[Finally assumed proper form, have you?] the Thunderbird drawled as Leon, for the first time in a long while, spread his wings and took flight, his family and retinue at his side.

[It was about time,] Leon replied, agreeing with her sentiment. [There’s only so much I can do on foot, and it seems fitting to show these wyverns that they’re no longer the rulers of the sky—at least, so long as I’m around.]

[Wonderful,] the Thunderbird breathed. [Just the attitude a descendent of mine should have. Spread your wings, young Leon, and dominate the skies just as I once did. Fly like this realm belongs to you, and to you alone. Make the sky yours with both power and presence and not even these mighty creatures will have a chance to stop you…]

The Thunderbird waxed poetic for a little while longer, but Leon had already found another wyvern to take his attention.

Channeling his darkness magic—not an easy feat in his avian form, but Leon was still capable of calling upon enough darkness for his mental communication technique—he ordered his retinue, [Keep going to the pass, I’m going to bag another head…]

Without waiting for any acknowledgments, Leon banked hard to the right, his wind magic and powerful wings flinging him onward with great speed.

He delighted in his strength and freedom in this form. He’d let himself go too long without really letting loose with it, but now, with the wind under his wings, lightning surging through his veins, and prey in his eyes, his blood sang with delight. It felt like all the magic of the world was at his wingtips, just waiting for him to use…

His target was a dark green wyvern, only sixth-tier. It looked to be male given its angular head and fairly sizable body given its magical strength, and it wasn’t paying any attention at all to what was above him. Instead, he was busy breathing waves of razor wind down at a group of hapless hunters, each gust ripping and tearing at their armor, clothes, and flesh. The hunting group was about ten strong and had several sixth-tiers themselves, but Leon could see that three of their number were already motionless on the ground, covered in blood.

Without a shred of hesitation, Leon rose higher into the air, preparing to swoop for the kill. He reached a height of more than a quarter mile, much higher than the wyvern which was only a hundred or so feet off the ground. Then, Leon curled in his wings and began his dive.

Wind whipped past him, curling around his winged form with ease, his feathers dampening all sound that he made. The wyvern didn’t even realize he needed to look up.

In an instant, it was over. Leon descended like a lightning bolt, his talons only stretching out a moment before striking the killing blow, then sinking into the wyvern’s neck a few inches behind the base of his skull, digging in, piercing through scales and cutting clean through almost everything they touched, stopping only once they’d sliced right through the wyvern’s neck bones, almost severing the beast’s head.

At the same time, Leon’s head, following through with the dive and still carrying that immense momentum, stabbed downward, his golden beak crushing its way through the back of the wyvern’s skull, piercing right through the monster’s brain.

The wyvern didn’t shriek or call out. Instead, he just went limp in the air, crashing to the ground with Leon still digging in with beak and talon. As the beast hit the ground, Leon called upon his magic power, and from one of the fluffy white clouds above, a bolt of golden lightning fell, striking Leon, coursing through him without so much as singing his feathers, and flowing right into the wyvern’s body.

The beast was thoroughly dead, slain in one strike. When the wyvern came to a stop, having slid across the ground for dozens of feet after impact, Leon removed his beak and talons from the dead beast and turned his eyes toward the hunters.

Most of the hunters were staring at him in speechless shock and abject awe, some brandishing their weapons and magic despite their obvious fear. One of the hunters—the strongest, as far as Leon could tell—was busy seeing to his fallen comrades. Unfortunately, of the three who’d fallen, two were clearly dead, and the last was only a few moments from joining them.

Leon’s golden eyes flashed with light, and a healing spell fell upon the last living fallen hunter, softly glowing with white light. As most of the hunters turned to gawk, Leon sucked in a breath, pulled the wyvern corpse into his soul realm where the labor golems could see to it, and then took off again without a backward look.

