As Leon stared down at the work he’d just finished, he was greatly impressed—and not with his small part in the enchantment.  He’d needed to lend his expertise with lightning magic for his thunder wood research team’s work, and while he was proud of what he’d done, it was paltry compared to what his people had accomplished before him.  With Helen and Elise’s nature magic skill and Tikos’ natural affinity, they’d finished in just a matter of weeks a prototype enchantment that might, might just be able to recreate some thunder wood.

And they hadn’t even needed to sacrifice any slaves to do it.  Despite this monumental achievement, though, Leon resisted the urge to rub it in Nestor’s face.  He wasn’t necessarily above the gloating, but he wanted to see if the enchantment actually worked before indulging in anything so unproductive.

“Remind me what I’ll be looking for,” Leon growled in excited impatience.  He was to leave for the Pegasi States in a matter of hours, and he wanted to be damned sure that he was ready when he finally departed.

“Look for very old trees,” Helen replied, showing all the patience that Leon found himself lacking.  “Oak would be ideal, but it’s not required.”

Leon lightly frowned, then sarcastically stated, “Of course, I’m an expert on trees.  Know all about trees, I do.  But just in case someone in this room doesn’t know how to tell an oak tree from a hole in the wall…?”

“Oaks have acorns,” Helen explained with bright smile, absent judgment.

“Just ask around, husband,” Elise lightly chided, an easygoing smile of her own playing at her lips.  “I’m sure the various Tower Lords on your way will jump at the chance to help you look for ancient trees.”

“I’ll just have to do that, then.”  Leon was a little embarrassed, but he’d never studied trees.  He knew about as much as he needed to about forest ranging, but there hadn’t been any oak trees in the Forest of Black and White, and that’s where all of his expertise came from.

Putting that embarrassment aside, Leon sighed with suppressed excitement.  If he wanted to find a tree, then the best place to go was undoubtedly the southeast, but the great forests that blanketed that corner of the continent were under the purview of the Forest Watchers, and to Leon’s understanding, outsiders were rarely granted entrance into their lands.  The Pegasi States, meanwhile, were relatively lightly forested.  He would be flying over much of the Ilian and Sunlit Empires, though, and he was sure there might be a few nice and old oak trees on the way that might be sufficient for testing purposes.

As he contemplated the hunt ahead of him, his eyes turned toward Tikos.  The enchantment devised by his people which he’d just placed the finishing touches on was powerful and exceedingly complex, but even it wasn’t sufficient on its own to create thunder wood.  Tikos would have to work its own magic on any tree that Leon found to prepare it for conversion.

However, with the Hesperidic grove still being set up, Leon didn’t want to drag Tikos away just yet.  And yet, he didn’t just want to collect information on possible trees; he wanted to test their work out at the same time.

“Tikos,” he said, “will you be coming with me?”

Instead of immediately responding, Tikos started to channel its power and slowly walked toward Leon.

“Here, for Leon,” the tree sprite said as a gorgeous flower bloomed on its arm.  It resembled a lotus, but its petals glowed with ghostly white-blue light similar to the ethereal leaves of the trees of Tikos’ older and more powerful fellows.  It was large enough to fit quite well in his hand, but Leon remembered Tikos showing off flowers on its arms like this when discussing whether it was male or female.

“What… is this…?” Leon tentatively asked, feeling too awkward to just take the offered flower, wondering if that could be considered pulling off the tree sprite’s reproductive organs.

“A bud,” Tikos explained.  “Bears power of mine.  It will channel power of mine.  I can speak through this flower and use my power through this flower.  If you find an old growth, then you can place this flower on it and I will use my power in readiness.”

“I see,” Leon said as he carefully plucked the beautifully glowing lotus from Tikos’ arm.  “How many of these can you make?”

“Many,” Tikos responded, its alien tone rather ambivalent.

Leon nodded, interest and greed blooming in his heart faster than the flower had bloomed on Tikos’ arm.  “Well, we’re just going to have to go over that when I get back…”  He sent Elise a meaningful look, and given her eyes were practically shining as she stared at Tikos, he guessed that the possibilities of what this flower could mean for them had occurred to her, too.

With all of that done, he gathered up the created enchantment, the thing being so large that it stretched over several dozen square feet of spell paper despite the constituent runes being tiny, and pulled it into his soul realm.  He then hesitated for a moment before doing the same thing with Tikos’ flower.  If it could channel Tikos’ power, then placing it in his soul realm was a calculated risk, but he trusted in Tikos’ pacifism if in nothing else.

And with that, it was time for him to make his final preparations to head south and pick up Red.

---

“You don’t have to go alone, you know,” Gaius said as Leon made his last preparations for his journey in his villa’s inner courtyard.

“You offering to come with me?” Leon asked with a sarcastic smile.

“I won’t lie, I’d prefer to stay here,” Gaius admitted.  “However, it doesn’t sit well with me that you’re heading off alone.”

“I move faster on my own, and I won’t be alone for long,” Leon replied.  “Not like anyone’s going to be foolish enough to attack me on the way, I don’t think.”

