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Over the barren plains Leon’s team traveled, steering clear of the settlements all along the way.  Now that they were in the urbanized Mandian Lands, that meant their path was quite meandering, but Leon still thought it was faster than trying to fight their way through each and every ruined city they came across.

Nearly all of these cities had been reduced to dusty rubble, barely recognizable as being places where humans once lived.  In the heart of each one of these ruined settlements emanated a purple glow, indicating the presence of a Devilish focus that Leon was almost reluctant to pass by.  These focuses were important to the Primal Devil as they directed all the magic of the plane to the Devil, but Leon was still convinced that dealing with them was far too risky.  Better to continue on and try to find a more permanent solution than trying to deal with every focus in their way, only for the foci to be replaced soon after his team departed the city.

More distressingly, on somewhat rare occasions, Leon saw cultists appear on the outskirts of these cities, their large glowing red eyes following his team’s movements as they sped across the wasteland.  None of them ever did anything to stop them, save for apparently keeping an eye on the team.  There were many explanations why they might not want to attack Leon and his team that Leon could make, but without knowing for sure which ones might be causing this strange passivity, his tension just kept ratcheting up as they pressed deeper into the Mandian Lands.

After several unnervingly uneventful days, the city of Naxor Amis finally drew into view.  It had been a large city at one point, with a population in the city limits of more than five million, while another five million lived in the metropolitan area.  There wasn’t much left of that wider urban zone, as Tiraeses explained that the Kingdom of the Water Mountain that had once ruled this part of the Mandian Lands favored wood as a building material, leaving most of Naxor Amis to swiftly rot in the Primal Devil’s power, but there were still large agglomerations of buildings made of brick or stone, though all were in advanced states of ruination.  The city streets were filled with gray dust, while the spaces between identifiable sections of the city were filled with little more than barren dirt.  There was a lake on the southwestern side of the city that had turned completely black and brackish, the water now almost perfectly resembling tar or oil.

Tiraeses had heard that the very first ritual that started the fall of Arkhnavi had been performed in Naxor Amis, and  Leon could certainly believe it, now that his golden eyes beheld the ruined city.  The Devilish aura that permeated the city was thicker than anywhere else on the plane that Leon had so far sensed, with the air itself growing darker and more opaque from the sheer amount of darkness magic in the environment—Leon could barely make out the core of the city, and certainly couldn’t see beyond it.  This made the bright purple glow from within the city’s heart stand out even more.

Leon’s new enchantments that kept him and Tiraeses safe from the environment were working well, thankfully, so this denser aura wasn’t negatively impacting them too much, other than keeping them from flying.

Leon was about to comment on the city as he, Tiraeses, and Mari halted on the tallest of the shallow hills surrounding the city when the darkness surrounding them intensified and a voice, soft and nonthreatening, said, “I wasn’t sure you three would come.”

Leon’s team spun around to face whomever just spoke and found themselves face-to-face with the same person who had ‘greeted’ them upon breaking through the Black Veil and entering the Mandian Lands.  Whoever they were, they were still wreathed in darkness, their two glowing red eyes calmly surveying all three of them in turn.

A lightning spear crackled in Leon’s hand; Tiraeses’ fists glowed; and Mari’s blue blades of light had been extended from her suit’s wrists… but the figure seemed as calm as if they were just running into acquaintances during an afternoon stroll.

“Naxor Amis is the natural place to go if one wishes to know the designs of the gods, but still…”  The figure’s eyes turned in Tiraeses’ direction.  “I’d have thought you would’ve recommended making like a tir’sellim and charging at Tell Kirin without another thought.”

“You speak of the gods, yet you have given yourself to the devils,” Tiraeses growled in disgust.  “Begone from this place, heretic, or suffer the wrath of the divine at my hands!”

“You believe the gods work through you?” the figure scoffed.  They paused a moment before continuing, though, and addressed all three of them at once.  “I mean none of you any harm, though that may change if you attack first.”

“Are you actually here?” Leon asked with a wry smile.

The figure hardly moved, though from the way they tilted their head, Leon thought they might be smugly smiling.  They did not otherwise respond to his question.

“What reason do you have for this, then?” Leon asked.

“For what?” the figure asked.

Leon stared at the figure with a blatant lack of amusement, the darkness around them pressing in against their defenses once again, though with far less success than it did the last time the figure had come to talk.  “Coming here.  Speaking with us.  Why?”

“For the same reason I told you before, hatchling; to save your life.”

“The only people who are threatening us are you and yours,” Leon said.  “You can’t claim to be saving us when you’re the ones we’re fighting in the first place.”

“I’m uninterested in playing word games,” the figure replied, brushing Leon’s comment aside like crumbs left on a dinner table.  “You refused my offer to return you home.  Foolish, but I can respect a man with convictions.  Now, I offer you something else: a chance to know the gods as the gods know you.  A chance to set aside all fear, all doubt, all loneliness you have ever experienced in life, and to join with the gods, the true gods, as they bring a new age upon the universe.”

Leon glanced around at the barren and ruined scenery.  “If this is your idea of a ‘new age’, then I want no part of it.”

