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When Leon arrived, he was shown inside to a surprisingly well-appointed meeting room where he and his Tempest Knight escorts could wait. Accompanying him from his retinue were only Alix and Gaius.

He didn’t have to wait that long before Commander Arcaion was shown in, the ninth-tier Sunlit officer looking healthy and relaxed, alleviating some of Leon’s concerns about his treatment.

As he was shown in, Leon smiled and said, “Arcaion! It’s been a while, how have you been?”

Arcaion stiffened up slightly when he saw who was greeting him and the escort around him, but after a moment, he smoothly replied, “I’ve been doing quite well, Your Majesty. My stay here has exceeded my expectations quite handily.”

“That’s wonderful to hear,” Leon replied. “If you have any concerns, please feel free to share them and I’ll see what I can do to see them fixed.” As he spoke, Leon gestured to a chair close to him, and Arcaion hesitated only a moment before walking past several Tempest Knights to sit down.

“Your generosity is appreciated,” Arcaion stated. “I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more than what we’ve already been given…”

Leon sensed something in the way he ended his statement and asked, “… But you’re going to anyway, aren’t you?”

Arcaion smiled and said, “There isn’t much to do here. We’re forbidden from training or practicing our magic in any way, and we have no access to books or anything else that might distract from our boredom. We’re soldiers, Your Majesty; leaving us bored is never a good idea.”

“Indeed not,” Leon said. “I’ll see about getting your people some entertainment, such as a library. In the meantime…” He nodded to Gaius who retrieved some writing implements, which put Arcaion immediately on edge. “I’d like for you to consider something for me.”

“Consideration is free, so I’m happy to give as much as is needed.”

“Great! Well, I suppose it’ll come as no surprise to you that I’m satisfied with simply holding onto the Sword. I intend to make peace with all of the Empires, and while I’ve secured peace with Ilion and Evergold, Thunderhaven and the Sentinels are proving to be tougher nuts to crack. It’s clear to me that so long as the Sunlit Empire retains its current Emperor, peace between my new Kingdom and your Empire will never be.”

Leon paused to give Arcaion a chance to respond. The Sunlit Commander took a moment to consider Leon’s words before simply stating, “I would agree with you.” He spared Gaius a quick look of mild annoyance as Leon’s secretary blatantly scrawled his response down.

“Would you agree that peace between our peoples would be best for everyone? No more raids on the Pegasi States, no more blood shed between us, no more feeding the krakens of the Argonaut sea…”

“I would.”

“Would you also agree that the best way to achieve this peace is to remove the current Sunlit Emperor from office and replace him with someone more peace-minded?”

Arcaion smiled in amusement, though it was clear from his body language that he didn’t think such a thing was all that feasible.

“The current dynasty,” Arcaion explained, “has ruled over Thunderhaven and the Empire that sprang from that great city since its founding. For someone of another bloodline to rule it is… unfathomable. Nearly eighty-thousand years of traditional rule thrown away just like that…”

“You think it’s impossible?” Leon asked. “Have there never been depositions before?”

“There has,” Arcaion clarified. “It’s just that there have always been claimants waiting in the wings.”

“And there aren’t now?”

Arcaion’s smile thinned. “There haven’t been since the current Emperor’s first few years on the Rumbling Throne.”

“Interesting…” Leon whispered, thinking he had an idea as to what Arcaion was alluding to. There were no easy candidates to replace Sunlit because Sunlit had gotten rid of them all upon assuming his Imperial title. “Before we get into exploring our options, I actually had a couple of additional questions.”

Arcaion lowered his head slightly in a clear invitation to ask.

“The Sunlit Emperor has, multiple times in private, claimed descent from the Thunderbird Clan.” Arcaion’s eyes widened in abject shock at Leon’s statement, and Leon paused a moment to allow the man to put his thoughts in order before he proceeded. “As the only bearer of the Thunderbird’s power remaining in all the universe, I know better than anyone that I have no kin remaining… well, anywhere. The Sunlit Emperor does not possess the blood of the Thunderbird.

“And yet… And yet, he still claimed descent from my Honored Ancestor, even naming himself the head of my Clan despite the absurdity of his claim. You are h—were high enough in your Empire that I’d like to know if you have any information regarding your Emperor’s claims…”

Leon stared at Arcaion, his golden eyes unwavering. Arcaion’s face morphed from surprise to mild anger, to thoughtfulness, and finally settled back into something neutral, though not unaffected by Leon’s revelation.

