Chapter 58

[|||| =LEVEL 4= ||||]

"Karkoff, judge fairly," I reprimanded the man. He snarled and whipped his wand towards the air. The 2 that he had originally graded Fleur with became a six. It was still lower than the other judges, Madam Maxime and Dumbledore, who graded with an eight and nine, but it was good enough. I sighed and waved the tournament onwards.

Harry had been stressing over the tournament for the past three days, making him a pain in my behind. He even went so far to ask for an extra few hours of training late at night. I told him to do it on his own since I had work to do.

And for the first time in a few weeks I actually did have work to do. The tournament was a mess, and while I certainly wasn't organizing it (I was staying FAR away from that catastrophe) I was making sure nobody died. In the moment that meant using my metal affinity to make the chains holding the dragons much denser, nearly twice the weight they were before.

I also reprimanded a few dragon handlers for getting drunk, stopped a few more cases of corruption, and checked in with the other champions to make sure they knew what was going on with Harry not getting a prize or formal recognition as a champion and the schedule for the tournament. They didn't need my help, of course, but they appreciated that I was taking my duties somewhat seriously all the same.

I watched slightly boredly as Victor Krum, the third champion, cast a nasty blinding curse on his dragon's face and snagged its egg out from under it. I sighed when the dragon cried out and stumbled around, crushing most of its eggs underfoot. When the scor came up for him I waved my hand and magically tossed a rock at the back of Karkoff's head for giving him a ten when Dumbledore and Maxime gave him a six and four. He waved his wand after muttering a few curses and his ten changed to an eight, which was good enough to be considered fair.

Finally, after a whole day wasted with the pompousness of the tournament, I arrived at the meat of the tournament, the stuff I had been waiting for.

Harry Potter entered the stadium to wave at the audience, inciting a roar of applause. I clapped lazily and watched closely to make sure he didn't screw up horribly. That would be bad for me. In the back of my head Helen was fretting as she had been doing for the whole tournament. Something about giant fire breathing lizards attacking children frightened her.

Harry waved his wand a few times and nothing appeared to happen. For nearly ten seconds he cast spells while standing in place. The audience's mood shifted to whispers, probably expecting something good, while the dragon growled and snapped at Harry, but was unwilling to leave her nest and children. I focused on the affinity in him and nodded in approval at the properly formed spells taking root in his body.

When Harry finally moved he did it in style. He moved to start running and the ground blew up behind him as he sprinted across the field. The dragon made some shrieking noise and breathed some fire at him but Harry's lessons in dodging had taught him how to avoid the flames, though I rolled my eyes at a backflip he did, the showy brat.

The audience was making oohs and aahs as Harry slowly made his way closer to the dragon, avoiding attacks in a way most unwizardly. Still, you had to respect a wizard who pulled off a flip over dragonfire. Even if he was using magic to make himself stronger and faster than before.

When he got close enough to the dragon to throw a rock at it he did something nobody really seemed to expect. More dragon fire was belched at him but instead of dodging Harry was consumed by the flames. The audience gasped adn screamed while Dumbledore bolted upwards in his chair and looked panickedly between me and Harry. I gestured at the arena again and he sagged in relief.

Down below the dragon Harry grabbed the fake one and cradled it in one arm awkwardly. Combat apparition wasn't something I had initially planned to teach Harry, but after he did it by accident once to dodge one of my attacks I told him to try to get apparition down. It involved a lot of vomiting but Harry eventually learned to hold his food down while rapidly teleporting, though only within his line of sight or he took too long to reorient himself to be practical. He still couldn't muster the concentration to cast a spell immediately after apparating or do anything too physical without a second to rest, but it was still great for dodging and evasion.

With his egg in hand Harry grabbed his wand once more and raised it at the dragon's belly. He shouted something dramatically, causing the dragon to rear back in surprise at the tiny human under her as an orangish light flew from Harry's wand. The dragon swayed woozily for a moment at the overpowered nausea charm but roared in fury a moment later while Harry made a beeline for the exit. Fire followed him but at the last second he suddenly rolled left, the fire only drying out his hair.

With an angry dragon charging him Harry shouted again and waved, making a large black smoke cloud around him. The dragon screeched and belched fire into the cloud but nobody saw anything. After a second, though, Harry emerged near the exit, the egg in hand. Before the dragon could attack again he had escaped.

