Leon had no reservations about leaving Valeria and Justin alone again. If they hadn’t run away the first time he and Maia had left, then he doubted they’d vanish on him now. So, after seeing Valeria’s reaction to Justin revealing some personal information that Leon guessed she didn’t know, he felt it was best to give them some space.

To that end, he and Maia found another room to get some rest in. The facility was still completely dark since Leon had taken its power crystal that kept it running, but for the two of them, that darkness was nothing. With nothing else to worry about in the place, Leon felt it was best if they stayed for a few hours before heading back through the Forest of Black and White.

After finding a good room to rest in, he and Maia took a few minutes to quietly cuddle. But as much as Leon wanted to keep that going, he now had to deal with the other enemy he’d found here, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. Now that he’d had some time to truly sit back and think about what had happened to him, he was feeling worse and worse.

His body had been stolen from him—for only a few hours, sure, but it was still a violation that had him shivering in Maia’s arms. Even worse, that violation had come at the hands of someone he’d hoped might become a family member, someone who could share the burden of rebuilding the Thunderbird Clan. It was making him question much about himself and about how much he’d tried to change recently.

If Justin hadn’t been so forthcoming with his information about himself and Kamran, then Leon felt like he might’ve already resorted to more violent and despicable means that he knew Xaphan and the Thunderbird probably would’ve recommended. As it was, he was starting to think that their advice of killing his enemies quickly and without mercy held a little more water than he’d recently given it credit for.

It was with all of these thoughts running through his mind that Leon cast his consciousness deep into himself, closing his eyes in rest in the physical world, and opening them upon his throne in his Mind Palace.

The first place he looked was to the table upon which still rested the ruby that Nestor had been imprisoned within. On her perch above sat the Thunderbird in all her avian glory, while Xaphan angrily burned not too far away, his glowing yellow ember-like eyes locked on the ruby and his power called upon and ready just in case Nestor tried anything to escape.

“Did I miss anything?” Leon asked as he stepped down from his throne, using a few errant wisps of mist to do a few superficial repairs to his damaged Mind Palace as he walked as if he were trying to display just how unconcerned he was about the current situation.

“Not much,” the Thunderbird replied, her voice booming like thunder. “I was simply speaking with my wayward descendant while you were busy dealing with whatever you were dealing with.”

“He say anything interesting?” Leon asked, not surprised too much that none of them were listening to his conversation with Justin.

“A lot of bitter complaining,” the Thunderbird replied, her avian face turning up in an approximation of amusement and faint derision.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Nestor replied as Leon finally approached the ruby.

“How about you shut your fucking face until we have something to ask you?” Leon asked in a request that was very much not a request. “We have some time to ourselves, so let me make something perfectly clear here: you are not a guest, you are a prisoner. You attempted to steal my body and leave me to rot in my own damn soul realm! If our Ancestor had not convinced me that your knowledge was useful, I would’ve killed you off for good instead of letting you continue to exist in that little thing.”

“Ha!” Nestor cried out in defiant amusement. “You were so eager to accept me into your life before, it would’ve only been right and proper for you to give up your body for your senior in the Clan!”

Leon rolled his eyes. He wasn’t sure if it would work, but in his exasperated anger he extended his left hand let loose with a small gout of flame that enveloped the ruby. He held back a bit on the power as he didn’t want to break the thing, but he had to vent his frustrations in some way, even if it wouldn’t work all that well.

He was surprised and quite gratified to hear Nestor yelp in pain.

“A bit crude,” Leon said as Xaphan began to laugh hysterically not too far away, “so in the next few days, I’ll be looking into a better solution for such outbursts. Let me repeat myself: you will speak only when spoken to, and you will earn your keep. If you are not useful, then you will be disposed of. If you are a nuisance, you will be disposed of. By all rights, you should be dead, and if you try pressing my buttons, then I will fix what looks a lot like a mistake right now. You can either fall in line, or spend the paltry remainder of your life entombed in that ruby. Do you understand?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Nestor replied, only to be answered by another gout of flame from Leon.

The ruby was a relatively fragile thing, but even with all the power he achieved in life, Nestor’s magic body was even more fragile. Leon’s fire submerged the ruby within it, and Nestor felt the intense heat as well as anyone else, and he hadn’t the magic power to protect himself.

He screamed in pain again, and this time, Leon let his fire stay just a little bit longer.

