“Keep it in control,” Xaphan reminded Leon in his crackling voice. “It’s your power, but if you let it, it’ll grow some brains and flee from your scrawny ass.”

Leon grunted in irritation but kept his attention fixed solely on the ball of lightning he had in his hand. He was forming it into the shape of a bird, something he’d done before but never in the kind of fine detail that Xaphan was demanding. Instead of a vaguely raptor-shaped bolt of lightning, Xaphan wanted the bolt to be so detailed he could count the feathers in its wings and the scales in its legs. He wanted it to act like a bird, screech like a bird, and most of all, fly like a bird. It was to be so convincing that a mortal without any knowledge of magic might think it was a real bird.

“How necessary is this?” Leon asked as he forced his power into shape, adding details while doing his best not to lose details he’d already added.

“Right now? Very. Later? Not at all. You won’t form a proper wisp until you can infuse it with origin power, but you can practice forming a reasonable magical shell for it to inhabit. Wisps are usually shapeless, but most wisps are created by mages with shit for brains, and their wisps take after them in that regard. The better body you can craft for a wisp to inhabit, the better it’ll fulfill whatever inane task you set for it.”

“Does the body have to be magical?” Leon asked.

Though his form was obscured by his ever-present fire, Leon could almost see Xaphan rolling his eyes. “Don’t even get started on the golem bullshit that the dead fuckboy is so obsessed with. Talk about shit-for-brains, I’m beyond ecstatic that that shitbird is gone. Finally get some peace around here.”

Leon couldn’t help but crack up a bit, but it was followed by immediate panic as the lightning bird he was creating began to fizzle out, the details he’d been adding fading in an instant as he stifled his laughter.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered.

“Concentrate, human,” Xaphan chided. “This task is tedious, but it’s not so difficult as to be beyond even your meager abilities. By the end of this session, I have confidence that even you should have a passable proto-wisp flying about your Mind Palace.”

“Would it be persistent?” Leon asked.

“No,” Xaphan bluntly replied. “One of those pesky little traits that you need origin power for is longevity. Whatever you create will dissipate the moment you stop feeding it power. A wisp should be able to generate power all on its own, so long as its shell remains intact.”

“Many of the wisps from my Clan’s arks and facilities have been damaged by what seems like time, not battle.”

Xaphan scoffed. “That says more about the ways your Ancestors crafted wisps than it does about wisps themselves.”

“Have you any insights to offer on stone giants?” Leon asked.

“No,” Xaphan repeated.

“So if I were to get the dead man to forge a number of golem shells, you don’t know if the stone giants could inhabit them?”

“No.”

“Demon… demon… I don’t believe you.”

“Your belief is not required, human.”

Leon sighed. “What would be the problem with the stone giants inhabiting the golems?”

“I can’t say. Wisps gaining true sapience is unprecedented. If they were fire wisps I might have more insight, but not necessarily. I’m not a golem engineer, either. Maybe they can inhabit the golems, maybe they can’t. Ask them to try and find out for yourself.”

Leon grinned despite how thoughts of the stone giants divided his attention, causing his lightning bird to flicker and blur. Swearing under his breath, he refocused on the task at hand, and in an hour, he’d managed to create a decently detailed model of the Thunderbird formed entirely out of the power he’d inherited from her and had it flying around his Mind Palace.

“… Hmm, good enough. For a human,” Xaphan conceded.

“I’m happy with this progress,” Leon said.

Xaphan grunted.

“Xaphan…” Leon continued.

“What is it, Leon?”

“I have some questions.”

“Of course you do. All seek the wisdom of a Lord of Flame, even if they don’t know it.”

“Then share your wisdom with me. What do you think about the Tribes?”

“Why do you assume that I pay any attention at all to what you do?”

“Because I can sense when you pay attention, and you do it a lot.”

