Hawk elders coming to the hall; his magic senses blanketed the city and its surrounding for hundreds of miles and he couldn’t sense any mages stronger than the sixth-tier attempting to reach Raikoraki with any haste. So, he decided to just jump right in.

“Your delegation, led by the honorable Rain-Dancer,” Leon began, nodding at the Hawk elder, “indicated that your Tribe had not made any decisions regarding my presence on your island or about my claim. So I’ve come here in person to make my claim known, and to hear your opinions. I seek to restore my Clan to its old heights, and any Clans or Tribes that support me will be likewise elevated.”

He paused to gauge their responses. For the most part, the elders were fairly neutral, but many of the people watching descended into hushed whispers. What Leon could overhear, however, was neither promising nor discouraging. It didn’t seem like the people were immediately rejecting him, but neither was he hearing many declarations of support.

“And what form,” one of the elders sitting in the closest seats to the dais began to ask, “would this support take? And what would giving up our independence get us?”

Leon chuckled good-naturedly, though he had to force it out a bit. “Forgive me for this opinion, I have only been here for a short while, but it doesn’t seem like your people are entirely independent. You are in a confederation with your fellow Tribes, yes, but that means autonomy, not independence.”

Another elder made to speak, but Leon held up a hand and pushed on.

“But, in truth, it doesn’t matter whether we call this ‘autonomy’ or ‘independence’. Whatever it is, I would not take it from you. Though I would have your Tribe swear itself to me as its King, I would not demand you change how you govern yourselves. Taxes and military service are what I would require of you, both of which you already provide to the Ten Tribes’ central government—however much that the Thunderer has managed to build, anyway.”

“We willingly give our blood and treasure for our neighbors,” another elder growled, clearly high-ranking given how close to the dais he sat. “You are a newcomer.”

“I am the blood of the Thunderbird,” Leon replied, though he thought he might say the same thing in their position. But he wasn’t in their position.

The storm clouds he’d called earlier hadn’t been dismissed, and he called another bolt of silver-blue lightning from them that curled about the image of the Thunderbird at the top of their Tribal Totem. When it dissipated, the totem hadn’t been so much as singed, but his power had practically exploded all across the city.

“My Clan has been absent for a while,” Leon continued, “but the Clans that make up your Tribe were our vassals for millions of years! Following us, you won glory beyond any that could possibly be gained upon a singular plane! If you follow me, then I would lead you back to the Nexus! Back to the Void! Together, we would all elevate each other beyond the petty squabbles of a single insignificant plane!”

“With you as our King,” a third elder practically spat.

“Yes,” Leon said. “Such an arrangement was good enough for your Ancestors, was it not? You did not fight against us for independence, you were only forced to form your Tribe after my Clan’s fall. Until then, your people were perfectly fine following my Clan and reaping the benefits of having the Storm King himself as a patron.

“I do recognize,” Leon continued as more Hawk elders grumbled discontentedly, “that a great deal of time has passed. And things can’t just go back to the way they were. I will not compel anyone to follow me! I am here to seek your support, and if it’s withheld, then I will leave and seek it elsewhere! I have already won the support of the Screaming Eagles and the Jaguars, for I have already promised them what I’m about to promise all of you here and now!

“I will not disband any tribal councils! I will not dissolve the Elder Council! Your traditions are yours to keep, and I would protect them as I would protect your Tribes in every other way, if you would only swear to support me as your King!”

The Hawk elders made quite a bit of noise, but it was Rain-Dancer who spoke the loudest.

“Protection?” the man inquired, his tone sounding a little angered. “Do we need protection?”

“Your Ancestors clearly thought so when they confederated into the Ten Tribes,” Leon replied.

“A long time ago,” another elder intoned.

“How much has changed since then?” Leon asked. “You’re still fighting the same war for incremental gains. Your army is, as we speak, still on the Sword, and has been for five years! Seizing one large island may be a coup for you as you are now, but it is so far from the glory of our past that it hardly merits a mention. We once plied the Void in arks bigger than anything fielded on this plane these days! Does no one here wish to return to that time?”

Leon glanced around the room, and though the elders still seemed skeptical, he could hear the people outside sounding far more supportive of his position.

He supposed he understood that though; the people still venerated the Thunderbird everywhere in the Ten Tribes, but the elders had to watch out for their Tribes at all times. Giving him their support was a big step that had to be carefully considered.

Just as he was about to speak again, one of the eighth-tier mages sitting close to the dais stood up and said, “If what you’re offering is protection, then we’d have to see it. Experience it.”

A few elders began to angrily mutter at those words, but Leon paid them no mind as he focused on the standing elder.

