-Break-

The next day

Φ With Cyrus behind me I walk through the shabby wooden door in front of me, and say, “Look who has arrived.”

Suddenly the kids in the classroom start to run towards me, and say, “Orb.”

“Doggy.”

“Play with us.”

“I don’t want to study anymore.”

“Let’s go on an adventure.”

As the kids from Aplos jump at me, I say, “If you want me to respond to your requests you must overcome my guard dog.”

Using my legacy, I make a little doggy out of snow and use it to chase the kids around. As my dog stops the kid's approach, I laugh and say, “Seems you were all too weak!”

In a mere moment, I am struck hard on my head by Pine who says, “Not all those kids are from Aplos they can’t put up with the cold of your wolf.”

With blue hair, I say, “Sorry,” And then remove the snow wolf.

As I do this Cyrus bows to Pine and says, “Good morning.”

“Good morning as well, I like the volume you have got now.”

The kids then run towards me and start complaining that they want to play. “Don’t worry young ones I have something far more exciting.”

Pushing Cyrus into the kids' clutches, I say, “A dragon!”

The kids start to cheer as they pull a clueless Cyrus away.

“I swear coming in here and interrupting my class with this, you sure have grown a giant ego.”

“Don’t worry Granny Pine no amount of arrogance would ever make me want to deal with a monster like you.”

She hits me again in the face, and says, “Don’t call me a monster I am still a woman!”

Holding my face I wonder why all the women around me are such violent monsters, they used to be all cute and adorable when we first met.

“Lady Pine, he is still just a young boy who is yet to grow into a great man. I don’t think instilling violence against him at such formative years is a great thing. Not to mention he does do a lot of work by himself, the less injured he is the better,” Elliot says.

“I guess you're right,” Pine says.

Seeing someone like Pine answering to someone who isn’t Sequoia is strange, but she does tell us to mine the words of our elders. Despite most of us calling her granny she is only 47 which was rather old for a lifespan in Aplos.

Compared to Elliot; Lady Dushes former servant from Skydust is 72. So it seems on some level she does respect him for all his experience, considering he is old enough to be her father.

Looking at her I have a bright smile on my face, and pink hair.

“What’s that look for Orb.”

“I am just glad you somehow made a friend, it seems violent women like you and Suzuka are being blessed by god with friendship.”

Pine puts both of her knuckles on my head, and says while rubbing them furiously, “I would have you know not everyone needs to be like you and be friends with everyone. I have a few and I am fine with that.”

Looking at her, Orb’s hair turns Maroon and he says, “That sounds pretty amazing.”

Pine lets go of me and says, “Is that a new colour?”

“AGAIN! I say trying to find something to look at.

Looking around the room, I stop and say, “Are the new courses going alright?”

“Yes, it seems to be well received by the kids, talking all of the knowledge everyone here has and using it to make a rather informative course seems to be making the children smile, especially when they can’t do anything else here.”

“I see some of the former slaves here, but what about the members of Aplos, I am pretty sure the adults were supposed to be taught as well.”

Elliot says, “Well we ran into a few issues with that.”

“Really, did they give you a hard time, I can help if needed.”

Pine says, “No, Orb it isn’t your responsibility to deal with that.”

“But-.” Before I can finish I sense two things appear and fall on my head.

“HAHAHAHAHA! Be amazed because the one and only Mime the Great is here to brighten your day!”

“Anto is here as well, we have been hiding and waiting to teleport to surprise you.”

“I see so that’s why I didn’t sense you.”

Crawling over to my face, Mime says, “Of course you wouldn’t because my plan is amazing!”

Pine says, “Mime what are you doing, haven’t you finished your work?”

“HAHAHAHA, you didn’t get me this time I have everything completed right here,” Mime says as she hands Pine a sheet.

Pine reads the sheet and starts to have a surprised look here. “Everything is correct, even though you're always asleep in classes.”

“HAHAHAHA! Of course it is.”

Moving closer to me, Mime puts her head down, and says, “Proceed Orb.”

Patting her head, I say, “Good job Mime, you did wonderful.”

She blushes then her ego spikes and says, “Now it is time to play!” Mime then runs towards the other children.

On my shoulder, I look at Anto who is making a tired expression. It seems he is still keeping up the act of being dumber than Mime to make her happy.

“Are you okay?”

“For the most part, but I swear whenever my twin isn’t directly in my sight she causes me to worry for her and everyone around her safety. I wish I could take a break from her.”

Mime looking at us with a sad expression, says, “ANTO HURRY UP!”

“But whenever I am not around her she starts to get sad, and I don’t want to let that happen. The struggles of being the grown-up twin,” Anto says as he jumps off my shoulder.

“Wait a minute,” I say to Anto.

