Chapter 17:
Roselinen stood staring out at the courtyard of the Candy Palace, watching as the small motorcade came through the gates. The lead car rolled straight up to the double doors, and the guards immediately sprang into action, opening the door of the car to reveal a singular figure. Tall, curvy, and with flowing, pale hair, the wizard came striding up into the castle. The Ice Queen was back, just as Strudel had said.
Roselinen wasn't quite sure what she was going to do here. She hadn't given a lot of thought to how she would handle the looming confrontation. Honestly, after the pleasant moment in the ballroom with her husband, where he was once again behaving like her husband, Roselinen had stopped thinking about this moment. In retrospect, that was a mistake. The Ice Queen hadn't disappeared. She was going to turn up again. Power. This was the curse of power.
Elsewhere in the palace, Finn the King was down in the tiny office that he'd retaken as his own. Head down, he was hard at work, looking for places that could house tens of thousands of refugees. As he went down the list, his food-taster stuck his head through the door, announcing, "uh, Finn... uh... sire, there's a woman here to see you." The hapless banana had never been one of the best of the Banana Guard. He'd been an also-ran before, and even after Fionna's 'fix', he was still kind of a loser. Finn mostly put up with him. Where was the dude going to go if he got canned? "Send her in," The King announced.
He was a little surprised when Jake Junior came through the door in a grubby pair of jeans and an old tee-shirt. "Hi," she greeted him. Puzzled, the big man motioned for her to have a seat. As she settled into the chair before him, the King remarked, "figured you'd be back on King's Island... getting acquainted with your daughters..." The ones she'd basically abandoned. That stung, more than he knew. Even if she had thought it was better for them that she wasn't in their lives, it still stung. At the same time, Finn was the only hope she had of getting herself squared away so she could save Liz.
"I...," she started to say. She'd been about to lead with a lie. That wasn't going to help her, even if it was as natural as breathing for her. "I came here to see you," she said. "Which made no sense to him. She was free to go wherever she wanted. "You do realize what an unconditional pardon means, right," Finn said. Junior shrugged and said, "I got nowhere to go. My gallery got repoed. The artists took their shit back. My old landlord threw my stuff on the street..." She literally had nothing to go back to. "You need a job," Finn rumbled. Junior nodded. "I can cook, but I don't think that dude would trust me with a King's dinner," she said with a chuckle.
The King had been pondering what to do about Jake's favorite child since he'd pardoned her. He'd expected her to just slip onto an airship and disappear. Hell, she could have just waltzed off the island, disappeared into the wilds, and never returned. The west was a new place with countless people to con and nobody there who knew who she was. He'd been pleasantly surprised that she didn't, but he hadn't really had idea the first where to go from there. Now she was reaching out to him for help, and he felt there weren't really many options for him in the face of that. "Ok," he said. "You'll be my traveling secretary." Breakfast was needed at home, managing their kids, and life was getting complicated enough for him that the change was definitely needed. Rising, the King said, "let's go down to Peppermint Butler's office. We'll get you some clothes and things." Couldn't have her looking like a bum after all.
As the sun climbed the sky, Roselinen strode into the section of the Candy Palace that housed the private offices of the government, her mind intent on the looming confrontation. She'd never found herself in this space before, and now, as she made her way down the main hallway, she decided that, even more than the private spaces where people slept and ate, this was what she thought of when she thought of the life of kings and queens. Servants whizzed around her, rushing about as they conducted their masters' business. Every space was filled with ornate furnishings and every corner held a bust or statue. Her feet squished into the sumptuous carpeting with every step she took. The place reeked of money. She didn't want this life, and she wished she could convince Finn to leave it all behind. If only he could leave this place, his life would be quieter and safer.
Up ahead, the Ice Queen was holding court with the rest of Finn's extended family. There was a lot of business to get settled. Things had been edging closer and closer to chaos while she'd been in the west. With the looming crisis with the human population staring them in the face, that had to get squared away. Fast. More to the point, she'd be looking to some of these women to ease the passage of the tens of thousands of refugees they now had to manage. As the clock on the wall struck for ten, Betty Mertens called the meeting to order.
And it was then that the agent of chaos appeared on their doorstep.
The room was full when Roselinen strode into the space. There were eight women physically there, occupying chairs before the grand oaken desk. Shimmering images of eleven more floated on the periphery. It was a daunting audience for this little confrontation. At the same time, she didn't have a lot of choices here. Shooting to her feet, the Ice Queen greeted her visitor with a cheery, "Roselinen! I'd hoped to have you join us!" Immediately the tall woman rang for a servant to have a chair brought in, but Roselinen stopped her.
