The Snow Lions didn’t stay long after ambushing the Deathbringers.  All told, the entire fight lasted barely ten minutes, and that was counting the few minutes the Snow Lions spent taking their revenge after the Deathbringers had already been beaten.

It might’ve gone on longer, but Leon heard a few more Deathbringers walking down the road who would soon come into sight of the ambush point.  The Snow Lions hurried back into the forest, but it took Leon falling back past the tree line for most of them—who were riding high on their victory—to get the picture and follow him. 

They left the Deathbringers there in the dirt.  Their first-tier trainees had gotten off easy and had only been knocked unconscious with the Snow Lion’s training weapons.  The second-tier nobles weren’t so lucky, as all the Snow Lions got in at least one punch or kick on them.  Despite this, the nobles weren’t left with any serious injuries, relatively speaking.  They’d all be fixed right up with a few healing spells.

But inflicting permanent damage wasn’t the point.  If it had been, the Snow Lion’s wouldn’t have used training weapons.  Getting revenge for their friends and fellow trainees was the reason they had sprung the ambush, and in attacking and humiliating this group of Deathbringers, they felt that they had achieved that goal.

“HAHA!  We did it!” shouted Alain in triumph as soon as they were out of earshot of the Deathbringers.  His shout was echoed by the victorious Snow Lions, who joked and celebrated all the way back to their tower.

Leon wasn’t in such a celebratory mood.  Instead, he felt an odd tingle in his bones and an itch at the back of his head.  His eyes turned skyward and he noticed that, despite most of the morning having been clear and sunny, the sky had become completely filled with light gray clouds which promised to soon douse the area in rain.

The Snow Lions burst in through their tower’s front door, loudly making plans with each other to head into the city to celebrate.  Some of the trainees glanced over at Leon with the intent to invite him as well, but Leon was clearly uncomfortable with the attention and the restless feeling that had suddenly come over him.

“Leon!” called out Charles.  “We’re heading into the city, want to come with?”  Henry, Alain, and half a dozen other trainees were with him, and they also nodded to Leon, silently inviting him along.

For a moment, Leon just stared at him.  His heart was racing and there was a loud buzzing in his ears.  He took a deep breath, intending to give Charles an answer, but he couldn’t bring himself to form any words.  He slowly shook his head, to Charles’ disappointment.

“Well… alright then!  We’ll be crawling through the clubs and bars in the western districts if you change your mind!”

The first-tier trainees gathered their silver, put away their training weapons, and filed out of the tower.

As they were doing so, Leon stumbled over to the stairs and started making his way up, shivering like he was a mortal in a snowstorm now that he no longer had dozens of pairs of eyes on him.  He almost felt like his own body was resisting him climbing the stairs for some reason.

After several minutes, Leon made it to the top floor and collapsed onto the closest couch to the door.

He desperately tried to make sense of what was happening—he’d never experienced sudden weakness like this, and it had come out of nowhere.  He tried to steady his breathing and meditate to calm himself down, but his wildly racing heartbeat refused to slow and his shivering only intensified.

Leon lay there for almost fifteen minutes trying and failing to meditate.  From what he was able to tell in that time, he wasn’t shivering from cold.  In fact, his body felt like it was burning up, and that heat was coming from his heart, as if it were flowing directly out of his soul realm.

[Xaphan, what’s happening?] asked Leon.  He waited a moment, but there was no answer.  [Can you hear me, demon?]  Again, his question was met with silence.

Leon grew angry and shouted in his mind, [You worthless demon, answer me!]  When that appeal to Xaphan’s arrogance, too, failed to elicit a response, Leon decided to give it a rest.  He resolved to try again in half an hour or so, when he’d hopefully be a bit calmer or when Xaphan finished whatever it was he was doing.

The young mage tried to get comfortable, but he found it was impossible, while outside, the light grey clouds grew dark and began to gently rain.

As soon as the first drops hit the windows of the tower, Leon catapulted upright.  He had started to realize that it was something specific making him restless, and he instinctively felt that this rain was surely a part of it.  He pushed himself to his feet and hurried over to the window, throwing it open and letting the rain rush in.

Leon breathed in the earthy scent of the raindrops hitting the dry ground.  He stood at the open window for several more seconds before he realized that the noise in his ears had receded and his heart was beating a little slower now.

He immediately turned around and sprinted for the stairs, not even bothering to close the window.  His mind was filled with nothing but the smell of the rain and the sound of distant thunder.  In seconds, he burst out from the tower with nothing but the clothes on his back, his training sword, and his family’s sword.

