Leon’s concentration was absolute. He manipulated his magic slowly and carefully, only enough to cause his object of study to slowly twirl in the air. It responded well to his power—to his will—but given its strength, he was terribly conscious of just how easy it could be to destroy everything around him.

The Iron Needle spun around slowly in time with his manipulations, occasionally sparking with golden lightning whenever Leon needed another burst of power. It was almost horrifically easy to call upon the power of the Needle, as if the Universe Fragment were an extension of Leon’s own body, but Leon knew that it wasn’t and didn’t trust his control over it.

“Very good,” Nestor whispered as he took copious notes documenting Leon’s experiments. “Are you ready, Leon?”

Leon smiled thinly, feeling ready, yet also nervous at the same time. Having an artifact of such titanic power that a Clan could be built in the Nexus out and in hand had his heart hammering his ribs without mercy.

Before him and Nestor lay a ceramic box filled with sand. The Iron Needle possessed, as far as Leon could tell and as far as the Thunderbird could tell him, perfect control over essentially all lightning. Leon couldn’t even begin to imagine what feats the thing was capable of, though he knew of a few already, such as the Thunderbird first learning the power that she would make her own from it.

Another power of the Needle—or, perhaps more accurately, an incidental byproduct of its power—he’d witnessed at its resting place in Tusk’s lair: the storing of its power in fulgurite. In the months since acquiring the Needle, Leon had conducted more than a few experiments with the Iron Needle, but so far, he’d not yet managed to successfully make fulgurite that stored the Iron Needle’s power.

Now, he was trying again.

He carefully ‘aimed’ the Needle and whispered a command in his mind. A single bolt of lightning erupted from the tip of the Needle and hit the sand. The sand all but exploded outward, only remaining within the ceramic container thanks to the vast array of enchantments that Leon and Nestor had layered upon its exterior.

As the sand settled, there were a few traces of vitrified glass, still smoking black and growing rough as it cooled and un-melted sand stuck to its exterior, but no signs of the same kind of fulgurite that Leon had seen in Tusk’s lair. That glass had held vast seas of power; the glass he’d just made most emphatically did not.

“Another failure,” Nestor whispered, sounding just as disappointed as Leon felt.

“We just need to try again,” Leon responded with determination as he pushed down his growing sense of pessimism. “We’ll keep trying until it works. It already worked once, so it has to be reproducible.”

“Or,” Nestor countered, “it worked merely because of the unique circumstances of the cave that you found it in.”

“Having some second thoughts about continuing this line of experimentation?” Leon asked.

“Ancestor’s no!” Nestor responded. “All I’m saying is that using such plain sand might not give us the same results, and expecting the same results would be foolish. We need to isolate what properties made that lightning glass in the first place if we’re to replicate it.”

“I don’t even know what that lightning glass was made of,” Leon growled as he glared down at the sand in the large ceramic bowl. “Even if we can’t use regular sand, though, there has to be some kind of substance that we can glass that will contain this power…”

“There is… another possibility,” Nestor whispered.

“No,” Leon shot back. He knew what Nestor was going to say, and he wasn’t quite ready to face that, yet. He wanted to explore all other options first before admitting to what could very well be the truth, that the fulgurite in that cave had only been charged with the Iron Needle’s power due to its proximity for thousands of years. “We’re just missing something, and we’ll find it. How much power leaked from the container?”

“Hmm,” Nestor whispered as he examined the bowl. Judging by the micro-cracks left in the ceramic, Nestor was able to make a ballpark estimate, and he and Leon moved on to another ceramic bowl with a slightly different enchantment.

In total, Leon and Nestor blasted through several dozen enchanted bowls, creating some fulgurite each time, but never creating any that either contained the Needle’s power from the moment of creation or any that could absorb its power after it cooled. Each time Leon and Nestor attempted to facilitate its power storage using enchantment, their attempts would fail.

As he and Nestor cleaned up after this most recent round of experiments, Leon asked, “Just how much control should I gain if I master the Needle’s power?”

Nestor paused as he made a few last notes in his notebook. “Are you thinking of trying this more manually?”

“I am.”

“Other storage mediums have failed, why would this be any different?”

