Lillian was in a wonderful castle. The entire place was filled with character; paintings filled the hallways, the banisters were elaborate wooden things, and the air smelled of oranges and milk.

The entire place was expansive. The rooms were large and had beautiful stained-glass windows that overlooked different parts of the world. Someone with a powerful gift must have spent a lot of time making this house, because the windows showed views of Vena Cava, beautiful pastures, some tiny villages, and a few even looked through time, into the past of the Shattered, Frozen, and Dead Continents.

Lillian wandered the halls, marveling at the intricacy of the building. It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

Eventually she came to the kitchen area, and something there stopped her in her tracks.

The kitchen was another beautiful room. The countertops were made of giant sheets of marble, while the floor was a beautiful piece of wood that had been waxed until it shined.

The entire room was circular, where the counters surrounded the centerpiece. The centerpiece was what had made Lillian stop.

At the very center of the room, stood a woman. Her skin was as brown as the wood beneath her feet, and her face was as pale as the marble on the countertops. She wore a voluminous, green robe that showed her face and arms, but covered everything else.

She smiled pleasantly at Lillian and gestured for her to take a counter for herself. As Lillian did so, she suddenly noticed three other people enter the room. Each of them wore an elaborate apron with unique color schemes and animals decorating them.

One woman wore a wonderfully green apron, it was all neon colors and incredibly loud. The front was embroidered with a rabbit playing in a field, while the rest of the clothing showed various scenes of the rabbit in action.

The next man wore a blood red apron and had an angry look on his face. Matching his face, the center of his apron had a bear embroidered into it. The both of them scowling was an intimidating image.

The final man wore a sandy yellow with flecks of orange spread throughout it. His animal was a snake, coiling and slithering throughout his clothes. His eyes were slitted, just like the snake. And Lillian could have sworn that his tongue was forked.

For the first time, Lillian looked down at herself and noticed that she was also wearing an apron. Hers was a rich blue, with creamy accents over the front. It was weathered from use, stains from past recipes dotted the front and obscured the giant killer whale that was embroidered into her own apron.

The figure in the front of the room waved her arms and spoke, “the competition begins. You must create a dish including pheasant, turkey, chicken, and quail. We will call this competition the flight of the birds. Now begin!”

The commands were nonsensical and yet Lillian knew what to do. Her hands started carving into the turkey and basting the quail. She cut and cooked the meat until it was golden. She created a plate of meat with a side of more meat, hoping to impress the judges with her dedication to the competition’s rules.

Then she looked at the plates of her competitors. Surrounding her were the wonderful colors of the world, each plate a beautiful variety of colors, spice, and vegetation.

The man in red had created a dish in four bites, where each of the birds were allowed to show their splendor while being surrounded by complementary vegetables and fruits.

The woman in green had made a seemingly unending string of meat that morphed between the four birds. It was like a pasta of meat, and surrounding it were sauces of all varieties and colors hoping to create many different sensations with each bite.

The man in yellow had created a sandwich. It seemed a little lackluster in comparison to the other competitors, but it was filled to the brim with sourness and sweetness, each bite looked like a delicacy of crunch and mouthfeel.

Lillian looked down at her own plate and saw one beautiful color. A delightful golden brown that showed she had cooked her meat to perfection.

But that was all. It was only meat, the perfect meat would never be a fulfilling meal, there needed to be more.

The woman in the center of the room stared at Lillian with disappointment. It was tinged with sadness and regret, not reproach.

She slowly started moving towards Lillian. Her feet never seemed to move, but she was pulled forward, as if she was yanked by an invisible rope. She slowly settled in before Lillian’s workbench.

“A valiant effort, but you were too focused on what I said.” A brief pause allowed Lillian’s stomach to continue twisting itself in knots. “You didn’t let your creativity shine; you are missing balance.”

The world around Lillian seemed to shimmer as the word ‘balance’ was spoken. The woman slowly placed one of her hands up her voluminous sleeve and pulled out a pepper.

She gently placed it on the table in front of Lillian, and Lillian’s hands started moving again. A symphony of tastes seemed to be playing in her mind as she suddenly could feel how to make her dish perfect.

