The air hissed as the blade cleaved the space where Leon had stood but a moment before. He pivoted, seizing upon the momentary opening, and lunged against his opponent. No amateur was his opponent, however, and Leon’s sword cut naught but air.
A flash: he ducked, and the shining head of his opponent’s polearm passed harmlessly above him. He shot forward, relying on sheer violence to carry the day. His fighting style was known, however, and his opponent twirled gracefully away, bringing her glaive back down in the same move.
Steel clashed against steel, and Leon gritted his teeth, his competitiveness rising as Valeria pushed back, his zeal, his drive to win reflected in her sapphire eyes.
Their training weapons had been quite thoroughly used so far; the force of their meeting again and again chipping and biting into the enchanted metal. However, that didn’t stop either of them from exchanging a dozen more blows in half as many seconds. Neither used their elemental power, letting their spar be a test of skill over anything else, but after more than two hundred years, they knew each other’s fighting styles inside and out, and scoring a hit grew more difficult every time they clashed.
Regardless, the matching smiles on their faces never once wavered. The skill the other put on display was a challenge and a comfort—the impetus to improve, and the reassurance that the other had the necessary skills to thrive in battle.
Nearly an hour of exchanging blows, and neither was any closer to achieving victory than when they’d started. Despite this, when they finally stopped, they both felt energized and reinvigorated.
“Thanks for this,” Leon said as he relaxed his stance.
“You looked like you needed it,” Valeria replied.
“Burning some energy is always a good use of time,” Leon responded. “Especially if it’s with you…”
Pink dusted Valeria’s cheeks, raising Leon’s spirits almost as much as the spar had. That he could still make his wife feel bashful so long into their marriage was something that he reveled in.
“It’s… it wasn’t burning energy that you needed,” she replied, her face almost but not quite falling back into her natural aloof expression—her pale cheeks remained dyed pink, while she looked to be fighting the urge to smile. When she continued, her lips finally gave up the fight, the seriousness of her statement forcing an end to that struggle. “You looked like you had a lot on your mind.”
Slowly nodding, Leon wordlessly returned his training sword to the wall rack and remained there, facing the wall.
“It’s… been a bit overwhelming,” he finally said. “Jennifyr and Varon have been… accommodating. Almost too accommodating.”
“And that’s a problem?” asked Valeria as she approached from behind and leaned onto his shoulder in a rare show of physical affection.
“Not so much, no,” answered Leon, exhaustion creeping into his tone. “If they’d come with their entire Clans, I think they’d have tried to introduce me to every single one of them over this past day. As it is, I almost had to resort to force to get out of Sweeping Tide—she’d wanted to keep me there until her father returned from whatever business he had down on the plane.”
Valeria smirked. “I can see how kidnapping you would be a problem. But otherwise, they’ve been quite friendly.”
“I’m not used to it,” Leon bitterly complained. “Where’s the rejection? The denial of my lineage? The arrogance that I have to burn my way through to see my mother? I’m not seeing it, and when I can’t see it, I can’t help but wonder where it is.”
“Should we seriously prepare for any of that?” Valeria asked as she put her hands on her hips, looking ready to do battle with the entire Great Dragon armada if the need for it arose.
“We should prepare for anything,” Leon said. “The opening ceremony is tomorrow. That’ll probably be quite the show. Lots of mages there. I anticipate a disaster.”
“Pessimist,” Valeria scoffed. She sighed and strode over, wrapping her arms around his neck. “You have two Great Dragon Clans on your side, now.”
“Our side,” Leon gently corrected. “I’ll be leveraging any advantage I have to free our entire family.”
Her flow broken, Valeria smiled and pressed her forehead into Leon’s chest for a moment, hiding her face. When she looked up at him again, she’d once again reasserted control over her expression.
“How much longer do you expect the Great Black Dragon Clan will hold out? They’ll have to respond to you eventually…”
“Ryker asked for time,” Leon said. “Jennifyr and Varon convinced me to wait. We’ll see what he has in mind. If he fails to do anything productive, I’ll take matters into my own hands, the opinions of the other Clans be damned.”
“I love it when you say things like that,” Valeria whispered, drawing his lips down to hers.
