We spent the night at the scene of the fight. It was late and Erin needed some time to recover anyway. The next morning we broke camp and made our way back to the dryad grove. Erin was still weak and Lucy offered her a ride. She did not mind having a passenger in her fox form.

  The dryads were pleasantly surprised that we had returned so quickly. We spent a few days there preparing the ritual to move the trees. It also allowed Erin to recover. With the trees secured inside my storage we returned to Lady Izanami. She invited us to dinner where we told her about our recent adventurers.

  “Beira became a lich? That is concerning. I will take care of Lady Chione and her part in this. I will contact you if there is a new development.” Izanami replied.

  “I will try to focus on my county for a bit. Get the train going, get the dryads settled, work on Iron Rock…” I replied.

  “Yes, your new grove is quite intriguing. It is not something I expected a storm fey to do.” She said.

  “Because we tend to travel a lot? I suppose most storm feys prefer a mobile force.” I mused.

  Izanami looked at me. “Actually, that is not the main reason. While rain might be a part of the storm domain it’s not really the best element for a dryad. I expected you to simply have some dryads work for you. Not make an entire grove into storm knights. I might have expected one or two, not a grove.”

  I scratched my head. “It worked all pretty well. The dryads seemed to enjoy it.”

  “I hope the demon lord's corpse helps them even more! We are going to have the best fruits!” Lucy added.

  Izanami raised an eyebrow. “Demon lord’s corpse?”

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  “Oh, I still have the body of Mantus. I will feed it to the dryads in some way when they settle. And we will see about feeding them some black forest monsters regularly.” I explained.

  “You invest a lot into those dryads…” Izanami said.

  “True. I like to invest in my people. I also think the grove helps our bond.” I replied.

  “Your bond must be truly special…” Izanami said, while looking thoughtful.

  “It’s great.” Lucy confirmed.

  “You are fully part of it?” Izanami asked.

  “Of course.” Lucy replied.

  “Your group is fascinating.” Izanami said.

  “Fascinating? Wait till you hear about Amaya’s gate plan!” Lucy said with a grin.

  Oh, I had neglected that part of the story. As Izanami raised an eyebrow I began to explain: “You remember that old gate? I got a divine diamond from Beira’s crown. Quite a lot of magic in there. I am going to connect it to the gate and try to open a permanent connection to hell. So we can open trade with Lilith.”

  “You… you are going to connect an ancient fey gate to a divine power source to open a portal to hell…” Izanami summarised.

  “Yes. It’s going to speed up our plans for Iron Rock! It will also allow Lilith to properly manage her own domain in hell, while still sticking around the mortal plane when she wants to! I just have to design the runes to properly use the diamond. Maybe I can make use of the grove. Generally I think they might be great gatekeepers…” I still had to work out the logistics. And we would need a connection point in hell. That was certainly something I had to figure out.

  “I suspect that will have interesting consequences in hell. But I might be interested in some trade too. Your train will be even more useful if it connects my portal to the fairy realm with your portal to hell.” Izanami reasoned. “It will also draw the attention of a lot of the old powers.”

  “They are welcome to drop by for a visit. Maybe they will have interesting things to trade.” I said. Also, I was still hoping to meet a dragon one day. Dragons were cool. Maybe I could recruit one? Not one of the ancients, obviously. But surely there were some younger dragons interested in the mortal world.

  Izanami looked sceptical. Well, if an old power did not behave we would have to teach them some manners. But it probably would not hurt to train my aura some more and make sure Lucy kept growing in power.

  In the end we only stayed one night at Izanami’s place. The dryad trees needed to be planted and I was looking forward to finally seeing my place. I wondered what our people had done with it so far. We had Sandra, the merchant I had freed in Mountainheart, to manage the estate. We had a bunch of maid knights. Hopefully Iris was busy training soldiers. The dryads might help with defense and agriculture…

  I certainly had a number of servants to get things started. It was time to head home and get to work!