“… and he just straight-up asked you to join the Ilian Empire?” Elise asked incredulously.

“He did,” Leon confirmed.

He was with his family in his, Elise, and Maia’s bedroom in the guesthouse, going over the meeting he’d just had with Anastasios, and finishing up their conversation in the aftermath of the brief meeting in the Evergolden palace.

“I’m surprised he was so up-front about it, given his veiled threats the last time we saw him,” Elise murmured. “More concerning is what’s happened in Occulara since we left…”

“Yeah,” Leon said. “It’s hard not to think that this is some kind of response to our moves against the Director. We meet with Narses just before leaving, and the next we hear of the man, he’s apparently been attacked by vampires.”

“Did the Lord Protector say what specifically happened to him?” Valeria asked.

“He was rather light on details,” Leon admitted. “I’m not even that sure if Narses is still alive, though I find it hard to imagine he isn’t. Still, I think we should hurry back as soon as we can. If Narses can be attacked, then anyone can be…”

Leon gave Elise a meaningful look, and the worry that flashed across her face showed him that she understood what he was trying to communicate. Narses was the Chief of Security for Heaven’s Eye, and likely had the most heavily guarded individual in the entire guild—or so Leon thought, anyway—aside from the Director himself. If Narses could be attacked, then not even Emilie was safe.

“I’m going to head into the main offices here tomorrow morning and see if any news has reached them,” Leon said. “In the meantime, I want all of us ready to leave. We’re heading out before sunset tomorrow.”

“That might seem a little rude to the Evergolden court…” Elise replied, though from her tone, Leon could tell it was a token gesture more than anything. She wanted to leave, too, but her propriety demanded at least this much resistance.

“I think they’ll survive a little rudeness,” Leon replied. “Besides, if they haven’t told us what happened in Occulara, I think it’s safe to assume that they don’t know. So once they find out, I think they’ll understand.”

“Even Cassandra?” Valeria asked.

“She has her arm to worry about, not us,” Leon replied. “I know from experience that being down an arm is deeply unsettling and uncomfortable. She’ll want to get that fixed as soon as possible.”

A brief quiet settled over them as they all processed what they needed to do the next day. Elise was the one to break the silence first.

“What do you think of her, so far?” When Leon gave her a questioning look, Elise clarified, “Cassandra, I mean.”

Leon frowned in thought for a moment. “She’s beautiful, powerful, and driven, but self-centered and arrogant.”

“With an emphasis on ‘arrogant’,” Valeria added, a hint of venom in her voice.

“She says that she wants to change, but I suppose we’ll see,” Leon continued. “Why do you ask?”

Elise gave him a serious look. “The Grand Druid offered her hand in marriage to you. That’s not something easily turned away.”

“I don’t want to marry her,” Leon said with exasperation. “I’m really not looking to build a massive harem here, love.”

“And I’m not trying to pressure you into doing so.”

“Good,” Valeria interjected. “I might have something to say if you were trying to cut down on Leon’s already highly-taxed time. I wouldn’t want to give him up to a spoiled Princess who got a huge chunk of her people killed.”

Elise smiled at Valeria. “Even so, you have to see the value in having her associated with us, right? Especially if the Lord Protector of the Ilian Empire is making overt moves in our direction…”

“That would only drive us into Evergold’s camp,” Leon said. “I wouldn’t want to deny the Lord Protector’s patronage because I want autonomy, only to turn around and start getting closer to the Grand Druid. Besides, while my opinion of the Lord Protector isn’t great, my opinion of the Grand Druid is even lower. At least the Lord Protector isn’t dangling one of his relatives on a hook trying to lure me in.” Leon paused a moment. “Wait a minute, he actually did do that, didn’t he?”

[Both are terrible,] Maia muttered. [If it were an option, I’d say kill them both. They can’t see beyond their own lands.]

