"It was alright the last time I came here, two days ago," Nero stated with a shiver down his spine. "What should we do?"

The fire didn't look too old but it spread throughout the whole city. Two miles away from the city walls, they couldn't see anyone on the walls or outside the city. Nero had a portal inside the city in a back alley of the outer district, but he didn't put a copy on a transition box like the one they just used and there was little way to know the condition of the alley. They could open a gate to an inferno.

"Discretion is out of the window. We must hurry!" Botolf shouted. "Your Highness!"

Aslanbek faced Crystal and asked, "Princess Serena, are there water mages in your group?"

Crystal nodded and pointed at a nereid knight. "Dame Ellis is a water mage. She can put out the fires if they aren't being sustained by someone's magic."

Aslanbek bowed slightly before the nereids. "Allow me to borrow her. Dame Ellis, I promise your safety is assured. Please!"

The two sea women exchanged a glance and Crystal nodded. "Leave one of your knights with us to reassure any locals that we aren't invading," She told Aslanbek and turned to her knight. "Go! Save as many as you can, Ellis!"

"Sir Tallbean will remain with you," Aslanbek decided. "Jon, see to the princess, Nero, and lady Altia's safety."

Tallbean, a wolfman with white and blueish-silver fur saluted. "It shall be done, Your Highness."

Ellis also saluted the princess and changed places with Tallbean.

"Wait!" Altia said. "I have potions of fire resistance. They should give forty percent for four hours," She summoned a crate of potions from her storage and spread them around. "Even if you don't need them, take some in case you find someone that does!"

She gave a handful of the bright orange sloshing concoctions to each person in the group.

"We thank you, lady Altia," Aslanbek smiled. "Botolf, prepare to depart!"

"We are going! [Speed of the Pack]!" Botolf shouted, activated a Skill, and Aslanbek's knights ran like the wind toward the city.

"We are going as well, but slower," Crystal told her knights. "We are scouting the outside and looking for any units from Coriander. We have to secure the civilians' safety and dissuade any compatriots we find of supporting Hye-Sung. Spread out and search for people!"

They moved after the knights, with the trackers on the far edges. Nero switched to his orange Rogue build to make use of the detection Skill embedded in the build. Crystal and Altia were slowing down the group but they could still move two or three times faster than a normal person. As they approached the wall, they found the population gathered a few hundred yards outside the wall, watching the city burn.

The closed gates exploded inward with a great burst of fire. They saw the silver armor of Aslanbek's knights entering the blazing city and the greenish-blue figure of Dame Ellis shooting jets of water left and right from her stretched hands. After a few moments, plumes of white vapor mixed with the charcoal gray smoke and the glow of the arson.

The people were talking about the nereid with Aslanbek. The hostility toward the nereid was obvious, and some were saying Ellis was a prisoner. They had weapons, clubs, spears, swords. They were angry, covered in soot, and looking for something to beat. Fortunately, they were looking at the burning city, not the people coming from behind.

Crystal waved her hand, calling everyone near her. "Cloaks!" She summoned a plain hooded cloak and covered herself, hiding her features. The other knights, even Jon Tallbean did the same.

"I think we shouldn't approach them," Nero told Crystal.

She nodded. "Agreed. But we need to get inside the city."

"I'll risk the portal," Nero frowned. "Let's go to the shelter and I'll connect it in a minute."

Nero put them back in the same transition box they used to come from the capital. Alone, he walked through a different portal into his map room. He would need a special dimension for his plan to win some sweet loot. It was a trap. A drop of ten thousand feet into sharp stone stalagmites. Inspired by the criminal arson, he filled it with smoke and bad air. He knew who he would put in there, at the very top of the long drop.

He ran the half-mile separating the staircase from Honeywitch in the stone diorama and checked his portals. Switching to the same build he used against Aslanbek, he stood a couple dozen yards away and opened the portal inside the city.

It exploded inward.

Tongues of flame rushed inward, greedily devouring the fresh air. Smoke and debris rushed into the shelter. Nero shut the portal. Made of real-world matter, the flames had no problem crossing the boundary between shelter and reality. Nero found himself sitting on a very uncomfortable mountain. Smoke was filling the map room and the heat was getting unbearable.

Nero drank Altia's fire resistance potion and checked the situation. Some burning debris were spread around the portal but the situation stabilized. The fire was no longer blowing from the city into the shelter. He had to get creative. Switching builds, he made a temporary ocean shelter. One that was entirely made of water, two hundred yards deep without air on top. He walked out into the burning city and opened a keyed portal to that shelter and dove inside. There, he quickly made another portal to where Altia and the others were waiting.

He splashed out of the portal, entirely dry. Crystal looked behind him. "Water?"

