Diplomacy (Slayers)

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 21. Negotiation.

Xellos practically pushed Filia into the conference room which was, she reflected, both cruel and juvenile behavior, and of course completely out of character for him. She might have had time to be mad at him for that if it weren’t for the fact that, as soon as he stepped in, he closed the door and locked it.

Click. The sound echoed in Filia’s brain, causing the part of Filia that had been raring to fight to scamper away and hide behind the nearest available lobe.

Filia began to wonder just what exactly Xellos thought of as ‘negotiation’.

When Xellos started taking off his cape it did nothing to assuage her fears. In fact, she might have let out a small squeak; she wasn’t sure. But she certainly did take a few steps backward for all the good it would do her.

He laid his cape on the table in a meaningful way, and Filia couldn’t help but think that… well, soon the same thing could be said of her.

He looked up at her and gave her his most good-natured smile. He clapped his hands together eagerly. “Well,” he said, “it’s time to get down to business.”

Her imagination let out a flood of completely unauthorized images, which traipsed across her mind with no care to the damage they were doing to her as he came closer and closer…

…and walked right past her.

“Now, where are the markers?” he muttered to himself as he looked speculatively at the many roll-up maps on the wall before him. “Ah, here they are,” he said, picking up a black marker from a tray, rolling down one of the maps, and busily marking it up.

Filia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. But instead of feeling relief, all she could do was stare slack jawed at the back of his head.

“Alright, so these—” Xellos began, stopping abruptly as he turned around to look at her. “…Something wrong?” he asked.

Filia nearly rocked backwards off her heels. She put a hand to her head and tried to regain some equilibrium. She sniffed, pulled herself as back together as she’d get, said: “I’m fine,”, mentally chided her stupid, over reactive imagination, and willed herself to join him by the maps.

He gave her one lingering odd look before turning back to the map. “These circles represent the territories of the Dragon race,” he said, pointing with the marker toward areas he’d marked out.

“…Are you sure you’re allowed to write on this?” Filia asked, looking doubtfully at the permanent looking marks.

“And these,” Xellos said, completely ignoring her question as he pointed to the X’s on the map, “are the Monster race territories.”

“…That you know about,” he added, snapping the cap back on the marker.

She scowled at him. He’d probably still have said that even if they knew them all.

“Now these,” he said, tapping several of the X’s with the capped marker, “are territories that the Dragon race is interested in acquiring.”

Filia let her mouth fall open again. Those were exactly the territories that Cleon had shown her yesterday. She closed her mouth and narrowed her eyes. “Have you been spying on me?” she accused.

“Of course,” Xellos said unabashedly. “But I didn’t find this out from spying on you.”

“Oh really?” said Filia, who found this to be a likely story indeed. “Then how did you find out?”

“From spying on other dragons,” Xellos said simply. He tapped her lightly on the nose with the capped marker. “Try not to be too jealous.”

She let out a few incoherently angry sounds. What he should have said was ‘try not to want to murder me too much’ because that would honestly have been more appropriate.

“Anyway,” Xellos said, cutting through the violent cloud encircling Filia, “the deal I’m offering you is this,” – he paused for a moment – “…you can have all of them,” he said with a theatrical shrug.

“What?” Filia couldn’t help but spouting out. She hadn’t even expected to get one territory through rigorous negotiation, and now he was just going to give her all the ones she’d wanted? There had to be some kind of…

“There is one catch,” Xellos said, holding up a finger.

Filia glared at the ‘one condition’ finger. I’m not going to like this, am I?

“The trade program with the humans you’ve been planning…” Xellos said, “…end it.”

“What?” Filia said again.

“If you’re willing to agree not to trade with the humans, then we will cede you these five territories,” Xellos explained patiently. “If not, there can be no deal between us.”

Filia thought about this carefully. Coming back with all five territories would be a boon to the dragon race. Control of land meant new power… and it would be an unexpected acquisition of power considering the attitude they’d gone into the negotiation with. …On the other hand, trade could bring power too, and improving the dragon race’s relationship with the human race was one of the main objectives of the summit. Could they really abandon that?

On the… other other hand, trading with humans could bring them a great deal of trouble. So many of the people she’d met at the summit wouldn’t be responsible trading partners. And even if the dragons blockaded them… they’d still find a way of acquiring dragon technology.

On the… well, another thing to consider was that if the monsters didn’t want them to trade with the humans, it was probably a good idea to trade with the humans.

She took a deep breath. “I…” she began, “I don’t have the authority to make that decision,” she said. “I’m sure you already know,” she said sharply to Mister Spies-on-people, “but opening trade with humans is very important to the dragon race right now.”

Xellos shrugged. “Parts of it.”

“When I get back to the temple I will relay your deal to the Supreme Elder,” she said. “This one is going to have to be his decision. But Xellos,” she said warningly. “I wouldn’t expect him to say yes if I were you.”

He nodded. “Good enough,” he said.

He steered her hurriedly back to the long table and guided her into a chair. She desperately tried not to look at his cape still spread out on the table. He folded his hands neatly over the table-top. “Now to the issue of the day,” he said energetically, “The Daius Seed.”

Filia braced herself. This was the big one.

“It seems clear to me,” Xellos said, “that the Daius Seed is an annoyance to both our races. To the dragons it’s a ticking time bomb, to the monsters, well, if it was activated it would make it impossible for us to get anything done. So we both agree that something much be done about it.”

Filia nodded.

“We haven’t found any way of destroying it,” Xellos said. “I don’t suppose you dragons have come up with anything?” he asked with a clear expectation of the answer.

“Not without accidentally activating it,” Filia said, shaking her head.

“So, the thing to do then,” Xellos said, “would be to encase it in a powerful barrier. But which one between our two races should take the job?”

She’d been thinking about that one long and hard the day before and was ready with her answer: “Both of us.”

Xellos beamed at her. “That would solve a lot of our problems,” he said, grin still hanging around. “But can you find a dragon who’s willing to work with a monster?”

“I’ll do it myself if I have to,” she said firmly.

“Good to know,” Xellos said. “I’m sure you know that finding a dragon to whom the idea of working together actually occurs is quite rare.”

“Oh, as if cooperation is the first thing on the Monster race’s agenda!” Filia shot back.

“Well, the two of us have managed to cooperate fairly well,” Xellos said, sounding pleased. “In barely any time at all and with little difficulty we’ve managed to work through all the issues that would’ve had others of our number squabbling for hours.”

“That’s it?” Filia asked in disbelief.

“That’s it,” Xellos said. “Unless you had something else for the dragons?”

“No,” Filia said, still reeling. How could it have possibly been this easy? she asked herself, then she caught his expression. “What are you smiling for now?” she asked sourly.

“I was only thinking,” Xellos said. “And I think I have to admit that your Supreme Elder might have had a few other reasons for choosing you besides the one.”

Filia scowled at him, but it was a weak scowl. She didn’t like him bringing that up again but… was that a compliment?

“Speaking of which,” he began significantly.

Filia felt a chill go down her spine. She’d thought she could avoid this, but oh no…

He enveloped his hands around hers. “I believe an annoying clerk interrupted us last night?” he said.

“He’s not—” Filia began. “Well, he’s not very—” she broke away again, not quite able to lie about the situation. “Well, he means well,” she settled on forcefully, wriggling her hands out of his grip. “Which is more than I can say about you.”

“Oh really?” Xellos asked, snatching one of her hands back again and kissing it, though this time not on a part with a wound. “Then it’s a wonder why you prefer me.”

“I don’t even like you,” she said, but without her customary venom and without withdrawing her hand.

“But of the two of us,” Xellos said, pulling her closer to him so that she was practically off her seat, “which one of us have you been seeking out, and which one have you been trying to avoid?”

“That’s just a coincidence,” Filia said weakly, as he pulled her onto his lap. One of his arms was snaked around her shoulders and the other was rubbing the hand in her own lap with his thumb.

“It’s not,” Xellos said certainly, his hand moving along her shoulder.

Filia tried to find something to use against him, but she was losing both the verbal and physical components of this argument. “At least Cleon loves me!” she struck out.

“He does,” Xellos said wearily, pushing her off his lap and standing to face her. “And if you feel even the slightest thing for him in return, beyond pity, then go ahead: run to him.”

All Filia could do was stand there.

“That’s what I thought,” Xellos said.

“Well, he does love me,” Filia snapped again. “And he’d say it if I asked him.”

“I never said I didn’t love you,” Xellos said.

That stopped Filia for a moment.

“Oh come on!” Filia finally shouted. “You can’t have it both ways, Xellos!”

“I don’t see why not,” Xellos said. “I’ve neither claimed to love you, nor denied loving you. Doesn’t that present you with an acceptable level of doubt?”

Filia felt so frustrated with him. But at this point it wasn’t frustration that would lead to violence, but frustration that would lead to tears if it wasn’t curtailed. “I don’t want doubt!” she said in a voice that she knew sounded childish. “I want to be certain of things!”

“How sad for you,” Xellos said without a trace of sympathy. “You dragons are great proponents of faith, aren’t you? Well, doubt is just faith from the other side. On some level, you doubt that I only want you for political convenience. So, on some level, you have faith that I want you because I care for you.”

“Who could believe something so ridiculous?” Filia asked, anxiety heightening the pitch in her voice.

“You,” Xellos said, putting his hands on his shoulders and gently but firmly guiding her into a sitting position on the table.

His hands left her shoulders, slid up her neck, and rested on either side of her face. And she realized she wasn’t just sitting on the table; she was sitting on his cloak. The very same cloak that she’d had the inescapable feeling that she’d wind up on top of before the meeting was over. I guess someone owes their supposed ‘stupid, over reactive’ imagination an apology…

His eyes were open, violet and piercing into hers. And he was leaning over her so close that it was only a matter of time before…

She fell backwards onto the table. She probably would’ve cracked her head painfully against the wood if Xellos hadn’t caught her head before the impact, and set her gently into the folds of his cloak.

And maybe, she thought as he kissed her and toyed with the buttons on her dress, I do believe it. At least a little. But that might just be because I’d like to think that the same force that’s keeping me here is what’s drawing him to me.

…He never said he didn’t love me, she thought in her own defense.

…He never said…

“Why?” she breathed out, the minute he broke contact.

“Why what?” he asked.

“Why can’t you say that you love me?” she asked.

He gave a twisted little smile. “You’ve certainly recovered your self-esteem,” he said. “But is it right to assume—”

“I don’t mean it like that,” Filia said in a slightly frustrated tone. It was hard to put together her thoughts in a coherent way with his hands on her. “I mean… if you don’t love me… then why wouldn’t you just say it anyway?”

He gave her a blank look. “I don’t—” he began.

“You don’t mind being dishonest!” she exclaimed. “Maybe you prefer half-truths, but that’s just because you feel clever using them. You wouldn’t shy away from a lie if it was more expedient. So why not just say you love me even if you don’t mean it?”

“It would certainly make things easier for you,” Filia went on. “And you’ve had me so twisted around your little finger the last two days that I’d be dumb enough to believe it,” she admitted bitterly.

“But you won’t say you love me,” Filia said fervently. “And the only reason I can think of why you won’t is because you’re afraid it’s true. You can deal with toying with my emotions and using me for political purposes; but loving me?” she said, her voice practically breaking at that point. “You can’t reconcile that with who you think you are.”

He stared at her, and there was a special difference in his expression that only those who spent a lot of time around Xellos would pick up on. Because Xellos thought he knew people. He thought he had them pegged. He ran through conversations before they happened and knew exactly what he’d say and exactly how he’d act. But occasionally someone would say something he hadn’t expected and it would throw him. This was Xellos taken aback. This was Xellos unrehearsed.

He reigned in his expression almost as quickly as he’d lost control of it. “Believe whatever it is you need to believe,” he said with an undertone of harshness in his voice.

She reached up a hand to his face and pulled him down to her, lifting her head up to his ear.

“You too,” she whispered, her own lips grazing his skin.

It appeared, at that point, that the negotiations were well and truly over. And even as Xellos slid her out of her dress she couldn’t be entirely sure which one of them had won.

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 22. He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.

Filia self-consciously picked up her dress from the sad little pile in the corner where Xellos had tossed it. He shouldn’t have done that. A dress like that is meant to be hung up or folded neatly. It was made of a high quality fabric. Now it’d be all wrinkled. It was… it was downright inconsiderate. And…

…And maybe this wasn’t really what she should’ve been thinking about. But what could she say? She’d come to this summit an honorable, virtuous dragon, and now, just a few short days later, she’d brought eternal shame to her race. How do these things happen?

And she should’ve felt guilty, but she didn’t. Not really. She felt a little scared, but not guilty.

Doubt was as good as faith, he’d said. Well, she’d had both. For just a second, though, she’d been able to believe that he could love her. Then she knew for certain that he couldn’t. But then she’d thought again that he must. And… well, two out of three aint bad.