He quickly caught up with his retinue, feeling fairly confident now that he’d evened the score just a little against Penelope and Cassandra, and ecstatic at his expression of power. Wyverns were dangerous creatures; so quickly laying low even a sixth-tier wyvern was a coup that had him beaming with pride beneath his feathers.

Adding to his pride came the Thunderbird’s comments. [Well done, Leon,] she said as Leon fell back into his retinue’s flying formation. [I have a few nits to pick, but overall, that was a well-executed dive.]

[Thank you,] Leon responded. His beak couldn’t smile, but he still tried to, anyway. [That was exhilarating!]

[Dives always are,] the Thunderbird agreed. [Few things are more joyous than feeling your feathers flatten in the wind or sinking your talons into the neck of your prey. And when such prey is as large as these creatures, then the feeling is magnified. It’s a confirmation of your power.]

Leon hummed in contentment, then decided to ask about the nitpicks the Thunderbird had. As high as he felt, if she could help him in rising even higher, then he was going to take that help. He spent the next hour or so listening to her lecture about proper dive speeds and postures, absorbing as much as he could.

The lesson had to end when his retinue reached the foot of the aeries. The entire mountain range belonged to the wyverns, and under normal conditions, they would be swarming with the beasts. This far out, most wyverns would be male, with the females lairing further in to protect their eggs and freshly-hatched young.

Now, however, Leon and his party landed on top of a rocky hill that had been swept clean of vegetation by wyvernfire long ago, and they could look out at the mountains only a few miles away in relative safety. Leon could see several other wyverns in the distance, but three of them were flying in a pack, another was beset by another group of hunters, and the last one was flying back into the aeries with huge animals in either claw. None of them seemed like threats or good targets, so Leon put them out of mind and focused instead on what they were here for: searching for the pass.

The local Naiad had given Maia specific directions to this narrow pass, and did so with the promise that many wyverns laired in a valley at the pass’ end further into the mountains. Now, they just had to find it, and they should have an easy way to win their bet. Bringing back clutches of eggs and possibly even a few wyvernlings would be worth more than bringing back wyvern heads, no matter the size or color.

Leon didn’t return to human form on the hill. Instead, he remained in his avian body as he retrieved the specific rooms he’d prepared for occasions such as these, when his party might have to camp in dangerous areas. When he was finished, half a dozen rooms lay adjacent to each other on the hilltop. There were no courtyards here, such things were dangerous wastes of space if a wyvern attacked. Instead, these rooms had to fulfill both the function of a camp while also carrying with them some manner of fortification.

And these were about as fortified as Leon could make them. They were made mostly out of concrete that had been reinforced with steel and covered in stucco. There were no windows and only a single door, but light and air enchantments ensured that the rooms were bright and comfortable instead of dark and dingy. Heavy structural enchantments ensured that a full-grown wyvern could land on top of the rooms and they wouldn’t even shudder, let alone buckle or collapse. Other enchantments ensured that if a wyvern did attack and found its physical might lacking, the magical might it would fall back upon would suffer the same result.

This region was known as the Scorched Fields because the most common wyvern was colored red and could breathe fire, leading to the entire region burning every five years. However, wyverns came in all different colors and could wield all seven magical elements, so Leon hadn’t been able to get away with just fire-resistant enchantments—not that he’d want to, if he wanted this fortified house to be at all useful in other situations.

Once all of that was complete, Leon addressed his retinue. [Get settled in and rest up,] he said into their minds. [I’m going to scout out a bit and look for this pass. Talal, be sure to get back in contact with Heaven’s Eye.]

“On it!” Talal responded, already walking into the villa. The rest of Leon’s retinue followed suit, though with a little less alacrity. Leon could understand their lack of energy, and as eager as he was to beat Penelope and Cassandra in this wager, he also knew that he couldn’t sacrifice his own people to do so. They’d been flying for a long while and needed to rest up before they entered the mountains in the likely event that they ran into any wyverns during their search for the females’ lairs.

Returning his attention to the task at hand, Leon stared back out at the wilds with his magic senses.

