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Menander was an old man even if his appearance was relatively youthful. He was the leading elder of a tribe of millions and carried that responsibility with dignity and grace. And yet, after managing his transformation, he sprang about and danced around the arena like a lion cub learning to play.

Leon left the arena that day secure in the knowledge that while Menander had been the only one who transformed, there would be hundreds of Lions capable of doing likewise in just a few weeks, and thousands in a month. With Menander’s aura growing noticeably stronger than it was in his human form, Leon felt like any opposition to any Lion with their bloodline awakened would be quieted.

So, he was feeling quite proud and secure when he strode back into the guest house set aside for him and his retainers. Most of his retainers he’d given the day to explore the city and see what the Lions had to show them. Most of them, he noted, were more interested in the fighting pits that the Lions used to train than anything else.

His family, meanwhile, largely chose to accompany him. Maia, Valeria, and Anzu had followed him to the arena, with Anzu in particular drawing quite a bit of attention given he was an Ascended Beast and had some insight into transformation.

Some stayed in the guest house instead of coming with him or exploring the city, though. Red wanted to laze around in her wyvern form, and Anna and Eirene had to tend to Anna’s war beasts. Cassandra, however, was the most notable one of them for wanting to stay and having some insight into what dampened Leon’s mood slightly when he returned.

Putting on a serious face, Leon made his way to his personal apartments in the palatial estate. Once there, he found Cassandra quietly reading what seemed like five books all at once, none of them thinner than his hand. She wasn’t reading with such intensity that she didn’t notice him and the rest of their family enter, however, as she looked up and smiled warmly in greeting.

“How did it go?” she asked as Leon took a moment to wash up with some summoned water before walking over. The room was partially open to the sky with a shallow pool in the center of the room surrounded by a peristyle. Maia stripped down and leaped into the pool, vanishing into it despite it only being deep enough to come up to Leon’s ankles. Valeria, meanwhile, also washed up and joined Leon and Cassandra at Cassandra’s table, while Anzu stretched out in griffin form in the last quickly-vanishing sunny spot on the floor.

“Quite well,” Leon said as he and Valeria explained the success that the Lions had in their attempts to build their transformation enchantments.

“… so I’m hopeful for where they’ll be in just a few weeks’ time,” Leon finished with a proud smile.

“I have to admit no small amount of jealousy,” Cassandra said. “Having the freedom to choose what form you take has to be… liberating. Especially if that form has wings.”

“It can be exciting,” Leon admitted, to which Anzu chirped in agreement. “It can also be a little… distracting, I suppose I could say. A little… confusing.”

“What do you mean?” Cassandra asked.

Leon frowned as he glanced at Cassandra and Valeria in turn. “It’s… well, I consider myself human. I was raised human, just with a little extra power in my blood. I’ve always had human form. I’ve had access to my transformation for almost half my life, now, but even then, I still spend most of my time in human form.

“But when I take the form of the Thunderbird, things can get… a little less clear, I suppose. It feels just as natural to me to be like that as it does to be in human form—perhaps even more natural. While I’ll never not consider myself human, I can say that sometimes the rush of being so in tune with the power within me can tempt me to only assume human form occasionally, and live as a Thunderbird more permanently.”

“If you do that, I…” Valeria began before cutting herself off for a moment. “I wouldn’t kill you, but that’s only because I think Elise would get to you first. I think I can speak for us both in saying that we prefer you like this more often than not.”

Leon smiled in agreement and nodded.

“You can add another to that list,” Cassandra added with a wry grin. “I’d hate to be abandoned by my husband so soon after marriage.”

“Just as I’d hate to abandon any of you,” Leon replied as he wrapped his arm around Cassandra and reached across the table to take one of Valeria’s hands. “As spiritually fulfilling as it can be to be transformed, I’d give it all up if any of you demanded it of me.”

“We would never do that,” Valeria declared.

“Which is why I’m so comfortable saying so,” Leon playfully retorted. “I’d hate for my bluff to be called.”

