***** Zona’s POV *****

After about ten minutes of cleaning, Broohn had to go pull the alternator out of the printer, leaving me to continue cleaning on my own with several cleaning wands, their portable charging station, the bag of holding with all the junk in it and a goodbye kiss.

I am really looking forward to this evening. It has been a while since the two of us had any time to ourselves, with all the craziness that happened after the Shihoth-Nor showed up.

Setting my distracting thoughts aside, I went back to cleaning the Grand Lobby as I had decided to call it. Since it is the single biggest room in the tree, getting it clean will give me the biggest boost to mana regen, control over and feedback from the rest of my forest among other things.

Thank you, God, that I have never had such a mess in my heart tree before. I prayed, remembering all of the little messes that I had dealt with in the past. Thank you for all of those little messes that prepared me for dealing with this one, and that I have some time to get things straightened out before I have to start working again.

Focusing back on the job at hand, I continued working, cheerfully removing the grime from every surface the wands could reach. I only paused to move to a new location when I reached the end of the wand’s range, which was very impressive, or to switch wands when the dirt storage was full. Fortunately, the charging station also emptied said storage when it charged the wands, allowing me to keep cleaning at a rapid pace.

About fifteen minutes after Broohn left, I finished cleaning most of the room. The only part that I hadn’t cleaned was the center of the ceiling, which I would need Broohn’s help in order to reach.

Satisfied with my progress so far, I decided it was time to set up mine and Broohn’s bedroom, which I still hadn’t even selected yet. Normally I would end up doing this more or less arbitrarily, but this was an opportunity to learn some more about my tree that I couldn’t pass up.

“Pardon me oh most noble of trees,” I said politely, “but the time has come for me to select sleeping quarters for my husband and I. Do you have a preference or a suggestion for which room I select?”

I immediately got a profound sense of shock from my tree, as if whoever had been here in the past never asked the tree its opinion on anything. It took the tree a few moments to recover before I got the feeling that it was thinking about my question, which in and of itself proved that my tree was not normal. While most trees could think after a fashion, it was usually a process that took days or weeks just to figure out what I had said to them, and then more days or weeks to respond.

Unfortunately, before my tree could come up with a response, my smart wrist bag started beeping.

“My apologies noble tree. It appears that my guest is going to wake up soon, which requires my attention. Once he is resting again, I’ll check to see if you have an answer, if that is acceptable to you.”

I received a feeling of agreement with a slight edge of shock that I truly cared what my tree thought.

With that out of the way, I ran down to the guest bedroom where I quietly prepared a tray of food for my guest. Normally I would have saved this tray for when Broohn was coming out of a healing trance, but since I couldn’t just run to the store and get some, I figured he wouldn’t mind.

Then I sat back in the chair in human form and waited for my guest to wake up, which he did quite suddenly about a minute later.

“Gahh!” he gasped, attempting to jump to his feet and getting himself tangled up in his blankets.

“Greetings friend,” I said while still sitting in my chair in an attempt to calm him down.

His head spun towards me, taking in my relaxed posture and lack of weapons before he glanced around the room, presumably checking for more threats. Whoever this man was, he was clearly a force to be reckoned with given the manner of his arrival.

“Where am I? Who are you? What do you want?” he demanded, pointing a knife in my direction that I hadn’t seen him draw.

“You are in the heart of a rainforest of unknown name, specifically in the guest room of my tree,” I responded calmly. “My name is Zonathalian Talioth Harnathon, but you can call me Zona. As for what I want, mostly I just want you to recover from your recent poisoning and the subsequent journey through the forest. I’m also curious as to why it would appear that several different people tried to poison you, but if you don’t want to share that with me, I’m ok with that too.”

He seemed to calm down significantly at my calm and forthright tone, pausing to think about what I had said. “Wait, if this is your tree then that means you live here in the forest yes?”

“That is correct.”

“If you live in the forest, then how come you don’t know what it is called?” he asked.

“I’m new here. I woke up here in this tree several hours ago with no idea where I was and only the vaguest idea of how I got here. So far, you are the first person I’ve met who stopped to talk about where we are beyond the obvious. At this point, I don’t even know what world I am in.”

At this he paused, tilting his head to squint at me and clearly paying attention to my outfit for the first time. “Hmmm. So, you think you’re from a different world?”

“Yes,” I replied, acting on Broohn’s earlier decision that being honest with our neighbors was the best course of action. “Do you mind if I ask why you aren’t surprised by that?”

“It happens on occasion,” he shrugged. “We don’t get Dimension Lost visitors very often, maybe once every five years or so, but that’s often enough that it won’t raise any eyebrows. Especially when you show up in this forest. What do you know of the Shimisthiel?”

“Who? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them before,” I replied, thoroughly confused.

“Wow. You’re not lying at all. So you really are a Dimension Lost. In that case, I must ask you: What do you know of the Child of Stars and Moonlight?”

“He’s my husband,” I said, remembering the message that Broohn had mentioned giving to the adventurers while we were cleaning together.

He froze, staring at me in complete shock. I don’t know what answer he had expected, but that wasn’t it.

“The Prophecy,” he whispered to himself.

Before he could say anything else, his stomach growled, signaling its impatience with its owner.

“Would you like some food?”

“Yes please!”

“Here you go then,” I said handing him the tray. Today it had a bowl of cream of mushroom soup, three sizeable pieces of garlic bread and some assorted fruits and vegetables.

He grabbed it and started eating, obviously holding himself back so as not to eat too much. When he had finished several minutes later, I took the tray from him and put it away for now.

