"I'm sorry, Father," the young woman sobbed. She held her scarf to her chest, a splash of purple against the pure white of her tight-fitting gown—a gown stained at the fringe and up the side with dust as though she’d been thrown to the ground. "I have failed us. Failed our house."

Soehn Yles frowned up at his eldest daughter. "I didn't expect this plan to succeed in the first month. You don't need to come running back to me with every little misstep. This is a long game, not a quick gambit. Maintain your position. Our time will come."

"No, father, you don't understand." Her voice wavered as she struggled to keep her emotions in check enough to appear remotely stable. "I did everything as you said, we were progressing well, but this morning he… he shouted at me, told me to get out of the palace and never come back. I don't know what possessed him. He was so loving and gentle before, I do not know what turned him into this raving madman."

"You knew the risks going into this. You know he would have good days and bad days. This may be a worse day than we've yet witnessed, but it will pass.” He flicked a glance to the stack of paperwork awaiting him. “Wait until he is out of the area, then move back in as though nothing happened. When next he speaks to you, pretend the incident never occurred. He is benevolent and doting, and he has never behaved otherwise for as long as you've been there. Understand?"

"That’s what I tried, but the guards wouldn't let me in. They said my room had been… That my possessions would be…" She lost control, sobbing as she clutched her scarf close to her chest, gasping in broken wordless heaves as tears drew glistening tracks through her makeup.

Soehn crossed his arms impatiently and waited for it to pass. He had a great many obligations to get to today, and watching his daughter blubber all over the place was not one he'd scheduled today. Couldn’t she have these little meltdowns on the weekends instead of during the busiest part of the week?

But, she was his daughter—potentially the key to their greatest coup yet, so he supposed he could give her a little patience.

This patient lasted for all of three minutes. When she still hadn't managed to get another word out, he snapped, "Pull yourself together, girl. This is a time-sensitive matter. You need to get back to the palace as soon as possible. Tell me what the matter is."

"He's had me forbidden. He, he, he… threw out my… Destroyed my… and my… And mother’s…" She could barely catch her breath between choking sobs, words coming out broken and unclear.

It took a while, but Soehn got the gist of it.

The king had one of his fits, decided to throw out his mistress and all of her things, and went so far as to banish her from the building. It was more extreme than the previous incidents, by a lot, but Soehn was used to dealing with the unstable man by now. Though with the rapidity with which he’d been issuing edicts and renouncing previous decisions the past week, he was obviously going through another phase. Soehn should have seen this coming.

"Did you say anything to set him off?"

"Not… no, nothing. He opened the door as if to come in, stood in the doorway staring…" She broke down sobbing again. "As— as though he'd never seen me before… After all this time…"

"Then he relapsed significantly. No matter. I will take care of it. Your old room is still around somewhere. Talk to the maids or something. I'll send word when you may return to the palace safely. Dismissed."

He wrote out a quick note to his head maid, then set the sobbing girl out of his mind. Rumors were flying about some new set of mercantile edicts, but he was more concerned with the potential changes rumored about the enforcement policies on certain obscure disallowed acts.

Perhaps his cousin's indiscretions could be resolved without needing the boy killed. That would be nice. The lad had potential.

Before the sound of her crying had faded into the background noise of the office home, his daughter was entirely forgotten. She may be an important piece to the family's potential future, but she was far from the only one in play. And right now, her chances of success seemed rather minimal. No point investing any more energy into a failed gambit.

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Kryr-Anarkin knew more about dragons than anyone else on the continent, though that wasn’t saying much. Veor being the cultural equivalent of a small backwater in the middle of nowhere, it was completely helpless and taken off guard when its local dragons decided the time had come to start demanding tribute from their neighbors.

The fact that the group had promptly decided the best way to handle the situation was to rob the dragon matriarch only showed that their incompetence lay far beyond what he could ever have predicted.

Who treated a dragon this way? Who thought it was anything but suicidal to treat a dragon as a mere creature and potential resource rather than the unstoppable force of nature they were?

It’d been a while since Kryr so vehemently wished he could depart immediately after coming.

There was a very particular strategy when dealing with creatures that could annihilate entire civilizations, and provoking them was never a part of that strategy.

Try telling that to a horde of mercenaries with the glint of treasure in their greedy eyes.

He half wished the matriarch had shown up while they were there, so he could watch the look of dawning recognition as these looting fools understood just how thoroughly they’d ruined themselves.

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Instead, the mountain lay empty the entire time, the dragons outside busy with their own searches, none of which infringed upon the matriarch’s mountain. All week, over a dozen trips all told, and not a single dragon objected to their queen’s horde being systematically dismantled and carried away.

Kryr had expected conflict and chaos. Instead, he found uncertainty and hesitance. The Mercurios seemed convinced that this was all some complicated game Ryenzo was setting up, and were afraid of angering the volatile matriarch by interfering in the wrong way. Even though none of them had seen her in weeks.

Finally satisfied that there was nothing more to be learned here, he turned in his final report and booked his Terlunia passage back to his comfortable north. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t an imminent threat, and Veor had better things to spend their money on than keeping him on retainer another full cycle.

He’d done his duty, whatever future chaos erupted when the matriarch finally returned to find her mountain emptied… no amount of negotiating could avert.

