As usual, when attacking a city from the air successfully, any units that had been placed in the wall and tunnel zones were automagically captured once all three garrison zones were captured and the city changed hands. One might consider this a foolish move in comparison to putting everything in those garrison zones so your city could fight to the last man… but those zones held much better defensive bonuses in comparison to the garrison zones, so it was just an inherent tradeoff to the process.

As such, Elya had plenty of troops to turn to the fresh side of Schnitzeland to form as the first shield against enemy invasion. At first, she turned all of the commanders, and Tanya went around to the groups of normal troops and gave a speech, promising a bribe of greater rations and a chance to prove themselves to the Titans that they deserve more than the mediocre afterlife that awaited them if they didn’t. With light magical nudges from Elya linked up with Maggie, this turned enough to cascade into a total conversion without requiring much juice, all five hundred or so infantry, eighty knights, and five warlords all acting as the anvil of their defense.

Elya then spent the rest of her and Maggie’s juice accelerating the replenishment of their flying knight casualties. That wasn’t much this turn, but when combined with the next turn it would repop all sixteen casualties from the last turn plus the ten from the battles before and allow them to shift to popping more speedbump units.

Sizemore, for his part, started setting up traps and other fortifications, turning the golem defense platforms into protected firing positions for rifle-wielding knights.

To finish their preparations, Tanya took out her primary tool for having a restful day: A black ball on a stick, one of her many wands, and plugged it into her primary wand. She had wanted to have at least one for each discipline she couldn’t cast herself well, although she couldn’t get her hands on any Stagemancy wands for some reason. “Will Schnitzeland be attacked today?” She asked before shaking the wand and saying the magic word: “Mattel.” She could sense the juice depleting as the display on the end calculated, a blue triangle appearing with the words ‘My sources say no’. She shook it again. “Will this city be attacked tomorrow?” She asked, “Mattel.” ‘My reply is no.’ displayed the wand.

Perfect. “The wand says no attacks today or tomorrow.” Tanya reported, which prompted sighs of relief from the barbarian casters. The wand was useful, but one of the things about Predictamancy is that it was incredibly useful… if you understood its limits. In this case, she knew without a doubt that there would be no attacks, and could thus act with impunity without care for security. That didn’t mean she’d give all the troops a day off, mind you, as doing such a thing would be tempting Fate, which Kurt had explained was a bad idea, but it meant that all she needed to do was put the soldiers at their stations so that they could theoretically respond to an attack, but also let them play cards or whatever without worrying that it would reduce their ability to respond to an attack, just that they were kept busy with guard duty, just enough responsibility that there wouldn’t be a significant amount of damage to the city that would need to be repaired with dirtamancy from bored soldiers.

The key was that if it said ‘yes’ that didn’t tell her anything about how big the attack is, or what Fate had to say about how successful their defense will be. This particular wand could only predict attacks, too. So it could say ‘unclear’ or ‘ask again later’ if she tried to get fancy with it, or asked about time frames later than ‘tomorrow’.. But as long as she used it only to know when she needed to be watching the hex borders or when she could safely spend the day in the Magic Kingdom, it worked perfectly.

With the important matters settled, Tanya wasn’t quite sure what to do. After thinking about it, she figured the customary thing to do would be to throw a party. That was definitely the royal special talking, but it seemed rather appealing, to relax in the company of friends and good food. She could afford the luxury, after all.

But… would she just be indulging in her own vanity, or would it be enjoyable for her subordinates? How would she tell?

Hmmm… Tanya closed her eyes and examined the heartstrings connecting her to her subordinates. She knew that they were entwined with the thinkamancy strings that connected a ruler to their units… could she? It would be a bit like a social media poll, just… magical. Date-a processing.

Consumed with the idea, she combined her understanding of date-a-mancy with her memories of social media, strumming the mass strings with an idea, and listening to the tones they echoed back. After a few minutes of testing the magical waters, inspiration flowed and she said the magic words of her new spell: “Vanilla Extract!”

Well, that settles it.

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[Lady Victoria von Secret, Chief Warlord of Schnitzeland, Level 7]

It had been tenturns since she had gotten to wear a pretty dress. It was great that Queen Tanya decided to hold a ball for everyone. She had even sprung for some new duds from the Magic Kingdom, assigning two stacks of gun-wielding knights led by the two warlords that were least inclined towards formal balls to guard her usual dress that was currently holding enough wealth in gems to buy two sides.