“That is… I… Maybe,” Arcaion finally responded.

“What kind of ‘maybe’?” Leon asked with a slow cadence to make up for Gaius’ surprise, which caused a hitch in his record-keeping. Others were listening who were also keeping records, so it wasn’t like Leon needed Gaius’ notes, but he wanted Gaius to keep pace. It was the visual of him so clearly writing down Arcaion’s words that was the point; less so the notes themselves. “Is it the kind of ‘maybe’ where you know the real reason but are afraid to say, or is it the kind of ‘maybe’ where you have some kind of idea, but you don’t know for sure?”

“The latter,” Arcaion admitted. “The only possibility I can think of is from before my time. And I want to emphasize that I don’t know anything for sure; I can only guess…”

“Then guess away,” Leon said with a wave of his hand.

Despite this unambiguous allowance to openly speculate, Arcaion took a few moments to consider his words carefully before giving them voice.

“After the fall of the Thunderbird Clan,” he explained in a slow and deliberate tone, “rumors abounded in the successor states of potential survivors. Eyes were always peeled for those who survived the Brilliant Eleven’s war for freedom. Potential spies from the Sky Devils, collaborators who’d worked with the Thunderbird Clan to suppress Aeterna’s natives, and most of all, rumors of pockets of surviving Thunderbird Clan members.”

Leon’s eyes widened slightly, but he otherwise gave no indication of the thoughts that ran through his mind with that statement. He, of course, knew that his branch of the Clan survived, but they were practically at the very edge of human civilization on Aeterna, and so easily hidden. If other branches of his Clan survived on the plane, then they’d have likely had to hide themselves very well. Given the Thunderbird’s insistence that the Clan was all down to him—a claim he hadn’t yet been given reason enough to disbelieve—he guessed that if those branches survived to the present day, then they’d have had to have lost their ability to awaken their blood a long time ago.

Arcaion continued, “I have always treated such rumors as they deserve to be treated: as rumors. However, in the course of my duties, I’ve also heard other rumors, more concerning rumors about how the Imperial family reacted to hearing some of these rumors. Remote villages in the southern mountains being wiped out are some of the more… less extreme responses I’ve heard about.”

“And are these just rumors?” Leon pointedly asked.

“A decade ago, I would’ve said ‘yes’. These days… I’m a little more unsure. The records I’ve been privy to indicate that the army group I com—that I used to command was active during some of these rumored times. Strange deployments in its history that can’t be explained, some that are only present in old and dusty records but not in more centralized libraries, for example.”

“Let’s be clear,” Leon said. “Are there any rumors that you’ve heard that you think are real? You are clearly resonating on at least some level with what I’ve told you, so tell me what’s going on in your head. This is my Clan we’re talking about, so I’m not going to just let this go.”

Arcaion sighed and directly said, “There are two incidents I can think of: the massacre of a certain village about two thousand years ago and what was supposed to be a raid about four thousand years ago that led to the deaths of a hundred thousand and the near-destruction of an entire city—both of which my army group participated in.”

“Why these two incidents?”

“The first is because of just how strange it was. We’re not in the habit of massacring our own people, you understand, so while the botched raid can be explained away as a riot that got out of hand, that arks and entire divisions of my army group were called out to deal with a village of not even a thousand inhabitants is notable. More notable would be some of the first-hand accounts I’ve read that I certainly wasn’t supposed to, including descriptions of the numerous altars to the Thunderbird that were discovered after taking the village.”

Arcaion leaned a little closer to Leon as his voice dropped to a whisper.

“If you ask me, this is probably what the current Emperor is talking about. It has been alleged that some individuals from the village were taken as prisoners. The Sunlit Emperor’s grandfather led the assault when he was but an Imperial Prince, and allegedly left the village with a new concubine. More than that, I cannot say. But I will say that if the Imperial line is descended from the Thunderbird Clan, it’s not something they’d want to advertise, especially in the early years of the Empire. That’s the sort of thing that would’ve had the other states of the Brilliant Eleven joining forces against us to exterminate our Imperial dynasty.”

Leon nodded as he processed all of this information. It sounded… plausible enough, but he wasn’t sure he ought to believe it.

