Undine tried to sit comfortably. It should have been an easy task. The cushions on his chair would have made clouds seem harsh and overly stiff.  Whatever craftsman had manufactured the royal furniture for Senkin was beyond a master of his trade. Even the fruit of so skillful an artisan though was not enough to allow for relaxation in the presence of the monarch of Senkin.

“Have you tried the mistberry tarts?” Marie Senkin asked. “The berries are harvested from our estates in the Blue Coast Hills.”

“They are exquisite Your Majesty,” Undine said. “There isn’t any chance that they can retain that wonderful sweetness over a night of transport is there?”

The Senkin Queen huffed a small laugh.

“Thinking to start an import business?” she asked.

“Only for personal use,” Undine said. “I am spoiled by the fare you provide. For as much as I love my queen, her court cannot compare to the culinary mastery yours possesses.”

Undine felt spoiled by more than the cuisine the Queen of Senkin provided. She was also bestowing an unusual amount of attention on him, the latest of which being a dinner to which only he was invited.

Dining with royalty was something Undine was prepared for. He knew the proper forms of etiquette and had mastered the basics of making harmless and charming small talk when required, so as not to upset anyone’s digestion. Those talents were largely predicated around being in a group setting though. Having a monarch’s full and undivided attention was an arena Undine had never expected to find himself in.

“We are glad our people excel in that,” Queen Marie said. “Though we must confess that the greater variety of herbs and spices which grow in our climate work in our favor.”

“The blessings of the Sleeping Gods are nothing if not varied,” Undine said. “It’s a credit to your realm that you’ve learned to do so much with them though.”

“Yes, Senkin holds many blessings,” Marie said. “The question is for how much longer they will remain ours?”

Undine placed his cutting fork and knife back beside his plate and picked up his small portions fork. He didn’t spear the next tidbit of food though, sensing he would need to be able to speak freely for a while.

Monarchs were different from other people. They held power both magical and political that only another monarch could understand the weight of. For all that though, they were still mortal. Human or Elf, Merrow or Sylph, whatever the ruler’s race, they were still prone to the frailties and insecurities that beset any other sapient being.

Marie Senkin was no different. She was many things and more powerful than Undine knew he could guess, but despite her strength and intelligence, she was also afraid.

Afraid of losing her kindgom, afraid of the suffering her subject would endure in the conflict to come. She was one of most powerful beings in the realms, but she still wasn’t strong enough to fix the problem before her on her own.

“I cannot speak for the future with certainty,” Undine said. “But I can say that Gallagrin will not stand for the destruction of any of the realms. The Council’s advance has been halted and we will see this conflict ended in a sustainable peace.”

“Yes, we have ample evidence of that desire in the insanity of your Queen’s actions so far,” Marie said.

Undine remained silent. Even in private with the Senkin Queen he couldn’t voice his support of the notion that Queen Alari’s solo trip into the Council’s realm was lunacy, however much he agreed with that appraisal.

Marie used her fork to pick up a slice of pear that had been coated in a thick raspberry sauce. Between nibbles on the sweet fruit she said, “We have been presented with a plan to assault the Council’s territory.”

“A bold move,” Undine said, wheels turning in his mind.

“Uncharacteristically so,” Marie said. “Our generals are not prone to extremes of action, or any action which could expose them to harm. And yet, one of our most sensible generals, Pentacourt chose this afternoon to present us with a plan to assemble our Grand Army and take the battle to our enemies homeland.”

Undine held off eating anything for a moment longer.

“The circumstances are unusually dire,” he said. “Perhaps General Pentacourt was pushed to unusual action by the unusual gravity of the threat before you?”

“Or perhaps he was inspired by one of our guests from Gallagrin,” Marie said. “Judging from your Queen’s actions, a direct frontal assault seems to be the sort of strategy which your realm favors.”

Undine smiled, a sliver of his confusion at being alone at dinner with the Queen of Senkin resolved. She wanted answers, and she didn’t want them clouded by what her flock of advisors might say or think. Without them around, Undine could afford to ignore the geopolitical implications of what he said since it only mattered how Marie Senkin reacted to his words, not how her advisors would expect her to react to them.

“That also seems likely,” Undine said. “I believe General Pentacourt had dinner yesterday evening with Duke Telli. I would be shocked if they didn’t speak of the state of the invasion.”

The Queen knew who her Generals were dining with. Undine was sure of that, so acknowledging it wasn’t a violation of any confidences. More importantly trying to be circumspect would have sent exactly the wrong message to Queen Marie. She wasn’t looking to punish either Duke Telli or Undine. If she was interested in that, she would have had them dragged to the dungeon as spies.

“That leaves us in the precarious position of allowing Gallagrin to rule our realm, if only indirectly,” Marie said.

“Anyone who would claim such is unworthy of gracing your presence,” Undine said. “In his role as your advisor, Pentacourt collected strategic information. That it came from a foreign Duke is a credit to his ability to draw on diverse sources of intelligence.”

“But as the source was foreign, the plan presented is necessarily flawed,” Marie said. She took a long pull from her wineglass and relaxed back into her chair, the resignation that twisted her lips the only visible sign of the turmoil that gnawed at her.

“All plans are, by virtue of attempting to predict the unpredictable future, flawed,” Undine said. “Is there a particular weakness with the plan Pentacourt presented that renders it nonviable?”

“Yes,” Marie said. “Althought it would be kinder to say it is suboptimal. That’s the most damning part of it.”

“I am certain Duke Telli would be willing to incorporate any operational intelligence he lacked when fabricating the original plan,” Undine said.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Marie said. “Not to correct this mistake. Not if he wished to remain in our good graces. And yet, curse your Queen, he must have known that. Wretched Duke.”

“What is it that Duke Telli omitted from the plan to assault the Council’s lands?” Undine asked.

“His plan is bold and reckless and daring,” Marie said. “It’s success is success in all arenas, and so its failure would be similarly complete.”

“The Duke has played for high stakes before,” Undine said. “It was his report to my commander Lady Akorli as to the treason of his father which prevented the attempted coup last fall. If she had failed to end the threat the previous Duke Telli posed, Ren and his husband would have been executed in one of our spectacularly messy fashions.”

“We are unused to such dire stakes,” Marie said. “We are not certain that our constitution is the equal of them.”

“I don’t believe anyone is equal to the tasks life puts before them,” Undine said. “The deepest trials we face are the ones where we become more than we are.”

“And yet we can never be more than we can be,” Marie said.

“No one can ever know what we can be though,” Undine said. “That is unwritten and can only be sketched from the choices we make.”

“We wish we had your youth and optimism,” Marie said.

“I wish I had your wisdom and bearing,” Undine said.

“They would ill suit you,” Marie said. “You make too fine a gentleman to be wasted on royalty.”

“Are we not all meant to aspire to the example which royalty sets for us?” Undine asked.

“Sleeping Gods, no,” Marie said. “We had the misfortune to be mistaken for a princess when we were born and so our whole life has been shaped by the duties therein, rather than the duties of the peasant girl we sometimes feel we should have been. We make a terrible role model for those who can find their happiness without the oppression of a court and realm depending on them.”

“You make me feel that I am the fortunate one among us,” Undine said.

“Born to greater freedom were you?” Marie asked.

“Ultimately yes,” Undine said. “As you were taken for a princess when you were born, I was taken for a daughter. I won’t claim that impression was easy to correct, but it was worth the effort.”

“Your family stood against you?” Marie asked.

“No, their spirits stand with me even today,” Undine said. “My adoptive family was more mixed. Pa was delighted, he’d always wished for a son to share his craft and time with. Ma took a bit longer to come around, but once we started forging my armor together we found common ground.”

“Gallagrin is the realm of transformations,” Marie said. “Couldn’t you simply magic yourself into a more accurate form?”

“I couldn’t wait until I gained a pact spirit to resolve the issue of my identity,” Undine said. “And, in truth, pact magic offers few options in that regards.”

“We were under the impression that bodily transformation was at the heart of Gallagrin’s magic,” Marie said.

“It is, but by necessity such transformations are temporary,” Undine said. “In any pact bond there is the mortal host and the spirit. During a transformation the two are fused more strongly together than at any other time. That is why it’s so important that a clear line be maintained between the two at other times.”

“So that the spirit doesn’t overwhelm its host?” Marie asked.

“So that they don’t overwhelm each other,” Undine said. “To retain our individuality, the core essence of who we are, we must maintain some separation from each other. If we merge for too long then the distinctness that defines each of us is lost. That’s what leads to Beserkers. The essence of the host and the spirit are blended together and neither has enough sense of self to exercise any restraint. Since most transformation take place on the battlefield that means the situations Berserkers finds themselves in are invariably violent and hostile, and so they react in kind.”

“So you cannot permanently transform yourself then?” Marie asked.

“Not via pact magic,” Undine said. “I am not quite as I would have been, thanks to some alchemical potions, and not quite as I would wish to be, but I am happy with who I am now, most days anyways.”

“You’ve lead an interesting life Guardian,” Marie said. “Perhaps we would have your courage if we’d be faced with such challenges.”

“You do not wish to be me, Your Majesty,” Undine said. “The world needs a Queen Marie Senkin and anyone else would be only a poor imitation.”

“A poor imitation would be appreciated at this hour,” Marie said. “Though we would not inflict this calling on anyone else, we suppose.”

“Calling Your Majesty?” Undine asked.

“Your Duke’s plan,” Marie said. “It calls for our best and strongest forces. It calls for us.”

Undine blinked and set down his fork.

“Our forces must succeed in this endeavor,” Marie said, drawing herself up in her chair and breathing in regal authority. “We will accompany them ourselves. We will follow the example of your Queen and bring the might of Senkin’s throne to bear against the forces the Council has assembled.”

Undine saw the courage that Marie thought she lacked. The Senkin Queen knew the terrible risk she was taking. She knew she would be the prime target for every Council soldier on the field. She knew she couldn’t couldn’t hide behind her troops but would have to march in front of them, blazing a path with the power she carried as she led them all into greater danger than anyone in their realm had ever faced, and yet she was going to go anyways.

“Though I am sworn to another, and though my loyalty and honor lies with Gallagrin, if you would have me, I would march at your side and defend you from all harm,” Undine said.

Marie Senkin nodded and allowed a small, willowy smile to grace her countenance.

“We would like that,” she said. “Though you are not sworn to us, we would feel our courage bolstered if you were by our side.”

“My course is chosen then,” Undine said. “Gallagrin fights against the Green Council and I fight by your side.”

Dae caught the enemy’s blade less than an inch away from her throat. As parries went, it wasn’t her finest work, but since her head remained attached to her shoulders she didn’t worry about her technique too much.

The Council Soldier who faced her was an elf, half a head taller than Dae was. He wore a strange form fitting armor that looked like it was grown around him from some dense variety of wood. Against an unarmed foe, the soldier would have been invincible. Against someone with an axe, he was decidedly weaker and against someone with a Pact Blade, the armor offered little, if any, protection.

Dae’s sword was still the normal blade she wore as part of her standard garb. It couldn’t penetrate the soldier’s armor except through the tedious process of hacking away at the wood directly. Ogma’s blade, however, was not so encumbered.

She skewered the soldier and when he reached for a frond at his belt to magic the wound away, she spun her blade in a small arc and then stepped over his headless corpse to press the battle onwards.

“Duke Zendli has fallen,” Duchess Harli said as she stepped up to fill the gap that Ogma’s charge left.

“Did you see where?” Dae asked, scanning the battlefield again after the distraction of a Council soldier breaking through their ranks.

All around them dozens of isolated melee’s raged, each with thousands of Council forces contesting against a scant handful of Gallagrin’s nobles.

Dae’s group was the largest of the Gallagrin squads, numbering eight in total. In part that was because they were the vanguard, the squad that had rushed in the furthest and the fastest. They’d flown ahead of the rest of the Gallagrin forces in order to disrupt the Council’s communications and prevent their forces from joining together. Thanks to the unexpected attack the Council was unable to bring their full weight to bear in any specific area of the battle whose front was less a line than an amorphous blob.

The other reason Dae had chosen to surround herself with twice as many nobles as the rest of the groups had was because of Kirios, her Pact Spirit. Her hope that a battle of historic significance would be enough to coax him into transforming with her had proven to be an empty one. While the other nobles strode and leapt and flew into battle arrayed in magic the likes of which the world had rarely ever seen gathered in one place, Dae entered the fray as nothing more than herself.

“Zenli was with the group on the rise,” Duchess Harli said, pointing to the cliffs to the east of them. “He got pushed off and fell into that horde of Marsh Trolls.”

Marsh Trolls were a race unique to the Green Council’s domain. With a legendary capacity to regenerate damage, and claws that were mystically hardened to the point where they could shred steel armor like it was the thinnest paper, even some Gallagrin fairy tales featured them as terrors to be avoided.

“We’re moving east then,” Dae shouted. “Zenli found some Troll Ichor, let’s go folks before he bottles it all up!”