I whistled and clapped for the boy while the judges raised their wands and shot out their spells. An eight from Maxime, a ten from Dumbledore, and a seven from Karkoff. I would have let him get away with another six, honestly. Harry was too showy in his battle. I'd grade him a five if I could. The crowd loved it, though. They were cheering and clapping for the unorthodox methods Harry used and the acrobatics he had displayed.

I snorted when I remembered the backlash for the physical enhancement spells. They strained his muscles. Harry would have a body-wide cramp for almost half an hour, though potions would likely help him a lot.

"I suppose my work here is done?" I whispered to Dumbledore.

"Typically the judges stay to comment on the contestants," he murmured back to me.

"Thankfully I'm not a judge," I said, feeling pleased. I stepped back and teleported to the locker room, where I saw Harry groaning on a bench, Fleur and Cedric talking animatedly over him.

"Serves you right!" I said loudly over the two champions. Harry groaned. "Honestly, flips? I thought we went over this, kid! Corkscrews are better for conserving momentum and you could have easily gone under some of that fire more easily than over! You were showy and now you're paying the price. And why the dust didn't you combat apparate more?!" Harry groaned miserably. I growled and put a hand on him, loosening his muscles and relieving some of his pain.

"I was nervous… queasy," he managed to say.

"Oh so you put your life in more danger to avoid a tummy ache. Great. I can see that you need more lessons in holding in your food." Harry whimpered and the other two looked between me and him in shock, though Cedric was more prepared than Fleur.

"You can suffer here for fifteen more minutes. When you're well enough to get a soreness potion go to the mediwitch and ask for one. Get three, in fact, since you'll be feeling this tomorrow with how hard you pushed yourself and a spare never hurts." Harry nodded against the bench, grimacing in discomfort. I shook my head but paused before I left.

"Well, you got out alive. Good job on that. But don't think for a moment that I'm going to let you out of this mess of a performance without some sort of reprimand. If you're getting nervous because of crowds then I'll strip you naked and have you go through all your classes like that. Forever after when you're nervous you'll think back to that day and all that nervousness will fade away since you'll think 'nothing could be worse than that'." Harry's face was ashen. He probably didn't know whether I was serious or not. I certainly wasn't an orthodox teacher so it was possible that I'd follow through with that threat.

"I-is that teacher's abuse?" Cedric asked, shocked.

"I'm not a teacher, I'm a mentor," I responded immediately. "Now I believe Madam Maxime or somebody is going to come in here and give you a little golden egg to prepare you for the second task. It's a clue, you see." As if on cue the Madam opened the door and looked at the scene before her with concern.

"He's fine," I said dismissively. "Now my job here is done for today. I'll be seeing all of you later, and you, Harry, the day after tomorrow. Do light practice by yourself." Harry groaned again and I shrugged at him before leaving through teleportation. I had places to be.

[|||| =-= ||||]

I found the teigu-verse, as I had been calling it, growing on me. It truly was a horrible place. The Empire was blatantly corrupt, the rebels sponsored assassins for hire, the other nations were often as screwed up as the Empire, and even advanced science was only being used for those few rich assholes who were in power. I was sure that the world had seen better days, but at the moment it was just awful.

I could empathize with those assassins, night raid, but I remembered what had happened when I killed half the underworld of Vacuo. Chaos. Doing the same to the Empire probably wouldn't help much. It was better to burn the whole thing down and start anew or sponsor a less shitty government, like how I'd sponsored Roman, than reform the old one with all its corruption.

I'd recommend the annexation of the Empire by a foreign power but nobody was strong enough with powerful people like Esdeath and General Budo around, not to mention the teigu.

Ah, and teigu. They were wonderful things. Esdeath's was some sort of treated ice demon blood, as I had managed to get from her. If she was killed the blood would return to a chalice of some sort in the palace. But most teigu were tools rather than something so personal. Esdeath's was a bunch of cold and ice based affinities bonded to her through the blood in an intricate pattern of affinity and a few surprisingly strong enchantments. I looked at the chalice and saw a few foreign runes on it that I assumed maintained the enchantments somehow and returned the blood to it.