“These mountains have never been tamed in their entirety, and with our army deployed to the Sword for so long, things have grown out of hand,” the elder continued. “Already, we’ve lost several villages to powerful monsters that we’re struggling to deal with—”

“Such a pessimistic view of our situation,” another elder shouted. “You would give up our independence just to secure aid against a threat we can deal, and have been dealing with, for thousands of years?”

“We are all aware of the situation in the east!” the standing elder shouted, his voice easily reaching the people around the gathering hall, who began shouting in support. Turning more towards Leon, he said, “I promise nothing. But anyone who would aid us in protecting our lands would be looked upon more favorably by our people and those who speak for them.”

Leon grinned. “If nothing else, I can say that I’m quite good at killing monsters. As are those who follow me.” He gestured to retainers, most of whom flexed their muscles or their auras in response, only Maia and Valeria not bothering. Red made quite the show of her enthusiasm, roaring into the air so loudly that many watching the gathering hall had to cover their ears.

As everyone calmed down, Leon spoke again.

“I’ll say it again. I consider you to be my people, and I would treat you as such! I would share with you many powers that I have learned, that could be of great benefit to you! And if you want more guarantees of my sincerity, that I mean what I say, then look to your fellows in the Screaming Eagles and Jaguars! They have elected to follow me, and not out of a sense of obligation or whimsy! I understand your concerns, though, so, if you’ll give me a couple of days to rest here, then I will head east and show you my sincerity!”

The Hawk elders were more subdued, but the Eagles, Jaguars, and watching Hawks began to roar and stamp and make noise to show their support, and Leon felt like while the Hawk elders were being more reluctant, he’d eventually get their support, too. He just had to kill some monsters, first.

—

“This isn’t going to be quite so easy,” said Exallos Angelos, a member of the same Clan that Exallos Aetos came from and the leader of the Eagle elders in Leon’s party.

“Why not?” Alcander asked. “Sounds easy enough to me; show up, crack a few skulls, and come back as glorious heroes!”

“And with bellies full of the conquered,” Red added with a vicious smile. She was still in her wyvern form, making the expression that much more terrifying.

“Don’t go breaking the wine and mead out just yet,” Gaius cautioned. “We don’t even know what kind of beasts we’ll be facing.”

He turned an expectant look to Angelos, who continued, “The threat is big enough that they sent their only ninth-tier mage to deal with it, and she’s been having quite a bit of trouble.”

“Define ‘quite a bit’,” Valeria quietly demanded.

“She’s been in the east for months and the threat yet remains,” Angelos explained.

“Is there something about the east that’s particularly dangerous?” Marcus wondered aloud.

“Titanstone,” Leon whispered, eliciting a look of surprise not only from Angelos but also from the rest of his retinue and the Eagles and Jaguars accompanying him. With a shrug, Leon said, “I’ve been reading some of your maps. It’s hard not to see five massive Titanstone quarries in the east and not connect the dots when the Hawks mention a constant threat from that direction.”

Angelos nodded. “Indeed, it’s the Titanstone. Or perhaps it’s merely correlated and not causal, I can’t say. What I can say is that my friends in the Hawk’s Tribal council have explained that there are four high-profile monsters that have been terrorizing their eastern territories. Three of them are eighth-tier but don’t let their magical strength fool you, they’re powerful enough that even with the Hawks’ ninth-tier elder, they still haven’t been dealt with. The last is ninth-tier, and is practically able to do what it wants in the east.”

“Let’s get more specific then, so we can adopt a proper strategy,” Marcus responded.

“One of the eighth-tier monsters is a seaborne menace,” a Jaguar explained as Angelos took out a map of the Hawk’s long and narrow territory. “Some kind of large amphibian thing that nests in shallow water. Reptilian, with hide so thick and resistant to magic power that it’s almost impervious to magical attacks. Oddly, while it has titanic strength, it doesn’t seem to use much magic itself.”

“Another eighth-tier monster is a massive serpent,” Angelos added as the Jaguar elder paused. Leon immediately frowned at the idea of another giant snake slithering about Aeterna. “It’s the least… destructive of the four beasts, given it doesn’t need to eat that often. But it can spit venom nearly half a mile, and one drop is enough to kill a fifth-tier mage. A bucket-full can kill an entire field of crops.”

“The third,” the Jaguar elder picked up, “is a mad bull. Likely an escapee from the Bear’s breeding programs, who then gorged itself in the Titanstone-rich forests of the southern mountains. It’s about three times as large as a normal bull, but it absorbs magic power and can eject it out of its horns.”

“I’ve never heard of a beast doing that before,” Leon said, leaning forward with sudden interest.