Still, Victoria got to enjoy herself, dancing to the music that Headmaster Isaac arranged from a foolamancy-favoring Headmaster by the name of Bill Hershey. The Master-class foolamancer also provided some quite interesting flavor illusions, having brought some chocolate-coated wafer bars created by the man’s changemancer brother Milton and making them taste like all kinds of things, such as cheesecake, milk tea, strawberry, and even some things Victoria had never heard of, like ‘wasabi’ and ‘matcha’.

Whatever they were, Queen Tanya loved them. She had even “returned the flavor”, as she put it, by creating a ‘miso soup’ flavor for the chocolate wafer dessert with her own foolamancy, which Bill seemed to appreciate.

Victoria sighed as she stepped away from the dance floor, leaving von Gratz behind. He was nice and all, and clearly besotted with her… but she didn’t feel the same way. She went towards where Elya was holding her own sort of court, at the bar.

“Oh, you!” Elya said coquettishly to Matt von White. “You’re the lucky ones, able to follow and protect Queen Tanya. I do my best to help her where I can, but there’s only so much I can do without running afoul of the laws of the Magic Kingdom.”

“Queen Tanya would never endorse such a thing.” Victoria pointed out in agreement, settling into the bar stool beside her friend.

“Exactly.” Elya said, giving Victoria a one-armed hug as she joined the bar-stack. “How’s being a Chief Warlady working out for you?” Despite deserving it, Elya was not the Chief Caster. Maggie was a level 6 Master-class Thinkamancer and had started to develop Lookamancy, so Elya’s latest level up to 6 didn’t cause a promotion.

Victoria hummed, looking around at her various subordinates mixed in with some barbarians from the magic kingdom. “It’s not much different than when I was the Chief Warlord for Yojo Mojo.” She said, shrugging. She didn’t get a lot of time as the Chief, just the few turns between Prince Ansom’s defeat and their evacuation from the Minty Mountains. “I just deal with the small details that aren’t worth the Queen’s attention.” Well, back then Queen Tanya was also habitually duplicating herself, so she had a lot of attention to go around then.

Really, according to Scripture, she should be doing more than she has been. Queen Tanya liked to fill her entire day with as much side-management as she could, only delegating decision-making to her or the other Warlords when she was too busy to tend to them herself.

It was improper for a ruler to do such a thing rather than delegate to the Chief Warlord and Caster.

Well, Queen Tanya didn’t get that much time to acclimate to being a ruler, so it was somewhat understandable that she may have had a hard time adjusting. She always delegated some things, at least. Like scouting routes. Wasting as little move as possible while getting the most scouting area was a very annoying part of being a scouting warlord, but someone had to stop the scouts from running into each other.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Elya passed Victoria a drink, which was gratefully accepted. One of the many blessings the Titans have given their favored children was alcohol. This particular drink was sweet, the bartender was a Florist by the name of Rose Bowl and she had many exotic drinks.

They passed the time with a discussion on the relative attractiveness of the party attendees, when suddenly she realized that their stack had received an Order from the Queen: bring her a drink. Through the natural date-a-mancy of being in a stack together, the final decision of who was to actually execute that order fell to her authority as Chief Warlord.

Rose Bowl put the Queen’s drink on the bar, her role complete as the contracted ally. Victoria picked it up as well as her own drink and started to walk towards the Queen. If her movements had more sway than was usual, that was clearly the fault of her own intoxication.

It certainly drew Tanya’s attention, and Tanya silently invited Victoria to sit next to her on the couch she was occupying. “Your drink, your majesty.” Victoria said as she flounced onto the seat, holding it to her.

“Thank you, Visha.” Tanya said pleasantly. Eee! She took a sip of the beverage, then hummed in approval as she took a deeper drink. “Ah, now this is quality liquor.” She commented, raising her glass in Rose Bowl’s direction. “Last time I had something this nice was the Corporate retreat back in ‘09.” She giggled. “Ah, Daikoku-sama was so bad at golf. But was anyone else allowed to beat him? No.”

Victoria looked at her side, and noticed that this was not Queen Tanya’s first drink of the evening. She always started using her impenetrable otherworldly jargon when she was drunk. She was still mostly understandable, so she wasn’t drunk enough to require an exit strategy. “What’s golf?” She decided to ask.