“You will see in time how mistaken you were,” the figure replied, not sounding at all put out by Leon’s refusal.  “Nothing can stop what will happen.  Nothing can stop the gods’ return.”  The figure turned back to Tiraeses.  “You have sought the gods for centuries, haven’t you?  To atone for the crimes of your younger years.”

Tiraeses glared at the figure and didn’t answer the question, though Leon knew that he would’ve answered affirmatively if he’d been honest.

“I have longed dreamed of finding you,” the figure said, apparently not at all disturbed by Tiraeses’ lack of response.  “Of the things I would do to you, should you ever fall into my hands.  The revenge I would have for the crimes you committed so long ago.  But it was the gods that showed me the way—the better way.”  The figure held out a hand to Tiraeses.  “The gods offer you forgiveness.  All you need to do is to take my hand.”

“I will not take the hand of an unknown creature!” Tiraeses definitively declared.

The figure didn’t flinch, but after a moment, did retract their hand.  “The offer shall ever remain open, for the gods are nothing if not magnanimous.  Never doubt that.”

Tiraeses stared daggers at the figure yet remained silent.  But after a moment, a deep frown slowly spread across his face, the light in his hands dimmed slightly, and he averted his eyes from the figure.

“We need not be enemies,” the figure said to Leon’s team.  “Consider why you’re here, and what you hope to gain.  The gods will grant you your heart’s desire, no matter what it may be!”  The figure turned to Mari, staring directly at the suit’s torso where her eyes would be.  “Your father, returned.  Perfection written in metal.”

Mari flinched, the massive suit almost crumpling in on itself.  “How…?” she whispered seemingly uncontrollably.

“Nothing can be hidden from the gods,” the figure stated.  Then, they turned to Leon.  “Not even the power of the Thunderbird can hide your ambitions from the gods.  You wish for your Clan to return to the greatness it once enjoyed, do you not?  For the gods… all it would take to see that dream become reality would be a snap of the fingers.”

Leon sneered behind his helmet.  “And what good would that do me?  To have my goals delivered so easily into my hands?  What meaning would there be in reclaiming the title of Storm King if it binds me to dark masters?  I will return my Clan to the heights it once stood at, but I will do so with my own hands, not with the borrowed power of a Primal Devil!”

Though she didn’t say anything, Leon felt pride radiate through him from the Thunderbird.

Beside him, Tiraeses seemed to take some heart from his words.  “As you say,” he said.  “Forgiveness without action is equally meaningless.  I must prove myself a better man that’s worthy of forgiveness before it can be given.  Virtue must be earned; the gods are clear on that.”

“And fuck givin’ me anything for free like that!” Mari shouted.  “Danglin’ my father in front of my face is askin’ for one of these stuffed up all your fun holes!”  She brandished her blue wrist blades threateningly to make her point clear.  “My dad’s dead!  That’s not going to change!  The Red-Eyed Bitch doesn’t give people back!  And as for your other thing… I’m going to make the perfect Ulta suit!  I will find the perfect fusion of man and metal!  What’s the fuckin’ point if it’s just handed to me, like a coin tossed to a beggar?  Ya don’t know shit if you think just givin’ me anything will win me over!”

The figure chuckled.  “I only seek your fulfillment.  The gods only seek your happiness.  The Red-Eyed One doesn’t exist, and so can’t argue if the gods give your father back.”

“Shut up, fuckface,” Mari growled as she took a threatening step forward.

The fuckface in question disregarded her implied threat.  “All offers shall remain open,” they said.  “I do not wish for you to suffer.  I wish only for you three to know peace.”

“What kind of peace?” Leon asked.  He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the shattered remnants of Naxor Amis.  “Did you give the people who lived there peace?”

“They received the most splendid gift of all,” the figure answered as easily as one might answer a question about the weather.  “Freedom.  Freedom from the suffering of mortality.  With the gods, they know only joy, and shall experience this bliss for the rest of time.”

“Monster,” Tiraeses spat.

The figure stared at Tiraeses for a long moment, then simply said, “Consider my offers.  I shall offer more.  With the gods, there is always more.  Until then, know peace.”

The figure then vanished, but the added pressure of darkness pressing against their defenses remained.

‘A reminder that we’re being watched, maybe?’ Leon guessed.

“What a load of anal leakage,” Mari hissed after a moment of silence.

“There is… no merit in considering such offers,” Tiraeses seemed to agree, though Leon couldn’t help but question his conviction given the hesitance he heard in Tiraeses’ voice.

However, before he could ask the old monk about it, he sensed a sudden spike in magic power close by, and he spun to face it.  Curiously, it wasn’t darkness, but rather what seemed to be a combination of fire and water—a huge lion made of steam came soaring through the air above a hill not too far away and barreled toward them.

“It can’t be…” Mari whispered in awe.  She’d turned to face this potential threat, too—as had Tiraeses—but she dropped her guard completely at the sight of this lion-shaped cloud of steam.

“It must be,” Tiraeses responded as he, too, dropped his guard.

“What is this?” Leon demanded to know, his guard remaining up.

