Despite the urgency of responding to the living flame, it wasn't as though Lucius could fly through the mountains. A dispatch had to be assembled and horses could only move so fast. He had but a single night in his personal enclave before he would ride through the Ashfall Mountains to show Felicia the true danger lurking in the shadows of the world. Naturally, it would be a shameless lie to say it had nothing to do with a human desire of quiet with those close to him.

He could hardly leave his child in Rackvidd. Though he was a hero of the revolution, there was no telling what an aggrieved man with no regard for his own life might do. More pertinently, as I would have instructed him, he couldn't leave the princess unattended in the city. Thankfully, her naivety to the world made her easier to handle, and in a sense young Alexander did more to handle her than Lucius did. The pudgy face of the infant had captivated her from the first sight and she had proved to be quite doting upon the babe.

It was the Ashe girl who kept her focus upon Lucius. While Kassie and Aisha discussed the trivialities of culture, Frederika Ashe inserted herself into Lucius' study. The girl had been raised to be one of the most refined noblewomen of the kingdom, even if she had selectively ignored such instructions throughout her years, but noble status meant nothing after the revolution. All had been made noble, save those imprisoned, and she could not invoke her family's name. As far as outsiders were concerned, she was a maid – perhaps a mistress to the general – with the makings of a scribe to ease the Supreme Commander's burden.

In candlelit privacy, she was but a girl he had known in his youth and he was the one who had saved her life. Once the door was shut behind her, her shadowed figure took hold of his attention. "You're quite compliant to Felicia's wishes, aren't you?"

Judging by the state of the letter I received some time later, I can only presume he had been sketching out certain details to me when she interrupted. The parchment arrived crumpled and the latter half of our coded text was hastily scrawled. It would have meant nothing to the Ashe girl and he should have left it upon the table, but she was able to set a finger upon one of the faults in his heart. "Is there a wish of yours I'm not being compliant toward?" he asked.

"My mother and aunts still don't know that I'm alive."

He sighed and gestured to his nearest map of the world. "Riding out to kill a godling is a simple affair in comparison."

"But I'm not asking you to march your army north and overthrow this democracy either," Frederika said with a smirk.

"Your family is almost certainly giving all of their resources to Gabriel right now. If he finds out who I have with me, he'll think he can make an alliance with me," Lucius said as he reached over and picked up the piece of carved wood he used to denote the self-exiled prince. At this time, neither he nor I had any proper understanding of how many trained fighters Gabriel had. The prince was something of an adventuring king, cutting back the barbarity of nature to the west, and there was no telling how the Guardian of the West would respond to him. Personally, I had made some overtures to the ancient, but I could hardly spare the time given the extent of the kingdom's problems I had to rectify before Aurum marched his golems back upon us.

"Can't he? Kassie thinks so. You might have helped kill his father, but you did save his sister. Even the fools know you had more important things to deal with than to save his tyrant of a brother."

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"Shouldn't you be wary of such an alliance?" he asked as she eased herself onto his desk. The simple dress of a serving girl made the approach far easier for her.

Frederika's laugh nearly escaped the room. "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"You were betrothed to the king once already," he said, rescuing his drink before her legs swung around so she could face him.

"And I have no interest in offering myself to the Arandalls again… unless somebody finds a way to kill you, I suppose," she said as she leaned down to him.

"Don't make it sound so difficult. The fiction of my immortality is stronger than my stigmata. And don't forget, without Acheliah, he has no legitimacy to claim the throne. It's Kassie's to take. Gabriel has become opinionated about how to rule. He's unlikely to be satisfied with anyone else."

The Ashe girl was taken aback. "You think he would see her that way?"

Lucius shook his head. "Her? No. Me? Yes. And it doesn't have to be him that sees the problem. He'll have his own inner circle, hardened men that either succeeded or failed to conquer the west. They won't see a bit more blood as anything to lose sleep over," he said as he set his drink aside.

Before he could turn back to her, she seized his shirt. "Then I don't see the issue," she said. "I don't want you marrying that ditz, and if you don't try to take the throne for yourself then you are no enemy of Gabriel's."

Now, what could he say to that? Kassie vi Arandall was the simplest way for him to take control of Vassermark. He and I had discussed this much over the years. To not take her hand in marriage would mean the necessary eradication of the royal family entirely, for Vassermark would not be able to survive without us. The armies of the world would march in and split it like a nut upon an anvil. They would shatter the fiefs in the style of the central kingdoms and pit them against each other, never to form anew. It would become as broken as Giordana, whose governor was in name only.(1)

Were he a different man, this would not have been such a terrible thing to Lucius. He was more than capable of leaving Lumisgard and fending for himself. It would have been a savage life in the darkness, but he most likely would have survived. Ah, I find myself touching upon the future too closely. He was still a young man, with many paths to force himself through despite the thorns and cliffs, and he chose the ones that called to him.

In that night, it was the embrace of the young girl that had taken him in as a child, now full grown and possessed of a will. She was no puppet of her birth and thought nothing of abandoning her name. Her moniker had been chosen before, but in privacy the whisper of Eri passed between their lips while their bodies came together. A decade's tension of regret bound the two of them together while their respective statuses had been inverted.

Truly I underestimated how much he brooded, beneath the surface of a warrior. He was like the sucking depths of a whirlpool pulling in the women around him. Had I known better when he was a youth, I might have simplified matters, but he had far more proximal distractions which were wholly under my control. Though he spent the night with the Ashe girl, it changed nothing of the grand plan. The former nobility of Vassermark were ensnared by him and their ploys against one another could have no effect upon the wars that had to be waged.

Felicia had her suspicions the following day as they rode north to confront the godling, accompanied by the most ambitious of the wastelanders, but to see a thing of fire and violence is the sort of event that erases all other matters from one's mind – if it is unfamiliar. So potent is it that I made spectacle of such things back in the capital, but the grotesqueries were not until that summer and they were blunt instruments to sway the political parties of the time. I must commend my student for his expert use of the godling's demise, even if his goals were no more than personal.

The governor at this time was a manager of dubious noble lineage, allegedly related to the Feugards, but was so inconsequential even most official reports neglected to mention the man because the southern territory's sole source of tax revenue was the customs fees collected at Rackvidd.

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