Once Apati was finished with his threats, the first thing Leon did was to project his magic senses and try to locate his people. If Apati had done anything with them already, then he was going to explode in anger.

Fortunately, he located them fairly quickly on the route to the research facility. Thanks to their still-healing wounds, they were moving rather slowly, but they were still being led by the glowing green light that Apati was using to communicate. It seemed that he could conjure multiple given there was another light there with Leon.

Leon didn’t bother responding to Apati’s threats. He didn’t need that long to think the problem over: he could kill the tree sprites and Apati would give him the remains of the research facility, or he could leave the tree sprites alone and go force Apati to give him what he came here for.

With an enormous smile on his face and anger in his heart, Leon leaped into the air and began flying toward the remains of his expedition, leaving the tree sprites alone and paying Apati’s green light no more mind. He didn’t think the ninth-tier sprite was deceiving him when it showed him its memories of the past, of the tortures his Clan had inflicted upon it as they studied it. It was more than within its rights to seek vengeance, as far as Leon was concerned. He was a little more conflicted that it was mostly slaves that took the fall when the tree sprite escaped, but in the millennia since its escape, it had mostly kept itself to the Prota Forest, leaving everyone else alone. It was only those who entered the forest that were killed or driven off, and again, Leon couldn’t blame it for doing so. This was its home, and it was protecting itself and its kin from further harm.

As he took flight, he reached out to Maia and Valeria, mentally speaking with them both and updating them on what had happened within the massive ethereal tree. From this point on, they were to treat Apati as the enemy and the forces of the Prota Forest as… not friends, but not direct enemies, either.

He just hoped that after being expelled from the ethereal tree that the ninth-tier tree sprite would leave them to their own devices. He could easily see its assault on his expedition ramping up given the way it had kicked him back out into the physical world, but if he were in its place, he might leave two feuding enemies to bleed each other dry before moving in.

At the very least, he estimated that he, Maia, Cassandra, and Xaphan could all take the ninth-tier sprite. It didn’t seem to be one that predisposed toward killing, so for all its power, Leon doubted that it was that good at fighting.

As he finished his explanation, he watched as Maia and Valeria called the expedition to a halt, to Cassandra’s surprisingly muted confusion. The Princess didn’t seem to be arguing as much as Leon might’ve expected.

Leon doubled his efforts to reach his expedition, but in a moment, his anger and worry skyrocketed—magic bent around the expedition, and they vanished within a curtain of darkness. A moment later, the curtain faded, leaving his expedition nowhere to be seen.

In a panic, Leon began bathing the forest in his magic senses, and only started breathing again when he located his people standing at the foot of the twin hills that the research facility was buried beneath. However, as his people assumed defensive formations, a dozen golems appeared around them, and six towers erupted from the ground. At the top of each of these towers were machines that looked like Imperial Lances.

Another ball of green light appeared next to Leon, sticking with him in the air.

“My Lord,” Apati growled. “I must insist. This childishness is unbecoming of one in your position. These tree sprites present great dangers to the Clan, both materially, and to its reputation. They must be destroyed at all costs!”

“The only thing that must be done, Apati,” Leon shouted back, “is for you to stand down!”

“I will do what I must!” Apati roared back, sounding near-hysterical as the ball of light vanished.

‘Guess he was more insane than he sounded,’ Leon thought as he reached into his soul realm for his transformation enchantment. A few seconds later, he was flying by feathered wing rather than his magic, and he moved with much greater speed.

The research facility wasn’t that far from the trees, and by this point, Leon was already on his final approach. But he could see the Lances on the top of the towers begin to power up and aim themselves at his people, while the golems Apati summoned began advancing.

These golems appeared to be labor golems, nearly identical to the two in Leon’s soul realm. That meant they weren’t built for battle, but they were durable and strong.

As Leon approached, he filled the sky with thunderclouds, while at the same time, Cassandra conjured a shield of light between the expedition and the golems, and Maia summoned a huge ice dragon.

[Don’t hold back,] Leon said to his people. [These golems are the enemy.]