Valeria slapped his hand, though a grin just as playful as his grew on her face.

“So, what are you doing here?” Leon asked, preparing himself to lean more into the problems he knew Cassandra was having with the Ten Tribes.

“Research,” she replied. “I went on an expedition last year that didn’t have any results. Left me feeling quite unfulfilled.”

Leon glanced at the titles of the books, but Valeria, apparently having already done so, asked, “Somewhere in the Indra Raj?”

Cassandra nodded. “Out of all the states on this plane, it seems the Raj has been one of the longest-lasting. It’s existed in some form since at least the fall of the Thunderbird Clan, and likely even longer than that.”

Leon’s eyes widened in surprise. “I didn’t think they were so old.”

“The Raj is… more like a successor, I suppose,” Cassandra clarified. “There’s no real break in continuity, aside from their brief conquest and vassalization by your Clan, but if you were to take the Raj as it was in our oldest records and drop it just off the coast of the current Raj, they’d look nothing alike. The onward march of reforms and deforms means that there’s no point one could point to and say that it was there the Raj changed into something else. Interestingly, the Free Cities of the Tam more closely resemble the Raj as it was back then, though with the addition of a Rajah acting as a hegemonic figure uniting autonomous Princes.”

“It’s remarkable that one state has lasted so long,” Valeria marveled.

“It is, though with different ruling families coming in every couple thousand years,” Cassandra mentioned. “The current dynasty is their… sixty-eighth?” She stopped a moment and flipped through the pages of the book she had in her hands to one of the first pages before nodding and confirming, “Yeah, the sixty-eighth!”

Leon nodded along as she spoke, and when she paused a moment, he asked, “What were you investigating over there?”

Cassandra momentarily scowled. “I was trying to find the remains of an important castle quite frequently attested to in many of the oldest records of the Indradian Raj and its vassal Principalities. There was a civil war not long after the fall of the Thunderbird Clan that had the Rajahs displaced from their capital at the time, and it was at this castle that they regrouped and retook their throne, extending their dynasty for a couple hundred years. That castle kept the nomads of the Kyron Steppes out of the fertile basin the Raj occupies, and played an important strategic role in the ruling of the Kingdom.”

“Any idea what happened to it?” Leon asked.

“None,” she dejectedly said. “It’s possible it just fell into disuse and was forgotten as the geopolitical landscape changed, but no one’s ever found where it was. There are legends about vast fortunes buried within it, acting as potent reserves that the Rajah could call upon in an emergency, among other spectacular legends—including one where the castle had a portal to a ‘higher realm’ built in its foundations.”

“What kind of ‘higher realm’?” Valeria asked.

“Not a clue. That’s part of why I was trying to find the place. It doesn’t refer to the Nexus, but the descriptions don’t match any belief in that region of afterlives or other kinds of realms separate to the physical places we know exist.”

“If this castle was a portal to their afterlife, or whatever else is said about it, how did something like this get lost?” Leon asked.

“Few of the stories are likely true,” Cassandra said. “Mostly just legends about a place that was once very important but became less so for normal, boring reasons. After it became irrelevant, records of its location became less accurate, other castles were misidentified as being the one I was looking for, and on and on. What’s more frustrating about that whole endeavor was that not only did I spend six damn months investigating it through the various records I have access to, but I was also refused entry into the Indra Raj to conduct on-the-ground investigations!”

“Why?!” Valeria asked, sounding just as offended as Cassandra was.

“I ‘lacked a male escort’, who had to be my father, brother, or husband,” Cassandra spat. “As if my Empire couldn’t wipe theirs out with ease! Hah! They lack even the most basic of self-preservation instincts!”

“Did anything ever come out of their refusal?” Leon inquired. “Any official response of diplomatic pushback? A little cheeky assassination, perhaps?”

