“Whether my enemies come for me as singularly deadly threats or as a nuisance of armies, the same is true of them all. To the last, they are under the impression that they, somehow, are the most dangerous thing I shall ever have to face in my life.

It’s quite absurd of course. How could they possibly be the most perilous encounter in any given day, or at all likely to be the ones who manage to bring about my downfall, when I must greet everyday by first looking in the mirror and spying the one who is unequivocally the most dangerous menace to my health and sanity.”

– Xindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame, speaking at the trial Farmer Jedri Brownsaw of Cedarbrook against the charges that Jedri had filched two pails of milk from his neighbor when he’d only paid for one, moments before the 5th Imperial Legion stormed through Cedarbrook, reducing all the buildings in town, save the courthouse, to rubble and kindling.

I hadn’t planned to fall asleep. In fact, falling asleep put a significant kink in my plans. I needed that time to deal with all the problems which were still waiting there for me when I woke up. If I was being honest with myself though, and there is a first time for everything I suppose, I really did need the rest.

I can ‘sleep’ faster than most people because I can handle the detoxification and regenerative elements of sleep as fast as I’m willing to spend magic on them. That’s great for waking up feeling physically refreshed. It is much less great for waking up with a clear head though. 

If I spend five minutes seriously working on it, I can put my body in pretty good shape (well, five minutes if it hasn’t been literally put through a meat grinder). Five minutes of noodling on the problems before me though typically means it will take me at least ten minutes longer than it otherwise would have to come up with the solution for them.

To really clear my brain out, I need to give it time to work on my problems without “Worry” and “Anxiety” tag teaming against all the useful part of my mind. 

On this particular occasion though, my night’s sleep had given me something better than a fresh line of attack on my problems. The images of the other world – my other world – lingered as clear as any waking memory in my mind. So much so that I was reasonably sure it hadn’t actually been a dream but something more fundamental.

Each ‘dream image’ was darkness wrapped in shadows, but the memories held so much more than that. I hadn’t needed to see the vast and formless others which had swum around me. There wasn’t anything of them to see after all, but touching them? Moving through them? Feeling the ever changing flow within me that was the heart of my magic and the heart of me, and finding that essence moving and shifting in time with theirs?

I’d forgotten, or maybe never known, just how vast that side of myself was. 

My people, well my original people, after my declaration to the formless others I had to admit that I had people here too, and that I’d had them for a long time now. My first family though? They played and swam and danced their ever changing lives in the epipelagic reaches because the light let them change in new ways.

In the darkness of the bathypelagic, there was no shifting of colors, there was no fine patterns and every swirling textures on skin or fin or wing to tail. Much like they’d found new modes of expression and being in the sun touched waters, living on the surface world and staying in one solid form for so long, I’d discovered even more subtle modes of expression as well. 

I’d learned to be one thing, or one sort of thing, so well that the changes I’d embraced changed me in turn. I would never be fully at home in the depths of the ocean of magic which had spawned me. Despite those changes though, I still carried my past with me. I was no longer a creature solely of the Boundless Deeps, but in me their currents still flowed, and, most importantly, to them I could still speak.

That put so many ideas in my head that they all but crowded out the previous nights worries. 

Which was bad.

I knew the things I’d been worried about were legitimate concerns, and ignoring them to flit off after a half baked baker’s dozen of thoughts would only lead to disaster.

So I went to go find my friends.

Housemates.

Eh, friends. As long as I was on a roll of not lying to myself, I might as well drop that one too I supposed.

They were, for a change, not in the dining room. They were still eating of course. In a house with cooks like Sea Cotton, Piney, and Pastries there was basically no reason not to stuff your face with snacks at all times.

Okay, there may have been some reasons, but it wasn’t like we didn’t have a higher-than-average calorie-burn-rate given the sort of nonsense we’d been getting up to.

“Hey, you’re awake!” Ilyan said, being the first to notice me as he chomped down on a cinnamon cookie which smelled delicious even from where I was standing.

“Yeah, what time is it?” I asked, curious at how much sunlight was streaming in through the windows.

“Around noon?” Narla said, without looking up from the foot-thick tome which was spread on the table in front of her. Everyone else had one or more similar doorstoppers in front of them and were similarly engrossed in their contents.

Even Idrina.

“Did I miss something? I thought our instructors were going to be running us ragged for school drills or something?” I asked, stepping over to the tray that had the current selection of treats and grabbing a cake that had seven layers, chocolate, and some kind of raspberry wonderfulness going on.

“Not today,” Yarrin said.

“They expelled us,” Narla said. 

I don’t know why that hadn’t occurred to me as being a possibility.

“On what grounds?” It wasn’t that I didn’t believe them. Honestly, on reflection, I was surprised we’d made it past the first day. I was legitimately curious what completely bonkers reason the Academy’s administration had come up with for denying us the education which, I think, we’d already paid for though.

“Imperial Academy cadets are not allowed to serve as active duty soldiers,” Idrina said.

Which, okay, that made some amount of sense, except for the glaringly obvious problem with the statement.

“You’re not active duty soldiers though?” It was a question regardless of the grammatical construction.

“We are since we declared war on House Ironbriar,” Mellina said, passing me one of the textbooks when I took the seat on the couch beside her and adjacent to the chair Idrina was sitting in.

‘A History of House Dryleaf; Amended’ seemed an odd choice of reading assignments, until I remembered what, or rather who, had happened to the former Great House.

