Kyou Kara Maou – The Ghosts of Trondheim
Summary: When the royal family goes on winter holiday to Trondheim, Yuuri and Murata must face the ghosts of Shinou and Daikenja's most tragic mistake.
Chapter 11 – Trondheim, RAH!
Trond Hall had a staging auditorium by the stables, a large room with seating for around fifty people, with hot beverage and snack service, and plenty of open space for gear. This was standing room only by the time Yuuri's group arrived, ready to head out to the Fairy Circle with Tariel, to harvest more treeborn babies. They congregated by the giant stable doors to await Lord Erick and Lady Alana, who arrived together with Guya and Hasgrud, Jessup and Friedrich, and mounted a dais.
"Trondheim, RAH!" called out Erick, mitted left fist raised above above his head on the RAH! The crowd enthusiastically replied in kind. "Thank you for coming! A great turnout of volunteers, RAH!" Rah! "We won't need all of you, but since you're here," the crowd laughed, "I want you to meet some very special guests! Yuuri Maou, our king from down below, is visiting. My liege?"
Erick held out a hand to beckon Yuuri to join him on the dais. A grinning Guya started slowly stomping her feet – Trond applause – and the rest of the dais joined in, followed by the crowd, so far a bit half-heartedly. As Yuuri walked over, Erick continued. "Yuuri Maou gave us protection, equal under the law to the lowland demons! Yuuri Maou healed the souls of over two hundred Tronds! RAH! Yuuri Maou gave us the miracle of six faun babies, the first in a century, and more to come! RAH! We have resented the overlordship of Shin Makoku." Stomping stopped. The Tronds really did resent Shin Makoku. Erick looked around the room, nodding solemnly. "And I say no more. Today I am proud to be vassal to – Yuuri Maou! RAH!" Yuuri was beside him now, raised fist just like Erick's, and the applause was thunderous.
"Next guest!" continued Erick, beckoning Murata. Murata headed toward the dais with vast reluctance, the crowd glowering at him. "We have called him the Bedamned Great Sage. We blamed him for the unquiet ghosts of our ancestors. We cursed his name! But fellow Tronds, this man has met our ancestors. He walked with my father Franklin and the great King Vladimir of old, searching for answers! He did not know! He did not know. Two hundred ghosts have been healed so far, and more to come! Friends, it's time we welcomed home our own! This is not Shin Makoku's Bedamned Great Sage. I give you – Trondheim's own Greatest Sage, Murata Ken! RAH!" It was a little slow coming as the crowd thought this over, but the stomping applause built to a crescendo, as Erick nodded at them, smiling, a dimple in one cheek. The young man really was extraordinarily handsome, and he knew how to use it.
"Next, my brother Lords!" Erick didn't beckon them to the dais, simply pointing to the group by the stable door. "Working with us tonight, first our own Aldrich von Trondheim Lord Bielenfeld, RAH! Next, protector of humans, of dragons, bane of criminals who would prey on Mazoku throughout the world, our friend Conrad Lord Weller, RAH! Plus, our good neighbor and ally to the north, Brendan Lord Gratz, RAH!" The welcome from the crowd was warm and enthusiastic.
"And last and rarest of all, friends, a special treat. We have with us tonight the last and greatest of the wood nymphs, Tariel, RAH! Tariel, the master of dragons, RAH! Tariel, who averted a repeat of the Great War! He forced both Maou and Troll Mother to surrender before it began! RAH! And Tariel's two sons, Garena, and Friedrich von Bielenfeld, RAH!"
The crowd gave their all, cheering the wood nymphs. True, Garena and Tariel foresaw it coming, dispassionately. But it was not a dispassionate experience, to be cheered so, the hall thundering with stomping feet, palpable waves welcome and admiration buffeting at them from this crowd of enthusiastic volunteers. It was… moving.
"We will not all go tonight. But here or there, before or after, all have helped. I thank you, and ask you thank each other, RAH! Trolls, RAH! Ogres, RAH! Elves, RAH! Goblins, RAH! Demons, RAH! Fauns, RAH! Wood nymphs, RAH! All for one, and one for all! Shamshesh alte'in, TRONDHEIM, RAH!"