“I’m not going to say this again, ‘kinsman’,” Leon said as the fire died down. “I don’t care who you were before, not anymore. I don’t care if you were the ‘Lord of Storm-Shaping’ and the ‘Chief Researcher’ of the Thunderbird Clan. Neither of those will save you if you piss me off, let alone if you try to escape. You will behave yourself, you will restrain your tongue, and you will be useful. Otherwise, there’s no need to keep around a man who did what he did to me.”

Just remembering his helplessness at the violation Nestor had subjected him to had Leon fighting the urge to roast him right there without waiting for a response. He found himself dearly hoping for Nestor to mouth off again, if only to give him the excuse to kill him. Given that the Thunderbird hadn’t yet stepped in on Nestor’s behalf only emboldened Leon, telling him exactly who she was siding with in this conflict as much as it did when she helped him to subdue Nestor in the first place.

The fact that their Ancestor was not coming to his aid seemed to occur to Nestor, too, for Leon could sense his weak magic senses pulse in her direction as the ghostly mage went silent. Leon gave him a few seconds to think things over and come to terms with his situation, a small mercy he granted freely in light of what Nestor could teach him.

But those few seconds passed quickly, and what little goodwill Leon was willing to grant his dead kinsman ran out.

He turned to the Thunderbird and asked, “Is what this shitstick pulled something I’m going to have to watch out for in the future?”

“Yes,” the Thunderbird replied, her tone sounding just as amused as she had when Leon returned to his soul realm. “Attacks on soul realms are fairly frequent past a certain level; once you become strong enough to heal from gruesome wounds in seconds, it becomes a more economical use of power to attack an enemy’s soul realm rather than continuing to ravage their body. Strictly speaking, possession is rare since it would leave the original body defenseless, but in the case of those without original bodies, such as Nestor here, there are no such risks to temper these actions.”

“I’d hardly say there’s no risk,” Nestor murmured, to which Leon answered with a third blast of fire.

“No one was speaking to you,” Leon growled, feeling some cathartic glee in hearing the dead man scream in pain. But, after a second or two, he cut off the stream of fire and said, “Although, I would like to speak with you now. How about you? Feeling talkative?”

Leon heard Nestor groaning, and he almost expected the ancient man to defy him somehow, to pridefully give him another reason to roast him. In that expectation, Leon was a little bit disappointed when Nestor sputtered, “W-What do you want to talk about?”

“My expectations,” Leon replied, his tone one of slight curiosity and confusion at how easily Nestor had seemingly given in. His paranoia of the man went up, thinking that perhaps Nestor was faking it somehow and just biding his time. “As I said, you were not spared out of any sense of mercy on my part, our Ancestor convincing me to keep you alive with the expectation that you would teach me what you know of enchantments.”

“I know a great deal about enchantments,” Nestor replied, his voice sliding back into a more cocky growl than the borderline subservience that he’d had only a moment before. “I don’t suppose you could be more specific about the kind of knowledge that you seek?”

“I can’t, because I want it all,” Leon replied. “I want to know every rune in your head, and I want to know how it all works together. Everything that you can teach me of enchantments, I want to know.”

At that, the Thunderbird finally spoke up.

“It would behoove you, Nestor, to agree. Leon is the last remaining member of our dynasty that yet lives. Any hope we have of seeing our Clan rise again and exact vengeance on those who laid us low rests on his shoulders.”

Nestor was silent for a long time before he whispered, “I’d never heard you speak before all of this, and when I do finally attract your attention and get you to speak to me, your words are for the benefit of someone else?” Turning back to Leon, he asked, “What guarantee do I have that you won’t just kill me once you decide that I have nothing left to teach you? How can I know that I’ll be safe here?”

Leon reached out his hand with the intent to let another gout of flame consume Nestor’s ruby for a few seconds, but right before he let loose with his power, he replied, “So long as you prove yourself useful, you’ll be kept alive. If you don’t prove yourself useful, or if you attempt to subvert me in any way, or try to escape from that ruby, as I no doubt you have the capabilities of doing if left alone long enough, then you’ll die. It’s that simple. You can take that, or you can die right now.”

Nestor was quiet for a long few seconds, and when he spoke again, his voice was laced with bitterness and grudging willingness. “I suppose I have no choice, do I? Very well, Leon Raime, I will teach you whatever you want to know about the art of enchanting.”

“And the rest?” Leon asked, not yet lowering his hand, a few sparks of flame erupting from his fingers and landing on the table that held Nestor’s ruby.