Leon grimaced slightly, remembering how he and Nestor had attempted to store the Iron Needle’s power in more conventional gems and suffered the gems exploding every time. No matter how weakly Leon made his attempts, the gems would always explode. Not even when they used more conventional methods of storing magic power would it work. It was almost as if the Iron Needle’s power simply refused to be stored, no matter if Leon was the Needle’s master or not.

“But I know that lightning glass can work. So if I’m able to force lightning into the glass and not let it out…”

“That sounds like a good way to make something that explodes,” Nestor observed.

“I fail to see how that would be a bad thing,” Leon said with a cheeky smile. More seriously, he added, “We can take more precautions, but I think it’s worth investigating.”

Nestor stared at Leon for a long time before sighing, his lungless body slumping over a bit. “That would take some preparation to experiment with safely. And we’ll need more lightning glass.”

“We can make just about all that we need,” Leon said as he raised a hand, silver-blue lightning dancing about his fingers.

“If it’s so easy, then get to it,” Nestor challenged.

Leon smirked and got to work, using his lightning to melt the sand into glass as best as he could—which was to say, not very. In the end, though, he was still left with a goodly amount of fulgurite, none of which was in any way magical.

With hardly more than a word, Leon began channeling the power of the Iron Needle again, the Universe Fragment responding to his will as it floated just above his hand. Lightning sparked about it, and with little more than an errant thought on Leon’s part, a spectacular bolt of violet lightning sprang from the tip of the Needle and hit one of his larger pieces of fulgurite, which promptly exploded, showering the area around Leon’s testing table in glassy shrapnel.

“Well done,” Nestor drily stated as bits of black glassy crystal bounced off his enchanted steel chest.

“Just my first time,” Leon protested.

He tried again three more times, for he only had three more pieces of fulgurite of substantial size. Each time, he tried to direct the lightning with more and more control, but each time, the lightning emanated from the Needle was too much for the fulgurite to bear, causing the crystalline substance to shatter.

“Those didn’t explode,” Nestor observed. “You’re making progress.”

“Your powers of observation never cease to amaze and astound, dead man.”

“Neither does your capacity for failure. Do try again, I haven’t had my fill of exploding lightning glass yet.”

Leon gave the man a withering glare, but before he could respond, he heard a quick bang on his workshop’s door, followed by a muffled curse in familiar tones.

With a frown, he glared at Nestor again, secured the Iron Needle in its golden tube, and moved to the door just as whoever was outside knocked on it a few times.

Since he’d been experimenting with the Iron Needle, he’d completely locked the workshop down. With Nestor’s upgrades to the workshop’s security enchantments, Leon doubted even a tenth-tier mage could get in or out if its defenses were raised.

The one outside wasn’t a tenth-tier mage, though, as revealed when Leon opened the door.

“Ah!” Cassandra cried out in momentary surprise, her hand raised to rap her knuckles against the door, almost rapping them on Leon’s forehead.

“Cassie,” Leon warmly said in greeting, ignoring all else. He was about to slip out of his workshop when Cassandra made to enter, and seeing no reason not to let her in, he stepped aside. Once she was inside, though, he shut the door tightly, raising its defenses again.

Cassandra took a moment to glance curiously at Nestor—Leon having introduced them weeks ago—and smiled briefly at Nestor’s large cat napping in the corner, which he’d named Kibeh. Cassandra had been briefly quite taken with Nestor, seeing him as a possible font of knowledge of the past, but after Nestor revealed that he’d participated quite little in the Thunderbird Clan’s political and administrative apparatus, she’d quickly lost interest—though she’d maintained a healthy wariness of the man. She was still vaguely interested in the mechanics of how he was still alive, his magic body having been implanted into a specially-created golem, but since she seemed to have no interest in golems themselves, she rarely asked Leon about him.

Finally, she turned back to Leon.

“Hey,” she said. “Am I interrupting?”

“Yes!” Nestor called out, but aside from a slight narrowing of her eyes, she ignored the dead man completely.

“Nothing so important that it can’t be done later. What’s on your mind that you had to come down here?” Leon responded.

“I wanted to talk about a few things,” she explained as she took a few steps back and began surveying Leon’s somewhat eclectic workshop, with its blacksmithing, enchanting, and golem-crafting tools. “How’re things down in here? Still working on… what was it? Cloud forging?”