Xaphan turned away for a moment and didn’t immediately respond. When he turned back, he continued like Leon hadn’t said anything. “I don’t care what you do and have little care for the people you’re trying to win over. If you want true power, you’d force them onto your side. Give them a choice: submit immediately or be conquered.”

“I’m not that strong, nor would I want to do that.”

“And that’s why you only have four Tribes instead of the whole island.”

“Really?” Leon sarcastically replied. “I’m disappointed in you. I thought you’d have come up with something better.”

“Bah. If you don’t want to hear what I have to say then don’t ask.”

“Fine. Let’s talk about something else, then. Demons are ruled by Princes, aren’t they?”

“They are. Roughly equivalent to your Elemental Kings.”

“And the Lords are beneath them?”

“Yes.”

“If you were fighting against the… I don’t know, the water demons or something. You fight them for thousands of years. Your Prince eventually orders that peace has to come to his domain and takes a water demon as his wife. How do you respond to that order?”

Xaphan stared at him for a long time, his yellow eyes burning so hot that they seemed on the cusp of turning white. Leon began to burn with embarrassment under such scrutiny and silently castigated himself for being so obvious.

Eventually, Xaphan turned his eyes away and said, “I must obey my Prince. My Prince is the demon who elevated me to the position of Lord. He can just as easily take that position away. In the Elemental Plane of Fire, his word is law.”

“You’d just accept it? Just like that?”

“No, but my Prince’s orders can’t be countermanded. To do so is to commit treason. Your question is political, and all political problems require nuance to answer. If you were to be more specific, I can try to put myself in the proper mindset and give you an answer worth hearing.”

“You’ve been fighting a genocidal war for many, many years. You just finished up a successful offensive campaign and many believe that you now have the upper hand in the war. Many of your fellow demons may despise your enemy.”

“If I were one of them,” Xaphan said as Leon paused, “I would outwardly follow my liege’s command and cease overt hostilities.”

“Overt hostilities, huh?”

“Proxies in the human planes can continue the conflict without drawing the ire of my Prince. Wars in the human realms don’t matter to the Elemental Planes.”

Leon sighed. “That sounds like a problem your Prince would have to deal with if he didn’t want another war with the water demons.”

“No demon shies away from battle. All peace in our realms is temporary.”

“Sounds like a delightful place.”

“I miss it dearly.”

Leon shut his mouth, recognizing the sincerity of Xaphan’s statement and the longing in his voice. He let silence reign in his soul realm for a long moment before speaking again.

“What about those?” he asked, nodding to the Hesperidic Apples on a table nearby. “What do you think I should do with them? I kept them for my people here on Kataigida to use, to strengthen my forces.”

“It’s better for the leader of a faction to be the strongest one within it,” Xaphan opined. “It makes potential rebellion less likely if you can personally incinerate any slow-witted fuckstick who challenges your authority. If you don’t have that kind of power, then your subordinates will be more likely to argue with you. To countermand your orders. To ignore your wishes in favor of their own.

“To go back to your earlier question, if I were as strong as or stronger than my Prince, he wouldn’t have much ability to stop me from continuing to wage war on the enemies he wants to make peace with. All he could do is try to convince me with words and hope that was enough. And let me tell you if there’s someone I want dead, I will have their charred corpse at my feet as soon as demonly possible!”

Leon sighed again. “I was hoping that I could share that power with my followers, show them the benefits they receive if they follow my orders…”

“Share too much and they’ll think you’re a pushover. Grow a spine and get stronger. Eat those apples.”

“You’re not just saying that so that you might siphon off a little for yourself, are you?”

“I’m not jesting nor am I advising you for my own self-interest. Eat the apples. No one can be insulted since the ones the apples were intended for gave them back to you. You need that power if you’re to face someone like the… the fuckboy who’s in charge out there.”

“The Thunderer.”

“Yes, that one. Acknowledge that at his power, you only have a chance to win because he’s indulging you. The moment he decides that a crown would suit his brow more than yours is the moment you lose. When faced with overwhelming power, power is your only shield.”

