"So you’re Dora’s daughter. Formidable woman. Killed one of my brothers, maimed the second, and almost got me too... Can I offer you more tea? Cookies?”

You’re kidding me! thought Vellantina. Please, Providence, let me wake up; this must be a bad dream.

They were having tea in the official salon of the nearby town’s City Hall. After the fight in the village, mayhem ensued. Them arguing the how’s and the what’s and the why’s, the inexplicable dead creatures around, the villagers agitating themselves all over the place, kissing their hands, and some their feet, the three red humanoids from the metal vehicle, who were still alive, and tried to bite and scratch, and had to be restrained and put in a cage, the brunette girl who awoke to scream and had to be controlled and put to sleep again, them arguing again and again in between all the other mayheimy things... It had been a mess.

The same old shepherd they’ve met in the morning had meanwhile returned and offered a solution.

„I see you have some troubles. Why don’t you consult our wisest Sage, the town’s Mayor?”

The villagers harnessed two horses to the same cart in which they had hidden their baggage – at least they didn’t have to move them – and chop-chop, to the next town, cramped in the cart together with the brunette sleeping beauty and the cage with the three little red-furred humanoids who were trying to bite their fingers off at every chance they got.

And when they met the sage, the wise, the Mayor... it was Fits Patrifoy the Mad. He looked like a very peaceful old trustworthy teacher: long grey hair tied in a ponytail, wearing many shabby and a few chic clothes. The cart coachman, the same shepherd, made the introductions and left, leaving them with a very obliging former villain, now repented, that was clear from the start.

He had made tea, served it with some cookies, and they talked.

First spoked the youths, keeping their part of the story to a minimum. Now, it was his turn. He took a sip, looking into nothingness, then sighed, then begun.

“Allow me to jump back in the past for a minute. When we arrived here, my madness was gone, but I was a broken man. I had done so much evil… My brothers were gone, my people stranded on a barely hospitable planet. And my daughter… she killed someone to save my life… I’ve made her a killer, at fourteen… This was my worse regret.”

“I would have thought that selling your daughter’s mother and her tribe’s woman as slaves to barbarians should have been number one,” said coldly Sirinn.

“I agree,” approved Vellantina. “I’m fourteen and already killed a lot of people; it’s not as bad as it seems.”

“Yes, because you are a monster!” accused Estella. “A bloodthirsty monster and bad royal subject. Disobeying direct orders.”

“No, Estella,” denied Vellantina. “On the contrary, obeying direct orders. Your parents’ orders and my mother’s. Protect them, destroy every threat, and have no mercy, that was Dora. Mind that Estella is very pretentious; if she asks for something stupid, think for a second you agree with her to fool her senses, then mind your own business, that was your dad. You have the liberty to restrain Ulius by force if he behaves unreasonably; your moms.”

“Hey, when I ever had been unreasonable?” protested Ulius.

“Almost every second, but not in intolerable amounts. The point is that taking a Nemesis alive was not a reasonable request. I’m authorized to use my best judgment and to override yours if needed. And I intend to keep it this way. As your father says: be nice but let them know who’s the real boss in the room.”

“Oh, I’m so happy to know all is in your competent hands!” jeered Estella. “If we had captured her, we’d be on the Realm now. We would have got the escape bead and used it together. My powers have limits, and things change fast sometimes. I had only seconds to decide, should I have taken the time to make you a drawing in the heat of events? Taking her prisoner would have been the right thing to do, both from a moral standpoint and from the logical one.”

“Girls, I mean, ladies, please!” asked Fits. “Arguing won’t help. If we put our pieces of information together, we can find a solution. A lot of things you’ve told me makes no sense. We’re missing the big picture.”

“Makes no sense for us either,” conceded Estella. “Alienor managed somehow to connect to his communication device and kidnap us. Yet, she didn’t seem to recognize us in the village; that was very strange.”

“Are you sure the one to kidnap you was my daughter?” asked Fits.

„Absolutely. I've felt a presence the moment before we were transported; I’m sure it was Alienor. It was the same presence I’ve felt all yesterday, this morning, and in the village. The villainess was in front of my eyes. It was her.”

