Vain was not in the public library, or the private one attached to it that only the gods had access to. He was not in his study near the library, or any of his other studies in the other towers of the castle. All that filled those rooms were papers and scrolls and a history that D’Argen was starting to doubt. Vain had too many places where he worked, but nobody ever opposed it. Each study contained the information on different topics.

D’Argen decided to wait for their head scholar in one of his smaller studies, the one that held maps and routes and delicate parchments that were sealed with magic to keep them from turning to dust. He was looking through the glass covering over one such parchment when his vision swam. He caught himself on the edge of a shelf near the glass box and started rubbing his eyes. When the vertigo subsided, the parchment behind the glass was still blurry. The characters on it were foreign and strange. The feeling reminded him too much of Varuba’s staff and that cursed pillar—

Were the two related?

A pounding started between his eyes.

He left the study to go back to the main library. All of Vain’s studies were accessible to any in the castle at any time. Yet if Varuba and her culture were real, D’Argen suspected that Acela would want that information kept from the mortals. The private library that stood out from the public one was a single and small room. There was not much in it.

As much as Acela liked having total control of the mortals, she was also a true believer that knowledge should never be hidden. Yet that small room had hundreds of books with information that no living mortal would ever know.

“What good does it do them to know of the eclipse?” Acela had asked once, offhandedly, as she marked a few books down to be locked in that room. An eclipse was one thing, but the event that made every single god in all of Trace lose access to their mahee was another.

As D’Argen walked the halls back to the library, he was greeted with both surprise and the much rarer pleasure. A few of the other gods stopped him to greet him, to tell him how glad they were he was awake, but none of those conversations lasted long. It was much more likely they had been glad he was silent for the past seven years than that he was back. Especially since he was back now with the plan of stirring up more trouble and, as Acela liked to call it, conspiracies.

The sound of metal striking stone made D’Argen’s feet falter. It sent a shiver down his spine, reminding him of Vah’mor’s glaive as it struck the marble floors of the castle hall when they chased him down. He had been so lost in thought he did not realize he had crossed almost the entire ground floor of the castle. But there were no training rooms on the ground floor. Even Vah’mor knew to keep their blade—

D’Argen wiped that thought away on purpose. He knew he would have to see and meet and talk with Vah’mor again in the future, but that did not mean he was ready for it just yet. Instead, he turned to follow the sound. It was irregular. It silenced for so long at some points that he thought he imagined it. Those around him were calm and collected, making no note of it and making him doubt his own mind once again. When he finally reached the source, he was blocked by a set of doors that usually remained open. The meeting room was one of many on the ground floor where any mortal dignitaries that visited could sit and enjoy themselves while waiting for attendance with Acela. The doors usually remained open to reveal the space was available for anyone to enter. Vah’mor’s glaive made the marble break from the other side of the doors.

D’Argen pushed the doors open and a sudden silence took over the room. There were over a dozen mortals inside, half of them dressed in rich fabrics, bright jewels, and precious metals. Acela and Zetha were there, as were a handful of other gods. All turned silent and stared at him as he stepped in.

“D’Argen! You are awake!” Acela seemed the most surprised. She slipped through the crowd to go right up to him. D’Argen could not avoid her as she gripped his forearms and pulled him close, placing a kiss on each of his cheeks. It was not a custom he was familiar with and definitely not one he could imagine Acela utilizing in the past. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“D’Argen,” Zetha greeted him as well, circling the crowd and wrapping an arm around his wife’s waist. His other hand clasped D’Argen’s shoulder tight and pulled him to mirror the custom Acela bestowed. Zetha’s beard and mustache tickled at D’Argen’s skin. The king’s fingers were too stiff, gripping almost painfully at D’Argen’s shoulder.

Acela’s smile was too fake.

They were obviously happy to see him, he could tell, but they were both so tense. A look over both their heads revealed everyone in the room was tense. The other gods there all looked at him with bright eyes and smiles, yet for some, their shoulders almost reached their ears.

“Ah, I apologize. If I knew you were awake and back, I would have prepared a proper greeting,” Acela said. Acela did not apologize. D’Argen narrowed his eyes.

“It is fine,” he said slowly.

One of the mortals, a portly man with a thick beard of white and black, cleared his throat loudly.

