After thoroughly reading through the paper, Eugene set it down with a sigh.

“I thought you would be happy about this?” Norman asked, his confusion evident on his face.

“Oh, I am. It’s not every day that you meet a woman like the Matron. And it’s even rarer when they like you back.”

“Ok… Then why the sad face?”

“Well, in order to fulfill her request, I’ll need to be alive.”

“Ah. The things we do for love,” Norman chuckled.

The big man rolled his eyes. “You’re getting far too much satisfaction from this.”

“I could argue that would be you,” he responded with a grin.

“Yeah, yeah. Alright. If you wanna set it up, I’m okay with her offer. One small stipulation you might want to add is that pregnancy might not result from our coupling. Do we even know if humans and her hum species can procreate?”

Norman shrugged. “I guess this makes you a trailblazer. Going where no human has gone before.”

Eugene groaned and covered his face with his hands. Before the big man could stop him, Norman scooped up the sheet and left the room, laughing the entire time.

It was nice to be able to poke fun at his friend instead of dwelling on all the other nonsense that seemed to take up most of their day. He quickly signed the agreement after adding the additional terms. He handed it off to Jacob to bring to the Ministry and whoever was in charge of seeing it got to the Matron.

With the expansion of trade and political ties, he had asked his advisors to pick a new person to be in charge of foreign affairs. As it turned out, his advisors had unanimously chosen Stewart, his other assistant.

This made Norman’s part easy as he already knew the man was competent and good at his job. So he quickly approved their choice. The man was ecstatic about his new position and took to it with gusto.

This lifted a bit of the responsibility off of Norman’s back and allowed for swifter action on any deals since people didn’t need to wait to meet with him. At least most deals.

This one involving Eugene was a bit of a unique situation. It wasn’t every day that someone wanted him to pimp out his friend. Not that Norman would agree to such a deal if Eugene wasn’t completely willing.

Everything was flowing smoothly. Normenia had some new allies, more trade, and was growing. Already an additional one thousand individuals had joined the city as freshly risen greykin. Quite a few of these new citizens came from the areas attacked by the Third Prince. Those who died within the last few days anyway.

It was part of the initial deals that Norman had struck with each group. The only group to even pause at the strange request was the Matron’s. And that was because her people held death in battle as something sacred for their culture. Similar to how the ancient Viking's beliefs were.

That didn’t mean they didn’t give up some dead. Since not all of their people died in battle, this was a second chance for them. A way for those few to redeem themselves in the eyes of their gods and to dine at the table with their vaunted heroes of legend.

Norman had met some of the Matron’s red-skinned brethren after they were revived. They stood out. And not just for their larger size compared to humans but their skin as well. Even the process of converting them to greykin didn’t diminish the blazing red coloring of their skin. It only made it look like they were covered in a layer of ash. It only added to the demonic look.

This new group quickly accepted their resurrection and took on a new moniker, the Risen. As much as Norman would have wanted them to join the Guard or the Death Knights, the Risen had other ideas.

It was probably for the best. Technically these Risen counted toward Norman’s agreement to help the Matron drive the remains of the Third Prince’s people from their land.

He hadn’t seen it firsthand, but he got the reports from his people. And everything he heard told him the Risen were nuts.

Their favorite tactic was to throw themselves into the enemy wearing nothing but a loincloth and wielding hand axes.

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As you can imagine, this led to heavy losses among the Risen. But they killed more than their fair share before falling.

It seemed like such a waste of talent to Norman, but it was their way of life so he had little say in the matter.

This tactic did prevent the Third Prince’s remaining forces, which were more numerous than Norman could have imagined, from pushing to find out what happened to their liege. Most of them were just normal people left behind to administer the land. But not all of them. The Prince may have overestimated his talent, but he wasn’t dumb. Each country between Normenia and the Empire was controlled by a gifted individual. And then there was a group of peacekeeping troops that also had callings.

This number fluctuated between countries from a bare handful in Custodian Valadin’s zone to over a thousand in the Matron’s.

The Death Knights had quickly killed off all the ones in Valadin’s area but the few scouts that were sent were not nearly enough to deal with the larger groups.