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“I'm terribly sorry, my lady, but your outfit is not quite ready." Curad Veshin bowed in profuse apology. The twelve members of the Ardent Shield Adventuring Company stood before him… eleven of them fully outfitted in their new custom armor. The twelfth, the healer, stood looking small and exposed in only her chest piece and robe.

"I was assured that you had time to complete our order," she said briskly, in the best imitation of a highborn Veori accent he’d ever heard from an outsider.

He wasn't sure if she was mocking him or not, but he smiled and bowed again anyway.

"Indeed, my dear lady. You must understand, there was an emergency order. Miss Serin—" the woman’s spine stiffened and she scowled— "required us to help her slay a dragon. It was incredibly urgent, you see.”

"A dragon, here?" One of the elder men in the group spoke up, a dark-haired fellow who carried a spear. The one they called Storm, if Curad was remembering correctly. "I thought the only dragons here were in the mountains. Poison, right? They don't bother anyone."

The woman with no armor shifted uncomfortably. "I don't suppose you know the name of the dragon this… Serin person went after?" There was a faint tremor in her voice, almost concealed, but if he didn't know better Lord Veshin would have called it worry.

He waved his hands hastily to reassure them. "No need to be concerned, the Draconis Mercurios has not seen fit to impose any penalty on us over this, you're in no danger here. Ryenzo's death—"

"Ryenzo!" the woman gasped, putting a hand to her chest. "Dead? And this Serin person… is she alive? She survived?"

"Of course she is! She had our armor after all. I would never have advertised it as dragonproof before now, but we have definite proof that it works. Young Miss Serin survived several days in the dragon's very lair, before emerging alive and well. Miraculously so. And there is no sign of Ryenzo. It is as though the great matriarch has vanished entirely. But I have it on good authority that she’s not going to be coming back." If the somewhat crazy kid who kept teleporting in and out of the oasis without any consideration for waking people up in the middle of the night counted as good authority. But enough other sources said similar things, it was impossible to disregard.

"I see.” The healer cleared her throat, in an obvious attempt at nonchalance. “How long would it be until you could complete my armor?"

"No more than a week, my lady, but I know by then the passage will be closed and you'll be stuck here. I will of course offer you housing and provision if you wish to remain. It is my own fault for accepting another order, however essential, and prioritizing it over yours."

"That is of no concern," she said faintly. "Yes. I will stay. I trust your craftsmanship as no other, Lord Curad. Where we go, I will need it."

"Teresa, are you sure?" A white-haired mage asked. "If we delay…"

"If you must go without me, go without me. You know I cannot enter a dungeon of that magnitude without appropriate protection."

Grudgingly, the mage nodded assent. "Then we too shall remain here until the order is fully complete. Please direct us to the nearest inn where we may obtain lodging for our stay."

"Fear not, dear guests, I shall make all the arrangements." Lord Veshin gestured expansively with both arms spread in welcome. "You need not worry for anything while you are here. Let it never be said that Curad Veshin does not fulfill his obligations to the utmost.”

"I am very curious about this dragon slaying," Teresa said. "Do you know where the woman who killed it resides?”

"Certainly!” Lord Veshin exclaimed. “Let me get you her address."

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Sekir Lifekeeper did not appreciate being killed, no matter how ineffectively. Worse, he had no warning and no sign of who—or what—actually did it. One minute, he'd been continuing his assigned patrol—pointlessly searching the desert—the next he'd been violently shoved into one of his backup bodies with no indication of what had gone wrong.

He needed to change his plans. If at least one person had enough suspicions of him to assassinate him, this personality was clearly a dead end. The shortlist of people who could pull off such an assassination without him noticing was a very short list indeed, none of whom he wanted to tangle with right now. Sekir had plans to deal with all of them in the long term, naturally, but that would be on his timing and with his full strength, not because they stumbled upon him alone and vulnerable.

At first, he'd assumed his adversary must be someone in the Hyperion itself. No one else would have any hint of his location. He'd done very little in this persona, and couldn’t think of anything that could evoke such drastic retribution.

However, upon returning to the capital, he found a new factor had entered into the game.

His control over King Farshen, which had been growing very near to completion, had been broken completely.

So completely, in fact, that he suspected that might've been the cause of his death. He’d poured more than two thirds of his power into maintaining that ongoing connection, and to have it suddenly destroyed could very well have backlashed onto his currently active manifestation of the time.

At least there was one thing he knew for sure. This new adversary, this Phoenix Healer, was not going to be difficult to find. Rumors of his existence, people bidding over slots in his schedule, a prestigious specialist academy’s headmaster acting as his agent… this newcomer made no attempts to hide himself.

The only question was how to approach the situation and what to do about him in the long run.

He selected an untouched persona with no established background, one he’d planned to use as his secondary avatar once Farshen was fully under his control, but which could be used for reconnaissance just as readily.

A faint smile touched the lips of Sekir’s new persona. This Phoenix Healer had no idea of the enemy he’d just made. Nor would he ever see his death coming. It was only fair. He’d caught Sekir off guard once, and set the stage. Taking Sekir’s king off the board was one hell of an opening move.

But first, Sekir needed more information. Only then could he begin to arrange things to his designs.

Let the game begin.

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