“Of course, of course,” Acela quickly turned back to the crowd. Her smile looked more real, but her shoulders were still tense. “I apologize, our honoured guests. We had an incident a few years back and D’Argen was almost lost to us. I did not even realize he was recently healed until just this moment. This is D’Argen, the Envoy of Evadia. D’Argen, would you like to join us?”

Would he? Of course not. The tension in the room was enough to make his skin crawl. The way Acela was acting was making his stomach church. Yet he nodded. Acela pulled out of Zetha’s grasp and wrapped both arms around one of D’Argen’s, guiding him deeper into the room. As she urged him to sit on one of the sofas there, D’Argen watched as everyone else also took a seat. He doubted they had all stood with his entrance.

A mortal woman with long hair in loose waves cleared her throat. She motioned over her shoulder and a moment later there was a glass in her hand that she sipped from. D’Argen accepted the glass Acela put into his hands and looked around, trying to find the source of the sound. It was gone, and while the walls were the marble that covered all of Evadia, Vah’mor was not even in the room, let alone their glaive.

Someone cleared their throat. D’Argen recognized the pin on the man’s chest. An envoy, like himself, but from the nation to the west. Cial – if it had not been changed in his sleep.

“May we resume?” the woman who drank asked, her voice raspy as if she had recently been yelling.

“Queen Valeria of Elese,” Acela introduced her to D’Argen.

The mortal Queen inclined her head in greeting and D’Argen copied her, hiding his throat from her sharp gaze.

“I still say Elese has no say in this, what-so-ever,” the portly man spoke up.

“King Vikram of Oltria,” Acela introduced. D’Argen wondered why Acela was acting like a scribe and not like the queen she was.

The Oltrian noble looked displeased at the title. D’Argen remembered that they had taken on a new naming convention a few years before his trip north. Acela ignoring their naming customs was as out of sorts as her fake smile.

“You passed our lands on the way to this expedition. You used our people. Most of the mortals that are still in the north, from the first time to now, are Elesee. We have more of a say than most,” the Elesee queen said, glaring at the Oltrian noble.

“The north?” D’Argen asked aloud before he could stop his words. Acela’s arm, where it was still hooked through one of his as they sat together, tightened. D’Argen knew it was a signal to stay quiet, so he did not meet either the Elesee Queen’s or the Oltrian King’s eyes. Instead, he took a sip from the glass Acela had given him. It was honey-coloured, but it tasted like water.

“As I have already stated—” Acela straightened her back as she started, her voice taking on the authority that was missing earlier “—whatever ire you have with one another regarding splitting the resources, is of no concern to us. We can hold an official court to mediate, but we will not take sides. What is our concern, however, is your firm belief that we must provide you with our magic.”

What?

WHAT?

D’Argen did his best not to flinch. Had they done it? Had Cana, Darania, and Acela found a way to give magic to the mortals? What did that have to do with the north?

The others continued their conversation before D’Argen had arrived. It sounded like a lot of it was repeated from before, an argument involving the Oltrian King and the new port and trading routes on his lands leading to the north, along with the Elesee Queen’s demand that her people in the north deserved to be rewarded for their work.

In general, D’Argen learned that over the last seven years since they had discovered the northern continent, Haur had led multiple expeditions with the specific focus of trying to establish a long-term settlement there. The fact that he had also spent that time looking for Lilian’s body made D’Argen blackout and he tuned back into the conversation what felt like days later.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“We will be receiving a full survey of the area to see what we can construct within the month,” Haur said at one point.

“Why?” one of the mortals questioned from where he was sitting right beside Haur. “From what we know, it is not a good place to live. Few crops will survive for food, and it would be completely dependent on resources from the mainland. I think it is pointless.”

At that point, Acela finally unhooked her arm from around D’Argen. He used the chance to escape and got up. So it did not look out of place, he went to the table of refreshments along one of the walls and filled a glass with the same amber liquid Acela had given him earlier. When he presented it to her, she took it with only a smile as an acknowledgement. Zetha took his spot on the sofa beside his wife. D’Argen returned to support the wall near the table, standing barely a step away from Olde. The other god greeted him privately with a tilted chin and a smile.

“Actually—” Haur continued his earlier point with a gentle tone, “—the small settlements we already have near the ocean shores are doing quite well. The reason I am looking to build something more permanent is due to the abundance of resources we can gather from the north that are of little use there. There are seals, white bears, foxes, and wolves, large whales where one carcass could feed a family for months. And those are just the animals. We have found an herb in the mountains that has multiple properties to help ward off sickness, and there is the ore in the mountain veins.”