As soon as the rain hit his skin, he stopped shivering.  His heart was still racing, but he felt much better.  He took a few minutes to stand under those storm clouds and enjoy the rain; he had always felt a little more relaxed when a storm rolled around, and this was the first storm he had been in since he left the Northern Vales.

But simply standing there in front of the tower wasn’t enough.  Leon hardly knew what he was doing, but he took off running as fast as he could sustain into the forest, making for the western mountains.

When he had gone up to the top of the tower, it had felt like he was struggling against his own body.  Taking every step had been an arduous task, as if there was a part of him that had been resisting.  But now, he felt liberated, as if he had become as light as a feather.  He sped across the ground so fast that he almost felt like he was flying.

Soon enough, he found himself at the base of the cliff near the pool he found the day before.  But this time, he barely stopped long enough to locate a suitable spot to climb.  He scrambled up the cliff almost like it wasn’t even there, the rain slicked stone proving no obstacle for him.

The higher he went—the more the rain washed over him—the better he felt.  The wind picked up speed, howling in his ears.  The thunder he heard grew louder, and occasionally he saw a brief flash of remote lightning strikes.

But even this wasn’t enough for Leon.  Something spurred him onwards, and he frantically searched for a taller mountain.

At this point, Leon was effectively unconscious, operating purely on instinct.  Magic power flooded into his body and his mind wrestled with keeping all of it in check.  The only thing that he could coherently think was that he had to get higher.

After scanning the horizon, Leon sprinted for the tallest mountain he could see.  He climbed with the same mindless speed he had the cliff, and he arrived at the flat top in minutes.  The mountain top was just barely big enough for him to kneel down comfortably, which was exactly what he did.

He closed his eyes and fell into a motionless trance-like meditative state, allowing all the magic kicked up by the storm to flow into his body.

Leon didn’t regain control over himself until several hours later, when the storm started dying down.  He was soaked by then, but his body was filled to the brim with magic power.  In fact, the first thing that Leon noticed as he opened his eyes was just how incredible he felt.

He knelt there for a while enjoying the rush this abundance of magic gave him.  Eventually, his mind turned to trying to make sense of what had just happened.  The last thing he remembered was zoning out in the third-tier common room, then just enough flashes of him sprinting outside and through the forest for him to know that he had done those things.  He had no reason for why he had done them, but given how spectacular he felt, he wasn’t too upset that he had.

He was still firmly in the third-tier, but he felt that he had made great progress this day.  In fact, as he thought about it, he remembered that Artorias would do something similar whenever a storm blew in back in the Vales.  He would vanish from their fort at the first sign of rain, making his way—as Leon had found out just before the ritual that awakened his Inherited Bloodline—to that mountain platform he had made.

Leon was certain what he had just experienced was related.

He was soon yanked out of his thoughts by Xaphan’s voice resounding through his mind.

[Leon.]

[Xaphan?  What happened?  Where the hell were you?!] Leon responded with some anger, confusion, and just a hint of betrayal tinging his voice.

[Well…] the demon began, his tone uncertain.

---

Just after the ambush, Xaphan went back to quietly sitting on the red and white tiles not too far from the small throne in Leon’s soul realm.  The pseudo-magic body that the Thunderbird had created for Leon was sitting in the throne with its eyes closed.

The demon had been spending his days absorbing some of the magic power that Leon’s bone marrow constantly supplied his soul realm with.  Xaphan could theoretically recover his power by relying on the meager amounts of magic that Leon possessed, but it would be a painfully and highly impractical process without the potion he’d told Leon about.  But there was little else for him to do on that tiny barren island in the Mists of Chaos other than watch Leon’s daily life, and that was hardly entertaining on a moment-to-moment basis for the fire demon, so he quietly sat and absorbed magic power instead.

If Leon could see him, he wouldn’t see any changes in the demon.  His fires still burned all over his body, obscuring whatever might be within, but not so completely that a shadow couldn’t be seen.  If Xaphan had recovered his power as fast as he had hoped, his flames would have burned much brighter, so much so that he would’ve appeared to be nothing but an enormous brightly burning flame.

As the demon was sitting there trying to pass the time after watching Leon carry out his ambush, he heard a quiet rumble in the mists.  For a moment, he thought he had misheard; he knew of nothing that could exist out there, after all.

His eyes burned a bright orange within the red flames as they darted around, searching for the source of the sound.  When he failed to see anything, he turned back to absorbing magic power.  And then he heard the rumble again, but louder than before.