In a clear voice, she announced, "I have come to announce that I do not concur with the current arrangement." The chatter in the room grew still. Several faces snapped around. Some wore frowns of puzzlement. Others were clearly angered. "I was married to Finn long before any of this got started," the pillow-person announced. "Though we were estranged, our marriage did not end. I do not agree with this."
Betty, who'd been sitting at her daughter's right hand, immediately saw red. "What," the wizard demanded? "Did Strudel put you up to this?!" "Mom," Simone interrupted. Betty swore at the stranger, and belatedly Roselinen remembered that the Ice Queen's mother was a wizard too. She'd just served notice on two very dangerous people at once with no protection at all. "Mom," Simone said. "This isn't helping. Please wait outside." Turning to the gathered women, the curvy wizard said, "all of you. Outside. We'll speak in a bit." Worried faces stared back at the pair in the center of the room as, one by one, the pack of women strolled out. Cherry was the last. Her dark eyes locked with Simone's. Those eyes seemed to convey a hard reality. Cherry wasn't about to be simply pushed aside. There was trouble there.
When the door had shut, Simone motioned for her rival to be seated. Roselinen refused. She stayed just where she was. "He's my husband," Roselinen insisted. "Mine too," Simone retorted. The pillow woman flushed to her long, blonde hair. She'd known from the moment she arrived here that she couldn't just push all these women away. Many of these women wore crowns. She'd come up here thinking... what? That they'd just be shamed into leaving?
The staring was getting them nowhere. "You still don't understand," Simone murmured. Reaching up, she unfastened the heavy chain that hung around her neck. Reaching out, she took Roselinen's hand and turned it upwards and lay the pendant on her palm. It was just as heavy as it looked. "The weight of my position, Roselinen," the Ice Queen announced. "It's yours now. You're First-Wife. What do you want to do? Hmm? Decide carefully. Lives hang on your choices." The other woman glared at her.
Calmly, Simone turned and walked across the room, announcing, "the office is now yours. I usually hold meetings every third day to discuss... problems. You might want to think about how you're going to address grievances." The wizard opened the door and stepped out, leaving Rosie standing there staring at the chain. She'd gotten the worst of that. She didn't understand how, but she knew she'd gotten the worst of that exchange. Far from taking back her husband, she was somehow in a far worse position–one she didn't understand and had no idea how to get out of.
It didn't take long at all for word of the ugly confrontation to reach Finn's ears. The King came rushing into Simone's quarters to find the Ice Queen seated at the little desk in the corner, working on Wizard City's budget. That immediately set his back up and made him angry. He'd had Peppermint Butler and Lollipop put together an office suitable for the Grand Master, and now it had been taken from his lady.
"Simone," the big man called. The curvy wizard glanced up and announced, "just a minute, honey." Finn stood there fidgeting. She was doing this on purpose. She'd done this on any number of occasions in the past, giving him the time to cool down when he really wanted to go on a tear. Far from being upset or even put out, Simone was eerily calm. Finally the big man forced himself to calm down. What was the point of shouting at her. She hadn't done this to herself.
The Ice Queen put the last touches on her ledger and turned to face her husband. "Did Junior come and see you," she asked? "Yes," he responded. "That's not why..." "Did you give her a job," she asked? "Yes," Finn muttered. She wasn't leaving him much of an out. "Good," Simone said, as she rose from her chair. Hugging him, the curvy wizard lay her head on his shoulder. "I wish we had known sooner, Finn," she sighed. "We could have avoided so much that went wrong." Sliding his arms around her, the big man sniffed, "I don't like this. This... I didn't agree..." Simone stepped back from him and spent a while studying him. He felt... awful. His face was about as pained as she'd ever seen it.
"This isn't your choice, Finn," Simone interrupted. "It's mine." The big man flushed and glanced away. His expression told her everything. He felt responsible for this. He'd tried and failed to get things square with Roselinen. "She has to learn, Finn," Simone announced. "She has to buy her learning the same way I did. It will be... painful, but I hope to ease the landing." The King sighed heavily. "I... have to go," he murmured. Simone nodded. Emeraude had called her almost the moment she was back in the Candy Kingdom–even before the airship had landed. Face softening, the Ice Queen murmured, "be careful, honey. Dangerous games are afoot."
