Half an hour later, they leaned against the wall mere inches from one another. They were both mentally exhausted from the discussion after having gone back and forth on the merits and risks involved in militarizing their entire alliance. It was, as she insisted, the logical next step for the Darkest Night, but a small part of both of them wondered if that might not be the dark trick of The Trials.

But when it was obvious they weren’t going to settle anything that night, and especially not without more and greater minds weighing in on the matter, they agreed to put the matter to rest and to do the same with themselves.

“So what is there to do for fun around here? Watch dew form on the ceiling of the tunnels? Watch moss grow on the walls?” Mason nudged her gently, and she elbowed him back.

“It’s too soon to tell. Between training and negotiating before we lift the seals, I don’t think there will be a lot of free time to spare. But I could see us making a great game of resealing the stone-work and cleaning out the residential quarters, too.”

“Ahh, luxury. I should have come to The Trials years ago. It was so boring back on Earth with our endless supply of movies, music, and video games. I always wanted to live in caves under the constant threat of assassination or war.”

“You’re a real cynic, you know? What about all the great things you’ve gained here?”

He raised an eyebrow, “I might be forgetting those.”

She pressed her palm to the side of his head and a burst of force pushed him gently to the side, “Magic, perhaps? Or me.” Her voice turned coy on that second suggestion, but she covered with, “And the rest of the Band, of course. Did you ever think you would be as strong or fast as you are now?”

“Speaking of,” Mason took the bait to move the subject along, “I need your help.”

“With what?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

Mason hopped out of the bed and pulled a crystal ball from his bag, the same he had received from Lady Sorynel before the world had turned upside down. “I don’t know what to do with this.”

Faynel’s eyes narrowed and she looked between Mason and the orb, then her jaw dropped and her eyes went wide, “You can’t read!”

The human looked back at her in horror, “What? No! I mean, yes I can. I just don’t know how read out of a crystal? We use paper in my world. Or I guess screens. Either way it’s like… sigils? Lots of sigils in order to form words?”

“Oh thank goodness,” she laughed harder than necessary and relaxed back against the wall again. “Right, no magic. You couldn’t use mana to pull data out of a stone. But screens? I guess that has something to do with your sun sight, right?”

“I’m going to say yes because I don’t think it’s worth the full explanation. I’ll probably never see a screen again at this rate. But yeah, so I just dip my mana in and then what? Leornal connected me to a terminal once, but I didn’t have to figure out how to navigate it.”

Faynel got off the bed, moved over to him, and then wrapped their mana together, guiding it into the orb and showing him how to delve through the information contained within. Mason found he could read the written language, but that was only a small fraction of what the orb contained. Fragments of memories, feelings, and energy patterns danced around his consciousness as they skimmed through.

Only a minute had passed before Mason pulled back and out of that awareness, anxiety gripping his chest as he was overwhelmed by the sheer diversity and intensity of what was contained in that orb.

“Was that- what was that?” Mason asked, almost gasping as he spoke.

Faynel grimaced, “A lot. That’s what it was. I’m sorry, I should have found something to show you, rather than flipping through with you. It’s hard to remember how inexperienced you are with everything. And Sorynel’s teachings were fairly intense even for me. But you saw it, right?”

“I think so,” he muttered as he tried to recall what he had seen. He felt like he was trying to quote a verse from a book he had merely flipped through. “I think I can see why going through these teachings is supposed to be difficult.”

“Do you want to try again? Let me find a piece of writing, and we can start with the easy stuff.”

Mason nodded, and gave Faynel his hand.

~~

“Well, you’re both clothed so I suppose I don’t have to be too jealous, but I still imagine there are a great many questions the two of you will be answering today,” Bazy spoke casually from the entrance to the room.

Groaning, Mason roused himself and pulled his arm out from under Faynel as he looked about the room. Sure enough, Bazy stood smiling in the doorway, and at her side looked to be Merek, the larger, almost intelligent Biord Mason had dealt with before. Mason rubbed at his eyes as Faynel plopped back down on the bed, seeming to have decided she was safe enough to continue sleeping.

“We were up late. Studying. What time is it?” Mason asked.

“Early, but late enough that I was requested to check on a certain woman who may or may not have disappeared overnight. It seems I misjudged your popularity, Mason.” The look on Bazy’s face was one of a cruel glee as she relished every bit of dirt she could get on her new ally.

Mason ignored her and bent down to shake Faynel, but she seemed nonplussed by his efforts until he began to pull at her arms to get her to sit up. Her hair was a mess and she looked twice as sleepy as Mason, but she eventually roused herself and considered the Biord in the doorway.

With a wry smile, she asked through a dry mouth, “I suppose this is an unprofessional way to be meeting the Queen of the Biord?”

Bazy waved her off, “My standards are low, and at least I know now that you can be trusted. It’s not a statement I’ll make for a great many. I suppose I’ll invite the both of you to breakfast, if you can rouse yourselves. You can tell me all about your studies.”

“And if I insist that’s private?” Faynel challenged on instinct.