Tanya took a moment to digest the question. “...Actually, you’d need like two hexes in order to have a good length golf course, now that I think about it.” She waved her hand, creating a fuzzy green oval with foolamancy. “Okay, golf is technically a sport. You have a club, and a tiny ball, and you hit the ball with the club towards the goal, which is a small hole in the ground.” Tanya took another sip of her drink. “There’s tons of specifics on the proper way to play, of course, but that’s the rough idea. Fewest strokes to make it in the hole wins. Course of nine or eighteen holes.”

One of the free casters, a Florist with decrepit signamancy named Charlie MacDonald, seemed intrigued at this ‘golf’. “Yannow… the Magic Kingdom is larger there than most hexes.” He pointed out, “Could maybe set one up near the coast, go around the Island, and let the free casters play, e i e i o all the way home.” How the hippiemancer managed to fit meaning into those random letters, conveying both frivolity and ease, was beyond Victoria’s understanding. Signamancers…

Tanya waved off the suggestion. “If you want to, I suppose I could outline how it was done, but don’t expect me to pay for anything. I prefer tennis.” She took another drink, leaning into Victoria’s side. “Mmm… Tomorrow.” She said, putting off the subject of golf. She took another drink of her wine.

“You know, maybe you should slow down, your majesty.” suggested one of the Great Minds.

“I’m tha’ boss.” Tanya replied, as if that explained anything. “Nun’s allowed ta be drunker than me, issa rule.” Victoria blinked. She had never heard of such a rule. “So if I want errryone to have a good time, I gotta smash.” She giggled at her accidental innuendo. “Get smashed.” She corrected, “I’m not complaining, though!” She finished, upturning the rest of her drink into her mouth.

Victoria just wrapped an arm around her queen, letting the drunk ruler cuddle up, giggling idly, as she stared out into space. This was fine. After all, Tanya had Victoria to keep her safe.

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[Queen Tanya von Degurechaff, level 8 ruler of Schnitzeland]

Tanya had, unfortunately, miscalculated. When they founded the side, their turn was suspended, and resumed towards the end of the day. They were then able to spend any leftover Move without any issue, which was only about 20 move per knight but a ten hex radius around the city was plenty to check the nearest bridge and wipe out the small but extant garrison there with a few stacks that were sober.

The miscalculation was the fact that she wouldn’t get cleansed from the party until the next turn start, the last turn of the day, which meant that she woke up with a hangover. “Ugh…” Tanya groaned as she hugged her big warm pillow closer. “Too loud…” She whined.

After a moment, Tanya registered that someone was stroking her hair. This was odd enough that her brain finally turned on, and she realized that her pillow was in fact her Chief Warlady.

…Well, she’d woken up like this after a party before, albeit with a duplicate Visha, so she retained enough composure that she decided to silently order Maggie to come by and cure her hangover, instead of doing anything that would intensify her headache. “‘Mornin.” She mumbled.

“Tanya, you’re using moon-speak again.” Visha whispered, “What’s ‘hayo’ mean?”

Tanya buried her head deeper in Visha’s chest in embarrassment. After a silent moment, Maggie entered the room. “Ephedra.” She intoned, sending a burst of juice into Tanya’s head.

Instantly, her hangover vanished and she could think clearly. “Ah, thank you.” She said, running a hand through her tangled curls. Tch. This is unacceptably messy. “Where’s my-” Tanya stopped as she looked around. Ah, her best dress is right there. “To answer your question, Visha, ‘Ohayo’ means good morning.” Fortunately, there were only other girls present, so Tanya just started changing her clothes right there. “Maggie, is there anything I need to attend to this morning?”

The thinkamancer had changed a lot since Gobwin Knob. Whereas before, she gave the impression of a stern school principal, older but not elderly, her signamancy had shifted to more of a mature academic with a dash of hypercompetent secretary. She still had the ashen gray skin and whitened hair from her ordeal maintaining a single link for tenturns, but they now just made her look a bit exotic rather than aged. “Well, all of the barbarians returned to the Magic Kingdom at night with no issues, except of course for those bound by contract, who slept while locked in to designated rooms.” Maggie began, which dispelled Tanya’s last anxiety about last night. “It’s currently the barbarian turn, and Janis Atlantis is down in the dungeon’s meeting room ready to execute the exchange of Rands for gems, as was arranged last night.”

Tanya didn’t remember that, but figured it was worth it even if she drunkenly negotiated a less than optimal price point. As long as it wasn’t worse than the Gild Bank’s rate. “Anything else?” Tanya asked as she put on the faux-military mini-coat that her dress included to modify her silhouette.

