“Wise choice.” Tyr whispered, he was with the Goldmane's and ensured their conversation wasn't too loud. The blossoming flares of fireworks streaking the sky overhead as Alex clutched his hand and Uriel hugged his leg. Family. “Nobody is better than him. If you mistreat him, I'll end you. Understand?”

“I do.” Nala replied with a glare, still in her 'Maria' form. Micah, out of earshot and on the opposite side of her, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively at Tyr. Goofy, sure. But his gaze was almost challenging, and the prince wanted to accept that challenge, if only to see to what heights that ambition would bring his friend. Friend. As if to say 'don't get any ideas about my woman' – Micah had no idea what he was getting himself into... “You are so boring, after all. I found a more interesting partner. Are you jealous?”

“Of course I am.” Tyr replied with a wry smile. “But he was the better choice to begin with.”

Micah was a shardling, just like Tyr – of that he was absolutely confident. Like Alex, Astrid, well... All of them possessed nascent shards, and though they weren't nephilim in the strictest sense just yet – Tyr would bet his household wealth on the fact that they'd rise to it. All of them, all humans could but they were the closest and he had no idea why. Like they were made for it, brought together through imperceptible threads to live amongst their truest kin.

“He was. But as I've told him, we chimera take many mates, keep that in mind.” Nala replied with a wink, taking Micah in her arms and burying his head in her impressive bust. He didn't seem to mind. That was the logical end of their conversation. Alex leaned over to whisper quietly in his ear.

“Meet me in the utility closet in fifteen minutes.” She said.

“What?” Tyr raised an eyebrow at her. “Is everything alright?”

Alex loved her brothers. They were rascals, sure. That was why she was the heir and they were not, but that wouldn't stop her from caring about them. Uriel was her favorite, naturally. The eldest of the boys were as different as people could be. Asher had become a templar in service to the church, sacrificing any claim on becoming heir to the House. At least for now, that was his oath of moment, and it could take a long time to complete said oath. Decades, possibly.

He was a man only concerned with duty and battle, while Bel cared only for making money and spending it with equal enthusiasm. A profligate, perhaps, but also an extremely successful merchant in his own right. To 'work hard and party harder', that was his only goal in life. Compared to them, Uriel was still the cute little brother that liked to play. His schoolwork had some room for improvement, honestly, but he was still young enough to excuse his lack of propriety toward the academic. Gideon was fiercely trying to push him toward an interest in the law to become his successor as an arbiter, while Asha was doing her best to make him an official college mage like Alex. Two out of four college mages in the family was good enough, by her reckoning.

Of course, he could do both as Gideon had over time. They were not mutually exclusive paths, but parents would always seek to live vicariously through their children. Alex was too willful and interested in other things to stay in Haran forever, she'd told her father that she'd think about becoming the heir. He was still young enough, time to wait to see what became of Uriel. But she wouldn't take the seat of arbiter whatever the case, both positions were determined by the primus so it wasn't as if any of them could decide for themselves.

She'd fight a man, kill them if she had to, but Gideon for all his gentle demeanor was just as familiar with the knives of an interrogator than the hugs of a father. It was a dark, brutal, and trying path that tested all who took it. Alex had eventually understood that she was not a proper fit for that particular vocation.

“Just come.” She said.

“I see. Yeah, I probably will.” Tyr nodded in understanding, a mischievous smile on his face. For so long he'd been so glib and dark, and now he was the man she remembered. The boy she remembered, that is. So human, so normal, in sparse moments but no less appreciated. “Two or three times, I suppose?”

She slapped the back of his head, but he couldn't fail to notice her smile. She had light in her, too. Something worth protecting. Whether she wanted or needed that protection or not, he should be there to ward against anything that wished to snuff it out. “Thanks again for looking after my little brother.”

“Probably going to end up kidnapping him, anyways.” Tyr mused quietly. He was thinking of asking Gideon to take the boy as an apprentice or squire, but he was a tad too young for that and if not the father, Asha would most certainly refuse. It was really too bad, of all the families Uriel belonged to it had to be the one that knew him best.

“...What?”

“What?”

–

“What was that about?” Gideon sighed in exhaustion, his eyes were red with worry at having lost his son in the midst of such a crowded place. He hadn't wanted to bring Uriel, but Asha had been insistent. To allow the boy to see the world when he still possessed the free time his formative years would allow. That's what she'd said, but arbiters had a tendency to see the truth in people, it was their job. “You don't seriously expect me to think that you lost our son?” His tired voice turned into an angry hiss.

Uriel was munching on a banana covered in hardened chocolate, starry eyed at all the lights and noise around him. Riven wasn't exactly quiet, but their estate was. The boy had never been in an environment like this, but he seemed to like it. Childlike wonder and all of that. His stubby hands pointing out this or that with joyous laughter while the wardens ensured that their eyes did not leave him, dispersed through the crowd and ever vigilant. There was no chance at all that a boy that young had given them the slip of his own accord.

This had been premeditated.

“Do not raise your voice at me, Gideon Goldmane.” Asha's voice was emotionless, her eyes indignant. She had a good relationship with her husband, and still loved him a great deal, but she had never tolerated disrespect or accusation in any form. A man as wildly intelligent as Gideon should know her well enough by now to understand. But unlike his wife, the man was emotional in all the wrong ways. Too doting of a father, and that's exactly why Bel had turned out the way he had. Thank the gods that boy had enough talent with numbers to take care of himself, instead of continuing to dishonor their house. “It was a test of character.”

“You and your tricks.” Gideon frowned, turning his ire to the hidden and ever vigilant wardens. He would have words with them, but ultimately they were performing to their mistress' expectations. Nothing more, nothing less. If push came to shove, despite his position as arbiter and their direct superior, they would obey Asha first, Gideon second. That was the logical, informed choice. “He didn't even know who Uriel was, they've never met in person. How was he supposed to know?”