"Yes. It is good to fight the heat outside. Too bad I can't..." Nero trailed off as an idea shone in his mind. But infusing the water to make it "real" and pouring it out of the portal would consume a ton of mana and time for a very little amount of water. "Nevermind, it won't work. Let's cross. Could we get some water breathing?" He asked while shamelessly wiggling his eyebrows at his nereid sister.

Crystal giggled and kissed his forehead. She also gave Altia a kiss to the cheek and they all dove into the ocean shelter. Poor Sir Jon Tallbean had to hold his breath.

"[Pyrokynesis]!"

Aslanbek used his third-tier Skill to control the raging inferno around him. He drew the flames and almost all the heat around him out to almost a hundred yards and condensed it into a sphere high above before allowing the fire to die for a lack of fuel. It used up twenty mana for each casting, but there weren't even smoldering cinders left behind. Soon the fire from the outlying area would spread to this new pocket of cool matter, but it gave his knights time to rescue the civilians trapped in the fire.

Burned corpses littered the streets. The fire was caused by magic, he had no doubt. It blanketed over the whole city too fast and at once. He couldn't see signs that this or that house started burning first. They all were at the same stage of destruction. Usually, the buildings next to the fire epicenter would have burned longer. No. The dead people weren't even carrying anything. They were caught by surprise in a coward attack. Aslanbek felt his rage coming back but he forced it down. It would only benefit his enemies. The lesson of a week before tempered him more than he could believe. Opening himself to Botolf's advice also helped a lot.

From what they learned from those they rescued and interviewed, the city was burning for only a couple of hours. A group of citizens resented Hye-Sung's takeover and the arrival of a squad of Coriander elite troops - including the two renegade knights responsible for the murder of the squatters in Hom. Aslanbek with his Knights were more than enough to retake the city. If the princess could sway her subjects to step aside, they could even do it without any deaths. Except for the traitors and Hye-Sung.

He paid the upkeep cost sustained his spell every minute, pushing away any heat from his area of effect while the knights lifted debris to rescue the few citizens they could sense. Captain Botolf led them to the back while Sir Hemmings was busy burying burnable debris underneath the ground. Dame Ellis doused the edge of the debris with water and ice to gain some time but the fire would return. It was a matter of time. The biggest benefit was to keep the heat from entering the area Aslanbek cleared.

"Just make a safe corridor to evacuate the next section," Aslanbek said as he drank a mana potion. "Try to use the cobblestone roads but don't worry about keeping anything standing up! Everything will need to be rebuilt! The safety of our citizens comes first."

It was a half truth and a half show. The civilians gave their thanks and praise as they rushed to the city gate while Aslanbek did his best to look dignified. They could go and crush the opposition, but it was a perfect chance to win the population and cement Bast's hold on the county. A dozen minutes later, they were done and moved to the next section where their trackers sensed people.

On the castle's battlements, Hye-Sung watched the scene through a spyglass while having a fit.

The knights from Coriander used brute force to clear the debris around the portal. Nero created a transition box linked to the farm road two miles behind and stabilized the portals. For the next two days or until he dismissed it, there would be a tunnel linking the two locations almost three miles apart.

"I can try to get some Skill build to fight the fire," Nero said. "Ice or water."

"Don't bother," Sir Lentyon replied. "Unless we cut the fire from spreading, it would only delay the spread. The best we can do is to put the debris in our dimensional pouches. Even that would take too long."

Nero looked around. "We can scoop the bigger logs through a portal. Oh. Wait. I'm switching to [Monster Tamer]!"

Altia's face lit up. "It's a job for Mr. Pebbles!"

Nero brought Mr. Peebles his Crag Turtle and Loolah the Goblin Shaman. The goblin wasn't speaking yet but Nero could see a spark of intelligence in the monster's eye. Maybe soon.

"Loolah, use your magic to help people as you see fit. Prioritize healing and don't engage enemies. Mr. Peebles, start shooting water at the flames once you shift to combat mode and don't stop. Avoid targeting people. Tell me if you are running low on mana."

Nero paid nine thousand Essence and the cute and small stone turtle grew to combat size. It immediately started working.

"Altia, I'll let you know when Mr. Peebles needs a mana refill. Mr. Peebles, use water gun!" Nero pointed at the burning debris. The turtle obeyed and spewed a continuous stream of high-pressure water at the fire. The pet's mana efficiency was superb. As its only attack mode, the turtle was made to spew water. It moved slowly even though Nero's Attribute bonuses more than doubled its performance, but they had to clear debris, break the logs from the wattle-and-daub house frames and store them in the dimensional pouches to deny the fire its biggest and mostly untapped fuel source.

They saw another sphere of fire rise up and sputter out in the sky above.

"That's His Highness' magic," Sir Tallbean explained.

"Maybe we should join up with him," Nero mused.

"I don't think so," Lentyon said. "We would work faster by keeping both groups separate. They have Ellis with them and we got the turtle... Mr. Peebles."