“Sky forging,” Leon corrected her. “And yes, I’m still working on it. I’m having some problems with the Iron Needle, so it’s looking more and more necessary that I’ll need something to aid me in channeling its power. I have Sid helping me with some research on the topic, but since she’s not a lightning mage, she was quite adamant that I not expect too much from her.”

Cassandra hummed in thought, and Leon wondered if she was actually listening. He found himself growing a little more concerned about what was on her mind, especially since she’d never come to seek him out in his workshop before, though she had while he was in other parts of the villa.

In those weeks, he’d brought her up to speed on just about all of his family’s goings-on. It was a calculated risk, but he’d made it clear that he was trusting her with sensitive information, and she’d given him no reason to think that she’d passed any of it on to anyone else. Still, he refrained from telling her about the Jaguar in Occulara, or about the Director’s arks. For the most part, however, he told her about his work, including the Iron Needle. That had been a particularly nerve-wracking conversation, but all that had happened as a result was her insistence on seeing the artifact for herself.

After confirming that Leon hadn’t lied about it and that it was practically useless to her, she lost interest pretty quickly, choosing instead to spend most of her time with Tikos and Helen in attempting to try and grow Hesperidic Apple trees without the tree sprite’s constant attention. So far, they’d made some progress, but not enough for Leon to properly bribe the Lord Protector into not screwing with his property while he was at the Sky Devil’s Hell, yet.

And in regards to the Sky Devil’s Hell, while he’d not told Cassandra about the Jaguar yet, he hadn’t been shy in telling her about his plans to win the Ten Tribes over, nor about his attempts to get in contact. To say that she was surprised was an understatement, but given the distance between the Sacred Golden Empire and the Sky Devil’s Hell, and the fact that the Sky Devils were largely seen as a problem for the Sunlit Empire, she wasn’t too upset.

“And what were you working on here?” she asked, her tone distant like she wasn’t really all the invested in hearing the answer, her mind miles away.

Leon quickly informed her of what he’d been doing over the past few hours, and the fruits of that labor—or lack thereof, as it were.

“… but I’m confident we’ll get what we need once I get a handle on using the Iron Needle,” Leon finished, and Cassandra still looked like her attention wasn’t quite on the here and now. “… And once that happens, I’ll be able to strip you down and tickle you to death.”

“Hmm, that’s good,” Cassandra whispered.

Leon fought to stop himself from laughing. “And once I’m done with that, it won’t be too hard to wave my naked ass at the Keeper and have my revenge…”

“Ohhh,” Cassandra said. Leon was about to continue when, after a second, her eyes widened and she turned fully toward him. “Wait, what?”

“Nothing,” Leon replied. “You had to have a reason for coming here, what’s going on?”

She frowned and glanced at Nestor again. “Mind if we talk in private?”

Leon nodded, and together, the two of them left the workshop, the sound of Nestor’s grumbling filling the air as they departed. Only a few minutes later, they were in Cassandra’s suite in the villa, Leon having given her the largest set of rooms that he still had open in his home so that not only the Princess but also some of her personal guards and servants could stay close to her. He was also hosting more Evergolden guards and servants in his home, but they were resting their heads elsewhere.

Cassandra led him to her bedroom, but before Leon could start getting any ideas of what she wanted, she collapsed on her bed and just laid there for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling.

“I… My grandmother… Actually, basically everyone has been asking me about you,” she explained. “They… I get the feeling that, even though they’re not saying it, they want me to spy on you.”

“Oh!” Leon exclaimed in faux surprise. “My word! What a horrible and completely unforeseen thing to have happen! Betrayal! I have been betrayed!”

“This is serious,” Cassandra protested, her ruby eyes narrowing as she sat up and crossed her arms across her chest.

Leon chuckled and sat down next to her. He almost wrapped an arm around her waist until he noticed her shy away from his touch a bit, so he contented himself with just being a little closer to her.

“I know that it’s serious, but it’s not surprising. Have you told anyone anything that you’ve learned about me, yet?”

“You ask as if you expect me to reveal your secrets at some point.”