This time, the demon was certain he heard correctly.  He scrambled to his feet and searched his surroundings again.  And now, he saw something.  It was a tiny dark speck in the bright grey mist, and it was growing very rapidly.

In seconds, that dark speck had grown to encompass the entire horizon, which Xaphan realized to be immense storm clouds.  These storm clouds were upon the island before the demon could react and began pouring rain down upon it.

[Leon, what is this?] he asked in a panicky voice that was entirely unbecoming of a being of his stature, but he received no reply.  He turned to look at the magic body on the throne and saw that it had been encased in a cage made entirely of lightning.

[The boy cannot hear you, former Lord of Flame.]

When Xaphan heard that deep voice that seemed to shake all in existence, he froze.  Slowly, he turned to see what had spoken, and saw a towering bird standing behind him.  This bird had gorgeous brown feathers flecked with gold that sparked with lightning magic.  No matter how hard it was raining, not a single drop of water landed upon those feathers.  It was larger even than him, and its yellow avian eyes locked him in their gaze, captivating him with their magnificence while simultaneously filling his entire being with dread and fear.  Its aura towered over his, making him feel like nothing more than ant before an elephant.

Xaphan had just come face-to-face with the Thunderbird.  The demon found himself completely overwhelmed in the Thunderbird’s presence, with its turbulent aura pressing down on him like a hundred mountains.  There was no way Xaphan could withstand this crushing pressure, not in his current weakened state.  He doubted he could even stand against it if he were in his prime.

The demon’s knees grew weak seconds after the Thunderbird arrived, and the pouring rain and fierce wind that accompanied it caused the flames that covered him to fizzle and die down.  When Xaphan’s knees finally gave out, his fires were completely gone, leaving nothing but the dark figure of an enormous humanoid.  He was shaped like a heavily muscled man with handsome features, only with skin like highly polished obsidian that sparkled in the lightning that surrounded the Thunderbird.

Xaphan turned his red-hot eyes—the only part of him that still burned—up to meet the Thunderbird’s bright yellow avian irises.  However, after the Thunderbird forced the demon to his knees, it hardly spared him another glance.  Instead, its attention had turned to Leon, still sitting on his throne as if he was peacefully sleeping.

“Re-… Release m-me!” shouted Xaphan in rage, struggling under the Thunderbird’s aura to raise his voice loud enough to be heard over the tempest that raged around the island.

The Thunderbird glanced back at Xaphan, sending the demon’s mind into turmoil with mere eye contact.  Xaphan crumpled down onto all fours, barely able to hold himself up.

[Tell me, what’s a former Lord of Flame doing residing within my descendant’s soul realm?] asked the Thunderbird, its thunderous voice hitting Xaphan like hammer to the chest.

“Who… are you… calling ‘FORMER’!” roared Xaphan in response, though the effect was tarnished as he could barely string the words together under the Thunderbird’s cataclysmic aura.

[I’m calling you ‘former’, because that is what you are.  A Lord of Flame who has been absent from the Void for so long is no true Lord of Flame.  Especially not one so diminished as you.]  The Thunderbird’s words cut deep into Xaphan, who grit his teeth under the strain of trying to respond.

[But your status is not my concern,] continued the Thunderbird.  [It is your presence that demands explanation, demon.  What are you doing here?]

Though his fires had been almost completely extinguished, Xaphan’s eyes burned orange like a pair of hot coals as he called upon all of his strength to resist the Thunderbird’s aura.  He pushed against the island with all of his might, just barely managing to rise before the Thunderbird appeared above him in a flash of lighting and stomped Xaphan back down into the ground.

Xaphan gave a cry of pain as his chest was pushed into the stone tiles that surrounded the throne and the Thunderbird’s talons dug into his glassy back, preventing him from moving again.

[I will not repeat myself again…] it warned, while allowing the pressure on Xaphan to abate just enough for the demon to speak.

Xaphan was about to shout defiantly, but the Thunderbird’s talons twitched and allowed a few small lightning currents to pass through Xaphan’s body.  The demon clenched his teeth but was unable to fully suppress his groan of pain.

“I am not trying to possess him, we are partners!” he growled, barely getting the words out through his gritted teeth.

[I saw you absorbing some of my descendant’s magic power,] responded the Thunderbird with an accusatory tone.

“I only took my share!  We made a contract!  I reside in his soul realm and use a tiny portion of his power to recover, while I give him counsel and some of my own power in return!”