And without a pause, Erick grabbed Yuuri's left hand and hopped backward off the dais. They strode down the middle aisle, Erick walking backwards to bump right shoulders with the crowd to one side, Yuuri bumping right shoulders on the other side, in the mountain folk high-five. Alana, also backwards, drew Friedrich the same way to the right aisle, Hasgrud taking Murata to the left. Guya and Jessup, much smaller, strode to the back of the hall bench to bench, boffing shoulders with the crowd in the middle.
"Damn, I love doing that!" laughed Erick, when he reached the back. "Alright, what's the drill…" He counted heads. "And thirty babies tonight is it? Twenty in this party if we take Jessup…"
"Was that a Trondheim thing?" Yuuri asked wonderingly.
Guya laughed. "Nah, that was an Erick thing. What a ham!" She was clearly pleased and proud of him, though.
Manfred shook his head. "A nobility degree would have been wasted on this kid," he murmured in admiration. Aldrich and Conrad, Brendan and Wolfram, nodded, envious of Erick's public speaking. Even Aldrich, reknowned as a man who could sell snow to Tronds, couldn't come close to Erick at working a crowd.
"Over one hundred babies tonight," said Tariel, correcting Erick. The group stopped and stared at him.
Erick's eyebrows flew up, then he frowned, reconsidering his supply of ambulance sleighs. He didn't like to leave Trond Hall itself under-equipped. Their emergency staff handled the entire valley, the elevator, and the last gondola valley as well, plus the next valley toward Royal Gorge in the other direction.
Tariel hesitantly added, "Tonight is major sabotage at last gondola, all ropes. Injuries. We take nineteen people to Fairy Circle, one sleigh only. Most babies are born at near ridge, not Fairy Circle. We signal for other sleighs on the way back."
Erick stood stock-still. Friedrich and Garena looked at each other in consternation. Wood nymph do not intercede this much. This is dangerous.
"How do I stop the sabotage of the last gondola?" demanded Erick.
"You do not," said Tariel. "Cannot stop."
"I'll stay and help with the gondola accident victims," said Friedrich. Manfred and Wolfram looked about to volunteer as well.
"No…" said Tariel, "I want you with me…" Those who knew Tariel well, could tell that he was scanning for a future that came out the way he wanted, then nodded as he found it. "Yes. I send Garena, with a dragon, later. None die. Jessup stays."
Tariel vanished for a minute. Then he reappeared in front of the astonished demon Jessup. He told Jessup how to prepare for the imminent gondola disaster. They would signal from the ridge behind Trond Hall in maybe 6 or 7 hours, when they wanted nursery sleighs, but only send those he could spare, because the trip was short from the ridge – several trips would be fine. Jessup stood amazed, drinking in the strange orders from this diminutive wood nymph. But Erick was listening intently, and at the end, nodded agreement. Jessup should do as Tariel advised.
Then Tariel simply walked out into the stable, in bare feet and sleeveless shift, and climbed into a large sleigh. Aldrich had fetched proper outerwear for both Tariel and Garena, and brought it to the Kraken baths. Garena had put them on, but Tariel declined. The rest piled in, Hasgrud taking the driver's seat. And they were off into the late afternoon sun.
"Tariel, I was surprised you spoke of the gondola," murmured Friedrich, nestled between his nymph-parent and his wife. "Why?" Garena, on Tariel's other side, looked on intently as well.
Tariel didn't answer, instead saying to Aldrich, "First stop, your trees on the ridge." Aldrich gave directions to Hasgrud.
Erick and Brendan and Conrad ended up taking over the conversation, filling in the others on what had been going on at Trond Hall and with the passes lately. With the possibility of dragon help on the way, Ted had decided to backtrack and work on repairs to the farther bridge of the Kriegsbad Pass first, and come back to Royal Gorge, a nasty bit of work, above a ravine over 2,000 feet deep. They'd written to von Dienst and Gwendal, and Gegen Huber Bruschella just below the Escarpment, and Vedanya and the Stovemuessens at the foot of the Gratz Pass, requesting assistance with securing the passes and the immigrants, but there hadn't been time yet for any replies.
Several times over the course of the discussion, Yuuri turned to Tariel, only to have his question die on his lips. The wood nymph was snuggled under Friedrich's arm, bare toes curled in Garena's lap, looking for all the world uninterested in anything those around him said. Yuuri suspected this was highly unlikely. But Tariel had – for him – gone out of his way to future-read for them already today to an extraordinary degree. Yuuri chose to respect the nymph's silence, rather than be a pest.
