“You know he shot us into the sky,” said Kol.

“It was really pretty up there,” said Taoc.

Kol stared at Taoc. “That’s not the point! I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. You say he brought you and the other humans to the camp with his magic, but where is he? I need to give him a piece of my mind!”

Taoc frowned. “Queen of the Demons, do not disrespect the Great Elf. Our Republic will not let you speak your mind in front of him.”

Kol gave the tiny hovering spirit a strange look. Kol was decked out in armor and had a spear about five times Taoc’s length resting by her side. “I see. I’ll make sure to tell him off when you’re not around, then.”

“You shall do no such thing!” said Taoc.

“I’ve known him longer than you have, spirit. He personally escorted me back to my kingdom. He may be a deity to you, but to me he is a powerful, but very mortal friend,” said Kol.

Kelser laughed nervously at the two leaders as they continued their pointless quarrel. He looked like he wanted to intervene, but also didn’t want to walk into the middle of this. Kelser’s eyes traveled to the side and I met his gaze with a grin. Kelser looked back at the demon and spirit who couldn’t see me and he sighed.

Kol, Taoc and Kelser were meeting in the command tent in the abandoned village. They were waiting for the other leaders from their countries to join them for a large plenary session. Bain Rusta was off preparing the demons for a march in the morning. The other Senators were inspecting the fairies’ camp. The human Elders were putting up their tents right next to the demon village and would probably walk over with Bain Rusta and the Senators.

I looked at the two lamps on either side of the tent. They were burning a sort of monster fat and produced an uneven glow. I admired how far my invisibility magic had come since I could hide myself in this light now. I was using air magic to hide my presence further, but Kol should have been able to find me by now. I know I didn’t teach her the best kind of magic, but she’d had so much time to work on her magic while the capital was isolated.

“You spirits are as insufferable as ever,” said Kol.

“And you demons are as uncouth and uncivilized as ever,” said Taoc.

“You know what, that’s it. Here, this will shut you up,” said Kol as she raised one hand to the side and stared at Taoc with a smirk on her face.

Taoc looked at her outstretched hand and frowned. Soon, she recalled where she had seen that pose before and her eyes widened. “You! You have learned from the Great Elf?”

The wind in Kol’s sails was taken out by Taoc’s guess. She hadn’t even used her magic yet! Sheepishly, Kol summoned a tiny fireball at the end of her outstretched hand and nodded. “It isn’t much, but I wasn’t kidding about us being friends.”

Taoc scratched her head. “Perhaps I let myself get a little carried away. My apologies. I must say, your understanding of our language is impressive, Queen Izlandi.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to rile you up like that. And thanks, I learned it a long time ago. I think my pronunciation isn’t the best, but I’m impressed by how natural your words sound in the demon language. Do all the Senators speak our language this well?” said Kol.

“No, most of them only speak it as well as the common fairies do,” said Taoc.

“It’s impressive enough that your fairies can speak it,” said Kol.

“I have heard most of your demon soldiers speaking in our language as well. I suspect it is because our peoples have lived next to each other for so long. Perhaps our languages share similar roots, as well. There were a few scholars in our Senate who were trying to analyze the languages of the continent, but they disappeared trying to find beastmen who were willing to speak their language in front of us,” said Taoc.

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“Yes, even our spies refused to speak the language in front of us,” said Kol. “It’s not like the language is some great mystery. We have heard them speaking it to one another before and some of our merchants did learn enough to make trades and get by in the Horde’s lands.”

Taoc leaned back on the chair. It was a strange sight since her body was hovering above the seat but her back was against the crude wooden chair. “Perhaps we could have deciphered it if our researchers had worked with your spy networks.”

“Yes,” said Kol, “there are many things our people could have learned from each other. This campaign might even bring our two countries closer together.”

Kol and Taoc met each others’ gazes but their eyes betrayed their true feelings. They did not think the two arch rivals were about to come together after this temporary alliance. Even through the Simurgh’s emotional manipulation, these two leaders knew there was too much bad blood between their people for them to forget everything after the Book of Annihilation was retrieved. There was a reason their camps were separated, with the human camp in the middle. There was also a serious threat of war for the Book once the Horde was defeated.

Kelser gave the two leaders a strange look and cleared his throat. Kol and Taoc turned to him and apologized for having such a long conversation without him. Kelser had learned the demon and fairy language a long time ago, since he was a determined learner and the demon language he’d learned from Kol on the other side of the mountains really was quite similar to the language used by the fairies and spirits.

I had been tempted to join the conversation on languages since that was exactly the kind of thing I liked nerding out about. But no, I had to keep a low profile for now. I needed to be able to observe the leaders of the united army without them knowing I was there. It wasn’t just the fact they always acted differently in front of the ‘great’ and ‘legendary’ elf. The Simurgh’s manipulation seemed to intensify when the others were talking about me. Or rather, they never brought up the kind of questions that would make the emotional manipulation kick into overdrive. They rarely mentioned the Book of Annihilation or the purpose of the war when I wasn’t around. Clearly, whatever the Simurgh was doing had rules and limits. One of those limits must be that it was easier to get them to avoid sensitive topics than it was to directly deal with them. Based on what I knew about the Immortals, this meant the Simurgh, the Immortal of Desire, was making some sort of sacrifice to be able to interfere directly with mortals. The first time it had done so, after all, it had allowed Madness to find its resting place in the Plains of Serenity.

I leaned back in my chair. The conversation had drifted off to logistics and the formal declaration of war. I kept listening to the conversation just in case they said something important, but my mind went back to Kol’s fireball.

Her magic was still pathetically weak. She’d had all this time to work on it, and yet it hadn’t gotten any better. This was incredibly strange. Even if her ‘knowledge’ had been inferior, was she not increasing her ‘wisdom’ by using the spells whenever she could? Was she just not using magic all that often? No, look at the way she tried to show off that spell. There was no way she didn’t play around with some spells for fun. Just lighting up her own campfire on the journey over should have helped improve the power and efficiency of her fireballs and yet they were still tiny little balls of flame, not significantly larger than the flames inside the oil lamps hanging on either side of the tent.

I frowned and tapped my chin. It was becoming clear to me that the ‘fundamentals of magic’ were not as fundamental as the name implied. I also now knew there was something else stopping the people of this world from coming up with magic on their own. It wasn’t a lack of systematized knowledge or anything like that. So far, I only knew of four beings who could make their own magic and pass it on to others. The three Immortals and myself.

Bain Rusta walked into the tent. Elder Kezler followed behind him. The other Senators, Elders, and several high ranking demon nobles walked into the tent, making the large tent feel a little cramped. A short demon noble with a mousy mustache and sparkling clean armor waddled over to me. I almost laughed at the way his pristine armor was making him walk, but the demon noble was walking right over to me. No, he was walking over to what must have looked to him like an empty seat.

The mustached demon tried to sit in the chair but stopped in the air. He blinked and tried to sit down again. Nobody was paying him any attention, since they were all trying to find a place to sit or stand and were trying to greet the other leaders of the united army. In the confusion, the strangely insistent demon noble kept trying to plonk his behind on the chair. It looked like he thought it was his armor messing him up once again. The demon’s face reddened as he tried to sit on the chair with force.

The demon noble let out a loud cry that cut through the din of the crowd and finally forced every eye to turn towards him. He had fallen face first into the dirt, with an empty chair right behind him.

I dispelled my invisibility magic. “Hey, watch it will ya! You almost dented your nice shiny armor on my knee.”