Hundreds of miles to the north and east, another unpleasant gathering was forming. For the noble conspirators acting against the King of Ooo, the last few days had kept them in a state of terror as the airship's numerous bits were slowly fished out of the sea near Engagement Ring Kingdom and unpleasant questions got asked. The King's nasty little daughter was already making inquiries into who had shipped cargo with the crew that night, suggesting there was already suspicion of foul play. Several inconvenient lackeys had gone to meet their makers to hush up the plot.
Lady Nicia announced, "the three attendants at the cargo terminal had an accident last night..." The chain was broken. There was no way for that nasty little bitch to trace the bomb back to them–assuming they could find evidence of it at all. That news came as welcome relief to the worried nobles in that room, allowing them to move on. "Ok," said Othman. "The assassination failed. We can try again, but we still need an army. Where are we?"
Hafgrim the Red took the floor and declared, "my contacts in the Jungle Kingdom have begun building the weapons we ordered. We'll have seven-thousand of those spear-weapons of theirs, and they tell me they may be able to arrange some small cannon if they can acquire the steel without being noticed." In the moment, most of the government in Jungle Kingdom was focused on the barrier device being built to protect the kingdom. They weren't paying very close attention to what the various foundries and factories were up to. "Seven thousand," demanded Henrietta? "That's all they can give us? We're offering good gold!" "They're running scared," muttered Hafgrim. "Some of them... some of them were involved in helping the Bandit Princess. They're terrified of the Crown digging into their activities." Finn had made it clear that anybody who'd helped the Bandit Princess of his own free will was looking at having his neck lengthened.
"Seven thousand won't do," growled Clovis. "We need more guns. Finn's troops have twenty-thousand." They might even have more. There were rumors that there was a great warehouse stuffed with firearms. For some reason, the King was very squeamish about such things. "What about the food," Hafgrim demanded? Clovis had been set the job of stocking the larder for their army, and so far nothing had shown up. The fat peanut glanced at the table, his expression telling them all how well that was going. He was always shouty when his position was weakest. Today was clearly no exception.
"Our troops will need food," muttered Hafgrim. "We can't act without food." An army marched on its stomach. "I'm working on it," Clovis muttered. "I have to get those damned whores off my land first." Those bitches had proven surprisingly resilient, and they'd hired scores of mercenaries to protect their interests. Moving against them too quickly would reveal their plot. "Assassins," announced Lady Mallory. "It's all coming back to assassination." Things became much easier if they simply removed some of the inconvenient obstacles in their way.
"Where is this warehouse," asked Othman? "Do we know? We could strike this warehouse and drastically improve our position." That suggestion precipitated an argument. Striking a heavily-guarded warehouse sounded suspiciously like suicide to some of them. They'd be squandering their army for nothing. "Not if you do it right," Hafgrim rumbled. "His idea has merit, but I need to know where to find the weapons. We can make the warehouse one of our first targets. I can use a raid to build our army's cohesion, and a successful strike gets us the weapons to immediately raise the numbers in our army."
The matter was agreed, just like that. Hafgrim took charge of preparing to attack the weapon storage warehouse. Othman promised to hunt down the location. Lady Nicia declared, "I'll hire us an assassin. I know just the person. She's worked for me in the past." Clovis said, "I'll get the food deliveries moving. It would help if we could divert some of the supplies coming out of Muscle Kingdom." Trouble was that inquiries with the royal family in Muscle Kingdom had been rebuffed. Odessa didn't appear to be particularly interested in joining their coalition. "We need to work on her," Henrietta rumbled. "I'll do it." The gathering broke up, with the conspirators slipping out again just as they'd come.
Meanwhile, far to the south, the object of their discussions was having an unpleasant meeting of her own. Acting on her tame elemental's information, the Dowager Princess had immediately focused on the weakest link in the chain of treacherous burghers in her kingdom. He had been a nobody who'd managed to parley a small business harvesting shellfish from a remote island into a massively profitable enterprise that bought him access to the elites of Muscle Kingdom society. Naturally that hadn't been enough for the greed fool. He'd decided to push past prudence to lay his hands on more gold.
Greed had placed him exactly where he'd so often hoped to find himself–front and center before the Royal Family of the Muscle Kingdom. Trouble was, this wasn't quite the fashion he'd imagined. For one, he was wearing chains instead of a silk suit. For another, an ominous pot sat boiling and bubbling in a corner as a fiendish elemental woman poured heat into it while a hooded man stood nearby, occasionally stirring the contents.
