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“You have many enemies, Leon!” the Emperor shouted, his powerful voice easily heard even over the howling winds and booming thunder that surrounded them. “They’re eager to get their pound of flesh!”

As Leon beat his wings harder to try and reach the Emperor in time, Sunlit threw the beads into Leon’s path, and they erupted in demonfire, summoning three more demons from the Elemental Plane of Fire.

Each of these demons was powerful, though smaller than Xaphan. Their auras were potent, equivalent to the ninth-tier.

But Leon didn’t hesitate for a single second. The demons had barely stepped out of the black abysses in the center of the summoning fires before he was upon them. With talons extended and beak thrust forward, Leon crashed into the first demon.

After so many years of having a contract with Xaphan, Leon was more than familiar with the potency of demonfire. He had used it on many occasions, himself. So, as the fire that covered the demon’s body spread to him, it wasn’t fear he felt, but surprise at just how weak it felt. He’d raised his defenses even as tried to sink his talons and beak into the hard obsidian skin of the demon beneath all that fire, and that fire glided right off his feathers, as consequential to him as rain.

The demon’s skin turned out to be a tougher challenge, but when Leon realized he wasn’t going to be able to rend and tear flesh as his instincts demanded, he changed tactics slightly and wrapped his talons around the demon. The demon fought back, perhaps realizing the amount of danger he was in, but Leon was stronger and more powerful; he easily took a strong hold over the demon and then summoned lightning from the clouds all around them. So many bolts struck them that it seemed for a split second that Leon and the demon became a new star in the sky.

But then the demon, under such pressure, shattered, his fires snuffed out like a candle and his obsidian body broke like a glass window that fell out of its frame.

Leon rolled out of the way as the other two demons darted forward while he was busy with their comrade, their fury evident in the savagery of their attacks, but their fire didn’t touch him, even as it filled the sky and pushed away the clouds.

Leon dove a few hundred feet, lightning reaching back from his blue crest and keeping the demons at bay. Once he’d gained some distance, he twisted and turned to fly on his back with some limited success. Lightning gathered around his beak and he thrust his head forward, firing off a powerful bolt of lightning that struck one of the demons in the chest. The demon wasn’t killed immediately but his fires dimmed and he lost control of himself in the air.

The other demon tried to cover for his comrade, but Leon turned hard and stormed upward, crashing into the second demon and dispatching him as quickly as the first.

As the fires died and obsidian rained downward, the last demon finally balked, staring at Leon with his bright yellow eyes wide with terror. It was then that the Sunlit Emperor finally made it clear that he hadn’t tried to run away. A bolt of dull yellow lightning flashed through several clouds, covering the near-mile that had stretched between Leon and the Emperor. With his Clan’s lightning surging through his body, Leon managed to sense the incoming magic and evade, the lightning arcing through the air above him, and giving the demon a second to breathe.

But then Leon was back on him, dodging the Sunlit Emperor’s attempts to snipe him with the carved iron staff he’d used against Iron-Striker so effectively. Leon didn’t want to get hit by something that could so easily take out a tenth-tier mage, so took a different approach to dealing with the demon.

Lightning flashed through the sky, arcing between the massive clouds and carving paths through the fiery hellscape that the demon summoned to protect itself. A few bolts struck the demon anyway, though, Leon’s power and knowledge of demonfire made many of the demon’s defensive options moot.

The demon screamed in pain as one of his arms exploded after blocking another of Leon’s bolts, and Leon, now flying above him, dove in for the kill. He cut through the demon’s defensive fire and crashed into his body, wrapping his talons around the demon’s waist and upper thigh while getting a firm grip on the demon’s neck with his beak. Leon then tensed his whole body, and with some strain, tore the demon into three pieces.

Leon had not a second to savor his triumph, however, for as soon as his brain had registered that the final demon had been killed, he was struck by a bolt of dull yellow lightning.

Some amount of panic flooded through Leon’s brain as he realized what had just happened, but after the slightest of moments, a rather unexpected feeling replaced it.

He felt no pain even as the yellow lightning danced across his feathers. In fact, his silver-blue lightning seemed attracted to it, and the two kinds of lightning seemed to dance in time with each other, A growing feeling of arousal, uncomfortable only due to Leon’s current circumstances, spread through his body.

Leon instinctively opened his beak and took in a huge breath, the cold air helping him to cut through the haze of lust and reassert some level of rationality to his mind, but that feeling persisted.

‘This can’t be what he felt…’ Leon thought. ‘What kind of weapon is this? This has to be some special interaction with me…’

He pushed those thoughts out of his head. He’d have time to contemplate this matter once the Sunlit Emperor lay dead at his talons. He refocused onto the Emperor, now staring at him with eyes wide enough to be easily seen behind his face-obscuring helmet.