“You’re a very difficult people, do you know that? Merek, do you think if I ordered you to strike her that she’d put up a very difficult fight?”

The larger Biord chuckled, “I’m fairly certain she’d stop me before I could land a hit, Lady Bazy. You’ll have to leave her whatever secrets she’d like.”

Mason interrupted, “Does everything have to be a battle? Merek, I know Bazy is your de facto leader, but if you promise to keep her under control I’ll try to convince Faynel to stop fighting everyone that crosses her path, deal?”

“And you’ve become a pacifist then? Here I heard you were a Demon on the battlefield,” Merek said.

There was an awkward moment of silence before Bazy announced, “Breakfast, everyone, and I’ll have no complaints.”

Breakfast was composed of strange, but palatable, fare. The Biord were not an impressive race by any measure, but their ingenuity with food was commendable. They’d cultivated a wide range of lichens and mushrooms as well as several plants nobody but the Biord could really identify at all. Much of it seemed subterranean in nature- tubers and roots were common- but there were several more leafy plants and something resembling a grain. All in all, it was heavily vegetarian as most of the Biord’s meat farms were hidden beyond the seals, but what really pulled the meal together was the vast and complicated array of seasonings and spices.

Somehow they had discovered how to extract and enhance the flavors of their produce so excellently that the long table was awash in flavorful and nutritious dishes. Even the Marrans for the splendour of their fallen city, had lacked such palate diversity.

There was no doubt in Bazy’s mind that she had especially pulled out all the stops for this specific meal. He looked around the room and saw that the Biord and Marrans lining the table were chatting excitedly, with the smaller bird people gesturing at a specific dressing or ladling a helping of some dish onto one of the Marran’s plates. It had broken down barriers in an unexpected way, and Bazy surveyed the room with an expression that was unabashedly smug.

She offered Mason a loaded plate, and the human smiled back at her and took it. He wasn’t about to pass up good food just because it was a ploy of some sort. But once he had sampled the fare, he finally spoke up, “I notice a specific commonality around the room, Bazy.”

“Whatever do you mean, Ambassador?” Bazy teased, taking another bite of her own meal.

“There’s not a single person in this room that couldn’t be obviously identified as someone who had supported me in someway. Lany, would you come over here real quick?”

The Biord squawked and looked up from where he had been talking with Leornal, and the archer looked on suspiciously as Lany hopped from his seat and rushed over. “Dem- Mason, sir! I’m… you, I- You know my name? That’s uh- that’s real good. Yep. Bazy said- er, Lady Bazy, she..”

Mason cut him off, “Lany, relax. Of course I remember you. You helped fight Geralt’s men with me, and I never got a chance to thank you. But I’ve got a question for you. What did Bazy tell you as she invited you to breakfast this morning?”

The stammering bird-lizard man- or was that boy?- looked as if he would rather run out of the room than have this discussion, but when Bazy rolled her eyes and waved her hand, he finally choked out, “She uh- she said we were to make you and your friends real welcome. Said that uh- the Marrans were too proud to-”

This time, Bazy interrupted, “That’s plenty, Lany. Go return to your meal.” She turned on Mason then, clearly forcing herself to look less amused than she was, “Am I so transparent? You had to know I’d get to my point soon enough. I suppose you’ve lost your taste for good company and rest?”

“You could say that,” Mason grinned. “You know, it might be considered poor taste to invite three of the six representatives you’re supposed to be dealing with over a decadent, closed-door meal.” Both Leenel and Torysen suddenly turned attentively to the head of the table, and though a few quiet conversations continued, it was clear that nobody present was surprised that this breakfast was more than a friendly affair.

“I simply invited those who were willing to stick their necks out for my ambassador as a way of saying thanks. If it turns out that I can make common cause with those same allies and present a united front at the next round of negotiations, well, that’s a happy coincidence.”

Mason turned the conversation then, “How did you gain your role so easily, Bazy? Geralt and Arlon had a pretty effective fighting force, by Biord standards at least. But you somehow got them to stand down and follow you without so much as a battle?”

The Biord Queen gasped gently, “You insult me. I fought with words for my position.”

“More like none of us wanted it,” Merek chuckled from behind her.

She shot a glare back at him, “That may have played a role. Lany, what would you say if I asked you to become king in place of me?”

If Lany looked nervous when Mason had talked to him, he looked ready to jump out of his feathers now. “No!” he burst out, to a round of laughter from those around him that understood the joke.

Shovelknight- who Mason realized he still needed to get the name of- spoke up from the other end of the table then. “Why would anyone want to have to argue and make decisions all day long when they didn’t have to?”

Bazy tilted her head as she looked back at Mason, “I’ve explained my plight to you several times now, Mason. The Biord are not an ambitious people. What little of our history I’ve uncovered is not flattering. We are very good at hiding and making ourselves comfortable, and little else. It’s the same reason we didn’t put up a better fight against Arlon, and why I didn’t consider for a moment taking down the seals without a military force worth a little more than my own.”

“And so what is the united front you’re hoping to present at today’s negotiations?” Mason urged.