“That’s a little… extreme,” Leon replied as he glanced at his river nymph lover. “They’re only looking out for their people. That they’re trying to manipulate me into joining them draws my ire, but I can’t really bring myself to hate them for what they’re doing. And they—hang on, why am I defending them? Fuck them both!” Leon went quiet, crossed his arms, and frowned.

Elise sighed and responded, “If you don’t want to have Cassandra as a wife, then I suppose that’s fine. I just wanted to bring it up with all of us. As I said, what she could bring to our house isn’t something that should be turned away so flippantly…”

“I’d rather you didn’t expand you roster of wives,” Valeria said, looking at Leon. “Elise and Maia, I can live with. There aren’t many others that I can say the same about…”

“But there are others?” Elise asked, suddenly sounding both intrigued and teasing.

Valeria gave her nothing more than an innocent smile.

“Filing that information away for later…” Elise said with a smile.

“Getting back to Cassandra,” Leon said, “as I told her, I’m more interested in being her friend right now than her lover, let alone anything more than that. Do you object to that?”

Elise frowned. “No, but I really hate the idea of leaving something so beneficial on the table like this…”

With a sigh, Leon replied, “Let’s not boil this down to just what benefits can be had. Taking a wife is more than just getting access to her family’s connections and power. We’d have to live with this person for, potentially, the rest of our lives—which might be immeasurably long. They’d be sharing my bed at the very least, and possibly have some of my kids. They’d be living with us, sharing in our power and resources. All of this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a huge commitment that we have to take seriously. And any incompatibilities have to be taken seriously, as well.

“As I’ve said, there’s some attraction there between me and Cassandra, I think. But not enough for me to ignore the friction that she’s already shown amongst us. Unless something changes, I don’t see her joining our family.”

“Fair enough,” Elise said, though her disappointment was palpable.

Leon walked over and took her into his arms. “Less time with Cassandra is more time with you,” he whispered.

That brought out her radiant smile, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in closer. “There’s a silver lining I can deal with…” Without another word, she pressed her lips against his, and then began doing her best to remove her clothes without disentangling herself from Leon.

Valeria just smiled, pulled a promise out of Leon to visit her when he was done with Elise, and then took her leave. Maia, however, stayed seated, watching quite intensely as Leon and Elise divested themselves of their clothing and made their way to their bed.

---

Leon sighed in fatigue as he opened his eyes in his soul realm. Several hours spent satisfying his ladies had left him fairly tired, but he couldn’t take much time to rest. With vampires making their moves while he was gone, he needed all the advantages he could get. When he returned to Occulara, he needed to deal with the Director first, but the vampires would come right after.

To that end, he made his way over to Nestor’s table where the dead man was pouring over the schematics for the ark engine that Anastasios had given Leon, while the Librarian and two other caretaker golems were busy running what few tests they could with Leon’s supplies on the piece of petrified wood that the ninth-tier tree sprite had given him.

“How’re things going over here, dead man?” Leon asked.

“Well enough, I suppose,” Nestor said with a hint of bitterness in his voice.

“Cool it there, Nestor, you’re overwhelming me with your enthusiasm,” Leon sarcastically replied.

“What enthusiasm? There’s little to be had here.”

“So things are going that well, huh?”

Nestor quietly grumbled for a few seconds just loudly enough for Leon to pick up on a few derisive curses thrown the Ilian Empire’s way.

“This engine is almost painfully primitive,” Nestor finally explained. “It will do you no good. Even if you had the materials to build it, with me here, you’d be able to build something much better. Well, you would be able to do so eventually, after several centuries of thorough education…”

“So that thing’s useless?” Leon asked, looking pointedly at the engine design.

“Not entirely,” Nestor objected. “It provides a window into what the savages here can build. Or at least, what the savages feel comfortable giving to you—I’m sure what they actually build is more advanced.”

“That would make some sense,” Leon agreed. “No reason to give out the good stuff to someone like me. This was only meant to be a taste, a hint of what I could gain from joining Anastasios’ Empire. Still, I would’ve figured he’d give something tasty, at least. How unappetizing is this taste?”

