Nestor climbed out of the crater and stood in front of Leon, a smile of victory all over his face. Leon was still on his knees, his soul realm devoid of any meaningful amounts of magic to call upon to defend himself. He glared up at Nestor, and if looks could kill, Nestor would’ve been ash on the wind.

Unfortunately, Nestor was unharmed, the rune in the air next to him glowing with all the magic he’d stolen from Leon.

The old mage extended a hand in Leon’s direction, but not to help the younger man up. Instead, his index finger drew a quick rune in the air, causing the rune he already had to flicker for a moment as he expended some of its power. A second rune appeared in the air just where he’d drawn it, glowing with white light. This rune then flashed, and Leon felt his body lock up as his face was slammed into the ground.

And there he stayed, completely immobilized.

“I hate to do this, kinsman,” Nestor said, his smug tone indicating the exact opposite, “but I can’t have you resisting any further, especially with you making a complete mockery of the strength you inherited. Just stay right there for a little while, maybe in a few centuries if you’re lucky, and I’ll give your body back.”

Nestor’s gaze then turned toward the onyx throne in the center of Leon’s humble Mind Palace.

“By our Ancestor, boy, this place is dreary. I’m going to have to make some changes around here if we’re going to get anywhere…”

Before Nestor could take a single step toward the throne, however, a massive flaming fist the size of his face practically appeared in front of him and crashed into his nose, hurling him right back into the crater he’d just crawled out of.

“Leon,” Xaphan murmured, his blazing body now replacing Nestor’s at Leon’s side, “I cannot help you with your restraints, but fret not! I shall annihilate this arrogant shithead and find some way to free you!”

“Really?” came the response, though it wasn’t from Leon, who found his jaw just as locked as the rest of his body, but from Nestor, who picked himself off the ground of the crater and now stood glaring at Xaphan, seeming none the worse for wear. “The slave raises hand against his master? Very well, then, demon, I shall strike you down to where you belong before I take this boy’s body.”

Xaphan didn’t hesitate, however, to leap down into the crater before Nestor could make a move. Another flaming fist crashed into the ghostly mage, hurling him into the crater wall with tremendous force, enough to send cracks spiderwebbing throughout that side of the compound.

Unfortunately, Nestor seemed about as affected by that blow as he was by the first.

“You’ll have to do better than that, demon,” he said as he rose to feet, taking the time to flash Xaphan a cheeky grin.

But again, Xaphan moved, seeking to exploit Nestor’s lack of caution. He had seen Leon’s power fail to take Nestor, so he resorted to more manual methods. With a vicious uppercut, Xaphan’s fiery fist had Nestor doubled over in pain, and over the next few seconds, punch and kick and punch rained down upon Nestor, preventing him from doing much more than try to block.

And Nestor did his level best to block many of Xaphan’s blows, but he was slow and clearly out of his element. Xaphan had the initiative, and Nestor had few tools at his disposal for getting it back. After a while, he leaped away, gaining as much distance between himself and Xaphan as he could as he drew another rune in the air. His finger was a blur, moving almost as fast as the demon.

The rune hovering by his head flickered again as he summoned some of its power just as Xaphan appeared in front of him again, his burning fist barreling into Nestor’s stomach, lifting the dead man off the ground.

Nestor did not come back down; he spun around in the air, using Xaphan’s momentum combined with the rune he’d called upon to summon a small cyclone around his legs that lifted him even higher, out of the demon’s immediate reach.

“You claim to be the master, but you’re no better than a street thief, and one who can’t even fight, at that,” Xaphan growled, his fires increasing in intensity as he wrathfully stared up at Nestor. Without waiting for a response, he waved his fiery hand at the hovering interloper, and a pillar of flame erupted from the crater beneath Nestor. This pillar rocketed upward, its top shaped into a hand with fingers outstretched, large enough to block Nestor’s view of the fire demon.

Nestor, however, didn’t even move as the pillar reached upward for him, and even in the moment right before it hit smiled derisively and wrote another ancient rune in the air.