There was a good chance that all this was just one of his mind games. ‘Do I love you or don’t I love you? I’ll never tell!’ But to be able to believe just for a moment that someone like Xellos, someone who was all that Xellos was and had done all the things that Xellos had, could actually be capable of loving her? That had been powerful. Irresistibly powerful.

She’d never know. She changed her opinion every other minute. Sometimes faith was strong, sometimes doubt was strong, but she’d never know for sure.

No… she would know for sure if… If he told her he loved her then she could be absolutely sure that he didn’t. Her mind couldn’t imagine him saying those words without them being dishonest. But yet, if he outright said he didn’t love her... then that would be for his benefit alone, and she’d know that to be a lie too.

It struck her that in all this, she’d been so concerned about how Xellos felt toward her that she’d never bothered to consider whether she loved him or not. An easy answer would’ve come a few days ago, but not now. She wasn’t sure; which was just her subconscious’s way of telling her that she wasn’t ready for the answer yet.

She finished buttoning up her dress. She really needed to say something. She could feel the silence pulling at her. But she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what came next.

“that uh…” she began awkwardly, not turning around to look at him. “That doesn’t usually happen during negotiations, does it?”

There was a thoughtful silence. “Not in my experience,” Xellos finally said.

Her shoulders relaxed as she turned to face him. By all rights, he should’ve been strutting. He’d achieved… well, she couldn’t think of any greater victory he could have over her. Killing her certainly wouldn’t have topped it. That would’ve been easy. But seducing her? Winning her and having her under his power? He should’ve been bragging. He should’ve been smirking. But he wasn’t. That meant that he was worried. And the fact that he was worried made her feel a lot better about the situation.

He caught her looking at him and she looked down. “You,” she began, talking just for the sake of talking, “you got my dress all wrinkled.”

There was another silence, as though extensive calibration was going on. “Oh dear,” he said, starting to sound more like himself. “We wouldn’t want people spreading vicious lies about your character.”

“That’s because you’d prefer them spreading vicious truths about my character!” Filia shot back.

“Ex-actly!” Xellos said, and it felt like they’d got the old rhythm back, but something lurked underneath the familiar pattern and it would never go away. Perhaps it had been there all along.

“Well,” Filia said, hand running up and down her arm awkwardly, “I suppose we should just…” – throw ourselves into each other’s arms again in a desperate effort to stop this feeling that we’re losing something that we’ve only just found – “…go then.”

“Yes,” Xellos agreed. “We’ve been in here for awhile. I’m sure you’re eager to find out if your clerk friend still holds you in such high esteem.”

“Don’t be such a jerk,” she said sourly, glaring at him as she walked over to the door and undid the latch. It was then that it occurred to her that the lock was on the inside. She could’ve left at any time. Xellos had never locked her in; he’d locked the rest of the world out.

As they walked through the hall and the noise of the busy crowd echoed to greet them, Filia knew she had to ask something. It was something that was occupying a lot of her mind, but all the ways she could think of to ask it were unbearable. She had to disguise it or he’d know for sure just how much he’d won.

“I’ll uh… I’ll talk with Cleon or Rasmus about getting a message sent to the Supreme Elder,” she said, trying to shift into a business-like voice, “about your offer on the territories. And then I’ll be able to tell you for sure either way.” She hadn’t been able to meet his eye through that last sentence, but she hoped he didn’t notice.

He just watched her.

“And,” she said, trying desperately to fill the silence, “we still have to seal up the Daius Seed. So…” she trailed off.

He tapped his staff idly against the ground and said, in a maddeningly condescending tone: “Yes, Filia: we will be seeing each other again.” And then walked away.

She stared at him as he walked away and cursed his ability to hear questions that hadn’t been asked.

*****

Filia strode through the lobby with apparent confidence. The general idea was for people to think: ‘Wow. Look at how confident that woman is. Why, I’m so struck by how obviously in-control of her destiny she is, that I can scarcely find time to notice her wrinkled dress, tussled hair, or how long she was in the negotiating room with that man, let alone draw any conclusions from these facts.’

She hoped it was working. But she was pretty sure she saw Lopa wink at her from the open bar, and that was not a good sign at all.

She located Cleon by searching for the meekest looking figure reeking of a crushed spirit. Some of the guilt she probably owed for sleeping with Xellos materialized.

“Oh, um… hello again Miss Filia,” Cleon said, and she could tell by his crestfallen expression that her confident air had not distracted him from the facts as they were. “How uh… how did it go?” he asked, with a look that said he really didn’t want to know.

‘Amazingly’ would’ve been an extremely insensitive thing to say in the situation. “Pretty well, considering,” she said with almost manic cheerfulness to cover up for the all-kinds-of-bad that this social situation was made of. “We reached an understanding about the Daius Seed and will have the territorial issues worked out as soon as I can check something. He didn’t want to talk about anything else.” Well, she added to herself, not anything I’m going to tell you about.

“Oh,” Cleon said. “But you were in there for a long—” He stopped. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and appeared to decide to abandon this line of inquiry. “Anyway, we’ve gotten a message about the Pro-Human League while you were with… while you were negotiating.”

Filia silently thanked Cleon for not putting scare quotes around the word ‘negotiating’, and now she was curious. “Have they been caught?” she asked.

“Unfortunately not,” Cleon said. “They’ve taken refuge in Bulraez and their government will never turn the League over to the police. But they have released a statement about you. They’ve taken complete responsibility for all three attempts on your life.”

Filia let out a breath. It’d been pretty clear they were responsible when they fled, but it was nice to have this all cleared up; though admittedly not as nice as having them behind bars.

“Well, that’s that,” she said rubbing her forehead. “At least we know for sure.”

“And Bulraez will have the dragon race to contend with,” Cleon reminded her, as if that would cheer her up.

Filia clawed at her own hair in frustration. “There is no room for razing whole countries in our new foreign policy!” she insisted.

“But they tried to kill you, Miss Filia,” Cleon said in a voice so concerned that it increased Filia’s guilt levels once again. “How could we not strike back against those who tried to harm one of our diplomats?”

“Well that sounds very well and good, but if we just jump out there and start fighting how will that look to the rest of the—” she paused as if struck dumb. Oh my word. I’ve actually started thinking like a politician.

She straightened up. This was all okay. She had to get a message out to the Supreme Elder anyway, and she’d just mention the problems swift justice could bring about in there. No problem.

She looked around. “Where is Mister Rasmus?” she asked.

“Oh,” Cleon said, now looking more uncomfortable than ever. “He was a little… out of sorts.”

Filia nodded grimly. She’d seen the look of pure disgust on Rasmus’s face when she’d left with Xellos. He’d already jumped to the conclusion of what would happen in that negotiating room besides negotiating.

“He went off to his room,” Cleon said. “He was… very angry; saying all sorts of horrible things that I wouldn’t care to repeat.”

“I think I can imagine,” Filia said, burying her face in her hand. “Did the word ‘harlot’ come up?” she asked in a sort of detached way.

“Four times, I’m afraid,” Cleon said miserably.

Well that was it. That was just it. She had enough on her plate without having to deal with Rasmus’s never-ending disappointment in her. Where did he get off judging her for sleeping with Xellos? What, did he think he had the right just because that was an extremely judgable thing to do? Well she was done with him. She was damn sure that she wasn’t going to be treated that way.

“You go and get him then,” she said, neglecting to add ‘because I’m certainly not going to’. A better thought struck her. “Wait. First get me a pen, paper, and an envelope.”

He fished around for a pen and paper in his bag, and if Xellos had been there he would’ve made a ‘glorified secretary’ remark. Filia took the items from him and leaned against the table to write. She drafted out a letter to the Supreme Elder outlining Xellos’s offer of exchanging their trading policy for territory. She added her arguments both for and against it. Then towards the end she advised caution in dealing with the Pro-Human League, particularly if it involved outside parties. She signed it with flourish, and stuffed it into the envelope Cleon had offered.

“Take this to Rasmus and tell him to deliver it to the Supreme Elder,” she said, passing the envelope to Cleon. “Since my assassins have fled I don’t have much need for a bodyguard, so he can be a courier instead.” Because if that’s going to be his attitude then I don’t want him around, she thought savagely. “I want to be able to get back to Xellos as quick as possible on this territory issue.” She ignored the weasely, disconcertingly Xellos-like voice in her head that snidely asked if that sentence would still be true without the ‘on this territory issue’ part.

Cleon took the note and for a minute Filia was sure he was going to say something like: ‘Rasmus won’t like this’ which would force her to pull rank on him again. And she really didn’t want to snap at him after breaking his heart. But he just nodded and went off.

Filia crumpled slightly, her shell of strength cracking now that there was no one around to bluff in front of. It was probably stupid to send Rasmus back to the temple now. He’d probably spread all kinds of rumors… and unfortunately not false ones. But she couldn’t stand the idea of having him around if he was going to treat her like an abomination. Someone had to go send the message, and it might as well be the person Filia really didn’t want to have to deal with anymore.

Anyway, she thought angrily. Let him say whatever he wants at the temple. I don’t care.

…That’s just because you’re mad, her common sense pointed out. You might regret this when you’ve calmed down a bit.

I won’t! Filia thought back petulantly.

Fine. You might regret it when they stone you for having sex with a demon.

Filia just glared at the wall.

“Miss Filia?” came a tentative voice.

She looked up. Cleon had come back, still holding the envelope and looking extremely uncomfortable.

“I just wanted to say…” he began, “that if the Supreme Elder asked you to… If you… for the dragon race…” He stopped, gave her a wretched look and tried again. “You didn’t have to…”

Filia sighed. Cleon thought the best of her, which was why he was convinced that she’d selflessly surrendered her body to the enemy at the command of her leader and for the good of her people. It was much nobler sounding to him than the truth. But she wasn’t about to disillusion him. It would be cruel, and she’d been unintentionally cruel enough to him already.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said kindly, but firmly. “Just get that letter to Mister Rasmus.”

“Yes, Miss Filia,” he said, looking almost relieved not to have to more clearly articulate what he was thinking.

She watched him leave again, her jaw set in determination.

What I could really use right now, she decided, is a drink.

She cast her eyes over to the open bar and caught sight of Queen Lopa and Duke Arkon, still enjoying a few drinks on the basis that it was five o’clock somewhere.

And Filia realized there was something that might make her feel better than a drink.

*****

“Oh, hi there, Filia!” Queen Lopa said as Filia approached. “Just the girl we were talking about.”

Filia took that as an extremely bad sign. She exchanged a grim look with Arkon.

“We heard some cranky looking old dragon call you—” Lopa paused, tapped a manicured fingernail against her chin and said, “Well, a lot of things. But the main impression I got was that something besides discussion was going on in that negotiating room. Good job!”

The fact that Rasmus’s not-so-glowing comments about her had been loud enough for the entire room to hear was just another column in the monument to Filia’s endless embarrassment over the whole situation. Hearing Lopa congratulate her on having an affair with a fellow diplomat was not doing anything for her mental health either.

“You know what they say,” Lopa quipped as she sloshed around her wine glass, “politics make strange bedfellows.”

Filia winced. Arkon gave her a look that said: ‘She’s got about five of these’.

“I guess that you could say that you had diplomatic relations with—” Lopa began.

“I actually had a question for the Duke, Miss Lopa,” Filia cut-in just a little too late.

“Oh?” Lopa said, looking puzzled that anyone would want to talk to Arkon of all people when there were much juicer topics to discuss. “Carry on then, I guess,” she said, waving her hand. “I suppose we’ll have to save our girl talk for later.”

Filia frowned, but put that in the category of ‘problems I don’t have to deal with right now’ and let it go. She turned to Arkon who was giving her his wary attention. She knew this was going to be awkward, but she had to ask now. It might not spell out an absolute, but it would give her some peace of mind.

“It’s… well, it’s fairly common knowledge that you two are… in a political relationship,” she said carefully.

Lopa nodded. “That’s true,” she said. “Arcet and Renz are trading partners so we frequently… collaborate on matters of state.”

“But it’s also common knowledge that you two are…” Filia wilted for a moment under the stony glare from Arkon, “…otherwise involved.”

There was a crowded silence.

“I think she means that we’re having sex,” Lopa said in a stage whisper to Arkon.

“I got her meaning, Lopa,” Arkon said harshly.

“Look, I know it’s none of my business,” Filia said, looking down from Arkon’s expression that agreed with this. “But I need to know: Your Grace, do you love her?”

Lopa suddenly looked extremely interested in her wine glass, or at least, more interested than she’d been before. Arkon gave her a look of pure suspicion.

“What is this?” he asked. “Did Ottovan put you up to this?”

“No,” Filia said. “No one’s asked me to. I just need to know. You two have diplomatic reasons for being together and I don’t want to judge, but I think that would be fine for both of you. But I want to know if that’s the only reason. I can’t tell you why, but it’s extremely important to me. Do you love her?”

