With Iron Pride in his hand, Leon felt invincible. It was a terrible thing to feel—no one was invincible, the fact that he stood upon a place in the Divine Graveyard was more proof than he’d ever need for that belief—but he didn’t think it was a bad thing to at least revel in the feeling for a little while.

Of course, his initial instinct to make for the Sunlit Empire and drown it in lightning was powerful, but he fought it off in favor of a more productive test of the Iron Needle’s power. Accompanied by Nestor, Leon took off from his palace and didn’t stop flying until he hovered tens of thousands of feet above Lake Ontarii. Up there, it would take quite a bit of power to cause any damage to anything that Leon actually cared about.

Not that he doubted the Iron Needle and Iron Pride had that power, but at least he had plenty of space to use as insulation.

“All right,” Leon said as he leveled out with Nestor joining him a moment later, “what sorts of tests do you have in mind?”

“You aren’t so simple-minded that you’re relying on me for tests, are you?” Nestor sniped.

“Hardly. But between the two of us, you’re the one with more experience with the Iron Needle, having borne witness to Jason Keraunos use it back in the day.”

“And our Honored Ancestor has more experience than anyone else in the universe with our Clan’s most sacred treasure. If you have any questions, they would be better directed to her, for the wisdom she can share will outshine any I could ever possibly offer.”

“She’s not in right now,” Leon replied. “I think she’s close, and I’ll certainly ask her for advice when she’s next here, but until then, you’re it, dead man. So come on, what’ve you got?”

Nestor emphatically sighed. “I’m more interested in your tests, Leon. Surely you have a few?”

“Is there some reason you don’t want to tell me your ideas? It’s not like I’m going to just abandon the basics… But fine, I’ll circle back to you if you’re going to be such a writhing little snake about this.”

“Watch it,” Nestor growled. “Snakes and our Clan don’t mix well.”

Leon gave him a thin-lipped grin. “No shit.”

“Just do what you want to do,” Nestor conceded as Leon raised Iron Pride. “I want to see what happens when you have no direction. How the Iron Needle might react to just you…”

Leon tuned Nestor out as he concentrated wholly on Iron Pride. He could feel the Iron Needle in the handle, practically humming with what felt almost like excitement. It wasn’t sentient, but Leon could feel its eagerness to be used, for its power to be expressed.

But that left a fairly big problem for him: he wasn’t quite sure how to use the Iron Needle. It wasn’t like the thing came with instructions… However, as Leon concentrated on it, it seemed the Needle sensed his problem and decided to solve it on its own. The Iron Needle radiated a magical aura all on its own, and Leon sensed this aura fill his new sword, mixing with the power he’d already filled the blade with.

Lightning arced out of the handle and into his hand, then around his fingers and dancing across the blade. Lightning of all colors raced up and down the sword, and Leon could feel the Iron Needle flexing itself, putting itself at his command…

… yet he could also sense a sense of coyness beneath it all, as if while the Iron Needle was eager to express its power, it wasn’t going to put everything it had into Leon’s hands. The Thunderbird only ever learned one kind of lightning from it, after all, and none of the heads of his Clan apparently learned any more; otherwise, he assumed that power would’ve been passed down, as well.

Perhaps his assumption was faulty, but such was his assumption. While all of this multicolored lightning was fun and quite a spectacle, Leon didn’t for a moment think he was going to learn some new special lightning from the Iron Needle—at least, not yet.

So, feeling the Iron Needle’s aura mix with his own, he felt his bodily senses expand as if he were growing a third arm. He flexed this ‘third arm’, so to speak, and a bolt of lightning erupted from his blade. The bolt was terrifying in power, and as it hit the lake far below, it caused a huge explosion of steam.

“Bit much, that,” Nestor quipped even as wind whipped about him and Leon in the wake of that titanic bolt. “Try that again, but weaker.”

“You’ll have to give me a moment, I need to process that searing insight.”

Leon, despite his words, did as Nestor bid—it was what he was going to do, anyway. This time, however, he tried to dial the power back a little bit. The Iron Needle didn’t seem to like this, but it complied anyway, and Leon fired off another bolt, this one much weaker. And then he fired off a third that was even weaker than that. Several dozen bolts he fired off as he increased and decreased the amount of power he called upon as he probed what kind of power the Iron Needle was going to give him and how much control he’d have to exert in the process.

Throughout the process, he marveled at just how little power he was exerting himself. Bolts of lightning that would’ve left his ninth-tier self feeling momentarily drained while power flowed out of his soul realm and into his body to replace what he’d expended the Iron Needle was letting him throw around like they were nothing. Hardly any magic within his body was being used even as bolts rained from his sword into the lake.