In concert with Lillian’s own actions, the woman kept reaching into her sleeves and pulling out whatever Lillian needed. The two were truly in tune for a moment as Lillian perfected her dish.

Her dish had somehow turned into a single nugget. All the herbs, spices, turkey, and other variety of ingredients used had consolidated into a single chicken nugget.

Lillian knew that it was a heavy-handed metaphor. She had stumbled across a nugget of truth; she lacked balance.

Ever since Susan had hurt her back on the expedition, even after Lillian had vanquished that fear, she was on the back foot, she was off kilter.

Lillian let out a long deep breath. She hated metaphors, why couldn’t everything in her dreams be less wishy-washy and more straightforward. The land of Dream was far too confusing and ridiculous sometimes.

With a lazy swish of her hand Lillian grabbed the nugget and swallowed it whole. Then she rested the very same hand on the shoulder of the woman who had made the herbs and vegetables appear from inside her sleeves.

“Let’s go.” Lillian said out loud only for her own amusement.

Then she opened her eyes and woke up. Sprawled in the medical cot next to her was the marble face and wooden body. The woman blinked groggily and looked down at her feet in disappointment.

The voluminous robe from the dream had obscured it before, but now Lillian was able to truly see the woman, and the fact that her feet used to be part of something larger. The woman seemed to have roots for feet that had been pulled out of the earth when Lillian pulled them out of the dream.

The medical center of the prince’s castle was not the comfiest place to sleep at night, but it was a necessity after the unfortunate incident that had happened with Susan. Lillian needed a safety net of healers just in case the devious demon ever struck again.

After a few long and hard months where Lillian would pull anything and everything out of the dream zone the medical staff had gotten used to her shenanigans and her guests, so they stopped paying attention to her, which was dreadfully boring.

Lillian looked to her right where her steadfast guardian sat in the mornings. And he was not there.

It wasn’t exactly disappointing; it was just a little sad. Seeing Theo in the mornings was always a wonderful way to wake up, and she did not have the faintest clue where he would be if he was not with her.

Lillian knew that her quest would be to find Theo and whatever he had been hiding. She knew him well enough that if he had skimped on being her personal dream bodyguard for a night, there must be some terrible secret at play.

So, Lillian got up and dragged her dream buddy along for the ride. The woman seemed unused to walking and struggled for quite some time to get her footing correct while loping along behind Lillian.

Lillian remembered something important and kindly asked the woman if she could provide Lillian with any more of her fruits. The woman reached into her sleeves and pulled out a beautiful, red apple. Lillian decided to forgo her brunch (it was already too late in the day to be calling her first meal breakfast) and just eat fruit while on her journey to find Theo.

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She found evidence quickly. She had decided to check his workroom first and when she went down there, she passed the prince and Sam coming out of the room. They seemed deep in thought, so Lillian tried not to disturb them.

But the prince tapped her arm as she passed by and said, “come to the meeting hall at dinner time, there are some important announcements to make.”

The prince had not changed the color of his hair or eyes at all during the trip to the Frozen Continent, but once he arrived back on the mainland, he kept changing it to garish colors, creating freakish displays. His hair was a rainbow, and he had somehow styled it to create a massive arch over his own head where each of the colors was distinctly separated from all the others.

His eyes were even more freakish, they were just a pure opalescent color. No pupil, no iris, just pure, shimmering opaque nonsense.

Lillian thought it was a little too much, but she was not one to question her superior.

She thanked the prince and tried to keep as straight a face as possible as he left. She only broke down into hysterical laughter after he had left.

Still chuckling to herself, she entered Theo’s workroom. Her breath came out in a gout of steam as the cold hit her. She had no idea who the prince had gotten to enchant this place into being cold, but their gift sure seemed handy in the summer. It was freezing within the room, and none of it leaked out into the surrounding area.

Inside the room Lillian saw a beautiful new art piece. Theo had obviously put his heart and soul into it, and he had gotten so entranced that he had worked through the night.