Lopa ran her finger around the rim of her glass as though to indicate that, against all reason, she wasn’t paying any attention to the conversation going on before her eyes. Arkon gave her a sidelong glance and then looked back at Filia as if utterly taken aback by the directness of her question.

Finally he said in a quiet, sullen sort of voice: “Yes.”

The universe tried this answer on for size.

Lopa looked up from her glass. “Of course, we’re practical people, so yes or no doesn’t matter to me,” she said. But she smiled a smug little smile nonetheless.

And Filia smiled too. This didn’t prove anything, and she’d probably never be certain, but there was this:

Love or politics? Can’t it be both?

Yes. Yes it most certainly can.

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 23. Ruined.

After having batted off Lopa’s more embarrassing personal questions, Filia had finally ditched the crowd. All she wanted now was to go to her room and lie down. She couldn’t stand being around other people now, not with everything that was swirling around inside her head. She just wanted a little peace.

But she couldn’t go back to her room; not yet. If she went, she’d risk running into Rasmus, and she didn’t want to have to deal with him. She wanted to keep away from there until Cleon found her and told her that Rasmus was gone; then she could crawl into her room and escape for a little while; maybe figure things out.

But there was no escape yet. Maybe Rasmus was being difficult. So, deciding that she at least had to sit down, Filia found a nook in a less populated hallway, and sat down.

She didn’t know whether to try to think or to try not to think. Maybe if she could just string a couple thoughts together then this whole thing wouldn’t be as confusing as it was. Then again, maybe if she strung a few thoughts together she’d realize what trouble she was really in.

And she still didn’t feel guilty! That was the thing of it. Even after she’d had all this time to reflect on it, even after hearing about Rasmus’s rant, and even after seeing Cleon’s face. Sure, she felt bad for hurting Cleon, but she didn’t intrinsically feel that what she and Xellos had done was wrong. While it had been happening it had all seemed so… clear that that was the right thing to do.

Which was crazy. And might have been a sign that she’d completely thrown out her moral compass and just didn’t care anymore. But this didn’t feel like… stealing.

Maybe she did love him. Maybe she didn’t feel bad because she’d acted out of love.

But what sane person could honestly fall in love with that evil, manipulative, obnoxious, arrogant, no good—

She realized at this point that she was standing again and clenching her fists. She self-consciously sat back down.

How did he always do that to her? He could rile her without even doing anything, damn him!

But it had always been like that. Now that she came to think about it, even when she’d hated him… or at least only hated him, she probably had expounded more thought and more energy on him than any single other person in her life. She’d… she’d cared about him more.

Of course, most of that caring had involved desperately wanting to knock the smug out of him, preferably with something both heavy and sharp. But it was a sort of caring, nonetheless.

She wondered if it had started out that way with him too. She was absolutely sure that when they first met he couldn’t stand her. But, while things had never been friendly between them (uh… at least before the negotiation room incident), there had been a… change in how he treated her.

All that negative energy between them… how did the desire to tear each other limb from limb transform into…?

Good Lord, Filia thought with a detached sort of horror, what kind of people are we? I mean, Xellos has an excuse: he’s a demon. But I’m at least supposed to be above dark and dangerous obsessions.

And Xellos thought she was attracted to danger…

It had to be something like… like magnets. Like charges repel. Cleon was disturbingly similar to how she’d behaved when she’d just gotten out of the temple (although she liked to think she was less sweaty), and she had absolutely no interest in him; Xellos had gotten that right at least. Unlike charges attract. Could you get more opposite than a dragon and a monster? Than a priestess and a murderer?

This pull between them… the fusion magic… all of it. Could it all be because they were so deeply, fascinatingly, different from each other than they couldn’t help but be drawn to one another? It sounded like the type of things that stories were made of.

She folded her arms. No. It would’ve sufficed as an explanation, but the more she thought about it, the more dissatisfied she was with it. Maybe it said something, but it just wasn’t enough.

Because when she thought about it, it didn’t go all the way to the core. Opposites, were they? True opposites… not exactly. By that logic they should’ve been as far apart along the spectrum as it was possible to be. Filia had once believed herself to be as virtuous as the temple had brought her up to be. But she couldn’t be pure as light. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to be.

And a priestess in this fairy-tale union on dark and light would have to be as pure as light. A priestess like that wouldn’t disobey her people to raise the last of a race they’d called enemy; a priestess like that wouldn’t be willing to play politics with a bunch of criminals just because they could claim royalty; a priestess like that wouldn’t quit being a priestess; and if a priestess like that did sleep with Xellos – because of the aforementioned principle of opposites – she would at least have the decency to be ashamed of herself.

And if Xellos thought he was in the deep end of evil – which she wasn’t even entirely sure he did at this point – then he was dead wrong. Certainly, he was all those despicable things that she’d called him before. But he nevertheless managed to crack jokes, protect people he needed to, and save the freaking world on one occasion. Sure, he did those things for the wrong reasons, but Filia reflected that her sins had been committed for the right reasons. That didn’t make the things she did less wrong, and by that token, Xellos’s darkly motivated deeds still carried as much good.

They weren’t really opposites when you looked carefully. They were both nearer to the center… and nearer to each other. Which was… amazing when she thought about it.

Is it… she thought, almost dumbfounded; is it okay if I love him?

Of course it’s not, logic kicked in. You can’t even say for sure if he loves you. And whatever the case, he’s not going to miss an opportunity to use a connection to you. If you’re not very careful you could end up endangering your entire race. And you saw Rasmus’s reaction. Do you think it’s going to be easy when he gets to the temple and everyone finds out what you’ve done? You’ve committed the biggest taboo in history! Your people will shun you and spit at the sound of your name at the very least, and kill you at the most. And don’t think you’ll be any safer when it comes to Xellos’s crowd. Those monsters will cut you down as soon as you stop being useful.

Yes, Filia thought. But that’s all… outside stuff. I can’t control that. I meant… is it okay with me if I love him? Could I be okay with that?

She stood up, as if in a dream, and began to walk down the hallway.

She was going on. She wasn’t going to walk on eggshells anymore. And if she ran into Rasmus or anyone else along the way, what of it? Who cared what they thought? They hadn’t been there from the beginning. They didn’t know.

But Filia was pretty sure she knew. And the surprising thing was that she was okay about it. She was finally okay.

*****

Filia strode down the hall on a rush of newfound self-acceptance. At this point she almost wished she’d run into Rasmus with his letter. Then she could tell him off. She really wanted to tell someone off, and for once, Xellos would not have been her first choice. Telling Rasmus what she thought of his high-and-mighty attitude wouldn’t really be closure, because if anyone at the temple found out what had happened between her and Xellos, it would be just the beginning of that kind of treatment. But it would have at least made her feel better to shout at him a bit in the here and now.

She walked up to the room Cleon and Rasmus shared and was surprised to see the door open. Did that mean Rasmus had already left and she’d be denied the chance to confront him? …It seemed kind of careless for a bodyguard to leave his hotel door open. Maybe that had been Cleon. Goodness knew he was distracted lately.

The light was off, and the thick line of trees outside the window meant that the room was somewhat dark even though it was barely midday.

She took a hesitant step forward. “Is anyone in there?” she called. “Mister Cleon? Mister Rasmus?”

When no answer came back she slowly sidestepped the door, careful not to brush against it and cause it to creak open even further, and quietly walked into the room. She gasped as she turned the corner.

“Mister Cleon!” she cried, running up to the prone dragon’s side.

He wasn’t moving. He was breathing, but he was otherwise still and completely unresponsive. A tiny puddle, barely more than a trickle, of blood was by his head, staining her hand as she reached out to him.

She drew back in horror. “What’s going on?” she asked in a shaken voice. “Who did this to you?”

She didn’t have much time to contemplate this, as an arm shot around her neck, banging against her throat so hard that her vision was clouded by scorching navy spots for a moment. She coughed.

“You just had to ruin everything, didn’t you? You and that monster,” hiss a voice in her ear. It was an angry voice and desperate too. Gruff and horrifyingly familiar.

“Rasmus?” Filia croaked out, against the hold choking away at her throat. “What are you doing? What have you done to Cleon?”

“Just put him to sleep for a little while. I don’t think he’s dead,” Rasmus said in a tone of barely suppressed rage. “But then again, who cares? He’s just like you and that so-called Supreme Elder when you get down to it. All of you are trying to degrade the good name of dragon. I won’t allow it. Not anymore.”

Filia struggled just to keep breathing. She couldn’t take this. She’d finally thought she was safe and now…

“I had it all planned out so carefully,” Rasmus said, the edge in his voice getting sharper as his grip around her tightened. “As soon as the new Supreme Elder rigged his way into the job, I knew something must be done. And when he announced his plans to send a diplomat to the human world summit… I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.”

“Imagine,” Rasmus practically spat derisively. “Dragons kowtowing to monsters, relying on weak and worthless humans, and trading our secrets for their rubbish. A true dragon could never allow this!”

“All I needed,” Rasmus said, anguish rising in his voice, “was one spark. Anything to throw the unrest of the dragon community into a call to war. Even the new Supreme Elder wouldn’t be able to stop it. Only a war with the monsters could bring us back to what we always should have been.”

Filia swallowed laboriously. She was being held against her will by a crazy person. Anyone who wanted to restart the War of the Monsters Fall had to be out of their mind. She hoped none of the foam that must’ve been shooting out of his mouth would end up in her hair.

“If the monsters killed the diplomat sent out to accomplish all those awful things, it would solve everything,” Rasmus went on fervently. “The Supreme Elder’s policies would be destroyed and war between our races would recommence.” An angry silence followed. “But I couldn’t rely on the monsters to do that. Both our races have clung onto life so long that we’ve forgotten our principles: forgotten that the only way we can deal with one another is through warfare.”

Filia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She thought it had been all neatly sorted out. How could Rasmus have been… “The Pro-Human League—”

“Ha!” Rasmus barked with venom. “Those clowns almost destroyed the entire thing before it was off the ground with their interference. Bad luck and intrusions have dogged me this entire time. First there was that old commander. I hadn’t counted on him being there. The old man can probably smell cyanide a mile away. Then there were those trigger-happy Pro-Human Leaguers. And worst of all Xellos. He’s been on to me since the poisoning, and has succeeded, along with your half-wit assistance, in bringing down the entire plan.”

“He… does that,” Filia barely managed to get out against the pressure on her throat.

“And you’re proud of that, are you?” Rasmus asked, sounding utterly incensed now. “As much as I’d love to kill you, it wouldn’t do me any good anymore. You and Xellos and those Pro-Human Leaguers saw to that.”

Filia tried to see this as a good sign through her haze of pain and fear. At least it meant she wouldn’t be dying… yet.

“Those damn Pro-Human Leaguers,” Rasmus growled. “How could I possibly sell these assassination attempts as plots of the monster race to the other dragons with those idiots claiming responsibility? One lousy shot. All they were responsible for was one lousy shot. They’re just out to bolster their reputations now.”

That sparked a recollection in Filia’s mind. “But you saved me!” she shouted in disbelief. “You took a bullet for me!”

“Yes,” Rasmus said sourly. “Because a war with some fanatic human group means nothing to me. I needed to kill you and frame the monsters for your death. I couldn’t do that if you were gunned down by some speciestist sniper.”

It was twisted, it was insane, but somehow it worked. And Filia had trusted him so much after he took that shot. She hadn’t counted on the fact that he’d been saving her to kill her himself.

“Getting shot was a major set-back,” Rasmus grimaced. “But at least asking for extra medical care was a good alibi.”

Another remembrance shot through Filia’s brain. “You were pretending to be more hurt than you were that whole time!” she declared, slightly numbed. “Xellos said you were taking too long…”

“That’s because he was paying attention,” Rasmus said, in a tone suggesting that paying attention should be punishable by death. And even if the Pro-Human Leaguers hadn’t interfered, even if their claims could be refuted, that monster has destroyed my plan beyond salvaging.”

“I knew, I knew,” Rasmus said, almost as if scolding himself. “I knew something wasn’t right the moment I saw you two. Too… close. But how could I have possibly guessed the unspeakable truth? I thought you were a know-nothing pawn of the Supreme Elder, just like Cleon, but I couldn’t believe that you were that much of a disgrace.”

Filia would’ve pointed out that trying to murder people and frame others for it to start, of all things, a war is pretty disgraceful in and of itself. But it hurt to talk and she was certain the comment wasn’t worth the reaction.

“How could I possibly frame him for your death?” he asked. “When it became ridiculously clear as each day went past that you two were involved? It got to the point where absolutely no one close to you would have believed it.”

“We weren’t involved,” Filia choked out.

…At that time.

“You’re lying,” Rasmus said firmly. “And after what you’ve done I wouldn’t expect you to be above lying. I wouldn’t expect you to be above anything.”