Each of the teigu also had a sizable bit of affinity, or in Esdeath's case, a bound soul that was the base of their abilities. After a careful check, I found that Esdeath had fragments of the ice demon in her soul, not that she knew I was looking. Other teigu in the vault had their own souls, some of them stronger than others. All of them were confined to their vessels, though, and couldn't really do anything other than fuel their items and dimly influence their hosts. Esdeath might be a little more murderous with a demon in her, but I had a suspicion that she was like that anyways, though that was just a hunch.

As I arrived not long after the first task of the triwizard tournament I was immediately met with Esdeath frowning at me.

"What do you do when you're away?" she asked again, apparently fascinated by my hobbies. I began walking towards the command tent with her at a brisk pace, the way we both liked it. As soon as I appeared men in dark black or grey armour stiffened and saluted both of us as we passed.

I was getting used to knights saluting me now. I assumed it was my strength and association with Esdeath that made them respect me. Sparring had been a common thing for us. I was a great fighter but Esdeath was able to push me in skill, though I eclipsed her in pure power. But I wasn't Abyss the spell flinging wizard here. I was Abyss the sneaky thief who had some sort of space manipulating teigu. I had to be smart rather than overwhelming, and sparring with Esdeath showed that I had been getting lazy with my fighting. Being restricted to space magic had forced me to get creative once more, making me develop a few new tricks.

"I told you, I live my life. I annoy people, tour the world, spend time with my girlfriend, play games, and do whatever I fancy."

"You have a schedule. What other kind of obligation could you have that's so important?" she asked.

"Now you're asking the right questions! Besides a girlfriend I have a sort of apprentice of sorts. He's a bit pathetic right now but people like you and I have high standards so don't take my word for it. I'd bet that he could beat a few of your knights, though. He battled a dragon this evening and managed to escape." Esdeath scoffed.

"Escape? Why not kill it?"

"Because he's about fourteen for one. Also, he's not a fighter. He has more important duties than fighting for all his life. He's a noble, you see. A ruler of man, though most of the people he associates with seem a little dim. A shame, really. He has a lot of potential that will probably never be used."

"Hmm," she hummed as we entered the tent. It was spacious, large enough to fit about twelve people with a central table upon which sat a large map of the north. On the fringes of the tent were several long tables with papers and a few weapons on them.

"We've been having trouble with supplies. The northmen seem to have the idea to harry us before we get north, where supplies are scarcer. We've torn through some of their villages, almost all of which are abandoned, to resupply but we're still being bled dry," Esdeath sumarized, taking a few papers from a table in the room. I nodded at the lack of developments. They were having the same problems as before, then.

"And have your powers over ice helped much?"

"More than expected," Esdeath twirled her fingers, little crystals of frost appearing between them only to melt when she closed her fist. "Pathways of ice along with the sleds we've taken from the northmen have helped transport supplies quickly. Causing and stopping blizzards is a new experience. I've never controlled so many small units of ice before. Snow is different, more liquid, but a blizzard is interesting." A cruel but pleased smile came onto her face. "I'd never sheared a man's skin off with a miniature blizzard before. It's a new usage for my power, if not the most useful one."

"Well good for you," I said casually. "And sensing through them?" Esdeath's smile dropped.

"Feeling through ice is… possible but difficult," she muttered in discontent. I smirked

"Aww, is it too difficult for you, Esdeath? It's okay. I'll still be your friend~." Esdeath repaid my teasing with an icicle to the face. She scowled when it went straight through my face and through the cloth walls of the tent.

"Tch," she scoffed. Ever since I had shown that I could fade out of space, making myself practically invincible, she had been a bit pissy about me showing my 'true strength'. So I showed off everything I could do with space and consequently she decided to expand her repertoire of ice based skills. Blizzards were new and she was getting better with them but she was having no progress with turning her body to ice. She was making some sort of trump card, though, and she wouldn't tell me about it. So I had been trying to make one for myself.

"And what have your efforts brought?" she asked sardonically. My smirk grew and I snapped my fingers. The cloth torn from the icicle Esdeath shot through it seemed to weave itself together, threads fusing to a solid fabric once more. Esdeath glared fiercely at the newly fixed spot in the tent walls while I basked in my superiority.

