Bellona looked over her selection of ingredients while Xarlug settled into a chair nearby. "Well," she said as she turned toward her spice rack, "Yesterday was one of the strangest days I have experienced here."

"Hah," he replied, "I can only imagine. Standing guard for the king and queens of a faerie court isn't an everyday sort of job. Not that those three are much for formality. I bet Moriko hated it, but I can see Kazue enjoying the fancy atmosphere at least."

"Not far off. There was a party at the end, and Moriko rather enjoyed that outside of a minor incident. Let's start at the beginning though." Bellona added a small selection of elemental salts to her herb and spice selection for tonight's meal. She had to be very careful with them as Xarlug didn't have her tolerance, but some flavors were otherwise impossible to create. They were a ground form of the elemental crystals she had brought with her from her forays into the caverns during her training.

"So, we get pulled to the Other Side and land in their faerie domain. Only it's not just a bit of faerie land, it's still the dungeon's territory, I can feel that connection clearly. It was still a strange place. The snow glittered like it was made of glass or crystal or something, but it wasn't fake or anything."

As Bellona described the world she had experienced, she combined tiny dashes of her chosen elemental salts into a shallow dish. "Everything was like that; somehow so intensely real that it felt unreal. You could smell everything clearly too; the smells of snow, trees, and earth blended together in harmony while remaining distinct. The real world doesn't work like that."

Next, she added some normal salt to dilute the ground crystals. "Once we had a chance to get used to the weirdness, the trio led us to where they were going to play King and Queen and began setting things up."

The memory brought a grin to her lips as she said, "Moriko got a tiny taste of being a dungeon too. She's a queen of her realm. On that side of reality, it means she could command the earth itself to rise and shape itself to her will. Not that it looked easy."

Xarlug snorted with amusement. "I bet. It seems like it'd be more magic stuff, though I guess she knows a bit about that now. More than me at least, but that ain't hard."

"I've seen you use a bit of power yourself," Bellona replied, "so you can't downplay it that much."

He frowned and looked pensive as he said, "You know what that comes from. I'm not sure why you and Kansif encourage me to use those tricks."

Bellona resisted the urge to smack him upside the head. "Your flesh and spirit inherited that potential from whatever touched your ancestor, but the power itself is not evil or corrupt. Denying this part of you will do far more harm than learning how to control it."

She placed a hand on the shallow dish of salts and concentrated for a moment to sense the elemental energies within. When she was ready, Bellona tweaked and blended the energy to create the flavor/sensation combination she wanted. It helped take her mind off of her annoyance with Xarlug's worry over his fiend-touched nephilim bloodlines.

"Anyway," Bellona continued after a moment of silence, "after Moriko set up the platform, Mordecai and Kazue got to work making everything fancy for the dais before creating this glittery white path that split and spiraled off into the distance. It's the only road there, so it would be rather hard to miss the hint of which way to go."

With her flavored salt prepared, Bellona turned to the rest of the meal she had in mind. Her kitchen was the fanciest personal kitchen she'd ever had, thanks to Kazue's enthusiasm. Bellona had asked Kazue for a kitchen for her room, and the energetic woman had expanded the room out into a small suite instead. The kitchen was second only to the main room in size while the bedroom and bathroom were about tied for third place.

It also had the fanciest cooking setup she'd seen for a private kitchen. Bellona was pretty certain she could keep a manor house fed out of this setup.

Not that Bellona minded really, and she was amused by how the bathroom clearly had been set up for two people to use together. But the kitchen was almost too large. There were entire cabinets she hadn't figured out a use for yet, she didn't have that many things to put in a kitchen!

"It sounds impressive," Xarlug said thoughtfully. "I'm sort of used to what they can do here, but it sounds like they can do even more over there."

"Yes, sort of. Most of it I think they just chose to not do this side, but some things..." Bellona shook her head at the memory then set out her pans for the fish fillets and vegetables. She already had some heartier root vegetables in the oven, but the more delicate greens she was going to lightly pan fry.

"I'll get to that in a bit. So, after they set up all the feasting tables and stuff, it was time to be ceremonial. Have I mentioned how much I hate that sort of thing? It's boring as hell. But, well, someone needed to do it and I'm their bloody faerie knight." It made sense really, Bellona had the training and experience for the role, but that didn't make it any more fun.

"It was just a routine where I introduced all the guests and petitioners to the trio after they'd introduced themselves to me. Until that Silvander guy came back into line a petitioner this time, under orders from Queen Sylphine to try to have Carmilla come back home. Only, I don't think that was the actual intent. It seemed like it was some sort of political stunt to prove a point or learn something? Maybe both. Normal politics are bad enough, faerie politics are worse."

Bellona shook the cast iron pan with the vegetables before tossing it a couple of times and setting it back down on the engraved symbols that served as the magical heat source for her stove. "In short, he and Carmilla got into a duel over it. It was impressive. She won, if barely, and only thanks to pulling a few tricks in setting up the fight and then surprising him with her new powers."

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She sighed and admitted, "I don't think I could have won that fight. Carmilla was able to use all of her power there and still had a hard time despite her tricks. None of my talents lay toward that sort of trickery. Though I suppose it depends on how hard his spells hit." Bellona flipped the fish once, both fillets landing neatly with their skin sides up.

"He's fast, but not fast enough to find a way between the plates of my armor and I think I have the power to match the enchantments on his blade so he wouldn't be able to cut through easily. So it all depends on how potent his magic is when using the spells that Carmilla's set up denied him the use of."

"You don't think you can ward them off?" Xarlug asked. "I've seen you block and deflect some potent magic."