“Of all the diplomats that could have been chosen, the Supreme Elder picks the one dragon low enough to throw her lot in with a monster,” Rasmus said bitterly. “Knowing him, I’m assuming it wasn’t a coincidence. I suppose it’s not enough that our species has already gotten screwed by them, you just had to literally—”

“Shut up,” Filia ordered in a strangled voice.

“You’re in no position to make demands,” Rasmus said. “There’s no way I can salvage my plan now, but I’ll be damned if I let the dragon race fall to dishonorable dragons like you and the Supreme Elder. So all I have left is one final plan. And for that I need you.”

Filia closed her eyes. She had a feeling that when her usefulness was over, then so would be her life.

“Where is the Daius Seed?” Rasmus asked in a low voice. “Cleon said you knew where it was. So tell me!”

Filia cried out as his grip tightened around her neck. She didn’t know what he wanted with that information, but there was no way she could help someone like him; even if she had to give up her life.

“Now why would a dragon want to know that?” a familiar voice from nowhere asked.

“X-Xellos?”

“You?” Rasmus spat, looking around the room for the source of the voice. “Stay out of this! It doesn’t concern you!”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure it does considering all the effort you’ve put into trying to frame me,” Xellos said, appearing out of thin air. “Though I suppose it was a bit careless of me to interrupt your little monologue.”

“I will not allow this!” Rasmus shouted. “With the Daius Seed I can stop the campaign you and this girl have cooked up. Peace between the dragons and the monsters? Your blood should boil at that prospect! That, at least, we should have in common!”

“What you don’t seem to grasp, Mister Rasmus,” Xellos said, as though making a polite correction, “is that peace is just preparation for war. Diplomacy is just a different way of twisting the knife in. Peace can be much more vicious and unforgiving than war could ever dream of being. And in many ways it’s more satisfying. If you don’t believe me, then you should read your race’s own history. It’s full of colorful examples of just what I’m talking about.”

“I’m not going to listen to this,” Rasmus hissed. “You can’t fool me as easily as you can fool her.”

“Well, whatever the case,” Xellos said, scratching at his hair, “I don’t see how the Daius Seed is supposed to help you accomplish your goals.”

“The Daius Seed is an object of unlimited potential,” Rasmus explained in a frustrated tone. “With its power I can restart the war.”

“Oh! You’ve fallen for the story that it’s a wish granter!” Xellos said, clapping his fist into his hand.

“I haven’t fallen for the fiction that your kind and the Supreme Elder have concocted because you don’t want anyone to use it, if that’s what you mean,” said Rasmus coldly.

“And what if you’re wrong about it?”

Rasmus took a deep breath. “I’d rather destroy causality than see a world where dragons are subservient to monsters.”

Xellos leaned his index finger against his brow and made some clucking noises with his tongue. “Oh dear,” he said. “Another dragon with a messiah complex.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Xellos said, and the cheerful pantomime was broken as he opened his eyes and gave Rasmus a calculating look. “So, I suppose this is the part where you threaten to kill her if I don’t tell you the location of the Daius Seed?” he asked, as though Rasmus was tiresome and predictable.

Filia had a strange realization that she’d been held hostage by both men in the room. Ironically enough, she’d been treated more gently the time with Xellos. Though in this case, ‘gently’ just means that he didn’t nearly strangle her every five seconds.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Rasmus answered.

“Oh?” Xellos said, raising an eyebrow.

“It wouldn’t make a difference what I threatened to do to her. This idiot girl may not have figured it out, but I know you’re only using her. It would be a waste of my time to try to get the answer out of you,” Rasmus explained bitterly. “But I’ll get her to tell me herself in the end.”

“Are you sure?” Xellos asked. “You should know that she has a lot of really stupid noble ideas in her head.”

“She either tells me or she dies!” Rasmus screeched.

“Really stupid,” Xellos emphasized.

Filia was feeling insulted. Keeping your mouth shut so the world doesn’t turn into a nightmare from which there is no awakening is not a stupid noble idea. It’s a smart one! Anyone could see that.

Xellos sighed. “You know Veize?”

Filia felt Rasmus’s grip on her relax slightly. “Yes,” he said hesitantly.

“There used to be a little shrine there on top of a mountain that looked like—” Xellos paused. “Well, it was a very distinct looking mountain. Anyway, running around that mountain is Kipler River. Along that river is a system of caves.”

“And?”

“And that,” Xellos said. “Is Valgaav’s old base camp. Where the teleportation device to the former site of the Pillar of Light is.”

“Xellos no!” Filia shouted, trying in vain to escape from Rasmus’s grip.

Rasmus looked doubtfully from Filia to Xellos. “You’re telling the truth,” he said almost disbelievingly.

“The whole truth,” Xellos agreed wholeheartedly. “The place where the Daius Seed stands is too far away and too destabilized for even we that can teleport to reach in one go. The teleportation device is broken, and will only take you part of the way. You’ll have to fly the rest.”

Rasmus hesitated for a moment, and then vanished in a flash of gold, leaving Filia to fall to the floor, gasping for air and clutching her neck.

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 24. Memory Lane.

Filia coughed several times, trying to get some life back into her airway after it had almost been crushed by Rasmus. “Xellos, you—” she began, staggering to her feet. “You idiot!” she screeched, rising up to her full height, fists clenched by her side.

Xellos stared at her. “Excuse me?” he said in his ‘Oh, I know I didn’t hear you right’ tone.

Filia glowered at him. What had he expected? For her to gush ‘My hero!’ and throw her arms around him? In his dreams!

“How could you just tell him how to get to the Daius Seed?” she raged, storming over to him.

“Well, pardon me for saving your life,” he said unrepentantly.

“My life?” Filia repeated angrily. “You know what’ll happen when he gets to that thing! It would’ve been better for me to die then for that to happen!”

She paced off to the side of the room, almost in a daze. Impending doom was approaching; and not even the kind she was familiar with. “It’s all over,” she said almost numbly to herself. “A complete breakdown of the rules of the universe. It’ll be nothing but nonsense from here on out!”

She turned around to face him, arms flailing expressively in the air as she really worked herself into a lather. “Rabbits in waistcoats! Smoking caterpillars! Anthropomorphic playing cards! Complete and utter chaos!” Her hands pressed against the side of her face.

Suddenly her expression sharpened and she glared at Xellos. “You like chaos!” she reproached, rounding on him.

“Well, admittedly that’s true, but—” Xellos began, holding up his hands in a placatory way.

“You meant to tell him this whole time!” Filia declared, her fists clenched as though she was ready to box. “Didn’t you?”

“Easy,” Xellos said, taking a half-step back before he realized he was doing it. Such was the power of Filia’s tears-to-towering-rage mood swings. “The general idea is that chaos should be a little less… whimsical,” he tried to explain. “I never really intended to tell him.”

Filia’s rage lessened and she seemed to shrink back to her normal size. “Well, now he knows,” she said almost sulkily. “And once he gets there, there won’t be anything anyone can do about it.”

“And, maybe if you stopped throwing an immature fit, you’d realize we still have a chance to catch him,” Xellos prodded.

“Oh, get serious!” Filia said, gritting her teeth. She’d noted the ‘immature’ part. “He’s already teleported! Sure, he still has to fly to the Daius Seed, but so would we! We’d never catch up!”

“If you’ll recall,” Xellos said, holding up his index finger in his standard lecturing pose, “Valgaav’s old base is a rather labyrinthine system of caves. We’ve been there before; Rasmus hasn’t. We not only have a chance of catching him, but of beating him to the Daius Seed.”

Filia stopped. Now that she thought about it… that did make sense. There might be a chance yet.

“Come on,” Xellos said, holding out a hand. “You dragons are terribly inefficient teleporters.”

Filia ignored that little slight. If they were going to catch Rasmus then they had to hurry. But…

She cast her eyes over to where Cleon still lay unconscious on the floor, blood dripping from his head.

She approached him, knelt over him, and held out her hands, letting a peaceful golden glow pass through her and to him.

“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that we don’t have much time,” Xellos reminded, still holding out his hand.

“Quiet,” Filia said. “I’m just going to heal his wound really quick. I don’t want him to bleed to death. Anyway… it’s my fault this happened to him.”

Xellos gave this due consideration. “N-ooo,” he finally said. “I think it was Mister Rasmus’s fault for bludgeoning him.”

“But I sent him to talk to Rasmus,” Filia said, completing her spell. The bleeding stopped. Cleon’d wake up with a headache, but he’d be alright.

“Oh, well then, pardon me,” Xellos said. “I guess it is your fault.”

“Shut up!” Filia snapped, getting up.

She turned to him, still angry but knowing they both had a dragon to catch, and took his hand. He smiled, gripped her hand more tightly, and pulled her in close to him.

And then the world disappeared.

*****

When the world reappeared it was much darker and rockier. Also Filia was fighting the urge to throw up.

“What is wrong with you?” she shrieked, breaking away from him and catching her breath. “At least when dragons teleport they do it so nobody gets sick!”

“Right,” Xellos said, unperturbed. “Inefficiently.”

She scowled at him. It would serve him right if she threw up on his stupid shoes. But they didn’t have time for that at the moment. They had to beat Rasmus to the Daius Seed.

“See?” Xellos said, gesturing at the rock formations with his staff. “There are many passageways he could’ve taken. But we know the right ones.”

“We’d better hurry anyway,” Filia said, placing a hand on his outstretched arm. “There’s always a chance he found the way. Dragons have very good intuition.”

“Oh, I’ve seen your ‘intuition’,” Xellos said. “And I’m not worried.”

“Is that so?” Filia said through gritted teeth, removing her hand quickly from his arm. “Well then, let’s just get going then.” She stomped off to a passageway, arms pumping angrily.

“Filia,” he called idly.

“What?” she exploded, turning around.

“It’s that passage,” he said, pointing with his staff to the cavern next to the one Filia had been about to go down.

She looked at the passage, then she looked back at him with a scowl. “I knew that,” she said petulantly. “I was just… making my way there.”

“Of course,” Xellos said, walking up to her. “And now I think that we had really better move quickly. I’m sure Mister Rasmus must be hurrying now, especially since he’s probably heard your shrill voice echoing through the caverns.”

“My voice?” Filia shot back. “You’re going to criticize my voice when you—”

“Let’s get going,” Xellos said calmly, urging her into the tunnel.

*****

Filia was experiencing an terrible sense of déjà vu. She’d passed through these tunnels with Xellos before under different circumstances. Of course, she’d been mad at him then too, but some things probably never change.

She’d been so… she’d been muttering angrily to herself about the indignity of being forced into the company of one of the world’s chief abominations. It had been an unpleasant time. All she could do was give him dirty looks and occasionally pout to herself in a teary-eyed way. While he on the other hand, acted almost savagely polite to her. The monster.

At that time, they’d been trying to retrieve Mister Gourry’s sword of light after Jillas had stolen it and… trying to find answers about Valgaav, Almayce, and the Dark Star weapons. Well, she’d been trying to do those things. Xellos was trying to find Valgaav and offer him a place on the monster race’s side by bribing him with Lina Inverse’s death and, failing that, kill him. You know, all in a day’s work for a servant of darkness.

Now they were trying to stop a rogue dragon (okay, that part was kind of similar) from unleashing the kind of chaos that Xellos didn’t approve of onto the world – the kind of chaos that makes destruction hard to get done. And things were so much more… complicated between them.

She nearly gasped as they stepped into a larger chamber. This was the place, she thought as she stared at the dozens of man-sized stalactites hanging precariously overhead; the place where Xellos fought Valgaav.

She didn’t know what to feel. At first she couldn’t even look at Xellos. Even in the depths of her hatred for him she’d have given most anything to forget the brutality she’d seen from him in that place. Whenever she thought of it she… it was almost like she couldn’t even hate him; like hate was suddenly too hot; too intimate of an emotion to have with him. It made her want to cry.

But yet… she couldn’t keep her eyes from being drawn to a crushed stalactite that had smashed against the ground and now lay as rubble. That could very well have been the one that nearly killed her; the one that Xellos had whisked her away from just in time, interrupting his fight with Valgaav, which should have been his number one priority.

Of course, this act had been a little hard to appreciate at the time considering he’d dropped her after that. Then he’d let loose with some explanation about him trying to surprise Valgaav. Because it’s perfectly normal to move from completely heartless, sadistic behavior one minute to life-saving and practical joke level stunts the next minute.

Come to think of it… the battle had all gone wrong for Xellos shortly after that. He’d been winning beforehand.

Even then he’d saved her. Even in the midst of the horrible revelation of his true nature. It was the contrast that was most startling… to be capable of two such disparate acts.

And that was long ago. That was before all the time they’d spent together at the summit. That was before they were meant to really work together. That was before he’d embroiled himself in the mystery of the plot against her life. That was before they’d become… involved.

