Kol rubbed her neck. “I’m a queen.”

“Yes you are,” I said.

“I command the love and adoration of my people,” said Kol.

“You sure do,” I said.

“If it was anybody else, Bain would have had them executed,” said Kol.

“Sounds a little extreme, but whatever,” I said.

Kol gave me a blank look. “Extreme? You can’t say that when your solution to us having our emotions manipulated on the ground was to knock us all out!”

I shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“It did,” said Kelser. “Now can we please get back to what you were saying?”

“Of course, thank you Kelser,” I said, smirking at an indignant Kol. “Now that we are back in the clouds, we have to figure out a way to get you guys to resist the Simurgh’s emotional manipulation, permanently. Since it would be too difficult to teach you this spell, since it is based on my new magic, and since I can’t seem to use this spell on others, I figured we could try combining both of these approaches. First, I’ll teach you a few tricks that helped me come up with this magic, and then I’ll try to use my magic to help you better control your own emotions.”

Taoc rubbed her tiny neck. I was extra careful not to hit her too hard, but it looked like I’d shaken her up a bit worse than I had the other too. Still, she didn’t complain about it at all, which made me think she was holding her tongue out of her respect for the elves. She might be the first one to learn how to resist the Immortal’s magic, if she could control her emotions so well already. “Cas,” said Taoc, “do we really have to sit this way?”

I looked down at her as she was sitting on top of the clouds in a lotus position. “Yes,” I said. “And regulate your breathing. I’m using magic to manage the air around your bodies. It shouldn’t feel any lighter than it would on the ground. So breathe in, and breathe out. Hold your breath in between for a while, and make sure each breath is deep. As deep as you can get it to be!”

“I am trying!” complained Taoc. Spirits were small so their lungs were small too, so I didn’t judge her too harshly. Still, she was restless and that did not help with regulating emotions.

“You seem to have already gotten the hang of it, Kol,” I said.

The demon queen did not reply. I nodded at her and cast a spell. Kol began to frown. Her frown deepened and beads of sweat began to appear on her forehead until she finally collapsed to the fake ground and let out a short shout. She picked herself up and glared at me. “What was that?”

“What was what?” I said.

“Don’t pretend like you don’t know!” said Kol. “I felt a massive weight bearing down on me. Were you pressing down on me with your hands or something?”

“Me?” I shook my head. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Messing up your concentration wouldn’t be funny at all.” I shrugged. “Adding a little weight on your head with magic hands and air magic to force you to keep your cool under pressure, now that I could imagine doing.”

“So you did put something on me!” she said.

“Just get back to your breathing exercises,” I said. “And try to keep calm no matter what. I’ll probably be tickling you next time.”

“No, wait, don’t do that, I’m very ticklish!” said Kol.

“After that I’ll splash water on your head,” I said.

“No, my hair!” she said.

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“And we might finish the day with a little fire training,” I said.

“Please don’t burn my clothes,” she said, “these were very expensive!”

“Didn’t you pay for them from the treasury?” I said.

“Of course I did,” she said.

“Then you can pay for some more!” I said with a chuckle. Kol complained but eventually she had no choice but to go back to the lotus position while trying to control her breathing. Despite all her complaining, she withstood the pressure and tickle training pretty quickly. The water training did mess her up though, mostly because she kept trying to keep her hair dry.

“And what about you, Kelser? Had any luck yet?” I said as I walked over to Kelser.

Kelser shook his head. He was sitting in the lotus position, trying to regulate his breathing and empty his mind, but he was having trouble letting go of some of his thoughts. It was surprising, considering how good he was at magic, but the young man was pretty bad at keeping his mind empty and calm.

“And you sure you don’t want to tell me what’s in your mind?” I said.

“No,” he said quickly.

“You know that’s terribly suspicious,” I said.

“I don’t care,” he said.

I shrugged. “Suit yourself.” I shook my head. “Kids and their secrets. It’s always something embarrassing and they’re terrible at hiding it. Don’t worry, I won’t tell her you have a crush on her.”

“What? How’d you know?” he said, keeping his voice low.

“Oh, you know, I can read you like an open book,” I said.

“But you don’t know her!” he said.

“Oh, I don’t?” I said. “Well, guess that’s all I’m gonna get from you then.”

Kelser frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I didn’t know it was something about a girl,” I said. “But thanks for letting me know.”

“You’re terrible,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“You’re naive,” I said. “And don’t worry, I know just the thing to get your mind off of love.”

“Oh?” he said.

“Yep,” I said as I walked over and started putting pressure on his shoulders with magic. “Kids like you need a little kick to keep them from wasting all their time thinking about crushes.”

“Not fair!” he cried.

“Have fun! Once you can keep cool under this, we’ll move you onto tickle training too,” I said as I walked away.

I cycled between the three of them, giving them pointers, and changing up their training from time to time. As expected, Kol moved onto fire training by the end of the day, and Taoc couldn’t stop giggling from the mere mention of tickling. Kelser, surprisingly, seemed to recover after our little chat, and shot right past Taoc, completely ignoring the tickle training. As the sun began to set on another day of training, Kelser spat out a mouthful of water and swept a hand through his wet hair before shooting me a glare and returning to his training. I met his glare and only looked away once he was back in lotus position.

The sun was getting low. I waved my hand and cleared away the clouds. Far below, I saw the soldiers making camp for the night. From up high, I could see the abandoned village in the distance, not too far from where the army had come to a rest. We had left pretty late in the day, thanks to a few delays and arguments that I had had with Bain Rusta and the others. I managed to convince them to improve our supply lines before leaving the village, since the Horde could always try to starve out an army of this size instead of engaging with us directly. Still, we were almost over the border and were only waiting for confirmation from our diplomats that they had passed on the declaration of war through the official channels. Starting tomorrow, the United Army would be officially at war with the Singing Horde.

In my head, I planned out the distractions that I was going to put in front of the army. First, they would be diverted to another direction thanks to a block in the road. Then, their scouts would think they had found a large raiding party nearby, forcing the army to take up arms and brace for a fight. When none would come, they would assume the maneuver had been a feint and would definitely fall for it a few more times before deciding to keep marching with their guard up. I was also going to make a couple of rivers overflow in their path, and bring a few annoying but not dangerous monsters over to them as well. I had a few other ideas too, like messing up supply lines and forcing them to retreat to fix them up again, or making a few fortresses along the way that looked like they were well defended but were actually completely empty. I was going to pull out all the stops to make sure this army took forever to get to the Horde.

In the meantime, I would train up Kelser, Kol, and Taoc, so they could resist the Simurgh’s mind control magic, and join me on my mission to retrieve the Book of Annihilation.

Taoc belted out in laughter, falling out of her position and cackling on the empty air like she had just heard the funniest joke of her entire life. I sighed. This was going to be a rough couple of days.