Brainstorming with Esdath wasn't something I had planned on, but she was surprisingly creative. I supposed you had to be to be considered the best torturer in the world, or at least the empire. What I was doing was using the closely linked relationship between space and time to reverse time on an object using spatial positioning. The threads weren't going back in time. They were returning to their previous position chronologically. It even worked on chemical changes like burning since I was returning atoms to their previous atomic formations. It didn't work well with things that became gaseous, though, so disintegrated objects couldn't be restored.

"No need to be jealous," I said, actually meaning the opposite, and Esdeath knew this as she shifted her glare to me. I met her glare with my smug satisfied smile and she growled and looked down at the map again.

"I'd like for you to transport supplies to my men," she said, changing the subject. "I can send you with a letter to any capital storehouse where you can bring all the supplies here."

"I thought this was your campaign?" I asked.

"It is," she said sharply. "But slowly grinding my way through the raids and gaining a few miles each day is simply boring for the both of us. Necessary in many cases, but not in this one."

"And I should give the northmen less time to prepare?" I asked, sitting down on a seat I made by warping the ground upwards.

"They are prepared," she said with an eye roll. "They have perfectly prepared fortifications and men ready to fight. They hope to delay for a month to train the men taken in from the evacuated villages more. It will do them no good, obviously. My force is larger and infinitely better trained, and I have teigu users with me. The north will fall. There is no debate."

"Why don't you tell them that?" I asked. Esdeath rolled her eyes.

"They know I intend to kill them, Abyss," she said obviously.

"Actually, I meant do the same thing I did when I met you. It's only right that you know what you're conquering before you destroy it, right?" Esdeath froze and stared at me.

"Why… yes. Yes it is… only proper," she said, a malicious grin creeping over her mouth.

"Well then let's go. However, I'm feeling rather hungry so let's visit their kitchens first." She shrugged, her smile still disturbingly pointed and wide. I made the portal to the city's palace, having visited it before to see if the northerners were much better than the Empire. As it turned out, the northerners practiced a somewhat vicious tradition of slavery and a clannish kind of politics, but other than that they weren't too bad. I still didn't mind conquering them, though.

I opened a portal to an unoccupied corner of the palace and gestured for Esdeath to follow. She almost stepped through, but hesitated and walked outside the tent.

"I'll be leaving with Abyss for a time. Find General Liver and tell him he's in charge until I get back."

"Yes, General Esdeath!" I heard somebody say before running off. Esdeath entered again and stepped through the portal. I came right after her and began casually walking towards the center of the palace.

When I came across two guardsmen at a small gate they weren't paying attention, both staring off into space and dressed in fur and some steel plates. When they noticed me they were on guard. Then they saw Esdeath and they turned an unhealthy pale. The one to the left of the gate turned and ran away but I warped space and pulled him back, leaving him trapped with one of my hands clenching his shoulder. I looked to the other guard to see Esdeath having severed his achilles tendon and watching him crawl away in amusement.

"Hello, friend," I said in as friendly a tone as I could manage, which was really friendly due to my acting skill, "Would you point us to the throne room?" The guard I had was silent so I clenched my hand harder, using a bit of aura, and heard metal crunch. The guard took a quick intake of breath and seemed to be almost hyperventilating.

"Th-the k-king isn't th-there right nuh-now." He was indeed hyperventilating. Esdeath was looking at me with interest.

"Did I ask where the king was?" I asked, putting a sharp edge to my voice. "I asked… where is the throne room?" I punctuated my question by trailing my hand closer to the guard's throat. When he felt my hand lift a little, though, he tried to break free to his left and run. My hand lashed out and I wrapped my hand around his throat, choking him enough that he felt like he was being choked but wasn't actually suffocating, yet at least.

"I'm waiting," I said calmly.

"Down the courtyard! Right turn! The main entrance is on your right-pleasedon'tkillme!" the man sobbed, collapsing onto his knees. I released my grip on his throat only to tap the side of his neck while sending a pulse of mind affinity into him that sent him to unconsciousness.

"How did he fall unconscious?" Esdeath asked.

"Thief's secret," I said. Esdeath shrugged and violently kicked the back of the head of her guard, who was leaving a bloody trail on the nice bricks that paved the path we were on.

"Well come on, then," I said as I merrily made my way down the path to the right as the guard instructed. When we came to the front gate of the castle, and it really was a castle, and a nice one at that, there were five guards in front of it looking very impressive for people who were basically decorations. I knocked them all out with five teleports and five pulses of mind affinity before trying to push open the huge oaken doors to enter.