“Like the sea beast, it’s almost impervious to magic attacks, but the difference is that it can, for all intents and purposes, reflect attacks at the mage attacking it,” the Jaguar elder explained.

Leon grinned. “That… sounds like a lot of fun, actually…”

“Four villages, amounting to some two thousand Hawks, have died to this thing in the past six months alone,” the Jaguar elder said, and Leon cringed and clamped down on his enthusiasm.

“The fourth,” Angelos said before the awkwardness in the guest house’s conference room grew too thick, “is the most dangerous. A ninth-tier monster, also likely the result of some escaped Bear experiment. A gigantic bird called a ‘roc’, but as large as they usually get, this one is larger still; bigger than one of our largest ships and with a wingspan wide enough to cast all of Raikos into shadow.”

Leon’s grin turned darker; he felt almost insulted. The only giant bird in the sky, a greedy part of him thought, ought to be him, not some magically twisted monstrosity from one of his Clan’s former vassals.

He already felt like he knew which of these beats would be the first he’d tackle. However, first, he had to do his duty.

“Where is our ninth-tier Hawk elder?” he asked.

“Singer-in-Caves is here,” Angelos said, indicating a village on the map a little further west than where the beasts had been placed. “She, and a group of elders and Chiefs, have made this point their base of operations while they attempted to deal with this problem. That’s where we’re most likely to find her.”

Leon frowned slightly, noting that that village was even further away than his magic senses could reach. Significantly further, in fact, with the distance being nearly six thousand miles. He noted, however, that the closest monster to that particular village was the roc…

“Then we ought to make our way there,” he said. “But before we do, we should go over our current strategy.” He fixed Angelos in his golden gaze, then glanced at the Jaguar elder, and then all the other Eagle and Jaguar elders that had accompanied him to Raikoraki. “I want all of you to stay behind and drum up support among the Hawks. From what I can tell, the elders aren’t thrilled with me, but there’s a great deal of support for my claim among the people of this city. See what you can do to make the elders see that.”

“We will do as you command, Your Majesty,” Angelos said with a slight bow, the Jaguar elder following suit.

“As for the monsters…” Leon said as he turned to his retinue, giving them all a questioning look and silently inviting any of them to speak their minds.

“We should split up,” Marcus immediately suggested.

“I agree,” Valeria added.

Leon lightly smiled and leaned back in his chair. “United in thought then? Justify it for me.” He agreed with them, but he simply wanted to hear what they had to say.

“There are a lot of monsters here,” Marcus explained. “We might not be quite on par with them, individually, but with the aid of the Hawk elders and some of what we brought with us…”

Leon grinned at what he was blatantly not saying.

“… we should be able to tip the balance in favor of the Hawks.”

“And would lead to a quicker fulfillment of this task,” Valeria added.

“The quicker we get this done, the fewer people will die to these monsters,” Gaius offered.

“I would like to sink my fangs into this ‘roc’,” Red said with a mean glare a flaring of her killing intent. “Such a creature should be reminded that it is only prey.”

“Even if it’s stronger than you are?” Anshu growled, shaking his head. He seemed to be thinking something quite uncharitable as he glanced at Red and shook his head.

“Magic is not everything, human,” Red breathed, the back of her throat glowing as she called upon a bit of fire. Leon recognized this from Anna’s work with her wyvernlings to be an intimidation tactic, and it seemed to work as Anshu paled slightly and didn’t respond to her. Instead, he spoke to Leon.

“I have experience in dealing with sea monsters. Allow me to attack that one.”

Leon nodded slightly. “I’m tentatively in agreement that we ought to split up, so long as we’re reinforced by Hawk elders. But we need to learn the situation on the ground in the east before we go making definitive plans.”

“If we are planning, though, then I’d like to kill the bull!” Anzu declared.

“Yeah!” Alcander growled. “Doesn’t seem right allowing something like that to wander freely!”

“I’ll take the snake, then,” Marcus said.

“I’ll join you,” Alix added. “That thing’ll fall to our thunder wood bows, easy!”

“Don’t make such quick judgments,” Gaius cautioned. Turning to Leon, he said, “I can join Anshu on his part. This may not quite be the same as fighting against Jormun, but I think I can adapt.”

Leon nodded again before glancing at Maia and Valeria.

“I’m with you,” Valeria told him.

We’re hunting the roc? Maia asked. Leon nodded again. She smiled and said, Then it’s only right to go with my mate and help in defending his territory.

Leon’s smile widened. “It sounds like we have the beginnings of a plan, then. Let’s get some rest and then we can distribute some of the weapons we’ve brought. We’ll head east in two days.”