Just past the top of the ridge, by the stand of trees Aldrich had indicated, they stopped the sleigh, for Tariel and Garena to get out and walk around. If they discussed anything, it was nonverbally. They touched a number of trees, then walked into an open area and looked around, Garena's boots crunching through the virgin snow, Tariel leaving small bare footprints. Then they climbed back into their same seating arrangement with Friedrich in the sleigh, both very subdued.
-oOo-
"Lord's Lesson!" declared Trenton, once they were back underway. The other kids jumped at that suggestion – Trenton and Dietrich's 'Lord's Lesson' game was a lot of fun. Actually, it was neither theirs, nor a game. The Lords of Bielenfeld had been training their kids this way for thousands of years. They posed an interesting question from the day's challenges after supper, and let the heirs mull it over. But the children didn't think of it as 'school'. And sometimes their suggestions were implemented as real public policy. They liked that!
"Alright, Trent," agreed his father Brendan. "What's our question?"
"One hundred babies," said Trenton. "Is one hundred a good number? And if we get to choose, how many of which kinds shall we ask for?" The adults nodded impressed approval – very good question. "Lord Conrad? Lord Erick? Would one of you like to teach us tonight?"
Both men looked flattered, if slightly intimidated. This sleigh was jam-packed with top rulership talent. They felt outclassed by Friedrich, Alana, Brendan, Aldrich, Yuuri, Murata, even Manfred and Wolfram. But they agreed to co-chair the Lesson.
Greta started off. "Trond Hall can't take many more than 100 babies at once. These are special babies we don't really know how to care for. The 100 could be like an appetizer, just a start, to give all the dwindling communities hope. But we don't want to overwhelm them."
"Yeah," agreed Dietrich. "They're moving to a new place. They need to make new homes and new friends. A few babies is a promise. Too many all at once would be too hard."
"What if some are already extinct?" asked Efram. "Somebody mentioned centaurs. There are no centaurs to adopt a baby centaur, are there? Are there even people who remember centaurs?"
"I do," said Murata, quietly. "As Daikenja, I was raised among the centaurs and the fauns. I think the fauns are best suited to rear them."
Yozak pitched in. "What if there are babies of a race no one wants?" The kids booed him down. There was somebody for any baby. They would all be wanted! But that did get them talking about how it would be decided, who got what baby, and who would be a good enough parent to get a baby.
Erick and Conrad sat back and let the kids have at it on this issue. Conrad prodded Greta or Efram with a toe once in a while, when they started talking to each other instead of treating the younger boys as equal partners.
Eventually Greta said, "Well, at least wood nymphs are easy, because Tariel is the only foster parent. Tariel, how many wood nymph babies would you like?"
"No nymph babies," replied Garena, when Tariel didn't acknowledge the question. Everyone looked to him for an explanation of this, but Garena just shrugged. "Wood nymphs, field nymphs, water nymphs, no 'babies'."
"Dragons should have eggs instead of babies," Wolfram announced, to get Garena off the hot seat. "Right, Yuuri? Dragon babies get very attached to the first person they meet out of the egg. Liesel thought Yuuri was her mother."
"Pochi," Yuuri corrected automatically – his name for the dragon Liesel. "But, yes, they need to be adopted as eggs. Garena, you're going to meet with dragons tonight, aren't you? Perhaps you could ask how many eggs they can handle."
"That depends on place to raise baby dragons," said Garena, looking at Erick and Conrad. "Dragon takes big territory."
Erick nodded thoughtfully. "I'd meant to talk to them about that, when they come to help with the passes. There's a lot of room in these mountains, plenty of remote places where their nests would be safe. And Tronds got quite fond of having them here. If they're willing to keep the passes open, and help with mountain rescue, they'd be very welcome Trond citizens. But, we'd need translators. And I'm not sure how much room they need. Conrad, say we wanted to settle dragons along Gratz Pass, Kriegsbad Pass, and the Escarpment. Is that… feasible?"
"Certainly," said Conrad. "There's room for more than a dozen dragons near each of the Passes. Provided Brendan's willing, on the Gratz Pass, of course."
"Actually, that's a bit tricky, Conrad," said Brendan uncomfortably. "For Walde as well. I'd have to run the numbers to find out how much keeping Gratz Pass open is worth to us, versus how much livestock the dragons would eat. If we can even get dragons to honor a work for hire agreement. And there's no clear advantage for Walde. And once you pay the dragongeld, it could be mighty hard to get rid of the dragon."