As he turns around to look at me I give him some candy and say, “I saved some for you, but if you're too much of an adult I can ju-.”

Before I can even finish Anto takes the candy out of my hands and puts it in his mouth, he then runs over to Mime.

“I guess he still is a child.”

Elliot beside me then says, “Orb what do you know about those two kids?”

“Nothing really, I overheard one of their conversation before but outside of that I really don’t know anything about them.”

“It is just that both of them are smart quite a bit smarter than the average kid their age. It is very apparent that they have received a noble education simply from watching them, even their posture gives them away.

But that is also strange because despite their age they are also quite capable of keeping up on the battlefield, and for kids that young it is incredibly strange. Don’t you think we should ask them?”

When I overheard both Mime and Anto speak, they were talking about how they were betrayed in the past. This topic for them isn’t something I should force out of them I should just leave it be.

“I am sure they will tell us when the time is right.”

Pine says, “Orb so why are you here in the first place.”

“Oh that’s right, I have come to ask both of you and Maple to come with me for the next meeting, which is starting soon, but where is Maple.”

“She is over there,” Pine says as she points to an isolated area of the room.

Looking over there I am hit with an intense gloomy aura. Sitting on a desk with her hands on her head is Maple, and the assistant chief of Aplos Cedar Wodok.

“What happened to her?” I say shocked.

“It seems the learning isn’t going as well for her as she had hoped, and I think Mime's mocking of her has made the situation worse.”

Going closer to her, I touch her on the back which causes her to turn around.

With an incredibly frustrated look, she says, “What is it?”

Scared, I say, “It is time for the meeting to start?”

Getting up, with excitement she says, “Really, I guess I got to stop this and go. Bye Cedar.” Maple then runs out the door filled with joy.

-Break-

Location: Meeting room

Inside the mansion, a group of people are seated around a circular table.

Representing the people of Aplos; Maple.

Representing the people of Skydust; Sandra.

Representing the construction; Arend.

Representing education; Elliot.

Representing the slaves of Basileia; Pine.

Representing resources; Avram

Avram and Orb also sit at this table.

But strangely enough, in Orb's arms is Cyrus, and in Maples's arms is Suzuka. Orb sitting down rubs his face into Cyrus's hair, and Maple does the same with Suzuka.

Cyrus looks confused, and Suzuka is red with embarrassment, but they both put up with it since the two Rians look happy.

“Now I have noticed that everything around here is flowing as well as it should be, and I have also noticed that many of you are avoiding telling me this issue,  so I have called this meeting here and no one will leave till we figure things out.”

The room falls silent as they all see the red in my hair, but then unintimidated Pine says, “Ok then, As you know I have been looking after my husband and all the others that have been sick from the Basileia crystal incidents. But we have run into an issue which is both food and water.”

“Don’t we have enough of both of those?”

“For water, we have to make it hot, and that requires us to find some wood. But all the wood on Fimbulwinter is from the trees, and sadly we can’t start fires from the trees in Fimbulwinter.

This means when Avram and his people go out to get us water on their airship they also have to bring trees back which is very hard to do without getting caught.”

Avram says, “This also leads to another issue, which is food.”

Pine then continues, “We have found out that the people who are sick really can’t eat predasaur meat, so instead we have had to find real animals, which is again an issue because when Avram and the rest leave they essentially have to find lone animals and take them for us to use every day.”

“About 20 per cent of all the people in Niflheim currently are sick, so it makes sense the resource issue that this would cause.”

Maple then sits up and proudly fully says, “What if we just take the animals and trees around the outside of Fimbulwinter, when me and Orb left Fimbulwinter on Willow the 2^nd’s back we saw a whole bunch of them.”

Pine says, “Remember there are a bunch of adventures still running around the bottom of Fimbulwinter, that plan might work in the future but for now it is pointless.”

“But I haven’t seen any.”

I say, “Buloke reported recently that he saw signs of adventures during your latest hunt.”

Maple with a demoralised look grips her fists and says, “I didn’t notice.”

Arend says, “This yet again leads to another unfortunate issue. Which is that all of the cooks who can handle wonderbeasts are held up, and without them taking apart the wonderbeasts for us we can’t get the materials and slowing our construction down.”

“I see so we need to get the sale of Basileia crystals going as fast as possible. At the rate we are going we will start to have resource problems.”

Turning my head to Maple, I say, “How is the education of the warriors going? For our plans, we would need to at least send over 100 warriors trained in spirit energy and knowledge enough to get around, to be the guards of our shop, wherever we choose to send it.”

Maple gritting her teeth, says, “That won’t be possible, anytime soon.”

“Huh, why?”

Sandra then says, “Orb, the biggest issue we currently face is the complete and utter uncooperativeness of the people of Aplos.”