It was locked.

I looked flatly at the door only to be pushed aside by Esdeath. "Allow me," she said as she placed her hand to the door. I sensed cold affinity and frost affinity creep through the door and an icicle grow up behind it, pushing up the bar holding it shut and sending it clattering to the floor. She neatly pushed the door open and stepped inside. I followed.

Inside the castle was actually quite nice. Some sort of unmelting ice was used everywhere. Chandeliers that would normally use glass or gems instead had hanging icicles, and the entry hall was lined with ice sculptures and busts made of ice.

"They're really into the whole ice thing, huh?" I noted.

"I believe they take their endurance for the cold to prove some sort of strength," Esdeath replied, walking through the hall and observing the sculptures.

"Say, this ice doesn't seem to melt. Do you think you could make statues yourself?" Esdeath waved a hand and in seconds a statue more detailed and fine than any other rose in the middle of the hall. It looked quite a lot like me and her crossing swords, our gazes intense and fierce. But more impressively was that some of the ice was colored slightly. Blue ice lined the edges of our weapons and features, giving a sharper, more distinctive look to us. I whistled in appreciation.

"You'd make a great sculptor. That's really beautiful," Esdeath looked at me a little surprised. "What?"

"You're the first person to ever say that I could be a sculptor," she said in amusement.

"Well you could," I argued, the two of us slowing to a stop right before the fancy engraved doors to the throne room. "Nobody can spend all their time being evil or slaughtering armies. People need breaks. I'm a thief but I'm also a great metalworker, a decent mechanist, a qualified surgeon, and a top tier chef. I can fight, sure, but fighting can't be all there is in a life. I know that eventually I'll retire from fighting and spend most of my time playing with my grandchildren or complaining about the kids these days. Maybe I'll start a courier service or something if I need something to do."

Esdeath looked at me strangely again but shook her head and pushed open the doors to the throne room, which were unlocked. It was empty but we looked around anyways.

"Hm? Nice mural," I said, looking at a variety of carvings circling the ceiling of the throne room. They looked to be read from left to right, all the stories starting at the throne and circling around the room. There were several lines so I picked one at random to make fun of. "A bunch of tribes exist, some of them unify under a strong looking guy, the others running away, a kingdom forms while the outsiders starve, ooh a white dragon attacks! And it's killed. How sad. I was rooting for the dragon. The king makes weapons and armour from its body and sits down, claiming the seat with a bunch of toadies. Lovely story. "

Esdeath smirked. "Some people lived near icy shores. Truly they were geniuses to embrace such cold waters."

"I'm so proud of you." I grinned.

"Naturally, the ocean froze, honestly what were they expecting," she continued. "But of course there was a brave hunter, very manly. He took his toothpick - sorry, harpoon - and stabbed the ice, shattering it somehow. A giant salmon appeared, a fearsome foe for any fisherman, and he tickled it's belly until it passed out with his toothpick. Then he lugged it home and married it, coining the term fishwife."

I snickered at her mocking and looked at the empty throne, which looked to be made of ice. I walked up to it and poked it, wincing. "Actually, that's really cold." Esdeath came up to it and sat right onto it, reclining and laying her head on her left fist.

"Cozy," she said.

"Oh excuse me, your frostiness, clearly I was just unworthy of freezing my ass off."

"I'm certainly hot enough to ignore the cold," she said innocently. I froze for a second before erupting into a full blown laugh that echoed through the hall.

"It wasn't that funny," she said, looking away. I raised an eyebrow at her blush but when she looked back at me with narrowed eyes I made myself look normal again.

"So does the throne meet your standards or should we find a better kingdom to conquer?" I asked sarcastically. Esdeath sighed dramatically and turned to the side, lounging across the arms of the throne, her pale legs kicked out and her hair down.

"Hmm, I think it needs a few peons to look after me, perhaps to admire my strength and bulging muscles. Should I hunt something impressive-looking and carve it on the walls?"

"Didn't you tame a dragon or something?" I asked in amusement.

"Oh, yes!" She snapped her fingers, as though in revelation. "Let's just put my mural up there in gold. I'm already the manliest out of all their kings if that's the measurement."

"And the most feminine too," I said sardonically. "Oh Lady Esdeath how do the stars shine when compared to you?"

