Me and Lance leave the area and head outside the city. We walk past the group of people and after a few murmers from people the groups we pass keep adressing him as commander. My men have brought the black dragon into range for the army to get used to. After showing it off to Lance and speaking to my men, we did have some problems with people trying to fight it until my men cleared everything up... Then they were still watched with extreme prejudice from the close by army.

We stop in the middle district for a moment where I assume he lives and buy some food to eat. We make our way to a house in the high quarter and we enter. Lance yells out.

“I’M HOME! I BROUGHT BACK A GUEST!”

I hear thumping as someone runs down the staircase close to the doors entrance. The person coming down the stairs isn’t Trice… Oh yea, I forgot about Duchess… She rushes down and shouts.

“Nice to me-.”

She finally recognizes me.

“Oh… It’s you...”

“Yep… It’s just me.”

She quickly ignores me and starts talking to Lance.

“So how did your war meeting go today? You didn’t let the other generals bully you into doing something stupid like a suicide mission right?”

“Haha, we’ve got a pretty good strategy for starting the fight.”

“Did they end up going with the strategy we thought up?”

“Not quite. It’s pretty similar except with some differences to it. The defending fortifications part because of the number advantage was very similar but we’re going to assault their main forces before their secondary forces join together with them. We’ll talk more at diner, go wash your hands and get Trice.”

She runs off into an adjacent room and I hear splashing. I hear someone else coming down the stairs now. Before I can see who it is, she says.

“Well, take your friend and go sit in the living room while I prepare the dining room for diner.”

I watch as she steps down more slowly than a normal person would come down the steps. Her stomach looks bigger than… She’s pregnant! She makes it to the bottom of the steps and looks up at me now.

“Oh, it’s just you Kite. Go sit down while I place some dishes for supper. Before you shout it out loud, yes I’m pregnant.”

Lance laughs hard as I feel embarrassed. Me and Lance go into another room and wait while I hear clinking of dishes being place in the dining room. I’m very surprised by the house he’s living in. It is one of the bigger houses in the high quarter. He had enough money to rent a house from the land baron in the middle quarter when he first moved here but he was given a house in the high quarter once he became an important general.

The house is honestly too big for 3 people to live in. You could easily fit another 7 people into this house without any trouble. I ask why he hasn’t hired a maid yet and he whispers.

“Believe me, I've tried. Trice is extremely against it. She says we don’t need a servant and we shouldn’t treat people like they are worth less than us.”

She is right. I already knew Trice was extremely against slavery. Getting a slave to be a maid would be something she wouldn’t do. He whispers even quieter now.

“The thing is… Her cooking is awful. No matter what she makes it comes out burnt and under cooked at the same time. I’m half tempted to learn myself or kidnap someone who can cook me an actual meal.”

He might be spoiled from having chefs make his food for him every day since he moved to the fortress… Trice isn’t a normal person, she is most likely trying to cook the food like a normal person would… I think I might have a solution for this problem if I’m being honest.

I start to think of what I would have to do to make sure that she could cook a meal no matter how bad she is at it… After a few minutes of talking with Lance and thinking I figured out a good method to at least teach her how to make one meal perfectly. I whisper to Lance.

“Alright, I think I have a solution to her cooking. I’ll teach her how to prepare a meal so that she can’t mess it up.”

I hear Trice yell from the other room.

“Alright, the table is set. You can come in now.”

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We walk in and Trice is pouring the last cup of tea before sitting it down on a tea set… Now that I think about it, Beatrice should have taught her many things about taking care of a house. Why didn’t she teach her how to be a chef? Could it be that even though Beatrice tried she was such a bad cook she couldn’t be taught…

Lance pulls out the food he bought from the stand and places it in the middle of the room. It looks like pork of some kind… Is this all they are going to eat? What an unbalanced meal with no side dishes. I go to grab a hunk to taste but I’m stopped by Lance grabbing my hand when I reach for some. He says.

“Not yet.”

The 3 of them all bow their heads and I hear Lance start to speak.

“Oh god of life. Please continue to keep our family safe. Please keep my men safe from our enemies. Help us bring in new life to this world..."

There is a pause for a moment and I assume it's over but after a few seconds of silence he continues to speak.

"Oh god of creation. Please keep making this world safer for us. Please continue to make this world a better place for us and our children to live in. Amen.”

I bowed my head and prayed with them. For some reason I never really thought of Lance and Trice as devout people… Maybe they picked it up from Duchess or perhaps someone in the city talked them into becoming more religious… I’m not sure how I feel about this. The few encounters I’ve had with gods so far haven’t been very great. The god of death is actively trying to get me to be his follower no matter the cost.

If I were to devote myself to a god it would most likely be one of the two they worship. With how many things I’ve created… With how many peoples lives I saved… Both gods would most likely eagerly accept me as a follower… With how many lives I’ve also taken… With the destruction my inventions have caused… With how much I’ve already changed the world… Every single one of the gods would want me as a follower... Besides the god of balance.

We start to eat and I prepare a few side dishes to go with the meat skewers that Lance had bought earlier. We have a lot of small talk which Lance tends to start. Me, Trice and Duchess would have most likely eaten in silence if Lance wasn’t here… It would be really nice to be as outgoing as he is… It is really nice to catch up with old friends like this every once in awhile. I regret not bringing Leaf along with me though.

