After a moment of just looking at it, Rykard reached for his belt. He took the vial filled with his Mutagen and downed it quickly. The infusion of magic in his biological system was swiftly shaped into sharpened senses.

  “May I?” he asked and Udunan nodded. Rykard took the weapon and turned it around a bit, paying particur attention to the network of tubes at the back. “Liquicity solution?” he mumbled, closely observing the way fine particles shifted in the thick, green liquid. He gave it a smell test and nodded. “Alchemical metal-fluid, meant to re-harden… which means that.”

  Turning the weapon around, he found a little tch and popped it open. A panel of wood opened, showing the carefully polished and maintained insides of the weapon’s grip. Wires and vials connected to each other, with a second, smaller, polished mana gem at the centre. A simple trigger hammer sat next to it.

  “I see, on the pull of this switch, the hammer strikes the mana crystal, sending an impulse through the weapon.” He felt the soft weight of Helenn, the shortstack staring over his shoulder as he analysed. “The signal is filtered through this… ah, I see, so this changes the shape of the metal piece formed from the alchemical fluid. The shape of the projectile then connects differently to the enchantments along the barrel, infusing it with different elemental properties…” Rykard nodded a few times to himself. “And the signal is changed… here”, he found a protruding bit of metal and pulled. It snapped into one of several slots with a satisfying click. “Truly well-maintained,” he complimented and handed the weapon back.

  “You know your way around a sparkrifle,” Tochnan complimented.

  “Sparkrifle? What an interesting name,” Rykard stated. “I have never seen anything like it.”

  “Surely you must be joking, king Rykard,” the diplomatic sibling decred.

  “Don’t disrespect a military man like that,” Udunan chastized his brother. “You have a keen eye and a quick mind,” he addressed Rykard in a respectful tone. “You’ll need both to solve the headache you invited into your realm. Let’s show our guest a pce to stay, Toch.”

  “...As you wish, brother,” the diplomatic sibling answered with a sigh. Even though both were in their sixties, in that moment he looked like any brother outshined by family.

  “You stay out here,” Rykard told his navy company. “How about you mingle a little bit,” he added with a wink, then followed his hosts with his harem in tow. Had it not been for the discipline on both sides, he would have expected the all male and all female groups to be all over each other by the time he turned his back.

  The insides of the bastion were as unimpressive as the outside. Nothing about the raw stone structure indicated the technology of the Hexagon had advanced beyond the dark ages. Even the rge dining room they eventually entered was a hall that would have been opulent for a barbarian king of the northnds at best. By Rykard’s imperial standards, this was the thematically decorated summer home of a baron.

  “Please, sit down,” Tochnan said. “Can we bring you anything?”

  “From the look of this pce, I feel like I should be asking that question,” Rykard answered, only half-joking. The chandelier above their heads was lit up by candles - regur candles. The work it must have taken to light that thing was not worth it. “For now, please just inform me what I am dealing with.”

  “I’ll make it quick,” Udunan stated, taking the wind out of the sails of his brother. “This Hexagon is the central point of overpping territory between the Atan Magocracy, the Divine Alchemy League, and the Fang Gear Consortium. We here at the Central Oversight Committee try to keep the three factions from devolving in a race war.”

  “...That sounds like a wonderful situation indeed,” Rykard drawled sarcastically. “Your people are really separating each other on the basis of race?”

  “They are not my people, Rykard. We’re crossbreeds, we band together to try and keep a bance, especially here. It’s not popur,” Udunan crossed his hands behind his back. “My personal advice would be to lend your strength, however much that is, to crush the locals. Unify by force. Without the backing of their homends, we finally have that opportunity.”

  “You’re being a bit too brief,” the king answered. “How come there even is this central committee if all three factions hate each other so much?”

  Tochnan cleared his throat. “To put it in unblemished terms… there were constant wars about who should hold the Exile Hexagon and so they all agreed to hold it together and… make our problem that of everyone else.”

  “Not that there would be no wars here if it weren’t for me and my troops,” Udunan added. “You’ll find that the only people in the districts are fighting age men and their support structures.”

  “All of them loyal to their district, I assume?” Rykard asked.

  “Their race and their craft,” Udunan confirmed with a nod. “The elves are enchanters, the angels are alchemists, and the fenrisians are artificers. We here at the Central Oversight Committee have limited knowledge of all three, but limited hands.” He gestured at the structure around them. “Took plenty of pulled strings to get this basic structure built.”

  Rykard hummed deeply. This was an issue. The popution of his Hexagon was essentially split three ways, with no two wanting to work together - at least by what it sounded like. There was no easy way to get the needed majority to have this Hexagon count as ‘subjugated’.

  ‘What are my options?’ he asked himself.

  The obvious one was to do as Udunan suggested and just come down on everyone. Their consent to be governed hardly mattered if they were subjugated by force.

  An adjustment of that pn was to pick one of the three factions and support them into taking control. That would give an easier springboard, but he was all but guaranteeing discrimination for generations to come. The Central Oversight Committee at least was a result of some kind of unity.

  Third was to actually go out and try to get a bit of unity going. If he could convince two of the districts to work together under him, then that should be enough.