"You forgot that I'm generous too. I allow it out of pity." She turned her nose up at me comedically.

"Ah, true. My grovelling needs work." We snickered a moment longer together, having fun making fun of the king.

"Come on. You said something about being a master chef?" Esdeath said leadingly.

[|||| =-= ||||]

"OH!" Esdeath moaned as she took the first bite of some bacon wrapped chicken I made.

"It's good, but not that good," I said, mystified. I was a great chef. A fantastic one, even, and I had a king's larder (literally) to work with. But who reacted that strongly to some great food?

"I've eaten from palaces and kingdoms across the land… this is the best!" she declared.

"It's just bacon, chicken, and some spices," I said, confused.

"And you did it perfectly," she said in perfect seriousness. "You'll be cooking for me from now on."

"No," I said instantly.

"Yes, you will be."

"You can't make me."

"I will find a way," she said dangerously.

"I'll poison your meals."

"If they taste this good it will be worth it. Have you ever tasted army rations, Abyss?"

"No, and I don't want to. If you want decent meals, learn how to teleport." Esdeath stared at me calmly with an intensity I had only seen before when we were fighting.

"Fine.\," she said.

"What?"

"I'll learn to teleport," she said seriously. I scoffed.

"Have fun," I said with a condescending smile. Then I heard a thump from behind me. "Hey! We didn't even hurt any of you! Shut up!" The cooks and more menial servants we had tied up and locked in an empty pantry were acting up again.

"Go deal with them," Esdeath said as she cut another strip from the chicken and bacon. She groaned a little more quietly when she ate this time, but it was still audible.

"Actually…" I trailed off and went to the pantry. A young boy was squirming around on the floor. When he saw me he froze. I pulled him upwards and pulled a dagger from my soul space and cut his ties. He looked at me fearfully and stayed quiet. "Come on. I don't want to clean the dishes." I pulled him out of the pantry and pushed him lightly to the dirty dishes and an empty wooden tub.

"Esdeath, could you fill this tub with ice and melt it?" I asked. The boy looked at me in naked horror, like I had asked her to kill me. She looked away from her food for a moment and waved her hand. Snow appeared in the tub from nothing. "You can't melt it?" She let out an impatient sigh and the snow melted somewhat, becoming more like slush.

"For goodness sake, hold on." I reached into my soul space and pulled out a tiny low grade fire dust crystal, about the size of my middle finger but thicker. I dunked the crystal in the water and pushed some aura into it. It crackled and popped under the water and dissolved to nothing as its energy was released.

"What?" the boy said, dumbfounded by the now somewhat warm water.

"I've been around. This kind of crystal decomposes in water. I use them sometimes when I can't make a fire but they're kind of expensive. Like thirty to thirty five Empire gold coins per crystal. Maybe twenty five if you're lucky." The boy looked at me in horror again at the, to him, exorbitant price and I shrugged. "Money's disposable."

"Mm, I'm done," Esdeath announced as she pushed her plate away.

"Well I thought we'd be caught by now. I don't know where the guards are or the king, but their castle is pretty great besides the cold."

"I think they're out running drills," Esdeath said uncaringly. She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Care to go look at the king's room?"

"Sure," I shrugged. The boy looked up hopelessly, probably praying for us two insane people who casually violated his king's quarters to leave. "So which way to the king's bedroom?" I asked the child. He froze and looked at me with wide eyes again. I waited a few seconds.

"I-uh-up the stairs my lord. Um, that way." He pointed shakily at a side door opposite of the throne room.

"Alright then. Thanks, kid. Good luck with those dishes." I was about to walk away but paused and walked to the pantry again. I pulled out a lockpick Bella had given to the whole of the subI club all that time ago and broke the lock. The weak black iron was easily broken by my modern steel lockpick, which I had enhanced with my metal affinity. Then I left the room.

"Run to your king if you care to. We're getting rather bored of his castle," Esdeath said to the kid, who looked between us as nervously as ever and drew in on himself as he washed his dishes harder. Esdeath shrugged and followed me out of the room.

The stairs were just to my left and I climbed up to the top of the castle and looked around. I assumed the purple painted fancy door was the one to the king's quarters so I kicked it wide open, breaking the lock.