"I don't know," Bellona replied, "he was skilled and strong, and I am better with physical blows than spells, but maybe. It also depends on if he was using spells that my elemental skills can mitigate."

With dinner almost ready, Bellona broke out a pair of plates and set them on the counter. "That still wasn't the scariest event though. For one thing, Fuyuko tried to start a war by insulting a clan that was thinking of alliance by marriage. That got settled without any bloodshed, but they didn't like that the girl carries cold iron either. But that still wasn't the highlight."

"Satsuki?" Xarlug asked.

"Satsuki," Bellona confirmed as she took the pan out of the oven and started plating the root vegetables. "She sauntered right on up to me as if she expected me to just conveniently not be in her way by the time she arrived. Not that she was really trying, I didn't have to push back against her that hard, but I could feel the pressure of her will trying to sweep me out of the way. It was sort of like when we sparred with Gil but without the weapons. Well, external weapons at least. That woman's body is a weapon."

That got Xarlug curious. "I haven't seen her yet, is she really that beautiful?"

"Yes and no. I mean, it's not just how she looks, it's how she moves and carries herself. How in all the hells does a woman make it seem like she might drag someone into the bushes at any moment while still being a perfectly dignified lady who would make a man court her for years before he might be allowed to kiss her hand?"

Bellona couldn't keep the disgust out of her voice, though really it was an outlet for frustration. Despite the various beauties inhabiting and visiting the dungeon at any given moment, Bellona had never felt that outclassed. Hell, Satsuki even outdid Orchid when it came to being casually seductive.

After she finished plating the food, her pan came down a little harder than it should have. Xarlug rose and walked over to her and hugged her from behind. "Are you okay love?"

"Yeah," Bellona said with a sigh as she leaned into him, "just, most of the time I don't really care much about being that sort of pretty, but somehow she makes me feel a bit jealous."

"You have nothing to be jealous about," he replied as he nuzzled into her neck. "You are beautiful and perfect and have more important things in your life than learning how to mess with people that way."

Bellona enjoyed the attention for a moment, especially how he knew just the right place to nibble on her neck, and then she gently shook him off. "Alright, enough flattery. Here, take the plates to the table, I'll grab the wine."

Once they had settled down to eat, Bellona continued with her story. "Anyway, it seems like it was some sort of test and I passed. After that, she had Norumi do the formal introductions and such. Which, well, it would probably have been awkward for her to announce herself as the mother of Mordecai's child. Makes it sound like he had an affair or something."

Here she paused to watch Xarlug's reaction. While no flavor, not even a magically created one, could quite carry all the essence of that strange environment, Bellona had done her best to add the scent and atmosphere of winter in faerie to their food.

Xarlug closed his eyes briefly to savor the food and then looked at her with suspicion. "You made it taste like winter air and cold light. I didn't know that was possible, and you did it without making it fight or overwhelm the taste of the food."

She smiled happily at his response. "That was what I was going for. It's not perfect, but it is a bit of what faerie land smelled like. So, there were the introductions and the gifts. I still haven't been able to get an intelligible answer out of them as to what was so special about those gaudy necklaces but it seems they were made out of rare things that have the cores working hard for some reason."

Bellona had a few bites of her food before she continued. "Then Norumi was going to try to implant a dryad spirit in the crystal tree on that side. They put that plan on hold to see if they can get that world tree leaf to turn into a sapling first. I can't imagine what craziness is going to result from this crystal world tree hybrid idea they have, let alone having a dryad living in it."

She took a sip of her wine and enjoyed the combination of flavors for a moment. "After that was the return gifts. I still have trouble believing that they gave Satsuki that opal, but it did seem to score points against her in some way. Norumi and Haolong seemed to enjoy the diadem and armor that had been crafted for them as well. Then there was a little more business to deal with before everyone could just enjoy the party."

"What was the party like?" Xarlug asked between bites.

Bellona glanced at his plate and was pleased with how much he seemed to be enjoying the food. "It went well, for the most part. I couldn't enjoy the drink much of course, but there was plenty of good food and lots of people were dancing. There was one moment that could have gotten ugly though."

"Oh?"

"Someone tried to flirt too hard with Moriko. I mean, there's sort of courtly socializing flirting where no one really means it. Don't ask me how that works, that was never something I understood. But it seems like this guy meant it and made it too clear that he meant it. Moriko got annoyed and pinned him in place with her black lightning while she made sure everyone understood that the three of them were not interested in 'sport' with anyone else. Which, really, shouldn't have been hard to figure out."

She shrugged and said, "But, it seems some nobles, faeries or not, seem to think other people's rules don't include them. Um, wait a moment. Sorry, topic change. Kazue just let me know she's about to move the complex as part of claiming their next zone. I've never been in it when it moved, this should be interesting."

The two of them paused and waited expectantly. The results were somewhat anticlimactic. She could feel a faint sensation of motion, but that seemed to come more from her awareness of her position in the dungeon.

"Huh," Bellona said, "I guess the magic they use to move this section grabs everything inside at the same time."

"We moved?" Xarlug asked, looking disappointed. "I didn't feel a thing."

"I'll make sure to rectify that later," Bellona said with a smirk. "Anyway, that was it for the party. No one died or even got seriously injured, which is pretty good for a faerie party from what I understand. But you can expect to see a lot more fey folk wandering around the dungeon now, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not."

"This place gets weirder and weirder," Xarlug muttered before taking another bite of the fish. "At least the food is decent." He gave her a wink with that.

Decent? Oh, she was going to make him pay for that. After dessert of course.