“Poor choice of phrasing on my part, then.” Leon smiled at her, but the only reason that was a poor choice of words was that he said what he really felt. He fully expected Cassandra to keep her family appraised of what he was doing, at the very least. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“You need more?” Cassandra asked, sounding offended. “You placed your trust in me, Leon. We are to be married in just a few months. I would not betray that trust, even moreso because we’re to become family. A betrayal of you is a betrayal of myself.”

Leon shrugged, not intending to argue the point. “Have there been any issues? Has the Grand Druid or Her Imperial Majesty been too keen on pressing for details of my work?”

“Not as much, but it’s clear to me that they’re expecting… certain information to flow to them…”

“Then ‘certain information’ can flow to them,” Leon said with another shrug, and Cassandra stared at him like he’d started speaking in tongues. “Look, Cassie, what I prize most is autonomy, not so much secrecy. I’m in a unique position where I’m largely left alone, yet also present a clear threat to the stability of this plane. I’m left alone because I’ve made myself useful. If I’m not useful, then why would your family, or the Ilian Imperials for that matter, keep me around? So, yes, I’m fine with some information making its way out of my halls. Just… you know, not the really important stuff.”

Cassandra scowled lightly. “I don’t like this,” she declared. “I don’t want to feel like I’m being forced to choose between you or my family.”

“We’re about to unite our families, so it’s not like you’re really choosing, are you? And unless you know something I don’t, then we’re not at war, and we’re not going to be at war. So… I suppose let’s start with this: what sort of information does the Grand Druid and the Empress think having you here will buy them?”

“Apotheosis,” Cassandra readily replied. “Hesperidic Apples. Other secrets that you no doubt have regarding old Thunderbird Clan magics.”

“All of which can be shared—after review, of course. How about this? We can prepare some small concessions. Things I don’t need, like some enchantments, a few of my older Lightning Lance designs, that sort of thing. Those aren’t even better than their Flame Lances, but it’ll take time for them to determine that. Should buy us some time. Not like this is unexpected, honestly.”

“I still don’t like it. It feels like… I don’t like feeling used.”

“Do you feel like I’m using you?”

“A little bit.”

“Then what is it you want to do?”

Cassandra took a long moment to think it over. “I want to continue seeing the world. I want to see all that lies beyond the borders of this plane. I want the universe to lay at my feet and have the freedom to go wherever I want and do whatever I want. There’s so much beyond Aeterna, and I want to see it all. I don’t want to be just another finger wrapped around you, squeezing you for all that my Empire can. Nor do I want to be a dagger you stick in my grandmother’s back.”

“I won’t force you to do anything. And if you don’t want me speaking on this matter again…”

“You’re involved, not speaking on the matter would be foolish.”

“Then I say handle this however you want. You have my trust. There aren’t many that can say that you know, and just about all of them live under this roof.”

Cassandra stared at him a long time, seemingly searching for any sign of deceit. But in this, at least, Leon was being sincere. There were always new things to discover, higher magics that could be his. He didn’t mind leaving some of what he’d discovered behind when he departed from this plane. If it kept tenth-tier mages from kicking in his door, then all the better.

Leon reached out and brushed her fingertips with his. This time, she didn’t flinch away, but instead reached out and tangled her fingers with his, not quite holding his hand but coming close.

“Things are going to get interesting soon,” he said.

“Sooner than I’d like,” she replied. “I’d have preferred more time spent with my new husband before he goes off courting Sky Devils.”

“It must be done. Strike while the iron’s hot, and all.”

Cassandra grunted and grabbed his arm. “Yes. And right now, the iron’s demanding a spar. Let’s go.”

Leon sighed but allowed her to drag him out of the bedroom. He had been working a while, and while he and Nestor hadn’t made much concrete progress on the fulgurite, they’d at least gotten some valuable data, so he had no pressing need to return to the workshop.

There would be time enough to continue his work later, but he was heading off to the Sky Devil’s Hell not long after his marriage with Cassandra, hopefully—just so long as he could be sure both Ilion and Evergold wouldn’t get on his family’s back while he was gone—and he only had so much time to spend with his friends and family who weren’t going to be coming with him on that initial journey before he left. And he intended to spend that time as well as he could.