No one needed any further encouragement. Most of Leon’s retainers and the remaining Evergolden escorts were still healing, but their worst injuries had been taken care of, leaving them ready for battle. Still, Leon sensed their auras rise as Maia’s ice dragon lunged outward, snapping up one of the golems in its jaws.

The golem showed its durability quite well as it resisted Maia’s attempts to destroy it, but her ice dragon was powerful, and as Leon angled into a steep dive, it fell from the ice dragon’s mouth in tiny pieces.

As he dove, the Lances opened up, and huge bolts of lightning erupted from their barrels. They hit Cassandra’s shield, and its pure white surface was instantly cracked. But crucially, it held, though she roared in exertion.

Leon, angered further at seeing his people attacked, conjured six lightning bolts and had them fall upon the Lances. The Lances themselves didn’t seem to take much damage, but Leon could see the towers crack and buckle under the weight of his power. It he could disrupt the enchantments that kept power flowing into the Lances, then even if he couldn’t destroy the weapons themselves, he could at least render them inert.

He kept up the barrage, and when he slammed into the first tower, it collapsed beneath him, the Lance atop it falling to the ground and all magic contained within it bleeding out into the surroundings.

“A valiant effort,” Apati said as his orb of light appeared next to Leon again. “Not enough, though.”

Maia’s ice dragon had destroyed three labor golems in this time, including the first, but the remaining nine charged, soon slamming into Cassandra’s damaged light shield. The Princess cried out in exertion, but the remaining five Lances unleashed another barrage of lightning bolts, causing her shield to shatter. Maia’s ice dragon swooped in and grabbed another labor golem, but the other eight proceeded with their charge.

Leon’s retainers and the Evergolden squad then surged forward, engaging the golems with blade and magic, though not making too many dents. Leon himself didn’t waste too much time before he launched himself back into the air and dove onto another tower.

[How do I break this?!] he roared into his soul realm.

[They’re weak in the back!] Nestor responded, and Leon began hitting the Lances with more targeted lightning strikes as he tried to tear into the one he’d practically landed upon. [They have delicate machinery inside to aid them in target acquisition!] Nestor explained. [Break that machinery, and the Lance barrel will be disabled!]

If Leon could’ve scowled in avian form, he would’ve, for it was much easier to say ‘hit the Lances in the back’ than it was to actually do. The Lances were hardened and armored, with the delicate machinery that Nestor had pointed him towards being locked behind thick plates of steel. Still, he scratched and gouged at the metal, his golden talons finding some small purchase within. As the cries of pain and battle filled his ears, his anger grew, and once again, he found himself reaching deep for power.

His golden talons then darkened as fire began to burn around them. He felt the power of black fire, the strength of his inner dragon yearning to be free. Instead of trying to call upon it, however, he simply unleashed it, letting his instincts handle things rather than trying to corral his power.

The fire that burned around his talons turned black almost immediately, and the steel between him and the Lance’s internals liquified. After a few more seconds of tearing, the barrel of the Lance went limp, little more than scrap with its internal machinery and enchantments rendered into slag.

“Damned ancient things!” Apati raged, and Leon smiled inside. This man was betraying him, and it felt great to cause him grief.

At the same time, three more golems had been destroyed, and Cassandra got back to her feet. Instead of conjuring another shield of light, she instead began firing off intense light beams at the base of the towers holding up the remaining four Lances. Already weakened by Leon’s thunder and lightning, the towers quickly began to crumble under her onslaught.

“Why are you damned children not listening to your elders?!” Apati screamed. “You side with monsters against a loyal servant of your Clan?! Why?!”

Leon couldn’t verbally respond—his mouth being a beak and all—but when he glared at the green orb, he hoped his anger and contempt was communicated.

It seemed it was, for after a moment of thought, during which two more golems and another Lance tower were destroyed, Apati finally said, “Fine. I guess I’ll have to teach you some other way.”

The ambient magic around Leon flared again and another curtain of darkness fell over his people.