They didn’t have time to take things as far as Leon might’ve wanted, given the preparations they had to make for the opening ceremony, but he made sure they used the time they had left efficiently…
---
Betrayal.
That’s certainly what it felt like. Four centuries of life, four centuries of imagining the glories of the past, forcing himself to be sated by the disappointing reality of the times he lived in. Bennu would never fight alongside the Thunderbird Clan, never hunt by the side of the Cait Sith, never fly amongst the stars with the Heavenly Wolf…
Or so he’d believed until just a few days ago, when he met a bona fide descendant of the Thunderbird. It was hardly shameful, as far as he was concerned, to feel ecstatic at the long-held dream coming true. The alliance between the Thunderbird and Phoenix Clans was legendary, and though it had hardly been ironclad and inviolable throughout history, Bennu had silently pledged himself to seeing the alliance renewed in the modern day. The Phoenix and Thunderbird would fly together again, and all the universe would tremble from their wingbeats.
That was before Ryker’s call. It had been short and to the point—as Bennu had expected of the man—but the information shared had rocked him to his core.
The scion of the bloodline he’d most obsessed over in his youth, attempting to court the very woman for whom his heart beat? Bennu was conflicted; every fiber of his being hoped and prayed to any being that would listen that it wasn’t true.
‘What do I truly know of Ryker?’ Bennu had thought in the couple of days since the call. ‘What do I know of Leon? What do either of them gain from this?’
The answers to both questions were numerous, and he’d pondered them again and again as he waited for the opening ceremony. He hadn’t socialized with his peers nor did much of anything at all, so powerfully had his mind been shaken.
He hadn’t much time to decide on a course of action; the opening ceremony arrived soon enough, and attending was his duty as the representative of the Phoenix Clan. All the most prominent Lords and Clan leaders were going to be there, listening to the words of the Sun King as he inaugurated the one thousand, four hundred and fifty-eighth Belicenian Games.
Unable to clear his mind, Bennu traveled to the opening ceremony accompanied only by his attendants, not any of the Lords and Clan representatives that were friendly to him and his bloodline.
‘Anyone else…’ he repeatedly thought throughout the journey, the fire of his Ancestor occasionally sparking around his fingers.
He couldn’t imagine his life without the strongest, most beautiful woman in the universe at his side, and if he had to crack a few more skulls to prove his devotion, he’d do so. Such was how the Great Dragons showed their affection, he’d been led to believe.
The site of the opening ceremony was an enormous oval stadium, able to seat several million people. Such was the scale of the construction that the stadium could be seen from anywhere on the plane, rising in the distance like a mountain range unto itself. For the opening ceremony, it had not only filled but also been surrounded by additional viewing platforms and small transport arks, augmenting the thousands of private boxes spaced throughout the stands, all of which were also undoubtedly full.
Bennu, however, as the heir of the powerful Phoenix Clan, wasn’t bound for the stands, or the private boxes, or even the viewing platforms surrounding the stadium; he’d watch the opening ceremony from the King’s Platform at the east end of the stadium alongside the rest of the most important Lords in the universe—those that chose to attend the Games, at any rate.
He was able to mask his mental state upon his arrival, not only giving away no clues as to what he was thinking but also weathering the intense auras of the powerful mages around him with no problems. Several dozen Anakes who hadn’t bothered to arrange private boxes were present on the enormous platform, alongside numerous Basileis, and all the attendants that both groups had brought, but the real stars were the two Kings whose presence utterly dominated the platform.
The Sun King himself was the center of attention, his cheerful demeanor helping to keep all of the conflicting Lords present at peace—though Bennu noticed that the Shadow and Gale Lords were maintaining some distance between each other.
The Gale Queen was the only other Elemental King who bothered to show up, in the end. There had been rumors that the Mountain or Burning Kings might attend, but business, it seemed, kept them away. More surprisingly for Bennu, however, was the man standing just to the Gale Queen’s side, immersed in what looked like fairly intense conversation, a glowing rune just to their side keeping their words secret: Akeron, widely considered the finest swordsman in the entire universe, and a man that Bennu had met only a handful of times. Bennu had tried to make friends with him, but unfortunately, Akeron never seemed to respond well to the overtures.
