With a flick of mental effort, James returned the council to “The Last Supper.”

  Now that everyone was embodied once again, he took in their facial expressions. Mouths gaped. Brows furrowed. At least two people appeared to be bowing their heads and clasping their hands in prayer. The head of the Education Committee had tears in her eyes.

  There was no question about it, after seeing the Panther Scout’s recollections, the predominant mood in the room was one of worry.

  James found himself less in accord with his council members than usual. He was a bit annoyed by their emotional reactions, actually.

  For fuck’s sake. Really, you guys are this worried? Where’s your faith in me after all the Rulers I’ve defeated? Every single one I’ve fought. I don’t lose. You see one scary-looking cat, and your balls drop off? Or everyone just forgets about how powerful I am? Guess I’m only as good as my most recent victory… but even that was fucking weeks ago!

  He kept his response to their reaction fairly contained. A slight curl of his lip for a fraction of a second. They didn’t deserve to know what he really thought right now—and of course there was no profit to be had in telling them.

  “I want to start by opening the meeting up to questions, comments, and strategic suggestions,” James said brightly.

  Originally, he had planned to ask his council about whether they thought he should order the army to come back, but by now he had lost any enthusiasm for that idea, both because he did not believe he would need the army to resolve this situation, and because he had begun to lose confidence in his council members’ nerves.

  “Do we have any more updated intelligence than those memories?” Leo asked immediately. “The enemy leader said she wanted to send her scout to head toward the Fisher Kingdom, but I have no way of guessing what happened next, beyond the fact that clearly, you intercepted the scout in some way.”

  “Is that how you became injured, sir?” asked Angelina Zuccarini. Her mouth quivered slightly at the thought of an enemy powerful enough to injure the Fisher King.

  “No,” James said briskly, shutting that line of thought down immediately. He didn’t need fear spreading at this meeting. “I received a penalty from the System, because a god showed up in the Fisher Kingdom to ask for my help. Gods aren’t supposed to be on our planet, at least not right now, so the System smashed a huge chunk of forest to kill his mortal form. I was right in the middle of that, where the blow was most severe, so I have been temporarily weakened. I’m already most of the way recovered. But I wouldn’t want you to think some wimpy scout could have hurt me.” He showed them a confident grin. “Actually, my mother took him out by herself.”

  James chuckled, and after a moment, most of the council laughed along with him. A mood of relief settled over some of those who had been concerned.

  The Fisher King put his dream cigar to his lips and blew a couple of smoke rings that transformed into cats that scampered around, trying to jump on each other’s backs. It was his way of further lightening the mood.

  Then he got another question.

  “Are you able to fight, Your Majesty?” asked Magnar of the Mole People.

  That’s a damn good question, James thought. Damn. I was hoping to avoid directly lying about this…

  “I can,” James said. “All of my Skills are functioning again. My movement is a bit restricted, still—” That was the understatement of the century—“but I’m getting stronger every day, and the information I can share about the timeline is that the Panther Queen is not attacking in the next few days. Assuming that she attacks at all.”

  Just based on the time that she would take to walk there with her army, James was confident she was at least a week away—and that was if they marched directly there and did not stop for anything else, which was unlikely. More probably, the Panther Queen would be more cautious than that. She could send additional intelligence-gathering units, rather than another easily subdued individual scout. Or she could choose a softer target—which, to James’s mind, would be almost any target other than himself.

  “I need to add that anything about my condition is obviously top secret,” James said. “What I’ve shared with you does not leave this meeting. When I’m more recovered, I’ll walk around outside as usual to reassure people with my presence. Until then, I absolutely don’t want any public panic. That means keeping a tight lid on this.”

  There were nods of agreement from all around the room. On that point, at least, James would get no pushback.

  “Should we call the Royal Fisher Army back?” asked Leo quietly.

  James was surprised that he was the one to raise the question, and he turned to look at the Police Chief.

  Does he look happy about this whole situation? James examined the other man’s facial expression for a few seconds before he concluded that yes, Leo was excited at the prospect of fighting the Pantherfolk. So at least he won’t get upset about my answer.

  “Do you feel as if you’re capable of organizing an effective defense without them?” James asked.

  Leo nodded instantly. “We have a lot of people and resources here.”

  “Well over a thousand humans in your territory, Your Majesty,” said Jeremiah Rotter. “People continue flocking to the aura of security that you give off every day.”