Two hours after they started working, there were no other life signs they could find. Parts of the city still burned but there were more important things to do. They joined back with Aslanbek a hundred yards away from the keep's main gate. Mr. Peegles was still showering the ruined houses around them as a gardener to a rose bush.

"There are about fifty presences inside the keep," Aslanbek's tracker reported.

"Indeed," Sir Trenton, the princess' tracker agreed.

"Let's lure them here then," Nero said. "Are you ready, sister?"

Crystal beamed a nervous smile. "Yes."

Nero switched to a new build, one made to assist Crystal in this job. He'd been waiting to use it since before he left to be Tyre's groundskeeper.

[Bard] - Yellow. Bound to Nero

+5 Reason [+2]

+20 Perception [+10]

+39 Charisma [+18]

Special: Pay the same cost as an ally's sound-based Skill plus your own Skills' cost: Apply your own Skills to the ally's performance.

Special: Add half your Perception to Charisma to determine the effect of your sound-based Skills.

Special: Add half your Reason to Charisma to determine the effect of your sound-based Skills.

[Amplify Song] - Pay X [up to square.root(Charisma) ] points of mana and stamina. Increase a sound-based Skill's effect and range by X * 25%.

[Encore] - Pay [3 or the highest of target's rank] points of mana. All targets of a sound-based Skill must resist again with a penalty equal to half your Charisma.

[Soothing Song] - Reduce target's Willpower by your Charisma to determine if they become hostile after being targeted by your sound-based Skill.

[Project Voice] - Multiply the range of your sound-based Skill by square.root(Endurance).

[Lasting Song] - The effects of your sound-based Skill lasts for square.root(Charisma) [Original Skill's time units] after you stop performing.

[Backing Vocals] - Pay 1 point of mana when an ally starts a sound-based Skill. Add half your Charisma to theirs to determine effects.

They held hands. Crystal used [Siren's Song]. Nero pumped everything he could and used all of his [Bard] Skills. He suddenly found himself enraptured by her Skill and singing the counterpoint to her melody. His voice was a baritone on the high records, creating the bass line for her crystal-clear soprano. He kept an eye on his mana expenditure for [Encore]. Fifty-five mana. The highest target in Crystal's song was between levels of two hundred seventy-five and seventy-nine. Since their group was not being affected, there was someone very strong in that castle.

With Nero granting her almost a hundred and fifty points of Charisma and multiplying the range by thirty-six, the song blanketed the whole city[*]. The melody had no lyrics. The vocalization, however, conveyed more emotions than any words could. Crystal's sorrow for the dead townsfolk, her wish for peace, and a nonviolent solution. Her longing for halcyon days where princess Serena was innocent, pure, and naive. Even her love for the family that opened their hearts for her found its place in the haunting tune.

Six minutes later, she stopped. Whoever fell under her spell would only wake up twelve minutes later. Nero looked around after he came out of his trance-like state and Crystal's knights were kneeling on their tears. He wrapped his arm over Crystal and she rested her head on his shoulder.

"It was beautiful," She whispered to him. "Thanks."

"I'll be your song partner anytime, sister," He replied as he kissed her forehead. He searched on his other side and soon found Altia's hand. "But now I must prepare to take down a Countess pretender."

Nero's motives were far from pure or just. Truly, Hye-Sung was going down, but he wanted to take her himself. Drop the holan-yan woman in the trap shelter for a gruesome but well-deserved death.

He assembled a specialized build made to take her there while they waited. Several minutes later, nereids and tritons appeared on top of the wall.

"Your Highness!" A nereid with captain armor saluted.

"I am Serena Coriander, the third princess. I command you to bring Hye-Sung here."

Some of the soldiers scowled. The nereid captain on top of the wall pointed at Aslanbek. "If you really are our lost princess, what are you doing next to the leonal scum? Are you under mental domination?"

Aslanbek bellowed a bestial roar in a challenge. "I am not one to put my allies under mind control."

Nero rolled his eyes. He wasn't an ally back then but Aslanbek was pushing it.

"My shameful brother Tyre that kidnapped and offended fair Princess Serena here was disavowed by our father King Zander Alexander IV, reneged by his crimes and punished to a fate worse than death. I spit on his memory for what he did. The King himself apologized before Princess Serena here and she accepted his contrite words. Our armies met on the battlefield and the invasion failed. I regard those nereids and tritons here with me as my comrades in arms. Step down and put yourselves under the command of your princess as it is right. We of Bast have nothing against you. We want the criminal that allowed the fair city of Honeywitch to burn."

The prince made a pause to gauge the reactions of the soldiers on the wall. They looked confused but he hoped Serena's charisma could convince them. Aslanbek was short on time and patience, however.

"I demand you step aside and bring me the usurper Hye-Sung."