After bringing this up, it turns out the Leaf has been frequently visiting them when she had any spare time. I guess that makes sense, Leaf was a very important member of their adventuring party for a few years. It makes sense that she would keep in touch with her best friend Trice… Now that I think about it… Leaf doesn’t have many human friends. For someone like myself, friendship isn't that big of a deal... Just hearing that she still has friends outside of the fortress puts me at ease.

We finish the meal. The meat was the worst part of the meal, ever since I got my new job it seems I can’t eat anyone but my own cooking. That is unless I regulate the meal so that it was made with a higher standard than normal. All of the chefs at the fortress were taught new ways to prepare food so that it would come out more perfect than it was before. Before I leave I give Trice the prototype for cooking foods more evenly than over a fire.

It looks very close to a sword that has been flattened down, it would be difficult for an average person to lift now that I think about it. I place a sheet of cold iron down on their counter and put the flat sword on top of that. Just holding the handle makes it begin to glow a faint orange as it heats up. The cold iron slab it’s resting on is to stop the heat from burning down the house. I’ve used this in many ways, but the best way is to boil food or make soup in pans.

The original prototype was of the pan heating up but it quickly became apparent that the design was flawed when I tried to wash the pan after cooking food. It also continuously heated when people tried to serve food to themselves and the overall control of heat was much harder to control. The original pan would quickly burn food, now it is much easier to prepare good food.

I go through and show Trice, Lance and Duchess how to cook using my new invention I call a hot plate. The biggest problem with Trice not knowing how to cook is no one has taken the responsibility from her yet so they’ve just been eating food prepared by vendors until now. If even a single one can cook then that will make it easier for them to eat good food.

I pull out a ten pound sack of rice and explain how to cook it. It is a food that the murine folk eat with almost every meal. I go through how to prepare it to eat and give them all the necassary tools to prepare it properly. At least with this they can get some experience with cooking and they might learn how to make things to serve along with the meat they buy.

That is all I can do… It’s getting late already, the meeting took hours and after catching up with Lance the day is just gone. I head to my home in Merideth and take the portal back to the fortress. I look for Red and make sure she is okay. Not just her physical well being but her mental as well. She was drugged for a long time but it seems she chose to stay there for the first few weeks since she arrived. All was fine until the fire elemental lord started asking questions about me. When she wouldn’t answer he drugged her to get the answers out of her… It still pisses me off but he’ll hopefully die soon.

She doesn’t remember much, the drug seems to have dulled her memory of when she was on it so I couldn’t even give me any details or weaknesses of the fire lord if I ever have to fight him again. It just doesn’t feel right. Leaving a dangerous enemy out there to do whatever he wants isn’t something I want to do.

I’m going to have to try harder than ever to make new inventions that will help fight against the fire elemental lord if he ever tries to attack me or my men. I need to invent stronger ice bombs. I need to increase the heat resistant material I can work with, perhaps strengthen my spider silk or the cold iron in some way. I need to keep my men’s equipment updated to the best they can possibly be. Finally, any allies I gain could prove extremely useful towards fighting him if he shows up. Getting some powerful leaders in my debt could save my army from being wiped out.

Tomorrow I will try to find the 5000 troops I asked for out of the untrained soldiers we have fighting. The archers I trained from Shienta should be arriving in a few days… I wonder who will see them for how valuable they actually are. Most people would not rely on archers for fighting, there aren’t any well trained archers in this area of the world. The only ones I’ve seen were the legion soldiers who were trained in archery, swordsmanship and fighting with spears.

The legion soldiers were trained to launch several volley’s of arrows at the approaching army. Once the enemy got close, the front line would pull out swords and shields to fight while the second and third line would pull out spears to help with the fighting. All of these soldiers would protect there inner line which were healers and mages providing support to the front line.

It would be foolish to try and teach 5000 troops how to use three different types of weapons in two weeks… Teaching them all how to use one will be cutting it close in time. Honestly… I’m not exactly sure what I should teach them.

I head into bed and Leaf is reading a book. She looks from her book and at that moment I remember… SHIT! She was going to yell at me. I think for a moment, I could still run away from this… No, It’s too late for that. If I remembered I might have been able to hide until she went to sleep. I step inside and get yelled at for over an hour for fighting the fire elemental lord by myself.

It isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be… She just cares about my safety and when I do something stupid like that she panics… I still think back to how close I was to death constantly during that fight. She talked about some other things but it seems like Gobber is very close to having a mental breakdown if he doesn’t do anything fun.

He’s missed out on so many fights and other events because of his children… Leaf told me to take him to a raid at the opposite end of the continent. Me and him can send a day or so clearing it while I really think of what I should teach the men I plan to train. I’ve sent beast riders that direction over a month ago to place a portal scroll close by. The network of scrolls I have make it so that it wouldn’t take me longer than a week to make it anywhere on this continent. I'm actually excited for the chances of placing plenty of portal scrolls in the north western continent during this upcoming war.

Leaf has fallen asleep but I can’t sleep now. I gently crawl out of bed and start planning my trip out with Gobber, the ideas for new weapons flow into my head. Rushing their creation might take waking up a few blacksmith’s and enchanters but I have no doubt the weapons will be worth it. I hear Wrath speak up now.

“We need to talk.”