“Well… that’s quite the story,” Leon eventually stated. “I hope… you don’t mind if I take it with a grain of salt without some way to verify it…”

Arcaion bowed his head. “As I said, all of it was rumor and allegation.”

Leon nodded. “To get back to the point of my visit… Do you think that it would be possible to topple the Sunlit’s Imperial dynasty?”

“I suppose anything’s possible. I can’t foresee it being easy at all, though…”

“Of course it won’t be easy, but I’ll be leading an expedition to do just that, and I’ll have the support of Ilion and Evergold. Thunderhaven won’t last long. But I will admit that I have a problem of just who ought to replace the current Sunlit Emperor. It would have to be someone respected by the Imperial army, someone powerful enough to command the respect and fear of his former comrades, someone intelligent enough to know when he should bend and when he should break, someone I know and feel like I can trust…”

Leon trailed off as Arcaion’s eyes widened in surprise and fear. “You’re not… asking me, are you?”

“I am,” Leon confirmed. “What do you say? Emperor Arcaion doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”

“That’s… I can’t… It goes against everything I’ve ever believed, everything I’ve ever worked for! I can’t do this!” Arcaion’s protestation was loud, but his tone was significantly less vehement than his volume tried to communicate.

‘He’s tempted,’ Leon observed as a wry smile spread across his face.

“You don’t have to be Emperor,” Leon conceded. “But come with me and see yourself at the head of your Empire, regardless of the actual title. You care about your Empire, don’t you?”

“More than anything,” Arcaion responded with great determination.

“Then work with me to forge a peace between your Empire and my Kingdom. I want this long war to end, for us all to be able to live without fear of this war going hot again. I want us to stop shedding our blood for no reason. Will you help me in this?”

Arcaion stared at Leon for a terribly long time; long enough that Leon began to fear that he was actually going to turn him down. However, eventually, Arcaion said, “I cannot be Emperor, but peace is a goal that all men should work towards. If you prove yourself sincere, then I will work with you to make peace between my people and yours.”

Leon grinned. “Very well. I’ll accept whatever I can get on this front. Get some rest, Commander, because I’m going to have quite a bit for you to do very soon…”

---

The Director stared out at Occulara with a morose look on his face, taking in the sights from the window of his office in the Hexagon. As he usually was, he was alone. Hardly a problem for him—solitude being his usual preference—but as he looked out on all that he’d worked for and all that he stood to lose, he couldn’t help but desire others to share his burden. He was old, and he felt every year he’d lived more and more acutely as more and more years were piled onto him.

He\'d thought he’d made a partner in Leon, even if the senior and junior roles in their partnership were reversed as time went on. He wished that when all of the dust had settled he could still count Leon as his partner, but he wasn’t so sure anymore…

War with the Sunlit Empire was probably going to go well, assuming all of the advances that the Sky Devils had made proved true. That Leon was now a tenth-tier mage was also a good sign, even if the Director had to suppress an enormous pang of jealousy from it.

In a way, Leon’s ascension both comforted and terrified the Director. It was a comfort to know that the Sunlit Empire was in deep trouble, but it was also terrifying to be uncertain of his fate should Leon finally defeat the Sunlit Emperor.

As he stood in front of the window pondering the future, he suddenly became aware of another presence in his office, someone who’d entered without opening any doors or otherwise revealing himself until the very moment he wanted to.

“Having some second thoughts?” the aged stranger asked, his eyes narrowing. They were a shade of red so dark that they appeared almost black, which only added to his unsettling atmosphere. He appeared to be quite old, though the wrinkles did little to mar his handsome face.

“No,” the Director said. “I’ll do what I must, even if that must be nothing. I can only hope that Leon proves himself in the war to come.”

“I look forward to seeing it,” the stranger said.

The Director blinked and the man was gone, terrifying him to no end. It was by this man’s word that he was now uncertain of his future. The stranger had demanded that he sit out the fighting between Leon and the Sunlit Emperor, and given his power, the Director had no choice but to comply. But he couldn’t just tell Leon that he was being forced to sit on the sidelines, the stranger had been quite clear on that front.

He wondered if the Lord Protector or the Grand Druid had been so ordered. As far as he could tell, their power was insignificant compared to the stranger’s, and if the stranger wanted to insist, they’d likely have little choice, either.

But all the Director knew was that the stranger seemed quite interested in Leon for some reason, and would be watching the upcoming campaign with great interest…