And he’d still saved her. Thinking of it like that… it almost seemed like the summit wasn’t important; like he would’ve tracked her down for the rest of her life; coming to her shop, occasionally breaking things, teasing her, and daring her to decide whether he loved her or not.

…But… maybe she was being overly sentimental. It turned out he had needed her later on as a user of holy magic to fuse powers with. Maybe he just considered it… wasteful to let her die.

But now because he’d saved her again the Daius Seed might go active, which was something that the monster race did not want. Even if he still thought that they could get there before Rasmus… that was a pretty risky decision. Had he made it in bias?

…Which led back to the same old question…

Are we really lovers or is this just a tactical move for him? Filia asked, feeling irritation welling within her.

She was seized by a slightly irrational thought. If we’re lovers then we should be able to hold hands.

She chided herself. He wasn’t really the kind for that whether he had feelings for her or not. Anyway, it would be too weird for both of them.

And then a stubborn voice nudged her. Do it anyway, it said. Just to see Mister Expects-Everything’s reaction.

She reached over, trying to feel no fear, but nevertheless feeling it, and clasped his hand. She had to remind herself that she was doing this to look for his reaction and turning away in embarrassment would defeat that purpose.

He looked surprised for a moment; that was unmistakable. Then he laced his fingers through hers. His hand had been cold when she first touched it, but now it was warming.

“Bad memories?” he asked, looking ahead.

“Well, you should know,” Filia retorted.

“We’re almost there,” was all he said.

They walked along in their awkward, hand-holding, not-really-sure-where-we-stand kind of way. Filia stared at the ground. Xellos watched her out of the corner of his eye.

Finally they reached the teleportation device. Xellos left Filia in the center of the teleportation area. It seemed horribly strange not to be holding hands anymore; like she could still feel the phantom of his hand in hers.

As Xellos walked over to the device to activate it, Filia let her hopes rise. The last time they’d been there, they’d had Jillas to fix and operate the mechanism. Maybe the device was too complicated. Maybe Rasmus wouldn’t be able to figure out how to make it work.

But that hope was dashed as Xellos clicked a rather obvious looking switch and joined her by the teleportation area.

“You think Rasmus has already been here?” she asked.

Xellos shrugged. “I can’t tell by the mechanism, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Filia hesitated. “Because if he hasn’t been here already, we could just—”

“We could destroy the device,” Xellos allowed. “But we don’t know if he’s been here or not. And we can’t chase him if we break it.”

“I know you’re right,” Filia said grimly as she felt herself fade, pulled to a distant place over the sea.

“Transform as soon as we reappear,” Xellos advised.

Filia nodded, and, for the second time that day, felt herself vanish.

*****

The stomach-dropping sensation of falling was instantly erased with the soaring joy of flight, as the gold sparks left her and she emerged fully transformed. Normally she might have experienced some dread over the necessary nudity-laden transformation process, but well… it was a bit late now to worry about that.

She flapped her wings through the open air. It was colder than the cave, though less clammy, but it was still a relief after the stale air of the cave.

Xellos flew beside her, looking deceptively small and crushable.

“Hey, Xellos,” she said, because she knew he was cooking up a size or weight-based insult to hurl at her and she wasn’t going to have any of that.

“Hmm?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “everyone thought that the Pro-Human League was the group that kept trying to kill me… but it was really Rasmus all along…”

“They were a rather obvious scapegoat,” Xellos commented.

“But even you were watching them,” Filia pointed out.

“Yes,” Xellos allowed. “They were obviously behind the shooting attempt on your life. But at that point I already suspected Mister Rasmus was connected to the poisoning attempt. After the league’s clumsy attempt, it was hard for anyone involved to search for a more careful, lone assassin.”

“But when you were talking to Vitrain,” Filia said, trying to get the facts in order, “you were saying how I wouldn’t be someone they’d want to kill. I mean, I know they hate non-humans, but the way you were telling it, it just seemed kind of stupid to target me.”

“It was, and they are,” Xellos said. “Tell me, Filia, what did you find when you preformed your illegal and extremely reckless search of Mister Vitrain’s room?”

“A gun and some bullets,” Filia said.

Xellos held up a finger. “What kind of bullets?”

Filia thought back. “Silver bullets,” she said slowly.

“Exactly,” Xellos said. “Can you think of a diplomat attending the summit that would make a better target for the Pro-Human League. Someone with a weakness for silver, perhaps?”

Filia gasped. “You mean… Lycristy?”

“It’s a legendary weakness of werewolves,” Xellos affirmed. “Not that a silver bullet through the heart doesn’t usually kill a human too,” he added.

“So… they didn’t even mean to shoot me?” Filia asked, mind reeling.

“You weren’t their original target,” Xellos said. “Miss Lycristy was scheduled to speak after you. I don’t know if the gunman they hired was stupid enough to lose count and blind enough not to see that you had less hair than expected, but there you go. My guess is that the gunman was a zealot who was angered enough by the prospect of non-humans at the conference that he took matters into his own hands and shot the first non-human that took the stage.”

Filia thought this over. Well, the Pro-Human League had seemed like an overly zealous band of disorganized hotheads. Clearly they’d given one of their most zealous, disorganized hotheads a gun. Good management.

“But they took credit for all the attempts,” Filia pointed out.

“Well, that looks better, doesn’t it?” Xellos asked. “Better at least then saying: ‘Yeah, we only tried to kill her one out of the three times, and we didn’t even mean to do it’, at least. Anyway, they bit off more than they could chew when they tangled with you, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t benefit them in unexpected ways.”

“Like what?” Filia asked.

“You and I both know that the dragon race is not exactly beloved by the human race. But few would actually pick a fight with a short-fuse, violent race like that.”

Filia dearly wanted to laser-breath him out of the sky, but she realized that would prove his point. Plus he’d probably dodge, the creep.

“They may have picked a foe that was too strong for them. They may have picked a foe that they never would’ve been able to kill with the resources they had available. They may have picked a foe that was from a race that could crush them like insects,” Xellos said. “But they did get press. People were talking about their group. People wanted to join them. Most importantly: people were donating money.”

“They ended up raking in a lot of notoriety and money by targeting you,” Xellos said, lounging in the air as they flew on. “Much more than they would’ve gotten from taking down the likes of Miss Lycristy. She just wasn’t as high profile as you. She couldn’t generate the interest you did; she couldn’t generate the controversy that you could; she couldn’t look as stunning in a low-cut linen dress as you could.”

Filia nearly fell mid-air, just out of surprise. She blushed and said in a weak, but nevertheless sardonic tone: “That helped, did it?”

“Never underestimate the power of cleavage to incite conflict,” Xellos said sagely.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Filia said dryly.

“Did you ever find out who gave you the dress?” Xellos asked.

“You mean, you don’t know?” Filia asked. “I thought you saw everything that went on.”

“I suppose I was a little too busy keeping an eye on both your body-guard and the Pro-Human League to solve the mystery of your wardrobe,” Xellos said in an ‘I can’t do everything, woman!’ tone.

Well, he had answered her questions. “Lopa,” she said.

“As in Queen Lopa?” Xellos asked.

“Yes,” Filia said.

“My, my,” Xellos said, surveying her with interest. “You do make powerful friends, don’t you?”

“She’s nice,” Filia said guardedly. For a conniving, sex-obsessed snake of a woman, that is.

They flew on in silence for awhile.

“For awhile… I thought that you sent it,” Filia said, almost for something to say.

He looked at her. She blushed and turned away, wishing she hadn’t felt the need to fill the silence, but knowing it was too late to get out now.

“Because it fit so well and it was… and you were…” she floundered at this point. Not being able to look at the ground, she instead looked at the pile of clouds below her.

They flew on in more silence. Then Xellos finally said: “I wouldn’t have gotten you a dress like that.”

She looked up at him. “What?”

“If I was going to get you a dress it would have to have a much shorter skirt than that one,” Xellos said with absolutely seriousness.

“You—!” Filia began. The urge to either knock him out of the sky or to hide her face resurfaced. She didn’t have much time to dwell on it.

“Look up ahead,” Xellos said, pointing.

Filia tore her gaze away from him to look ahead. There was no longer a pillar of light there, but you could still see a structure in the distance that was all that remained of that place.

They were nearly there.

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 25. The Daius Seed.

Filia stared at the structure ahead of them. Though no pillar of light now stood there, it still filled her with the same sense of fear it had when they’d first arrived there. War of the Gods and Monsters… Darkstar’s summoning… and now Rasmus and the Daius Seed. There was just something… unstable about the place. It seemed to attract terrible conflict.

“Xellos,” she said quietly against the onrushing wind as a horrible thought struck her, “you don’t think he’s already there, do you?”

Xellos cupped his chin in his hand and appeared to give the matter some thought. “Well,” he finally said, “there’s one way to check…”

Filia waited, but all Xellos did was fly on.

“…And?” she prompted after a minute’s silence.

“Oh, sorry,” Xellos said. “I just started wondering about something and got distracted.”

“What could you possibly be thinking about that’s more important than making sure Rasmus isn’t at the Daius Seed?” Filia asked incredulously.

“I was just wondering whether you had table-sex with all the other diplomats or if it was just me,” he said mildly.

A column of charged energy shot out of Filia’s mouth at him. It wasn’t even a thought thing. If it had been a rational decision then she would’ve realized that he’d dodge and not even bothered. It was more of a ‘you slimy, miserable creep! Do you really think you’re going to get away with that?’ decision.

When the burst of laser breath had disappeared beyond the clouds and the red haze faded from Filia’s vision, Xellos cheerfully floated back up to her side.

“I think it’s safe to say that effect still follows cause,” he said.

Filia got it just barely before she lashed out at him again with her tail. “You MONSTER! You didn’t need to do that to check! You just did it to be obnoxious!” she shouted, gripping her taloned fist and glaring at him.

“Now, now. There’s really no need to get upset,” Xellos said, shaking a finger at her. “After all, I think we both know that the truth is that you’re not exactly practiced when it comes to table-sex.”

“Stop saying ‘table-sex’!” she screamed, with a hint of desperation in her voice. It wasn’t something she wanted to hear in Xellos’s voice even once. “And anyway,” she added, calming down from her hysteria slightly and remembering his shot about her not being ‘practiced’, “I hope to never be.”

Xellos turned his head slightly as if she’d said something puzzling. “Why?” he asked.

“Because I’m not a gigantic ****!” she exploded. She almost added ‘like you’, but that was out of being on edge and disagreeable and probably not really true. Although, to be fair, Xellos was at least more of a **** than her. But again, to be fair, before the whole… (sigh) ‘table-sex’ incident, most everyone was more of a **** than her.

“…But you already did it,” Xellos pointed out.

“That’s because you talked me into it!” Filia shot back defensively.

“I don’t recall doing that much talking,” Xellos said pensively.

“You know what I mean,” Filia said, blushing slightly.

They flew on in their own silences for a minute. Filia’s was embarrassed, Xellos’s was thoughtful.

“So…” he began, withdrawing from his cerebration. “No more table-sex then?”

“I told you not to say that ever again!” Filia practically shrieked.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” Xellos said.

Good, Filia thought in her now embarrassed and fuming silence. So you can take a hint.

“What’s your position on beds?” Xellos asked.

Filia really hated herself for understanding that pun. She opened her mouth to say something, she wasn’t sure what it would be, but damn it! It’d be something. But she never got a chance to say it. At that moment from behind her a blinding flash scythed through the sky and directly at her. The light immediately turned to searing pain on contact with her wing and she lost control.

She screamed as she tried to flap her crippled wing to regain stability, but it was no use. She plummeted through the clouds, her right wing curling and uncurling in agony. It felt like a hole had been punched straight through it and she knew she was bleeding badly. As she looked up through the blur of her own tears, sudden in her eyes, she saw a golden streak shoot past Xellos and toward the place where the Daius Seed was.

She tried to focus on Xellos. He had his sharp little eyes targeted on the retreating shape of Rasmus, then they slid from Rasmus to her. Even from Filia’s quick decent she could make out what they were saying. One shot and he’s dead, they said. The dragon cannot be allowed to activate the Daius Seed, they said. Priorities, they said.

No way to teleport. They were too close to the area of destabilization. The sea lay somewhere below her, but from the height she would be falling from, there wouldn’t be that much difference between sea and ground. She closed her eyes.

There was a tug, and pressure on her claw, and she felt herself stop falling. She opened her eyes and looked up.

Xellos was there. It looked so… bizarre. He was holding her by the talon. He was holding her against gravity by less than her little finger and he was winning. But then again, she had to remind herself that he was so much stronger than he looked.

“I thought dragons were supposed to be hopeful,” he quipped. “Do you not espouse that philosophy in freefall?”

Filia transformed back to her human form, her wounded body bathed in golden light. After all, with a damaged wing her dragon form was much more useless now even in mid-air. She could feel the wound still. It was on her shoulder-blade and bleeding into her dress. At least in her scaled down form, it too was scaled down. She looked up at Xellos, now holding her by the hand.

