For several long hours, Nestor and the young Raime spoke at great length, with Nestor getting a feel for Leon’s current skill in enchanting. By the end of it, he wasn’t particularly enthused about Leon’s skill, but he grudgingly admitted that there was some talent there that could be nourished.

It would have to be nourished another time, however, for Leon had to get at least some mental rest during the night, and he still had a few things to discuss with the Thunderbird. So, once he and Nestor were finished—with Nestor going quiet as he contemplated what and how to teach the runic arts to Leon and Xaphan returning to his pavilion to meditate—Leon found and approached his Ancestor a mile or so away from his Mind Palace perched atop a low mountain and gazing out at the forest he had created.

He’d flown to her, and he quietly alighted just behind her. She barely even turned her avian head, choosing instead to continue staring out at Leon’s domain. Leon didn’t press her for speech, though, and simply took up a position right next to her, taking a few minutes to drink in the spectacular multi-colored expanse of flora that spread out before them.

It took a little longer than a few minutes for the Thunderbird to finally break their silence.

“In all my years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone build a Mind Palace quite like this,” she said, a hint of both mourning and wonder in her sonorous voice.

“I’m guessing most people take the ‘palace’ part of ‘Mind Palace’ a little too seriously for your tastes?” Leon asked, knowing full well that he’d done the same for his first try.

“They do,” the Thunderbird whispered as she closed her hawk-like eyes as a slow, unnatural breeze wound its way through her feathers. “I enjoy it here. It’s not a perfect replica of the outside world, but to my senses, it hardly matters; I haven’t felt the wind or the light of a proper sun in so long… I must thank you for building such a place. Even if you did not do so for me, just being here is a privilege that I treasure.”

Leon felt nothing but honesty radiating from his normally so domineering Ancestor, and it was such an unexpected thing that he almost failed to respond. Contorting his face in surprise, confusion, and embarrassment, Leon simply said, “Yeah… uh, anytime. And… thanks to you… for training me, and for advising me. And for being honest…”

That wasn’t all he wanted to say; he wanted to thank her for choosing him, but the words just didn’t come. After all that had happened over the past few days, admitting how badly he had screwed up and how horrific a situation he’d been in was just a little too much to face right about now.

“So,” he continued in a fairly transparent way of changing the subject, “before I hit the hay, I was hoping to get a couple of questions answered, and maybe a pointer or two from you in defending my soul realm from similar invasions?”

The Thunderbird seemed to smile, though her avian face was incapable of such expression. Her wing closest to Leon twitched and he almost thought she was going to pull him in for a hug, but in the end, she didn’t.

“Defending against soul invasions…” she whispered. “That’s actually not too difficult. You’re doing quite well, so far, you just got incredibly unlucky with the first person who tried being so skilled in ancient runes. Without knowing at least that erasure rune I taught you, such people with that kind of knowledge are nearly untouchable.”

“So I learned.” Leon grimaced in the direction of his compound and fought back the urge to drag Nestor out of his ruby and try to kick his teeth in.

“The best way to defend yourself is to have something of an army in here,” the Thunderbird said. “I told you when you first came here to treat this place as if it were real, for it is a real place. That should be quite obvious, given how much physical material you store here…”

Leon nodded, though he wasn’t quite sure where she was taking this. It was easy enough to think of his soul realm as real—he stored so much here and even Xaphan could exist within it. But he had a little more trouble thinking of it as a place properly connected to the physical universe.

“Does this mean I’ll have to start building defenses in here?” he hesitantly asked as his eyes scanned the brilliant forest, his enthusiasm to see it marred by castles and fortresses quite low, but his willingness was high enough that he wouldn’t hesitate if it were necessary.

“Not necessarily,” the Thunderbird replied, giving him a little bit of comfort. “Doing so wouldn’t be discouraged, of course, but I wouldn’t say that soul invasions are a popular tactic in the Nexus; as I told you before, to attack someone’s soul realm means that a person’s magic body has to leave their physical body, their mind leaves their physical body, and their physical body is thusly left incredibly vulnerable as little more than an empty shell capable of breathing and not much else. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, especially not with some of the more powerful figures in the Nexus who can afford to protect someone’s physical body, but such attacks are not so frequent I should think that you need to start building walls and moats and castles in here.

“No, what you need instead is an army.”

“An army…” Leon drily stated, his eyes practically shooting up into his hairline in skepticism. “I don’t even think most people can come here…”

“I don’t mean bring people from outside in,” the Thunderbird countered. “Instead, once you achieve Apotheosis, you’ll need to dedicate some of your time to creating wisps and having them maintain and defend this place for you. They’ll be your first line of defense against anything attempting to replicate Nestor’s assault on your soul realm. Various enchantments will be your second line, and you and anyone else that you have in here will be your third and final line.”