“So, and I know we talked about this, I’m just curious, who declared war on Ironbriar?” I asked, flipping through the first few pages of the roughly thousand page book as I chomped on the cake. As breakfasts went my inner wolf pup grumbled at the lack of meat, but my outer young human woman was delighted with the sweetness and the easy carbs.

“Officially, you did, but I submitted the paperwork for you,” Mellina said. “I’m your Senseshal now as a note. You can fire me whenever you like.”

I laughed at that, which earned me a sideways glance of confusion.

“You seriously think I’d let you get out that for all the gold in the Imperial Palace?” I asked. “I’ll say you can quit whenever you like, but Grammy did not raise any idiots. I am not firing anybody in this room from anything.”

“Good. I will retain the position of House Militia Commander then,” Idrina said without any emotional embellishment.

I nodded in agreement for a good second and a half before her words fully translated in my brain, at which point I froze mid-nod and turned to her, my hand raised to ask a question that my brain, mouth, and lips seemed incapable of forming.

“I’m your Diplomatic Attache,” Ilyan said, plopping down on the sofa opposite us, in between Narla and Yarrin. How he managed to cuddle up to them both was as intriguing as it seemed to be unconscious for him.

Still not able to form words properly, I turned to him and gave him the same look I’d been querying his sister with.

“It’s no bid deal,” he said. “I just know Damiana – she was the courier they sent over the with the charges, so we talked for a bit while your House Archivist and Seneschal drew up the response.”

“Archivist?” I asked, to which Yarrin, of course, raised his head and hand in answer to the question.

“Right, of course,” I said. It was the most sensible role for him and he was the most sensible one to fill it.

“And you? Got a job you’d like yet?” I asked, meeting Narla’s gaze.

“Yep,” she said, straightening up to her full sitting height. “House Executioner.”

Again, I couldn’t argue that it fit for her. Wasn’t sure I was going to have any executions that I was planning on ordering, or that I’d be willing to let anyone else bear the burden of it if I did, but she definitely projected the sort of power your want from a House Executioner.

“And House Champion,” Narla said, shooting a challenging glance in Idrina direction.

Idrina scowled but did not respond. From her scent, I knew the matter was far from settled between them, and, I suspected, was not something I wanted to get in the middle of unless I really had to.

“Right, right,” I said. “So, just one thing. Don’t you need to officially be members of a House to take on governmental roles. I don’t think student bonds qualify for that. Do they?”

“No. They don’t,” Yarrin said.

“Which is why you’ve adopted us,” Mellina said.

“I’m sorry, I’ve what now?” I asked, staring at my…my children? No that definitely did not sound right. Especially not for…

“We renounced our former houses,” Yarrin said said. “Doxle witnessed our pledge of Imperial fealty to make it official. It was the only option if we want to participate in the war on your side.”

“That’s not true,” Idrina said. “Technically she could have hired us as unhoused mercenaries.”

“But then if the High Council declared this Private and Restricted, we would have been cut off with no appeal,” Narla said.

“Not that they’d do that without a massive bribe on our part,” Ilyan said.

“Or a direct order from the Empress,” Mellina said.

“That’s only a technicality,” Yarrin said. “The Empress hasn’t had a voice in the High Council since the Calamity.”

“Well, she’s been dead since then hasn’t she?” Ilyan said. “I mean, we saw with your sister that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have an opinion on things but…”

“She’s not dead,” I said. “It’s not life as we know it, but she and the others she cast the spell with? They are very much alive.”

“Can we use that somehow?” Narla asked.

“If she hasn’t been able or willing to speak to the High Council in three hundred years, I’m guessing she won’t, or can’t, make an exception for us,” Yarrin said.

“It’s not that she won’t or can’t,” Doxle said, sauntering into the room with an unusual amount of smoke wafting from his otherwise pristine suit. “The High Council knows she’s there, and she can communicate with them directly if she chooses to, but until she can put in an appearance in body as well as spirit, they are free to continue to brand her projection as being of uncertain provenance and as likely to be a subterfuge by one of the lesser houses or even an unbound spirit.”

“They’ve done that?” Narla asked.

“Consistently since the day after the Calamity,” Doxle said. “We’ve had a few discussions on the subject, but the bylaws of the High Council are remarkably clear on the need for physical representation, and the Houses have been uncommonly united on that front for centuries now. It is a remarkable testament to their ability to work together which they utterly fail to recognize or replicate in any other endeavor.”

“So you took all of their fealty oaths?” I asked him as he collapsed into the remaining open chain in our little circle.

“In your name of course,” he said. “I trust you do not disapprove.”

“Not at all,” I said. “And it was all of them? No one took the mercenary option instead?”

“Oddly that was the case,” Doxle said. “I tried to stress how much wealthier they would become individually if we had to pay for their services, but I was an unconvincing advocate for the mercenary position it would seem.”

“And so everyone here joined what is almost certainly a doomed project to take on a power structure which has been in place for longer than our collective ages put together?” I asked.

“Well, you would need to count me out of that list for the calculation to be true,” Doxle said.

“And me as well,” Glenmorda Tinbellus Enika of the Reaper’s Mercy, aka one of Doxle’s ex’s and Idrina and Ilyan’s pacted Advisor, said, wandering into the room holding a tray she was sampling from liberally, before plopping down into Doxle’s lap.