“Diplomatic as usual, I see,” Aspan greeted Dallion as he entered the kitchen.

At first glance, the cook looked like the average person. All people knew about him was that he was an excellent cook, even if a mouthy, who preferred to rarely be seen and always worked alone. In truth, he was the leader of the copyette race who had tried to take over the world millennia ago. At one point, Dallion had almost killed him, back when he feared that Aspan had aspirations to conquer the world again. As it turned out, the copyette only wanted to keep a low profile in the real world in the city built on top of the ruins of his former capital.

“Not you too…”

“I know, I know.” Aspan split into two copies. One continued cooking, while the other sat at the kitchen table. “So, what do you want to talk about this time? The Star? Artifacts? Old combat tactics?”

“Cloudfish,” Dallion said.

“Cloudfish…” the Aspan at the table scratched his chin. “Haven’t heard that in a while. You’ve actually found the city Jiroh is looking for?”

“We might have.” Dallion considered. Maybe it was a good idea to ask Aspan about the warning the dwarf hunter had given? If there was anyone who knew, it would be the copyette. “It’s supposedly near the ruins of a nymph city.”

“I take it that’s rare?”

“A rarely seen fortress crashing in the sea next to an unfindable submerged city? I’d say it’s rare.”

“Quite testy today.” The cooking Aspan went to the table and placed a bowl of porridge in front of Dallion. It didn’t look much, but the aroma was better than anything Dallion had sensed in months.

“Sorry. It’s been a long day, and it still isn’t over.” Dallion took a spoonful of the food. It was magnificent, as expected: a nice full texture, and a taste of grilled peppers, pumpkin, and herbs. Thinking about it, he’d never suspect such products would remotely go well together, but they did. “I’ve been asked to get the heart of the cloud fortress.”

“And you don’t like that?”

“No.” Dallion shook his head. “I don’t know almost anything about furies, but I’m pretty certain that’s not a good thing.”

“Well, you’re part right. It takes the heart of a living creature to get the cloud fort be what it is. A cloudfish, as you mentioned. The thing is that the fort doesn’t kill the cloudfish, it just imprisons it in another body.”

A shiver went through Dallion, causing him to visibly tremble at the thought.

“Yeah.” The Aspan copy sitting across him nodded. “Cruelty isn’t reserved to the human race. The only way to create a cloud fortress is to catch a cloudfish and use its living heart to transform a normal cloud into something people could live in. You know that furies can manipulate clouds, right?”

“I thought it was air.”

“Air’s part of it. In the old days, they used to flaunt flying all the time in their attempt to show that they were the superior race. There were many more of them back then. The skies would constantly be filled with cloud forts fighting each other over dominance of a region. When I first came to this world, furies were considered the greatest power there was. People would often joke that we had to be thankful that they were so obsessed with the skies, for if they stopped fighting and turned their attention to the world below, there wouldn’t be anything to stop them. Of course, back then it was seen as ludicrous that humanity would amount to much.”

Clearly, things hadn’t turned out that way. The empire aside, humanity was the dominant race by far now. Even most of the countries rivaling it were human dominated or mixed at best. Dallion’s knowledge of world geography and politics were still poor, but he didn’t know any real non-human powers. The furies could have presented a threat a few centuries ago, but at present they were little more than mercenary kingdoms for hire. The dwarven dukedoms—the true dwarven dukedoms—had isolated themselves or become vassals of other kingdoms, and as for the gorgons, they were in too small numbers to make a difference.

“The fury’s real power was to command clouds. And I’m not talking about the puff of steam you see in the sky today. They could capture and take cloud creatures.”

Hearing that, Dallion’s imagination ran wild. Images of animals made entirely of clouds appeared in his mind, running throughout the sky in cartoon fashion. Knowing this world, he had no doubt that it was a lot more fascinating and deadly than that, though.

“There used to be a lot of those as well,” Aspan continued. “The furies used them for bets, for attack creatures, but they also used them to build their cities. All they needed to do was catch the animal they wanted, shave off everything but the heart, then merge it to a large cloud they had constructed.”

Dallion’s spoon froze in his hand. The process wasn’t supposed to be graphic, but because of his empathy stat, he imagined it exactly like that.

“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea. The heart remains, and as such, the creature as well. If you bury it out, it could return to being itself. I haven’t seen it happen, personally. When I started stirring up, the furies decided to remain neutral in a way.”

“You made a deal with them, didn’t you?”

“It was the only way to get everything underway. Of course, the Star suggested I betray them the first chance I got. To be honest, I never needed the sky. As long as I got all the land, everything was supposed to be fine. Of course, that was before the massive failure. You know the result.”

The Star again… Dallion knew that there was a lot that Aspan couldn’t share. Even mentioning as much as he did was on the verge of going against the Moons. Given his involvement in saving the city, the deities were probably willing to give him some slack.