“All right,” Gaius said with some resignation, but he wasn’t the only one with that thought in their mind.

Leon’s entire retinue, save for Talal and Anshu, had gathered to see him off, and he could feel Valeria and Maia’s eyes burning holes in his back.  They’d shared their vigorous goodbyes the night before, but Leon was already well aware that Maia didn’t like being away from him for too long, and Valeria hated being left behind.

But his mind was made up.  He wanted to get Red and get home as soon as he possibly could, and that meant he had to travel as fast as he possibly could.  That necessitated leaving the others behind.

So, as he finished his preparations, Leon turned to the friendliest, relatively speaking, pair of eyes in the courtyard: the blood-red eyes of his griffin.

“You’ll take care of everyone here, won’t you?” he asked Anzu.

Anzu chirped, but it was low and a far cry from the happy, joyous vocalizations he usually made.  Leon cheered him up a little bit with a minute of head rubs, but the griffin was still reluctant to part.

Finally turning to address his family and retinue as a whole, he declared, “I should be back within a week.  Be careful and watch out for vampires.”

When he finished that statement, he watched Marcus, Alcander, Helen, and Anna all react quite negatively to the prospect of facing vampires without him.  Alcander shivered, Marcus frowned and averted his gaze, Helen shrank back in apparent unconscious fear, and Anna scowled and flexed her sword arm.  All four had suffered at the hands of vampires, and he had to admit to some regret at having not adequately addressed that, yet.

‘When I get home…’ he swore to himself.  Hopefully, by then Valentina might’ve sent word back on her decision to accept Xaphan’s contract or not.  He was eager to learn whatever she could teach on the subject of enchantments.

But now, it was time to set out.  He said one last goodbye to everyone, sharing a quick intimate moment with Elise, Valeria, and Maia, and then activated a newly-installed enchantment in the courtyard that created a shroud of darkness around him.  It didn’t make him invisible, it merely obstructed his form from view.  Once the shroud had been fully realized, Leon took one moment to examine it, and when he was satisfied that it was working properly, he pulled his clothes into his soul realm.  With the shroud hiding his body from the others, he activated his transformation enchantment.

When the shroud was lifted less than a minute later, he stood in his courtyard in his avian form, towering above everyone else.  With only one last look around, he took off, his powerful wings and magic taking him high into the sky with just a few mighty beats.

He reveled in his flight.  He hadn’t transformed much in the past eleven years, not wanting to make his strong association with the Thunderbird too obvious to those less accepting of his ties, but now was different.  He was a Chief of one of Heaven’s Eye’s main branches, and he simply didn’t care as much as he did even just a few months ago—less so for the Ilian Empire’s restrictions on flight.

With this feeling in his heart, he ecstatically flew through the sky, his body mostly hidden thanks to it being a cloudy day.

---

It was a long journey south to Utavi, though one undergone relatively quickly.  The state of Utavi itself was small in absolute terms, but relative to the other Pegasi States, it was quite large.  It lay on the eastern coast of the region, with enviable access to the Veins of Vigilance thanks to many fantastic natural harbors.

Utavi itself was quite beautiful, in a stark way.  Its hinterland was fairly hilly and bereft of much vegetation.  It was dry and hot, but those few trees that did grow in the area were the extremely tall variety that were also scattered all over the Scorched Fields just a stone’s throw west.

However, compared to the sights he’d seen flying down, Utavi wasn’t much of a spectacle.  It seemed just an average state, if a little richer compared to the rest of the Pegasi States.

Over the past few days, Leon had flown for thousands of miles, rarely stopping to rest—only really doing so when he found fairly large forests that promised to hold potential ancient oak trees.  However, so far, he’d come up empty on that front.

What he’d taken far more interest in was his first real look at the Sunlit Empire.  Flying many miles above the plane, Leon could see a great distance before everything faded into gray haze, and what he’d seen of the Sunlit Empire had been almost spine-tinglingly surreal.  Leon guessed that if his eighteen-year-old self could be teleported from the Bull Kingdom to the Sunlit Empire, he likely wouldn’t have immediately noticed anything was wrong.  The sheer size of many of the great public works and richer villas and the magical wealth on display would’ve inevitably given away that he wasn’t in the Bull Kingdom anymore, but other than that, the architectural style and aesthetic sensibilities he saw were so like those of the Bull Kingdom that Leon couldn’t help but be suspicious.

The Sunlit Empire was all white stone and red roof tiles, columns and marble statues lining every boulevard, men and women walking around in fashion that looked surprisingly close to what Leon would’ve seen in Ariminium on any given day.

Had he not been in a hurry, he would’ve stopped in the Sunlit Empire for a short while, if only to take in the ambience.  The place also apparently had an abundance of lightning mages, so Leon was also rather curious as to what he might be able to learn within the Empire, but Red had to come first.

And so, when he finally arrived in Utavi, the small state’s capital situated on the coast hardly seemed all that special.

On his final approach, Leon put some faith in the fact that he was so high above the ground that he doubted any mages he could sense down below had any idea he was there, and shifted back into his human form with all haste, then dressed himself.  As he plummeted, he caught himself with his magic and controlled his descent while bathing the city below in his magic senses.