The expected greetings took a long time, with Bennu making his way around to all of the Lords he was personally or politically friendly with, as well as offering his polite greetings to the Sun King, the host of these Games, but before he was done, Bennu noticed that Akeron had left. The Gale Queen looked smug about something, though, so Bennu assumed she’d assigned him some onerous duty that she took undue pleasure in foisting onto him.
Minutes turned to hours as Bennu distracted himself by interacting with the Lords he knew, not wanting to think about having to challenge Leon for the hand of his beloved. He couldn’t get it out of his mind, however, no matter how pleasant or interesting the topic of conversation was, his yellow eyes were always on the lookout for the young Storm Lord who’d shaken the Storm Lands so much in the brief time since his arrival in the Nexus.
His vigilance hardly seemed worth it when Leon finally arrived, as he did so as part of a group that commanded the attention of nearly all the Lords in the stadium. He arrived with a dozen Storm Lords, all of whom seemed to gravitate around him—hardly surprising given their accomplishments, even if Bennu were to be generous, paled in comparison to the fame of Leon’s own. Furthermore, the thirty-third Princess of the Ocean King arrived alongside him, with an entourage expected of a woman of her station. A hundred Ocean Lords came with her, though notably, it was Leon and his family who walked alongside her palanquin, and not any of them.
Bennu wanted to greet them, to assure himself that Ryker was wrong, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to approach just yet. If he did, honor might demand that he fight the very bloodline he’d so longed to meet…
When the Great Dragon Clans arrived, all other thoughts other than those related to his beloved vanished from Bennu’s mind, but his hope to see her here was soon dashed; the Great Black Dragon Clan wasn’t going to participate in the opening ceremony. Most of the Great Dragon Clan members, as it so happened, remained sequestered on their own viewing platforms, with only a small handful of them coming to the King’s Platform.
Prasinos led their group, the dark-skinned and white-scaled Patriarch of the Great White Dragon Clan cutting an impressive figure. The most amiable of the Clan leaders, it was no surprise that he smiled and greeted everyone who worked up the courage to speak with him, though he sought no one out, not even the Sun King—rather, it was the Sun King himself who greeted Prasinos first.
Alongside the White Dragon Patriarch came Jennifyr, Varon, and Nyra, and Bennu’s heart sank when all three ignored nearly everyone in favor of greeting Leon first. At the sight, darkness bloomed in Bennu’s heart as his doubts fell away and his belief in Ryker’s warning magnified.
“You look terrible,” a familiar voice said, the demanding, feminine tone forcing his attention away from the man who now appeared to be his romantic rival. When Bennu turned to the speaker, he beheld Deianira, whose arrival he must have missed—a significant feat given her status and personality.
“Thanks,” he hissed, no wittier response coming to his burdened mind.
“You shouldn’t look so terrible,” the woman replied with a beatific smile, hampered only slightly by the triplet of youthful attendants she had following her, holding up her long dress, ensuring the dark purple fabric wouldn’t touch the ground. Her dual-bloodline concubine was nearby, looking very much like a beaten dog, his eyes perpetually locked on the floor. “You’re too handsome for that,” Deianira finished as she reached over and patted his cheek. “If you need an outlet, you can always talk to me, you know…”
If there was something to read into there, Bennu ignored it, choosing to take her entirely at face value. He initially opened his mouth to say that he was fine, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye Jennifyr laughing at something that Leon said, their friendly relationship on full display.
‘She never acted that way with me,’ he darkly noted.
Following his gaze, Deianira spied the same thing he did. “They seem close, don’t they?” she whispered. She gently took his arm and steered him away to a less populated part of the enormous platform and activated an enchantment on her sparkling wrist bangle, giving them some measure of privacy. What she did could’ve been considered untoward, but given they were in public and there were plenty of others who preferred their privacy, no one batted an eye.
“You’re worried about them,” she stated once their words wouldn’t carry.
Bennu’s eyes flickered in Leon’s direction again. He briefly wondered if he should lie, but the longer he watched Leon interact with the dragons, the less he wanted to. “Should I be?” he growled with greater vehemence than even he expected.
Deianira, however, grinned in the face of his viciousness. “Oh, yes, you should,” she said. “That man has Princess Miuna wrapped around his finger, and now it seems Princess Jennifyr, too. Quite the harem he seems to be building. Perhaps that extends a bit farther…?”