“I… can accept your conditions…” Nestor grumbled unhappily, a tone which sounded almost magical to Leon’s ears.

Leon smiled as his hand dropped back down to his side, his power settling back into his body and losing its fire element.

“Wonderful,” he breathed, and the Thunderbird quickly assumed human form, both of their faces bearing mirrored smiles.

“A good choice,” the Thunderbird said, her brilliant yellow eyes fixed on Nestor’s ruby. “If you had refused even once or continued to protest even further, I would have rescinded my recommendation to young Leon to keep you alive.”

Leon, for just a moment, thought he saw the ruby tremble, but he didn’t say anything about it. In his mind, though, he thought, ‘I think the first thing I’ll need to do with this is reinforce the wards that will prevent him from moving…’

“Do you have any questions for right now?” Nestor asked, clearly trying to ignore the Thunderbird’s choice, though from the way his voice trembled, Leon could tell that he was quite hurt by her disregard. If he hadn’t tried to steal Leon’s body, Leon might’ve even felt some measure of sympathy for the dead man, but as it was, he just jumped right into this opportunity.

“I was hoping for something of a crash course in golem-craft,” he said. “I told you this before, but I ran into golems that you built, as well as stone giants descended from other golems that you left behind. The giants, at least, had achieved sentience.”

“Impossible,” Nestor said dismissively. “Sentience, true sentience, is impossible to create like that. Sure, there are stories of the Primal Beings that have succeeded in doing so—I think the humans made by the Gods and the demons made by the Devils are the two biggest examples—but for us, even after Apotheosis, we lack such abilities.”

“You dismiss them too easily,” Leon replied.

“For good reason, I’ve attempted to create life in such a way many times. You could even say that it has been my life’s goal, to create fully sentient and self-aware golems.”

“And yet, when told of your success, you ignore and dismiss it out of hand?”

“I would not believe a word you tell me right now,” Nestor shot back, though it was quite understandable in Leon’s eyes. “Anyway, to turn back to the topic at hand, golems are created when a wisp conjured by the divine power of one who has achieved Apotheosis is placed inside of a suitably enchanted frame. The resulting golem is entirely under the control of its creator, unless the creator specifically opens them up for others to manipulate, as I did for most of the golems I created.”

“Seems foolish,” Xaphan muttered as he took a few steps closer. “Such creations shouldn’t just be given away like that…”

“I didn’t ‘just give them away’, you asinine brute,” Nestor venomously replied, almost earning him another blast of fire from Leon, until the younger man decided that constantly using pain as a reinforcement wasn’t going to work too well for his willingness to continue teaching him—though he could tell that it was probably still going to be a staple of his interactions with Nestor for a while, yet. “In presenting them to my family, I expanded the powers we commanded by relieving some of the more laborious tasks that branch kinsman and vassals were saddled with.”

“Is such golem-craft common in the Nexus?” Leon asked as the possibilities for such automatons raced through his mind. A civilization without the need for laborers would be a powerful one, indeed, as its citizens would be able to concentrate their energies on higher pursuits rather than preoccupy themselves with their daily needs.

“No, though it isn’t unheard of,” Nestor replied. “Most of the Elemental Kings—at least, back in my day—had legions of such creations working for them, though even as many as they had wasn’t enough to eliminate the need for manual labor.”

“I see…” Leon responded as he began to think. “This is a truly daunting thing to learn, then, isn’t it?”

“It is one of the most complex uses of the runic arts in existence,” Nestor said. “Not even the mightiest of weapons or the most advanced arks that could travel from the edges of the Void and back to the Nexus can compare to the art of building golems, for golems are not just machines, but extensions of the will of the mage who creates them. They are facsimiles of life, and even these poor reflections of humanity are far more complex than anything else you can care to mention.

Leon smiled, though he doubted Nestor’s claims a bit. At the very least, the mention of weapons and ‘arks’ was something he found intriguing. At least for now, though, he’d focus on the golems. He knew that he would have a long way to go before he was making golems, especially since they required wisps, which he already knew that only those who had achieved Apotheosis could create, but he had hours at least before he had to ‘wake up’ and set about returning south with his spoils. So, with that in mind, he pushed his lingering anger, frustration, and humiliation out of his head as he addressed the man that had put most of it there, “Then let’s get started laying the groundwork for you to pass on your knowledge…”