“Now, before your stomach interrupted, you were saying something about a prophecy?”

“Yes, I was. The problem is that at this point, I’m not entirely sure how much I should tell you about it.”

“Is there anything that you know that you can tell me?” I asked.

“About the Prophecy itself, not so much. But because of the prophecy I know I can trust you with the story of how I got here.”

“Oh? Do tell. At the moment I have no pressing engagements for the rest of the day.”

“The detailed story is a long one, so, for now, I’ll give you the simple version,” he said before he launched into his tale.

“Our world is divided into seven regions, six of which have become provinces of The Kingdom, and the seventh is the Rain-Soaked Forest, which has resisted all attempts to make it into any sort of civilization.”

“Would you mind drawing me a map?” I asked. “It doesn’t have to be terribly precise, I’m just hoping for a general outline of what the continent looks like.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, but I would prefer to finish my story first. Please hold your questions until the end, otherwise, I will lose track of where I was.”

“Certainly. Just give me one moment,” I said as I belatedly activated the recording function of my smart wrist bag for Bud’s sake. “Ok, go.”

“The current political situation in The Kingdom is complicated, but in essence, there are three factions at this point. First, there is my faction, The Royalists, which supports The Queen and wants The Kingdom to remain whole.”

As he was talking, I was typing up some notes on what he was saying despite the recording. That way I would have a quick reference to refer to later. The Royalist faction was pretty self-explanatory, so I didn’t bother adding any annotation to their name.

“Second, there is the Separatists faction that wants to see The Kingdom divided into several pieces. Which pieces and who would control them depends on which part of the faction you ask. The only reason these people are working together at all is because none of them have a prayer of succeeding if they don’t.”

When he mentioned this faction, on the other hand, I got a bad feeling radiating down my marriage bond from Broohn’s Foresight, so I labeled them ‘Power Hungry Fools?’

“The third and final faction is the Arms dealers who don’t particularly care one way or another what happens to The Kingdom, they just want to get rich from selling weapons to both sides.”

This time I didn’t even need help from Broohn’s Foresight to tell me that this faction was full of ‘Greedy pigs’.

“The current problem is that The Queen is getting on in years but has no legitimate children of her own, and for various personal reasons I have declined my birthright. In other words, I am no longer in line for The Throne.

“That is not to say I am out of the game completely. I have given my support to one of my cousins, and he would make an excellent King. Plus, his wife would be an even better Queen.

“Unsurprisingly, none of the other factions want this to happen, and it would appear that several people have decided that my death would be the simplest way to do so. Hence the assassination attempts and the poisonings that led to me coming here.

“Any questions?” he asked.

“For now I only have one question: is there a chance that some of the assassins will follow you into the forest to make sure that you actually died?”

“Most definitely. The Assassin’s Guild is very thorough. If they accept a job, they will do their best to see it through to the end. There are limits in terms of how many losses they are willing to take, but it has been quite some time since those limits have been tested. Once I get back home, I am fairly certain that the Assassin’s Guild will not survive the resulting Royal Displeasure without paying a heavy price for attacking a member of the Royal Family.”

“One last question before I go find you something to draw a map with: What exactly did you say your name was?”

“Forgive my lack of manners Fair Lady, I should have introduced myself earlier. My name is Christoff ne’ Throne Le Roy, more commonly known as The Bastard Prince.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Your Highness,” I said, bowing in his general direction as I stood since curtsies in shipsuits look weird. “You just lay there and rest while I go find some map-making materials.”

“Certainly,” he replied, inclining his head in response. “However, I must note that since I am your guest outside the borders of The Kingdom, bowing is not necessary.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said as I exited the room.

“Now where am I going to find some writing materials?” I asked myself out loud.

To my surprise, my tree offered to let me pull some bark from its roots, provided I supplied the power to grow it back.

“Thank you!” I said, running down the stairs and out the door to the spot it showed me.

{“Hey Broohn!”} I called down our mating bond. {“Do you have something our guest could use to draw a world map? I have a big enough sheet of paper substitute, I just need a flat surface to put it on and something to draw with.”}

{“Hey Zona!”} he replied. {“I don’t have a pen on me, but give me a moment and I’ll be right up with a charcoal stick and a sheet of metal.”}

Five minutes after I left the guestroom I was back with the writing materials I had promised.

“Here you go! Sorry about the seam down the middle of the page, I’ve never done something like this before.”

“That’s fine. I’ve made do with worse while I was adventuring before,” he replied.

Ten minutes later, he handed me the map and said, “The line of highest elevation starts at the big mountain in the middle then follows the mountains to the southeast. Going clockwise from that line the elevation slowly drops until you get to Islandia.”

“Wait, is that province seriously called Pasta?” I asked.

“No, that would be Pastu. They really don’t like Pasta because people make that mistake all the time,” No sooner had he finished speaking than he yawned hugely. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go back to sleep.”

“Sweet dreams Your Highness,” I said as I quietly left the room. He was asleep before I even got to the door.

The next thing I did is take a picture of the map and send it to Bud along with the recording.

His immediate reply was, {God help us. We're in some deep doggy doo-doo.}

***** Guildmaster’s POV *****

Normally when I visited the palace I went through all of the security checkpoints and such at normal speeds. One should be polite to one’s monarch after all.

This time however I blitzed through the security checkpoints in the palace gate at full speed, leaving behind an identifier token and two gold as an apology. I didn’t slow down until I got to the infirmary where I paused just long enough to identify myself to the doctors on duty before I started feeding the Krakenmari to the twelve Elite Royal Guardsmen laying there.

Oh God, please don’t let me be too late! I prayed.