  “All right,” James said. “Excellent. I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the army is doing a lot right now. They are trying to secure one of our flanks all the way to the ocean. I made contact with them earlier today, and they were actually in the midst of combat with an enemy army already. I doubt that it’s over now, although I will keep checking in. But the bottom line is that we are always doing better if we’re on the offensive. If we don’t defeat potential enemies now, while they’re relatively weak, we’ll be talking about how to defend against a snake Ruler or a lizard Ruler or something in a few weeks. We need the largest swathe of territory we can acquire. The more we have, the larger our forces will ultimately be, too.

  “As long as I am here, we can mount a very strong defense against any enemy, if not outright destroy them. Remember that the person who the Panther Queen was dealing with in the vision we just saw was not a Ruler.” At least Dean was not a Ruler as far as James knew. “He was just defending a single building, and he couldn’t manage that, so whatever Skills he was relying on clearly weren’t Ruler level.”

  No offense, Dean, I don’t mean to diss you, James thought. He had actually recognized, especially with the repeat viewing, that his former boss had done a decent job in many respects. And the most important thing had been the leadership to go and be the face of everything himself. Challenge the Panther Queen himself, then surrender himself, so that if she was going to commit atrocities, he would be the logical first victim. That had been courageous.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “So, then, under the assumption that we will not be recalling the army to sit around waiting for the Panther Army that may or may not show up—and that probably would not outnumber our forces currently present in the Kingdom if it did—what can the members of my council tell me about our current preparedness?” James finished.

  He had tried to be firm and head off possible counter arguments without venting his annoyance at the council for immediately trying to call for backup, before an enemy had even shown it was near.

  The council members seemed to accept his verdict.

  Harry Luntz of agriculture, in a nervous but professional voice, began explaining the food situation. The long and short of it was that they were well equipped to endure a siege, at least in terms of supplies.

  “Although of course the physical defense aspect is far from my area of expertise,” he added unnecessarily, dipping his head in James’s direction.

  “Construction has become a lot more efficient, having to continued building housing for new people almost constantly,” Steve Luck from construction said excitedly. “I think we could put up a wall around basically the entire Fisher Kingdom if we wanted to, given that we have a little time.” He looked to James, and James nodded. “Alternatively, we could create a more powerful central fortification, enclosing the main inhabited buildings. Our monster citizens would need to come in from the outskirts of the Fisher Kingdom to be protected, but the advantage would be that it could be a pretty tough nut to crack. Do we have anyone with a Skill like what we saw in the vision, to reinforce a building?”

  There was silence for a few seconds, before James spoke up. “I do. I think everyone here might already know this, but I can enhance the properties of soil, rocks, water, pretty much anything I choose within my territory. At a certain point, my power began to extend into the air to some degree, but I haven’t experimented with that yet. But I’m pretty sure I have a stronger ability than whatever Dean’s guy had.”

  May he rest in peace, James thought. He imagined that whoever had been defending the firm building had probably died under the strain, which would explain why the defenses faded away and Dean went to the roof to surrender. Whatever I might say about Dean, he was actually pretty capable. His convict friend was far more dangerous in a fight than I realized—though still not comparable to me—and Dean was even able to find a special Mage or some other specialty Class-possessing person who was willing to maybe die to defend the firm’s building. Somehow, the people who gathered under Dean had a lot of faith in his vision.

  “So, what do you think we should do?” Steve asked. “Build the wall or a more concentrated defense?”

  “What do other people think about Steve’s two proposals?” James asked, smiling.

  “We could line the perimeter of the Kingdom with underground traps,” Magnar suggested.

  There’s an idea, James thought, nodding along. He was particularly glad that Magnar was speaking up, since someone present had to represent the monster point of view and ensure that the humans remembered that they were contributing citizens too. Almost all of the monster council members were with Dave right now.

  “If the matter actually comes to combat, I think that Carol—that’s the name of the Dungeon Core in the Kingdom—would be willing to send some monsters out of her Dungeon to help us,” Mina said. “I could go talk to her.”

  James just smiled and nodded again.

  For the rest of the group conversation, James mostly smoked his dream cigar and shaped the smoke into monkeys and giraffes, only sporadically interjecting with some tip or order, as his council members worked out the plan for the Kingdom’s hypothetical defense. Or, as James couldn’t help but think of it, as they reassured themselves. Since he had not personally felt much fear at all over the prospect of invasion, and he was increasingly determined to prevent it from happening.