The pillar extended up, but as the flames licked at his feet, starting to play around the cyclone that held him aloft, and the fingers clenched around him, they all stopped like they had hit an invisible barrier, leaving Nestor unharmed. They were then drawn into the shining rune that still hovered right next to Nestor’s head, their magic power captured and added to what Nestor had already stolen from Leon. A second later, Xaphan cut the pillar off from his power, recognizing that it wasn’t doing anything, and it dissipated into nothing.

But he’d moved, knowing from Leon’s display that his demonic power likely wasn’t going to do anything. Nestor tried to continue to mockingly smile at Xaphan as he lazily held out his hand and began to draw another rune in the air, but his smile froze when he registered that the demon had vanished.

Barely a moment later, Nestor felt Xaphan’s fist slam into the back of his neck, sending him hurtling back to the ground. Nestor slammed into the earth and did not rise, his ‘body’ battered and bruised and burned from Xaphan’s strikes.

“I think we may have made a mistake in summoning you, Xaphan,” Nestor said, his tone filled with pain and disdain, though still surprisingly vigorous given how efficiently Xaphan had beaten him. “The whole point was to summon powerful Lords, but clearly that doesn’t include you if this is all you’re capable of!”

With that, Nestor finally pushed himself back as the demon loomed above him, his flaming fist raised again. Before the massive fire demon’s fist could fall, however, Nestor revealed what had kept him down—it hadn’t been Xaphan’s attack, but rather the rune he’d drawn in the ground as Xaphan had fallen down after him.

The collection rune next to Nestor’s head flickered again as its power was called upon, and the rune Nestor had just drawn flashed with brilliant blue light, causing all of the burning orange fires on Xaphan’s body to sputter and fizzle out, driving the demon to his knees.

Xaphan furiously tried to stand, but his body wouldn’t move. He knelt there, his obsidian skin exposed, his eyes burning bright yellow… then dimming to orange, and then to a dull, almost lifeless red.

“That’s it…” Nestor cooed as if he were trying to get a young child to sleep while he wiped blood from his face. “It’s over now… no need to resist…”

Xaphan tried to scream and roar and thrash, but his body wouldn’t move. Slowly, and against every thought and will that Xaphan possessed, his body relaxed until his eyes closed and he fell into the dirt, unable to stay conscious any longer.

Nestor stood above the obsidian-skinned demon for several more seconds, reveling in his victory. After a moment, he turned and made his way in Leon’s direction, who yet remained conscious despite his similar magical restraints.

However, Nestor barely spared him a glance. Leon couldn’t move or speak, there was little need for him to waste his time there. Instead, all Nestor had eyes for was the onyx throne just beyond the fallen Raime. Once he sat upon it, his magic body would connect with Leon’s physical body, and he would take it over completely. For all intents and purposes, Leon’s body would become his to control and do with as he pleased.

“‘Why study the ancient runes?’ they said,” Nestor mocked as he started walking toward the throne, “‘They’re useless, everything they can do, modern runes can do better!’”

Finally, as he reached the marble platform upon which the throne stood, Nestor stopped and glanced over his shoulder at Leon. Despite being held there by Nestor’s rune, the young man’s magic body was subtly shaking as he tried to fight the total paralysis he’d been hit with.

“Before I go through with this, know that I mean you no ill will, regardless of what I said before. The summit of the mountain is only as lofty as what lies beneath it, and a Clan is only as strong as its members. If you were born back in my day, you could’ve been quite a powerful mage, perhaps even enough to have stood beside a Storm King on one of his conquests. But to actually be the Storm King? You lack the power, and thus, the right to claim that mantle. That’s just the way of it. You have no one to blame other than yourself. If you had been stronger, this never would’ve happened. This never would’ve been necessary.”

Nestor smiled as he turned back around to face the throne. It was a humble thing, barely more than what he might consider a dining chair.

‘Or maybe even less than that…’ he thought with a grimace. He stole a quick look at the rest of Leon’s soul realm and saw nothing that pleased him. Dirt, grass, and unworked rock, these were not the things that made for a good palace. He’d have to make quite a few changes as he got settled into Leon’s body, if for no other reason than his own comfort.

