From what Iztris heard, the lack of reports grew—there were a few dozen towns that stopped reporting to the king. In response, the king did send out knights and such to investigate. They didn’t want to mention it out loud, but quite frankly they believed that they should focus more effort in predicting and testing those predictions—it would lead to a greater loss of life, however. For people waiting quite a while before officially acting, they did hold on to the notion of saving lives fairly closely.

Both of the princes tried their best to get Iztris to ‘substitute’ for their actual teachers—they didn’t mind Jacob, but Miles was…slightly more obnoxious. The younger was about as mature as Iztris’s youngest brother, which was to say that he wasn’t exactly ‘mature.’ It was enough of a reminder that Iztris declined the younger prince’s requests more often than the older one’s.

Still…the fact that Iztris was thinking about their brothers was still odd. Perhaps it was just a matter of remembering—they never truly strayed far from their family, until Elsyn essentially (and likely unintentionally) cut them off from them. This was the longest Iztris had been in the mortal realm in a very long time; it was refreshing in the same way that it was a bit bothersome. They were growing to be…reminiscent. They didn’t want to fall into being complacent because of that, but it was difficult.

Iztris looked over reports even when Alyson and the king were doing other things; it kept their mind off of memories, at least. They tried to figure out of their was any kind of pattern in the enemy group’s movement—it seemed like the lack of reports came from the areas with more thieves and other people, but some were mostly innocent aside from one or two people of ill repute. The towns seemed to be close by each other, so it could just be as simple as travel distance.

They had been alone after the king went to eat dinner. They didn’t exactly mind—they could hear the rain outside and a bit of thunder, and even when that subsided they murmured nonsense just to have the noise to work with—although it did make the passage of time seem more…vague.

When the morning came, Iztris barely noticed. They hadn’t thought much of the time at all until the king came in. Iztris looked up almost as soon as the door started to open, although they expected who the visitor was.

“It still unnerves me that you don’t sleep,” the king said, taking a step in and looking into the corner Iztris situation themself in. The king quickly sorted through the papers Iztris had gone over in the course of the night and put them in a specific pile, making it vaguely seem like an organized space. “I know you don’t need to eat, either, but there’s room at the table if you want to sit in for the conversations?”

“I’ll stay here,” Iztris replied.

“I won’t force you. Expect question bombardment later, though—Jacob’s done most of his schoolwork for now, so I’d imagine that he’ll try to get a story or two out of you.”

“Thank you for the warning, I suppose. I’ll keep working until then.”

The king nodded, not quite agreeing but knowing that he couldn’t argue, and left once everything looked vaguely neat. Iztris continued their work, then, until the king returned with Alyson and Jacob about an hour later. As the king assumed, Jacob immediately started asking after stories and, although a bit reluctant, Iztris did agree.

All of them did work in some manner—even Jacob inefficiently helped, distracted by Iztris’s responses to his questions. The conversation helped Iztris move a bit quicker in comparison, so it wasn’t a loss in that regard.

“I know you said you didn’t travel much as a mortal,” Jacob said, “But did you travel as a servant god? You knew the roads in Letrela and Relan pretty well, at least.”

“I did travel a bit,” Iztris replied with a small nod. “My role as the gods’ servant was gradually introduced—it took a few decades before I took my current position, and even then I was allowed to spend several days at a time here. I traveled through Letrela and Relan most; Cheryn never quite held my interest, I’ll admit.”

“Fair; there’s not much to see other than farms,” Alyson noted. Curiously, she asked, “Although, why Relan? If you still took the appearance you have now, people would have treated you to odder looks than you get now.”

“I covered up to prevent them from noticing,” Iztris explained. “Especially shortly after I died, I wasn’t fond of the idea of letting go of that—even at the expense of not being able to show much of myself. As for Relan…well, it was Elsyn’s home. In those earlier years, we explored together.”

“You traveled with the other servant?” Jacob asked, mostly curious.

Iztris nodded. “Elsyn and I weren’t immediately needed, so having died within minutes of each other, we were…something close to friends, I’d say. We had enough in common, given the circumstances; we are the only two to hold positions explicitly and solely as servants to something else. Elsyn was eighteen or nineteen when they died, and I was sixteen—we were close in age to each other’s younger or older siblings, so it was easy to carry on as if we could still talk with them.”

Jacob looked a bit hesitant to say anything, but nonetheless he did ask, “Does needing to fight Elsyn bother you?”

“I knew their views on humanity,” Iztris replied, shaking their head. “They acknowledged that, at some point, they would attempt a path like this one. I didn’t expect for the gods to send me in retaliation, but aside from my loss being the least noticeable, they likely wanted to see how I responded to it.”

The conversation ended there, as no one seemed to think that asking after it was a good idea. Iztris didn’t…exactly mind—it’s been hundreds of years since the two servants last spoke, and chances were that one of them would fall the next time they met—but it was easier if they weren’t thinking about it.

Jacob eventually asked after other topics of conversation, and stayed with them until lunch when Alyson left as well. The reports held nothing especially important, aside from the lack of a few.