Both sides clamored to speak at the same time but Norman simply held his hand up. He didn’t actually expect them to stop talking but both sides went quiet almost immediately. That told Norman they both wanted something from him.

He turned toward the Admiral. “You may speak first.”

It felt weird to give someone so high up in the military permission to speak, but Norman needed to act like everything here was under his control. Letting these people direct this meeting would lead to undesired results.

“Thank you… Lord Norman.” The man sounded a bit annoyed with having to add the honorific but Norman ignored his tone. The man’s feelings towards him didn’t matter. Norman might even react the same way if he was forced to pay homage to someone who should be a civilian but now had more power. A good example of that would have been Noorani, if he had been forced to speak with her the day Grobert rescued him.

“First things first,” the Admiral continued, “We would like to apologize for any misunderstanding that occurred between our two groups.”

Norman stopped him there because that was a cop-out and he wasn’t about to let their actions just slide. “There was no misunderstanding on our part, I can assure you… Admiral.”

The man tensed slightly, then seemed to relax. “You are right. The mistake was completely on our end.”

One of the Council members snorted at this. All eyes turned toward the man.

“And you are?” Norman asked dismissively.

“J-son Conrad, and your better. So you will do well to remember that,” the man sneered.

Norman looked at Eugene, then at his other ministers before turning back toward the man and breaking out in a fit of laughter. “You, my better? If that were true, I would be coming to you and not the other way around.”

The man launched himself to his feet, throwing his chair back. “You dare talk to me like that, I could kill you like that,” the man snapped his fingers as he glared at Norman.

“Sit down and shut up,” Norman spoke coldly, “or prove it.”

Norman felt the build-up of magic as the heat started to rise in the room, he rolled his eyes and pointed a finger at the man. There was no visual burst of magic from Norman’s finger, but the man fell over dead all the same. “Whoops, I forgot to snap my fingers.”

The room fell deathly silent as two knights walked over and dragged away the corpse of one of the Councilors. Norman hadn’t expected to need that spell for at least an hour. Was it a good or bad sign that he had been forced to use his new modified Death Ray so soon?

He turned back toward the remaining people and smiled. “Now that one irritant is gone, we can continue.”

The Admiral cleared his throat before continuing. As he apologized for his force’s actions against Normenia, Norman made sure to keep an eye on Donovan’s reaction. None of the Council members seemed upset at all by that J-son idiot's death. But Norman could swear Donovan’s smirk had grown slightly after the dude hit the table.

The leader of the Council was a bit of an enigma. He was obviously here to hamper any attempt of the SCA to form an alliance. But what else was he trying to accomplish?

Norman didn’t have time to contemplate the issue as the Admiral finished speaking. “We accept your apology,” Norman spoke, not having heard a single bit of what the Admiral had said.

The apology itself didn’t matter. The only reason they were paying lip service to Normenia now was that they knew that had been caught. It would be like Norman apologizing to a homeowner if they caught him breaking in.

He turned toward Donovan, “Is there anything you wish to add here?”

The smirk never left the man’s face. “The Admiral’s mistakes hardly have anything to do with us.”

By the tensing of the Admiral and his Commander, it seemed everyone in the room, except maybe Pedro, knew that to be complete and utter bullshit. But there was knowing something was true and proving it.

“I see. So what exactly are you here to do if not to refute their claims?”

“Our being here at the same time is just happenstance. We felt like our first offer to have you join the Council was a bit lackluster and wished to make a new one,” Donovan stated matter of factly.

“WHAT!” the Admiral slammed his hands onto the table and stood from his seat. “You can’t be seriously considering working with them! The Council are a bunch of monsters.”

Norman wanted to rub his temples. It was like dealing with unruly children. Had none of these men figured out how to control their emotions? And Donovan had obviously provoked the man on purpose, the bastard. He knew Norman wanted nothing to do with the Council. He wanted nothing to do with the SCA either, but here they were.

“Sit down, Admiral Barnes,” Norman spoke quietly. Yet his voice and underlying threat were clear for all to hear.

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The Admiral did sit down and Norman focused back on Donovan. “As I told your associate last time. I am not interested in getting involved in your conflict or becoming a member of this Wizard Council.

This made Donovan’s smirk slip for just a moment. And Norman knew he had guessed correctly. He hadn’t been sure at first, but the longer he interacted with this Donovan, the more he began to realize the first one had probably been a fake. They already knew the man used those weird doppelgangers as spies so it hadn’t been a huge leap to figure out the Donovan that had visited him before was not this one. And between the two, this one was less weird.

Before any more conversation could occur, there was a bell. Norman stood and nodded toward the two groups. “I have some other business to attend to so we will take a recess for a few hours. Feel free to take in the sights, but realize that if you break any of the local laws, your diplomatic status will not save you from punishment.” With that Norman and his ministers left the two groups alone.

Honestly, if they killed each other off, his life would be so much easier. Once they were clear of the room, he walked up next to Eugene. “Thanks for not leaping across the table and killing Gail where she stood.”

He grunted. “You’re welcome. But after your display, I probably should have.”