"Nice place," I said, looking around. He really had the whole king thing on lock. He had a fancy silk bed with comfortable looking furs, two wardrobes probably full of outfits, a bathroom that might have plumbing, and a great view of the whole capital city through a window. I leapt onto his bed and bounced on my back. I happily noted that I could still see out the window.

"A little rustic for my tastes, but a king's room nonetheless," Esdeath said, sitting down on the bed beside me and looking over the city. "I think I could easily take that row of courtyards. That will be a wonderful place to break enemy lines should they muster at the castle."

"Sure, sure, plot away," I said as I continued looking around the room.

"Better tactics based on information I gain here could save my men's lives," Esdeath said with a sort of dignity to her. I chalked it up to pride as a general.

"And lives lost for the northerners. It makes no difference to me." Esdeath frowned at me.

"How sad. So the lives of my men and the northerners are equal to you?"

"If your men break through the defenses they'll pillage and rape before you drop an occupying force here to annex it for the Empire. If the northerners win, which I can see clearly they won't, they'll be left weakened and many more will die, perhaps of starvation or the disease from the corpses that will lie in the streets. I don't owe loyalty to the Empire or the north. I'm only here because I find this place interesting, and after travelling the world I know that no matter how many die here humanity will live on in better places than this. When you know that there are so many people, so many places and things, people dying or suffering just becomes… less important. People stop being good or evil and just become people because what they do just matters that much less with how big the worlds are."

"Worlds?" Esdeath said. I groaned.

"Whoops."

"What do you mean?"

"I can teleport between dimensions. I'm a dimension traveller," I said, not really caring what she thought about it.

"… I've seen stranger things." She shrugged. I was silent but thankful that I didn't have to go through some sort of process of proving it or anything. "It is sad, though," she continued, "that you see the worlds as so large that you mean so little."

"Family makes it easier. Focusing on little things, things that feel important to me personally, makes it easier. It's not what you do that makes life worth living. It's the people in it. Helping to make the things in front of me a little better every time is another good way, though not everybody enjoys that."

"Family…" Esdeath said quietly. She laid down on the bed next to me and we stared down at the city together for a few minutes.

"Huh?" I muttered as I saw a few people moving frantically towards the castle, charging horses at breakneck speeds. "Well it took them long enough. Come on, lets meet them in the throne room and gloat before leaving."

"Lets," Esdeath agreed, pushing off the hero's bed. We hurried a little down the stairs and walked to the throne. Esdeath reclined on it, legs crossed with her rapier across her lap looking very dramatic while I sat on the right arm of the throne and prepared to enjoy the show.

It took a few minutes for them to arrive, in which Esdeath and I discussed ways to properly gloat. But finally a loud bang echoed through the throne room as a proud and furious looking man stalked in, spear in hand. He looked in hatred at Esdeath and I on the frosty throne. A group of soldiers trailed behind him, at least fifty armed men in armor crowding the hall, weapons naked.

"Who's that?" I whispered to Esdeath.

"Numa, the prince. He leads the military," she whispered back. "Numa. I see you've finally decided to join us."

"How did you get here, demon?" he growled.

"I walked through the front door. Couldn't you tell?" She gestured to the wide open castle door. Numa glared a little harder.

"And yet you haven't stormed our home with your army of bandits and thugs," he spat. "You stand here alone but for an aide. Have you come to announce your egress of the north?"

"I'll leave when you beg on your knees like a dog to lick my feet and your kingdom is fallen, Numa." The way Esdeath said this was as though it was perfectly obvious when she was going to leave.

"You'll find your army battered against our walls, demon," Numa growled. "So why have you come here? To die?"

"Power," Esdeath said.

"The norm, then. Arrogance."

"Hardly," she scoffed. "I am confident. Confident that your walls will crumble and your fighters will perish. It would only be arrogance if it were not to happen and we both know that my men are superior to your desperate attempt at a militia."

"The people of the Northern Tribes stand together, craftsman, hunter, or warrior all. Each and every single one of us will defend our home. Now once again, demon, why are you here?" Esdeath rolled her eyes and got up slowly from the throne in a way that screamed confidence.

"Because I can be, you pathetic footnote of a prince," she said callously. "I came because I felt that you could not stop me. And now here you are, unable to stop me. If you are incapable of realizing my presence in your most sacred of places then you are most certainly incapable of stopping me from doing anything I want. So I did whatever I wanted to."