Lillian wasn’t quite sure who the subject of this work was, but she could feel a sense of deep loss and loneliness emanating from the icy features. It seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t quite place who it was.

She was proud of Theo, this was something incredible, something that could’ve been shown in a royal gala. It made her sad that his new hobby had created this new obsessiveness, but she was glad he had found an outlet. Her friend had been too high strung for too long.

He was off balance and needed to bring some stability into his life.

His balance was brought by being expressive and artistic, how would she come up with her own balance?

Ruminating on her thoughts, Lillian started trekking towards her shared room with Theo. They had shared it for years and it was a truly wonderful piece between the two of them. Unfortunately, considering recent events, Lillian had not been able to spend very much time in the room.

The fact that she had to sleep in the care of medical professionals was slightly irking and kept her from truly settling into her habits.

As she entered the room, she noticed that Theo’s normally orderly side was in ruin. He had somehow knocked almost everything to the floor in his sleepless delirium.

Lillian thought that somehow the two sides were now matching and yet unnatural. Her clutter was matched by his own clutter and that did not feel right. Theo was the orderly one who kept all the messes clean and chided her for leaving a crumb on her bed.

The clutter made Lillian feel bad. Like some part of her life and the natural order of things was wrong. So, she did the unthinkable, she started to clean his half of the room.

It was like a type of magic; she knew exactly where everything went. In her mind’s eye she could see where every item should have sat and its exact position. The neat freak usually kept everything to orderly that she even knew the orientation of where every knickknack went.

Humming softly to herself Lillian made his side of the room indistinguishable from how it normally looked. It was just her, a sleeping Theo, and a silent wooden woman who stared eerily out from behind her marble face.

Theo’s slumber was undisturbed, and he slept fitfully, curled into a little ball in his bed. He somehow looked kinder without his piercing blue eyes. His blond hair lightly curled around his ears, and he looked so much smaller than he normally seemed.

Lillian was content to sit there and watch him sleep. He must have done the same for her countless times over the years. A silent vigil to make sure none of the monsters from her dreams could escape. It really was the least she could do.

Her eyes drifted over to her own side of the room and considered the piles of clothes and the mismatching carpeting. Maybe she had grown up too much and it was time to move on from her childish obsessions and lack of proper cleaning habits.

Nah, she was fine the way she was. Cleaning up after Theo was one thing, but her own things, no way.

So, she sat and pondered her life. She wished that this was some beautiful moment where everything seemed to come into place, and she understood some beautiful truth of the world. But the real world wasn’t like her dreams, instead she just sat there watching her friend sleep.

After what felt like an eternity Theo woke up. He blearily looked around his room and seemed oddly content to see that everything was in place. A deep sigh of relief escaped his lips.

Lillian smirked at this, he probably thought that the mess he had made was just some sort of hallucination induced by the long night and that was why it was gone. Well, maybe it was better to leave him his delusions.

Lillian stood up and shook him, just to be a little annoying. She jostled his hair around and gave him a playful slap on the face. The slap was not playful to Theo, but it woke him right up.

“Our dearest prince had requested our presence at the dining hall this evening, for dinner.” Lillian said with a devilish grin on her face.

Lillian noticed Theo start tensing up. She had given it away, he knew that something was up, but there was no way he knew exactly what it was.

Drawing out the words slowly Lillian said, “by my time I think dinner will be in about…” a theatric pause filled the room “five minutes.”

Before she had even finished speaking Theo bolted upright in bed and started doing damage control. He knew that he was going to have a bedhead, so he threw on a hat to cover it up. His eyes were red, so he got a pair of tinted lenses that were all the craze a few years back to make him inconspicuous. He tried to put on the fanciest clothes that took the least amount of time to put on, it ended up being a training uniform. Lots of loose fabric made it slip on easily.

Lillian watched the entire process with a smile. He scrambled this way and that like a little critter trapped in a box. She would not take pity on him and tell him that his fashion choices were horrible, for that would be being too kind. He had brought this upon himself.