  The meeting continued in that vein for some time, until James felt that he had allowed adequate discussion for the meeting to end.

  “Thank you for the many constructive suggestions, everyone,” he said. “I assume that people know what they need to do, and that, say, Magnar and Steve can coordinate construction and trap-making plans? People know who they need to talk to?”

  There was nodding around the table. People looked satisfied with the meeting, which just made James’s own continued feeling of mild annoyance seem more absurd. He knew it was not entirely rational—perhaps not rational at all—so he kept it well hidden.

  He had a good poker face, made even better by the System and the context of a dream. Just in case anyone somehow had a Skill to penetrate all of that, he further disguised his expression and distracted his audience by blowing more puffs of smoke in the shapes of random animals.

  I’m the fucking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland or something, he thought.

  “Excellent,” James said, giving everyone a broad smile. “Good work, team. No, great work! Everyone, get some real rest.”

  By his Will, the dream began to fade from all around them, scattering the sleeping consciousnesses into separate mental spaces once more. After a moment, James was in the void again, alone except for his wife and the spider who chronicled all his adventures.

  “Thank you for bringing me along this time, sir,” Hester said. “I learned even more about manipulating dreams this time. I hope I can be of more use to you. If you continue taking me on these trips, I expect I’ll get Dreamwalking or some similar Skill that will allow me to be of more value than I have so far.”

  James had felt annoyed at—almost contemptuous of—his council’s initial reaction to the news about the Panther Army. He was still thinking about how he might deal with the problem without actually needing to rely on their planned defensive measures. But he retained the self-awareness to refrain from taking that out on Hester. He mustered a genuine smile for her.

  “That’s wonderful, Hester,” he said. “I would love to have you helping me. I think you could be a great asset—not that I don’t already appreciate what you do.”

  “There were some things you couldn’t say back there, skapi?” Mina asked. Of course, she had sensed that there was something going on unspoken behind James’s peaceful facade.

  He nodded. “Back to the waking world to discuss. I don’t think anyone is eavesdropping on us here, but Dreamspace is an anarchic place, in my opinion. Territorial barriers don’t keep things out the way they’re supposed to.” He thought of Sister Strange, who had invaded his dreams and the dreams of his citizens repeatedly. “So, best to talk about sensitive subjects in places where you’re guaranteed security.”

  James opened his eyes in the real world. Beside him, his wife stirred. On his other side, Hester moved slightly on his hand.

  “So, what was it you couldn’t say?” Mina asked curiously. “And were you angry?”

  “Angry?” James asked, raising an eyebrow. His wife, turned away from him, could not see the expression.

  “I think I can sort of feel your emotions a little bit, since the Evolution,” Mina said. “When you don’t keep them completely reined in. I felt that for a moment. Anger or something like it.”

  “It wasn’t anger,” James said, “but yeah, it was, more like a low-grade contempt.”

  To his surprise, he felt her head dip up and down beside him. She was nodding.

  “Because they’re weak,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  James said “Yes” in reply nevertheless.

  She nodded once more. “Well, you are allowed to look down on them for that.” Her tone was very matter of fact, with the air of a shrug.

  James thought he knew the general tenor of her thoughts at that moment.

  “My husband is a king and can look down on anyone in the world.” Something like that.

  “It wasn’t just that,” James clarified, though he suspected that Mina would actually prefer it if he did not explain just now.

  She twisted to look at him, her hair flipping in front of his face as her body turned. She smelled of a meadow in full bloom—and something more. James felt a sudden stirring of longing as he looked into his wife’s eyes. She just watched him and waited for him to continue speaking.

  “Could you put Hester and her children in the living room for the night?” James asked. “I hope you don’t mind, Hester.” He wasn’t looking at the spider as he spoke, still staring at his wife, who glowed with superhuman beauty—and whose eyes smoldered with a silent intensity.

  “No, sir,” Hester said quietly, in a tone that suggested she knew exactly why James was asking.

  Mina rose, picked Hester up, then gathered the other spiders and carried them out of the bedroom.

  A minute later, she returned and climbed onto her husband. They began to kiss. James had read his wife correctly.

  The couple would resume their serious conversation in the morning.