“Why?” she half-sobbed, not knowing if what she was feeling was closer to terror or relief. “You could have stopped him easily! Now he’ll activate the Daius Seed. Why? Why didn’t you just let me fall?”

Xellos appeared unmoved by Filia’s emotional outburst. He just shook his head, said: “Dreadfully cynical,” and began flying again toward the structure that held the Daius Seed while towing her.

“Answer me!” Filia shouted, still feeling the disequilibrium of her fall.

“You always have had a melodramatic streak,” Xellos commented as he flew. “Why do you assume you need to be a sacrifice?”

“You can’t have it both ways this time, Xellos!” Filia retorted, annoyed that he still managed to insult her even when he was the one being irrational and stupid. “It was me or the Daius Seed!”

“‘Both’ is a perfectly relevant option,” he answered calmly. “Mister Rasmus may be ahead of us, but he can still be stopped.”

“How?” Filia demanded.

“It’ll take both of us,” was all he said.

“HOW?” Filia repeated.

“By closing off the universe,” Xellos said.

Filia stared up at him.

“The Daius Seed is basically a pocket universe. It expands and overtakes this one. If we can seal it off, then we can stop its expansion,” he said simply.

“…How?” Filia said again, but calmer this time.

“The same way we always planned to,” Xellos said, “barriers. Though with a bit of a twist which I think will work much better. We just have to encompass Rasmus and the Daius Seed before he activates it.”

“But he’s got a huge lead on us!” Filia pointed out. It was true that Rasmus hadn’t quite reached the platform yet and that Xellos was closing the gap, flying remarkably fast for someone towing a passenger, but still.

“If I’m right, he’ll slow down considerably as he gets closer to the destabilization point,” Xellos said, narrowing his eyes at the speeding Rasmus.

“You shouldn’t have taken the risk,” Filia said, still determined to be angry with him. “You know what he’s trying to do. It would’ve been safer just to deal with him then to go through all this.”

Part of her didn’t know why she fought so hard. Was it that part of her just couldn’t accept being his priority?

“He’s heading straight for the Daius Seed,” Xellos pointed out. “If I’d attacked him and he’d managed to dodge, there’s always a chance that the ricochet could have activated the Daius Seed.”

And that’s why there would always be doubt. Xellos always had multiple reasons for doing anything.

“Why hasn’t he thought to do that?” Filia asked. She shivered. One clear shot and Rasmus would win.

Xellos sneered. “He thinks it’s a wish granter. He’s not about to blow it up.”

Filia stared ahead at Rasmus’s flight. He had a wish. What kind of person wishes for war? Not even victory over your hated enemies, but the chance to be locked in combat with them. For an old soldier like Rasmus, that was all he could think of. That’s all the dragon race had taught him to think of.

“Hey,” she said shyly, looking at the cloud bank below and not at Xellos. “Do you think you could carry me?”

She could feel his eyes on her. “Now’s really not the time to be getting distracted, Filia.”

“It’s not that!” Filia said emphatically. “It’s just that… well, if you keep dragging me like this then my arm’s probably going to stretch to twice its length. It hurts, you know,” she said reproachfully.

“And… and,” she added, somehow feeling that her argument was not strong enough. “And we’ve got to catch Rasmus and we can’t be going very fast this way. If you carry me then we can be more… aerodynamic.”

“Aerodynamic,” Xellos repeated.

“Yes,” Filia said. “Dragons know a lot about aerodynamics,” she added defensively.

“They do indeed,” Xellos said. “In that case, I’m sure you know what’s best.”

He hoisted her up into his arms. She strove to think of this as the best course of action in the situation and not any kind of profoundly awkward experience because, as Xellos himself had said, this wasn’t the time to get distracted.

He was flying fast now, so Filia held on tight. It struck her as horribly ironic as they continued their chase. She was out to stop the man who was supposed to be her protector from destroying causality, while being aided by her most hated enemy; someone who had such a bloody history with her own race that he should by all rights have ‘murderer’ tattooed all across his body. She knew for a fact that he didn’t, though, because—

I can’t think that! Filia mentally screamed at herself. Not while he’s holding me!

Yes. Best keep her mind on… relevant things. Or at least things that were relevant at the moment.

“Xellos!” she called over the rushing wind.

“Yes?” he asked. One arm was around her shoulders, the other slid beneath her knees. Somehow he was still managing to hold onto his staff.

“There’s something very important I need to ask you to do,” she said.

Xellos’s eyes left Rasmus’s retreating figure and looked into her eyes. She took a deep breath.

“Xellos, this time… don’t drop me!”

He smiled.

*****

The two of them landed on that strange green platform, with ruinous half-columns sticking out on all sides. It was so bright there! As Xellos put her down she squinted in the blinding glow and saw it. A pin-prick of light so brilliant that it burned black against her eyes. And Rasmus was slowly making his way toward it.

“Xellos!” she shouted.

“I know,” Xellos answered. “He’s in the destabilization zone. It’s where the Daius Seed is transmitting its energy into this universe. The two probabilities are meeting, but they can’t mix. His movements should be very restricted, but he’ll make it through eventually on willpower, so we’ll have to act now.”

Rasmus appeared to notice them, even in the bright haze he was surrounded in. He turned his head to them as if moving through treacle. He said something. Watching his disgusted expression contort slowly on every word was not a sight that Filia would be able to forget any time soon.

“Even the sound waves are having trouble moving through it,” Xellos commented, as if this was of interest.

Two universe meeting. It was like… like mixing borscht with clam chowder. It was too thick to move through and was not in the least delicious. It just didn’t work.

“So, we’ll each do a barrier?” Filia asked, as Rasmus turned back, having said whatever his piece was.

“No,” Xellos said. “He’s a golden dragon. He can break your barrier from the inside. I don’t trust a black magic barrier to stand up to the power of the Daius Seed alone. We’re doing a fusion barrier.”

It made sense. If Rasmus tried to throw energy at it, it would just be absorbed. And… it seemed right to throw a union of black and holy magic at this alien force. If it couldn’t take everything this universe could throw at it then the Daius Seed could never be defeated.

What am I saying? she thought wildly. There’s nothing ‘right’ about a union of black and holy magic!

“I need you to give me everything you have,” Xellos said, holding out his palm.

She stared at him. Then she gave a fierce nod, laid her hand palm up on top of his hand, and called the magic. Magic from the mind.

In her hand, an orb of golden energy grew. It contained more power than its size suggested. She was giving this everything. And she knew that Xellos was following suit as the orb of energy shuddered and darkened as he poured black magic into it.

“Traitors,” a voice echoed into her hearing, seeming to come from far away. “Two traitors,” it said, and she realized that this must be Rasmus’s parting comments finally reaching them on the outskirts of the distortion zone. “Traitors to race, and traitors to nature.”

“Don’t stop,” Xellos warned, as Filia crumpled slightly. “Don’t falter.”

“I’m not… faltering,” Filia said, through the buzz of energy that crackled through her teeth. Her eyes flashed gold as she dug deep for her last vestiges of energy and watched the ball of energy grow and grow.

She’d opened the floodgates, but was nearly spent. As she let the surge of her remaining energy flow into the orb of power, she couldn’t help but look at the fused magic. It jolted madly in her palm. It was black, but in some indescribable way it was a bright black. It was unstable, it was wild, and it was violent. It… it had to be as Rasmus said: against nature. Two such forces can only be brought together against tremendous opposition. It was… pure chaos.

But yet… but yet… though it was wild and violent, that didn’t make it unnatural. It was… the ultimate original, older than time. It was chaos, and chaos has the power to both create and destroy. Sometimes it can seem to do both at once. It was meant to be violent. It wasn’t meant to be tamed.

…And they were trying to construct a barrier out of this? Could it hold together in its constant state of discord? Would it last or would it tear itself apart?

…Will we last or will we…

“Now!” Xellos called, as Rasmus reached the Daius Seed. He was looking at it and reaching out his hand, as though the Daius Seed was a falling star that he could pick up.

The two of them heaved the condensed ball of energy at Rasmus and the distortion zone. As it reached the time slow-down it burst and coated the distortion zone in a dome of energy. The fused magic drizzled down the edge of the distortion zone, crackling and juddering as it went in a way that Filia couldn’t decide whether it was wretched or perfect.

As the fused energy met itself on the bottom of the sphere it formed a bubble and seemed to crystallize slightly. The green light from within it spiked as a mass of smoky energy fought its way toward the enclosure.

“He’s activated it,” Xellos said, through gritted teeth. “Now we just have to wait and see if the wall holds.”

Filia hoped and prayed that it would. She watched the strange globe of energy with such intensity that she felt that it was holding her up by her eyes. A mixture of dark and holy energy made up the outside, and otherworldly energy surged from within. Brilliant green smoke pressed against the walls in swirling clouds, like the surface of some diminutive gas planet. But the wall was holding. It was holding.

Filia fell to her knees. “It worked,” she breathed, clutching her side. “I can’t believe it worked.”

“I can,” Xellos said, still watching the globe of energy, but Filia liked to think that there was some relief in his voice. He’d taken a lot of chances on this one.

Filia looked at the soup bubble of chaos. “You think it’ll last?” she asked.

“If it lasted against that first blast, it’ll last forever,” Xellos said firmly. “Or at least close to forever.”

Filia was silent for a moment. “…Do you think he’s dead in there?”

“Mister Rasmus?” Xellos asked, looking down at her. “No. The Daius Seed only destroys causality, remember? He should be alive in there.” He gave a small snort. “Though I can’t say what kind of shape he’s in.”

“What if…” Filia began, and she hesitated to go on. It was such a tiny what-if, but she had to ask it anyway. “What if he was right and it is a wish granter.”

“Then he has an entire pocket universe to wish in,” Xellos said with a shrug. “He can have all the wars he wants.”

Filia grimaced. War, war, war. Rasmus had gotten so embroiled in it that he forgot what he was fighting for until he was just fighting to fight. Peace was intolerable.

“This isn’t a place to hang around in,” Xellos said, holding a hand down to her.

Filia stared at it, and looked aside. “I… I can’t fly on that wing. And I’m all out of energy anyway.”

“Well, obviously,” Xellos said. “I assumed I’d be carrying you.”

“What?” Filia colored. “You mean all the way back?”

“You’re injured and exhausted. I don’t think you’ve eaten much today what with one thing and another,” Xellos said. He was the one thing, Rasmus and the Daius Seed had been another. “It’s a long way until teleportation is possible, and I don’t think you’d make it even with a bridge. So unless you’re planning on living here, I think it’s pretty clear that this is the best possible option.”

Filia narrowed her eyes at him. It shouldn’t be possible to be chivalrous and a smart-*** at the same time. But she took his hand, let him pick her up and…

…Let him fly her away.

*****

She woke up in his bed the next morning, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds and, anyway, wasn’t her fault.

Xellos had been right. She’d been exhausted, completely exhausted after her long flight to the Daius Seed and after giving up every ounce of her energy for that barrier. It wasn’t a surprise that she’d fallen asleep on the gentle flight home. There were hours of clouds and then… and then she couldn’t remember anything before waking up in a comfortable, but unfamiliar bed. She’d been laid conscientiously on her side as to not open up her wound.

She reached a hand to touch the tender spot on her shoulder-blade. It still hurt, but she could already feel her renewing energy closing the wound.

“Did you have a nice twelve-hour nap?” a familiar voice asked, as Xellos took a seat on the bed where she lay.

She pressed a hand to her forehead. Oh no… she thought.

What am I supposed to be thinking here? Oh, how nice of him to care enough to bring me back to the hotel and rest me on his own bed while I recovered so he could watch over me?

Ha! ‘What’s my position on beds?’ indeed! How transparent could you get?

She sat up and said nothing. She tried to conjure up memories of their sleepy flight back. She gritted her teeth. Cuddling against his chest might have occurred. But it was alleged cuddling and, anyway, she’d been so tired that she couldn’t be blamed for it.

“The Daius Seed has been dealt with, as has your would-be assassin,” Xellos said, reaching over and touching her face. “Mission accomplished, yes?”

Filia let everything she’d been thinking about the last few days before chasing Rasmus to the Daius Seed had made it all so simple. Could all of that really slide now?

She moved back, away from his hand. “No,” she said, almost feeling like she ought to apologize. “There are still things left… that I’ve got to do.”

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 26. The Choice.

“I’ve… I’ve got to go,” Filia said, sitting up in bed and moving away from the hand that reached out to stroke her cheek.

Xellos withdrew his hand and looked at her somewhat coldly from his perch next to her. Finally he said: “Perhaps you didn’t notice the fact that this isn’t a table.”

“I noticed,” Filia said, getting out of bed. “…And I appreciate that,” she felt moved to add at the disapproving look on his face. “But this is the last day of the summit.”

