They stood at the edge of the crater, watching for movement, hoping that the statue would remain a statue. Thankfully it remained stone-still, but two questions burned in Zelsys’ mind.

“...What does the Living Storm target again?” she asked, turning to Strolvath.

“The brightest-burning soul in any given area,” he answered with a grim countenance.

Her second question visibly confused him: “And when was the last full moon?”

“Uh… Right after the start of this month, I think. What’s that matter?”

“So there will be a blue moon next month.”

Strolvath’s eyes widened with dawning realization and he repeated what the Divine Emperor had said, “When next a blue moon rises, the thunderstruck beast-mountain roars again…”

He let out a deep sigh.

“Shit. I’ll have to call in a favor. Let’s keep movin’, I’m not risking waking the psycho up early.”

Three days.

It had been three days that Crovacus Estoras hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep. A governor’s work was tough, doubly so for one such as himself - a foreigner to the very people he governed and wished to aid.

Over the course of these three days he’d done a week’s worth of paperwork, he had spent a nearly twelve-hour stretch in a pivotal senate meeting wherein the senators presence cycled in and out thrice over, and he’d been poisoned with cyanide in his wine.

He now sat in his office smoking a cigar, doing paperwork, and drinking the reason why he felt better than he ever had in spite the events of the last three days. Fivefold Philter, a wondrous thing that was considered an elixir of immortality back in its heyday. Of course, it wasn’t quite that miraculous, but it was as close as Crovacus could get even with his considerable riches and trade connections.

The cyanide poisoning could’ve gotten him, were it not a popular poison in his homeland of Grekuria. Being the son of a relatively well to do noble house, Crovacus had a small glyph tattoo on the underside of his tongue which reacted to and neutralized several popular poisons, including even arsenic, hemlock, nightshade, and strychnine. This hadn’t been the first, second, or even third time that an attempt on his life had been made using poison.

Estoras derived great amusement from finishing the entire goblet as he looked across the senate chamber and watched the barely-concealed expressions of the exact people he’d suspected. Between the twelve senators and the governor himself, four seats had been mandated to be filled by non-Ikesians by the same treaties that ended the war. Of these seats the foreigners were him, one Grekurian senator, and two Pateirians.

These two were the ones he had suspected of having orchestrated his poisoning, and unsurprisingly, it was them that had a reaction when he just drank the wine and showed no signs of poisoning. It had been subtle enough to go unnoticed by those who didn’t know what to look for, but he’d kept a close enough eye on these two that he had them figured out.

Soon enough, he’d be able to clean up the senate. Just a little longer and he’d catch them in a trap that not even a hundred treaties would get them out of. Perhaps then Willowdale’s citizenry would deem him worthy of full governorship.

The Provisional Governor’s train of thought was thrown from its rails by a particular melody being tapped out on his office door. He sighed, toked from his cigar, then beckoned, “Come in!”

“Nice paintings ya got ‘round here, as far up your own ass as ever my guy!” laughed the diminutive owner of that bell-like voice. It was true when people said that Kargarians could be distinguished regardless of ethnicity or language used - the Kargarian language’s hard edges, rolled Rs, and slightly off sentence structure always came through as a truly distinct accent. It somehow became even more obvious when they tried to speak with some formality.

Childishly though she spoke, she was a trusted trade partner and a member of the Kargarian Free Merchant Clans. Her name was Arnys Krishorn, the current matriarch of a merchant clan with a reputation for seemingly arbitrary rules as to who they trade with and caravans with defenses that surpass those of many cities. The Sage of Fog had somehow gotten them into a trade agreement, and they’d kept their word despite trade sanctions from other countries and a huge increase in attempted caravan raids.

Crovacus himself had never met Arnys until he had already been governor for a few months, and this time was only the sixth time he’d ever met her period. Every single time she had a different extravagant outfit, and every single time he wasn’t sure where to look due to the woman’s aggressively provocative clothing choices.

Her head was covered by an obnoxious cone hat, and a plain wooden scabbard hung from her waist by a belt of red cord. She dressed as garishly as she acted, yet she had a way of vanishing into a crowd as if she had never been there if she so wished. At a glance her outfit looked only impractical, but the longer one looked the more obvious its impossibility became - it held on without any belts or straps, betraying the arcane nature of its making. She wore a wide-sleeved jacket in red fabric with white cloud designs on the lower half and sleeves. It had cleavage so deep that it boggled the mind how it didn’t constantly expose the middle-aged woman’s considerable bosom, even with red cord tying the jacket together top to bottom in a crisscross pattern. Did she even wear anything under that? He couldn’t tell.

Instead of any reasonable piece of clothing for her lower half, she had huge parachute pants with cutouts on the sides that brazenly exposed her hips and underwear for all to see, and this too was clearly meant to be seen, ornamental black fabric held together by thick golden rings.

“Using Fog-infused fabric for the sake of fashion, that’s too frivolous even for me…” the governor thought to himself as he watched the woman flow through his office and take a seat across from him.