"I-I-I don't understand," the merchant babbled. Which he'd been saying for more than five minutes now. The harsh bubbling of the molten gold in the kettle counterpointed his every word. Odessa responded, "it's quite simple. You're guilty of treason. You've been working with outsiders to subvert the will of your rulers." The slick young man had been racking his brain, trying to understand what the fuck she was talking about. All he'd done in the past few weeks was join a coalition of allied businessmen to capitalize on the Crown's upcoming bond offering. "I would have paid my taxes on my earnings," the hapless tycoon gobbled. "Your earnings would have caused issues for our position," announced Duke Omar. "Now we want to know who else was involved."
His eyes flicked to the woman who seemed to be in control of all of this. Her dark eyes were cold and hard. However feminine she looked, she wasn't going to be swayed by anything he said. The terrified merchant began to babble, spitting out everything he knew about Kim Kil Wan's scheme. He told them everything about the plan to buy up the bonds. He explained the scheme to sell short and wreck the offering. He even courteously entertained the questions about how they could profit from the business, explaining that the whole scheme involved getting other people to overextend and then cutting the bottom out from under them. All for profit, of course.
"Good enough," growled the Dowager Princess. Nodding at the executioner, she said, "make it quick." The burly guards snatched up the hapless merchant, who began pleading anew. He'd given them all they asked! He'd told them about the whole scheme and named all the names he knew. Not that it availed him much. The executioner pried his mouth open and jammed a long funnel inside. As Odessa watched in satisfaction, the massively built man went to the kettle and raised it with a set of heavy tongs. As the gathered nobles variously watched or turned away, the executioner upended the contents over the funnel, pouring the molten gold down the dead man's gullet, searing him to death from the inside out. He'd lived for gold. Now he'd died for it. Turning to the elemental, Odessa growled, "kill them. Kill them all. Let none live."
The following morning in the forests around New York found Shoko walking in the wilds with Maja of all people. She'd been all through the forest, scoping out trees they could use for the human-transport project. Now she was here showing the witch the building materials she hoped to use to assemble the army of living transports they needed to build. Far from being impressed or even irritated, the witch was bored to tears and seemed to be rolling her eyes every three minutes or so. "Fine," Shoko muttered. "Fine. You don't want to help..." "You're screwing this up," Maja interrupted. Shoko whipped around, her face going red, and her hair blazing up. "You're an elemental, kid," Maja growled. Jabbing her in the chest, the Sky Witch said, "this isn't the time to be like your momma. You have senses she doesn't have, but you're not using them."
Striding over to one of the trees Shoko had selected, the witch put her hand against the wood and said, "this won't do, Shoko. It's heart is dead. In ten years, it would have fallen over." Striding over to a second tree, she said, "this one's still living in its heart. It's flexible. It can handle the energy we plan to throw at it. It can take the strain of bending and flexing for a couple-thousand miles." The elemental goggled at her. "Come here," Maja growled. Shoko, a little worried about where this was going, stayed rooted to the spot. "Your education needs improvement, girl," said Maja. "Come. Here." Swallowing hard, the young princess stepped carefully over to where the witch was standing.
"Take my hand, kid...," Maja rumbled. When Shoko was holding her hands, the witch murmured, "open your Wizard Eyes, Shoko. See the world as it really is..." Somewhere inside her, a window opened, and indeed, the young elemental found herself seeing things that she'd never seen before. "Is that...," she babbled. "Energy flows from place to place," Maja confirmed. "Sometimes we can intercept a little of it... harness it for need. It's dangerous, girl. You know the problems that I have..." Shoko swallowed. Every wizard she knew was just a little bit mad. "You don't have to take it that far," Maja murmured, "but you can at least see what's around you." Releasing Shoko, she took up the paint can, saying, "come along. Let's get to work marking trees."
Hundreds of miles to the southwest, the Lizard Princess stepped out onto the terrace of her husband's hotel suite to find him chatting in soft tones with someone by phone. Hamest hung back, listening and quietly waiting for the conversation to conclude. It was a conversation that sounded a lot like an important man transacting business with a far-off associate. You could have been forgiven for wondering why they spoke in such hushed voices. But Billy was awkward about this. He was uncomfortable, even as he'd told the person on the other end of the line just how this thing was going to go. The Lizard Princess held her peace as Billy wrapped up the conversation and signed off, freeing the satellite channel for someone else to use.
