Throughout the Azeria Mountain Dungeon and along many lines of e rippled new pootential.

  Carmil roused slowly from the aftermath of her oath and stretched happily as she felt a portion of her power as a princess return to her. She was in the domain that she now beloo after all. Opening her eyes, she smiled at Mordecai's ed expression and opened her mouth to tease him.

  The words felt like ash in her mouth.

  Startled, she sat upright as she tried to figure out what had happened. It didn't take her very long to realize what this unintended sequence was, and she hid her fa her hands. "Of course that would happen. If I'm the princess of a court with queens and a king, then I am at least their adoptive daughter." Mordecai started ughing softly, and Carmil could hear Kazue trying to fort her but the effort was ruined by how ughter leaked across even that mental voice. It didn't help her feeling of embarrassment.

  Throughout the dungeon, all of the fey inhabitants gained a small measure of power, which lified when also inside of the growing domain.

  Fuyuko had been practig in the arena to work off a bit of nervousness knowing what Mordecai and Shizoku were dealing with topside. A sudden shiver nearly made her drop her daggers and she looked around in fusion. She could tell something was different, but she couldn't tell what and that made her nervous.

  Moments ter, Kazue spoke softly into her mind, "You rex, nothing bad has happened, but I think your status as our ward is going to affect you a little. Um, we'll talk more ter, a lot is happening, but it's fine. Really."

  Somehow that was not f.

  Shizoku had been making her way back down to the dungeon's guest quarters wheiced a faint luminance casting her shadow on a wall in front of her. She turned around with a frown only to find nothing behind her. Until she gnced down at the ground and found her shadow being cast fain.

  With trepidation, she drew one of her tails forward and stared in dumbfounded shock at the trickle of glowing white motes drifting from it.

  Topside, Orchid had taken the opportunity to take a nighttime walk with her sort. She was rather enjoying the feeling of leaning against him as his fingers brushed through her hair, but then she felt him pull something free that she hadn't realized was there. She turo look at what he had in his hand only to stare in fusion at the white orchid in his hand. "That's cute, learning some sleight of hand Love?"

  Paltira shook his head. "No, this is from you." He reached over and plucked a rose from her hair as well, and theured behind them. For the st several meters their trail was littered by a scattering of random flower petals.

  In the Azeria forest, Norumi sighed at the sudden ges she felt. "Oh Father, what did you do this time?" The effect was unmistakable, she was somehow even more fey tharansformation had already made her, though in a purely additive fashion. She couldn't see any immediate effects, but she felt somehow more solid and guessed that at the least she'd be able to make a corporeal body more easily. Possibly even sustain one for a while. Now that could be an iing idea.

  In Riverbridge Traxalim fought to retain his mortality. For an a, powerful elf priest even a small infusion of faerie essence could tilt that band now his grandfather was a Faerie King. The temporal order of events like this meant little to faerie logily the es aionships. He was able to maintain his grip on mortality, but a gn the mirror revealed ahat appeared to be no more than middle-aged. This left him with rather mixed feelings.

  In an inn room on the coast of Kuic, Moriko had been keeping Kazue and Ruby up to date on the unfoldis, minus some careful edits regarding the statues and the border, when Carmil swore her oath. Shortly after that, Mordecai id cim to the new domain on their behalf. Titles that carried Power cimed Kazue and Moriko, and the two newly ed Faerie Queens were briefly lit by bolts of power that shattered their chairs and scorched the floor around them. The two kneeling women gasped to catch their breath before they carefully rose to their feet.

  "What happened?" Kazue asked.

  Moriko sighed as she answered, "Mordecai says our atus carries its own power. It doesn't have as much impa him as he already was used to it, but it might take a while for us to deal with more than the side effects, whatever they might be."

  "Well," Ruby said, "that would certainly expin those." She poi Kazue's back.

  The kitsuwisted about futilely to see what was on her batil Moriko grabbed her by the shoulders and brought her to the mirror so she could see what was there from the side. Kazue gaped at her new faerie wings for a moment before whispering, "Oh, they are so beautiful." She shook herself out of her trao start examining Moriko. "I don't see anything different about you. Well, maybe you are a bit taller?"

  "Look down," Ruby told them.

  Moriko wasn't any taller. She just wasn't standing on the ground. Her feet were floating a couple of inches above the ground.

  After several minutes of effort, Moriko mao make her feet stay on the ground properly, but it took a little bit of tinual effort to not start drifting again. With that settled, she looked at Kazue and said, "Mordecai has also noticed that there seem to be visual cues of fey bloodline amongst his desdants."

  "Oh," Kazue replied, and thewo of them turoward Ruby. "Um, you should probably deactivate y."

  Ruby narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Why would this have anything to do with me?"

  "Well," Kazue said, "I think this secret is as good as dead, so we might as well tell you now. Queen Norumi, founding mother of both the Apifera bloodline and the Azeria matriarchy, is Mordecai's daughter."

  There was silence for a few moments as the rocessed this news. Princess Bridgette pulled off her disguise ring and began hastily looking herself over. "Did something happen? Did I ge? I don't see anything."

  "Your hair," Moriko said.