Bennu glared at her, not appreciating the insinuation even if it lined up with what Ryker had said just two days ago.
“He seems to have a type; I mean, look at those bitches he has with him! Utterly stuck-up, thinking themselves better than everyone else!”
“He hasn’t been going after you,” he said through clenched teeth.
“You dog!” she shot back in an unserious tone. Her tone lowered when she continued, and she leaned in conspiratorially. “I found him to be arrogant, you know. The exact kind of man that you’ve had to deal with before. He is a threat; look at him!”
“He… is…” Bennu hesitantly agreed.
“Are you going to do something about it?” Deianira pressed. “I’ve seen you challenge Lords just for implying they’d like to see Princess Serana! Where’s your fire now? Why aren’t you marching over there and ensuring that that man doesn’t take what’s yours? Have you lost your manhood, Bennu?”
“You are my friend, Deianira,” Bennu snarled, “but choose your words more carefully.”
“Did the truth insult you?” she cuttingly replied. “A hundred years ago, you would’ve walked over there and made yourself clear: Serana is destined to be your bride! I mean, the entire universe knows that to be true, and yet this new Storm Lord, so arrogant that he claims descent from the Thunderbirds even though we all know that they’re extinct, just comes in and starts moving in on your woman? What kind of man allows that? So I ask again: have you lost your manhood?”
Bennu’s eyes flashed with golden fire, and his brief pulse of his aura wiped the smirk off Deianira’s face.
“I am a Phoenix,” he hissed. “You will not speak like that to me.”
His outburst, even though his voice hadn’t carried, still attracted attention, with many nearby Lords now watching intently. Aware of their gazes, Bennu forced himself to relax and pretend his honor hadn’t just been challenged.
“I will deal with this myself,” he spat. “Leave your problems with Leon and Miuna out of this, unless you wish to be fully involved…” He glanced at Deianira out of the corner of his eyes, his glare making it clear what he considered that to mean.
To her credit, Deianira at least appeared unfazed, and after a moment of silence, she whispered, “I heard about one of his retainers asking around about dragons. I had his retainer snatched off the street. He had some interesting words to share: the only reasons that this young Storm Lord came here are Miuna and Serana. He already has one, and even through the screen, you can see how that arrogant bitch hangs on his every word. If you do nothing, then you may lose the second to him, too…”
The slow-burning wrath in Bennu’s stomach erupted just as Leon gave Nyra a friendly clap on the shoulder, and without another word with Deianira, he strode toward the last descendant of the Thunderbird. His approach was noticed by one of the other women accompanying Leon, and she whispered in his ear. Leon turned to greet him, a shallow smile on his face, but it fell as Leon’s eyes met Bennu’s.
No words of greeting fell from Bennu’s lips. Instead, a simple demand, spoken in what felt like complete silence, as to Bennu’s senses, no one else was present save for himself and Leon.
“Cease your pursuit of Princess Serana. I will not warn you again.” His words were like tongues of flame, scorching everything around them, carrying with them the promise of violence should his ultimatum be turned down.
“Bennu… there seems to be some misunderstanding,” Leon said, his tone confused. Bennu was vaguely aware that someone else spoke, but his eyes remained locked on Leon, who by this point stood within reaching distance… “I am not—”
Leon hardly managed to get the words out before Bennu backhanded him across the face. A thirteenth-tier mage, his strength was much greater than the twelfth-tier Leon’s was, but he held back; he didn’t want Leon to go flying off the platform, but he still needed to make himself clear.
“You have chosen the hard way,” Bennu managed to intone despite wrath tightening around his throat like the fingers of a hated enemy. As blood began to seep from Leon’s lip and the air became thick with killing intent, Leon glared at Bennu in anger and shock. His hand rose to his bleeding lip, touching it gently as if he could hardly believe what had just happened. “Consider this a formal challenge,” Bennu growled. “I will defeat you in single combat, but if you cease your pursuit of Princess Serana, I will grant you mercy and spare your life.”
Leon straightened up, an odd grin breaking out over his face even as his post-Apotheosis healing factor closed the injury on his lip, leaving only a few thin blood trails as evidence that he’d ever been struck. Coldly, he said, “I accept your challenge.”
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