Leon gathered himself, then let his power spill forth, his blood singing in time with the distant lightning and thunder. The Sunlit Emperor, after a moment, projected his magic to compete with him for control of the sky, but Leon pressed harder, his near-tenth-tier power not losing out to Sunlit’s at all, and even gaining some ground. As Leon asserted his control over the sky, the wind, already howling around them, picked up, the clouds opened and let loose a torrent of rain, and the natural lightning arcing between the clouds intensified.

Had his beak been capable of it, Leon could’ve smiled as the Sunlit Emperor dropped the staff and retrieved another item from his soul realm: a tiny metallic cube. Had he been smiling, that smile would’ve disappeared as the cube began to glow with bright blue light, and one of the cube’s faces suddenly spat out a lance of bright blue light.

The light reached Leon in a moment, slicing through his armor-like feathers and biting deep into flesh. Leon screeched in pain, unable to stop himself, and his flight faltered for a second. The wound wasn’t quite superficial, but as Leon stabilized himself, he could feel his natural healing ability as a ninth-tier mage begin to go to work. His wound would heal in a matter of minutes, but in a fight like this, that might as well have been a lifetime.

But his combat capability wasn’t unduly impacted, and Leon rushed to cover the distance between himself and the Emperor as quickly as he could. He sped across the sky, covering thousands of feet in seconds. As he moved, the clouds struck him with lightning, filling his body with power and his feathers with deadly charge.

The Sunlit Emperor, understandably not wanting to take Leon head-on, surged backward, the cube in his hand glowing again. This time, however, Leon was ready, and the next lance of blue light missed him completely as he rolled out of the way and then returned to flapping his wings, hardly missing a single wingbeat.

“YOU LITTLE BASTARD!!!” Sunlit shrieked as he fired off another blue lance, to no effect. This seemed to be his last shot as he dropped the cube, too.

Leon had managed to significantly narrow the distance between them, enough to let loose with the storm of lightning that had gathered around him. Almost a bolt for every feather erupted from him and curled toward sunlit, surrounding him like a deadly net before descending upon him.

Sunlit howled in terror and frustration as he spread his arms and countered with his own power, using his lightning to defend himself. A few bolts managed to penetrate his defenses, but Leon joined Sunlit in his frustration when he saw they seemed to have little effect on Sunlit’s armor.

As Leon’s lightning storm died down, Sunlit responded with a massive bolt of his own, striking Leon directly. The bolt cut through many of Leon’s feathers and ravaged his body, but Leon suffered through the pain as instead of trying to regain some distance, he dove at the Emperor, his talons extended once more.

The golden scales that covered his talons started to blacken under the Emperor’s intense bombardment, and Leon lost feathers by the millisecond, but his talons closed around the Emperor’s body and squeezed hard.

The Emperor yelped in shock and pain but kept channeling his power. Pain wracked Leon’s body but he fought through it, slamming his beak down upon the Sunlit Emperor’s neck.

But the Emperor’s armor proved itself worthy of such elevated personage and held against Leon’s strength. However, Leon’s beak sliced through one of the straps holding Sunlit’s helmet tight against his skull, and the helmet slipped away, revealing the Emperor’s face to Leon for the first time since their first clash during Sunlit’s ambush.

The helmet fell away, revealing the Emperor’s once handsome face now marred and deformed by ugly burn scars, some black and surrounded by eerily pale flesh. The Emperor’s features looked half melted, but his eyes were wide with fear and terror.

With a desperate shout, the Emperor drew his sword, so much like House Raime’s own, and began to wildly hack at Leon, forcing Leon to release him or suffer further injury.

Sunlit dropped through the sky, seemingly not bothering to catch himself, before vanishing into a cloud.

Leon only waited a moment before diving after him, but as he pushed through to the other side of the cloud, the Emperor had seemingly vanished.

Leon pulled up and circled a couple of times, keeping his eyes and magic senses open and scanning for the Emperor even as he took the opportunity to scan the battlefield below.

It seemed to him that his side, despite suffering quite heavily, was winning out over the Sunlit forces. Three of Leon’s war arks had been shot down and the second Thunderbird destroyer had waved off, now trailing smoke from multiple holes in its hull. The first destroyer, however, was already finishing off the last of Sunlit’s fleet of war arks, its terrifyingly powerful Lances cutting through the Sunlit defenses with ease.

The army below it, led by the Tempest Knights and their MALLs, was making steady progress against the entrenched Sunlit positions. With increasing air superiority, the Bear air forces were freer and freer to drop down upon Sunlit positions from above and demolish them, giving the ground forces even more cover as they advanced.

The mountain that the Sunlit Emperor had been based on, and which had split open to reveal Iron-Striker’s mangled body, seemed to have been completely lit on fire, burning from both within and without. Iron-Striker had been secured and taken from where he’d been posted, but where he’d gone Leon couldn’t tell. Regardless, it was clear that his retinue, and especially Red, had gone all out in reducing the Sunlit base of operations to cinders.