The first direction he looked was back toward the female wyvern he’d seen hauling her kills back into the mountains. He located her again and did his best to track her movements as he started searching in other directions. At the very least, she’d lead him to her lair.

Then he took back to the skies and started evaluating the mountains from both the perspective of an eagle, and of an eighth-tier mage.

He found that the mountains were rugged, filled with blackened rock and sheer cliffs. There was little to no vegetation, and what was there was small, barely more than a few sparse weeds. The mountains themselves were dotted with caves of varying size, though none that he could see were warded against magic senses. He could see remains of abandoned lairs here and there, with little bits of eggshells and wyvern nest padding. He didn’t see a single nest with intact eggs, though he supposed if such lairs could be found with such a rudimentary scan, then they wouldn’t have lasted that long against the predations of other wyverns.

After about a quarter hour, he noticed another wyvern flying back into the aeries, this one passing within ten miles of his camp. She was a large, powerful thing, being much bigger and stronger than the first wyvern he and his retinue had taken down. She was a seventh-tier beast, and she was clearly a fighter, if the patches of slightly discolored and scratched scales were any indication. Her scales were as red as the sunset, so Leon knew she breathed fire, and her slitted reptilian eyes burned orange. Clutched in her claws was another massive antlered animal—an iruk, if Leon guessed rightly, which looked like some strange cross between a bovine and a deer. It was huge, requiring the red to use both claws, with more than enough meat on its bones to feed quite a few wyvernlings.

He watched this wyvern from a distance, his power ready and roaring beneath his feathered skin, just waiting for the wyvern to turn toward his camp or make any other threatening moves. He was sure she’d seen him, he wasn’t exactly being subtle as he flew about, but this wyvern seemed at least a little smarter than the last red one, choosing not to attack him. If anything, she seemed to be maintaining a fairly comfortable distance between them, flying just a little bit further away when Leon tested her mettle by flying a little bit closer.

Feeling somewhat amused, Leon pulled back to let her gain some more distance, resolving to keep an eye on her, too. However, not even ten minutes after she left the Scorched Fields and entered the mountain range, she came down hard upon the flat edge of a wide cliff that overlooked a deep gorge. The gorge continued downward, going deeper even than ground level, eventually vanishing into darkness.

Leon hadn’t paid much attention to the gorge, reasoning that, as interesting as it may have been, no wyverns would’ve laired within given the less ready access to the sky it had.

His belief was immediately proven wrong when a gigantic black wyvern came soaring out of the gorge—though gigantic didn’t really do it justice, it was a true monster more than three hundred feet from snout to tail, and with a wingspan that almost doubled the red’s. Its angular skull shape indicated it was male, while its aura was at the human equivalent of eighth-tier.

Leon’s heart skipped a beat when he realized that. He’d never seen a wyvern quite so large or powerful before. Given their sheer size and physical might, a wyvern could prove dangerous to even mages that were a tier higher.

He immediately turned around and put a little extra distance between himself and that monster, but watched, enraptured, as the black wyvern flew upward, and then landed on the same cliff as the red.

Once it touched down, the black let a rumbling growl escape his throat, his eyes a matching orange to the red. The red seemed cowed, lowering her entire body and tucking in her wings. The black growled again, and the red slunk backward, leaving the huge carcass that she’d carried back with her right there on the cliff.

The black seemed to glare—though given the shape of his head, every look seemed hateful and threatening—but he crawled forward like a bat on claw and wing and took the iruk carcass in his jaws. With barely a glance backward, he leaped off the cliff and dove back into the gorge, leaving the red alone on the cliffside.

Leon watched the black fall into the gorge’s darkness, not making the same mistake as to ignore the place again. And so, he watched as the wyvern seemed to vanish from view as the darkness on the walls reached out, responding to his magic and wreathing him in shadow. Leon didn’t even see him reach the ground, he simply seemed to vanish in midair.

