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“Well, then,” said Octavia with a distant look in her eyes. “That certainly... puts things into perspective, at least. I’m looking forward to meeting this young man and his reaper again.”

The conversation didn’t last much longer after that. With night coming on, Octavia went to go rest. Wen did not go with her, but he did venture off to go talk to someone else. Even Axiolis ended up leaving Zeff alone with thoughts again.

Long after they were gone, Zeff’s mind still lingered on that last subject. He didn’t know how to feel about it. While he didn’t think that Ax was one to make such comparisons thoughtlessly, it still felt... like a strange decision on the reaper’s part.

He was tempted to call Ax back over and try to hash things out, but he had no idea what he would say. This unease in the pit of his stomach had no words to accompany it.

Was he afraid of something here? Did he think that Axiolis had some sort of... intentions at play, now? Hyping Hector up like that in front of Octavia? As if the boy even needed it, at this point.

Bah. But still. Rhein Ricardo was... an entirely different level of importance.

Some tales regarded him as an incarnation of Lhutwë himself. Others said, instead, that he had encountered Lhutwë and received the God of All Water’s everlasting protection--for him and all his future kin.

They said that Rhein Ricardo was the very reason why the divine materialization ability of water even existed in the first place. And why it continued to propagate into the future through the bloodlines of the Rainlords.

And of course, there were the tales of how Rhein distinguished himself among the ancient Arman people during their countless clashes with the Lyzakks, eventually establishing an entirely new warrior class known as Rainlords, who went on, long after his death, to seize power over the local government when the old regimes proved too incompetent and corrupt.

The Mohssian Empire had not been terribly pleased about that, but it was still quite young at the time, and the heroic legacy of Rhein, still fresh in everyone’s mind. So the Rainlords were able to negotiate a privileged status for themselves within the empire as a vassal group with unparalleled autonomy, so long as they recognized the emperor as their rightful ruler and fought in his name when he called for their banners.