Troll blood retained some of the amazing healing capacities and was a frequently sought after ingredient for healing potions. It wasn’t greed to get their hands on such a valuable substance that convinced the nobles around Dae to pivot from their own battles and rush to render aid to one of their fallen brethren, but the lure certainly put some extra pep in their stride.

“Do we know Zenli even needs to be rescued?” Ogma asked, resuming her place at Dae’s side as they raced across the battlefield.

A small troop of Council forces, no more than a hundred or so, rallied in front of them, a rank of spears ready and archers behind them. The Gallagrin nobles didn’t even slow when they met them. Arrows shattered against Pact Armor chests and the spears were reduced to kindling as the nobles overran and the left the Council troops in the dust behind them.

Dae used her fellow nobles as both sword and shield, trailing a few feet in their wake to allow them to break the enemy’s ranks and create a clear path for her to run though.

Unlike many who bore a Pact Spirit, Dae had never given up on her training regime. Occasionally she’d been too hungover to perform it, but even that was becoming a thing of the past. Her fellow Pact bearers would tease her on occasion but without that commitment, it would have been impossible for Dae to keep up with her squad. As she vaulted over a pile of bodies the nobles had left in their wake and the burning in her lungs reached barely tolerable levels, she had to reflect on whether working to make something impossible merely agonizingly difficult instead was really such a brilliant overall plan.

“This assault succeeds or fails on our being untouchable,” Dae said, fighting for her breath as they ran. If she’d been transformed, the furious speed they were running would have taken nothing from her. As it was, she was slowing them down and was still barely able to speak. “If one of us is slain, the rest are going to become much more tentative. And that will lose us the fight.”

“Even if it’s someone you’d just as soon see dead?” Ogma asked.

“Yes,” Dae said between breaths. “Definitely then. This isn’t a trap to kill off the Queen’s opponents.”

“If Zenli gets a chance it could become a trap to kill you off,” Duchess Harli said. Her armor bore the pattern of stags flying through a forest. If unrestrained, she could have reached Zenli and been back already, but Dae refused to let the members of the vanguard range freely.

The noble’s had grumbled about that, but once they were crushed in the press of battle each become silently grateful to have their companions around them. They might be able to face odds of a thousand to one and win, but then again they might not and the unknown was always easier to face with an ally by your side.

“I’ll have to make sure we keep feeding him Council forces then,” Dae said.

“It seems like there’s plenty to go around,” Ogma said, spitting a goblin on her sword as he angled down towards them on a glider  that was filled with some form of combustible material.

Dae rolled away from the exploding glider, while Ogma let the fiery sap run over her, the heat providing a pleasant warming of her armor’s surface.

The Gallagrin noble’s had descended on the Council’s forces while they were still focused on creating a wide range of defensible positions. Without those, supplying troops within a foreign realm was going to be difficult to impossible, but the cost of setting the positions up had been that the Council’s army was scattered and distracted when Gallagrin’s attack fell on them.

“They probably thought they were bringing enough troops,” Dae said.

The army that marched into Gallagrin was an impressive one. Dae estimated she could see at least ten thousand troops and she knew that their forces held a backline and two flanking wings which were obscured from her vantage point.

Thanks to the Miner’s Guild, Dae was reasonably sure she knew where each of her enemy’s forces were deployed though and thanks to the speed Pact Armor provided, all of them were embroiled in battle.

From the Green Council’s view the strategy had to look like madness. Sending small squads against entire regiments of the Council’s forces. Even worse, engaging every unit of the Council’s forces at once meant that there was no backing out for Gallagrin’s fighters. With three to four Pact fighters in a squad, there was no one who could form a defensive line if the squad was injured and pinned down.

Of course if the noble’s needed to retreat, Pact Armor offered many options for quitting the battlefield faster than the Council’s forces could follow. That was something the Council might have known, but since that level of transformation wasn’t commonly available to Pact Soldiers, it wasn’t the kind of thing any sane tactical planner on the Council’s side would have given serious consideration to.

Dae smiled at the thought. The Council expected her to bring a force to bear against their invasion, but no one in all of the realms could have expected this. Under no other circumstances could she had coerced Gallagrin’s nobility to fight personally in such a small army. It would never be an option again either.

Unleashing the power of the collective nobility would be a tactic which the other realms would watch for in the future. As it was, there was still a chance that someone would react fast enough to cause trouble in the provinces which were bereft of leadership and protection, but with inter-realm conflicts in an uncertain area, Dae was willing to bet that no one would tempt fate by trying such a bold move against Gallagrin, at least until it was clear that Dae hadn’t left behind any traps to cover the absence of the various nobles.

“They have him pinned!” Duchess Harli called.

“Take them apart!” Dae ordered and held back to watch for the Council units that were repositioning to aid the Marsh Trolls. “Ogma, we’ve got another squad of Poison Archers west-southwest from here. They seem to have noticed us.”

“That’s a shame for them,” Ogma said. “Can you hold out for thirty?”

In another battle that might have referred to thirty minutes, or thirty hours, or thirty days. Given the exposure of the Poison Archer’s position and Ogma’s speed though, Dae knew she meant thirty seconds.

“Go,” Dae said. “We’ll be here.”

The Marsh Trolls were a more resilient foe than the archers. Duke Zenli was holding them off but on his own he wasn’t able to exploit the openings he could create. The arrival of Dae’s squad helped change the balance of the fight. Together the Gallagrin nobles were able to slice the Troll ranks apart fast enough to allow Zenli to reposition and join up with them. The balance of force slipped back in the Council’s favor though more Trolls threw themselves from the cliffs to join the battle, pinning the nobles and Dae between a wall of stone on one side and a wall of regenerating flesh on the other.

“I never thought I’d be wishing for a dragon to show up on the battlefield,” Dae said.

“I’ve always hated those stinking lizards,” Duchess Harli said. “But I agree. A nice spot of fire would be welcome.”

Dae parried a blow for Harli, severing the fingers from a Troll’s claws. She was surprised at the force of her own blow, and surprised as the cutting power of a sword that should have long since been blunted into little more than a metal bat. The wounds she inflicted made for a bloody mess, but, unfortunately, they didn’t inconvenience the Troll much since its fingers grew back instantly.

Or almost instantly. Duchess Harli use the opportunity to stab the Troll and drive it back into its nearest companion, the force of her blow blasting a hole through both creature’s chests.

The creatures roared in unison, but refused to die like any reasonable mortal thing would. The one Harli pinned smacked her so hard in response that she flew sideways head over heads, and skidded to a stop several dozen yards to Dae’s left.

Dae stepped forward and, on instinct, threw her off-hand knife into the Troll’s. It reared back and clutched at the hilt but Dae was able to land a palm strike on end of knife, driving it forward to sever the creature’s spine.

Paralyzed it dropped to the ground, taking Dae’s knife with it. She let it stay there. The only method she had for preventing the creature’s return to instant healing was to leave the knife in place so that the spinal cord couldn’t regrow through it.

While that seemed to be a viable tactic against a single enemy however, it proved insufficient for the situation at hand where they were faced with more Trolls than Dae could carry knives to disable. In fact, before she could even unsheath a second knife, another Troll knocked her to the ground, bloodying her lips and bruising her arm and side. Before it could finish her off however, Duchess Harli was back, a spinning swirl of blades and fire that unravelled the Troll standing above Dae.

Dae kicked herself back and away from the blazing remains as they dropped onto her.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Another goblin tried to dive unto me,” Harli said. “Looks like their glider bombs work just fine on Trolls.”

“I’ll have to get one of those for myself,” Duke Zenli said, joining them as he spun around a troll. Dae couldn’t see his face, since it was hidden under his pact helmet, but the formerly sour and bitter man sounded surprisingly cheerful. Despite the poor turn he’d taken in being pushed off a cliff and surrounded by unbeatable enemies, the rush of battle seemed to agree with the Duke.

“Your family is good with alchemicals isn’t it?” Dae asked, recalling one of the pillars of the Zenli wealth.

“We have a few prodigies in our ranks,” Zenli said.

“Including yourself as I recall,” Dae said. Zenli had lost faith in Alari, but he was still a son of Gallagrin and on the battlefield that was enough to unite them in fine spirits.

“I’ve dabbled a bit,” Zenli said, a hint of pride in his voice.

“If the goblin fire is interesting to you, collect as much as you want,” Dae said. “We can wait before pressing forward again.”

“Really?” Zenli asked. “There’s still a lot of ground to reclaim.”

“Take your time and collect your samples so they won’t spoil,” Dae said. “We’ll watch your back.”

“Why are you doing this?” Zenli asked.

“We’re not just here to defeat them,” Dae said. “We’re going to make them regret ever coming into our realm. If there’s anything we can take from them, take it. If there’s anything we can learn from them, learn it. I intend to fight this battle once, and only once. When it’s done, I want the world to look at what happened here and never desire to come within a hundred miles of our realm bearing any hostile intent.”

Zenli shook his head and sighed.

“If only our queen had your heart,” he said.

“Who do you think gave me those exact orders?” Dae asked. “She’s merciful to our people, but she’s far from weak. Believe in her again, just like she believes in you.”

Dae marched at the head of the strangest column of troops which Gallagrin had ever assembled. She walked with a smile on her face but the song in her heart held notes of apprehension

“There are nobles who will never forgive you for this,” Ogma Daili said, keeping pace with Dae easily as they trekked along the high road that lead to Gallagrin’s northern province of Moon’s Reach.

“They can join the ranks of the ones who’ll never forgive me for beheading Telli and the Paxmer bastard,” Dae said. “The important thing is that they fight for us.”

“Oh, they’ll do that,” Ogma said. “For as much as they hate you, there’s a lot to be won in hating the Green Council more. Even the ones who are allied with the Council serve to gain from this expedition.”

“It’s the wonderful thing about our nobles,” Dae said. “Offer them just a little chance to plunder a neighboring realm and you only have to demote a handful of them for the others to see the error of their life choices.”

The road to Moon’s Reach was broad and well maintained, thanks in no small part to the policies Alari had enforced over the years of her reign. That the road they had complained about maintaining made their trip easier was something the marching nobles refused to acknowledge. They were enjoying their grumble-fest far too much to allow rational thought into their arguments.

“I understand why you didn’t allow the sky carriages to bring us closer to a defensible position, but why restrict my scouts from using them as well?” Ogma asked.

“For the same reason,” Dae said. “The Council has penetrated our border, but they’re not used to fighting on our terrain. They’re trying to dig in and establish supply lines. We don’t want to give them any more idea that we’re coming for them than we have to.”

“Don’t we need to know where they are though?” Ogma asked. “You’ve got my scouts ranging forward of us, but not far enough to give a complete picture of the Council’s deployments.”

“That’s because I already know how they’ve laid their forces out,,” Dae said. “Your scouts are preceeding us with unlimited kill orders to blind our enemy. I want their vision of us to darken slowly. It’ll be nightfall by the time we make it to Moon’s Reach and by morning it’s going to be ours again. Between then and now I think it’s important that we create a few new nightmares for the Council forces to bring home with them.”

“How do you know where to find them though?” Ogma asked. “Scrying spells?”

“I wish that was an option, but the Council’s spellcraft is significantly better than ours,” Dae said. “Even with the advantage of casting into our realm, we haven’t been able to pierce their veils.”

“How do we know my scouts aren’t walking into a trap then?” Ogma asked.

“They are,” Dae said. “But by now they’ll have connected with the Miner’s Guild, so any traps ahead of them will be easily avoidable.”

“The Miner’s Guild?” Ogma asked.

“If we fly above Moon’s Reach in sky carriages, the Council will spot us, and possibly bring us down, their air forces are formidable too,” Dae said. “But the Old Roads and the Deep Fortresses are something they can’t see or spy on. From down below though, the Miner’s can hear everything that’s going on above them.”

“How did you get the Dwarves to work with you? They’re very protective of their Under Cities I thought?” Ogma asked.

“The guild employs more than just Dwarves”, Dae said. “And I owe them a huge debt for the work they did in helping us assault Paxmer. They like to keep investments of that sort afloat, and if our realm is conquered my debt to them will die along with me. Also, I promised them the mineral rights to their cities and holdings.”

Ogma stopped marching and blinked.

“You did what?”

“It turns out that Queen Alari wasn’t kidding when she gave me the ability to speak in her voice,” Dae said, her gaze fixed ahead while a smile spread across her lips.

“The nobles are going to assassinate you,” Ogma said. “You’ve stolen away their wealth.”

“Some of it,” Dae said. “The reality though is that the Under Clans already own most of mines that produce any real value. The rest are lying unused due to competing claims over their ownership. Those claims are now resolved. That should work out well for the nobles too. They’ll no longer be taxed on assets that aren’t productive and while the Under Clans have gained the rights to pull up precious gems and enchantable ore, they’ll also all be trading in the Royal Market to sell to the businesses who specialize in refining and crafting with their materials.”

“So the noble’s lose money on the resources, but gain it back on the worked goods, the Under Clans lose money on the price of their materials but make it up in volume of sales, and the crown loses money on taxes on the mines but makes it up on taxes on the sale of goods?” Ogma asked.