Normally, he wouldn’t care about these groups, but he wasn’t willing to have another hostile power next door. Not after the Brotherhood.

But he had to leverage his forces carefully. The Empire forces in the connecting zone were starting to realize something was off as their people were vanishing in ambush attacks. The quick hit-and-run raids were becoming the bread and butter of the Death Knights. But it could only do so much.

It was too bad the zone next to Normenia wasn’t one of those to send an envoy. They were a strange race, one Norman had no story analog to compare to. Insectoid in appearance, and with four legs, they looked like a cross between an ant and a horse. They also had four arms, but two were smaller and always remained tucked against their chests.

Communicating with them was difficult as they used a form of clicking sounds to speak. Instead of trying to come up with a way to communicate with them, he tasked his wraiths to steal one of the objects the Empire forces used.

He felt really dumb when he was handed the ‘device’. It was a simple clicker. Something you might use to train dogs. Thankfully, the Wraith realized this and managed to find a small book with simple communication clicks in it. Almost like Morse code.

If that had been the only difficulty, they would have established communications already. But the insectaur – the name is a work in progress – people avoided any of his people like the plague. It wasn’t until someone suggested having a non-undead be sent there that things finally started to bear fruit.

As it turns out, the insectaur race had an innate fear of the dead. To them it meant disease and they could sense when something was dying or dead, almost like a sixth sense. As you can imagine, this made them a rather passive species. And to see the dead moving about was causing all sorts of fear amongst their people. Convincing them that they had nothing to worry about from Norman’s people was proving difficult as this fear seemed to be buried deep in their subconscious as a survival instinct. In most cases, that instinct would be spot on.

But the negotiator sent to communicate with them learned of the outcasts. These were insectaur that were missing that sixth sense, almost like being born blind or deaf. You might ask why this would be important. Well, even if their species was passive, it didn’t mean that everyone died a natural death. There were still accidents and even the occasional disagreement between individuals that ended up with dead insectaur due to their individuality. Since those with the sense couldn’t bring themselves to go near the dead, the outcasts were sent in to remove the bodies and dispose of them.

It was an oddly fascinating society. However, it posed significant problems in getting rid of the entrenched Empire forces.

Every time his people got close to their cities, the insectaurs would go crazy, alerting the people hiding within to their presence.

They had already tried sending in a squad of revived Death Knights but they were forced to retreat as well. Even just the bones in their armor were enough to set the creatures off.

He knew there was a plan in the works to send some of those revived Marines in. But Norman feared setting off the insectaurs if they killed a bunch of the Empires forces inside the city. When he said they went crazy around death, he wasn’t being facetious. They literally lost their minds to the point that they caused self-injury and injury to others in a blind panic to escape.

He couldn’t imagine what had happened in their past to produce that strong of a reaction to a single corpse. But whatever it had been, it must have been devastating to their species.

Still, they were going to attempt the strike. If it didn’t work, they would try something else. Maybe they could herd the insectaurs away from the city, and then attack the Empire’s people.

That was a last-ditch option though. He suspected if the Empire figured out what they were up to, they would just kill a few of the insectaur people to foul up the entire plan.

Having the Wraiths go in and kill them all was also an option. The Wraiths being incorporeal didn’t set off the insectaurs senses. But he was limited on how many he could deploy and they could be countered by magical wards or enchantments.

Norman paused in his walk as a new idea came to him. It was a way to use his limited Wraith forces while ensuring they targeted all of the Empire's forces at once. And it would let the insectaur’s natural instincts deal with the aftermath.

He modified and made improvements to the plan as he finished walking back to the castle. There was no point in bothering Eugene about the plan at this moment. At least until he was certain it would work. Besides, the man was coming over for supper anyway, so he could wait until then to discuss the details with him.

He was sure there were things he was missing. He turned to his guards, Lohr and Nolix, who had been following him this entire time. “Can one of you send a dispatch to Grobert and have him meet me when he has time?”

Nolix nodded and headed off to the telegraph room. He really needed to improve their communication standards. Thankfully, the enchanters were hard at work on a solution, among a dozen other things they were researching.

Norman sighed and headed toward his research room, which was now conveniently located right next to the testing chamber. He needed to prepare a new spell if he wanted his plan to work.