“You have some correspondence awaiting reply at your desk, but other than that nothing that can’t wait until our turn starts.” Maggie reported, bending over to pick up Tanya’s shoes and presenting them to her.

“Janis first.” Tanya decided, putting on the heeled shoes without trouble and fishing out the wand she’d been wanting to use for a while. “Hildebrand.”

Suddenly, the somewhat sloppy fit of her clothes automatically adjusted themselves perfectly to her as they were spontaneously laundered, the vaguely grody feeling she felt by waking up and dressing without bathing went silent, the knots and tangles in her hair straightened themselves out before falling artfully into her hair’s usual curls, a smell vanished that she didn’t notice until it was absent, and even her teeth were fully clean and gleaming.

Ah. Much better. It was a very comfortable outfit, but even velvet and silk felt off when one was dirty. She put the wand, which was shaped like a hairbrush, away and pulled out a different wand, one that looked like an oversized tube of lipstick, and walked to her vanity mirror to better visualize what she was doing. “May Believe.” Was it wasteful to have a wand just so she can fix her makeup? Yes. But all of her wands also served as juice batteries that, due to her artifact wand, can be used on pretty much anything even if they didn’t replenish on their own, so she didn’t feel bad about it.

Now properly dressed as the queen she was, Tanya put the wands away and picked up her primary wand, checking how much juice it had. Nothing? …Oh, right. She used moneymancy to clean up the bodies yesterday. That was why the treasury had shmuckers in it instead of it being empty. Didn’t even have enough juice, she had to tap into some of her wands. She’ll need to recharge those today. Luckily she had the presence of mind to remember she would need her cleaning and makeup wands this morning due to the turn delay.

Visha had also changed clothes to make herself presentable, and with a nod of approval, the two of them went on to conduct business.

---------------------------

As was Predicted, there was no retaliation for their conquering of the capital site before turn’s start, with a fresh supply of juice and an additional six garrison knights popped, which were not promoted to field unit yet to save on upkeep while the rest of their cohort popped next turn. Without needing to turn all those units, Elya and Maggie could focus their attention solely on accelerating the city’s production.

Really, turnamancy production boosts were incredibly inefficient in comparison to, say, golem production, and was atrocious in comparison to turning enemy units of ordinary levels of loyalty. But it still let them, by spending all of their juice while linked, produce sixteen turns of production in just one turn. But they didn’t have enough rifles and Barrier jackets for that many if garrison, and needed more than that for non-garrison, but they spent it anyway on the assumption that they could use the excess to replace losses from a strike that used Chocoland, which is what they renamed the city to, as a base camp. Four hundred shmuckers per promotion wasn’t exactly nothing, but it was quite affordable when compared to the amount of shmuckers they would spend on upkeep taking those extra turns to pop them.

Although… she’s noticed that the garrison knights are never Nobles… They had enough to act as backup warlord promotions, about twenty knights had the distinctive ‘von’, so it wasn’t a big deal now, but in the future… might be relevant.

“So I’m definitely not going to conquer any more cities this turn, Sir Blair, but next turn I’d like to know what kind of resources the Empire can use to retaliate against us taking this city.” Tanya said, tapping the map on the other city on this fragment of the Continental Break. “I’m inclined to say that we can leave it relatively undefended, but we may need to exterminate a field army to do that.”

Sir Eric Blair, the Albinny Lookamancer, scratched his chin as he looked over the map, bringing attention to his unfashionably scruffy pencil mustache. On seeing the caster in the flesh, Tanya thought ‘author’, always making notes on paper on various physical details of things using simple and clear language, instead of anything she’d expect a spy to want to know about. Or well; that was the impression she got, and she’s learned to trust her instincts when Signamancy was concerned.

“As you can see…” He began, issuing orders to the other stack members to place units in accordance with the intelligence he was reporting, “-the Empire has adapted to having local flying threats, withdrawing their defense stacks from the bridges and sending them to their cities.”

Tanya nodded idly. Yeah, there was only so many times she could count on enemy incompetence not seeing her coming. She’d exhausted the element of surprise, so she can expect the Empire to shift their defensive posture to protect against her specifically instead of unknown enemies. “What about the sides to the west?” Tanya asked.

“That’s going to take a bit to go over.” Sir Blair said, but he started anyway. “So it’s a bright cold day over here in April, and the clocks there go to thirteen…”

Tanya settled in and listened to the political exposition.