The Thunderbird’s golden eyes seemed to bore holes through Xaphan’s shiny obsidian skin for a moment, before answering with: [A terrible lie, if you are indeed lying, for it is so easily verified…]  The Thunderbird’s feathers rustled slightly, sending a pulse through its body and into Xaphan.

The demon’s ire grew as this pulse seemed to open everything about his body to the Thunderbird.  He felt like he had no secrets under its unyielding gaze.

Slowly, after several moments of waiting, a thick golden thread appeared, connecting Xaphan’s chest to Leon’s throne.  Specifically, it ran from the demon’s heart straight to Leon’s mana glyph on the back of the throne.

The Thunderbird’s eyes swept over the entirety of the thread, reading the nigh-imperceptible information within as if it had been carved into the heavens for all the world to see.

Though its avian face couldn’t frown, the Thunderbird’s displeasure was plain as day on its face.  It removed its talons from Xaphan’s back and moved about a dozen feet over with a flap of its titanic wings, keeping itself between Xaphan and Leon.  Additionally, it allowed its aura to abate just enough for Xaphan to catch his breath, but not enough for him to rise past a kneeling posture.

Xaphan pushed himself up as far as he could, then took a few moments to reignite his flames.  They didn’t rise very high; in fact, they barely covered him at all, leaving most of his body exposed.  Despite having some time to compose himself, he still couldn’t move from where he was kneeling.

The Thunderbird barely glanced at him again, seemingly purposefully ignoring him.  It stood between Xaphan and Leon, running its beak through its feathers while keeping an eye on the lightning that surrounded its descendant.

The two maintained their silence for the next few minutes.  This quiet atmosphere was only broken when the lightning that surrounded Leon suddenly started to grow far more intense.  Where before it was only a few bolts here and there every few seconds, it had become a maelstrom of lightning, concentrating enough power around Leon to shock Xaphan.

“Hey, what’s happening to him?” asked Xaphan in concern, after working up the nerve.

The Thunderbird didn’t reply; it only stared with increased interest at Leon.

“Don’t ignore me, damnit!  What’s happening to him?!”  Again, the Thunderbird didn’t even look at Xaphan.  Seeing that he wasn’t going to get an answer, the demon took to shouting at Leon, using their connection through their contract to try and communicate mentally with him.

[Hey, Leon!  Answer me, boy!  What’s happening?!]

Xaphan got as many answers from Leon as he had from the Thunderbird, but he wasn’t dissuaded and continued to mentally shout at his partner.

After several minutes, the Thunderbird rolled its eyes and glared at Xaphan, instantly silencing the demon with its gaze.

[Did I not tell you that he can’t hear you, demon?]

“… You did, but there’s no harm in trying, is there?” responded Xaphan with a slightly flippant look that was utterly at odds with how much he was panicking within.

[You’re disturbing my peace.  That is harm enough.]

Xaphan shrunk back a little at the Thunderbird’s rebuke, but then he gathered himself and said: “Well, if you were only to tell me what is going on with all that lightning, maybe I wouldn’t be shouting, would I?”

The Thunderbird clicked its beak again, though it was in thought rather than amusement.  After a moment of contemplation, it said, [This is the first natural storm he has been in since he awakened his Bloodline.  My power that he has inherited is amplified during storms, and it can be extremely overwhelming.  He’ll experience an overpowering urge to head out into the storm and seek the highest place he can, at least until he grows powerful enough to control it.]

“You don’t seem to care that much about it.  This isn’t dangerous, is it?” asked Xaphan with some uncertainty.

[It’s fine.  In fact, this is very beneficial to the young boy.  A few more thunderstorms of this magnitude and he might advance to the fourth-tier.]

“Is this something he’ll get used to?  It wouldn’t be very convenient if he loses his head every time a few raindrops fall.”

[It takes an enormous storm to trigger this kind of reaction.  If he experiences a few more, he’ll eventually grow accustomed to the surge in power and will be affected less drastically than he is right now.]

“Good…”

The two continued to watch in silence Leon as he sprinted back outside of the tower and into the forest.  They watched him race through the forest and dart up the side of the cliff.  They quietly observed as he found a suitable place to meditate, then sit down and do just that.

After about fifteen minutes, Xaphan had become certain that the Thunderbird was telling the truth and Leon wasn’t in any danger, so his attention began to gradually turn to the Thunderbird.

‘It answered a few of my questions before, maybe it’ll continue,’ he thought as he summoned his courage again.

“How are you still here, if you don’t mind me asking?  The universe thinks you dead, yet here you are right in front of me…”

The Thunderbird sent a dismissive look at Xaphan before turning back to Leon.  However, to the demon’s surprise, the Thunderbird actually answered several seconds later.