Leon smiled as the fiftieth bolt fell into the water below. “All right, I think I’m getting the hang of this, now… The Iron Needle is being cooperative enough…”

“Then you should try—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Nestor, be careful with how you offer me direction! I might start thinking you’re not actually interested in the tests that I had planned!”

“I’m only trying to help, Leon; your sarcasm is making that harder.”

Leon stared at his clansman’s golem body in absolute disbelief. But after a beat, he just turned away and decided to try and regain the sanity that the dead man had just cost him with that statement by running another test.

He concentrated again on the Iron Needle. After throwing around so many lightning bolts, he was starting to figure out the connection they shared with the Iron Needle now embedded in a weapon forged at least partially from Leon’s blood. If he could modulate its power with but a thought, then could he do the same with the nature of that power? Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to learn exactly to use fancy lightning bolts from the Needle, but would that preclude the Needle from using those bolts if he were to ask it nicely enough?

Such were the thoughts in his head as he aimed the blade downward and reached out for the Iron Needle again. This time, he tried to envision the Jaguar’s red lightning. The savage, ferocious lightning of the Blood Thunder Jaguar as it tore its way through its enemies, obliterated corpses left in its wake. Such power was violent and useful only for violence, but in that respect, Leon considered it fairly simple and easy to understand.

A bolt burst from the tip of his sword, gold in color.

“Damn,” Leon muttered. He concentrated again, trying to urge the Iron Needle to do what he wanted. It wasn’t like it hadn’t been somewhat compliant before; he’d used it before to call upon the purple lightning that made thunder wood.

A second bolt burst from his blade, again gold in color.

“Double damn,” Leon murmured.

A third time he tried, and a third golden bolt fell into the lake.

“Triple damn.”

“Were you trying to do something just now?” Nestor asked with faux politeness. “Forgive me for asking, but it’s so hard to tell when failure dogs your heels begging for scraps.”

“Nestor? Do you even really need a golem body? Like, do you really need it?”

“Threats won’t make our Clan’s treasure work any better for you.”

“I’m not threatening anyone, I’m just asking a question. Maybe you should contemplate the answer to it before you try to shit on me for this, yeah?”

“Fine, fine.”

With a sigh, Leon tried to will the Iron Needle to use a different kind of lightning once again. This time, however, it wasn’t the Blood Thunder Jaguar’s lightning he envisioned, but the purple lightning of thunder wood. This time, to his immense relief and muted surprise, a bolt of purple lightning exactly as he’d envisioned sprang from the blade.

“Ah!” Leon cried out. “Well, that’s good. I was hoping my method would work. But why did it work for this lightning and not the other kind…?”

“Tell me what you’re doing and let’s speculate together.”

“Tell me what tests you want to run and how our Ancestors used the Iron Needle and maybe I’ll consider taking your offer under advisement. Yes, there is a distinct possibility that that will happen. Potentially.”

Nestor gave him a theatrical sigh before assuming a posture like he was leaning against something, despite hovering in the air with nothing at all to lean on.

“Fine, young Leon, I’ll indulge your curiosity—and your impatience. The Iron Needle is an instrument that commands lightning. All of it. It has absolute mastery over the element. And the Iron Needle grants that mastery to its chosen wielder.”

“I hardly feel in control of lightning right now…”

“That’s because the bond between you and the Universe Fragment is still forming. Wield that blade for long enough, and its mastery of lightning will be yours.”

“When you say ‘mastery’, does this include other kinds of lightning?”

“In some cases, yes. I suppose it isn’t right to call it ‘mastery’, more like ‘whatever the Iron Needle feels like giving you today’. As your bond with the Universe Fragment grows—as you two grow more attuned to each other—it will allow more and more.”

Leon nodded along, then thought about the black lightning that the Iron Needle used against Sunlit, then attempted to summon it. A golden bolt answered his call, and he sighed in mild, but unsurprised, dejection.

With Nestor, he ran through a few more exercises, which just about exhausted both his and Nestor’s knowledge of the Iron Needle, learning little more about the Universe Fragment than how far it was willing to let Leon push. In short, Leon could call upon tremendous power, but anything other than normal lightning, the Thunderbird’s lightning, and the purple thunder wood lightning was impossible.

For now. Leon felt some encouragement even from this much, and he knew that he’d probably be studying the Iron Needle for the rest of his life.

But the direct use of the Iron Needle in such a manner was only the end of one battery of tests. There was another use of the Needle that Leon wanted to test. To that end, he retrieved from his soul realm a dozen containers filled with sand of varying quality, and he extended his blade toward them.

Lightning arced from his sword into the containers as he pictured the spiraling, vinelike mass of fulgurite that he’d passed through just before acquiring the Iron Needle back in Tusk’s cave. That fulgurite had been able to contain the Iron Needle’s power, and Leon hoped to replicate its creation.