“And everyone makes slightly more money because the overall system is slightly more efficient. Kemoral thought of the idea,” Dae said. “He’s talented with logistics like that.”

“They’re still going to assassinate you,” Ogma said. “Just for proving them to be needlessly stubborn for centuries now.”

“They’re welcome to try,” Dae said. “The Queen didn’t want me to kill her subjects, but if they chose to commit suicide on my blade, I can’t help but feel it would be the realm’s advantage.”

“This upcoming battle will be a prime chance for anyone who has that in mind,” Ogma said.

“The thought has occurred to me,” Dae said.

“So you’ll stay back at the command tent then?” Ogma asked.

“That would be the safe and smart move,” Dae nodded and picked at her teeth. The mountain air was refreshing but what was to come was going to be messy.

“Safe and smart, so there’s no chance it’s what you’re going to do, is there?” Ogma asked, causing Dae’s smile to broaden even further.

Ogma was fun to work with. The Master Scout seemed had grasped the essentials of Dae’s character shortly after they first met. More importantly, despite being lower rank, Ogma was willing to challenge Dae’s choices, something the Queen’s Knight knew she needed since she didn’t even try to think clearly in some cases.

“I’m going to lead the first charge,” Dae said.

“Please make sure to tell me when that will be so that I can bind you up in our strongest ropes,” Ogma said. “I know that will technically count as assaulting a superior officer, but I believe Queen Alari will not only forgive me but also pin a medal on my chest.”

Dae snickered. Ogma wasn’t wrong. Alari would be furious with Dae for risking herself in battle needlessly, especially given the fact that Dae couldn’t transform freely.

“Our queen left me behind to coordinate the realm’s defense and see that the noble’s came together,” Dae said. “If any of them want to kill me, I at least want them wading through a horde of Council troops to make the attempt. Also, I think the safest place for me to be is surrounded by the nobles who I know are still fully committed to Alari’s reign. By fighting at their side, I can honor the sacrifices they’ve made and show that we are willing to support them, with blood, if need be.”

“Why lead from the vanguard though?” Ogma asked. “That’s the most dangerous unit to be part of.”

“Which is why I need to be there,” Dae said. “Aside from the training they received in their youth, and the skills and knowledge carried by their pact spirits, many of these people have never fought before. I need them to see that I am asking no more of them than I am willing to give myself. We’ve lost too much of Gallagrin’s spirit over the last decade. It’s time we show that we remember how strong we can be together.”

“We are a rather small army though, are we not?” Ogma asked.

“We number over a hundred,” Dae said.

“By last count, the Green Council’s forces numbered in the tens of thousands,” Ogma said. “Including creatures the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

“It’s a shame the numbers are so unbalanced,” Dae said. “They really should have brought more troops.”

“More? You think we can win?” Ogma asked. “I thought this was a delaying tactic until Senkin’s forces could rally and draw the Council back to fight on that front.”

“If anything it’s the reverse,” Dae said. “We’re going to drive so hard into the Green Council’s army that the assault on Senkin should weaken. If we’re successful, the Green Council will feel compelled to deploy their strongest units and seek out as much additional magic as they can muster in order to deal with us.”

“I say again though, there’s only barely more than a hundred nobles in this army,” Ogma said. “We didn’t even let them bring their personal troops.”

“There wasn’t room in the sky carriages,” Dae said. “And they weren’t needed. The Council’s forces are so numerous because they’re all regular troops, even if they are from little seen races like the Insect Warriors.”

“Tens of thousands of regular forces are still quite formidable,” Ogma said.

“Agreed, but consider the true might of the people behind us,” Dae said. “Even the ones who aren’t fighters, still carry a Noble’s Pact Spirit. Our Pact Soldiers, the ones with the weakest spirits, who can only manifest a single piece of armor or weapon, are worth a dozen regular troops, and our Pact Warriors are worth a dozen Pact Soldiers each. A Knight, at least one who takes the job seriously, is worth two dozen Pact Warriors and the Noble a Knight is sworn to holds more power than three dozen of their knights.”

“That approaches a very large number,” Ogma said.

“In simpler terms, with Gallagrin’s nobles united, we alone could demolish an invading army that numbered in the millions,” Dae said.

“You make it sound as though our victory is assured,” Ogma said.

“It’s not,” Dae said. “We have the advantage in power and familiarity with the terrain, but the Council could turn that back against us, or bait us into situations where the extreme concentration of our force would be a detriment.”

“What would you have me do then?” Ogma asked.

“Stay in the background and coordinate communications,” Dae said.

“I can manage that as easily from the front lines as I can from the back,” Ogma said.

“You’re not wrong about the vanguard being a dangerous position,” Dae said. “And unlike our merry band of nobles, you’ve done nothing to warrant placing your life in that level of peril.”

“Do I look like I come from another realm?” Ogma asked, offense heavy in her voice.

“No, with eyes like that you’re as Gallagrin as they come,” Dae said.

“Do I look like a coward of some stripe?” Ogma asked.

Dae chuckled, seeing where the conversation was going.

“You’re bravery is apparent too,” she said. “And there is, of course, room for you in the vanguard if you wish to run with us.”

“Good,” Ogma said. “Because we all know that’s who’ll have the first chance at the really good plunder.”

“Oh my Sleeping Gods!” Dae said, wry amusement in her tone. “The Gallagrin spirit is alive and strong and I’ve found it’s wellspring! That’s the most Gallagrin thing I’ve ever heard someone say.”

“Some things run deeper than even blood,” Ogma said.

“Yes, we’re all going to have a bit of fun with this,” Dae said as they crested the last hill before the Moon’s Reach valley.

Waiting below them were thousands of the Green Council’s forces, foreign troops who had no idea of the kind of hell that was going to be unleashed on them.

Dae called to Kirios, asking if he was ready for them to transform again, only to receive the same sensation she had the last several times she’d asked. If the need was great enough, he would be there for her, but more time was required.

The assault on the Green Council was going to be a battle that would be remembered through the ages, for good or for ill. Dae could only hope that Kirios would find that to be a great enough need.

Rendolan Telli sipped the exquisite wine his host had provided, using the moments of appreciation for the vintage that were expected of him, to formulate a response to the delicate question that General Pentacourt raised.

“Vice Commander Lafli’s whereabouts?” Ren said, placing his glass back onto the velvet tablecloth and relinquishing the social armor it provided. “As I told the queen, she was forced to leave suddenly and wanted me to express her regrets for the swiftness of her departure. With news of the Green Council’s declaration of war against Gallagrin surely you can imagine how our plans in coming here to seek a peaceful resolution to your conflict have been dealt a telling blow.”

General Pentacourt placed his own glass down on the table as well and smiled at Ren. It wasn’t a cruel or sharp smile, but it held the menace of a man who knew he was playing a game, and being played, and who could sense that the story being presented to him was missing critical elements. Ren disliked perceptive foes as much as he enjoyed clever friends. The problem was in telling which of the two Pentacourt would prove to be.

“I can imagine many things,” Pentacourt said. “For instance I can imagine many reasons why our war room would be missing a pair of ledgers. What I can’t seem to imagine is any good results coming from that.”

“Ledgers you say? From a war room? I would have to concur. No doubt they contained critical information. Troops movements and composition if I could hazard a guess?”

“Oh nothing that bad,” Pentacourt said. “We guard those sorts of ledgers with much greater care. No, these only held supply requisitions and logistic correspondences.”

Ren winced. Pentacourt had his suspicions, but he didn’t have as complete a picture as Ren did.

Vice Commander Lafli hadn’t stolen the ledgers. Ren didn’t know her well, but anyone Queen Alari chose to trust with her life was not going to go renegade for such a minor reason. Her sister Jyl though was another story.

“Supply requisitions?” Ren asked. “Are you, by any chance, in the habit of fabricating the data in those ledgers?”

“No, I’m afraid our bureaucracy works poorly enough even when feed with accurate information,” Pentacourt said. “The Sleeping Gods would rise back up if we asked those poor sops to deal with sorting real work orders from faked ones.”

“I’m afraid you may be facing a much worse problem than you know then,” Ren said.

“My realm is under attack by a hostile force which has, apparently been preparing for this day for centuries, and our best defense lies in a deposed queen of another realm taking control of the military forces we have present in the area,” Pentacourt said. “Do tell me of a problem that could be worse than that.”

“As a child I spent a significant amount of time reading,” Ren said. “It seemed to please my father the Duke. He believed it helped prepare me for my role as my brother’s exchequer.”

“You were not in line for the Ducal throne then?” Pentacourt asked, shifting back in his seat and indicating his tolerance of the digression by tilting his head to the side. Dinner in Senkin was a time to discuss light topics usually, but a private meal offered the opportunity to speak freely that was rarely afforded to high ranking generals or Dukes.

“I was third in line, by my father’s express order, behind first my elder brother and then my sister,” Ren said. “Needless to say, things did not work out quite how he hoped in that arena.”

“My condolences on the loss of your siblings,” Pentacourt said.

“Oh, they’re both still alive,” Ren said. “One is a wanted fugitive though and the other is taming dragons.”

Pentacourt paused, raising an eyebrow as he read Ren’s face for sincerity. Nobles weren’t often allowed to survive long enough to become fugitives if they crossed their rulers and no one, not even the lord of Paxmer, truly “tamed” dragons.

“Yes, my husband is a vampire and I’m considered the normal member of the family,” Ren said.

“Sleeping Gods preserve us but your realm is mad,” Pentacourt said.

“No one in Gallagrin will deny that,” Ren said. “It’s even a source of some pride. Of course we see all the rest of you as mad as well, just differently so.”

“As interesting as that is, I don’t quite follow how it connects to the loss of our ledgers as being a terrible threat to my realm?” Pentacourt said.

“Ah, yes. In my studies I was always fascinated by where victories began,” Ren said. “The classic stories point to moments of heroism by this commander or that knight but when I looked at the record of those battles, the bright moments that were lauded were often an inevitability by the time they occurred.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Pentacourt said.

“Take the Battle of Blue Spire,” Ren said, leaning forward and arranging the salt shaker and plates to illustrate the long ago battlefield. “The only tale remembered of it comes from the final battle wherein the Steward of Blue Spire Keep road out of the gate with a mere dozen knights and carved a path to the Commander of the forces from Singing Rocks Glen who had besieged them for months.”

“None of these names or places are familiar to me,” Pentacourt said.

“Most in Gallagrin don’t remember them either, just the bawdy ballad of the Steward and the lover she stole from the Duke of Glar, where Singing Rocks Glen is found,” Ren said. “The important bit though is that Singing Rocks was successfully sieging Blue Spire Keep. Food stores had run out, the rats were all eaten and starvation was just starting to set in. In one triumphal charge though, the Steward managed to break the siege and through single combat end the threat poised by the Duke of Glar’s forces.”

“Sounds heroic,” Pentacourt said. “And now you will tell me that the besieging troops numbered no more than twenty and the charge took place on the back of Mountain Mammoths or some insanity I presume?”

“No, the charge, as best as I can determine, was every bit as impressive as the tales made it out to be,” Ren said. “The Steward’s troops were vastly outnumbered but with her leadership they absolutely crushed the forces that were waiting and prepared for them. At least the ones the encountered in their charge to army’s commander.”

“How badly were the odds against them?” Pentacourt asked.

“The enemy forces had them matched at least one hundred to one, by the most conservative accounts,” Ren said. “The key however is that the Steward devised a path that ensured they didn’t have to fight all of their foes, only a small subset who stood between Blue Spire Keep and the Commander.”

“I feel as though the tale should continue with the rest of the army annihilating the Steward’s forces, regardless of how well her strategy worked,” Pentacourt said.

“That is because you have a realistic view on how warfare works,” Ren said. “And you are correct, the Steward’s forces were doomed. They rode out with the thought that a death in battle would ensure that they didn’t die of starvation. The Steward however promised them more than that; she promised them victory.”

“And apparently delivered, but how?” Pentacourt asked.

“As the Commander of the besieging army fell, the King’s forces arrived at the besiegers rear flanks. There was a brief skirmish, but after a few hundred additional casualties, the besiegers surrendered, being unwilling to fight a superior foe who was also their sworn ruler.”

“Rather convenient timing for the Steward,” Pentacourt said.

“Yes, that bothered me too,” Ren said. “Then I found the provisioner’s log for Blue Spire Keep.”

“And what insight did that shed?” Pentacourt asked.

“The siege began just before the end of winter,” Ren said. “It’s a terrible time to move an army, but a fantastic opportunity to catch a castle at the low ebb of its food stores. The Duke who ordered the attack chose his time to strike exceedingly well given that his army was able to traverse the mountains and lay in the siege while keeping its own supply lines open. By rights the castle should have starved out within a week.”

“And yet it survived?” Pentacourt said.

“They held on for close to two months,” Ren said. “And the provisioner’s log explained why. What the besiegers didn’t know was that Blue Spire Keep had been selected as the site of the King’s First Vernal Festival of the year. The staff at Blue Spire had stockpiled supplies to last them to the exact day the King was scheduled to arrive with the Royal Army.”

