I sighed deeply as my sneakers met the stone floor of mom’s castle, my head spinning a bit from the extremely rapid forceful teleportation from that room with all of the warlords. Out of habit, I just grabbed a random apple from one of Mom’s tree, thick green slime coating the outside of the pitch colored apple. I just huffed in annoyance as I looked out over the gardens from the balcony I had landed on, the tree growing so tall the canopy was even with the balcony, so it wasn’t that hard to grab one of the apples. I just softly turned it in hand before taking a bite, the liquid core of poison filling my mouth with the extremely sour tang as usual along with the caustic taste of the poison that oozed from the fruit across it, the skull like face on it distending as I bit into it. The air was crisp with the scent of fall twinged with that soft sweet scent of rot and decay, the scent of spices, sweets ad all sorts of baked goods and candies drifting out of the giant windows of the factory.

“Why must she be so incredible…but so incredulous?” I asked myself, I had first met Viktoria when I was thirteen, she was sixteen: she was just this…incredible person, she was so…cool. She was that classic “bad kid” that everyone becomes kind of obsessed with then you’re that age: she already could drive, she was impossibly powerful, an accomplished hunter and was just…an incredible cool person and…I’ve never stopped being obsessed with her sense even though that was nine years ago.

“Gabriel…you’re back” Mom’s soft, slow and thickly accented voice said making me laugh as I felt the familiar cold iron like grip of her hand on my shoulder as she stood beside me, “How was the meeting?”

“Interesting…Viktoria was there.”

“And how is she, I’ve not heard from Nick for a fair bit of time” she said, her long hair coiling around her in the strong fall breeze that roiled around us.

“Same as she was last time” I said with a laugh, “Brash, loud and very, very confident in herself, but there was someone there…I had never met them before, but they were the pure antithesis of Viktoria.”

“Who was it?”

“Their name was Rynold” I said

“Ah, her child…Groei Van der Bloom…the current holder of the title of Mother Nature, her child has always been…very headstrong in their ways from what I recall, nothing makes them change their mind or compensate.” She added before looking up as she held two fingers up towards the sky, glowing marigold petals swirled around her forearm before shooting out towards into the sky where it exploded into a huge jack-o-lantern firework, the warm scent of marigolds, cinnamon and red chili filling my nose as I rested my head against her shoulder. “I can see why the two of them would butt heads. Viktoria…where to start with her, from what Nick has told me, she’s always been so intense, so…headstrong, so crude and so bold. Plus she was also raised with the help of Krampus, so…it’s obvious that some of his personality traits have been picked up by her.” She added, I laughed softly as I looked down towards the apple in hand, caustic poison caramel oozing from the center as the poison that coated the outside stuck to my fingers.

“What would be the…easiest way to head over to Everwinter?” I asked, she sighed softly as she brushed off her gown, fireworks exploding everywhere in the night sky in all sorts of the usual shapes, pictures and colors, the fireworks raining down as glowing marigold petals across the massive city.

“I’m not sure, I’ve not gone to Everwinter myself, why do you ask?”

“Just…Viktoria was welcome to compromise in some way with the others with this whole…warden thing the warlords want, but Rynold wasn’t…they refused to even talk about compromise, they called Viktoria a murderer and a cannibal because of the fact Viktoria isn’t a vegan…I mean, none of us are aside from them, but…they were so…I don’t want to say, militant, but that’s the only thing I can think of that describes how they were acting towards Viktoria and the rest of us.”

“And you want to talk to Viktoria about…how to handle Rynold?”

“Or something, she said that she’d be open to working alongside me or a few of the others, the warlords felt the need to…contact all of us to be able to start talking about making all of us those…wardens they called us, but…Rynold isn’t wanting to work with us.” I said

“I see, well…I’m sure there is some way you could get to Everwinter, I’m not like Nick or her where I can just throw a snow-globe that opens into a teleportation portal or something, but…there must be some way you can head over. The necklace you wear might help in same way.” She added, I rose my other hand to my necklace feeling the texture of the bat wings against my fingers. “As long as they have a photo of someone who has passed away, you could teleport over there through shadows through your necklace.”

“True” I said as I leaned against the railing, “It’s just…a lot to think about in terms of…what they want to do, they were talking about how…all of you have that ability where you get stronger when more people believe in you and know of you, that all of us would be the same so that the longer we work like this…helping protect the magical worlds and all, that we’d get stronger.”

“That is something that reminds me of Kálmán and a few of the other warlords, they are very…interesting beings: there is a magic that they all have, this…cosmic awareness where their minds are linked to the very fabric of the universe, everyone and everything around them, they think on a large enough scale in comparison to everyone else that a vast majority of the things they plan for or things like this that they do are on a scale that all of the people like myself, you or the others just…can’t fathom the scale they’re thinking of.” She explained before sighing softly that turned into a soft laugh, “It’s incredible to be honest when you think about it, that those eight people who are almost mentally and magically detached from humanity by how their minds are linked to the world…that they can think on such a large scale to make their creed, form global safety nets for the magical world and just…everything like that” I nodded softly.

“It is incredible” I said quietly as I agreed with her.