“It is,” Xellos said, as if this hardly mattered.

“There are things I’ve still got to do, and people I’ve still got to talk to,” Filia said. “This’ll be my last chance.”

Xellos appeared to give this some grave consideration. “It might be,” he said. “But then again, it might not.”

Filia got his meaning and nodded. “Still, I’ve got a responsibility right now. I’ve got to go out there and act in the best traditions of the Dragon race.” Because if I stayed here I certainly wouldn’t be able to.

“The best traditions of the Dragon race include burning those weaker than them to a crisp and pounding religious mania into anything too stupid to resist,” Xellos said calmly.

“No, those are the worst traditions of the Dragon race!” Filia snapped. “I’m talking about the good ones!”

“…You mean the ones you don’t practice?” Xellos asked.

“Hmmph,” Filia said to herself, moving toward the door. “It’s never too late to start a new tradition.”

“I suppose not,” Xellos said.

There was a silence and Filia reached for the doorknob. Then Xellos said: “And you’re going out there even now to complete your work. My, my, my…” he trailed off. “What a sense of professionalism you’ve acquired,” he said, sounding as though this was slightly distasteful.

Filia hesitated at the door. Then she opened it and said: “…I’ll be back.”

“Ah,” Xellos said, sounding as though he was cheering up. “So not completely professional, then?”

*****

Filia had gone back to her room to gather some things together and change into clean clothes before braving the more public areas of the summit. She’d stopped by Rasmus’s and Cleon’s room… or, at least Cleon’s room now, and found that Cleon was gone. She’d consulted with one of the summit guards and apparently Cleon was fine. He’d been taken down to the infirmary when he was discovered unconscious and he was sleeping it off.

Filia couldn’t help but feel relieved… and not for any of the right reasons. Sure, she was relieved that Cleon was alright, but she’d pretty much expected him to be alright after the healing anyway. She was mostly relieved that he was sleeping and therefore she had an excuse to not talk to him yet. By all rights, she owed him an explanation for what had happened first, but she wasn’t about to complain if she could put that off for a little while longer.

So she walked toward the bar down in the lobby. After all, it was nearly nine o’clock in the morning. The alcoholics would be positively parched. So she was sure to see some familiar faces.

“‘Morning, Miss Filia,” said alcoholic #1, otherwise known as the President of DASIS. He toasted her with something that definitely wasn’t orange juice. “Heard there was a big broo-ha-ha with your clerk getting hurt or something yesterday,” he said. “Someone try to kill you again?” he asked with only mild concern.

“Yes, Mister President,” Filia admitted, walking past him. “But that’s… taken care of now.”

“Good, good,” DASIS said jovially. “Can’t stand the idea of assassins crawling around the place, myself.” He then seemed to get distracted in search for some matches. His ceremonial outfit didn’t seem to have any pockets. He eventually located them in his hat.

“Miss Filia!” a voice called out, as Filia was joined by the caller (Amelia) and a toothpick in a shocking green dress that could only be Gardenia.

“Are you alright?” Amelia asked worriedly. “We heard you disappeared last night and one of your advisors was hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Filia said comfortingly. “Some… pretty crazy things happened, and I’ll tell you the whole story later,” – when you don’t have that fourteen year old brat trailing behind you – “but it’s okay now.”

Gardenia nudged Amelia in the ribs and Amelia looked down. “We uh… we heard lots of other rumors too,” she said.

Courtesy of Rasmus’s lack of indoor voice no doubt, Filia thought, rolling her eyes. Isn’t it enough that he tried to kill me, restart the War of the Monsters Fall, and nearly transformed the world into a hallucinogenic nightmare? Does he have to ruin my reputation too?

“Oh,” was all Filia could say.

“Rumors about you and… Mister Xellos,” Amelia went on, sounding like she didn’t really want to have this conversation.

“I see,” Filia said, and wondered how long she’d be allowed to play it coy.

A fan snapped angrily open and Filia could see that Gardenia wasn’t pleased with how Amelia was conducting this interview and planned on taking the reins. “There’s one rumor where he offered you half his kingdom if you’d only sleep with him once. And there’s this other one that says that you turned spy for him against your own people. Then there’s this other one that says you two are actually secretly married, though that happened by some kind of accident and you—”

“Miss Gardenia!” Amelia said, cutting the girl off as Filia wondered where that last one had even come from. The rumor mill certainly seemed to be alive and well.

“We all know none of that’s true. Right, Miss Filia?” Amelia said, waving her hands. But Filia recognized the tone. It went like this: ‘Of course I know it’s not true. I just would feel more comfortable if you’d tell me that for yourself. …Oh GOD it’s true, isn’t it? I knew it!’

And Filia might have confessed what had happened to Amelia. The girl seemed to half-expect it anyway (which struck Filia as a bit unnecessarily dirty-minded for a shrine-maiden and Princess of Seyruun), but she wasn’t about to do it with Gardenia there.

“Ha,” Garden said, fanning herself haughtily. “Of course it’s true. Something romantic was bound to happen at this thing sooner or later.”

Filia glared at Gardenia. “Now, listen here!” she said, hands on her hips. “This is a diplomatic summit, not that masquerade ball you wanted. It’s not supposed to be romantic. It’s not about moonlight encounters or secret liaisons. It’s about policy, goodwill, and professionalism. The sooner you learn that the better you can serve your people. Because whatever crazy fairytale you’ve got floating around in your head: the truth is that no professional diplomat would do the kinds of things you’re talking about.”

Unless there were extenuating circumstances. And Xellos was practically the definition of extenuating circumstances.

…Anyway, it was the version of events that stupid girl needed to here.

Gardenia rolled her eyes. “Boring,” she said.

Filia clenched her fist. Throttling teenage countesses was also not something a professional diplomat would do. And this time there were no extenuating circumstances.

“I’ve just seen someone I’ve got to talk to,” Filia said, looking across the room. “See you again sometime, Miss Amelia.”

“I hope so,” Amelia said.

“Feel free to come around the shop,” Filia said, as she walked across the room.

Admittedly, part of that had been to escape from Gardenia’s insufferable… insufferableness. But Filia really had seen someone. It was someone she felt she owed a lot to, but someone she hadn’t been sure if she’d be able to find. It was someone who was being spoon-fed applesauce.

“Commander Banner?” Filia said, as she approached the man in the wheelchair. “Could I speak with you for just a minute?”

“Alanis, my dear. The time is now!” Banner said through a gummy, applesauce-filled mouth.

“You can try,” his nurse said, wiping the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “But he’s really not at his best this time of day.”

Filia took a knee so that she was closer to the old man’s eye level. She said softly: “I think… you didn’t knock over my glass by accident. I think you knew it was poisoned. Maybe…” she paused. “You’re a military man, maybe people have tried the cowardly poisoning tactic on you too. Rasmus seemed to think you could smell the poison.”

The old man smacked his lips noisily.

“Maybe you just knew it was poisoned, maybe you didn’t see who did it,” Filia said quietly. “You couldn’t really do much to break character, otherwise people would know this is just an act.”

“I think you should leave, Miss,” the nurse said coldly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about and, frankly, you’re going to get him overexcited with that kind of talk.”

“I guess what I wanted to say is just…” Filia stood up and smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress. “Thanks for saving me.”

There was a loud pause as Commander Banner sucked at one of his few remaining teeth before finally saying: “Well, gee, little lady, you’re welcome for the fly-fishing lessons!”

*****

It had been a long day of regards-giving. Or at least… attempted regards-giving. Arkon had basically shrugged off all her attempts. She was pretty sure she’d embarrassed him, which seemed to her to be quite an accomplishment.

But the day had been rough and it wasn’t over. She’d had to give answers to questions that she wasn’t even sure about. The rumors had been flying and, worse yet, some of them were accurate.

Lycristy had been one of the harder ones to talk to. She deserved to know about the Pro-Human League especially considering that she was their intended target. Lycristy wanted to go after the League, which was her own business. She wanted Filia to get the dragons to join her which was not. Filia had intended on the League getting what they deserved but… well, perhaps she was spending too much time in politics. You couldn’t risk everything all because of some fringe group of idiots that couldn’t plan and wasn’t even that powerful. It was a cost-benefits assessment that you had to make.

Lycristy hadn’t been pleased. She’d said that she’d hoped that the werewolves and the dragons could work together in the future. Filia insisted that this was still a possibility, just not in that way. Lycristy hadn’t particularly cared for that answer either.

Filia sighed and leaned against the wall. If Xellos honestly thought for a minute that she’d rather have left than stayed with him then he was dead wrong. But there were things that needed to be done, and she wasn’t even finished yet.

A wry smile crossed her face as she began walked toward her next destination. Xellos probably didn’t think that at all, the smug *******. In fact, he probably hadn’t expected her to leave in the first place. What made it worse was knowing that she’d only really been able to leave by telling herself that she’d come back.

She reached the door she was looking for, knocked on it, and could swear she heard the swish of fans being set down and the jangle of a beaded curtain parting.

*****

Once Lopa had told her numerous, suspiciously attractive and muscular bodyguards to get lost, she and Filia were soon around the table, each enjoying a cup of tea. Well, Filia’s was plain tea, Lopa had put something in hers.

“Well, now,” Lopa said, taking a sip of her tea and then pouring the remainder of a small unmarked bottle into the cup, “there have been so many rumors swirling around about you lately. Some more interesting than others.”

Filia had a sneaking suspicion that the ones about the Daius Seed and Rasmus were not the more interesting ones that Lopa spoke of.

“You’ve made quite a splash here,” Lopa said with her painted smile. “I hope you know what a good story can do in the business of politics. It’ll certainly be interesting to have you around from now on.”

Filia look down into her tea. “This was temporary, you know.”

“Oh, but it surely doesn’t have to be,” Lopa said. “Couldn’t you keep doing this? You could be good.”

“Yes,” Filia said. “I could be. But… do I want to?”

Lopa waved a hand. “Oh, trust me. It’s not like it’d be like this all the time. Diplomacy is more like chess than bowling. You wouldn’t have to deal with assassinations on a daily basis. Maybe every couple of months, but that’s tops. Otherwise, it’s a pretty good gig.”

“You don’t always think so,” Filia said in a low voice.

“Hmm?”

“You said that you never asked to be loved,” Filia said. “Isn’t that… kind of sad?”

Lopa shrugged as though to indicate that there were many things in life that were more important than love such as fine wine, expensive parties, assorted gemstones, and your own personal masseuse.

“But Arkon loves you,” Filia said softly.

Lopa gave an unladylike snort. “Arkon. I’m sure. The poor dear would’ve said anything to get away from your question!”

“But he does,” Filia insisted.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Lopa said. “It doesn’t bother me. He tricks me, I trick him. Somehow it all evens out in the end.”

“Do you love him?” Filia asked.

Lopa stared at her. “Do you want to know why Arcet is allowed to be under my rule? It’s because if they put a general or a duke like Arkon in charge of it then that person would have the power to challenge even the mighty empire of Renz. That is politics for you.”

“But do you love him?” Filia asked again.

Lopa stared again. Then she sighed and said: “I suppose I do… in my own fashion. More the fool me, I suppose.”

Filia nodded, apparently satisfied.

Lopa rested her chin in her hands and looked on her. “So that’s alright then? You can stay with your dear enemy, serve your own race’s needs, and keep your ideals.”

“Maybe,” Filia admitted. “But maybe I don’t want to.”

Lopa opened her eyes wide. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t know if I want subterfuge hanging over my love life.”

Lopa laughed. “You get used to it, hon.”

“But maybe—”

“I know, I know,” Lopa said. “Maybe you don’t want to. That’s the choice.” She swilled around her tea… or mostly tea in her mug. “So… I understand your… well he’s one of the monsters.”

Filia looked up, but she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. “You have a good information network,” she mumbled.

“I have a good information network. Arkon has a good information network. Together we have an excellent information network,” Lopa said. “So… fancy that, eh?”

Filia wasn’t sure how to respond.

“How are things?” Lopa asked.

“Fine,” Filia said. “I think.”

“…You want any tips?” Lopa asked slyly.

“No!” Filia shouted immediately. “At least…” she added with a little blush, “not right now.”

“Alright,” Lopa said slowly. “Then… what did you really come here for?”

“Just this,” Filia said. “Mostly. I just think for a… well, for a politician, you’re alright.”

Lopa’s laugh burbled. “You only think that because it doesn’t profit me to do you harm.”

Filia decided to ignore that comment. “I also wanted to give you this,” she said, fishing out a flat cardboard box she’d packed earlier and handing it to Lopa.

Lopa opened the box. “…A dress?” she asked.

“Well, you did say I could give you one of mine,” Filia said awkwardly.

“I didn’t expect you to actually take me up on it,” Lopa said with a grin. “But it’s cute… all… ribbons and stuff.” She took something heavy and metal out. “Whatever are these?”