“About as much as a carcass that’s been rotting on the side of the road for several weeks. As I said, it’s hopelessly primitive. Ark engines are primarily tools that ensure magic power gets to where it needs to go. There are a few—there were a few arks in our fleet advanced enough to generate their own power rather than having to rely on charged gems and crystals or their post-Apotheosis operators, and those functions were mostly contained within arks, but for the most part, the vast majority of arks only use stored power, or power supplied by mages. Regardless of the power source, though, the engine is what directs that power to the proper enchantments.

“This engine is hopeless. Barely able to handle the kind of power that would be needed to push a small ark two thousand miles without needing to stop for maintenance.”

“That’s strange,” Leon said, remembering the ark ride he took to the Scorched Fields. “Given what I’ve seen so far, the arks of this plane are better than that.”

“Which just goes to prove the point that this isn’t even close to the best they have. This is like baby’s first designed engine. This is something I’d expect you to be able to design in a couple hundred years.”

“Your faith in me astounds, dead man.”

“My faith is earned, not given freely. As for this engine, about the only thing I can see it being used for is an example of what not to do. It’s a useful tool showing the myriad inefficiencies that often crop up when the incompetent design such intricate machines.”

“Is that all?” Leon asked, his disappointment growing rapidly.

Nestor paused a moment to think, then responded, “Not quite. It’s a fairly small piece of information, all things considered, but I can at least confirm that Titanstone is being used by these primitives. I doubt they are able to use it to its full potential, but its use is rather obvious in this design.”

“That’s the stuff that allows for a completely lossless transfer of magic power, right?”

“Yes,” Nestor confirmed. “I mentioned that we found Titanstone deposits when we conquered this plane. Well, to be honest, we found a lot of Titanstone here. The stuff is almost completely absent on most planes, being incredibly rare to find in nature. However, we found so much of it here that it was almost hard to believe. Enough that we would’ve directly administered this plane instead of giving it to a vassal if we’d had more time to consolidate our hold over it.”

“That’s interesting,” Leon replied. “But I’ve never seen anything resembling Titanstone coming through Heaven’s Eye. I think it’s safe to assume that Titanstone is a carefully controlled substance under the Imperial thumb. I suppose that makes Anastasios’ willingness to hand over this blueprint a little more understandable, then—even with it, it’s not like I can build an ark, can I?”

“No, you’d need far more specialized tools and a certain amount of experience in constructing such complex magical machines. For something like this, it would be even harder given the amount of poor design choices made to solve certain problems, but only exacerbate other problems. This thing is more patchwork fixes than proper magical engineering, to be honest…”

“Appropriate; that sounds exactly like what most engineering is.”

“Eh, I suppose you’re not wrong, but there’s a certain elegance to it when done by someone who knows what they’re doing. This is not elegant. If I taught you how to build arks, and you came back to me with this as your design, I’d just about die from embarrassment as your teacher.”

“Good thing you beat me there.”

“Ha. Ha. Funny boy makes funny joke.”

“Oh, thank you, I’m very proud of my prodigious wit.”

“Strange to take pride in something that’s mediocre at best.”

Leon shrugged, having not been serious at all for these last few exchanges. “So, if this engine design is unworthy of your consideration, then how’s the testing for this wood going?”

“This material completely overshadows this garbage engine,” Nestor gushed, his excitement palpable. “Such contained power I’ve never seen before. It’s practically indestructible, yet the lightning magic within it is channeled so efficiently as to only be exceeded by Titanstone. Leon, if this stormwood can be mass-produced, then it would be a construction material on par with Adamant and Lumenite.”

“That’s pretty incredible,” Leon replied. “Just one small thing I’d like to add: we’re not calling it ‘stormwood’.”

“It’s wood that contains the wrath of a storm; what’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t want to run ‘storm’ into the ground. Call it ‘thunder wood’ or ‘tempest wood’ or something. Anything else but ‘stormwood’. Ancestors, what an uncreative name.”