"Thus your statue defacing the walk of ancestors," Numa bristled.

"Your entrance hall filled with weak men who led weaker cowards? I felt that you could use a reminder that real strength comes from those that do, not those that are known."

"Enough," he yelled in fury. "You dare to enter our castle-"

"Obviously."

"And deface our history?!"

"Once more."

"You will die, demon! Your flesh will feed our pigs and your head will be mounted on our-pfuf!" I inturrupted the man by socking him in the gut from right beside Esdeath. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

"He bored me. It was getting repetitive. Also, are you taking the monicker of demon as a compliment?"

"Why, yes," Esdeath said with a smile. It seemed like slugging Numa had been as amusing for her as it had been for me.

"CHARGE!" Numa yelled. I focused my space affinity and increased the inertia in the air of the throne room by an order of magnitude, though I didn't affect Esdeath or myself of course. Numa immediately strained to move his legs, like he was wading through thick mud rather than air.

"You… what did you do?!" he said through gritted teeth, muscles straining. A few of his men fell at the unexpected resistance to their movement. It was almost comical how they slowly fell back only to softly bump the floor.

"I can alter space," I told him. "I just made space a lot harder to move through. I could have made the space between us a mile long or something but this is more fun to watch." Numa stopped trying to run towards us and fell into a defensive stance with his spear.

"Goodbye, Prince Numa." Esdeath took a few steps towards him, not seeming threatened in the slightest. "And remember…" She leaned close to Numa's ear and whispered for a few seconds. Numa's face contorted into fear and rage as she stepped back. I silently made a portal back to the camp and she stepped through it. I waved at Numa as I left.

"I'll see you around, Prince. Don't worry, I'm not with the Empire. Esdeath is the only person in this world I really care about at the moment and she wants to fight you so she will. Are you as excited as I am?" I smirked arrogantly and left, the smirk immediately vanishing, though I was amused at my deceptive words. Esdeath was the only person I knew in the teigu-verse but she was more of a friend that was always interesting to be around.

"So that was pretty fun," I said in the command tent. Esdeath, looking over her maps on the table, nodded.

"It… was," she said, pausing for some reason.

"Hm. Well, if there's nothing else I'm going to go elsewhere now."

"Other worlds?" she asked, looking at me through the corner of her eye.

"My girlfriend's apartment," I said dryly. "A world of old furniture, rather loud neighbors, and a lot of kisses." Esdeath blushed a little and looked back at her maps.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said. I nodded and stepped back as I disappeared from the world, happy with the fun I had with Esdeath.

[|||| =-= ||||]

"Honey, I'm hoooome!" I called out, in a good mood.

"Mrrgf," Kuroka grunted from her room. I crossed the living room and peeked inside to see her clothing torn and a few lightly bandaged wounds on her.

"Bad day?" I asked, already putting my hands on her back and working my magic.

"Horrible," she groaned. "The Brigade's been more passive since Ophis has been toning down her backing with you around to give her silence. The Old Devil faction's been striking out on their own. My sister's peerage showed up and wrecked some stuff but got beaten. I showed up to make sure my sister was okay and saw the Leviathan and Beezlebub smackdown the Old faction. But I had to step in when this one asshole took on my sister's peerage in their weakened state. I got my butt kicked, but he died."

"You make it sound like you didn't kill him…"

"I held him off until Sirzechs arrived." I winced.

"That must have been hard to get away from." Kuroka groaned again.

"Can you, like… call in Ophis to kick all their butts? Or do it yourself and sort through all the assholes, nyah? You told me about taking Vale with Torchwick. Can you do something similar here?" I thought for a moment before a lightbulb might as well have appeared above my head.

"I think I can, actually. Do you need to sleep tonight?" Kuroka shook her head and I grinned as plots formed in my head, most of them involving me going in and wrecking everything. Dealing with a whole faction would need a lot of power, though. I had a cult, sure, but I wasn't confident that they were ready for something as large as the old Satan faction yet. My cult was mostly composed of humans, albeit ones with my blessings. Pureblooded devils were too much for them. So I needed a power-up or I was risking a lot.

Finally, an excuse to use those points I keep hoarding.

"No, I don't need sleep. I need you to kiss my boo-boos." She pulled me down into the bed, making me put aside my plots of world domination. Cuddles were more important according to Kuroka.

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