“Quite convenient,” Pentacourt said.

“Somewhat, though less so as they were unable to receive the additional supplies they would have needed to be able to host the festival itself,” Ren said. “The important part however is that the Steward knew the day the King would arrive. Their survival and victory were all but assured given the assistance that was due to arrive. Her charge was an attempt win glory and prevent the Commander of the besiegers from presenting the Duke’s case for the return of the Duchess.”

“One would think the Duchess would be able to present such a case for herself,” Pentacourt said.

“That presupposes that the Duchess was not the one who instigated her flight to Blue Spire,” Ren said. “The bawdy ballad suggests otherwise and the copy of her diary I’ve read makes the ballad seem chaste by comparison.”

“Scandalous,” Pentacourt, “But I’m afraid I’m beginning to see the shape of your concerns with our missing ledgers. On their own they may seem innocuous but read with the proper eye they could reveal a great deal about the disposition of our forces.”

“Yes, they would be an enormous boon to an enemy who already is already in motion and has reason to search for the soft targets rather than tangle with an unexpected thorn that has arisen,” Ren said.

“You speak of our dear ally, the former Queen of Paxmer?” Pentacourt said. “I must confess I still don’t quite know what to make of her.”

“Assume she is a more dire threat than the Green Council, and also your best hope for retaining the sovereignty of your realm,” Ren said. “Despite her reduction in position, I believe her to be the second most dangerous person in all the realms at present.”

“I am curious as to your Queen’s designs in bringing her into Senkin?” Pentacourt said. “It seems almost a declaration of war on its own.”

“I cannot claim to be privy to my Queen’s reasoning but I believe releasing the Paxmer Queen into a situation where she needs to overcome impossible odds with insufficient and under trained forces is a gesture of friendship and respect.”

“To Senkin?” Pencourt asked. “I can see how it’s to our benefit but I believe a troop of Pact Knight would have accomplished the same result.”

“I was thinking more that the gesture was directed towards Haldri Paxmer,” Ren said. “The ex-queen’s renown can only swell from her actions here, and there’s little which dragons seem to like more than adulation.”

“I imagine in this instance, she might also find reinforcements rather agreeable,” Pentacourt said.

“And yet you cannot send any to her,” Ren said.

“So says my Queen,” Pentacourt said. “She’s concerned that Haldri Paxmer’s position is not a tenable one to support the defense of the realm. So while the battle rages, we dither over where to send the bulk of our forces.”

“I have to wonder if Queen Marie’s concerns lie less with the tactical realities of Haldri Paxmer’s location and more with the strategic issue of sending more troops to be subborned by the Dragon Queen’s charisma and acumen,” Ren said.

“You are not alone in that suspicion,” Pentacourt said.

“Regardless though, your Queen is right not to send aid to the front lines,” Ren said.

“And why would that be?” Pentacourt asked. “Because of the stolen ledgers?”

“In a sense, yes,” Ren said. “Even without their loss, the Green Council’s next move will be to broaden their assault. They gain nothing by contesting with a tenacious foe and everything by crushing the Senkin forces who remain isolated from each other.”

“And yet we can’t gather all our might together into a Grand Army of the realm without leaving ourselves exposed to widespread devastation,” Pentacourt said.

“That is not entirely true,” Ren said.

“In what particulars?” Pentacourt asked.

“Given that the delegation I came here with was dispatched to facilitate peace, I am loathe to point this out, but there is one certain method of finding a spot to defend your realm from. One strategy which will guarantee that the Green Council will meet you at the place of your choosing.”

“What trickery do you speak of?” Pentacourt asked.

“No trickery at all,” Ren said. “Just this; you must attack their realm. Strike into their heart and force them to recall their troops. Place them on the defensive, and you can set the pace and parameters of the conflict.”

Pentacourt leaned back and steepled his hands in front of his face, considering for a moment the impact of Ren’s suggestion.

“My Queen will not be happy with the prospect of extending our forces like that,” Pentacourt said.

“Then perhaps you can offer her this,” Ren said, “If Senkin pushes into the Green Council’s territory, you will not march alone. By this time tomorrow, Gallagrin will have responded to the Council’s declaration of war and will be marching across the high mountain borders. The Council may have plans in place for dealing with its neighbors but they will not be ready for the forces my queen has put in play against them.”

Alari rode on the Warbringer’s right shoulder, her high perch giving her as much visibility as the thick forest they moved through would allow. Thanks to the Gallagrin Pact Spirit, she had stronger and richer senses than anything else that walked in the enchanted woods, but she knew that wouldn’t necessarily be enough to alert her to the next attack the Green Council sent against them.

Since they began their trek, Alari and Iana had faced a flight of murder birds, a deadfall into a pit filled with a variety of subterranean enemies and a river that rose up on its own and tried to drown them. None of the  attacks had been announced, and none of the ambushes had gone well for the Council’s forces.

Each cost Alari some of the magic she carried, but, for as formidable as their assailants were, the Council had yet to bring a serious threat onto the game board.

“I don’t understand why they’re blocking me out,” Iana said, the Warbringer rendering her voice into a bass so deep it shook the trees they were passing back. “They’re supposed to trust me to make decisions. Why aren’t they trusting me on this?”

The plant giant swatted a pair of trees with enough force to reduce them to kindling.

“You were afraid I would corrupt you,” Alari said, “That’s likely what they’re afraid of too.”

Alari leaned against the Warbringer’s head, allowing herself a moment of real fatigue. Banishing the weakness of her human form with Gallagrin’s magic was perfectly possible, but conserving her strength wasn’t a bad thing either. With Gallagrin’s help Alari could have lived free from pain or the need for rest, but doing so came with a price. To live as a human, meant to experience human weaknesses. Some of the past monarchs of Gallagrin had ignored that and become cold and removed as time went on, their empathy for their people withering as their power insulated them from the struggles that beset those they ruled. Alari knew she couldn’t afford to be fully human under the present circumstances, but her designs were forged, in part, from her empathy. The ability to understand and care for others wasn’t a weakness in her hands, but rather the most dangerous weapon she possessed and she knew she couldn’t afford to let it grow too dulled from disuse.

“But you’re not doing that, and from what Dagmauru said it should be stupid to worry about that,” Iana said. “Our magic is deeper and stronger than yours. Even if you could enchant me, the Council is supposed to be protected. From everything.”

“No one’s protected from everything,” Alari said. “But I’m sure their defenses are formidable. Certainly beyond any enchantments I could cast. That’s not Gallagrin’s speciality.”

The Warbringer’s rolling gait wasn’t the most comfortable transport Alari had ever taken, but it was relaxing nonetheless. The big problems, the ones that faced the realms in general, she was moving through the heart of them, but her die was already cast. The temptation to keep trying to do more was hard to fight, but she had to comfort herself that some steps in her scheme had to be given time to play out. The other realms needed the opportunity to see what was happening and to react to it.

For the realms which didn’t have a border in the conflict, like the Sunlost Isles or Authzang, those reactions would be slow and carefully considered. The world was changing and, until people had a sense of what the new rules were, no one in power would be overly anxious to risk their positions by moving too quickly.

“Hmm, is that why I’m doing this?” Alari didn’t mean to speak her thoughts aloud but they slipped out before she noticed them flittering over her lips.

“You’re try to learn to how to enchant people?” Iana asked, confused by unspoken the change of context.

“No, I was just wondering if I’m here because I don’t want to be queen anymore,” Alari said. It was a thought that had bubbled close to surface hundreds of times but when she’d always managed to avoid paying too much attention to it.

“Why wouldn’t you want to be queen? You’re so powerful!” Iana asked, the steps of the Warbringer slowing as she twisted to see Alari and read her expression.

“I never wanted to be powerful,” Alari said. “I just didn’t want the wrong people to be in charge and the only choice I thought I had was to take over myself since there wasn’t anyone else who could do the job.”

“What about now?” Iana asked.

“That’s the question I’m asking myself,” Alari said.

“That doesn’t sound like a leader,” Iana said. “Dagmauru taught us that we had to project strength and confidence no matter what we faced. If someone who’s following us sees that we’re hurt or scared or weak, they’ll lose their faith that we can make things ok.”

“That’s pretty standard leadership advice,” Alari said. “My tutors taught me the same thing. I don’t know that they had it right though. Pretending that a role is effortless, or that you’re not afraid of terrifying situations is a lie, and when the shell of lies breaks you’re left in a worse position that if you’d been honest all along. ”

“That sounds nice but running scared in battle will lead to people being killed,” Iana said.

“It depends which direction you’re running,” Alari said. “Run towards the enemy, even when you’re full of fear, even when your troops know you’re full of fear, but they can see you rising above it? That can be one of the most powerful forms of leadership.”

“It’s easier if you don’t feel the fear at all,” Iana said, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Alari narrowed her eyes.

“Did Dagmauru give you elixirs to help with that?” she asked.

“Not for me. For some of the weaker recruits, yes,” Iana said. “Leaders are allowed to tap into the Deep Roots through.”

“What are those?” Alari asked.

“They’re how we communicate,” Iana said. “In battle we commune with the Elder Thanes and draw on their courage and strength. It’s still hard, but with their strength directing us it’s a little easier.”

“When they commune with you are they offering encouragement or do they take control of your actions,” Alari asked.

“They encourage,” Iana said. “At least, now they do. Most of the time.”

“When do they take your control of yourself away?” Alari asked.

“When we’re not doing what they want us to,” Iana said.

“That may be why they’re not letting you contact them,” Alari said.

“Why? I didn’t do anything wrong,” Iana said.

“No,” Alari said. “They did. And if they try to take control of you again, I’m likely to do something politically unwise about it.”

“But I don’t want to lose my command,” Iana said, stopping the Warbringer. “You’re going to talk the other realms into backing us and they’ll see that I’m still loyal.”

“I’m going to tell the realms what Senkin did,” Alari said. “I don’t know things will turn out after that. Not exactly. I just know that the next steps the realms take have to be built on the truth. Without that we’re going to fall apart.”

“Would that be so bad?” Iana asked. “Senkin’s terrible, Gallagrin’s bad enough that you don’t want to be queen of it, and all the rest of the realms are worse than that.”

“So burn it all then?” Alari asked. “Even your troops? Even your friends?”

“No,” Iana said. “They haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Neither have you. But if the realms fall apart, they’ll suffer with the rest of us just the same. That’s the problem with letting things fall apart,” Alari said. “Everything’s connected. If Senkin burns it’s going to affect Gallagrin, and Sunlost and even the Council, no matter how isolated you try to be. There’s a better way though.”

“What’s that?” Iana asked.

“We work together,” Alari said. “Even with all the power I’m carrying, I can’t do something as simple as take a walk in these woods and get to where I need to be. That’s all on you.”

“But that doesn’t count, it’s too simple,” Iana said.

“Nothing’s too simple to count,” Alari said. “And talking with me? That proves you’re braver than anyone on the Green Council. They didn’t foresee that I’d bring Gallagrin’s power into the their domain like this. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re half terrified trying to figure out what I really plan to do here and half ecstatic about the opportunity my being here offers them. If they had an ounce of your courage, they’d be demanding a meeting with me rather than desperately trying to keep me isolated from them.”

“What can you do to them though?” Iana asked.

“Talk to them, and then tell the other monarchs of the realms the truth of what they’ve done,” Alari said.

“Why would they be afraid of that?” Iana asked.

“That’s an excellent question,” Alari said. “I didn’t expect it to be, but based on their behavior, I have to guess the answer is something worse than treating people how they treated you.”

“What’s wrong with how they treated me?” Iana asked. “They always provided for me.”

“For your body, yes,” Alari said. “But turning children into weapons is the kind of behavior the other realms won’t be comfortable with endorsing.”

“I’m not a child,” Iana said and Alari could hear each of Iana’s ten years striving to back up that assertion.

“That’s the problem,” Alari said. “They stole that time from you.”

“But humans have such short lifespans, if we’re not trained early we barely live long enough to do anything useful at all,” Iana said.

Hearing the desperation in Iana’s voice, an odd thought occurred to Alari.

“We’re not quite that transient,” Alari said. “How old do you think I am?”

“Twelve?” Iana’s guess was met with instant laughter from Alari. “No? Well how old are you then?”

“Over twice that,” Alari said. “And I should easily live more than double my current years, and hopefully even double that again.”

“That’s impossible,” Iana said. “That’s long enough to watch trees grow. No humans live that long.”

“How long do you think humans live?” Alari asked.

“Between twelve and thirteen years,” she said. “Beyond that we change and our senses dim so we can’t be Warbringer pilots anymore. That’s when we go to the Wintering Green and wait to be reborn into a new life.”

“When I was twelve, I started to change,” Alari said. “My father was well into his madness by then, and so my caretakers were growing more distant. I had no idea what was happening until…until Dae found out for me.”

“Who was Dae?” Iana asked.

“She was my best friend,” Alari said. “She was the one who kept me sane, who kept me myself.”

“What happened to her?” Iana asked.

“I made a terrible mistake and let her go away,” Alari said. “I thought it was the right thing to do for her.”