Norman chuckled at that. “Maybe. But I feel like Donovan has some other agenda he is trying to push here. Otherwise, why bring two people so antagonistic toward us?”

“You’re probably right…”

“Was there something else?” Norman asked.

“Yes, but not here,” Eugene replied quietly.

Norman nodded. “Freya, Nolia, if you would excuse us, we will meet back up in a few hours.”

“Of course, Lord Norman,” both women nodded.

There was no other conversation between Norman and Eugene before they reached Eugene’s secure office. His was the closest as the room meant for secure communications inside the ministry was yet to be built.

After the spells engaged, Norman spoke up. “What did you want to discuss?”

“I think we should bring our spies in to see if they overheard anything.”

Norman rubbed his chin at that. After learning about both groups, Norman had retasked the Wraith Guard to keep an eye on these people. They had kept close to them for most of the trip to the city from the border and hadn’t left their side even during the meeting. But Norman was loathe to tip his hand.

If the spies did indeed learn something critical, that was one thing. But if Donovan was as slippery as Norman thought, the man might have let something slip just to catch Norman out. After that, their spies would be much less useful against the Council, who was their main concern at the moment.

“Pull the one from the SCA but leave the one watching the Council. We can question him after they leave.”

Eugene nodded and sent out the order. It may not be received right away but that was fine. They had time, speaking of time, he unbuttoned his shirt sleeve and rolled it up, exposing the bit of tomfoolery that made it look like he could cast without forming a spell circle. He still hadn’t gotten time to figure that magic trick out, but this worked just as well. It was only single use though, the spell eating away at the material he had fashioned it from. It also left a nasty burn on his arm.

“Here.” Eugene reached into his desk and offered a potion to Norman.

“Thanks.” Norman took a sip from the bottle and the pain vanished quickly followed by the burn on his skin.

Eugene picked up the ruined bracer and examined it. “What metal did you try this time?”

“Silver.”

Eugene shook his head in disgust at the cost and dropped the broken thing back on the table. “So no alternative to gold, yet?”

Norman shook his head. It wasn’t that they didn’t have gold to spare, but it was still a finite resource that he would prefer not to waste. “I’m going to have them try anodizing aluminum with gold next.”

“What do you want to do about the loudmouth?”

Norman tapped his fingers on the desk while he mulled over the problem. He could just leave the man dead for the rest of this conference but he would be forced to revive him eventually. Perhaps that was why Donovan was smirking. He knew anything Norman did here was impotent at best unless Norman wanted to declare hostilities against the Council. And Norman wasn’t willing to go that far yet.

He was almost certain Donovan was the catalyst behind these attacks, but the man had done it in such a way that all of the blame landed on others. And if Norman just started attacking people without probable cause, his entire premise of wanting to remain neutral would fall apart. That might make Normenia a target. And while he was confident his forces could take on quite a bit, he doubted they would survive a concentrated effort by either force to wipe them out. And he was sick of having to rebuild.

So for now he would listen to their complaints and try to get both groups to agree to some sort of cease-fire. Or at least a trade deal that benefited Normenia. He glanced at the clock and sighed, only another hour before he had to go back and pretend he knew what he was doing. He wondered what Princess was up to.

***

Princess stalked the alleys of Ashvale with her two subjects in tow. She hadn’t been allowed to join her master in this meeting. “Her form was too terrifying for these outsiders to comprehend,” Master had told her. That thought made her happy.

Being separated from her master stung though, but she had been getting better at dealing with his absence. If she couldn’t be there to protect him, she would do so by ensuring the surroundings were safe.

Dante growled softly, alerting her to a scent. She had already picked it up but waited until one of them had also scented it. It was a foul oily thing that shifted and changed. But no matter how it changed, there was always that oily quality to it.

The three raced across the busy street, a blur of red and black that most didn’t even register. The few that did, didn’t comment on the spectacle. Most in town knew about Princess and her kin. Most in town were similar to them. The few that weren’t knew better than to start a ruckus.

They followed the scent through twists and turns and other back alleys. As they grew closer, the smell of fear mixed in with the oily base, pushing them to pursue even faster. Their quarry knew it was being hunted.

Finally, their prey came into sight. It looked like a citizen, but the smell was wrong. It tried to act afraid, edging backward with its hands raised, but Princess smelled the undertone of deceit. She yipped once and Dante and Lucifer raced up the wooden walls to surround the creature.

Realizing its deception wasn’t working, the thing began to change, growing multiple fleshy arms studded with sharp spikes and a large beaked mouth. Then it shot forward faster than even Princess could move.

Her mouth split wide, mimicking her master’s smile as the many-armed creature plowed into her. The two rolled around in a tangle of flashing limbs, snapping teeth, and crushing maws, but for all the thing's many limbs, it was not a very capable brawler. It lacked the heft required to really pin her down. Its limitations were even more apparent when Dante and Lucifer pounced on its back.

For all the violence in the alley, the fight was mostly quiet and after a few minutes, three hellhounds trotted out of the alley, sporting new bony plates where they had taken injuries. Their quarry was dead and consumed, the city was safe once again.