"How's she doing," Hamest asked? Billy turned around to find her standing there in a sheer nightgown, watching him. She'd been delighted to land here in this warm place. It was a chance to duck the winter, something even a royal couldn't completely avoid in her kingdom. On his side, Billy wore an expression of embarrassment. He hadn't hidden the affair with Red Kate. He'd been very honest about what had happened in Stilt Town. Slipping his phone in his pocket, the big man replied, "she's in a good mood." Katherine was coming out of her shell as it were–looking at ways to improve life in Stilt Town. The biggest thing she needed was water. A steady source of water would make it possible to clean up the town.
The Lizard Princess goggled at him. That didn't really make sense. It had sounded to her that what Stilt Town really needed was a robust city guard. Billy chuckled. "Half-right, babe," he said. "Katherine's peeps drink beer for breakfast. They drink beer for lunch. They have whisky with dinner." Hamest's jaw came unhinged. They were a city of drunks! Nodding, Billy said, "that's the problem, baby. The city's standing in a lake, but the water's salty. It's undrinkable. You've only got liquor or tea to drink. They're not drunks, but they drink a lot of alcohol. If she could get the water situation handled, she could wean them off of drinking all the time. They'd be happier and more responsible."
Nodding, Hamest replied, "I see the problem." Slipping into his lap, she lay her head on his shoulder and remarked, "I wasn't much different with a half-defended city and a vulnerable population." The troubles in Stilt Town could be fixed. It took will and a little help. Moving on, the slim princess reminded him, "we have to go to Ramona's court tonight. What shall we do in the mean time?" Billy had been dreading the trip. He had to convince the Tequila Princess to let him ship hundreds of thousands of peeps to her lands. He had no idea when they could move them back again. Still, he was here with one of his ladies. It was better than the nothing he'd had before. It was time to put the worry aside and enjoy the moment.
Back in the west, young Bonnie walked into her mother's apartment to find the older woman putting herself together for the day. They had planned a jaunt out to look around the town, but after the ugly confrontation yesterday, Bonnie didn't really want to go. She was angry at her mother. She didn't like what Roselinen had done, and she thought the stuffing in her mother's head had gone bad. "I'll be ready in a bit," Roselinen announced. Chin jutting, Bonnie replied, "easy as that?"
Roselinen glanced up to find as foul an expression on the younger woman's face as she'd ever seen. She'd expected her kids–both of them–to be on her side with this. Jay had called her an idiot when he'd gotten wind of the whole business, and now Bonnie looked like she wanted to rip the seams out of her. "Momma, I don't like this," Bonnie muttered. Roselinen glared at her. Ernestly, the younger woman reminded her, "momma, Simone has been good to us. She took us into her home! She could have just had us done in! None of these people really had to help us." "Finn is my husband," Roselinen stubbornly replied.
"Quite correct, Your Highness," announced a voice at the door. She glanced up with a shudder to find that there was a pack of people there. "Formal audience is in just a half hour," the maid declared. "We need to get you fitted up with a formal gown." Turning to Bonnie, she added, "you too, Your Highness! With His Majesty gone to the Grey Forest and the other Royal Heirs out working, it falls to you to run the audience today!" A shiver of terror shot through Bonnie. This was everything she'd tried to run away from before! Now she was in the middle. On her side, Roselinen groaned. What had she just set herself up for?!
The answer to that question wasn't long in coming. The pack of maids shoved the two women into chairs in the center of the room. Two maids ransacked the closet Roselinen had been provided, coming up with an acceptable outfit for her to wear, at which point she was stripped naked, scrubbed, and stuffed into their chosen attire. And then the gang of them ruthlessly combed out her hair to the point where it felt they'd pull it out by the knots. A separate pack of wenches went at Bonnie, giving her roughly the same treatment. And then the pair were dragged bodily out the door and down to the audience chamber at the front of the castle.
There they found an even larger pack of people all gathered within. Only this time, instead of being ushered off to one side or placed in the gallery above, they were dragged to the front of the room and shoved into the chairs there. Bonnie found herself front and center, sitting in the ornate, high-backed chair that her father customarily used. Throne, Bonnie, she thought, her mind reeling. She was sitting on a throne. Her father's throne. Her mother was shoved into the chair at her right. On her left sat the tiny little candy person known as Cherry Cream Soda. Striding into the space before the throne, the Ice Queen announced, "the meeting of the Princess Privy Council is hereby called to order. Princess Bonnibel stands in stead of the King of Ooo. Let the council begin."