"Chichiue!" complained Trenton, mortified at his father being a spoilsport.
"Nah, Trent, this isn't about being popular with our friends," said Brendan. "I'd like to help Erick and the dragons, too, but Gratz is ranchland. We owe it to our ranchers to make decisions that are good for Gratz. If Gratz Pass brings X income, and the dragons cost Y livestock, then X has to be bigger than Y, or it's bad for Gratz. This is Lord's Lesson, remember!"
The nymph-kin, especially Wolfram and Friedrich, looked very disappointed at this. Garena suggested, "Maybe offer four eggs now? And more eggs if have good agreement about work and eating livestock?"
"I will not hold eggs or babies hostage to financial agreements," Yuuri stated firmly. "The question is only how many they can comfortably raise now." He turned to the kids. "I've been enjoying this discussion. You've clarified my thinking on a lot of topics. But the thing that's most clear to me, is that we should go slow. Converting ghosts into free souls, ready to be reborn – this is owed, and I will do it to the limits of my ability. But to have all these ghosts turn into newborns – Murata, do we even know how many ghosts? Not the… light wolves, the partial souls, to be reunited with their incarnated souls. But the ones who cannot incarnate?"
"Thousands, probably tens of thousands," said Murata.
"A promise, then, as Greta and Dietrich said," Yuuri concluded. "New hope. A handful only, at this time, for most of the dwindling races. If we take it nice and slow, everyone has a chance to think things through, do the next right thing, make good decisions, prepare, work things out. Then the rest of the babies are born when there is a home and family ready to welcome them, and not before. And many of those souls will wait for babies to be born the usual way, as their races recover their numbers with fresh blood. Over generations, not days or months."
"Huh!" said Tariel. "You are right, Shibuya Yuuri Maou! Slow is much better…"
"You look much happier, Mother," said Friedrich, surprised. Tariel nodded emphatically, actually smiling, and snuggled into his arm, petting Garena's arm too. Both of his sons looked puzzled, but relieved.
Erick was nodding at Yuuri's points. But he added to the kids, "But the small groups of babies are for the small communities. It gets trickier with the big communities. Trolls, elves, ogres – these have battled their way back from extinction, from way too few people. They have large populations now, and huge problems from inbreeding. Even a promise to these would have to be in the tens, if not hundreds. I'd like to suggest at least twenty each – thirty would be better – of trolls, elves, and ogres."
"I thought ogres were extinct," said Wolfram. "But you mentioned them in your speech back at the hall, too."
"Erick's part ogre," murmured Alana. "A very wise move on Franklin's part." Most of the party were surpised at this, Aldrich downright astonished.
Erick looked as though he doubted her sincerity. He explained to Wolfram, "Troll Mother was pregnant at the time of the Genocide. Her son was fathered by the head of the northern ogres, in what's now Gratz. No pure ogres survived, just the one half-ogre. He refused to breed with his own mother. My mother's kin, and many in Gratz of 'troll' ancestry, are descended from him."
"How did…" began Yuuri, then changed to, "I thought a female troll could compel a male troll to mate with her. Did Troll Mother… respect his wishes?" Yuuri'd met Troll Mother. He couldn't imagine her driving will respecting anyone's wishes, son or not.
Erick shook his head. "No. Trolls are powerless to compel ogres. That's why my father mated with one, and kept it a secret. He believed we von Trondheims should be able to defy Troll Mother, if her wishes weren't in the best interests of all Tronds. As they weren't, last spring. My father and Uncle Ted obeyed her – they were entrolled, and Father died of it. But she hadn't reckoned on this leaving her with a Lord Trondheim who wouldn't obey her. Lady Alana and myself and Elvenhall were all ready to defy her. But, if Tariel and the dragons hadn't intervened, this would have meant civil war in Trondheim."
"Hey," said Trenton, having finally puzzled this out. "Are you calling me an ogre?"
Erick grinned, showing a huge dimple and modest fangs. "I called me an ogre. And proud of it, too." He tousled Trenton's head. "You're probably only the tiniest bit ogre, Trent."
"Are ogres tougher than trolls?" the boy asked hopefully.
"Just crankier," said Alana, sighing. "And immune to the, ah, issues dear Friedrich is here to research."
