Theron looked up at the General, practically having to crane his neck. He hadn't grown much more than maybe an inch or so in the last several months, but that still left him at 5'7". Compared to this behemoth of a man that was nearly seven feet tall, accounting for the heavy steel boots on his feet, the gap was too wide.
But that didn't really do much to change Theron's heartrate or countenance, and that was the very first thing the General was focused on.
The representative of the Zhen Clan opened his mouth to speak, but General Pennel spoke first.
"Who is this, mother?"
General Pennel tilted his head to the side, scanning Theron up and down.
Dean Pennel pouted. "You've forgotten about your own mother. Do you know how much pain I went through to push out that big head of yours? But you forget to greet me first now?"
"Ah…" General Pennel blinked and finally snapped his eyes away from Theron. "Sorry, sorry. Yes, ma, how are you doing? It's been a while."
"You know it's been a while too? Six years, Flinny. SIX! You barely even send letters, and when you do, they're written in that terrible chicken scratch. You don't even bother to wipe the blood off your hands first. By the time they get here, if I'm lucky, the rotting smell will be a little bit more manageable.
"You didn't even clean yourself up first before coming up here! You couldn't put on a nice robe or something? How are you going to go and see your wife? ?! What did I teach you about how to treat women?
Theron smiled from the side. He didn't have to fake this one; he just found the situation quite cute, as though he were an old man overseeing the relationship between a young mother and her son.
He didn't seem like a young boy at all.
His mother wasn't nearly as aggressive, but she had her moments. She had lectured him quite a few times about any number of things. She especially liked it when she could because there really wasn't much to get on Theron about.
General Pennel could only stand there and scratch the back of his head, seemingly not noticing the grating sound of metal against metal as his gauntlets and his helm rubbed against one another.
Finally, he managed to appease his mother with some reassurances and got the answer he wanted.
"This is Theron. A new student at the school."
General Pennel raised an eyebrow. A new student got to stand here? Since when? Theron was the only Silver Mancer on the entire city wall right now. He stuck out worse than a sore thumb.
Dean Pennel smiled, though, as though not caring whether her son was confused or not.
"What did you return for this time? This is abrupt. Usually, you write in advance."
"This…" General Pennel's voice trailed off. This wasn't exactly the sort of situation he could explain these matters in. It was probably best to go and see the Emperor first. But by the same token, he couldn't just not give his mother an answer.
Between his Emperor and Dean Pennel, there was no question as to who he feared more.
"There's been trouble at the border. A change. It's odd, there's an aggressiveness from the Mana Beasts that's been peculiar, especially under the moon, and even more so when the full moon approaches.
"What's even odder is that the new moons are more obvious in the night than they've ever been before."
Dean Pennel gave her son a look.
Mana Beasts were one of the greatest threats that human civilization faced off against, but they certainly weren't a reason to keep an army stationed out there for extended periods of time.
The real reason the Northern Ebonstone Army was already deployed was because they had enemies in the surrounding Provinces.
There were five in this region that fell under the territory of the Black Clan. The Nightingales and the Firewings were in one alliance and could be considered to be slightly more powerful than the alliance of three they faced off against.
All these years, they had pretty much always had the upper hand.
The fact that General Pennel was mentioning Mana Beasts before mentioning these more threatening enemies only meant one of two things.
Either he was severely downplaying the activity of the Mana Beasts, or the changes to the three Empires were so substantial that even though it was his mother asking, he couldn't be forthright with all of this information and could only throw out a distraction.
Something was telling Dean Pennel that it was actually the former. And in a lot of ways… that was more troublesome.
She had felt the shift in the moon that night as well, and it seemed as though something that had been slumbering for a long while had stumbled awake.
Throwing the continent into chaos seemed like an inevitability at this point.
"We've also noticed that… the full moons are happening more often. Before, it was just once a month, but now the cycles are closing in on two. And if you haven't noticed, although it's rainy season now, the rain is still more frequent than it should be. There's been rainfall the last two nights, and it seems that there'll be rainfall again tonight.
"That's the key point, though. The rain seems to be particularly more frequent during the night rather than during the day. And then—."
"How much are you planning to say here, exactly? Do you not take the Emperor's rules and regulations seriously?"
A voice abruptly cut General Pennel off. The Zhen Clan representative seemed to have lost his patience, but this representative wasn't just any man that could be easily ignored.
This man was a General in his own right, although he didn't lead one of the two strongest armies of the Empire.
The Northern Ebonstone Army was headed by General Pennel…
The Southern Ebonstone Army was headed by the brother of the Emperor, General Nightingale.
And then there was the Zhen Clan that headed the Central Ebonstone Army, one purely stationed at the core of the Empire. And it was led by this General Zhen.