“You just said that you weren’t encouraging me to bring other people in here…”

“And I’m not, but as it stands, you already have two others here not including me who will aid you in defending your soul realm. That living match has already done so, though he predictably failed. Bringing others into your soul realm is a tremendous risk, but there’s no reason not to use what you already have.”

Leon reluctantly nodded.

“Besides, there’ll be a time when your soul realm may even be connected to the rest of the universe,” the Thunderbird continued, causing Leon to look at her in shock.

“How would that work?” he wondered aloud. “Why would I even want that? Wouldn’t directly connecting my soul realm to the universe just make it vulnerable to anyone who came across it?”

The Thunderbird shrugged as much as her avian frame would allow. “Depends on the nature of that connection,” she said. “By that time, though, it’ll hardly be something you’ll need to worry about. Forging such a connection is something far beyond your capabilities. It’s even something beyond just about anyone below the level of an Elemental King if my estimations of their power are correct.”

Leon frowned, but he accepted her judgment. There was a great deal more in the world of magic that awaited him, so much more left to discover and learn about beyond even Apotheosis. He had no idea what kind of power he might wield if he ever reached the end of that line, if there even was an ‘end’ to that line.

But, with the Thunderbird’s mentioning of the Elemental Kings, and with her brief spiel regarding his soul realm defenses seemingly over, Leon turned to something else he wanted to ask her.

“When speaking with Justin, he told me of a man named ‘Khosrow’…”

Leon wasn’t sure what to expect when he said that name in the Thunderbird’s presence. Stoic indifference, most likely, with the Thunderbird regarding the man with the dispassion of one who thinks themself far above the subject of the question. He expected to maybe get a little bit of a more unbiased view of the man from the Thunderbird, assuming she even knew who he was.

He was not expecting the Thunderbird to suddenly freeze up as the sky above them turned black with storm clouds in the blink of an eye. He didn’t expect lightning to dance around the peaks of distant mountains, or for deafening thunder to come crashing down upon his soul realm a few seconds later. He never would’ve guessed that the Thunderbird would turn to face him, fury etched into every line of her avian face, her eyes burning silver-blue, her aura skyrocketing and filled with killing intent.

“Khosrow…” she growled, sounding far more like she had the first few times Leon had seen her years ago, like the spirit of a furious and vengeful god rather than the softer and gentler tones of a mentor and their student.

The Thunderbird’s gaze bore deep into Leon while her tremendous aura settled around his shoulders like a rucksack of bricks on a mortal.

“For what reason did that man invoke the name of the dead?” the Thunderbird demanded, her voice resounding in Leon’s ears like a hammer to his eardrums; Leon barely managed to remain standing as his head shook and he almost lost his sense of balance as her killing intent swept over him.

After taking a moment or two to right himself, Leon asked, “He was—he was just explaining the political establishment in the wake of the fall of the Primal Gods and Devils!”

The Thunderbird stared back down at him for a long moment, her blazing silver-blue eyes seeming to search through his entire being, seeking any hint of deceit. Of course, she found none, and when it became apparent to her that Leon wasn’t lying, she averted her gaze and went silent. The dark clouds overhead slowly dissipated, the thunder was silenced, and the lightning in the distance ceased.

When the Thunderbird turned back to Leon, her eyes had returned to their usual shade of eagle-yellow.

“I… apologize, Leon,” she said softly, her voice no longer hitting Leon like a ton of bricks. “I lost myself a little, there. Khosrow and I… have history. Bloody history.”

“I think that was obvious,” Leon replied as he fought off the last few traces of killing intent that the Thunderbird had suffused the air with.

“I… Allow me to explain why,” the Thunderbird said as she shifted back into her human form. Her bronze physique practically sparkled with health in the light of Leon’s soul realm, but she had a terrible look of hatred and dread in her eyes that sent shivers down Leon’s spine, and when she spoke again, she did so with a grim tone, one that held no traces of levity or unseriousness.

“Khosrow… is the man who killed me,” she said, and Leon immediately understood her anger for the man. “I was one of the last of the Ascended Beasts alive in the Nexus during the wars at the end of the Primal Age. I’d outlived all seven of the Great Dragons, I’d seen the fall of the Primal Gods, and I’d even participated in bringing the Primal Devils to their reckoning. And yet, when Khosrow and I fought, I lost.”

“Why did you two fight?” Leon asked. “Was it for any particular reason? Or was it just because you were one of the ‘Old Guard’, so to speak?”

