"What was up with his eyes?" Isaac asked Lenna while they were still relatively safe from prying ears.

"When an elf is soon to die, their eyes begin to fade." Lenna explained. "They turn dull and gray. The elf usually dies before they deteriorate further than that."

"You think that he's stayed so long past his time that he just doesn't have eyes anymore?" Isaac questioned incredulously. "From what I could tell, that was power flowing where his eyes should have been. Real power. Life, death, and everything in between was fusing and swirling around as if it wanted to become one but was instead stuck as five separate entities."

"Like it was his power only barely contained?" Lenna wondered.

Isaac nodded in affirmation. "Exactly like that." He confirmed. "There are things going on with him that I cannot even begin to understand, but what I do know is that his power is of a type far beyond and more final than any type of magic I have seen, felt, or otherwise experienced."

"We do not need to understand it, as long as he wants to help us, and the price is stomachable," Lenna began.

"And our odds of success are extremely high." Isaac added.

"Then that is all that matters." Lenna finished. "For now, we should do as directed."

"Should we let anyone know first?" Isaac wondered. "As much fun as it would be to cause this city to go into lockdown, dealing with the repercussions of that will probably take longer than informing the necessary parties would."

Lenna nodded in agreement. "We should ask Walter. We could have asked Xlen, but we are already nearly at the bottom." The duo had taken the stairs to the bottom and, even though the stairway was well decorated and perfectly clean, Isaac was debating just teleporting down a flight or two at a time.

"We can just stop the first guard that we see and make them inform the powers that be." Isaac told her with a shrug. "That is the best part about being important. We get to make normal people have less monotonous days."

Lenna just shook her head.

—

Isaac stood directly in front of one of the guards that ringed the spire. "You are a royal guard, are you not?" He questioned the man in gleaming gilded armor that baked in the afternoon sun. The guard did not move in the slightest. He was nearly as rigid as a statue despite Isaac half looking down his nose at him. Isaac raised an eyebrow that almost seemed to ask: 'Are you sure about that decision.' When the guard didn't after a few tense seconds.

"They are very well disciplined." Lenna commented and leaned in slightly to inspect the armor. "Decent quality, not Emperor's Guard level, but decent."

"Is your armor 'Emperor's Guard' level?" Isaac asked her. He was genuinely curious. If every single one of the drow emperor's guards wore the same gear as Jallen V'Nova then he was probably the singularly most protected person in the world.

"My crown makes it better, but the standard protection is the same, yes." Lenna replied casually. "When I was still working under my uncle, I would have loved a suit as high quality as what these guards are wasting."

Isaac nodded in agreement. "They are also wasting their strength." He added. "Though, I guess that is every ruler. They always protect themselves with powerful warriors that could be better used as heroes of the people, fighting external and internal threats under the full light of the sun, instead of standing at attention."

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A small group of guards quickly approached the duo from outside of the spire's perimeter. "Excuse me, my Lord, my Lady, but we request that you leave the Royal Guards to their duty." The leader of this new group of guards quickly explained in hopes that Isaac and Lenna would leave the poor royal guardsman alone.

Isaac slowly turned to face the leader of the new group of guards. "Tell the commander of the guards, both royal and otherwise, as well as any present mages of influence, every word that I am about to say." He told the squad leader with a look that expected perfect compliance. "I will begin meditating in one hour and will continue to do so, almost constantly, for the next nine days. Do not disturb me unless absolutely necessary. The Fatebreaker told me to do this in preparation of the granting of a Wish. That is all."

The guard's face was covered by his helmet and visor but Isaac could see in his body language that, in the beginning, he really wanted to punch Isaac in the teeth for speaking so lightly of the rulers of the nation and city. As he went on, however, the guard seemed to realize who he was talking to and the gravity of the situation. Especially once the words 'Fatebreaker' and 'granting of a Wish' were spoken.

The guard nodded. "I will relay it post haste." The guard assured him. "But before I go, my Lord, I must reiterate that the Royal Guardsmen should be left alone unless absolutely necessary."

Isaac nodded. "I am aware." He replied and turned to Lenna. "Let's do some shopping and exploring. After that, then we will begin meditating."