Leon’s eyes widened in alarm as he beat his wings and tried to disrupt what was going to happen—spatial magic was composed of darkness, light, and lightning, and by filling the air with lightning, he had a faint hope that he might be able to do something to stop this. However, when the curtain disappeared, his people were gone, leaving the remaining three Lances to aim at nothing, and the final handful of golems to stand there, targetless. It seemed that Apati had either refined the teleportation enchantment he’d thrown together, or simply lied to Leon about how accurate it was.

“Now, Leon,” Apati said, “I need you to—”

Before he finished his statement, Leon had already taken flight again and smashed into another Lance, destroying it.

[That’s unnecessary,] Nestor said, though Leon was inclined to disagree. [I doubt these defenses have been subverted enough to allow them to target one of us, who bears the awakened blood of our Honored Ancestor.]

Nestor’s assessment turned out to be accurate, as far as Leon could tell, as none of the Lances turned toward him, nor did the labor golems make any threatening moves against him.

Apati’s ball of light, however, wasn’t quite so dissuaded, as it appeared again beside him.

“The impetuousness of youth,” he said condescendingly, “is easily forgiven. I know that you think you know what’s right and what’s wrong. You think that that these monsters have a right to live, or something, don’t you? Well, let me tell you something: things that slaughter men like farmers reaping wheat aren’t fit to live! When we conquered this plane, these creatures put up great resistance! They killed many of the Clan’s warriors! After so much blood has been spilled by them, they deserve nothing less than to be exterminated—save a few specimens who ought to be studied, so that we might make their strength, ours!”

Finally feeling like he wanted to respond, Leon began transforming back into his human form. As he did, Nestor quietly said, [I think… I think I finally know who this guy is!]

[Who?] Leon asked as his clothes and armor appeared over him.

[One of the lead researchers here…] Nestor said. [The one you saw in that vision, I think…]

[So he’s not a security guard who was left in charge of this place after the evacuation?] Leon asked, his anger and disgust with Apati growing more intense.

[No,] Nestor confirmed.

Thusly even further enraged, Leon turned to face the call of light. “And you think you know better than I do?” he asked.

“I am older, wiser, more experienced, and more intelligent,” Apati responded without a shred of humility. “There was a reason I was chosen to supervise this facility when all the researchers abandoned it.”

Leon almost called out his lie right then and there, but instead, he asked, “Where have you taken my people?”

“They were brought somewhere quiet where they can’t do any more damage,” Apati replied. “I’m not so uncouth as to try and kill good warriors of the Clan. Yet.”

Leon glanced around at the Lances, then down at the golems.

“Sure,” he said sarcastically, though making no more comment on that front. “Apati, you will stand down, and you will return my people this instant. If you do not, I will consider you in rebellion against the Clan, and will act accordingly.”

“You are a fool,” Apati replied. “I am doing what’s best for this Clan! I have given my life, all of my effort, for years beyond counting! Even when I was passed over for promotion in favor of that brainless fool Nes… Look, Leon, I know this place. I know these creatures. You must destroy them. There is no alternative. Destroy them, and then we can leave. Everything you came here for will be yours, and I can rejoin the Clan. All that I know, all the knowledge that I have collected over a lifetime of good, loyal service, will be yours! If you don’t destroy these monsters, they will continue to blight human civilization forever! The blood of countless will be on your hands!”

Leon frowned. The tree sprites had at least been willing to negotiate, but Apati was trying to order him around. They had both tried to have him killed, but he’d borne witness to the memories of the ninth-tier tree sprite. While he wasn’t particularly fond of either Apati of the tree sprites, with his people having been stolen by Apati, he was a little more predisposed towards killing Apati than the sprites right now.

“The sprites are sapient,” Leon said.

Apati was quiet for a moment, as if he needed a moment to try and suss out what exactly Leon was trying to say. It appeared he failed, for he asked, “So what?”

“If they’re a threat, how did you deal with them?” Leon asked.

“As the Clan demanded,” Apati said. “They resisted us, so the order came down to exterminate them. Only their incredible mastery over nature magic saved them from complete eradication in those first few years. We needed to study them, so we kept a few alive.”