Leon ground his teeth in thought as he stared at the apples. “Maybe… maybe…”

“You doubt my words?”

“No, I really don’t. You and my Ancestor both have told me that enough times that it’s sunk in somewhat. I just wonder at other options. None will ever be enough compared to reaching the tenth-tier, but those two apples aren’t enough for that, either. So I need a bit more than that…”

“You will eat those apples, though, won’t you?”

“Yes, I’ll eat the damn apples.” Leon started walking toward the table, but before he reached it, he paused and said, “The expedition to the remaining two Tribes won’t begin until next week, so I’ll have some time. Expect me down here a couple more times to practice.”

“Do as you will,” Xaphan responded, his voice warm despite the relative chilliness of his words.

---

When Leon returned to the physical world, he could feel the new strength coursing through his veins. His soul realm had grown by a spectacular degree after consuming those apples, allowing him to store ever more power. By his estimation, his soul realm was a little past two thousand five hundred miles in radius, more than a quarter of the way to the tenth-tier, and it hadn’t even been a year since he’d reached the ninth-tier.

Despite his misgivings regarding eating the apples when he’d wanted others to eat them instead, he couldn’t help but revel in the new power.

However, he didn’t revel too long; he knew that he needed to train to get used to his new power. It wouldn’t take too long—his body was only carrying around a few drops more mana than it had before he ate the apples, so the amount of power he had access to at any given moment hadn’t changed, but the amount he could store had, and his magic senses had roughly doubled their scope. He felt like he’d only need one or two training sessions to get used to himself.

To that end, he made his way from the private meditation room he’d been in to a courtyard set aside for his retainers. There, he found not only his family and retainers, but also several faces he hadn’t expected to see—namely, Xanthippe, the Jaguar, and Nikolaos.

Most of the people in the courtyard were busy training with blade or magic. The Jaguar was the only exception, though that was mostly because he seemed to have taken on something of a mentor role, passing on some of the tips and tricks he’d picked up in his centuries of life. Even Red paid attention when he spoke, to Leon’s surprise. To his delight, he found that Anna was present as well, with her Attican Snapper and manticore cub—now the size of a large dog—and speaking about them with Xanthippe.

So intently was everyone concentrating on what they were doing that Nikolaos and Maia were the only ones who immediately realized Leon had entered the room. Both joined him as he stood off to the side to watch the Jaguar instructing his retainers in how the Jaguar Tribe fights.

[Leon,] Maia whispered as she took one of his arms and snuggled up against him.

“Your Majesty,” Nikolaos greeted at almost the same time.

Leon focused on Maia first, sending her love across their connection and leaning into her a bit.

[You feel stronger,] she observed with a delighted smile.

[Ate the apples,] Leon explained. [Xaphan pushed me into it.]

[Smart demon,] she replied. She sent some feelings across their connection that made it crystal clear exactly what she thought about Leon growing stronger, and he couldn’t help but ponder the logistics and politics of ending the training session early, ignoring everyone and everything else, and whisking Maia away to their private chambers.

But, as Leon was almost painfully aware, Nikolaos was still there, waiting for Leon’s acknowledgment.

“Elder Nikolaos,” Leon eventually said after giving Maia a quick kiss. “I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

“Family should come first, I understand that,” Nikolaos replied. “I make as much time for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren as I can, but even when one can live for a thousand years, there never seems to be enough time.”

Leon grimly smiled as all three went silent for a moment.

“Leon,” Nikolaos said a little less formally, “I hope I’m not out of line when I say that… I wish we knew about the Princess sooner.”

Leon felt Maia’s grip on his arm tighten as a flash of annoyance came through their connection, an emotion that was mirrored within him. However, he controlled himself and said, “I wanted to admit to that sooner as well, but I’ll admit I worried about the reaction.”