  Fourth was to try and unify everyone diplomatically instead of violently. There was a central government here. If Rykard managed to make it popur with most people across the three districts, that would also get his pn working.

  Taking time to first meet with the factions in py was, of course, also an option. That would take him at least a week, given the travel times involved. Whether time was more precious than the intel was impossible to tell.

  Rykard’s fingers danced on the tabletop. He was seriously contempting what to do here. Most of his options were ugly, but ugly decisions were part of being a leader. When heading a nation, not all was blowjob and steaks.

  “I can’t make my decision off of your word alone,” he finally decided.

  Udunan pressed his lips together. Tochnan let out a sigh of relief. “A most wise decision, king Rykard,” the diplomatic sibling agreed readily. “A peaceful solution may be found yet.”

  “We’ve been in this gridlock for generations.”

  “Which is exactly why an outside perspective may be what we need.”

  Rykard pushed himself off the table. His presence ended the bickering before it could begin - at least while he was around. “There are many ways we can solve this and I’m ready to walk the path of violence if the situation calls for it,” he made clear. “However, I am not so pressed for time that I won’t do them the bare minimum of at least trying.”

  “Then try,” Udunan said with a half-hearted wave. “You’ll come to see it my way.”

  Rykard detected no lie in that statement. The crossbreed really did believe that violence was the only way out of this. As the prince of an empire that had unified a world through conquest, he knew well enough that, sometimes, the only way to end a blood feud was to crush everyone involved into the same paste.

  Ugly, yes, and also reality.

  “I’ll see the elves first - I assume they are north of here?” Nods were all the confirmation he needed. “Any tips?”

  “In general? Keep your bodyguards close. The moment you suggest to make peace with the other races, whoever you deal with could turn violent.”

  “A… sordid state of affairs,” Tochnan added to his brother’s words.

  Rykard looked at the women with him. The warning words of the duo had the opposite effect they likely intended. Taking anyone else with him invoked unnecessary risks, especially when three of the four haremettes with him were two months pregnant.

  He could have them come along, accompanied by the other 100 navy women that had tagged along. That was theoretically enough of a force to assure their safety. Alternatively, he could have them all stay behind and move alone.

  ‘Nah, I’m here with a whole set of trained professionals,’ Rykard thought. No need to part with his haremettes and leave them somewhere outside of his sight. That was where they were safest anyway.

  With that resolve made, he set out.

  A cobblestone road, if it could even be called that, extended from the north of the fortification to the gap in the northern walls. The march to the wall took half a day, the march to the actually poputed area another eight hours. Between the two points were vast fields of berry bushes and the like, growing in carefully measured patches surrounded by rune-etched pnks of wood.

  The people Rykard saw were immediately confusing to him. Never, ever in his life had he seen fat elves before. He had thought elves were just magically immune to that acquisition of adipose tissue, but all he saw were equal parts pointy-eared and rotund.

  Their group of over 100 people caught attention, predictably, as they made their way towards a rge, ornate building. Between its size and the blue, magical glow around it, it was quite obviously the most important pce around - obnoxiously so.

  “Sir…” Lyvia whispered.

  “I’ve noticed,” Rykard assured her.

  As they advanced, the locals were forming a ring around them, growing in density. As advertised, the crowd consisted of near exclusively fighting age men. That they were above normal weight hardly mattered, the aptness at magic dispyed by the many wands they held either in hand or kept secure on their belt. The distrust was heavy in the air.

  Rykard was reminded of a, well, frankly racist general that he used to serve with. The man had always espoused that female elves were the greatest thing ever, but male elves, especially high elves, were backstabbing, conniving knife ears that couldn’t be trusted. The man had many colourful views that Rykard had found more amusing than anything. Right now, he wondered if there may have been something to that.

  Considering the pale skin and hair colours around, he was definitely dealing with the high elf variety.

  Despite the hostile atmosphere, their contingent was allowed to advance up to the building. Two guards in wholly impractical, ornate armour opened the gate of the cathedral-esque structure with stilted motions. “Come with me,” he ordered his haremettes specifically. He did not want them out of his sight in this situation.

  The building smelled intensely of arcane refuse. It was a tingly, almost sharp kind of smell, more of a feeling that blocked the scent receptors than an actual fragrance. Rykard found it eyebrow raising. Such a smell only occurred where enchantment was used extensively or inefficiently. He typically associated it with artifice shops over anything else.

  Standing dramatically at the end of the main hall was a singur elf in robes of blue and gold cloth. His wide silhouette was cast against a pale blue light.

  Rykard almost cringed when the pointy-eared man turned around. It was meant to look impressive, no doubt, but it only looked awkward. Two slow steps, made wobbly from his focus on keeping up the spell between his hands as if he was trying to hold onto something shaky. Even when he faced the king, the elf did not look immediately at him, only lifting his blue eyes once he was certain of his position. He was not necessarily unattractive, nor was he as overweight as other elves around, and he did have pretty impressive, long, white hair, but he just felt… bumbly.

  “Pretty impressive, right?” the elf asked, slightly raising the pentagram between his hands. The magic flickered, almost going out before he focused on it again.