[I am dead.  What you see now is a fragment of consciousness that my descendants have kept within them for eons, a tiny remnant of what I once was.]

“A ‘tiny remnant’, huh?” said Xaphan, vividly remembering the Thunderbird smashing it into the ground.  “How is something like this even possible?”

[A trick that I and several of my contemporaries discovered, an exploited quirk in the way our power is passed down in our descendants.]

Xaphan waited for the Thunderbird to elaborate, but when it remained silent, he didn’t press the issue.  He doubted the Thunderbird was in much of a mood to explore the undoubtedly highly advanced and excruciatingly complex magical processes that allowed it to remain here.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to keep their exchange going just a little bit longer.

“I have to ask… Why did you answer those questions?  Your reputation would indicate that you wouldn’t even spare a Primal Devil a moment of your time, let alone me…”

The Thunderbird looked back at the demon and thought about it for almost an entire minute before answering.  [Hmmm.  Perhaps that is the way I would’ve behaved, once.  But after dying and watching my clan effectively come to an end, perhaps I feel a little more chatty.  Besides, as a former Lord of Flame, it’s not like speaking with you is a complete dishonor for me.]

“Don’t call me ‘former’!  I am a Lord of Flame!”

[You are not.  About ten thousand years ago, another of my descendants entered the Void and became acquainted with several of the Demonic Lords.  You were replaced a long time ago.]

“What?!” roared Xaphan in fury.  The Thunderbird’s response left him stunned and infuriated.  He hadn’t even been gone one hundred thousand years!  It’s actually quite common for a Demonic Lord to go missing for millennia at a time before suddenly showing up again without warning, so one hundred thousand years is typically how long it takes the Demon Princes to appoint another Lord.  He had been captured and held prisoner by the Storm King, but the traditional waiting time had yet to pass and the Prince of Flame had already replaced him!

“I don’t suppose you know who replaced me?” Xaphan asked, barely containing his rage.

[Which Lord of Flame were you, specifically?]

“The Fifth.”

[Then it would’ve been a demon named Amon.  Of course, my information is a little out-of-date; my descendant was killed not too long after arriving…]

“Amon…” spat Xaphan with more hatred than even he thought possible.  “I’d thought him dead…  Of course, it would be that fucking one, though.  Not even death would keep him from trying to take his revenge against me.  Bah, when I get back to the Void, I’ll simply kill him again…”

[‘When’?  I doubt you’ll make it that far.]

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

[Before you were summoned, my clan was one of the strongest in all of the universe.  They ruled a truly immense portion of the Nexus and were Lords over hundreds of planes.  Yet now, in less than a hundred thousand years, my clan has been reduced to a single boy in the Divine Graveyard.  A fall that sudden is impossible unless it was orchestrated by an enemy of comparable power.  And they certainly haven’t given up.]

It was subtle, but Xaphan could pick up on the defeat in the Thunderbird’s voice.

“You think Leon is going to be killed by these enemies, then?”

The Thunderbird didn’t give Xaphan a verbal answer, but its silence was enough for the demon.

“If you have so little hope for Leon, why bother try and protect him from me?  Why bother watching over him with so much concern?  Why bother doing anything at all?  I mean, these are hardly the actions of someone who has lost all hope.”

[Why shouldn’t I do these things, demon?  Doomed though I’m sure he is, I will at least provide this young lion with what little help I can give him.  It’s not like I can see the future, anyway, I don’t know if he’ll die or not.  Not to mention... I do believe that he has the potential for greatness.  He may beat the odds.  Besides, I’ve rested on my laurels enough, and that has left me with no other choice than to aid this last descendant of mine or finally allow death to take me, and that I will not do.]

The lightning surrounding Leon began to die down as the Thunderbird finished speaking.  The storm was ending, and so Leon was returning to lucidity.

The Thunderbird took another look at Leon, then took off from the island and flew back into the mists without so much as one more glance at Xaphan.

Xaphan watched the Thunderbird go and didn’t try and to stop it.  A few seconds after Xaphan lost sight of the Thunderbird, the pressure that kept the demon down vanished.  Xaphan slowly got to his feet while thinking over everything that the Thunderbird had just told him.

‘Should I tell Leon what the Thunderbird told me?’ he asked himself.  After a few moments of thinking, he came to his answer.

[Leon,] he said to the young mage.

[Xaphan?  What happened?  Where the hell were you?!]

[Well…] he started hesitantly.

---

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