After seeing this, Leon watched further as the red seemed to vent some frustration by breathing some fire on the rocks around her, melting them slightly in the heat of her power, and then take off again, flying back toward the Scorched Fields—undoubtedly to search for more prey.

What she would feed with that prey, Leon wasn’t sure. It seemed like she’d come directly to that cliff to deliver the iruk carcass directly to the black wyvern, not even making a token gesture to prevent him from taking it. He guessed that maybe she wasn’t a nesting mother, and maybe was just feeding the black wyvern.

But that left the question of just why she was doing that. As far as Leon knew, wyverns didn’t form familial relationships, and even a mother’s wyvernlings would be kicked out of the lair as soon as they could fly. They didn’t mate for life, and they didn’t typically mate with any specific partner.

So he had to wonder at the relationship between those two.

[Hey,] Leon said for anyone listening in his soul realm, [what are the chances that wyverns develop sapience?]

[Wyverns?] Nestor inquired. [Slim to none, I’d say.]

[Though it hurts like a kick between the legs, I have to agree with the ghost,] Xaphan concurred. [Wyverns are brutish, and have fairly small brains, relatively speaking.]

[But not impossible, right?] Leon asked.

[Anything’s possible,] Xaphan replied. [The sun could rise in the west tomorrow, if the Grave Warden willed it to. The Great Black Dragon could forget just what kind of a successor you are and let you have your power. And wyverns could develop sapience.]

[What about at higher tiers?] Leon asked, ignoring Xaphan’s jabs. [At, say, the eighth-tier?]

The Thunderbird’s voice boomed through his soul realm and echoed in his ears, [All creatures have some chance of achieving sapience as they gain in power,] she explained, though Leon already knew that much. [Wyverns are no different. They’re closely related to dragons, but lack a dragon’s gift for intelligence. Still, that doesn’t mean they can’t develop sapience. Why are you asking?]

[I just saw a couple of them acting strangely,] Leon replied, narrating what he’d just seen to those who hadn’t been paying attention.

[Be careful, Leon,] the Thunderbird cautioned. [Those beings with the power to blend with the shadows are difficult to deal with.]

[I remember,] Leon whispered. [The thing is strong and probably vicious. But still, what a catch it would be! With his head alone, I think I could win that bet!]

Leon alighted down on the closest mountain peak to his camp and continued to watch that gorge for several more hours. And what he saw left him stunned and left no doubt as to whether that black wyvern had merely stolen something or if that red had brought him, specifically, that iruk carcass.

First, a brown wyvern came flying in, two smaller iruks clutched in her talons. She was smaller and weaker than the red, but she was still large for a wyvern and radiated an aura equivalent to the seventh-tier. She seemed meeker, too, and left the iruks at the side of the cliff before preemptively backing up and prostrating herself. Not much longer later, the black emerged from the gorge, snatched the iruks in his claws, and vanished back into the gorge with nary a glance at the brown, who promptly flew off as soon as the black disappeared again.

Leon watched this repeated with four more wyverns, each one representing another of the magical elements. He saw a blue, a white, a green, and a gold all leave their offerings on the cliff, cower from the black, and once the food was taken, fly back off into the distance. All were female, and all were seventh-tier.

The black didn’t react to any of them nearly as dramatically as he did to the red, though none were nearly as protective of her kill as the red had been.

Leon was fascinated, and though he did eventually find what he thought was the path the Naiad had indicated—a long, narrow valley that wound through the mountains and over which Leon saw several wyverns flying—his mind was now taken by those scenes he’d just witnessed. And with some feeling that seemed a mix of dread and anticipation, Leon saw that the pass forked off in several places, with one branch carving deeper into the mountains until it merged with that black wyvern’s gorge.

It was with some reluctance that Leon turned around and began to fly back toward his camp. He wouldn’t be sleeping this night, so he figured he might as well work on adjusting his Lightning Lance. They were going to be operating in close proximity to that black wyvern, so he needed to have all of their weapons in working condition, just in case.