The gathered nobles stood there staring at the stranger up on the throne for a moment. Young Bonnie's face was frozen in a rictus of fear, and Roselinen's eyes kept darting back and forth, going from the placid face of the Ice Queen to the pack of strangers and back over and over. Her eyes found Strudel, standing down there in that pack, but Strudel said nothing at all about what was going on. Finally, Cherry Cream Soda turned to Bonnie and said, "it's customary for the Heir to open the meeting." Bonnie's face twisted into a sour expression. She didn't have anything to say! She didn't want any part of this! "You might announce that the work on the southern barrier is underway," Cherry suggested. Except she didn't know what the fuck a southern barrier was or why that even mattered!
Smelling blood, the pack of hostile nobles surged forward, and they all began shouting at once, leaving both Bonnie and Roselinen almost climbing the backs of their chairs to get away. Simone shouted for order twice before she got the raging pack calmed down, but instead of taking charge, she only turned the meeting back over to the pair in the hot-seats. The meeting, such as it was, went off the rails not long after, and Cherry was forced to call a halt to the proceedings entirely. She wasn't quite sure what the fuck was going on or why these two were involved, but she didn't like the whole business one bit. Simone gave her not a moment to complain or comment though. As soon as the council was dismissed, the Ice Queen dipped out, leaving Cherry managing the fallout.
Roselinen wasn't far behind. As soon as she had Bonnie out of that room, the curvy pillow-person went searching for her rival, hunting through the private spaces of the palace and asking every servant she saw for directions. Their guidance led her up into one of the smaller towers and into the space that had been Princess Bubblegum's private music room.
Striding through the door in a state of rage, Roselinen demanded, "what do you think you're doing?!" Simone glanced up at her with a frown of utter bafflement. "You-you're... Those people," the pillow woman howled! "You're supposed to be dealing with those people." In patient tones, Simone responded, "no, Roselinen. You are. You're First Wife. It's now your job to manage Finn's business while he's away." The other woman grabbed her hair in a white-knuckle grip as she realized just how she'd been tricked! She'd tricked herself! She'd thought... what? That this woman would just continue dealing with the madness?! For nothing?!
The Ice Queen went back to playing her instrument as if nothing in the world mattered more than that. "H-how can you just sit there, playing that instrument," howled the pillow person?! Simone shrugged and said, "it's soothing, Roselinen... I find I have a great need for the comfort of soothing music." Closing the keyboard down, the wizard turned to her co-spouse and said, "I'm a wizard, dear. Do you understand what that means?" Clearly the other woman had no clue. Putting on a smile, the pale-haired woman remarked, "I'm afflicted with severe bouts of mental illness. In my case, that's Social Anxiety. I fear being in the company of others. I become anxious to the point of being incapacitated for fear of rejection. The more I use my powers, the worse it gets." The pillow-person goggled at her. This reserved, calm woman was actually a nervous wreck?! Roselinen's mind reeled!
Turning back to the keyboard, the curvy wizard murmured, "I turned my back on my powers because of what they did to my mind and the difficulties they caused in taking care of my son. Finn turned his back on the adventures and the long trips far from home. We settled down–with Emeraude–to raise three lovely children. It was a beautiful little house." Roselinen swallowed. It sounded very much like her own. "Finn never wanted power," the Ice Queen declared. "He could have had it in spades if he'd wanted it. When the creatures of the void came to ransack the planet, he could have asked anything he desired for defeating them. He only desired to raise his children." Taking a deep breath, the wizard released it as a sigh that seemed to carry a sorrow that made Roselinen's own burdens seem trivial. "Trouble never stays buried," Simone remarked. "Cherry lost her husband in battle with Maja the Sky Witch. Bonnie... our Bonnie... did nothing about it, even though she had the power to restore him to life. We all got caught up in the storm of Cherry's vengeance."
Roselinen gasped! "Th-that woman's... she's...," the pillow person babbled. Nodding, Simone said, "she's also one of the most loyal women in Finn's world. She's loyal to him and no-one else, Roselinen. Remember that. It's very important that you keep that in your mind." The pillow person's mind went to the words her daughter had spoken. Cherry was the lord of crime. All the myriad bandits, thieves, and footpads across the face of the world owed their loyalty to her. And Roselinen wasn't very high on her list of friends. "I was forced to take up my powers again," the Ice Queen murmured. "We were forced out of our quiet, comfortable home. For this." She indicated the castle around them with its ornate walls–and endless plots.