“I… don’t exactly know what they’re called,” Filia admitted. “You wear them with the hat.”

“What,” Lopa said, holding up the green and gold orbs that would usually hang from the hat, “are they like, shock-absorbers or something if you get hit in the head?”

“Not really,” Filia said. “They’re meant to cover your ears for if dragons want to go among humans without them knowing what they are.”

“…But I’ve seen some dragon elders before and they never wore these,” Lopa said doubtfully.

“Well,” Filia admitted, “It was really only for the females. Apparently seeing a girl’s ears was supposed to cause lustful thoughts?” Filia tried. “I never really understood that.”

“I see,” Lopa said.

From Lopa’s tone, Filia gleaned that Lopa was very keen on causing lustful thoughts, so she added: “The high priestess said they’re very fashionable items, nonetheless.”

“Never trust a clergy member on the subject of fashion,” Lopa said sagely. “Nevertheless, thank you.”

“There are two conditions for accepting that,” Filia said seriously.

“Oh? Do tell.”

“One,” Filia began, “you must keep it. I don’t want it back. And two, and this is important, you must never tell me what you do in it.”

Lopa beamed a wicked little beam. “I think I can manage that.”

*****

Filia was in the infirmary. She didn’t want to be there, but she knew she had to.

“Miss Filia?” Cleon said, sitting up in bed. “Oh, Miss Filia! Rasmus is—”

“I know,” Filia said hurriedly, taking a seat by him. “It’s alright now. He tried to activate the Daius Seed, but he’s been trapped behind a force field. There’s nothing he can do now.”

This was probably a bit too much for the recently concussed, but Filia didn’t want to mince words.

“You disappeared yesterday! Where have you been all this time?” Cleon asked, his eyes saucers of concern.

“I was… with Xellos,” Filia said carefully.

The concern only intensified, and it took a shade that Filia didn’t like. It had a certain ‘Oh, you poor, brave thing’ quality about it.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this,” Cleon said, staring at his sheets. “Mister Rasmus was… well, he was right about one thing. I… bought all those lies about the Supreme Elder being a good dragon but… to find out he would stoop to a plan like this? Disgusting! How can I support a man who would ask such a thing of one of his own… Well, I assure you Miss Filia, I will do everything I can to make sure he doesn’t stay Supre—”

“Stop,” Filia said. She said it quietly, but with a certain amount of force that stopped Cleon mid-revolution.

“Look,” Filia said. “Rasmus was right. The Supreme Elder is sneaky and deceitful. But he doesn’t want war and he’s a shrewd leader. We’re much better off with him than any of the senior elders nipping at his heels.”

“But after what he had you—”

“The Supreme Elder didn’t ask me to do anything!” Filia shouted. It would hurt Cleon, but he needed to understand. “This isn’t the Supreme Elder’s plan, this isn’t Xellos’s plan, although knowing him he probably thinks it is, this is me. It’s my responsibility.”

“But he—”

“Please,” Filia said. “If you’re going to stay in this diplomacy business and do any good at all – which I think you could and I think you should – then you can’t be black and white about people. Not about the Supreme Elder, not about Xellos, and certainly not about me.”

“But aren’t you going to—”

“I thought I’d learned long ago that people aren’t how you expect or want them to be,” Filia went on, ignoring the half-asked question, “but I guess I’m still learning. You should learn too.”

He stared at her. She stood up.

“It’s late,” she said. “I told Xellos I’d be back.”

“Miss Filia…”

“I hope your head feels better,” Filia added awkwardly as she left.

*****

Everything since then had been chaotic. All the way up to and including where she now sat in front of the Supreme Elder, uncertainties still swirling away. And before that while she waited for the Supreme Elder to be briefed on the events of the summit. And before that on the carriage ride back to the temple while she and Cleon hardly spoke to one another. And before that where she’d asked the guards for her mace back with a ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m sure you guys were too busy confiscating maces from innocent people to worry about such trivial events as shootings and poisonings. Good job, guys’. And before that with Xellos…

She gripped her knees. This wasn’t the time to agonize over decisions already made.

“Well, now, Miss Filia,” the Elder said, shuffling through his papers. “It seems that you’ve done admirably well even in the face of tremendous adversity. You should be very proud of—”

“How much of it did you expect?” Filia asked bluntly.

The Supreme Elder pause, sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I expected many things. It’s a good way to avoid getting caught by surprise.”

“The assassination attempts?” Filia asked.

The Supreme Elder laced his fingers together and looked at her over them. “It was… reasonable to expect something like that. The Dragon race has plenty of enemies. Though I always thought our most likely attackers would come from within.”

“Rasmus,” Filia said.

The Supreme Elder shrugged. “Or Cleon,” he said. “Or some political fanatic who followed you. It was really impossible to control. Anyone I sent would’ve had that problem. But you had a powerful protector. That’s one of the reasons I chose you.”

“That’s not the only reason you chose me,” Filia said darkly. “Xellos thinks the main reason you chose me was to tempt him.”

The Supreme Elder gave a wan smile. “That’s a little… conceited of him, isn’t it?”

Filia gave him a sharp ‘welcome to my world’ look.

“I… didn’t know what would happen between you two,” the Supreme Elder admitted. “But I had enough information put together from your travels with him that I thought it was a legitimate possibility.”

“But you didn’t tell me to try anything on him,” Filia said.

“Of course not,” the Supreme Elder said.

“Not because you’re above such dirty tactics,” Filia went on, “but because you knew I’d refuse. You just… set people up. You don’t give orders; you just make sure that what people want to do is what you want them to do!”

“Best way to get things done, really,” the Supreme Elder said unabashedly. “Do you think my motivations in choosing you were not painfully obvious to both Xellos and Beastmaster whom he serves? She is thoroughly pragmatic. If Xellos had resisted you, then you would wield power of him. If you resisted Xellos then he would wield power over you. But for it to occur as it did… was a mutually beneficial situation. She let it happen.”

Filia was silent. The idea of Xellos having to get permission from his, let’s not get stuck with terminology here, mom for this little plot was an unaccountably squirmy thought. But it was strangely pitiable too.

“Xellos,” Filia’d said that morning. “There’s something I have to say to you.”

“You’ve done well,” the Supreme Elder said. “And I’m not just talking about the situation with Xellos. The pride of the dragons has made subtle politics a joke in the past. You know more about the real world than most dragons ever will. What I’m asking is—”

“You want me to be the Premier of Foreign Affairs permanently,” Filia said in a faraway voice.

“Yes,” the Supreme Elder said. “You would be an invaluable asset to this administration. You’d get to see places you’ve never seen; walk with kings and queens; be the architect of the new trading program; shape the policy of the dragon race’s future; and chair all talks with the monster race.”

Filia caught that last one. It was the baited one.

“No,” she said.

“They’re going to offer me the Foreign Affairs job,” she’d said that morning, not even bothering to sit up in his bed. “I just know it.”

“That’s a very confident attitude you’ve got,” Xellos commented from next to her. “Though in this case I’d be inclined to agree with you.”

“…I’m not going to take it.”

He’d looked at her. It was the same look of disapproval he’d given her when she’d left the morning before.

“So you’re going to go back to your little shop and sell knick-knacks for the rest of your life?”

“I like selling knick-knacks,” Filia had said without much rancor.

“You could be doing important things,” he’d said.

“Raising my Val is important,” she’d said in a small voice.

“You wouldn’t have to give that up and you know it. That’s not the choice. That’s just the excuse,” Xellos had said in an absolute sort of tone.

“I’m not taking the job because just because I can have it both ways doesn’t mean I should,” Filia said firmly. “Just saying ‘I’ll use you and you’ll use me’ doesn’t make it somehow fair. I don’t want to go through life being used or using people.”

“So, go on,” she’d said, “keep this up if you want to. Spy on me if you want to, but you’ll only be spying on a shopkeeper. I’m not going to give you any information on the Dragon race’s plans if I don’t have any, so it’s pointless if that’s your goal.”

“I see,” he’d said cryptically.

“Well, you can’t honestly expect him to come back after that, can you?” the Supreme Elder asked incredulously. “Even if he wanted to, it’s not that simple. He needs an excuse and you took it away from him.”

“Maybe,” Filia said in that same vague, faraway voice. Then her eyes flashed and she was all business again. “I may not be taking the job, but I still have some suggestions before I go back home.”

The Supreme Elder sat back. “Oh. I’m sure I can’t wait to hear them.”

“First off,” Filia said, “don’t take Xellos’s territory trade. It’s not worth it. Start up the trading program, but don’t trade weapons. Trade doesn’t stop at party A and party B. Trading with one is like trading with them all. We can’t put some moral magnifying glass over the whole thing or it won’t work.”

The Supreme Elder nodded.

“And send Queen Lopa one of our music boxes,” Filia added at a sudden thought. “Complimentary.”

The Supreme Elder nodded again.

“Ally yourself with the beastmen. They need friends right now and we have a lot of the same problems,” Filia said firmly.

The Supreme Elder tapped his tabletop. “We’re… trying to make nice with the humans right now. Many of them have rather… traditional ideas. Getting in too close with the beastmen will make us all the more ‘other’ to them.”

“That’s no excuse for ignoring them,” Filia said. “Anyway… they can be helpful. You’re the kind of person who doesn’t like wasting anything that can be useful,” she added accusingly.

The Supreme Elder let that pass. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“And have regular meetings with a representative from the Monster race,” Filia said. “They’ll lie to us and we’ll lie to them, but at least we’ll both know what the other race wants us to think and that’s worth something. A cold war is better than a hot one.”

“…You’ll need to pick your representative with care,” Filia added quietly.

“And you know very well that no one could do better than you.”

“I’m going to suggest regular meetings between our races,” she’d said. “You like to play politics. It should be fun for you.”
“Yes,” Xellos had said in an uncertain ‘waitress, there’s glass in my soup’ kind of way. “But you won’t be part of the meetings.”
“No,” Filia had said.
“The other dragons are not nearly as fun as you,” Xellos said wistfully.

“Well, I should hope not under the circumstances,” Filia had said lightly.

Xellos had looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “That’s a rather risqué comment for you, isn’t it?”

“What can I say,” she’d said, “you’re a terrible influence.”

“I try.”

“…I think you know what my answer to that is,” Filia said.

“I see.” The Supreme Elder sighed. “What a shame… for both the Dragon and the Monster races.”

“Funny,” Filia began, “Xellos said the same thing.”

*****

It was hard, but Filia was getting back to her normal life. It’s strange how a week can change a person. Her life as a shopkeeper and a mother-eventually-to-be seemed so much smaller than it had when she left it. Oh, in many ways it was wonderful to be back. But so many things that she had to deal with now seemed… petty now. Whenever it got her down, she retreated to the nursery where the unhatched egg containing the reborn Val stood in its bassinet. Then it all seemed worth it again.

She was there now, looking the glowing shell and the new hope it contained. It warmed her to look at it, but even it couldn’t give her the peace she needed. She still agonized as to whether she’d done the right thing or not. She was beginning to think that there was no right thing for her to do. She’d merely taken the option that made her feel the least guilty.

…But she still felt pretty guilty.

She sighed. It was best this way. The world of politics was too changeable. Sure, she could’ve done good, but she had the sneaking suspicion that she could’ve done evil just as easily and frequently. And as for Xellos… well, that was the worst of it. But if she loved him then she didn’t want it to be under that shroud of excuses. It would’ve just been… inauthentic and selfish. If her choice meant losing him through either his inclination or what was permissible then… then that was the way it had to be.

Still… she couldn’t shake the diplomat thing entirely. Lopa would be coming for a visit next Tuesday. She said she might even get Arkon to come with her. Filia made a mental note to restock her liquor cabinet.

And the President of DASIS wanted a huge order of pottery for his capital building. Ash-trays apparently. Well… at least that was good for business.

And she’d received news that Cleon had been promoted to Foreign Policy Administrator. She hoped he’d taken her advice. She was a little miffed that his title didn’t have ‘Affairs’ in it, but it was probably for the best. Anyway, she wished him luck with all he’d have to deal with. Putting together a comprehensive trade strategy while dealing with the monsters wouldn’t be easy.

…Not that she’d bother with any of that stuff. Surely that was all far above the world of a pottery shopkeeper. …Even a pottery shopkeeper that talked with queens, dukes, and presidents on a regular basis. It wasn’t her concern anymore.

…Which was… too bad in so many ways, but still the best choice. It might not have been the right choice, but it was the right choice for her.

…And it would’ve all been so much easier without that one regret. She sighed.

“Oi, boss!” Filia heard Jillas say from the doorway. “What’s our policy on discounts?”

“We don’t give them,” Filia said, not taking her eyes off the egg. “You know better than that. Full price no matter who buys. No exceptions.”

“Isn’t there any room for negotiation?”

Filia whipped around. “Xellos?” she cried.

People aren’t always how you expect them to be.

The End.