Nikolaos’ gaze slid from him and landed on Cassandra. Now that he’d had some time, Leon noticed that both the Jaguar and Xanthippe were staying about as far away from Cassandra as they could without being overtly rude.

“You have my loyalty, Leon,” Nikolaos said. “Never doubt that. You are of the Thunderbird Clan. Such is expected. Such is guaranteed. However…” He paused and appeared to need some time to ponder his next words.

Given what he might potentially say, Leon gave him all the time he needed.

Nearly half a minute later, Nikolaos finally said, “There will be no problems from the Tribal councils because of your marriage. You are our King and you have made your will known. But others may have… less than honorable mindsets. Less than loyal. We’re embroiled in the second great war against the barbarians across the sea in our generation, and many have lost loved ones to those who your wife considers kin. While none of the councils will act officially, there are some who may—”

As he spoke, the Jaguar loudly said to the others, “Let’s begin pairing off, shall we? Some sparring will help to put all of this into context!”

Without missing a beat, Xanthippe raised her spear and pointed it at Cassandra. “I would fight you, barbarian!”

Leon’s retainers didn’t say anything, but as the Jaguar froze after realizing Leon was present and then began slowly removing himself from between Cassandra and Xanthippe, they closed ranks around her.

Leon was both annoyed and mildly amused at Xanthippe’s challenge—and how clearly Cassandra wanted to accept it—but any frostiness was melted at the show of solidarity his retainers showed. Even Anshu stood alongside Cassandra.

However, he wasn’t sure he should allow it. He stepped forward, Maia releasing her hold on his arm as he did, and said, “I’m afraid that I have to steal Cassie for a moment, but I’m sure any of my retainers will prove to be a wily and skilled opponent.”

Cassandra frowned and very hesitantly began walking toward him while Xanthippe deeply frowned, sighed, and lowered her spear.

“As Your Majesty commands,” the Lioness growled. “I hope to cross blades with a barbarian Princess soon, though.”

“Count on it, Sky Devil,” Cassandra shot back.

When she said that, the Jaguar quickly stood alongside Xanthippe, presenting as unified a front as they could. Even Nikolaos flashed a hint of killing intent, though he didn’t make a move even as Cassandra almost smugly join Leon, Nikolaos, and Maia at the edge of the courtyard.

“Need something, Leon?” she asked as the others slowly began pairing off, though not without more than a few nervous glances sent their way.

“I need my people to not kill each other,” Leon replied. “Let’s give everyone a few days to cool their heads before going for full-contact sparring.”

Cassandra frowned. “I can handle myself—”

“I don’t doubt that. But try and tell me that fighting Xanthippe right now is a good idea with a straight face.”

Cassandra continued frowning, then sighed. “Fine. Fine. I’ll kick that bitch’s teeth in later.”

Leon smiled, knowing that was about as much as he was going to get. However, he glanced at Nikolaos and found the man stone-faced and staring at Cassandra without a hint of warmth in his eyes.

“Queen Cassandra,” he muttered as her ruby eyes turned in his direction.

“Elder Nikolaos,” Cassandra replied with a similar attitude.

“Nikolaos,” Leon said, not wanting to give the atmosphere even a second to turn awkward, “I’ve been toying with an idea lately. I have retainers, and while I trust their skills with my life, it’s still a fairly small force. I’m glad you’re here today because I wanted to talk to you about forming a new group from all the Tribes who’ve sworn themselves to me. Say, twenty-five or fifty from each Tribe?”

“A personal guard?” Nikolaos asked, his expression noticeably lightening with the change in topic.

“No, it’ll be a… well, yes. I feel vain for even suggesting it, but a man’s entourage is almost as important as his aura, isn’t it? And a King ought to have a guard unit that makes an impression, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would.”

“Good. I hope to begin evaluating candidates before we leave for the north.”

“Do you have any ideas for who will be leading this unit? Or what they’ll be called?”

Leon began grinning madly and his eyes turned toward his retainers. He certainly had some thoughts on that front…