The answer to his question came not from his teammates, but rather from the lion itself, as it dissipated in the air, leaving a man in black armor to land on the hill only about thirty feet away from Leon.  The man was respectably, though not overly, tall, with a well-built frame that was tastefully enhanced by his armor.

Despite this modest effect on the man’s figure, the armor was magnificent—even with just a single look, Leon almost cringed at the sheer amount of work it would’ve required to make.  It was made primarily of some kind of black metal, and heavily embossed with dozens of lions.  Gold lions further adorned the armor’s shoulders and the top of the greaves, though the dents and chips in those areas were some of the most obvious bits of distress the armor had suffered; with another second of study, Leon noticed other dents and even a couple of holes in the armor.

The man’s helmet was perhaps the most eye-catching part of his armor.  It was open-faced, though with cheek guards that evoked the fangs of a lion, while the golden mane that flowed from the top of the helmet down over the man’s shoulders further exaggerated the look.  Additionally, the armor featured a long golden cloak emblazoned with a lion’s head sigil.

In the man’s hand was a fifteen-foot-long lance made of gray metal, which pulsed with the same fire and water magic Leon had sensed earlier, indicating that the steam lion had come from this lance.  The lance’s haft was just as decorated with lions as the rest of the man’s armor, while the lance's blade was wicked sharp and gave off a slight glow.

The man’s face was the only thing that could be seen beneath the heavy black plate armor.  His skin was a darker shade of orange than Tiraeses, with refined cheekbones, thick golden eyebrows that were angled in suspicion, and heterochromatic eyes—one the clearest blue, the other a vibrant gold only a shade or two duller than Leon’s.

“In the name of the Blue Sky,” he began, his deep voice resonating with authority, “identify yourselves!”

Mari immediately fell to her knees, the Ulta suit almost shaking the hill from the force of her prostration.

“I am Mari’Kha, Eminent Star!” she declared.

The black-armored man nodded imperiously, and then his miss-matched eyes turned toward Tiraeses.

“I go by Tiraeses these days, Eminent Star,” the old monk said as he gave the man a deep bow.

Only then did the man turn to regard Leon.

“I’m Leon Raime,” Leon said with a challenging smirk.  The armor he could tell was high-quality, and the man’s aura was robust, but it was only ninth-tier.  Stronger than Tiraeses in Leon’s estimation, though not by too awfully much.  Next to Leon, with his pseudo-Adamant armor, true Adamant weapon and implanted Universe Fragment, and tenth-tier power, the newcomer’s objectively spectacular power didn’t seem quite so powerful.

Still, though, his curiosity at the deference Tiraeses and Mari showed him was strong, though he felt he could already guess the man’s identity.

For a moment, it seemed like the man was going to make a bit of a fuss with Leon’s less-than-respectful introduction, though when that moment was over, his light scowl disappeared, and he said, “Why is this place so unusually concentrated with devilish power?  Answer me truthfully, or my Cloud Piercer will gorge on human blood this day!”  He assumed a more aggressive stance, his lance held with only one hand, while steam gathered at its tip.

Leon grinned, about to answer the man with a question of his own, but Tiraeses beat him to the punch with his eagerness to sate the man’s curiosity.

“A devil cultist appeared, attempting to poison our resolve with sweet offers.”

“You turned the creature down, I trust?” the newcomer asked.

“We did!” Tiraeses reported.

The newcomer glanced at all three of them in turn, his eyes looking for any trace of deception.  After this short inspection, he relaxed, though his weapon remained in his hand.

“Why have you three come here?” he demanded.

“Before that,” Leon interjected as Tiraeses and Mari both seemed to jump to provide an answer, “how about we continue our introductions?  It seems we stopped before they were concluded…”

The newcomer stared at him with narrowed eyes, while Tiraeses took a couple steps forward, not quite between Leon and the newcomer, though enough to seem almost like an intermediary.

“This,” Tiraeses said to the newcomer as he held a hand out to indicate Leon, “is Leon Raime, of the plane of Aeterna.  He is the King of the Thunder Kingdom, and has come to Arkhnavi to seek the source of this devil’s power.”

The newcomer’s gaze softened slightly, and he remarked, “I thought as much.  I believe all of our native tenth-tier mages have long ago been judged by Just Helior.”

“May they be judged fairly,” Tiraeses whispered in prayer, to which the newcomer lowered his head slightly.

After a moment of silence, Tiraeses then addressed Leon while holding a hand out to the newcomer.  “This, Leon Raime, is Ard’Nara, the son of King Ard’Khil, nephew of King Ard’Khun, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of the Blue Sky, and the Cloud-Piecing Lion.”

The newcomer nodded, apparently satisfied with this introduction.  “Well-spoken,” he praised.  “I’ve almost forgotten what civility is, having spent so long alone.”

“You are Ard’Nara?” Leon asked, a skeptical look blooming on his helmeted face.  “I’d heard you were dead.”

“Not quite, though the devil’s spawn have tried their best to introduce me to the Red-Eyed One.  But enough of that, Leon Raime.  You are from another plane?”

“I am,” Leon confirmed.

“We have matters to discuss, then,” Ard’Nara said.  “Of those who came before you, and their fates…”

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