“Yours are hardly better, boy.”

“But they haven’t been used to death by the Clan, have they? How many things have been named ‘storm-X’ as opposed to ‘thunder-X’ or ‘tempest-X’? A little variety is nice sometimes, Nestor.”

“Fine, have it your way. This thunder wood is a miraculous material. We need as much of it we can get our hands on.”

“Do you have any conceivable method for creating more? To my understanding, this was created when a bolt of lightning struck a tree and got somehow ‘stuck’. I don’t quite know what that means, but if it’s true, then might it be possible to freeze a lightning bolt in a tree artificially? As it is, one small chunk of thunder wood isn’t going to do us any good at all, save for mocking us with its usefulness and unavailability…”

“That’s what’s giving me some trouble. I don’t know how the lightning got in there, or why it hasn’t left…”

“No theories or anything?”

“I’m an enchanter, and not one specializing in nature magic—this is really pushing the boundaries of my expertise.”

Leon nodded and thought about the issue. This piece of thunder wood couldn’t have been produced by a mage, as far as he was concerned, but the fact that it existed at all meant it could be reproduced. But as Nestor just indicated, he wasn’t all-knowing. Leon needed other specialists to take a look at what he had.

And he might just have those other specialists.

“What tests are you running right now?” Leon asked.

“Anything that comes to mind,” Nestor replied.

“Halt them, for now,” Leon ordered as he approached the table. The Librarian dutifully stepped aside, and before Nestor could respond, Leon took the thunder wood.

“What are you doing?” Nestor asked.

“Taking this to someone who might know more,” Leon explained as he made his way back to his throne.

The brightest minds of his Clan at its peak were studying this thing and, as far he knew, didn’t get too far. So, if he wanted to make any headway in analyzing it, then he needed the best he could find, and the best that he could trust. Right now, that meant only a few people…

---

“What even is this thing?” Helen asked in wonder as she stared at the piece of thunder wood.

“Lightning,” Tikos answered, speaking through amber within its wrist. “Lightning struck an oak tree many thousands of years ago and was trapped.”

“That long ago, and it’s still stuck in there?” Helen said in wonder.

“Why do you think my Clan was studying it so intently?” Leon asked. “This thing has great potential, but what I need most right now is a method for potentially recreating it.”

Elise then looked up, the final one of the three people that Leon had specifically sought out to look over the piece of thunder wood. Valeria, Maia, and Anna were also present, but they were mostly just watching from the side.

“Capturing lightning in a tree sounds more like your area of expertise, husband…”

“Yeah, but if even Nestor is stumped, then this might be a job that’s beyond the scope of enchantment. Or at least, the kind of enchantments that I’ve been studying lately. I’m good at lightning and fire, but when it comes to something like nature magic, I’m a rank novice. And that’s why I’d need a lot more help.”

“How much did your people study this, Tikos?” Elise asked.

“If it was studied at all, then I was not informed,” Tikos replied, its leaf-hair flattening slightly as the smell of mild embarrassment filled the room. Leon then learned that, apparently, embarrassment smelled rather like bananas.

“Then we’re working from scratch?” Helen muttered as he prodded the thunder wood with a spoon. The thunder wood vibrated and nearly shook the table it sat upon to pieces, while a bolt of lightning arced out and burned the spoon, causing Helen to drop it with a cry of pain.

“Careful!” Anna shouted as she rushed forward.

“No, it’s fine,” Helen insisted, waving her sister off, a wide grin on her face. “This is looking like it’s going to be quite a bit of fun…”

Leon smiled nervously at the manic look in Helen’s eye, but between her, Elise, and Tikos, he felt like the thunder wood would be in good hands. He just had to make sure they understood the necessity for secrecy, and he’d have to give Helen’s workshop back in Occulara another few passes to ensure her security was up to the necessary standard, but he felt confident that results would come soon.