That ore again. It had been mentioned earlier. D’Argen ignored Olde’s subtle gestures to leave the room so he could listen in.

The mortal sitting beside Haur turned to him fully, his round belly making the gesture look comical. “King Arjun of Jiyahad, named after his great ancestor who fought in the demon wars alongside Vah’mor,” Olde whispered to D’Argen, shifting closer.

D’Argen ignored him. He did not recall any mortal with that name, in either set of memories.

“While we are not lacking in food,” the Jiyahad King started, his belly and cheeks alone proving his words true, “This ore is useless to all of us without your help.”

“Even without us infusing our magic in it for your use, you can still mould it into metal. It is stronger and lighter than steel. It would be great for many constructions, especially the more delicate work such as clockwork and in the medical fields” Haur specified.

An… ore… that could be infused with their magic?

There had been many generations of mortal Queens and Kings that had begged the gods for access to their magic. There had even been some that demanded it as their right to have it. It had never worked before when the gods tried to share it. D’Argen tried not to think of the Life Crops that Darania had created and that horrible dream where Darania and Lilian fought in a field of flowers with the scent of magic.

“A farming community?” one of the other women in the room scoffed out, obviously trying to take attention away from the ore for some reason. Olde did not whisper her name but the delicate silver diadem on her head revealed her to be some sort of royalty as well. “You want to send even more of us regular people to that horrible north? Somebody to take care of all this and bring it back here?” she sounded insulted as if she were going to be the one to do the work.

“I want to send whoever wants to go,” Haur quickly answered with a smile before anybody else could. “I would love to go back there and remain for longer myself. It is such an interesting land, and we are finding something new every time we go.”

“You have been back here only a few times since your first visit. Your last stay in the north was almost three years,” Acela added in, trying to continue the conversation in that direction.

“This ore. We cannot even shape it without your magic. We have already tried,” the Jiyahad King spoke up above the others.

Acela’s face darkened.

Haur hesitated only for a moment, but then smiled wide and turned his full focus on the man. “I did not realize any of it had left the north,” he said. The Jiyahad King flinched back, one of his heavy lobes wobbled and the black metal in it jangled loudly.

“It is a resource that does not belong to any one nation or person,” Queen Valeria of Elese threw in. “And let us stop beating around the bush. We all know that while a farming community and a new nation are nice, what interests all of us here is that ore and your help in gathering it, moulding it, and using it.”

“And for what purpose?” Olde asked, finally speaking up for once from beside D’Argen. “Our discovery that the ore can hold our magic was an accident. If it was up to us, you never—”

“What he means to say,” Acela swiftly interrupted, “Is that this is a danger that we must first explore in full before it can be utilized to harm you or any of your people or lands.”

Queen Valeria scoffed. The man beside her patted her shoulder and she shook him off.

“So my generation, probably even that of my children and grandchildren, will not even hear of it, is that what you mean to say?” the Elesee queen asked.

“If that is how long it takes us to ensure it is safe, yes,” Acela answered, her voice gentle but leaving no room for argument. “If you wish to join our parties, sign a contract for the resources that we will be bringing down from the north, you are more than welcome to.”

“Those are my ships bringing those resources here,” King Arjun spoke up.

“Those are my men gathering them,” Queen Valeria shot back, glaring at the Oltrian King.

“And it is the gods that pay for those ships and that keep all those mortals safe and alive in the north,” Acela interjected. D’Argen felt a chill run down his spine and settle in his bones, like tiny ice crystals forming under his skin.

“The lands themselves have much to offer,” Zetha spoke up, obviously trying to steer the conversation to safer grounds.

Haur quickly added, “Yes, the winters are definitely harsh and there is not much of a summer, but the land is so beautiful and we still have much to discover.”

“We have seen Abbot’s paintings,” Zetha continued with a smile. “I would love to see it for myself as well. If I am not needed here, I would love to join a future party going north to help with the construction of a more permanent settlement. Where were you thinking?”

“On the east of the mountain,” Haur confirmed. “But we want to keep as far south as we can, both for access to the ocean and whatever good weather we can get. The mountains can help shield us from the worst of the colder northern winds and there is quite a bit of natural flora there. We have also seen more land leading both east and north but have yet to explore that far out.”