“And how did you study them? By letting them infect slaves?”

“We… needed living samples,” Apati said, sounding rather confused and not all ashamed, as if he simply couldn’t understand what direction Leon was taking this conversation.

“I wonder what happened here, Apati,” Leon said. “I wonder if they were acting in self-defense. Personally, if I found invaders coming to where I lived, I would fight like the hells to kill them. If they took me prisoner, I would fight to escape, too. I wonder if this isn’t a problem of our making, and if some accord can’t be reached.”

“It can’t!” Apati insisted. “They are monsters, and to kill us is all they think about!”

Leon’s frown deepened. The simple fact that the Prota Forest hadn’t really expanded in these millennia was proof enough that Apati was wrong, though Leon didn’t put much stock in his words, anyway.

“What is your real name?” Leon asked the man.

Apati went quiet, and this time, his silence stretched over many seconds.

It became clear that he wasn’t going to respond, so Leon continued, “You’re not a security guard here. You were a researcher. You weren’t placed in charge of the evacuation, were you?”

“You don’t know anything, fool,” Apati spat.

Leon continued along on that path, though.

“The tree sprites can store memories and share them quite vividly, did you know that? Of course, who am I kidding? Of course you know that. I wonder what that ninth-tier tree sprite might be able to show me of its time in our captivity. I doubt anything you did to it back then might be considered a crime, but I wonder just how it managed to escape. Why so many of our slaves were confined when cerebral roots burst out of them? Did you expose our own slaves to these tree sprites to study their capabilities?”

Leon had no proof, but was just guessing based on what was starting to make more sense to him the more he thought aloud.

“Were those even slaves? What exactly happened here after Jason Keraunos was killed? Was the order to evacuate even given? Or did you just seize control of this place to pursue your own research when the Clan fell?”

Without another word, Apati’s ball of light disappeared. With this small triumph achieved, Leon allowed himself a smile, but that smile was short-lived. Regardless of how he felt, his people were missing once again.

However, he took some solace in the fact that they couldn’t be far. The teleportation enchantment thrown together by Apati, despite clearly being more accurate and useful than the dead man had let on, couldn’t be powerful enough to send them outside of the Prota Forest, and he guessed that they were probably somewhere beneath his feet, within the research facility.

He quickly leaped down from the tower intending to charge in and do what he could to find his people and kill Apati, but before he hit the ground, an enormous root erupted from the earth and slammed into the tower, knocking it right down and disabling the Lance still atop it. The last remaining Lance was similarly disabled, with a second huge root thicker than Leon was tall destroying its tower. The final few golems met similar ends as thick roots speared them right through their cores, rendering them little more than scrap.

Leon’s sword was already in hand, sparking with silver-blue lightning, when he hit the ground, and his head went on a swivel as he leaped into the air and hovered, looking around for any potential enemies.

He didn’t have long to wait, as a moment later, a tree sprite pushed its way out of the earth like a diver breaking the surface of the ocean. It was one of the eighth-tier sprites, as far as Leon could tell, and when it stood up, it made no more hostile moves, choosing to stand still and stare at Leon.

Leon almost attacked immediately, but managed to suppress that impulse, and when he detected not a hint of killing intent within the tree sprite’s aura, he slowly descended until he hovered before it, not quite touching the ground and ready to spring into violence at the slightest moment.

However, the tree sprite held out its hand, and sap congealed within its palm. That sap hardened into glittering amber that glowed with arcane light. From that chunk of amber came a simple, understandable, but thoroughly alien voice.

“You oppose the Pain-Bringer?” the tree sprite through the amber asked.

Leon, not wanting to be caught in a misunderstanding about who the ‘Pain-Bringer’ was, replied, “I’m heading down below to kill the man who stole my people and took over this facility.”

The tree sprite stared at him for a long moment, and then the amber spoke again. “We wish him dead, too.”

“Are you proposing an alliance?” Leon asked with a smile.

Again, the tree sprite was quiet, but when it spoke, it answered quite simply.

“Yes.”