  Bridgette drew a lock of her hair forward and examihe flowing, currently heatless green and red fmes that coated the strands. The bits of fire that flickered off of the fmes now often had distinctive leaf shapes, whether they were red reen. "That's sort of scary, but I have to admit that it looks fabulous." She got up from her chair to look at herself in the mirror too, turning from side to side to examihe way her hair moved and shifted. "I think it's looo, but the ends now float more so it's hard to tell."

  Kazue g Moriko with amusement. "Do you think we o give her some aloime with her refle?"

  "Hah, you're oo talk, you were just as fasated with your wings," Moriko replied.

  "I admit to no such thing," Kazue said. "Oh, and you are floating again."

  They spent some time getting used to their new ges, but eventually, Bridgette turned her mind to the mystery that had just beeed to her. "So, how do you two know about this, and did you say 'is' when talking about Queen Norumi?"

  Kazue pursed her lips thoughtfully. "That's plicated and involves other people's secrets. Hmm, I wonder how good your privacy gem is. There's someone I'd like to sort of call upon, but I don't know if I am going to need you to turn it off for a bit to do so."

  "It's not that good, at least, not when I focus my attention on the area," said the young woman with wildly colored hair who was suddenly sitting on the bed as if she'd been there all along.

  Bridgette yelped in surprise and barely kept herself from throwing a bolt of fire at the woman. "Who are you? And why aren't you two surprised?"

  "Well," Moriko said, "this is the person Kazue was talking about. So, I am guessing that you turned your attention toward Bridgette when the rest of her family started having something happen?"

  "Yes, and please, make introdus. There's no point in keeping the secret from the rest of the family now, and I've already let the secret keepers know that their oaths no longer bind them when talking to the royal family."

  Kazue nodded. "Princess Bridgette, I would like you to meet Kuic. Lady Kuic, I believe you have been familiar with Princess Bridgette since she was born."

  The princess sat back down with a thump.

  "Yes, I am," Kuic said. "To answer your questions, they know because Mordecai figured out that they were sharing borders with a dungeon, namely, myself. So that made it time to have a little chat. And that talk included another, Mordecai's daughter Norumi. You might also know of her as the Azeria Forest Spirit. Oh, and the Guardian Spirit is King Haolong. Well, former king and queen, they go by just their names now."

  While Bridgette processed this information dump, Moriko asked, "So what is the pn from here? I take it the whole truth isn't going to be annouomorrow m or anything."

  "No," Kuic replied, "for now the extended family is going to be brought in on at least the bloodline part, and the royal family will be told the whole thing. This should coordinate minimizing the impact of these sudden signs. But other people are having random ges and there is no way to keep the secret indefinitely anymore. I'm not sure what our step is going to be, but it would help if I knew what in all the heavens and hells happened in your duonight and what it has to do with Queen Sylphine's visit?"

  "Well, she was there because it turns out her daughter had been hiding among our fairies," Kazue said. "Skipping the details, Mordecai asked her to firm her decision to tinue as our inhabitant and floor boss, or otherwise bee uest instead. She took things a step further and swore an oath instead. Mordecai's avatar includes faerie bloodlines, and he had used a bit of that potential when he was letting her know how upset he was. Well, the way she did it basically made him her king and us her queens. The Azeria Mountain Dungeon is now also the Azeria Court."

  Kuic spent the several minutes using every curse word she could remember, and she had quite an impressive vocabury. After she wound down and caught her breath, she pined, "I 't believe I'm going to be sharing my border with a Faerie Court. I like pying with a faerie avatar, but I don't want to be that involved with them. Oh no, I just realized that the royal family could found a court in the capital if the entire bloodline is now fae. Wait, no, it's my territory. It only happeo you guys because Mordecai was on both sides of the equation. Okay, I'll want to put some protes io be sure, but it looks pretty unlikely as long as I don't allow it." She sighed and shook her head. "I'm talking with too many people about the same topic at the same time. It's hard to keep the versations straight. I'm just going to go now, thanks, sorry, and whatever else should be appropriate right now, too much to do."

  And with that, she was simply gone.

  "My kingdom is a dungeon. Queen Norumi and King Haolong are still alive but have given up their titles. This has been some sort of spiracy from the founding, hasn't it? Does this have something to do with the marks?"

  Moriko and Kazue spent the few hours filling her in.

  Not everyone desded from Mordecai had some form of awakening, the strohe bloodline was and the closer they were ected to the source the more likely they were to awaken. But that was not the only path.

  Power calls to power. The form of the power did not matter, so long as it was their own. Warriors, monks, wizards, priests, and others like them were the oo feel their bloodline suddenly bee fae-touched. The quiet life of a farmer or mert did not qui that iance.

  Outside of this local tration in Kuic, the awakenings would be few and far between, but they were scattered across the entire world.

  Far from the realm of mortals, at the jun of dreams, shadows, and refles, a god helplessly watched as the tapestry of the world rewove itself. Until the ripples of this momeled out, even Ozuran's limited view of future probabilities was effectively blinded on this p.

  All because a faerie princess happeo run away from home when Li was visiting the Azeria Mountain Dungeon.

  Zagaroth

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