“But it wasn’t?” Iana asked.

“I don’t know,” Alari said. “She learned a lot, and I learned a lot, but we were both miserable.”

“So what did you do?” Iana asked.

“Well, I got thrown off a castle and she came to rescue me, and aside from silly things like invading foreign realms, we’ve been together ever since,” Alari said.

“Do you love her?” Iana asked.

“More than my heart can bear,” Alari said. “She’s what I’m doing all this for. She’s why I have to make this world a better place.”

“I wish I had someone like that,” Iana said.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in the world quite like my Adae,” Alari said. “But there may be someone who could be to you what she is to me. That’s the world I’m willing to fight for; one where you can find that person.”

“But what if they banish me?” Iana asked. “They’ve cut me off from the Roots. What if I’m cut off from everything? What if I have nowhere to live anymore?”

“The ones who cut you off have something to hide,” Alari said. “I promise you that we’ll bring it to light. You will have your home back when this is done even if I need to depose those who would keep you from it with my own hands.”

For a brief moment, the ghostly echo of royal blood ran down Alari’s hands, giving the sickle of her smile a terrifying finality.

Iana’s heart felt like it was pumping liquid confusion through her veins. Less than a day earlier she’d been swallowed up by a pure crimson certainty, righteous anger thundering in her ears as the tread of her Warbringer thundered across the land.

“The interfaces are all under your control now,” the Gallagrin Queen said. “You can do as you wish with your machine.”

Being nestled in the heart of the Warbringer held both a disquieting warmth and a comforting dread.

She shouldn’t be inside a Warbringer. Only if a sanctuary was breeched were the pilots evacuated inside their war machines, and even then only if the pilots lives were in immediate danger.

Iana’s sanctuary was more than breeched. The Gallagrin Queen had destroyed it utterly. Using the power of Iana’s own Warbringer. The destruction had been almost incidental though, a casual shortcut to facilitate their conversation. Despite that Iana’s life didn’t seem to be in immediate danger. At least not from the Gallagrin Queen.

Iana felt more unsure than she ever had in her life, but against her deepest wishes, she found herself believing the Queen’s words. Whatever else Queen Alari wanted, Iana didn’t believe the Gallagrin meant her any harm.

Which made no sense. They were enemies.

Except it was her own people who’d abandoned her. Who’d tried to kill her.

Iana had no illusions about the Stone Warriors’ attack. It had been aimed at her, and the raw flood of power they unleashed was hundreds of times more that should have been required to ensure a kill. The only reason Iana was still alive was because the Gallagrin Queen had reacted without a moment’s hesitation and had been strong enough to weather an attack that could have obliterated a hundred armored soldiers.

“You’re weapons systems are live and loaded as well,” Alari said. “We can disable them if you’d prefer, but we don’t believe a fiction that you are our prisoner will serve you as well as a real capacity to defend yourself.”

“I don’t understand this,” Iana said, testing her Warbringer’s responsiveness. A lifetime of training sent her fingers and toes flickering over the sensory vines inside the Warbringer’s command bower.

The layout was the same as the remote bower she’d been piloting the machine from but the resonance strength was profoundly greater. Good pilots talked about “becoming one” with their Warbringers when they reached a state of perfect focus and synch with their living machines. Sitting inside the plant machine though provided such a direct and unfiltered connection to its systems that Iana felt herself slipping deeply enough into the Warbringer’s senses she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to part from it again.

“There is very little to understand,” Alari said. “You have your machine restored to you. You are free to leave with it, attack us, stay here, or to travel with us. We would advise against attacking us, but if the Council requires such a show of loyalty we will not hold your actions against you. We are well aware of the unreasonable demands those in authority can place on young girls.”

“I don’t understand why you’re letting me go,” Iana said. The weapon systems tested out as fully functional. Which was an even greater mystery. She couldn’t picture why she wasn’t dead. The Gallagrin Queen was an enemy. The moment she found Iana’s bower Iana should have been vaporized. Dagmauru, Iana’s closest mentor, had ordered her to burn. The flames should have taken her, reducing her body to ash and sending her spirit to the Wintering Green. She should have been dead, but she wasn’t because some pillar of her world was broken. Something she knew as a certainty wasn’t right.

“We are not enemies,” Alari said. “Even under the current circumstance, Gallagrin claims no animosity towards the Green Council.”

“You attacked us!” Iana said, amorphous confusion boiling into anger then bursting as she spoke into chilly fear.

“Let us call that non-verbal negotiation,” Alari said. “If we intended to attack the Green Council, our tactics would have been very different.”

“What do you want me to do?” Iana asked, choking back a sob as her emotions threatened to overwhelm the dams of professionalism her mentors had disciplined into her.

“Help us,” Alari said. “Show us what you’ve seen. Walk with us and let us see your realm as you see it. We refuse to judge and act from a position of ignorance. We need your story to understand the story of the Green Council and why events have led us to this place.”

“Really? You don’t want anymore than that?” Iana asked. “You have so much power, and you’ve fought on the same side as Senkin. How can I believe that this isn’t a trick to help them conquer us?”

“We cannot reason you into believing in us,” Alari said. “Any argument we make would allow for counter-arguments.  We can ask for your trust however, and for the opportunity to show you who we are.”

Iana felt her world reeling under her feet. The Queen’s words weren’t anything profound. There was no magic spell wrapped within them. Somehow though they upset so many long held belief that Iana felt like she was in danger of falling off the world if she believed them.

But believing seemed so right too. Maybe it was the residual terror at almost dying in flames. Maybe it was gratitude for being spared the Stone Warriors’ wrath. Maybe it was as simple as the Queen demanding nothing and offering only respect.

“Ok,” Iana said. “I’ll take you there. Everyone should know what Senkin did.”

“Thank you,” Alari said and, with a single light step, leapt up to the Warbringer’s shoulder.

With her passenger sitting comfortably, Iana began to plod towards the last place she ever wanted to revisit.

They’d traveled no more than a few dozen yards before the next of the Council’s attacks descended on them. A flight of Razor Crows, each bearing a vial of Demon Bile, swooped down from the clouds, their wings slicing through the wind faster than any natural bird could manage.

Instinctively, Iana readied the Warbringer’s defenses. She was under attack. Panic and confusion were no longer useful. Calculations were required. With practiced efficiency Iana determined how far out she could intercept the attacks and how close the birds needed to get before the Demon Bile would be effective.

She didn’t like the answer to either question. The birds were moving so fast that they could slip by all but the closest of her defenses and the Demon Bile would enter an effective dispersal range long before then. Barring phenomenal luck, Iana knew that her Warbringer was seconds away from being dissolved into a large puddle of goo.

As she jerked away from the birds to buy time though Iana saw the phenomenal luck she needed manifest directly in the crows path. From nowhere a storm of serrated daggers appeared, tearing upwards as though hurled by a legion of giants with immeasurable strength..

Pact Knights are able to call forth weapons and armor. Pact Queens were apparently able to call forth entire armories when they desired.

The hail of enchanted daggers spun through the Razor Crows like a tornado, reducing the magical birds to a cloud of feathers and viscera. The force that accompanied the daggers blew the crow remains and the Demon Bile back in the direction they’d been traveling, on an arc that took them safely away from Iana’s Warbringer.

“It would be agreeable if your commanders would cease trying to kill you,” Alari said.

“Maybe they were after you?” Iana said.

“They’ve seen me blow back their forces across the space of a mile,” Alari said, switching to common speech. “I don’t think a flock of birds would strike them as a likely assault force.”

“Yeah,” Iana said. “I’m not sure what we could throw at you that would work.”

“I’m sure they have something in mind,” Alari said. “If they believed I was unstoppable, they’d send everything they have at me now. This feels more like they waiting for me to exhaust the magic I carry as much as possible before they put their real forces into action.”

“How do you know that?” Iana asked.

“I don’t,” Alari said. “It’s just how I think a smart opponent would react. Idiots can be dangerous, since they’re difficult to predict, but their efforts don’t tend to build on each other like an intelligent adversary’s work does.”

“Is that something you have to worry about as Queen?” Iana asked.

“Most days, yes,” Alari said.

“Have you been Queen all your life?” Iana asked, not clear on how Gallagrin ranks worked. It had never been an element that was important enough for her mentors to touch on.

“No, when I was born I was just a princess,” Alari said.

“How did you get to be Queen then?” Iana asked.

“I ripped my father’s head off his shoulders,” Alari said, speaking as though it was a more common subject than the weather to talk about.

“Is that how the rulers of Gallagrin are selected?” Iana asked, puzzled at the kind of realm that would allow for such a barbaric transfer of power.

“Not usually,” Alari said. “How about you? Have you been a Warbringer pilot all of your life?”

“No, it takes a long time to qualify,” Iana said. “We spend years practicing before they let us connect to even the training models.”

“You seem to be something of a prodigy,” Alari said. “How long have you held a command rank?”

“I was groomed to be a leader early on,” Iana said.

“That couldn’t have been easy,” Alari said. “Fulfilling and exciting I would imagine, but never easy.”

The Gallagrin Queen spoke with notes of longing and wistfulness painting her words to reflect a time long ago. Despite the chasm between them, Iana felt an echo of familiarity in the mix of emotions.

“They always ask for so much,” Iana said. “And I get why. We have to make sure we can handle everyone’s problems not just our own, but sometimes you just want a break.”

“Five minutes away from the world. Ten minutes where no one can find you,” Alari said. “Somedays those would be worth a pot of gold.”

“I always wanted a coin I could give people that would say ‘Solve it Yourself’ so i could pay them to go away,” Iana said.

“That’s a brilliant idea,” Alari said. “You have no idea how tempting it is to tell the royal minters to cast a hundred of them.”

“Can’t you do that?” Iana asked. “You can do anything as the queen right?”

“Not anything,” Alari said. “My nobles have direct governance of their subjects. My powers are mostly involved with arbitrating the interactions between them.”

“Can’t you just kill them if they don’t do what you want?” Iana asked.

“My father thought he could,” Alari said. “That didn’t turn out so well for him though and I’m trying not to repeat his mistakes.”

“Dagmauru says that humans don’t live long enough to develop true wisdom,” Iana said.

“The gods claimed that none of the Mindful Races had the capacity for true wisdom,” Alari said. “I think they’re both wrong though.”

“But we die so soon,” Iana said, “It’s why we’re so good at war. We don’t have as many years to save as the long lived races do.”

“Just because they’re brief on the scale of the mountains and the trees, doesn’t mean our lives are meaningless flashes in the night,” Alari said. “What we do, who we are, the people whose lives we touch? Those all matter. With each breath we change the world, and sometimes it’s the smallest of changes that matter the most in the long run.”

“Maybe that’s true for Queen’s, but I don’t think it’s the same for the rest of us,” Iana said. “I don’t matter like that.”

“Don’t you though?” Alari asked. “Right now you’re changing the world, and right now the Council is spending a lot of effort on stopping you from helping me.”

With the next step that Iana took, the ground underneath her Warbringer collapsed, sending her and Alari tumbling into a cavern that had been hastily repurposed as a pit trap.

From the walls, Iana saw a variety of the Council’s rapid strike forces pouring forth.

“Case in point,” Alari said, a blazing sword in her hands and the crescent of a dangerous smile splitting her lips.

Dae braced herself before entering the assembly room. In one sense the nobles waiting for her inside were her prisoners. She held their lives in the palm of her hand, and they had already witnessed proof that their noble standing wouldn’t be enough to spare their necks if she was driven to move against them.

In another sense though, she was at their mercy. Their realm was being invaded, and it was on Dae’s shoulders to not only prevent that, but to turn the tide around so that Alari’s plans could run their course. Alone, Dae didn’t have the power to make that happen. Even if her bond with Kirios was healed and she could transform at will, the movements of the realms were simply too broad for her stand against alone.

The worst part was that the nobles knew that. The good ones, the bad ones, even the ones who didn’t want to be involved with realm-level disputes at all, all of them were looking to the meeting Dae called to see what they could get out of her.

As she stepped through the central doors to the Grand Assembly room, Dae felt a stab of concern lance through her. There were so many missteps she could make. So many different possibilities for how she could fail Alari. She could even win the war, but trade away so much in doing so that Gallagrin would tumble down into ruin anyways.

“All Rise for the Queen’s Voice,” the Grand Seneschal called out. The door to the hall closed softly behind Dae, with a hush that had the finality of the closing of a coffin lid.

The last time she’d stood before the assembled nobles of Gallagrin, she’d been flooded with enough rage to render her immune to their stares. With a cooler heart came the flush of self-consciousness though and her trip to the throne left her more unraveled than composed, despite her careful breathing.

The assembled Dukes and Duchesses sat in their familiar spots ringing the throne. None of them were directly behind her though. For as foolish as they were, Gallagrin’s nobles weren’t stupid enough to try to claim that level of unfettered trust under the circumstances.