"Sex," clarified Dietrich, putting his hands over his ears in protest. "So stop. We were going to talk about babies, not sex. OK, twenty or thirty each of ogres, trolls, and elves."
-oOo-
Soon after dusk, they developed a following. First by ones and twos, then by tens, light wolves gathered to run beside them. When they stopped to greet the pickets Jessup had sent out, to keep spectators at a distance, their shaman reported that the extraordinary number of ghosts had been strangely quiet. By the time they reached the Fairy Circle, the entourage of ghosts was well beyond counting.
Brendan and Conrad and the four children set to making a good coal fire and a hot supper, Hasgrud and Yozak to taking care of the animals, while the others approached the trees. Aldrich showed Tariel first the tree he'd suspected of housing a wood nymph, but he nodded, and skipped that one, walking around touching each of the other trees instead.
"You have your baby order?" asked Tariel.
Yuuri held out the wish list that the children had devised, and the adults had approved with modifications. But there were a great deal more ghosts here than on that list, and the hope had been to call more babies from the other trees, he thought. "How do we submit our request?"
The small bare-limbed, bare-foot wood nymph padded slowly across the snow to that first tree, which he'd avoided the first time. The closer he got, the more his steps faltered. Garena and Friedrich walked up to stand with him, and held his hands. Tariel stood that way with them for several minutes, then seemed to gather his… either courage or resignation.
He walked to the tree and placed his hand on it, looking up into the branches.
"Oh," said a woman perhaps twenty feet tall, yawning. "Who wakes me in winter?" She looked around at eye height – on her – and finding no one, blinked sleepily and finally tried looking down at her feet.
"It's me, Tariel, Ponderosa," Tariel said reluctantly.
The vast wood nymph slowly shrank to only about a foot taller than Hasgrud and Erick. "Oh, Tariel! Heavens, little one, you're looking much better! You were so sick!" She frowned, puzzled. "How did your trees recover in winter? And… but… there were only a handful left."
("Do you understand what they're talking about?" Yuuri murmured to Wolfram and Murata. Wolfram shook his head no. Murata nodded yes, but held a finger to his lips to suggest silence.)
Still groggy, Ponderosa looked around her, and complained, "There's something strange with this stand of trees, too. The trees have too much life maryoku, but also some kind of maryoku parasite. And all these life maryoku phantoms swarming about. And the trees are planted in stone! Who on earth would do such a thing?"
("I'm never going to live that down, am I," sighed Aldrich. Manfred laughed silently and hugged him closer.)
"My grandson, Aldrich," said Tariel, pointing at him.
Ponderosa followed the finger, whose path led to no comprehension whatsoever. "This is a very strange dream," she sighed, nodding to herself that she was right.
Tariel walked over to Aldrich, took his hand, and drew him back to Ponderosa. He repeated, "My grandson, Aldrich. This is Ponderosa." Tariel indicated the circle of trees with a wave of the hand. "Ponderosa pine. Ponderosa, you've been asleep for a long time. A very long time. You notice that you wake up in an unfamiliar tree? You see that I am healthy again, too much healing for one winter? A very, very long time."
Yuuri wondered why Tariel didn't just go ahead and say how long, but he didn't wonder long. Denial set in fast and furious upon Ponderosa. "You wicked little bracken, Tariel!" Ponderosa scolded. "It's no wonder the great nymphs decided not to save you! A pathetic little shrub like you should not have been called a tree in the first place! Begone! I've had enough of your idiocy!" Ponderosa grew back to her original twenty foot height, and beyond, seeming to thin to vapor as she grew to the height of her towering tree. And she disappeared into it.
"I never like her," complained Tariel sadly.
Garena and Friedrich both put arms around him. He enjoyed their comfort for a moment, then removed their arms. "I see you back at the ridge." With that, Tariel walked into the tree and disappeared.
Along with all twelve of the Ponderosa pines. And the ghosts.
"Garena, what the hell is –" began Friedrich.
"I go to gondola now," said Garena. And he disappeared, too.
"What did we ride all the way out here for, then?" wondered Wolfram.
"So he could move the trees to a more convenient place?" hazarded Friedrich.
"Did you know he could do that, Chichi?" asked Aldrich.
"No," admitted Friedrich eventually. "There's a lot about this I don't understand."