Cassandra chuckled. “As entertaining as that might’ve been, I decided that there were other prizes in need of my attention. Their castle can remain lost for all I care. Making a big deal out of it just wasn’t worth it.”

“They could still use a good reprimand,” Valeria said with a dangerous look in her eye.

“Getting violent on our Princess’ behalf?” Leon teasingly asked.

Valeria simply grinned and shrugged.

“That’s sweet Val, but it doesn’t matter,” Cassandra said with a smile of her own. “There’s enough frustration that we have to deal with without adding to the pile.”

Leon took a deep breath.

‘Now or never…’ he thought.

“Speaking of which…” Leon said aloud. “I noticed you getting fairly heated yesterday. Is everything all right?”

“Of course it is,” Cassandra responded, her smile vanishing in an instant. “Just because my people are repeatedly insulted by the enemies we’ve fought for tens of thousands of years doesn’t mean anything! They can keep flapping their shitty gums all they wish, it won’t change the past eighty thousand years!”

Leon pulled her a little closer, snuggling her up into his side. She resisted for a moment, but after he silently insisted, she sighed and melted against him.

“Want me to talk to them to lay off the rhetoric?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “Not yet, at any rate.”

“Does this change anything about when you might want to be properly introduced?”

Cassandra was silent for long enough that Valeria quickly spoke before she could.

“Want me to kill them for you, Your Highness? Has your honor been insulted enough to warrant death for the offenders?”

Valeria gave Cassandra a provocative look that had Cassandra glaring at her for a moment before bursting out in laughter.

“I’ll allow them to keep their miserable lives,” Cassandra magnanimously replied. “They are our husband’s sworn bannermen, after all.” She pinched Leon in the side and smiled at him. In a more serious tone, she said, “Let’s just get this over with. Tell them who I am. I don’t want to hide myself, so let’s let the die fall where it may.”

Leon smiled back at her, elation filling his chest. He could understand perfectly well the desire not to hide oneself—he’d done it for a goodly portion of his life.

“We’re heading back to Raikos once the Lions get a hold of their new power,” Leon said. “I’ll hand out the remaining two Hesperidic Apples, and then we’ll make some proper introductions.”

Cassandra tightened her hold on his arm for a moment but then relaxed. Leon didn’t say anything more for a while, and when he did, it was merely to get his ladies ready for bed. Neither of them needed to sleep, of course, but sleep wasn’t on his mind. He didn’t share a bed with both at the same time, but as he saw to Cassandra’s needs first, he at least took some comfort in being able to put on quite the show for Valeria before seeing to hers in turn.

---

Soon enough, Leon found himself back in Raikos. It had been a few weeks since he’d last been, and in that time, more Hawks had come down from the mountains to continue interfacing with the other elements in his growing coalition. He found not only all the Jaguar elders present but an additional twenty Hawk elders, including Singer-in-Caves. All of the Hawks caught his attention immediately for, as soon as he arrived, they took flight in their avian forms and escorted him down to the Jaguars’ gathering hall.

He wasn’t the only one who arrived, either: the Eagles had met him partway with a couple dozen additional Chiefs and elders, led by Exallos, while the Lions sent their own fairly sizable delegation, led by Xanthippe. In total, Leon’s entourage had grown to more than a hundred elders, and a couple hundred more from his sworn Tribes as well.

Fortunately, the Jaguars’ gathering hall was big enough to hold all of the elders with him, but many of the rest had to either stand or wait outside. Most chose the latter, but he didn’t allow a single one of his retainers to leave. If anyone had problems with Cassandra, he wanted his most trusted people there with him, even though he didn’t think they’d be needed.

Once everyone had assembled and the requisite congratulations and acclimations were had, along with his expected—though no less heartfelt—humble deflections, he launched into what he was more interested in.

“All of you are sworn to me,” he said. “You follow my orders, within reason.”

“We are your humble servants, my King,” Nikolaos said, his tone a little obsequious, though Leon knew he was a little more nuanced in his loyalty than that. His sentiments were shared, either vocally or otherwise, throughout the hall.

