Jarek vis-Oddmund sat in his study, overlooking the heap of missives, charts, and portfolios on his desk. He glared down at them through his steepled fingers, his tired eyes giving away the years of world weariness and experience that had been erased from the rest of his revitalized personage. Then he leaned back in his chair and stared up the ceiling.

The door of the study opened up and in walked his wife, literally looking as beautiful and bright as the day they were wed. They’d been together for decades, but thanks to elements in their blood they now only barely seemed to have marriageable age.

For them feeling young again was a wonderful thing, it was also a reminder of how quickly things had changed for their family and how they fast they could continue changing in the future, for better or for ill.

“Are you still brooding over those plans of ours, Jarek?” said Olivia.

“Mhm? Well, kinda...It’s, I don’t know. We’re both warriors, we’ve both fought in the kingdom’s armed forces..We’ve seen how wars are supposed to be fought….and its like at the same time that I know that there’s nothing sacred about warfare...I also can’t shake the feeling that we’re being somewhat wrong here.Going just a few steps too far. War should be men meeting in the battlefield, blade to blade, spell to spell...It shouldn’t just be me sitting in my office, pressing a button.” said Jarek.

Olivia sighed, crossing the room and gently prying her normally jovial husband away from the desk that had been steadily him into a brooding old man for the last year or so.

“I think you’re overthinking it, love.”

“Overthinking it?”

“Yes….Overthinking it. We’re in this war already. If the Oedheim clan is to ever again...or rather, even if we simply intended to exist without being under constant threat, this conflict was all but inevitable. In which case, a lot of people were going to die anyway, a lot of our people, a lot of their people...People die in wars, love. We can only pray that the black gods let those deaths be good ones, and let the hereafter be a peaceful one.”

“Mhm…” said Jarek. Still not sounding fully convinced.

“Jarek, tell me, how long did you spend trying to figure out how to pull together enough men into our forces. How hard did we all have to work to get those forces trained and fed? How hard did we have to look to find some allies to help us make a strike at just a few of the Order of Golden-Shadow’s bases a few months ago. How long did we have to prepare for that? And How high were our predicted casualties? You remember don’t you?”

Jarek sighed and finally allowed his wife to extricate him from the desk.

“You’re right, hon.” said Jarek. Turning to give his wife a kiss. She accepted it and then pushed him away. Her bright eyes crinkling at the corners, her nose wrinkling at the odd scent cocktail that the man current wore. A scent made up of sweat, ink, and stale coffee.

“Of course I am, now go wash up. Dinner’s almost ready, and you’ve been huddling behind that desk o’ yours for the better part of the last three days…”

“Yess’m” said Jarek, chuckling as he and his wife left the room.

Though he’d stopped brooding, the wheels in Jarek’s head kept turning. When it came down to it, it seemed silly to spend so much time worrying about the morality of continuing to fight their battles the way they were fighting them now. Good wars were never fair, and the worst wars were those where both sides were equally matched. Leading to a bloody slug match between the two sides.

It was just that in Jarek’s heart of hearts there sat an idealistic young knight that still felt it a slight betrayal to all that he’d learned, and all that had been drilled into him by his former captains and trainers, to fight his wars with armored mechanical men, and skyborne ships while the other side only had a few cultivators with the power of flight, and absolutely no means of even drawing near to the ships.

Hidden behind the young knight within Jarek’s heart was a cynical old monster that had appeared within the shadows of Jarek’s heart shortly after Jarek had been injured, and had lost his place amongst the knights.

Perhaps this voice was the most troublesome of all, because Jarek knew without the mitigating presence of his loving wife and his children it might well have taken him over.

This voice whispered over the knight’s voice and chided the old knight for his childishness. Telling Jarek all the things he already knew, but with spooky echoey undertones.

Wars were rarely even matched things. Life was unfair...and if his power would allow him to reign supreme above all of Embla, then that was exactly what he should do.

Both voices were thankfully faint, compared to that of his own general inner, and a voice that sounded oddly like his wife’s. The same voices that kept him from giving into despair when he was at his lowest, and were currently keeping him from giving into depravity and megalomania, now that he had a fair portion of, if not all of, the world at his fingertips.

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A little later as the evening wore on, the vis-Oddmund’s all found themselves seated around a table together for the first time months. It was hard to say that the vis-Oddmunds had been out of touch with each other, considering how closely they were working together, but it had still been a while since all of them had been home at the same time.

“Well, this is nice.” said Olivia.

“Nh…” said Jarek. Grunting in agreement.

They watched Wallace come in with a certain Patricia Patterson at his side. The two old lovebirds whispering to one another, musing over whether or not the family would soon be hosting another wedding. Egon walked in alone but came carrying a cask of ale from the local drinking house.

The last two arrive were Edwin and Vanessa who’d met on the walkway. The two looked comfortable with each other, but there was something odd about their atmosphere together.

The oddity was subtle, but it was enough for Jarek and Oliva to notice and share a look of concern between the two of them.

Jarek looked at his youngest son’s face and then leaned in towards his wife.

“Hon, is it me or are his eyes glowing?” said Jarek.

Olivia just shook her head and sighed.

“Mh, Probably...We’ll ask later, hopefully it’s nothing we need to worry about.” said Olivia.