-oOo-
Several hours later, the sleigh pulled up at the Fairy Circle again, newly relocated to the ridge above Trond Hall, and swarming with ghosts. If Tariel was there, he wasn't admitting to it, and Garena wasn't there either. After some deliberation, they decided to just go ahead and do what they set out to do in the first place – deliver the trees of the babies they still carried, half of them fauns.
Guya set off a flare to signal Jessup's people below to send a nursery sleigh if they could spare one. Erick was kicking himself for not bringing along some skis – he was desperate to find out the status of the gondola sabotage, if it had indeed happened at all. His confidence in strange Tariel tales was not high at the moment.
"You need to stay while the first batch is delivered, anyway," murmured Aldrich. The cooking and animal crew set to work again, and the others approached the trees with Aldrich, with plenty of blankets. Aldrich touched the one tree – Ponderosa's – again in curiosity, but simply said, "No change."
He delivered four more baby fauns.
Then he started in on the trees he'd skipped. A baby centaur. An elf. A troll. An ogre. A dragon's egg. "Erick, Guya, I need you," he called. The two left the elf and ogre baby back at the sleigh, where Friedrich was supervising the babysitters. "I believe this one's for you," said Aldrich, when they rejoined him.
And he delivered a bouncing baby boy elf-troll-ogre-demon-goblin baby. In far from equal proportions. In fact, the child looked exactly like one might expect a child of Guya and Erick's to look, right down to its sheer size, at over 15 pounds.
"What on –" breathed Erick. He took up the baby, and upon touching him, recognized the soul. "Welcome back," he told the baby with the soul of Franklin. "He's so tiny!" he laughed.
"What do you mean? He's huge!" said Guya. She unconsciously crossed her legs at the thought of such a giant baby coming out of her tender places. She swaddled him quickly in a blanket and started for the sleigh, but Erick stopped her.
He tipped her head up to look him in the eye, and smiled, dimples at maximum. Guya looked down, as though blushing, then lifted head high and met him squarely in the eye. She said, "Lady Alana, may I have the blessing of your family to marry this man, your great-nephew Erick Lord Trondheim?"
Alana smiled. "You have the blessing of the family. I think your father would have approved, too, Erick," she said wryly. "May I hold the baby?"
Guya passed the baby over, and bid Erick kneel in the snow. "Marry me, Erick," she ordered.
"Yes, m'Lady!" he replied, with gusto. He rose and picked her up, swung her around, and shared a long, deep kiss. They were still well preoccupied with each other when the first sleigh arrived up from Trond Hall.
"Jophin, it's you!" cried Greta in surprise. "What are you doing here?" For the sleigh was driven by none other than Jophin, leader of the goblin troop Greta had adopted in the Krist Fens last spring. He and his band of extremely helpful small people had been working the Blood Pledge Castle baths mostly, though they'd also tagged along up to Castle Bielenfeld to help out there during the Racial Accords conference.
"It is!" cried Jophin. "It is me, Jophin, Princess Greta! I'm so happy to see you!"
Erick and Guya left off their smooching promptly when they heard the name Jophin. Both boffed Jophin's shoulder. Hasgrud told the newcomers on the sleigh the happy news that one of the tree babies looked exactly like an Erick-Guya baby and that the couple were going to marry. Jophin squealed with delight.
"So what are you doing here, Jophin?" asked Erick, smiling.
"Ah, I came home with the troops, m'liege!" said Jophin. "General von Dienst sent you his commander Griesel and some men. But the gondola ropes broke! It was scary. But dragons came! And a blond man like him." Jophin pointed to Friedrich. "Except maybe younger. And we picked up some fauns in Bruschella. Fauns are very nice people!" Jophin nodded enthusiastic approval of the fauns. "And kobolds too! I think maybe they're nicer when they're not so scared. But goblins can take care of fauns and kobolds, you'll see!"
"I'll bet you will," said Erick, grinning. "Damn, it's good to have you back, Jophin!" And he and Guya and Hasgrud and Jophin lifted their fists in a unanimous RAH!
"You know our bath attendents?" asked Greta.
"Jophin's my fourth lieutenant – my goblin troubleshooter. He's just been on extended duty down below. Right, Jophin?"
Jophin nodded enthusiastically. "Yes! They're very chatty in the baths at Yuuri Maou's castle. Especially at night. Lord Günter von Krist is very kind! Every night he makes a cauldron of vodka punch. All his friends come to get drunk and screw! I think our elves would like this down-below custom! I think our elves would invite girls, too, though."
-oOo-
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