Finally, Leon could see that Xaphan had been joined in the sky by Maia, Valeria, and Anzu, with Maia taking on one of the three demons Xaphan had confronted while Valeria and Anzu dealt with another, leaving Xaphan free to focus entirely on one, to that one’s extreme detriment. Leon was a little concerned seeing his family so entangled in a fight against ninth-tiers, but after a moment, it was clear everyone was holding their own, even Valeria and Anzu despite each only being eighth-tier.

Leon was forced to tear his eyes away from the scene when he felt the air sizzle and crackle around him; he dodged just in time to avoid an intense bolt of lightning, and he noticed that the Sunlit Emperor had returned, this time with two ninth-tier mages, each heavily armored and armed with deadly weapons.

But Leon didn’t care and charged, taking them by surprise. Only Sunlit kept firing lightning bolt after lightning bolt, filling the sky with lightning to try and block Leon’s path. Leon, however, cut through it, letting that lightning slide over his feathers or cut right through them as it pleased, ignoring the pain it brought and the blood it spilled as he slammed into the first of the two ninth-tier mages.

The man shouted first in anger, then in pain as Leon’s talons punched through his armor and dug into flesh. He summoned a torrent of lightning, but compared to Sunlit’s and Leon’s, he might as well not have done so. Leon squeezed, then dug his beak into the man’s neck, easily cutting through the relatively thin armor and severing the man’s head.

In an instant, a ninth-tier mage had been killed, and Leon pulled away, focusing on the second, who had drawn a massive pike and coated it in white fire. He swung his pike, sending a massive wave of fire Leon’s way, but Leon countered with a single wing beat, which kicked up enough wind to halt the oncoming fire and let him slip beneath it.

The second ninth-tier mage remained mobile as Leon chased him, while Sunlit bought himself significant distance and did his best to impede Leon at every turn. Injuries were piling up, but Leon, spurred on by the rage that the pain brought and by the rage that Sunlit had instilled from his treatment of Iron-Striker, ignored it all.

Eventually, he lost patience and dove through the second ninth-tier mage’s white fire, singing many of his remaining feathers but clamping down on the man with his talons. At that point, the Sunlit mage seemed to realize that it was over and pulled a potent spell from his soul realm and immediately activated it.

Leon recognized many fire runes on it but had little time to analyze it before it detonated in his face. He was hurled backward, most of his feathers incinerated and leaving him unable to fly without magical aid. Numerous burns and lacerations were added to his already extensive collection, while the shockwave battered every one of his internal organs.

The pain and intensity of the battle was finally getting to him, and Leon found himself hard-pressed to try and right himself. As he fell, the Sunlit Emperor loomed over him, his scarred face manic with glee, and Leon summoned what little power he had remaining. His battered body flared up with pain in protest, but a few silver-blue lightning bolts were ejected from his body.

Sunlit, however, took the hits on his breastplate and pursued Leon, his sword gleaming in the light of distant lightning.

In a moment, Leon felt Sunlit plunge the blade into his chest and he uncontrollably screeched in pain. In a last-ditch attempt to save himself before Sunlit could inflict permanent damage, he cut the flow of magic into his transformation enchantment, starting the rapid process of turning back into a human. Sunlit’s sword, embedded in Leon, was jostled and torn from Sunlit’s hand, though it remained lodged in Leon’s body and did additional damage as Leon’s organs shrank back down to normal size.

But Leon was able to get a few feet between himself and the Emperor, and he lashed out with an all-or-nothing blast of lightning, pushing the Emperor further away.

Leon thought he’d only bought himself a scant moment or two, but Sunlit didn’t further pursue him. Instead, as Leon plummeted with Sunlit’s sword stuck in his chest, Sunlit flew higher, a look of such extreme antipathy on his face that Leon almost thought Sunlit was trying to light him on fire with his eyes.

The soft arms that caught him told him all he needed to know about why the Emperor was letting him go—Maia, Valeria, Anzu, and Xaphan had finished off the remaining demons and come to his aid. They weren’t alone, either, and as Maia caught Leon, arresting his fall, the first Thunderbird destroyer cut through the clouds and leveled off a couple hundred feet beneath them.

Leon’s eyes widened in surprise and glee as he took in the sight, his energy rapidly fading, Maia’s concern flooded through their connection and Valeria’s panicked voice resounded in his ears. He couldn’t understand anything she was saying, though, and as his mind turned sluggish, he turned his eyes upward one last time.

The Sunlit Emperor was gone. It seemed he’d run away. While there was still fighting down below, despite the tremendous casualties, Leon’s side had achieved a dominant position, and the only remaining Imperials were either surrendering or putting up scattered resistance.

Leon’s force had won, though he had only a moment to process that before everything went dark, and he fell unconscious.