When Lord Walter's summons arrived, Prime Minister Asibridel rushed, abandoned the usual nation-visiting protocol, and ran on foot to the Alune Theocracy. Her assistants failed to keep up. Impatient, Asibridel pushed harder, and her lungs squeezed every ounce of air into her body they could. The elderly elf grew healthier and mightier with time, and each stride stripped the bark off tree limbs.

Every second mattered. The prime minister had never seen a demon messenger terrified before. Walter's actions defied her expectations again.

Asibridel planned to deal with the Alune Theocracy, on her terms, on elf terms. First, she sealed off the northern peninsula to starve them of new hosts. Then, she waited to see the results of Walter's experimentation with Nix's fertility. If Nix succeeded in birthing a half-elf child, an heir to a kingdom and future of another nation, Asibridel would canvas the Sanctuary for volunteers. Walter hinted that Nix might lose her physical strength, but there was a possibility it would release her accumulated mana. Such elves might be the first to work spells. Given enough time breeding with humans, wizardry might enter their purview, and the officials plotted family trees. The combined political pressure and spellcraft could enable the Sanctuary to squeeze and eliminate the Alune Theocracy. In time the Sanctuary and the Wilmand Kingdom would unify.

The elf worried. Walter explicitly stated he did not want to dabble in national politics, and spies informed Asibridel that he disdained it even locally. What changed? Nothing indicated to Asibridel that Walter was indifferent to death. His magic, no matter how potent, could not accomplish the single-handed conquering of a nation. If he snapped and laid waste to the theocracy, then the argument loomed that she unleashed Walter upon them. She was the manipulator and the one to blame. Other nations might embargo the Sanctuary or worse; the Sanctuary's fate proved precarious again.

The Alune Theocracy counted for little more than a drab mountain town of the demon-controlled, despite their magical prowess. Prime Minister Asibridel landed at the city limits, drab houses carved from large stone bricks or inside rock faces. Everything looked intact. She sighed with relief. Then, she sucked in a breath. Asibridel drowned in Walter's mana shadow, and it poured out like a deluge. No one dared to break the unspoken curfew until he restrained himself again. Blank faces briefly peeked through parted curtains. Was this his power? She realized her miscalculation: Walter could crush the Alune Theocracy and any other contender. They existed, they all continued, only because he allowed it, and woe unto those that aggravate the Black Mage of Eovamund.

Asibridel's mouth dried, and she forced herself to step closer to the pope's mansion, the center of the unseen whirlpool of mana, where Walter waited. Inside, the servants, perhaps trapped by a lack of permission to leave, gathered in comforting groups and avoided the building's center. None worked; they looked emotionally exhausted.

Shyla wordlessly opened the door to the dining room, the heart of the building.

"You requested me, master?" Prime Minister Asibridel knelt outside the door. Technically, Walter still owned her as a slave. No amount of protocol would be unsafe, and she decided to err on the side of caution.

"Quit screwing around and come in."

She stood and did so. Stale food remained untouched on a banquet table, and some rotted with a mild stink. Not a single servant dared to enter this room. Asibridel found herself standing alone against a tide's worth of pressure, and Walter did not yet work magic.

Walter sat next to a window, listless, and gazed at the view. Mud marked his clothes from travel. "Thanks for coming. You got here quick."

"I would not dare to defy my master."

"Stop calling me that," Walter said, "I'm just a nerd. Shit, I should have told Princess Roselynde to erase your slavery as well."

"Is Pope Althonbright deposed?"

"Yeah. Dead. Choked to death on a chicken bone. Tragic. We threw the parasite off the mountain, and a vulture is probably poking his eyes out right now. Pests deserve pests, I guess. There are rules, you know, and he was long due for the consequences."

He lied. No doubt, the other servants would repeat the story, afraid to contradict him, and the tale posthumously shamed the pope. History books would record the ridiculous claim as truth. While the method of death could not be believed, his body left to the elements seemed accurate. Prime Minister Asibridel opened her mouth to speak, to agree with his decision, to appease him. Walter silenced her with a raised hand. She held her breath while he continued.

"We have a Prometheus in my world. A titan, god of fire, and he gifted it to humans, defying Zeus's command. Zeus punished him by chaining him to a boulder, and a giant bird eats his regenerating liver every day. Makes you want to sympathize with him, doesn't it? Honestly, though, if you listen to the story, it doesn't seem like he regrets it. He just did what he thought was right. We have an Aratron, too, and he kind of does the same thing with magic by teaching others, but he's a demon, not a titan. I really don't get religion in this world. Like, did you copy ours and get it wrong? Or did the myths in my world decide to have fun and mix it up here? Why do so many gods combine two of ours in a weird sort of yin-and-yang? Aphrodite and Venus are two-faced like Janus, and Gaia and Ouroboros are twins. Don't get me started on paladins. They're supposed to get their abilities from a higher power, not through some bloodline. At first, I ignored it because I thought the magic system in this world was simply wonky. But Elin fooled everyone when she pretended to lose her powers. Why would Gaia let Elin retain them if she allied with Ouroboros and, on top of that, willingly avoided motherhood?"

When Walter remained silent for over a minute, Asibridel dared to speak. "I have no answers. Am I to suffer Pope Althonbright's fate?" She whispered, "Is the Sanctuary safe? If we have offended you in any way, I swear we will make it up to you."

Walter scratched his forehead, like a parent suffering a child's misbehavior, and fixed his sight on her through his fingers. The room, while still, felt like it spun. "Don't be stupid. I'm not going to rampage against the elves because you were dumb or pretending to be a slut, and I'm not going to kill you, either. You were doing what you needed to, to survive, to help your people survive. Kind of like the demon inhabiting Shyla outside. No, I called you here for something else."

"Which is?"

"You're taking over the Alune Theocracy."

"You are not conquering the territory?"

"No. From this point, I am to be considered a nation unto myself. I'm leaving. I have other plans."

"I cannot accept this land. The backlash from the other nations would start a war. No one will tolerate the Sanctuary absorbing the theocracy, even if they didn't appreciate their presence."

"Is that right?" Walter shrugged, "Let me show you something that will change your mind, and, while we walk, I want you to tell me about Hera."

Hera was the Goddess of Marriage, the joining of two souls in matrimony. She was Aratron's first wife. She placed the Curse of Hera upon the elves, which resulted in the seven-to-one ratio of elvish women and men.

"There is not much else to say, Lord Walter," Asibridel admitted.

Prime Minister Asibridel followed Lord Walter through the mansion, and they descended several flights of stairs. Below ground level, in the cellar, Walter opened a hidden door and into a sex dungeon. She entertained no illusions that Walter intended entertainment. He moved to a rack attached to the wall, and it, too, revealed another hidden door.

"Down here rests the dungeon heart for the demons," he said, "You can recognize a statue of Hera if you see her, can you not?"

"Correct."

"What do you see?"

"That's... impossible."

The dungeon itself was a simple affair, a square room. A statue of Hera knelt in the center of the room, her palms lifted the pointed skull of a demon, the dungeon heart, with black mist pouring out of its eyes and mouth. What surprised Asibridel the most the nature of the cup: it was connected to and carved from the statue. Nothing else could have possibly been hefted.

Alune was Hera. This proved the Alune Theocracy was historically an elf nation, which legitimized the prime minister's rule. Moreover, the elves were intrinsically linked to demons.

"Makes sense, doesn't it?" Walter mused.