„I have a theory,” said Ulius, and Estella sighed, thinking: oh no, here it comes. „She didn’t know how we looked. Maybe didn’t even want to spy on us, but on Sem or those Realms, for secrets. She is accessing the scroll remotely when suddenly she hears a voice recounting a sad story about her mother. She gets mad because of her genetics... - sorry, mister Fits, it came out worse than I wanted - and tries to kill Sem. Transport him in a volcano or whatever. But her spell goes awry, and here we are.”

„Not bad, kid,” said Vellantina, and Estella continued. „The question is, what is she up to and why? Do you...”

„No, the question is how. The good question is how.”

Sem had kept for himself all day.

“The what and why are clear: she wants to return on the Realm and conquer at least part of it, to build a glorious country for the Beauhemian nation.”

„You seem to know a lot of her plans,” frowned Vellantina. „Are you sure you’re not a spy?”

„I know how to read, that’s all,” Sem replied, showing two posters on the wall. On one was written: Vote for Fits. Stability and Credibility, building a better life in our new home, while the other read: Vote for Alienor. Audacity and Determination. Going back on the Realm and making a glorious country for the Beauhemian nation.

„And after you’ve won, she rebelled and started recruiting brigands among the disgruntled beauhemians and the local races?” hypothesized Ulius.

Sem laughed for the first time they’ve met him, but he ceased immediately, looking at the saddened kid with apologetic eyes.

„She won by a large margin,” confessed Fits. „She’s the Beauhemians official queen now. I’m just the town’s mayor. I would have been surprised otherwise. You see, I was a broken man at the beginning, and things went sour immediately. Most of the crops we brought didn’t catch, winter struck, and winter here is hard and long. I was... unhelpful. Drunk almost all the time, trying to cope with my past. I would have killed myself if not for her. She was always cheering us up. She organized us, dug shelters and cellars, rationalized food in such a manner that no one died that winter, sorted what plants were edible here, made a system to breed the animals faster, explored the region, built roads, villages. This town is her work. If not for her, I think we would be all dead now.”

„Errr.... you’re speaking about the same person who wanted to turn senior citizens into food?” asked Ulius.

„Yes, child. She was our light, our beacon of hope... until two years ago.”

He paused, sighing, and maybe expecting to be asked: what happened? and every one of the youths did ask the question.

„I think that despite her being our hope, she lost hope herself. Even now, life is hard. Winters are harsh, food difficult to produce, there is no fun. We sedentarized, which is precisely what my madness wanted to prevent, the sedentarization brought by the Continent's new industrialization. But how to have caravans when you don’t have cities to travel to? How to cheat at cards when you don’t have money to play? How to smuggle wine, how to put up your Circus performances, when your customers and your spectators are millions of miles away... Our culture was dead, and I was the killer; I’ve killed it by trying to save it. So she lost hope and started a mad plan..."

„Family feature,” noted Sirinn mercilessly.

Fits sighed and continued.

„To get back to the Realm. I was on her side at first, but we couldn't find a way to do it. To transport even one person between planets needs power we did not have. For our migration, we cheated the Realm and used his power, but here...”

„Magic can be produced without Realms, too,” affirmed Ulius. „Sentients beings produce probabilistic fields on their own, thus maybeons quarks, thus a certain amount of magic.”

„Yes. A certain amount. Not a large one, by any means. You don’t realize, but wormholes and tunnels, as they are known by the masses, are the most power-consuming spell. Your father doing them by himself is an extraordinary feat, made possible only by his bloodline, his connection to that old artifact, the Certitude Inductor, and because he has a formidably strong-willed character...”

„He’s very stubborn,” said Estella.”He can not accept defeat even in the face of overwhelming odds and always finds a way around. He calls it strong will, but moms call it stubbornness. And yes, it comes with the other things you’ve said, or else every mule would be a magician. But please continue. I suppose she found a solution to get that power somehow.”

Fits nodded.

„She had an idea. To access the Realm’s mind without the risks involved. The Scar was too far away anyway...”

„As a matter of fact, dad healed the Scar. No one can access the Realm’s mind now without him knowing and willing.”

„It’s not quite so, milady. I was connected to his mind, and my subconsciousness must have retained some information from it. That was her theory, and it proved right. She started working on me, hypnotizing me, digging up information, piece by piece. She always told me what she found. Until one day... when I woke alone, in the dark. She had left for the mountains. The next day, she returned with an army. Those monsters you’ve seen, the bird heads, the wasps, the red imps. None of them are local species. And she was powerful and had a plan.”