“None of you want to be here, do you?” Dae asked as she sat down. She’d considered a variety of clever openings, elaborate traps of words and wit that she could fence Gallagrin’s elite in with. One by one she rejected each of them though. Political stratagems were not her weapons, and if she came to battle with them, she would be out fought in seconds by those who’d mastered the Noble’s Stage long before she’d been born.

Instead, she chose to be blunt. It was the tool she was most experienced with and one which she knew they would never expect.

“Our stay has been longer than anticipated,” Duchess Harli said,speaking up before the others could reply. It was a tactful and non-committal answer, which was one of the many choices Dae foresaw the noble’s making.

“Have you come to your sense about releasing us,” Duke Varsli asked. “Some of us at least that is?”

Varsli had been one of Alari’s staunchest supporters, but when Sanli put out the call to challenge Alari for her throne, Varsli had been silent in response.

In some cases the silence of Alari’s supporters had been due to physical coercion. Ren Telli and Duchess Harli were an examples where Sanli’s supporters had locked them away from the meeting room so that their voices wouldn’t be cast against her plan.

For other supporters though, like Varsli, the coercion had been less bold. Silent threats, for example, were effective against parents with child who were in exposed situations. The credibility of Sanli’s claim to the throne was backed up by the extensive research she and her allies did into the other nobles of the realm. For a large number of them, the levers to push were obvious to those without scruples or restraint. The key simply lay in pushing them in the correct order and at the right pace so that the weak fell under her influence first and, by the time Alari’s strongest supporters were contacted, Sanli’s cabal was riding a tide of unwilling support that made her victory seem inevitable.

“Or are you here to slaughter us all at last?” Duke Zendli asked.

Zendli belonged to a third class of noble. He had backed Alari throughout the civil war, hoping to emerge among the rich and powerful at its completion. When Alari refused to allow her supporters the right to plunder their defeated neighbors though, his loyalty had shifted. Not to the opposition of course. He still despised them for backing King Sathe, to whom he’d lost both of his sons. That hatred had not secured his affection for Alari though, so when the time came to support her again, he found silence a perfectly welcome state.

“Is that what you want?” Dae asked. “It would be the simplest path forward wouldn’t it?”

“You can’t kill us,” Duke Linli said. “You don’t have the power or the authority.”

Linli was the last class of noble, and the least in Dae’s mind. His loyalty was to those who opposed Alari at every turn. Though there wasn’t much proof concerning the members or the working on Duchess Sanli’s cabal, Dae was certain than Linli had joined her early and had campaigned for her cause with all of his influence and cunning.

Reaching back into her earliest discipline drills, Dae managed to remain still and calm. Linli was the worst of a bad lot, but there were many tied with him for that title.

Dae understood why Alari didn’t want to murder her nobles, why she’d taken great pains to offer reconciliation to even those most adamantly opposed to her. She understood, but she didn’t share the sentiment. Linli and those like him couldn’t be swayed by kind words or a forgiving heart. They lived to hate, and in their hate, they could do real and permanent harm.

A younger Dae would have known the answer to the riddle they posed. How to deal with those who could and would harm you at any opportunity without becoming as bad as they were? The Dae from as recent as the previous fall would have said the answer lay in the edge of a blade.

One quick cut, drawn in defense of those who would be harmed by the raging malevolence of Linli and his fellow disciples of unreasoning hate. It was such an easy, seductive image to picture. No more insults, no more lies, no more taunts and jeers. Every stupid, hurtful utterance silenced at last. The world a better place for their absence from it.

The Dae who sat before the assembled nobles though held a different view. Fear of what Linli could do to her was something she could dismiss with ease. He was an awful, evil man, but he held no power over her, and she wasn’t going to let his malevolence twist her decisions. He wasn’t that scary.

In the fight with Haldraxan, she’d faced fear beyond reason, beyond the capacity for a soul to endure and she’d come out, if not intact, then at least functional. Her triumph, she knew, didn’t lay in any superhuman reserves of will or wisdom, but rather in the fact that even standing before Haldraxan without anyone else one the battlefield, she hadn’t been standing alone.

“You are mistaken as to the Lady Akorli’s capabilities,” Faen Kemoral said. “I believe we have seen ample demonstration of that last fall. In fact, I believe there’s still some evidence on the high pillars that the grounds crew has not been able to clean off yet.”

“If she touches one hair on any of our heads, there will be war again,” Linli said.

Dae sat up to her full height. Mixed feeling stirred in her chest. Part of her relished what was to come, gleeful that Linli had given her an excuse to act against him. He was an idiot, but an influential one, though that was about to end.

Another part of her though was concerned. Everything would have been so much smoother and more beneficial to all if the nobles would put aside their jockeying for power for a single minute and worked towards everyone’s mutual benefit.

With a small sigh, Dae reflected that this had been Alari’s life for years. Struggling to steal small victories out of the jaws of idiocy.

“Our capacity is of less importance than our intention, Duke Linli, but know that you have misjudged both of them today,” Dae said, slipping into her best formal speech as she felt the mantle of Alari’s authority settle over her. “You, all of you, are here at the queen’s sufferance. You imagine her the equal of her father and expect treatment from her as you would expect from him. You, all of you who think that, are fools. The Queen is far more than her father ever was. Far more kind, and, for appointing me to oversee your fates, far more cruel.”

A wave of murmuring swept through the crowd, but no one made the mistake of interrupting Dae, guessing that such a faux pas could have fatal consequences.

“Monelle Linli, step forward,” Dae said, addressing the young woman who stood behind  the Duke of Linli.

Monelle wore an expression caught halfway between a scowl and a trembling frown. Many of the family members of the Dukes and Duchesses were present in support of their parents or children. Monelle was typical among them, though the distance she placed between herself and the Duke of Lin suggested an unwillingness to be associated with her father. Dae allowed that to kindle a spark of hope.

“Monelle, eldest daughter of the Linli family, has your father named an heir to his seat yet?” Dae asked.

“Don’t ask her,” Duke Linli said. “You can’t threaten her. You can’t threaten any of us. You have nothing here. We own this realm. We own you.”

“Answer the question Monelle,” Dae said, ignoring the Duke’s outburst.

“He has not,” Monelle said. By proper form she should have included an honorific in there as well, but Dae was willing to let it slide given that the girl clearly thought she was facing an execution.

“Would you see the Duke of Lin live?” Dae asked.

The room went silent awaiting Monelle’s answer.

“I will not…” Duke Linli began, but his daughter interrupted him.

“Yes. He should live,” she said quickly. She was visibly shaking with, what Dae took to be, anxiety over what her request was going to cost her.

“We acknowledge your choice,” Dae said. “Place your hand on his forehead.”

“Why?” Monelle asked.

“Shut up, you don’t do anything she says,” Duke Linli said.

“Place your hand on his forehead,” Dae said again, making eye contact with Monelle and offering the girl a small, reassuring nod.

Monelle blinked and then did as she was instructed. Her father tried to slap her hand away, but Faen drew his sword and dimpled the flesh at the Duke’s throat to insist on the nobleman’s compliance.

“Duke Olgovauld Linli, you are charged with sedition and treason,” Dae said. “In lieu of a trial, the throne forgives these charges, and releases you from the threat of capital punishment for them. Let all know that your service to Gallagrin has been seen and is valued.”

Stunned confusion greeted Dae’s words, even from Faen who she’d discussed the handling of the nobles with at length.

“You have also given insult to the throne however, both in deed and in word, and given insult to those of your domain and the domains of your peers,” Dae continued. “In this matter, we shall act as the final arbiter and pronounce our judgement.”

Wide eyed panic graced more than a few faces as the collected nobles prepared to witness a gory spectacle. Duke Linli didn’t share their opinion however and greeted Dae’s words with crimson faced rage.

“Duke Olgovauld Linli, you are unfit to serve this throne. We do hereby strip you of your title and lands. We cast you from this court, never to return, on pain of mortal consequence. Lastly, we break the bond which ties you to your family’s Pact Spirit and name Monelle Linli as the new Duchess of Lin, with all the lands, right and privileges thereof,  as well as being the new bearer of the Lin Pact Spirit. All hail Duchess Linli.”

The nobles gazed at the young girl who was literally glowing with newly invested authority and magic, and at the unconscious form of the former Duke of Lin who’d been overwhelmed by the shattering of his power on all levels.

“Nobles of Gallagrin, this is the judgment we lay upon you,” Dae said, rising from the throne. “You have failed your queen, you have failed each other, but for all that, you have not yet failed this realm. For all of the internal strife we so love to engage in, in our hearts we all know one thing to be true; for as bad as we are, our neighbors are a thousand times worse. So today, as Gallagrin stands in peril, this last choice is before you. Stand with us, with our realm, or stand aside and let someone more fitting rule in your place.”

Eorn enjoyed marching. Hiking was appealing too, the connection to the world that came from traversing it one step at a time and breathing in its myriad scents was its own form of magic, but marching added a unique social dimension to their experience.

“For a realm without any notable mountains, Inchesso seems amazingly adept at finding roads that are uphill for the entire length one has to walk on them.” Teo’s grumbling was forgivable in light of the fact that they were marching at high noon. His bloodline wasn’t one that found the sunlight anathema – he wasn’t going to burst into flames in other words – but that didn’t mean he enjoyed developing a good healthy tan either.

“You were the one who negotiated for us to be here though,” Eorn said, looking at the ranks of Inchesso troops that they were marching with.

The war between Gallagrin and Inchesso was officially underway. Hence troop movements were required. That the Inchesso troops being moved were heavily armed was no surprise. That they included one of Gallagrin’s most recently appointed ambassadors and his personal guard was more of a novelty.

Generally advancing armies don’t make space for their enemy’s diplomatic staff to join them after all, but this was a rather unique sort of war.

Eorn cast her gaze at the Inchesso livery that both she and Teo wore. It fit well. Better than her usual clothes did if she was honest. Her family had skilled tailors and seamstresses, but Inchesso’s textile skills were on a level beyond what a simple Ducal court in Gallagrin could match, even when it came to something as common as how they well they outfitted their rank and file soldiers.

Marching in Inchesso garb almost made it tempting to truly defect. Between the comfort of the fine cloth and the camaraderie that abounded in the troops, Eorn felt more at home than she had at any time since she’d been called to the Royal Palace in Highcrest.

The marching chants were by turns crude, and loud, and surprisingly stirring. There were long jokes about the backstabbing and treachery the Inchesso were famous for, and longer chants about the bawdy romances that filled the rest of the realm’s reputation. Underneath those though, Eorn saw people who were so very similar to the ones she’d known her whole life.

The boy who walked beside her, not yet sure of his place and trying to spend his enthusiasm where others could let experience speak for them.

The girl in the next row ahead of Eorn who was blessed with the confidence to dare the rest on when the talk turned to darker speculations as to their coming fates. She had experience the boy lacked and where that tempered her naive enthusiasm, she turned to humor to cast aside the morale killing cloud of grim dread that always threatened to swallow up an armies endeavors.

Even Teo’s grumbling complaints seemed perfectly ordinary, though Eorn noticed that none of them strayed into concerns for the battles to come.

It was a strange war indeed when maintaining the morale and combat fitness of the other side was a priority one had to keep in mind.

“The next time the Queen asks me to deal on her behalf, would you be so good as to break my spine,” Teo asked. “I’ll heal from it, I assure you, but the delay should cause the Queen select someone else.”

“Perhaps, but she would probably fire me for doing that,” Eorn said.

“I’m sure Ren could hire you,” Teo said. “Between running the Dawn’s March in Nath and acting as the Duke of Tel, he’s somewhat drowning in open positions he needs to fill.”

“I thought the Dawn’s March was supposed to be separate from the nobliity?” Eorn asked.

“It is,” Teo said. “The Dawn’s March is an oversight organization, so, officially, it is controlled by an appointee of the crown with the only restriction being that they can’t be part of a noble’s office – otherwise that noble would lack supervision.”

“But your husband is both?” Eorn asked.

“Not entirely by choice, and in any case, not for long,” Teo said. “Once the current issue with the nobles revolting against Queen Alari is resolved, his status as Duke will have to be addressed. The original hope was that his sister would be ready to assume the title by then, but recent events have suggested that she’s not likely to place an official claim on the title any time soon.”

“Why’s that?” Eorn asked.

“Because she seems to have taken up dragon taming as a hobby,” Teo said.

“She has done what now?” Eorn asked.

“Ren’s sister is part of your order,” Teo said. “Mayleena is a her name.”

“The guardian who stayed in Paxmer after the war there?” Eorn asked.

“The same.”

“I don’t understand why she did that,” Eorn said. “Or how. People seem to only speak of her in cryptic phrases.”

“Mayleena is unique,” Teo said. “That’s not a new quality. She was always an exceptional girl. Her Pact bonding followed that trend.”

“What happened?” Eorn asked.

“No one knows exactly,” Teo said. “Even Mayleena hasn’t ever been able to explain it completely, at least not to me. The closest I can come to understanding it is that the walls between the Pact Spirit and Mayleena never really formed. What should have been a bond became a merger.”

“But that can’t work,” Eorn said. “That would drive someone insane. It’s how Berserkers are formed.”