“And what of another avalanche?” D’Argen spoke up for the first time. He could not imagine that this was how land and its resources were claimed. Acela had been right before, he knew nothing of the politics of ruling a nation or having any subjects. Still, he could not help but feel those ice crystals grow and shatter and reform as anger coursed through him and came out with his next words, “What if more die in the snow?”

“There has not been another incident since our first time there,” Haur explained.

“The first incident was enough to leave an impression.”

“D’Argen!” Zetha scolded with power in his voice.

D’Argen ignored him to ask, “Will it be on top of the mountain where we lost four? Or inside the mountain where we lost another two? Or maybe in the red snow or on the soft ice? What about under the mountain, where I almost met my own end?”

“That crevasse has long since shifted,” Haur spoke up and his eyes darted to Acela. D’Argen must have said something the mortals did not know about. “The ice there is strong and Borianna had set about crews and explorers in the area. The avalanche was a rare occurrence and even if it were to happen again, it would not reach the area I had in mind. I want us near the mountains, not in them or on top of them. Halen is also there with Thar, the two are looking for a way to mould and strengthen the ice, so if we wanted to, we could build an entire city from it that would be safe.”

D’Argen’s anger only rose further upon hearing the other man’s name. It was as if Thar himself was in the room and had heard his name, responding to it with his usual hum that echoed inside D’Argen’s chest like a lead weight.

“Thar is there?”

“Yes. Of course. He and his mahee are vital in the construction of our settlements,” Haur then turned to Acela, ignoring whatever else D’Argen wanted to say and speaking over him to say, “In fact, if everything is going by plan, Thar will be returning alongside with Halen for that survey I mentioned. Otherwise, it would be just Halen.”

Acela smiled behind her glass as she sipped it delicately, then faced Queen Valeria fully. “It would be an interesting expedition, no? To see the construction of a city of ice?”

Queen Valeria scowled, then took a deep breath and her face calmed.

“I, for one, am too old to endure such a trip and my bones are too brittle for the harsh cold,” an older man that D’Argen had only just noticed spoke up. He had been quiet the entire time even though the metal brooch at his neck revealed him to be of equal status to both the Elesee Queen and the two other Kings in the room. “My son, however, would love it,” the older man continued. The younger one sitting beside him looked like he would love to do anything but.

“And I, for one,” Olde added in, pushing off the wall, “Have to return home to prepare for such trips as needed. I am looking forward to going up north myself on that mountain and studying the stars from there. But before that, D’Argen, would you walk me out? I need to speak to you about something. And we should also find Vain, together, to get some updates from both of you down on paper.”

Vain was the reason D’Argen was in Evadia. He nodded only after checking in quickly with Acela and receiving a subtle nod from her. The two left the room and though it had not been as tense as when he first entered, the moment the doors closed behind him he let out a heavy breath.

“That Queen Valeria? She is the mortal ruler of your lands?” D’Argen asked as he and Olde walked down the hall.

“More that I am the god of her lands, but yes,” Olde nodded. “She and I do not see eye to eye on many things, but the one thing we agree on is that our lands are harsh and unwelcoming to most. We need more resources.”

“That is why you are siding with her?”

“Siding with who?” Olde asked, stopping them in the middle of the hall. “Who did you just see me side with?”

“I… uhh—” D’Argen stammered.

“Maybe you were hearing something that was not being spoken, but there was nothing for me to side with. And even if I did, I know how ambitious she is. I know how hungry she is. I know what she would do if she were not given at least a little leeway. She had to fight for her title. She was not born to be queen, as many of these mortals decide on their leaders. So much has happened while you were asleep, D’Argen. Be lucky you awoke now, otherwise even more would have happened.”

With those words, Olde started walking again. D’Argen had to skip two steps to catch up.

“Where are you off to?” Olde asked him with a crooked smile.

“Didn’t you just say you wanted to speak to me and for us to see Vain?”

“Oh no, that was just an excuse. One person leaving that meeting alone could be seen as an insult. But yes, go to Vain. He will catch you up on all that you have missed these past seven years. It has truly been exciting. But D’Argen, truly… I am glad you are awake. When Haur told us of what happened, none of us believed it. You used so much mahee and the fact that you are awake so early…” Olde trailed off.

D’Argen stopped walking as Olde continued, staring at the man’s wide shoulders and long white hair. For a moment, D’Argen thought of Thar. If Thar was due back in Evadia within the month, then D’Argen would be out of there within a few days. He turned on his heel and ran back to the library, this time sending out a message to try and reach Vain so the other would meet him there.