Sand immediately vitrified under the extreme heat of Iron Pride’s lightning, but the arcing bands of fulgurite that Leon had hoped for didn’t form. Instead, he was left with containers of molten and rapidly cooling sand.

“It might take more than just finding blasting sand,” Nestor grumbled.

“I know,” Leon grumbled right back. They’d debated the subject quite a bit ever since Leon returned to Occulara with the Iron Needle. It was still Leon’s fear that it was some natural quality of that cave rather than the Iron Needle that had allowed that fulgurite to form.

He began returning the containers to his soul realm in the vain hope that once the molten sand cooled, maybe there’d be some usable fulgurite in them, but as he reached his magic out to bring the second to last back in, he felt a slight pulse from Iron Pride, causing him to pause.

There were no exchanges of words, no flashes of images in his mind, or sudden feelings of intent. But all the same, Leon could feel that something was in that specific container of molten sand. He pulled the other back into his soul realm and then stared into the mass as it cooled.

“What is it?” Nestor asked.

“I have no idea, but I think it might be… promising.”

The container was fairly large, so Leon, losing his patience a little with how slowly the cooling process was going, conjured a mass of water and simply poured the sand into it. Dirty brown glass formed as the molten sand was quenched, none of it all that interesting…

… save for a single bead of fulgurite glowing with golden light in the center of that dirty glass.

“Leon…” Nestor breathed. “What kind of sand was that…?”

“I don’t know sand,” Leon said as he glanced back at the container. “Batch eleven.”

“We… we need to find more of Batch Eleven.”

Leon grunted in agreement. Then, he and Nestor turned slightly to glance at each other, locking eyes—as much as Nestor could do that—for a moment.

“Now?” Nestor asked.

“Now,” Leon stated.

They stayed hovering in the air only long enough for Leon to smash through the brown glass to retrieve that one single bead of fulgurite before they sped as fast as they could back to the palace.

---

Leon stared at the vats of Batch Eleven, as he and Nestor had taken to calling it, arranged before him. Tons of sand, literally. All of it slightly different, with extensive notes printed on the side of their vats indicating just what kind of miscellaneous material had been added or what had been taken out. Batch Eleven had succeeded in making a tiny amount of fulgurite, and after doing their best but failing to find any more Batch Eleven in the palace, Leon had ordered the glassblowers guild in Stormhollow to supply him with as much Batch Eleven as they could.

And then, after setting aside for control, those same glassblowers used their skill in earth magic to alter the contents in every batch. They were going to find out just what specific composition of sand and other material would make the needed fulgurite—or if sand was even needed at all. If they were successful enough, Leon hoped they’d even be able to figure out some way to make this kind of fulgurite without the Iron Needle, but he put that hope aside for the moment. That would be a matter for the Ravens, in time.

For the moment, he sent bolts of lightning into every vat of sand. With the Iron Needle and his tenth-tier strength, his heart rate didn’t increase from this expression of power, but it certainly did when seven vats all close by each other had their molten contents quenched, revealing glowing fulgurite within the vitrified glass.

With excitement stirring within him, Leon ran to the vat with the most fulgurite. Nearly a third of the vat had been filled with the stuff, clearly visible beneath the bluish glass.

“More of this!” Leon called out. “And more like this one!”

With staggering financial rewards dangled in front of them, the glassblowers Leon had hurriedly contracted to aid him in this endeavor sprang into action. The vat was examined and more sand was brought. Other materials were thrown into the vats that the glassblowers told Leon were quite similar to what had been in the vat that had caught his eyes as well as some vats that only had their specific ratio of sand to additional material altered—his eyes glazed over during their explanation, but he trusted that they knew what they were doing.

With the glassblowers guild aiding him, Leon went through three more such rounds before exhausting their at-hand resources. However, in the process, they eventually found an aggregate that produced just about as much fulgurite as there had been material in the vat.

And Leon couldn’t have been happier. The combination of thunder wood and this fulgurite, his arks, MALLs, and whatever else he might want to make with it, such as golems, would completely out-power anything else that his rivals would have. That combination was Nexus-worthy, Nestor assured him, a material combination worth being said in the same breath as Titanstone.

It just needed a name, something more poetic than just ‘fulgurite’.

Nestor suggested ‘storm crystal’. Leon hated it, but given how it was received by everyone else, he held back his displeasure. He was too happy that they’d finally made the damn stuff to care over much about its name.

So, with the storm crystal in hand, Leon got in contact with the Raven Tribe. Their new arks and MALLs would be receiving some unscheduled upgrades before the punitive expedition across the Argonaut Sea would be launched.