“You must know I had a whole plan as to how to bring this up today? You’re disrupting that, and after I went through all this trouble to gather your friends around you.”

“We’ve had a great many conversations about Mason’s unpredictability,” Torysen said suddenly. “It is one of his more endearing traits.”

“As well as one of his most unmanageable ones. But here he’s right. This collusion is risky, and it may be best we get to the point,” Councilwoman Leenel added.

Bazy sighed and threw up her arms, “Very well. It’s about the seals…”

“We should bring them down in three days, four if your Biord prove worthless in a fight. I think we should begin organizing squads today and stationing them at each of the seals. Our official story can be that there is not enough food or mana to go around in just the royal quarters alone, and that we need to be able to assess our threat and push into the rest of the city urgently before people starve,” Faynel insisted to the surprise of most everyone in the room besides Mason.

“She’s right,” Mason affirmed, “But there’s more to it. I’m sure we’re not the only ones who’ve realized that we don’t have the strength to clear through a city with just the military fighters we have now. If we start in with a resource scarcity story now, it’ll be much easier to make a case that we need to start enlisting and training as many people as possible, and that it’s a requirement in order to receive a share of food and mana.”

“And I’m the one colluding?” Bazy accused, looking between Faynel and Mason with new understanding. “What else have you two discussed?”

“Faynel don’t you believe we should discuss these tactics privately before we…” her mother started.

Faynel didn’t hesitate though, “New Marra fell with hardly any resistance because the moment the enemy broke through our gates, we had no way to defend ourselves. We can’t continue to insist that it’s acceptable for their to be civilians and fighters. This world is dangerous, and we have more enemies than we can resist. Once we clear the city and fortify, we need to have the strength to push back against the Corrosi, the Goblins, and whatever else The Trials has to throw at us.”

This simple declaration was met with silent contemplation around the table. It wasn’t an unusual claim- in fact, most of the Marrans could remember hearing that very subject debated when they first entered The Trials. But the suggestion hadn’t held quite the same weight when their enemies fought in units of ten or less. Now that they were marching as armies of thousands…

“She’s right and we all know it,” Leornal announced, standing. “I presume you brought us here today to make that very case. What else have the Darkest Night ever stood for? And surely our very own Demon has made the case for taking The Trials seriously since he first started causing trouble for all of us.”

“I guess I have,” Mason added non-committally. “I don’t love the idea of forcing innocent people into dangerous combat, but I think it’s foolish to pretend that’s something we’re doing to them. The Trials forced all of us into a dangerous situation, and it’s awfully cowardly that some people think they can let the rest of us handle those problems for them.” He was starting to feel more heated as he talked- how had he ignored how obvious this was? “Faynel was a dancer and a runner, I delivered food and had only ever held a plastic sword, and Leornal used to spend his days doing math. If we can become competent fighters, then so can everyone else.”

“We still need people to handle our food, our medicine, building, or anything else that the alliance deems necessary. There’s work for those who absolutely can’t fight, or those who are better skilled elsewise. But I agree that everyone should be ready to defend themselves,” Torysen said.

“Now wait a second. My mother may be a famed adventurer, but I am not going to go out there and fight those… those things!” Leenel stood up and brought attention to her panic. She was pale, and was already breathing heavy from fear.

“Seriously, Mother?” Faynel asked with disgust.

Mason interceded though, “From what I hear, you’ve been a politician since before The Trials, and from my perspective, you’re a good one, too. You can lead people, help us make the right decisions, and there’s value in that. But who got you out of New Marra as it fell? If a goblin had run up to you with a dagger, would you know how to protect yourself?”

Leornal had moved over to her and grabbed one of her hands, “Nobody is talking about putting you on the front lines. But there are a lot of people among us that could be, but chose not to because it wasn’t demanded of them. We need more people fighting, and we need everyone to be able to defend themselves if something bad happens.”

“I’ll admit, my own fighting forces are frail, but when your council described to me your military strength yesterday, I knew immediately that it wasn’t enough,” Bazy admitted. “This is a question of survival. Arlon may have been cruel, and we Biord may be cowardly, but that was a point we saw eye-to-eye on. The vast majority of my city is lost to me because we weren’t able to find the strength to protect it, and your entire city was lost to you for the same reason. Will we let our alliance fall to a third tragedy of this sort?”

Leenel looked right at her daughter, her eyes hollow, “I didn’t even want you to fight, and look at the trouble you’ve gotten into.”

Faynel laughed at that, “I was able to stay alive while our city burned, and I saved a good friend of mine. If I had been too afraid to learn how to fight, I could be dead right now.”

Leornal pulled the woman to himself and wrapped her in a hug. He whispered something in her ear, and she began to cry while everyone looked on silently.

Lany broke the silence, “Should we do something?”

Despite her tears, Leenel laughed weakly, pulling herself from Leornal and looking back at her daughter, then around the room. It suddenly occurred to her that she was one of the only people there, even among the weaker Biord, that had never been in a fight. “We should do something. We should defend our alliance.”