I spent the entire flight home thinking about Quenn Herana's parting words to me. The politics of the realm was one big game, a game that Herana had been playing for decades that I was taking my first steps into, and not tentative steps, Queen Herana and I were taking it upon ourselves to shatter the existing world order and replace it with a new world order of our own. There were many that weren't going to be happy with our actions, who were going to start thinking of me as a dangerous force in the realm. More than ever I needed Uraia close to me, as long as she was protecting me I had faith that no one who wished me harm would see their wish come to fruition.

Uraia and I spent two days in bed when we returned to the palace to make up for the time we spent in Theran when we weren't able to be together. On my third day back I flew up to Galand to see what Brumli and the dwarves were up to. Brumli was more excited to see me than I was to see him. He had been busy since I had last seen him over a month ago and he was egaer to show me what he had been busy with. The first thing that he wanted to show me was a device for transporting water vertically that he told me worked far better than a waterwheel. He had only built a small model but it was clear to see from the model how the device worked. The device was a wooden cylinder inside of which was a metal screw that had three paddles attached to it outside the cylinder. Brumli explained to me that the side with the paddles went into the river and the current moved the paddles which turned the screw which scooped up the water and carried it upwards. This 'waterscrew' as he called it was a better solution for transporting water than the waterwheel because with a waterwheel the higher you want to transport the water the bigger the wheel needs to be; with the waterscrew it was simply a matter of making it longer. What Brumli envisioned was that the waterscrew would transport water up into a water tower where it could be kept for storage and the overflow would be taken out by pipes that would carry the water to wherever it was needed.

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"This is brilliant, Brumli, but what about those dams that you proposed building?"

"We still need to build those to create new waterways, these waterscrews will allow us to easily control the flow of water to anywhere we choose."

"I'd like you to build one of these in one of the canals in the capital city so that we can see how effectively it can be used to distribute water to various locations."

The Okwari had a saying: 'With water anything is possible'. These waterscrews that Brunli and the others had developed had the potential to bring about rapid transformation in the kingdom, affecting everything from agriculture to settlement expansion to industry. I felt guilty about declining the opportunity to reclaim Grunheim for the dwarves, but over the following months we erected twelve waterscrew towers in the canals in the capital city that were giving the residents their first experience of running water piped directly into their homes and we commenced construction on two dams, the teaching academy was completed and so were the schoolhouses in the villages.

The issue of new leaders being selected for Volstaff and Kandalar was yet to be resolved, Elias paid me a visit at the palace to inform me that the Overseers for those two kingdoms were yet to identify appropriate candidates for their thrones. Because there were no legitemate leaders on the thrones in those kingdoms Queen Herana and I couldn't move forward with our plan, word of which, despite our pledge to keep it to ourselves, reached Dranii, setting into motion a most unexpected sequence of events.

"King Gregorio and Prince Baron have been murdered. Prince Philip has fled the castle, he's accused of colluding with members of the Council of Regents to usurp the throne. Dranii has entered a state of civil war," Ferland rushed to me in my study and told me.