Rising, the wizard latched the keyboard cover. Turning away, the curvy wizard stepped off, her long strides carrying her swiftly across the room, each step counterpointed by the click of her heels and the swishing of her long skirt. She left her rival staring at her back in a state of fear and confusion.
As Roselinen pondered the harsh realities of life as a king's wife with all its ugly complications, far to the south, a cavalcade of cars came rolling into the Muscle Palace, astonishing the inhabitants. There were literally a dozen vehicles there, including four limos and six heavily built trucks from the Royal Guard. As Odessa stared out the window, Nieve dismounted from the closest car, but she wasn't alone. The Froyo Princess. Here. Why was Ragnhild here? Moments later, Abieuwa and Noemi stepped out of a second car, while down the line, dozens of heavily armed soldiers out of the Purple and Jungle Kingdoms got down from those trucks. The evil grandmother's fists clenched into a white-knuckle grip as she realized just what her granddaughter had done.
Late that evening in the Tequila Kingdom, Billy the Human came strolling into the Casa Dragones Blanco to find the place filled with happy revelers. The harvest was done. The mash was in the tanks, being fermented, and the folk of the kingdom were settling in for a winter of partying and preparing for the spring planting season. A portion of the room was filled with dancing revelers, as the band near the far wall played enchanting, upbeat music. On the other side of the room, an excellent board had been set with lots of delicious food, and pleasant aromas greeted the pair in the doorway.
Of course, as Billy was scoping out the scene, so too was he being noticed. He'd been in and out of the kingdom so quickly on his last visit that hardly anyone realized he was present. Now, many eyes focused on the big man in the doorway with his elegant silk suit and ice-blue eyes. In a time not long past, that would have made him a littler nervous. Today, with Hamest at his side, the big man waded right in.
The pair wandered the ball, meeting and pressing the flesh with all they encountered. Some of the court still remembered the time the Last Human had visited their land. Now they excitedly greeted his son and his beautiful companion. Hamest, in spite of being pregnant, was eating the attention up. She was, at least, until her bladder intervened. It was the curse of being preggers. Slender as she was, her innards and the baby were in a tenuous coexistence, leading to some hilarious moments, including finding herself with the sudden urge to go-go-go when she hadn't drunk very much at all. Knowing that his presence would only slow her down, the Ice Prince sent her on her way to the WC alone.
The big man continued to stroll the party, angling to meet up with Tequila Princess in a venue that wasn't the formal audience chamber. And that was how he came across the princess's other august visitor. She was standing just off the dance floor, looking at the people dancing when William approached. "High-Lady," Billy greeted the water-nymph matriarch. The older woman's face whipped around, her violet eyes narrowing on his face. "Prince William," Margarida replied. Her heart was racing, though she did all she could to keep the fear from her face.
Nodding at the dance floor, the big man smoothly offered, "care to dance?" The nymph frowned up at him, but he was already reaching out for her. In short order, the big man was sweeping his nemesis around the dance floor alongside the others. As the pair circled, the matriarch asked, "what brings you?" With a shrug, Billy responded, "business. Got to find temporary space for a hundred-thousand or so of my people." Glancing down into her face, the younger man announced, "your lands were my next stop..." Her mind reeled. She didn't have space for a hundred-thousand spare mouths to feed!
Feeling her tense, the big man declared, "we're shipping some people through to Coca-Kingdom. I've already spoken to Pirate Princess. You were my next stop to secure their passage." The matriarch relaxed visibly. "As long as you have no need to land on our islands, I have no issues with you passing through our waters," Margarida declared. Fair enough. Billy moved the conversation onwards. InterFone wanted to connect the Confederacy to their network, and it had fallen to Billy to open the conversation.
Margarida let him blather on about this magical device he wanted to sell them. The important thing was that he not suspect what her purpose was here. When he'd made his pitch, she offered to give the idea its due consideration and excused herself, leaving him at the edge of the dance floor. Billy let her go, as much because he was still irritated by her antics in the previous year as anything else. Thankfully, Hamest was back, offering him someone much more pleasant to dance with.
Kim Kil Wan's faction is taking some major hits. Odessa gets some pushback, and Roselinen goes hard at the Ice Queen and gets an unpleasant response. The Lord of Chaos reigns.