By his reckoning, the city was home to about half a million people, but the local Heaven’s Eye enclave was still easy enough to spot.  It wasn’t any larger than it was in the Bull Kingdom’s capital, comprised of just the Tower, a few large warehouses, and the Tower Lord’s palace, but the Tower still towered over its surroundings, doing much to dominate the city’s skyline.

Leon drew quite a bit of attention when he gracefully landed in the courtyard in front of the Tower, but he ignored all stares and immediately entered.  The Tower here followed the standard Tower design to a t, with him emerging into a large lounge area filled with black-dressed attendants and rich-looking guests.

 He’d barely been approached by an attendant before the lifts in the back opened and an older man came walking out as fast as dignity would allow, his seventh-tier aura flickering with anxiety.

The Tower Lord.

It turned out the Tower Lord knew Leon by sight, the Director having sent along Leon’s likeness to all those of sufficient rank in Heaven’s Eye across the plane, as was standard practice when a new Chief of a branch was selected.  Leon, to his immense relief, barely even had to say a word before he was being escorted to a small guest palace nearby where Red was being boarded.

The palace was as heavily warded as could be expected, explaining why Leon wasn’t able to sense Red until now.  The wyvern was in human form when Leon was shown to her location.  She’d been napping in the thickest part of the guest palace’s gardens, behind a number of bushes and beneath some kind of willow tree, damn near invisible to the naked eye despite her eye-catching scarlet hair and striking dress made of what looked like red silk.

As Leon sauntered toward her, he rustled her hair and dress with a gentle gust of wind, and despite this light magical touch, as soon as her hair made the tiniest wave in his wind, her amber reptilian eyes flashed open, and she sprang to her feet.  Her aura practically exploded out of her and a wave of killing intent swept over the garden, but after a moment, she restrained all of that, her eyes having landed upon Leon as he sauntered over, completely unperturbed by her turbulent aura.

Red stepped out of the bushes and stood before him, her arms crossed, her eyes narrow, the distinct red scales surrounding her eyes glittering in the sun like vivid red agates.

“Red,” Leon said in greeting as those who’d escorted him to the palace made themselves scarce.

The wyvern-in-human-form frowned, opened her mouth several times, frowned even deeper, then spoke to him mentally.

[It’s about damn time,] she said, not speaking in words, though her intent was carried through anyway.  [I have been waiting for too long.]

“If you didn’t want to wait, maybe you shouldn’t have come so early?” Leon retorted.  “I suppose that brings me to my first question, which we can get out of the way now: what’s going on that you showed up half an Ancestor’s damned year early?”

[Trying to raise my young bored me,] she admitted.  [Constantly nipping and fighting amongst themselves.  After one of my young ate another while I slept, I lost all patience and left.]

“You… abandoned your children?” Leon asked, his tone flash-freezing.

[They’re old enough to hunt,] Red brushed off.  [I had no need to stick around at that point.]

Leon felt his face harden into a scowl.  “Then why ask for a year?”

[I might’ve wanted to rest,] Red replied.  [Raising young is tiring.]

“It sounds like you didn’t actually raise them.”

[It sounds like you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.]

Leon stared at Red, wondering just how big of a deal he wanted to make out of this.  On one hand, he absolutely hated the idea of leaving children behind.  It disturbed him fiercely, and if Red were actually human, he would’ve been tempted to make her shorter by a head, let alone accepting her into his retinue.  But she wasn’t human.  He barely even considered himself able to comment on how humans raise their kids, let alone something like a seventh-tier wyvern with an utterly alien world view and value system.

“Is that… how you were raised?” he asked.

[Indeed,] Red replied.

Leon sighed.  His scowl didn’t go anywhere, but he dropped the topic, for the time being.  He could only hope that having Red in his retinue would help her to a more human outlook.  He wasn’t that confident in any lessons sticking, though.

“Well, then… let’s get moving.”

[Already?  You don’t want to rest?]

“Absolutely fucking not.  I have things to do, and they aren’t going to wait around for me.  So, it’s back to Occulara as fast as our wings can carry us.”

Red nodded, and her clothes vanished back into her soul realm revealing a sight that any lady lover would’ve killed to witness.  However, it was barely visible for a second before Red’s body was covered in gleaming red scales and began to grow.

“Not quite what I had in mind, but all right,” Leon muttered as he did likewise.  His transformation went much quicker, and he was able to send a mental message to the local Tower Lord that he wasn’t going to stick around and not to wait up for him.  He was sure he just raised quite a few questions with the man, but he hoped the Tower Lord was prepared to live with those questions unanswered.

Once they were both back in their animalistic forms, Leon and Red took off.  Leon moved quicker, and Red followed as close behind as she could.  Leon first flew straight up, not wanting to cause a scene with a giant eagle and even more massive wyvern swooping over Utavi’s capital.  He didn’t level out until he was several miles in the air once again.

Once Red got up that high with him, he set off for the north.  It had only been a few days, but he was already raring to get home and get back to work so he could exploi—make efficient use of his new position.

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