Lenna nodded once in agreement. "I would like that." She told him with a slight smile in her voice. "Maybe we can even pick up souvenirs for the girls."

Isaac and Lenna spent the better part of the next hour looking through a toy shop in the higher end part of town. Most of the toys were wooden and of the usual kind. There was apparently only one toy shop in the entire city simply because of how few children there were at any singular time. The mated pair that ran the store also made all of the toys by hand and were more than happy to tell Isaac and Lenna about them. There were rows of horses, horse-drawn carts, bears, wolves, pumas, deer, elk, snakes, and soldiers all with articulating limbs. It was clear that each piece was labored over until it was perfect in its own way. The knots of the wood were often used in interesting and unique ways, like the bear whose lower jaw was darker than the rest of its body and the curved lines of the knot made it look like it had just finished taking a bite out of another creature.

Some of the toys were hundreds of years old but, with the magically persevering shelves and tables that they were arrayed on, they still looked only weeks old. Eventually, they got to a section of dolls. It took the duo a little while but they eventually found a pair of dolls that looked like mirrored images of each other. The dolls faces were smooth and, like everything else in the shop, had articulating limbs. Their hair was made out of silk string so it felt as smooth as real hair. Isaac and Lenna looked at the dolls and then at each other. "These." Isaac said what they were both thinking.

The owners gladly sold the duo the dolls and the pair returned to their room, not before stopping at the kitchen for something to eat first however. The two had a light late afternoon snack and then headed up to their room. As they left the stairwell and out onto the floor, they noticed a man in the same armor as the rest of the Royal Guards, just with a cape that had actual golden leaves cascading down it, and missing his helmet. Next to him was a woman with long white robes covered in golden embroidery of the sun. Leaning against the wall opposite the two was Walter.

Isaac and Lenna approached the three waiting just outside of their door. "Looking for us?" Isaac asked rhetorically. "Where's Gypsy?"

"Playing checkers with the old man Ashborne." Walter replied and gestured towards the two across from him. "This's Royal Guard Captain Chen Du'Ran and High Priestess Tina Su'Sol, one of the Fatebreaker's great nieces."

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance." The high priestess greeted them with a bow. The guard captain bowed along with her but not nearly as deeply and, unlike the priestess, the guard kept his eyes on Isaac and Lenna at all times.

"Likewise." Isaac replied for both he and Lenna. "Though I must ask, what brings you by right now, of all times."

"After hearing directly from the guardsman that you had talked to, I felt the need to meet with you directly before you began." Priestess Tina explained. "I suppose that I am just curious as to why you believe it necessary to inform everyone before you meditate. Master Walker has informed us that it can be likened to a tornado of mana that destabilizes the local mana to a degree. Is that true?"

Isaac nodded. "It is." He agreed. "And why is the guardsman here?"

The priestess shook her head. "I am the head of the clergy here in the city made in the image of El'Gra's celestial haven." She informed them. "I am apparently not permitted to meet with any outsiders without an escort of the highest level." She wasn't joking. The guard next to her felt strong, very strong. He felt like one of those people that Walter referred to as having the 'Hero Factor'. Isaac wouldn't have been surprised if he gave Jallen V'Nova a run for his money. In fact, Isaac had the feeling that a fight between the two would have been decided by who had better items.

"I see." Isaac replied. "I will begin shortly, you are welcome to watch until it begins. Once it has started, please leave and close the door behind you." Isaac told her. "People tend to underestimate the impact until they have witnessed it first hand."

The priestess smiled in gratitude and relief. "Thank you, Lord Darkness, for your cooperation." She told him with another bow and then she got out of the way so Isaac and Lenna could enter their room.

The guard was entirely silent as he just observed the duo and how Isaac and the priestess interacted. Clergy of El'Gra were always very in tune with the flow of power and the simple fact that she had wanted to meet with Isaac meant that he was someone powerful enough to be important. That alone warranted a royal guard escort. Hopefully he would stay out of the way and not try anything funny while Isaac was drifting down the flow of dark mana to see where it ended.

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