In a loping walk that Lillian thought made Theo look rather silly, he tried to go as fast as possible while not looking like he was in a rush, a truly impossible task. Lillian just strode along beside him, somehow her normal walk kept pace with Theo’s loping terrifying gait. Even the wood and marble woman wasn’t being left behind, and Lillian was pretty sure that she had just learned how to walk today.

The two of them entered the dining room and all the prince’s close attendants were there. Even Joy sat in the corner making a little war in mashed potato trenches between forks and spoons.

They slid into a seat nearby, Lillian on the spoon side and Theo on the fork side of Joy’s war.

The prince looked at them with a little grin before clearing his throat. His hair and eyes were back to normal, a boring blonde and blue pairing. Lillian knew that it was all purposeful, that he changed his hair and eyes to appear more authentic to his allies, while playing around with his enemies, by pretending to be an extravagant waste of space.

“I called you all here to discuss one thing. The war for succession was officially started. My father believes that it is time for me and my sister to vie for the throne.”

A silence filled the room. Lillian was not a noble, but even she knew how cutthroat the succession wars were. The last one was the start of Ian journey to becoming Bloody Ian.

“My sister believes herself to be the only choice and will stop at nothing to prove that to our father. She will assassinate us, and she will destroy anything in her way to the throne.”

Shivers went up Lillian’s spine. She knew that Dahlia didn’t have as tight of an inner circle as the prince, but she had been the one with political favor for years now. And those advantages accumulate. The noble houses would support her, the nation would support her, and she was so powerful.

“We will win this war by being better than her. In blunt terms I want to wage a propaganda war where I show the entirety of the world how she is not fit to rule this country, that she is too blackhearted to have anyone but her own best interest at heart.”

The prince stared off into the distance with a melancholic look in his eyes.

“I will do this or die trying.”

Lillian stared at the prince, seeing the determination set into his eyes. Sometimes Lillian saw a man beneath the layers of frivolity and charm that was hard. A man who had suffered in his own ways to become the man that he was now.

This was not going to be fun and silly; this was going to be hard and painful; the prince’s plan was one that promised that they would be on the losing end of the conflict until the very end. Their opponents would strike to kill, while they would be forced to only defend, to uphold the honor of their benefactor.

“Everyone, I will assign you your duties throughout this trying time. You cannot be merely satisfactory; you must be extraordinary.”

Lillian listened to all sorts of assignments. Some of them would be doing charity work for the outskirts of Vena Cava, others would be doing more clandestine missions where they would sabotage key parts of the princess’ operations; Benny was assigned a mission in this vein. He would be spending months hiding in his shadow world, trying to gain valuable intel from the princess’ conspirators.

Ian, Clyde, and Sam were all on personal prince protection duty. Sam would foresee the assassinations, Ian and Clyde would defend against them. Personally, Lillian thought that Clyde was an odd choice to have, since his shoe-based gift was not the most powerful ability, but after the Frozen Continent, the prince had given the kingmaker to Clyde. And it was very hard to attack one’s enemies when their shoes kept dragging them in the wrong direction.

Finally, their turn came. Lillian, Theo, and Joy walked up to the prince and asked about their assignment.

“Do you all know about the Knight Tournament?”

Theo nodded his head, but Lillian and Joy shook theirs. It sounded like it had something to do with noble houses, but Lillian was intrigued why the prince was mentioning it.

“Really?” In disbelief the prince shook his head at Lillian and Joy. “It’s a tournament between the knights of kingdom where they all show off their abilities so that they can show who has the biggest muscles. Ian won a few of them back when he was more respected and less feared.”

“It happens whenever there are no major crises that need resolving and the knights get bored. With our major missions being accomplished the knights are getting a bit restless again and will start the tournament.”

“This tournament is incredibly well attended and there are many people with information sharing gifts that show images and moving pictures of these competitions to the villages around the continent.”

“I will be your benefactor to get into the tournament. Then, I need you all to become beloved by the entire continent. I want you to become the fan favorites for the entire thing, then I want you to try and win.”

Lillian breathed in. It was a tall order, but the prince had said it before; they didn’t need to be satisfactory, they needed to be extraordinary.

And this was an extraordinary task.