‘Going to have to move quickly…’ Nestor thought, glancing once more over his shoulder at Leon. It might’ve just been his imagination, but he thought that Leon’s body was starting to shake a little more violently. For all that Nestor was about to take it and make it his, Leon’s body still responded best to the younger man, and until Nestor got around to making changes to Leon’s soul realm, Leon would still command most of the magic that built up within his soul realm.

But Nestor wasn’t worried; he practically skipped over to the throne, supremely confident as he was in his victory. Almost eighty thousand years he had languished at the bottom of his laboratory, abandoned by everyone save for the golems that he’d built. He felt a brief tinge of regret as he proceeded to unleash his golems on Leon’s two companions, but he wanted no loose ends who might strike at him before he was ready.

Now that he had a body again, he figured it would be the easiest thing in the world to return his Clan to glory once more, with him at its head, prepped to return to the Nexus and reimpose the old dominions of his forebears.

With an almost theatrical flourish, Nestor sat down upon Leon’s throne, and a moment later, in the physical realm, Leon’s eyes opened.

“Ooh, what a wonderful feeling,” Nestor said through Leon’s lips, not caring at all that he was speaking to none but himself. He picked ‘himself’ up off of the ground where Leon had fallen and glanced down at the desiccated bed where his old corpse now lay, fleshless and barely recognizable. Within his old ribs sat the shattered, lusterless ruby where his magic body had for so long resided.

All it took Nestor was a single thought and an outstretched hand for a tiny silver-blue bolt of lightning to erupt from Leon’s finger and the ruby shattered into dust. Within Leon’s soul realm, the rune that stored his magic power and hovered next to Nestor shimmered, dimming by a tiny fraction.

With that out of the way, Nestor turned his attention to the sword of House Raime, the blade that had once been wielded by the Thunderbird herself, and which had fallen to the ground after Leon was knocked unconscious. Leon had never quite dropped his guard, for which Nestor was grateful, for it meant Leon hadn’t drawn the blade back into his soul realm and Nestor hadn’t had to face the power of the weapon when seizing Leon’s body.

Now, he bent down to pick the blade up, but just as his fingers brushed against the hilt, the weapon exploded with a tremendous blast of golden lightning that flung Nestor and Leon’s body across the room to crash against the golden sphere of light that prevented the power of the moon stone from escaping.

Nestor was stunned, so much so that he could only sit that on the ground where he had fallen, Leon’s eyes wide and mouth agape.

“What?!” he complained in confusion. “What is wrong with you?! There is none other who can wield you! I am it! You must submit to me!”

Nestor pushed back to Leon’s feet and strode over to the blade, seemingly fine despite the blast that he’d just suffered. Again he bent down to grasp the blade, but he froze as the hilt began to spark with golden lightning in clear warning.

“You…” he angrily murmured, barely able to keep his anger and displeasure hidden. It was only a sword, after all, it could not hear him or even truly comprehend the gravity of what it was doing. “Fine,” he said as he straightened up and created a door in the golden sphere with a snap of his fingers, “you may wait here until I return to claim you.”

Nestor then turned around and stalked out of the room, pausing only to glance over his shoulder at the moon stone, still glowing in the center of the sphere of light. Not even a second after he left, though, the sphere’s door quietly closed, keeping the moon stone separate from the rest of the facility.

The lead golem was still waiting outside of the door when Nestor walked out.

“Master!” the golem cried as Nestor appeared, despite wearing Leon’s body.

Nestor didn’t even respond verbally, instead simply waving his hand at the golem to get it to shut the hells up and follow him. He had much to do if he wanted this facility to get back up and running and to lay the groundwork for his return to the world. He needed to build more golems, he needed to solidify his hold over Leon’s body, and he needed to regain his lost power.

And, if he was of the mind, he also wanted to see if he could get Xaphan properly enslaved. The last thing he wanted was for that damn demon to be running around without any checks on his power, making Nestor’s life a living hell.

’Hmm, yes, some good punishments must be included in this new enslavement enchantment,’ he thought to himself. ‘Such disobedience can never be tolerated!’