Yvonne’s eyes widened so far it seemed they might leap from their sockets.
A boy—an eleven-year-old boy—was standing against the ocean that was Brenal’s magic, his power not breaking but holding.
The clash lasted only seconds, but to the witnesses it felt like a battle fought over hours. Energy splashed and roared, each wave testing, probing, and colliding with the other until finally—
Brenal smirked.
With a casual grace that mocked the storm he’d unleashed, he pulled his hand back.
At once, the torrent of energy receded, leaving only a crackling silence behind. His cloak and clothes fluttered down like leaves settling after a gale.
"You are one little monster, aren’t you," Brenal said, his voice carrying amusement.
Jorghan stood there, chest heaving, eyes bright with untamed fury.
"And you are one shameless old man," Jorghan said back to him.
"What!"
Yvonne was startled, and she thought she heard him wrong, and she turned her attention to Brenal to see what he would do.
HAHAH!
But he laughed.
"You sure are honest, kid."
"Alright, Brenal, stop your banter." Yvonne said, rolling her eyes.
"Let’s focus on the task at hand."
Brenal grinned mischievously before turning his attention back to Jorghan.
"I was wondering when you would come back," she said conversationally, as though his reappearance was the most natural thing in the world.
"You knew I would?"
Her smile held no warmth.
"Of course. The moment our scouts reported movement around their border isles, I knew your people would send someone to assess our intentions. And who better than the boy who has already proven he can move between our worlds?"
"How did you know I lived there?"
"It wasn’t hard. The beast crashed with you and the place you landed. It was in the direction of floating isles. And the skiff, you seem to have destroyed it, but it got the work done."
Confused, Jorghan, he asked, "How?"
He was sure that he destroyed the tracker too, so how would they know.
"Yes, you did," she said as though she could tell what he was thinking. "But we are able to trace your mana; remember the crystal mana stone you used to drive the skiff. It was helpful."
The casual revelation made his hair stand on end, just from how calculated they were.
"How long ago did you plan this?"
"Long enough to know that you live on the isles."
"It’s quite fascinating to learn that a human child is living on the elves’ island. The elves who are disgusted even by the smell of humans."
She leaned back in her chair, studying him with the patient intensity of a scholar confronting a particularly fascinating text. "I understand now why you lied to us about your origins. The question becomes, what do we do with that understanding?"
Brenal and Revin let her do what she does best.
Jorghan kept his expression neutral despite the racing of his heart. "What do you want?"
"Honestly? To avoid unnecessary bloodshed while accomplishing our mission." She gestured to the maps scattered across the table, their edges weighted with small stones.
"We’re here for very specific resources—Matlneite, which our surveys suggest exists in significant quantities within those isles; they are literally made of it."
Matlneite, they are a top-grade mineral, made from the very mana itself, a pure crystalline form of the mana essence. This mineral was a lot more costly and rarer to find in the whole realm.
"And if we refuse to allow you access?"
Yvonne’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted in her posture—a subtle hardening that suggested steel beneath the diplomat’s facade.
"Then we would have to consider alternative approaches. But I prefer negotiation to conquest, when possible."
The threat was elegantly delivered but unmistakable.
Jorghan filed it away for his report while maintaining his role as an uncertain messenger. He wasn’t sure the elves would be happy to hear that, and he didn’t want to get provoked or involved in these matters.
"Your elders sent you to discover our intentions," Yvonne continued.
"Return to them with this message: we seek a formal meeting to discuss terms of mutual benefit. Trade agreements, resource sharing, perhaps even technological exchange."
She reached into her desk and withdrew a small device—a communication piece of obvious sophistication.
"This will allow us to arrange the details once they’ve had time to consider our proposal."
Jorghan accepted the device carefully.
Another tracking mechanism, almost certainly, but one he might be able to turn to their advantage.
"And if they refuse the meeting?"
"Then we’ll be forced to make our own assessments of the situation." Yvonne’s tone remained pleasant, but her eyes held the cold calculation of someone accustomed to having her will enforced when diplomacy failed.
"I trust it won’t come to that."