“I attacked him,” the Thunderbird replied. “I did so with three of my closest friends at my side, the Heavenly Wolf, Cait Sith—an Ascended panther strong in the ways of darkness magic—and Bennu—one of the first children of the Phoenix, and the only one of her progeny to be born as a Phoenix rather than a human. Not long after the last of the great campaigns had been fought and he’d established his new order, Khosrow, the Great Lord of all mankind, lead a final push toward our lands since we refused to bow to him and acknowledge the changes he’d brought to the universe. To do so would’ve meant to acknowledge his supremacy over us. So, we went out to meet him in battle.”

“And you lost?” Leon asked apprehensively, his opinion of Khosrow diminishing quite a bit.

“Yes and no,” the Thunderbird replied. “I and my friends perished, but our Clans survived. Khosrow was mortally wounded in the battle, and his followers took him away to try and heal him. Wherever they took him, they did not succeed, for Khosrow was never seen again. His campaign was halted in its tracks, and my Clan went on to seize the title of Storm King only a few millennia later when Khosrow’s handpicked Elemental King of lightning ended his own long life.

“It took a long time for me to realize what had happened and to reorient myself to my new position. It wasn’t until my children and grandchildren had passed on that I was able to directly speak with my descendants as easily as I am with you right now. But I was informed that Khosrow had disappeared after that fight. The wounds we inflicted him were mortal, though, as much as any wounds could be. His body had been ravaged, his soul realm had been destroyed, and his magic body had been torn asunder. With the magic left in his physical body, he couldn’t have lasted longer than a few days after being carried off that battlefield, and indeed, he was never seen again.”

“He must’ve been incredibly powerful to stand against you four all alone…” Leon said, though in his tone was the implied question of whether or not Khosrow had fought them alone.

“He was the most powerful human I had ever seen,” the Thunderbird replied. “Even to this day, I have never seen a human exceed his capabilities. He’d brought his soul realm into the universe as a physical place, making it nearly impossible to destroy and granting him a great deal of power over the physical world. He could essentially create things at will in the physical world using the Mists of Chaos, just as you can here in your soul realm.”

Leon’s eyes went wide. “He could… just create?” he asked in wonder.

“He could,” the Thunderbird confirmed. “In him, humanity finally had an answer for the greatest powers that the Gods and Devils could command, including their great collections of Universe Fragments. He could also teleport across the universe practically at will, and so long as his soul realm existed, his body could not be destroyed. It also drank in much of the power from the Nexus, granting him magical might beyond what any other being at the time could muster, with the sole exceptions of the Kings of the Primal Gods and Devils and the Great Dragons.”

“How did those beings fall, then, if they were so powerful?” Leon asked.

“Khosrow led all of humanity,” the Thunderbird explained. “He did not face them alone. They took grievous casualties, but humanity has never wanted for replacements. Their nearly endless hordes, the allies Khosrow had made—including me, for a time—and the timing of his strikes—usually right after the Gods and Devils had worn themselves down by fighting each other—allowed him to come out on top in these wars and usher in this age of humanity.”

Leon nodded in understanding, though he couldn’t help but find some admiration for Khosrow bloom in his heart, even if the man had wound up being an enemy of his Clan, in the end. More than that, though, he found himself imagining himself with all of that power, to be able to create whatever he wanted at will and to have an effectively limitless supply of magic power.

“So, he’s dead,” he said after a few seconds of fantasizing. “That resonates with what Justin revealed about him. It seems like the system he built endures, and that he’s greatly venerated in the Nexus.”

The Thunderbird clicked her tongue. “Such veneration shall never be found within me. Khosrow was greedy and duplicitous, he deserved a painful death!”

Leon smiled bitterly, recognizing much of his own anger in his Ancestor. Khosrow had, by her own admission, been an ally of hers, at least for a time, but the two of them had wound up killing each other.

And now, it was Leon’s goal to find a way to reclaim his Clan’s position within that system.

As he considered that, Leon couldn’t help but frown. It seemed that Khosrow’s Law wasn’t going to be kind to him, if Justin’s accounts of how those with Inherited Bloodlines were treated was anything to go by.

If that was going to be the case, then he wasn’t sure if he wanted a place in Khosrow’s Law.

“There must be a way…” he murmured aloud as something occurred to him, something more ambitious than just about anything else he’d ever considered. The Thunderbird turned to look at him, but Leon didn’t say anything more.

If Khosrow’s Law was as definite as it seemed, having survived for millions of years, then what Leon had the sudden urge to do was madness. He clamped down hard on that urge—a single person couldn’t possibly challenge that system, they couldn’t possibly build one of their own to replace it…

’Could they?’ Leon wondered as a smile of desire spread across his face. If he could reclaim his family’s old titles and powers as the Storm King, then maybe…

The smile on his face grew wider as a hint of ambition glittered in his golden eyes.