“You humble me with your trust and support,” Leon replied. “I would see that loyalty repaid as well as it can be with the resources I have access to. That means I want every Tribe here to take up the transformation enchantments that I’ve already shared with you!”

Before anyone could respond, Xanthippe leaped to her feet and transformed into her feline form, tearing through her clothes in the process. She was a little smaller than Menander, but where Menander seemed to embody fierce power, Xanthippe was graceful and elegant. She stalked up and down the hall between the elders’ seats, her golden coat gleaming, and said to them all with darkness magic, [It’s safe! Look upon me and know it to be true!]

“And me!” Singer-in-Caves responded as she did likewise, though instead of tearing through her clothing, she shrank right out of them before flying through the air above the heads of the elders.

Leon thought that was going to be it for a moment until, to his surprise, Nikolaos took to his feet and said, “And me.”

Like Xanthippe, he tore through his clothes as he assumed his own Jaguar form, a lithe, yet powerful and intimidating predator. His coat wasn’t quite as golden as Xanthippe’s, but his aura was magnificently radiant and he let loose with a roar that Leon didn’t think any normal jaguar would be capable of making.

At that invitation, dozens of elders began transforming, too, and the air was filled with Hawks, while the hall’s central aisle had Lions and Jaguars alike all staring at him.

Without another thought, Leon did as his vassals had just done and transformed into his silver-blue Thunderbird form, tearing through his clothes with only a single errant thought given to modesty. Xanthippe and the other Lions were large, but Leon towered over them all, and when he cast his gaze about the hall, he found everyone staring back at him, waiting for what he had to say next.

Their confidence in him buoyed him, and he allowed his pride to flex a few times before he clamped down on it hard.

[There is another gift I would give all of you, though I will leave it to all of you to see how it is to be distributed,] Leon continued, and he summoned his remaining two Hesperidic Apples, drawing every eye and eliciting more than a few gasps of surprise and awe.

“Your Majesty…” the Jaguar of the West said as he rose from his seat only to take a knee before him. “This gift… it’s too much.”

[I’ll be the judge of that. You have only to accept my gift.]

The Jaguar looked for a moment like he wanted to argue, but seemed to think better of it and bowed his head. He accepted the apples, but in a show of solidarity with the rest of the Tribes present, he returned to his seat without taking them into his soul realm. Instead, he gave one to Exallos, and the other to the transformed Xanthippe, though neither of them did anything more than hold them—or, in Xanthippe’s cast, balance it on her head in a display of motor control that Leon was quite envious of, given how recently she’d learned how to transform.

[Your gift is beyond humbling, Your Majesty,] Nikolaos said as he bowed as well, and the rest of the hall began stomping, shouting, roaring, crying out their approval in a great cacophony that Leon thought the entire city would feel in their bones. It was quite the sound, too, with so many disparate and powerful beings in the room making it.

It took a minute or so for everyone to calm down, but Leon could feel the excitement in the air from the power he’d given them. He could practically feel their devotion spilling off their bodies and offered to him.

’All right,’ he thought to himself as he took a deep, steadying breath, ‘this is it. Moment of truth. Please don’t get violent, please don’t get violent, please don’t get violent…’

He glanced back at Cassandra, who he noticed was more than a little nervous herself, and waved her forward with his wing. Once she’d taken a position next to him, he wrapped his wing around her and announced, [This is my second wife, Cassandra.]

Again, the hall erupted into roars or whatever equivalent sound the elders were capable of making in their respective forms, welcoming her to the hall in their most honorable fashion.

[She is the daughter of the Sacred Golden Empress,] Leon finished, and he practically flinched at the response.

Deafening silence hit him like a brick compared to what it was just a moment ago. All noise was snuffed out like blowing out a candle. All that remained were a few fading echoes. And soon enough, they too died, leaving the gathering hall in complete silence as all eyes turned from Leon to Cassandra.