“Mayleena’s not a Berserker,” Teo said. “I can take a Berserker in a fight, if I’m well fed and don’t mind spending a lot of strength. Mayleena though? She scares me. Not for who she is you understand. I’ve known her since she was a tiny little thing. The woman who emerged from the bonding ritual though carries something within her that I don’t know though. She’s like a diamond, some facets are familiar and others are truly alien and altogether there is an unbreakable hardness that I have no interest in ever testing my strength against.”

“So why is she taming dragons?” Eorn asked.

“She was part of the mission to Paxmer,” Teo said. “From what I’ve heard, she was instrumental in its success too. Somewhere along the way though she discover something in the Paxmer dragons that called to her. An affinity of some sort. I’m not sure if she’s there to teach them, or if she’s learning something from them. Some form of control perhaps?”

“So no chance of her being Duchess until she’s done with that, which could take how long?” Eorn said.

“Probably until Gallagrin has some major crisis they need to recall her for,” Teo said.

“And going to war with Inchesso doesn’t count as a major crisis?” Eorn asked.

“Given that we’re most likely not going to be stabbing each other, I suspect not,” Teo said.

“That still seems strange to me,” Eorn said. “Not that I like the idea of Gallagrin and Inchesso painting battlefields with blood, but why are we calling this a war? All we’re doing is moving troops around.”

“The troops movements are for the benefits of those spying on us,” Teo said.

“Should we be more careful of what we say then?” Eorn asked.

“We have a small obfuscation field on us thanks to the oil that Eldest Lialarus provided,” Teo said. “That’s the stuff I had you rub across the bridge of your nose. To any spies or scrying spells not specifically searching for us, we’ll appear and sound like bog standard Inchesso troops.”

“And are we sure anyone is spying on us?” Eorn asked. “It seems like this could all be for nothing.”

“It’s less a question of ‘is anyone spying on us’ and more ‘is there anyone who is not spying on us’,” Teo said. “And also, of course, are the right people spying on us.”

“How can we tell that?” Eorn asked.

“If we wind up being slaughtered then, probably, the wrong people were spying on us,” Teo said.

“Will we get any sort of warning about?” Eorn asked.

“Yes,” Teo said. “We’ll find ourselves surrounded by people with drawn weapons. Also there will likely be a good deal of screaming.”

“That’s acceptable,” Eorn said, without sarcasm. If failure meant fighting, then that meant failure didn’t mean being poisoned in her sleep, and of the two, fighting seemed infinitely preferable.

Of course, as Teo had said, Inchesso’s reputation for being a realm of poisoners was as overstated as Gallagrin’s reputation for being a realm of rock-eating berserkers. A few extreme edge cases might make for entertaining stories, but by and large people were just people, no matter if they were human, dwarf, elf, sylph or any other of the many Mindful Races. Eorn knew the biggest risk of being poisoned she faced in Inchesso came not from the soldiers walking in formation around her but rather from the native cuisine that, while delicious, was not as well adapted for travel as Gallagrin road rations were.

“So, do we have people in Gallagrin spying on us?” Eorn asked.

“That I can guarantee,” Teo said.

“Could we use that to pass a message back home?” Eorn asked, her thoughts trending as they often did towards a certain slim young man.

“We are,” Teo said. “I said the low level obfuscation field would shield us from anyone who wasn’t looking for us specifically. Well there will be plenty of people on the Queen’s staff who are very interested in where we are. That’s one reason I wanted us to march with the Inchesso forces. It will give our people some free intelligence on where this army is going.”

“There’s more armies in motion?” Eorn asked.

“Each alliance of families in Inchesso controls an army,” Teo said. “I imagine that they’re all on the move at the moment. The key is whether they’re moving in the right direction or not.”

“If they’re move in the wrong direction, that will make things much worse won’t it?” Eorn guessed that would lead to the aforementioned drawn weapons and screaming.

“It will complicate things,” Teo said. “Our job will switch from intelligence gathering and diplomacy to convincing the wayward factions that they would be better served following the plans Queen Alari has for them.”

“How will we do that?” Eorn asked.

“You and I? We’ll speak with them,” Teo said. “Being that there’s only two of us, our military options are limited, and we are diplomats after all.”

“And when talking doesn’t work?” Eorn asked.

“Swords and screaming,” Teo said. “It’s barbaric, but we are all barbarians in some corner of our hearts.”

“If we have to fight an Inchesso army, we are going to die you realize?” Eorn asked.

She looked around them. The Lialarus family’s forces were far from the largest military in Inchesso and there were still several thousand fighters in the formation they had joined. Even in Pact Armor, backed up by vampiric powers and leaving aside any tricks of Inchesso magic the arm could bring to bear, that was not a fight which was going to fall in Eorn’s favor. In a positive light, a fight of that caliber would ensure that epic tales and songs would be performed in remembrance of her glory. Realistically though, Eorn was less interested in epic tales and more intrigued by the idea of living to see Gallagrin again.

“That’s why we are not going to fight an Inchesso army,” Teo said. “If we fight, we will be picking our targets very carefully.”

“And if our targets happen to have an army of their own?” Eorn asked.

“Then we’ll bring one of our own to meet them,” Teo said, smiling as his eyes caught a glimpse of something overhead.

Eorn cast her gaze skyward. In the air high above them soared the sun shadowed silhouettes of a flight of dragons.

Gallagrin was definitely not alone in Inchesso.

Jyl raced up the side of the Star Seer’s tower like a bolt of lightning. Ahead of her, another bolt of lightning, shaped not at all unlike her sister flew up the sheer stone surface, keeping pace at the same two body lengths apart that they’d been when they started.

“You can’t get away from me.” Jyl spat the words out between the breaths that her transformed state didn’t require her to take.

“And you can’t catch me.” Jaan’s words were torn apart by the winds of the chase but enough fragments survived for Jyl to make out their meaning.

Metal claws and metal toes found purchase in the stone walls (or made it as necessary – a feat Jyl hoped the Queen of Senkin would forgive them for). She didn’t intend to damage the Senkin Royal Castle but when the alternative involved allowing her sister escape and wreak havoc on Gallagrin’s relationship with Senkin Jyl felt her path was pretty clear.

Jaan didn’t seem as determined to avoid damage, which was part of the reason she was able to stay ahead of her sister. Jyl had spent years training with her Pact Spirit. Jaan had only a few months of experience to draw on, but, as always, she had an artificial leg up on her twin. Where Jyl’s Pact Spirit was one she’d discovered for herself in a complex of lost and forgotten tombs, Jaan’s had a long and active history of previous bearers.

Jyl hated her for that, except even if she was given the option to trade, she knew she’d never take it. The Pact Bond was more than a business contract, or at least it was for Jyl. Some Pact Warriors seemed to regard the bond as little more than a power up. Their spirits were silent in a manner than Jyl found chilling.

For her, the magic of the Pact Bond had always included a sense of connection. Even from the beginning, she knew hadn’t found a lost treasure when she found the naming stones for her Pact Spirit. She didn’t have words for it then but as she’d pronounced the oath and shared her name with her spirit, she had the sense of being reunited with an old friend. Their bonding was the affirmation of a compatibility that already existed between the two of them.

People said the Pact Spirit’s never spoke, and Jyl couldn’t help but look at them strangely at that thought. It was true Pact Spirits didn’t use verbal language like one of the Mindful Races, but the steady ebb and flow of emotions from the spirit was as clear a form of communication as any other that Jyl had ever witnessed.

In standard Pact Knight doctrine, there was supposed to be a sharp line between the host and the spirit, with no influence from the spirit realm crossing over to corrupt the Pact Warrior. With a deep separation between the two, the chance that a Pact Warrior would lose themselves in a Berserker frenzy was, supposedly, diminished and controlled.

In theory that sounded good, but in practice it was all wrong. The relationship between the host and the spirit, or her relationship at least, was nothing without the depth that openness brought. People were right to fear the power of an unrestrained Berserker but it was only by being connected with her Pact Spirit that Jyl believed she was able to avoid going berserk given the situations she’d been placed in.

That was what made her pursuit of her sister so infuriating.

Jaan was a model Pact Warrior. She received her Pact Spirit as an ancestral gift, as so many other Pact Warriors did. Her skill with Pact magic came almost entirely from the spirit’s learned competency rather than anything Jaan brought to the relationship. Jaan asked for the magic and her spirit worked it for her. Simple and clean and, ultimately, limited.

From everything Jyl could see, Jaan evidenced no particular connection or accord with her Pact spirit, beyond the minimal contact needed for each to achieve their goals in the relationship.

And yet Jyl couldn’t catch her.

Jaan reached the top of the Star Seer’s tower, flipping over the parapets and onto the roof with the inhuman grace of someone whose strength far exceeded their body weight. Jyl hurled herself to the rooftop in a similar manner, but stopped at the near edge, knowing her sister’s penchant for striking back when cornered.

“There’s nowhere to go. Give back the ledgers and give up whatever this insane plan is,” Jyl said. She refrained from screaming only because letting the entirety of the Royal Castle know of her sister’s breach of their security would do noone any good, least of all anyone from Gallagrin.

“It’s not insane if it works,” Jaan said. “Then it’s ‘daring’ or ‘brave’. Haven’t you seen how accolades work?”

“I’m not interested in arguing this out,” Jyl said. “Give me the ledgers or I will take them from your broken and shattered body.”

“Why?” Jaan asked. “Why do you want these so much that you’d harm your loving sister to get them.”

“Oh, you don’t understand at all do you,” Jyl said, slowing edging a path around the Star Seer’s tower. The tower was narrow enough at the top of its spire that Jyl could have crossed the flat rooftop in a dozen paces but stalking around the edge meant she was able to keep the crenelated wall to her back. Always wise when dealing with her sister, she thought. “I’m hoping you don’t give me the ledgers. You see I really want a reason to hurt you that will stand up in court. It’ll work out better when I can’t stop myself from beating your stupid face in.”

“We would bring this castle down if we really went all out,” Jaan said. “And I know you don’t want to cause a diplomatic incident like that.”

“I don’t know, it’s not my castle, and not my country,” Jyl said. “At the rate things are going, it might not even be anyone’s country soon, so maybe there wouldn’t be so many complaints.”

“And yet you still want these ledgers back,” Jaan said. “Don’t lie. You’re watching them more than you are me.”

“That would be because seeing you makes ill,” Jyl said.

“Mirrors don’t do you any favors then, do they?” Jaan asked.

Her family always told Jyl that she and Jaan were identical twins, but Jyl had never seen how that could be possible. In her eyes, there was a resemblance between them, but Jaan’s face was always so twisted by mocking cruelty that it seemed like it should have been impossible to confuse the two of them.

“Why did you even steal those?” Jyl asked, certain that the reason would be terrible.

“These show the provisioning status for each of the forts and towns from her to the Green Council’s borders,” Jaan said. “It’s not much, but the Green Council should be able to use these to plan their attacks more efficiently don’t you think?”

The battle at the front line had become a siege instead of an unstoppable invasion. Haldri Paxmer’s touches were visible to anyone who knew she was there, with a dozen unconventional strategies stymying the Green Council’s forces from advancing further into Senkin.

If the Council knew of other, less resilient targets it could attack though, they could confidently renew their thrust into Senkin and leave behind only as many troops as were required to keep Haldri and her troops contained.

“Senkin will never forgive us. You can’t betray Gallagrin like that,” Jyl said.

“But I’m not betraying Gallagrin,” Jaan said.

“We’re allied with Senkin,” Jyl said. “They trust us. If you plunge that knife into their back, Senkin will hate us as they never have before. You’re dooming Gallagrin to fight against a new enemy when we just defeated our longest standing rival. There’s nothing else you can call that than a betrayal of Gallagrin and what it stands for!”

“What Gallagrin stands for?” Jaan mouth crooked into a familiar, unfriendly smile. “Gallagrin stands for survival. That is the heart and soul of our people. I thought with all the fighting you’d done, with how hard you’ve struggled, you understood that.”

“And how does putting us at war, again, help us survive,” Jyl asked. “People are going to die if you hand those ledgers over.”

“Yes, Senkin’s people,” Jaan said. “Except they’re going to die anyways. The Council is going to destroy them all.”

“Not if we can stop this war!” Jyl said.

“We can’t,” Jaan said. “This isn’t a war that wants to be stopped. Look at what’s happening. You know I’m right. The Green Council is too prepared for this, and Senkin, if it manages to survive, will never forgive them for it.”

“Our Queen doesn’t believe that,” Jyl said. “She’s out there, right now, working to put an end to this madness.”

“And she’s going to fail,” Jaan said. “You saw the reports. The Green Council is so incensed by her actions that they’ve started sending troops through the Frostmoon Pass. Gallagrin is under attack right now and these ledgers can help fix that.”

“You think the Council is going to call off the attack on Gallagrin because you give them a few papers?” Jyl asked.

“No, they won’t call it off for that,” Jaan said. “The ledgers are a gesture of good faith. They prove that there are those of us in Gallagrin that still value our old friendships with the Council. More importantly though the ledgers also give the Council somewhere else they can expend their military force.”