“After examining the evidence, I am quite certain that he did know. The prince just happens to be in the right place, at the right time, just twenty three seconds after I separated from Uriel? No, he had been watching us the entire time, and he performed exactly how I'd hoped he would. Strangely, but not inappropriately.” Asha always spoke to him in that 'this isn't up for debate – I'm right and you're wrong' sort of way that irritated him so much. “I tire of trying to decipher his fools act through intelligence missives and wished to see it for myself. Though... You know it was not my preferred method.”

“If that is the case, and he knew... If young Tyr truly is the mastermind you think he is...” Gideon didn't think it made any sense. They'd been ordered to investigate Tyr by the man's own father and draft a personality profile. A criminal one used in the court to try and sentence an individual. For no good reason beyond Jartor's interest in figuring out if Tyr was cognizant of his actions or not.

That's what Gideon believed, he'd been given a dossier of intelligence gathered by the authorities in several nations. A handful of which demanded remuneration, or an accounting through other means. Even wholesale execution, three individual churches were petitioning the crown every single day to hang criminal charges on the young man's head. Jartor didn't seem to care, though. He had been very clear with them that Tyr was following his explicit orders, even if that was a lie, and he had three questions for his elites.

Who was Tyr? That was the most important. Jartor did not know his own son, and it was difficult to follow his logic through all his seemingly random decisions. Hastur was not a controlled entity, not in the slightest, but he behaved in line with his own beliefs and was predictable. Tyr on the other hand was the antithesis of predictable. People thought him simple and random, which was a predictability in and of itself, but it couldn't be that.

He made moves through various proxies and apparent delegation. Asha did not know this, she was party to the investigation undertaken by their family, but Gideon knew very well. Bel and 'the Don' alike were incredibly talented merchants and managers, but neither they nor their accountants could divine how Tyr had become so insanely rich in such a short amount of time. All of his earnings were being funneled through proxy accounts in no less than six different banking institutions, and then back to his vault. This made sense if he was laundering, stealing, smuggling, or so on.

Until it ended up back in a vault owned by Jartor and – in terms of raw currency – fully visible to the Harani officials. All of the audits checked out. He paid his taxes on time and kept immaculate records of his financial activity. Clearly aware that he was being observed. If he was okay with them auditing him, why was he moving all of that money back and forth?

Moreover, Tyr was manufacturing nephilim. A lot of them, and nobody knew how or why – some of them weren't even friendly to the prince himself. A handful were complete strangers that he'd met briefly before never communicating with them again.

Nephilim were rare, but not an unknown. High humans, the supposed original race, Lazarus had been preaching about them for some time. Somehow, he had managed to fly under the radar of the powers in the world by behaving so perfectly that it couldn't possibly be random. Nephilim existed, though Gideon's information regarding them was little more than a collection of suspicions. Many were born nephilim but they would never awaken to it.

Awakening as a human was extremely difficult. Many called them 'bloodlines', genetic attachments to an element, the term 'sorcerer' in classification of a mage was a part of that. A fallacy, though not a complete one. The ability to use more unique forms of magic, more so than a simple adept. All humans may be nascent nephilim, but Gideon didn't know what a nephilim actually was in any case, only that every single author of a Black Book had been one of these 'original humans' – or at least had a shred of that heritage in them.

If Jartor was correct, which he always was, Tyr had successfully managed to awaken a human – that human being Tiberius Scarr first as far as they knew. Awakening in the sense of the first step in a long process, the ignition of a mana core. Hypothetically, this process would allow every human on the planet to become a full fledged mage, eventually. Which was decidedly not what they wanted. Mages were already common enough as it was, it was like handing the citizenry the most unpredictable and dangerous weapon the gods had ever gifted to mortals.

Three questions, and that was only one and it's related points. Who and why. A lot of exposition in between because Gideon didn't know enough to keep his vast amount of information efficient. Jartor would only share the barest details, which stood to reason. Primus' had secrets, not a single soul understood what they were.

Beyond that, they wanted to know what his grander plans were. And if he had awakened to his aspect whilst managing to hide it from the others. For what purpose was he building an army? That was most pressing in their minds, a terrifying force of monsters living right on the Harani border. Or inside the country itself, depending on what cartographer one spoke to, and Jartor hadn't made a single effort to wipe them out. Gideon had taken it upon himself to investigate that, but every individual ranger sent into the disputed valley simply disappeared.

“If that is the case, and he knew... If young Tyr truly is the mastermind you think he is...” Gideon repeated. “He was likely emulating appropriate behavior in a situation where you made it all too easy to shed suspicion.”

“You're right, but I was not the true observer in this little experiment of ours.” Asha inclined her head toward a nearby, and suddenly empty rooftop. “According to the primus, this unique energy of theirs cannot lie. And now they've confirmed what his aspect is. Our job is done, and we can enjoy this event as a family the way you wanted to.”

“And what might that be?” Gideon showed his sincere interest. Whether Tyr had lost the position of heir, he was still part of their family – and a primus too. These were things that couldn't be taken away. He personally thought that so much suspicion being aimed at the boy was uncalled for, but it was true that it was better to keep as many eyes on what might've been just a very talented mage as possible. Even more since he'd been confirmed as a true primus, through whatever means Jartor and Octavian had supposedly used.

“Better we didn't know, according to Jartor.” Asha spoke calmly, the flickering lights of fireworks lighting up her hair. “He won't be around long enough to use it. Apparently it is worse than Cortus' was.”

“I hate cliffhangers, Asha.”

“I know, dear.”