“You think they have survived all this time?” Dallion asked.

“As long as the cloud fortress is whole, they have. That’s the only thing that keeps it in the air, and intact.”

“And if it’s no longer in the air?”

“It could mean a lot of things,” the copy of Aspan said. “Most likely it’s sick or dying. There’s a chance that by the time you reach the location, there will be nothing left.”

Of course, there would be, Dallion grumbled. Now he understood why Jiroh was so cautious to rejoice upon getting the location. Even after everything, there was no guarantee that they would find anything, after all.

“It all depends on the creature in question. Most last a few thousand years. Some last tens of thousands, and some… they are virtually eternal.”

Dallion thought back to the crystal cube the general had shown him. Was the creature trapped inside alive? And if so, what creature was it? As long as it was another piece of merchandise, no one would find out. Dallion so much wanted to go back to the general, break his nose, then free all the exotic creatures just for the sake of it. He knew, however, how reckless that would be. Even if he had the strength to do it, releasing wilderness creatures in a city domain was not advisable. In a best-case scenario, the creature would slowly die—faster if the overseer intervened; and in the worst case, it would go on a rampage, attacking everyone on sight.

“What were you given to capture it with?”

“Nothing,” Dallion replied. “The general will only give out the device once I was on my way. It’s something expensive so he doesn’t want to risk losing it.”

“More likely, he doesn’t want to risk you poking it.” Both Aspans in the kitchen chuckled. “He’ll probably give you some more instructions. Other than that, I don’t know what to tell you. Just don’t do it with Jiroh around.”

That much was a given.

“There’s something else, I wanted to ask you. Before you set off to conquer the world, were there any prophecies or warnings from the Moons?”

“Interesting question.” The Aspan copy at the table looked at Dallion straight in the eyes. “Truth is I’m not sure. When we joined the Star, we weren’t that keen on continuing with the Moons. All Moon Clerics sealed themselves in the temples and waited for us to be done. I was a bit overoptimistic back then; I believed I could conquer the world in a year. So, I told them that the war would be over in five. Sadly, they believed me.”

“So, no warnings…”

“If there were any, I didn’t get to hear them. I guess you heard something different?”

“The person who found the cloud fortress told me that the end of the world is near, and that I triggered it by allowing the Star to pull a city into the wilderness.”

“That’s one of the things about prophecies—they always have just enough truth to possibly be real. I’ll assume the person in question has something to base his gears on? Getting a hunch isn’t something I’d be worried about. Personally, I’d say the chances of that occurring are negligible. Besides, it wasn’t the Star that caused me and my entire race banished.”

“What was?”

“That’s something I can’t share. Not yet, in any event. Let me just tell you, if a vague worded warning is all that you have to worry about, you’ve lived a pretty comfortable life.” A moment of sadness flashed through the copyettes, vanishing the moment it appeared. “I don’t have the knowledge or the freedom to give you advice, but I can say that there were no warnings or prophecies warning me of what might happen. All I had was the Star’s assurances, and as it turned out, they weren’t much.”

“So, you’re saying just be me?”

The answer made Dallion feel slightly better, although it wasn’t what he was hoping for.

“You’re always you,” the copyette said. “Do what you feel is right, and don’t worry about what could happen. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking you know everything. Empathy is a good stat to have—it shows you things that others can’t see. However, that in itself doesn’t make you good or evil, to use your terms.”

The advice was good, almost as if it had come from Nil. No, it was better than Nil. Despite his looks, Aspan was thousands of years old, millions if one considered true time.

“One final thing,” Dallion said as he went back to eating his porridge. “What are thunder furies exactly? I know they command lightning, and that makes them special, but… How do they become that way? Is it an awakening power or something?”

“No, just a natural gift, like the color of one’s eyes. That’s not what you really want to ask, is it?”

The other copy of Aspan put a large dish on the table. Today’s specialty seemed to be seafood. With Nerosal increasing in status, so did the types of food that were shipped here. Things which in the past were delicacies, now were merely very expensive. It was still impressive that Hannah spared the money to buy them, given what a miser she was.

“You want to know about Jiroh’s past,” the copyette continued.

“There are a few things I’ve been curious about.”

“I made a promise not to share certain things, but I can tell you this. What she wants above everything else is to return to her real world. More importantly, however, she’s found a way that might make it happen.”

Dallion jumped up. His mouth moved, attempting to ask a dozen questions all at once. However, each sound that came out of his mouth was instantly destroyed. After a few seconds, Dallion stopped. There was a glowing pattern of light in the air above him; Aspan had resorted to casting magic.

“That’s something you best not share. And no, I don’t know whether it’s true or if it will be able to help you. All I know is that supposedly, it would only help her go back. Anything else you’ll have to learn from her directly.”