“You want to trade Senkin lives for Gallagrin lives?” Jyl asked.

“Yes,” Jaan said. “At any conversion rate. We’ve fought against the crown, opposed Alari on numerous occasions now, but our family has always been loyal to our realm.”

Jyl was stopped sidling along the wall and just stared at her sister.

“You really believe that don’t you?” she asked. “Somehow in all the lying and backstabbing and betrayals, you managed to convince yourself that our families actions are motivated by anything beyond greed and self concern.”

A low growl escaped Jaan’s lips.

“You are tiresome, do you know that?” she said. “You are so convinced of the evil in your blood that you’re incapable of seeing the world as it is. Yes, we look out for ourselves, because that’s what a family does. Yes, we supported the Butcher King, because our support meant that we and ours were safe from his excesses. And yes, we would sooner see Senkin fall than a drop of Gallagrin blood be spilled, because the people of Gallagrin are our people, and we are the ones who protect them. The rest of the world is not our concern, and if we try to make it our concern then we won’t be able to support and protect those who depend on us.”

“You think you’re too weak to protect strangers as well as kin,” Jyl said, resting back against the wall. “The truth is you’re too weak not to. We all are.”

“That’s ridiculous gibberish,” Jaan said. “Is that what Alari has been feeding you?”

“You think you’re justified in making hard choices today, in giving in to the expedient and self serving courses of action, but those have long term consequences that you never count and are far too weak to mitigate,” Jyl said. “Look at supporting the Butcher King, it kept the family safe in the short term, but he was routinely murdering his allies. Queen Alari saved you when she usurped his throne.”

“And so we owe her some kind of debt you believe?” Jaan said.

“That’s irrelevant,” Jyl said. “The point is your support for an insane monarch is still costing you. The people of Gallagrin hate the Lafli family for both the cruelty they supported in King Sathe and the cruelty our grandfather was all too free with inflicting because he thought his position near King Sathe sheltered him. Queen Alari received death threats for adding me to her retinue, despite the fact that our grandfather stripped me all connection to the family. I’m still too Lafli for anyone to trust, and that’s going to be true for all of the family’s descendants for a long time to come.”

“That’s why we have to seize the chances that are laid before us,” Jaan said.

“No, that’s why we need to rise above what we were and prove that the sins of our grandfather aren’t carried down into our generation,” Jyl said. “We can be better than he was. We have to be.”

“There are many ways to be better,” Jaan said, a trace of what sounded in the neighborhood of regret sneaking into her voice.

“We’re part of the world,” Jyl said. “Like it or not, its problems are our problems, and whether they’re kin or strangers, we need to protect and support people. It’s the only way we can buy a better future.”

Jaan frowned and shook her head.

“I wish it was really that easy,” she said.

“It’s not,” Jyl said. “Nothing’s easy, right or wrong. It’s like you. You’re never easy.”

“Maybe it’s good we both exist then,” Jaan said. “If your ideas are right, then there’s someone amazing working on them. And if I’m right? Well then at least there’s someone making sure that the important people will be around when everything falls apart.”

And with that she pitched herself backward over the parapet.

Jyl ran to the edge of the tower and saw her sister sprout wings from her Pact armor at the bottom of her fall, using the momentum gained to race out of Senkin’s capital city.

With a deep sigh, Jyl hurled herself off the parapets too, welcoming the embrace of gravity as it lent her speed and power.

She wasn’t going to let her sister get away. She couldn’t.

Dae gripped the wooden figure in her hand and resisted the urge to hurl it across the room. It was an heirloom piece, part of set used to depict the placement of forces on the war map. Treating it poorly would be an insult to the generations of Gallagrin commanders who came before her. Plus it was sturdy enough that it would probably knock a sizeable divot out of the wall if she threw it as hard as she wanted to.

“The news from the Council is confusing,” Gala, the Green Council’s former representative said. “Their advance in Senkin has been halted, and there are reports that your queen has taken to the field personally.”

“At the same time we’ve got reports of shock troops pouring through the Frostmoon Gap,” Faen Kemoral said. “We’re going to lose Moon’s Reach and half the northern dells before we can get an army assembled to hold the Council forces back.”

“We have armies up there,” Dae said. “But they’re not organizing to fight the Council forces are they?”

“The Harli family’s army was recalled to Castle Harli yesterday,” Faen said. “They’ll keep the Council from taking the castle but they’re not going to directly oppose them.”

“That might be for the best,” Gala said. “Your forces don’t know what they’re up against.”

“To be fair, neither do the Council’s forces,” Ogma Daili said. Dae liked Ogma’s enthusiasm, but the Acting Commander of the Scout Corp was missing a few critical pieces of information.

“They might,” Dae said. “Operational security during our civil war was shot to pieces. The Council could have learned a lot about us by observing the battles from afar.”

“They weren’t even required to do that,” Gala said. “We were invited to witness some of the conflicts in the northern realms by the families we have connections to. In the early stages of the war, they wanted us to see that the realm would still stand. In the later stages they wished to show the inevitability of your queen’s victory.”

“We have to deal with the nobles,” Faen said. “They’re necks are on the line here too.”

“Not all of them,” Dae said. “The Harli’s are going to bear the brunt of the cost, so they may be willing to capitulate but the other families will leave them to hang in the wind. They have us in a poor position thanks to the invasion. It gives them leverage and if there’s one thing those snakes know how to do its exploit opportunities.”

“That’s always been our biggest problem,” Faen said. “Can’t trust them out of your sight, but if you keep them close the nobles will stab you in the back.”

“Are they truly so bad?” Gala asked. “It seems that if they were so adept at their schemes then they would have succeeded in one by now.”

“The ambassador raises a good point,” Ogma said. “We know there are nobles who supported the queen. Can’t we just ask those for help?”

“We can,” Dae said. “If we’re willing to admit that we’re keeping the other nobles here against their will.”

“They’ve been held in session for a month, I think everyone knows they’re here against their will don’t they?” Ogma asked.

“Not precisely,” Dae said. “Realistically, we all know what’s going on, but because the queen is working within the formal processes still, this can all still be resolved as just the wheels of bureaucracy moving as slowly as everyone jokes of them doing.”

“What she means is that no one’s been explicitly insulted yet, so whenever the queen’s ready, we can all pretend that this never happened,” Faen said.

“The alternative is that the Queen, or rather one of her agents, will have to call formal charges against everyone who was involved in the last attempt to usurp the throne,” Dae said.

“Why don’t we just do that then?” Ogma asked. “We’re paralyzed as it is. Maybe that would let us act while we still have a realm to defend.”

“Right now we’re fighting the Green Council,” Dae said. “The last thing we want is to fight both the Council and a rebellion of the noble armies.”

“They’ve proven that they’re willing to attempt to remove the queen from her throne. At this point open rebellion is the only tactic they haven’t dared to try,” Faen said.

“It’s worse than that though,” Dae said. “When the queen returned from the God’s Hall, she did so with complete certainty in her reign.”

“Yeah. you flew in on a Dragon King,” Ogma said. “That kind of made an impression.”

“But not a permanent one,” Dae said. “Haldraxan is gone, as is the queen for the moment.”

“Your queen left you in authority for the duration of her absence though,” Gala said. “Surely your nobles will respect that.”

“Some will,” Dae said. “The troublemakers are the ones who only recognized the queen’s power, not her authority though.”

“It sounds as though you must recall your queen then,” Gala said.

“That’s one of our many problems,” Dae said. “We can’t.”

“But it’s imperative,” Gala said. “I know what the Council will do. I can tell you of the weapons they’ll use. If they take a piece of your realm, you’ll never truly get it back, and even if you could, you wouldn’t want it.”

“I don’t mean that we’re not allowed to contact the queen,” Dae said. “I mean we can’t. She’s gone into the Green Council’s lands. Their magics block ours.”

“Then your realm is lost,” Gala said. “I will have to seek asylum with Paxmer. Perhaps their dragons can withstand the Council’s advance.”

“Our armies can hold against the Council’s forces,” Dae said. “They just need someone to lead them.”

“No,” Faen slammed his hand down on the table. “Get that idea out of your head Akorli. You are not going to the northern front.”

“I believe you were saying earlier that I was dangerous because I inspire people?” Dae said. It wasn’t true. Not in Dae’s eyes. Alari was the inspirational one. She was the one with the gift for working with others. Dae had training in command, but she hadn’t grown up as a public figure or experienced any desire to be one. Let the masses focus on Alari, Dae was content with looking along with them, provided she had the closest view of all of them.

“Without you, here, in this castle, this realm loses the last scrap of stability it’s holding on to,” Faen said. “You want to inspire someone? Inspire a brilliant general to head up there and take care of things.”

“Is that the sound of someone volunteering I hear?” Dae asked.

“I said a brilliant general,” Faen said. “Brilliance isn’t my stock in trade and we both know it. I’m needed here as much as you are. Maybe more so, since I seem to be the only one with an ounce of sanity left here.”

“There’s also the matter of the war with Inchesso,” Ogma said. “I have the Scout Corp mobilizing for it already, but I can shift their mission focus to the Council instead.”

“We can’t afford that either,” Dae said. “Invading Inchesso is a critical play in this game.”

“Should we really be treating this as a game?” Ogma asked.

“We have to,” Faen said, before Dae had a chance to respond. “There are too many lives at stake to look at this as anything other than a game that we cannot afford to lose.”

“But the Council isn’t playing around with us,” Ogma said. “Their invasion is serious.”

“All the more reason for us to work this like a game,” Dae said. “That doesn’t mean we’re playing around. It means we’re looking for all of the moves our opponents are going to make, and we’re looking for every form of victory we can win.”

“I don’t think I understand how that makes it a game,” Ogma said.

“A fight is simple, but it’s fast,” Dae said. “You don’t game a fight once it’s begun. There’s no time. Not in a serious fight anyways. You survive it, and you do whatever you can in order to accomplish that.”

“We’re not fighting now though,” Faen said. “And the Council isn’t either. So we have to stay aware of the broader realities behind what we see occurring.”

“How does that help here?” Gala asked. “Whatever you do, you’re still be invaded by an unstoppable force from the Council.”

“No one’s unstoppable,” Dae said. “Even the Sleeping Gods bled and died when the faced the wrong foes.”

“The Green Council is making one of the classic mistakes of warfare,” Faen said. “Opening a second front when they don’t need to is a recipe for defeat.”

“Only if you possess the power to fight back against them, and you are squandering that on an unnecessary invasion of Inchesso,” Gala said. “How is that any different than what the Council is doing?”

“Their forces are perfectly organized and coordinated,” Ogma said. “Ours are as likely to turn on each other as the enemy. So that’s a difference right?”

Dae couldn’t repress a grin. Ogma didn’t have the full view of Alari’s plan, but she was willing to embrace the insanity of it anyways. That was as much as a piece of madness endemic to the Gallagrin psyche as it was the sort of residual faith that Alari left in her wake.

“See ambassador,” Dae said. “If we’re willing to go into battle with troops like that, then victory must be assured right?”

Gala shook their top branches in a gesture that was too close to a human shaking their head for Dae to read it as anything else.

“What have I gotten myself into?” Gala asked.

“Don’t worry,” Dae said. “This isn’t your fault. This is the world moving like it was always going to move. We’ve nudged the timetable a little bit, but there wasn’t any real escape from this happening soon or later, and in this case, sooner is a lot better than later. If all this happened after our lifetimes, there’s no telling what kind of weird fictions the realms would be clinging to. Better that the truth comes out now.”

“And what truth is that?” Gala asked.

“The one we’ve been ignoring for centuries now,” Dae said. “The Sleeping Gods are gone. When they went away, it wasn’t for a little naptime. They left us, but more importantly, they left us this world.”

“That’s blasphemy,” Gala said. “All of the realms still venerate their deities.”

“Venerate the memory of, yes, that’s fine,” Dae said. “But it’s long past time that we admitted that they are not around to guide us or limit us anymore. We’ve been walking on our own for a long time now, and that’s a fantastic thing. We’re like children who haven’t noticed that they’re parents left a long time ago and that we’re adults in our own right now.”

“We will never have the wisdom or power of our creators,” Gala said.

“We don’t have it now, but we’re wiser and more powerful than we ever were under their care,” Dae said. “This is our chance to wake up, and to prove it to ourselves.”

“Why would you throw off our gods like that though?” Gala asked. “What if they awaken tomorrow?”

“Then the whole world will change again,” Dae said. “We let our fear of that world though keep us from living in this one.”

“That sounds great, but getting back to the ambassador’s earlier point; how does any of that help us with the army that’s coming through Frostmoon Pass?” Ogma asked.

“We can’t keep living in the world of yesterday,” Dae said. “Or expecting some greater force to come along and make everything right. We’re here, right now, because we’re the ones who can make it right. Even if it’s hard, and even if we don’t want to have to do it.”

“Which means?” Ogma asked.

“Which means, it’s time for me to meet with the nobles,” Dae said. “They’re a part of this realm too, which means whether they like it or not, they’re part of fixing this problem too.”