Remus woke with a start his head feeling like it was splitting from the intense pain. His caretaker quickly wiped his sweaty feathers with a cool brush to help him settle, and a deep coughing started up.
"My lord Remus!" His attendant said, startled, "Did it go so poorly this time?" Her voice worsened his headache, and he waved her down and back while he took stock. His old bones creaked as he turned his head slowly to focus on the symbols around the room. They were his focus for when, or if, he was killed in his simulacrum. To make matters worse he couldn't recall memories of how he died in such cases, but knew he couldn't go back into that dungeon for a long time. His power had burned out from pushing his stats too high, and now it would take a young man at least a month to recover. And, he was far from a young man anymore.
"Child," Remus croaked out, his voice dry and raspy from months of no use, "Call the leadership together and let them know we are going to have to discuss new plans." He coughed again, and the girl looked concerned. This was going to hurt them far more than he would like, but the plans he and the others had been working on would work. His eye caught the facets of a clear crystal in a stand near the window.
"And tell them, that I might have a new angle." Thoughts returning to the young human with hair like burning ash.
-----
King Malagos leaned back in his chair, massaging his head from the last few hours of politicking. Weeks of debating a simple issue of where to send additional troups for the ongoing conflict with the rebels. It just got more complicated when he started recieving unwelcome reports from Lord Reginald about the Mana Well. It was supposed to concentrate the rebels efforts into one place so the Kingdom to crush them in one go, and that seemed to be working in a way. Reginald reported that many problems with rebel forces had been made and dealt with in short order, but the unwelcome news was that the Mana Well was under a Dungeon. Which they just didn't have time to pacify and secure, especially with the increasing pressure on the north border near the Kingdom of Masire. He would have thought that the rebels would have focused on the Kingdom of Lalogas since they held the largest populations of enslaved Beastkin. Which seemed to be the focus for the rebel forces when they attacked. Yet, they ignored the western kingdom in favor of his own and Masire.
Something was going on, and even the last reports of successful defense against the Blood Lord Remus wasn't enough to quiet the mutterings of the court. The King wished to just put them all in collars and be done with it, and while he could do just that. He needed their support for the ongoing campaign to the Mana Well since most had strong Adventurers in their family.
"My King," A page asked, bowing before his monarch, "The lady Mirabella is here to see you, sire." Malagos waved the page in, and the face of the Lady of Arcues followed in behind. A clever woman with a good habit of being where she was needed, before even being asked. She had earned her name after planning and executing the raid of a rebel stronghold in the east by a town called Arcues. Which she now had a firm hand on, and the King had heard nothing but good reports about it's productivity and trading.
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"I take it you are here to ask for permission to go to Veridian's Holding?" Malagos asked with a raised eyebrow, and Mirabella nodded her head.
"If I take a force of one hundred it should be easy enough to aid my colleague in his work, and secure the Mana Well within a month or two. Since I have heard that the Dungeon is as new as the Well itself." Malagos smiled and chuckled slightly near the end.
"I grant your request, but you will find this Dungeon to be something of an outlier when it comes to Dungeons of it's age. The history books talk about the few that had been found close to Mana Wells being exceptional." Mirabella looked confused at his choice of words, they were always deliberate.
"They were destroyed?" She asked with an inquisitive tone. Dungeons provided some of the best building and war materials in the Realms.
"Yes, they became too strong for us to control, so we used the slave magic on them. Apparently, it does something odd to them over a short time, and they just fall apart. Not that I am a mage, so it's not something I care about." Malagos replied, "Go forth and conquer Lady of Arcues, this is a direct request to succeed and replace Lord Reginald. He has done well, but is needed back in the capital." Mirabella flinched, knowing those words put her on the same path that Reginald had taken. He likely thought no one saw his machinations to get sent on this quest, but he would be dead wrong. Now he would be punished for not following the commands of the King.
"As you wish, my King." Mirabella said, dropping to her knees before her monarch. Sometimes it was good to be the king, Malagos thought to himself.
----
Pyra looked back towards the south, where she knew her Mother was. It had been days of travel along game trails to get away from Lolacal, and Marshall told her they were going to a Beastkin town in the western Kingdom of Lalogas called Artima. Apparently he had family there he wished to visit before they went to see some ruins. He promised the ruins had some answers to her constant questions about the "System", and why it suddenly gave her all these things that only seemed to limit her power. Her sensitivity to fire was much higher, but she could barely see the other patterns and flows of mana now. Beyond that, since they fled the town, she kept thinking back on the faces of the children she had seen out of the corner of her eye, or just in passing. For some reason they stuck in her mind when the rest didn't, and she wanted to do something for them. Though, she was at a complete loss as to what that was, and what this feeling was. Marshall called it "sympathy" and tried to expalin that it is what you felt when you did something bad that you felt was wrong.
A flame came to life in her hand, and only the mana from within her body flowed out to form it. The energy of the world only flowed into her directly, avoiding the flickering light. Those people had come after her, attacked her, wanted things from her that she didn't want to give. She had the right to remove them and continue on... didn't she? It was that lack of conviction at the end that conjured up those small faces. Faces like her own, but not quite the same. Faces that had been haunting her as she walked, and also in her dreams. A shiver passed through her as she remembered the dreams, ever since the "System" she now had to sleep at least a few hours each night. Those faces wrapped in fire had been the only things she had seen. A judgement of her actions verses her name.
The flame flickered with blue, before going out. She would try to do better this next time, she would try to make them smile. Just them though.