James blinked, and then his eyes and nose were full of Mina’s long, dark hair.

  She had thrown herself into his arms. He instinctively bent and clutched her to him. She smelled like home.

  “I was starting to worry about you,” she whispered into his ear. “I stopped asking Carol about how you were doing—reminded myself that you’ll always be okay. But I still worry.” She sounded slightly embarrassed.

  “I was worried, too,” James whispered, burying his face deeper into the curtain of her hair.

  “You missed me?” she asked.

  “A moment’s break from your gaze is an eternity passed,” he replied instantly.

  “I was almost ready to fall asleep, you know?” she said. “I only stayed awake because Carol told me you were coming up.”

  “Sleep?” James asked. He pulled away from Mina, and he saw that behind her, there was a loveseat in the corner of the Dungeon entrance, where he was fairly certain there had just been a solid wall before. “Well, that was nice of Carol.” He gestured at the seat.

  “Yeah, she’s—she likes us.”

  “You’ll have to tell me everything that happened in your Dungeon adventure,” he said. “For now—it feels like we’ve been away for a long time. Let’s go home.”

  Mina nodded, and the two walked out the way they had come in.

  James shielded his eyes as they stepped back into the bright light outside. When he blinked the blurred vision away, he saw there were already a dozen more people outside, moving forward as if they had been ready to enter the Dungeon just before the Robards stepped out.

  “Oh, you were using the Dungeon today?” asked a young Hispanic woman he didn’t recognize, stepping forward.

  James took Mina’s hand.

  “We were,” he said, immediately on. “It was a great experience. I highly recommend it…”

  After a few minutes of schmoozing with the citizens, James and Mina extracted themselves and made their way home.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, they split up. Mina went to check on the children, and James went to see how Hester was doing.

  “Hester, I’m ho—oh…”

  The spider stood in the furthest back corner of the ceiling. She had woven a web, for the first time as far as he could recall. The spider stood in the corner of the web, and in the center, there was a tiny clump of silk. It looked almost as if the spider had accidentally made a big knot in the middle.

  James was tempted to call out to Hester again, but the spider was silent and unmoving—and his eyes were drawn back to the clump of silk again.

  He took a step closer. That clump looked familiar to James somehow.

  His mind flashed back to Orientation, and his eyes widened. He quickly strode across the room until he stood directly beneath Hester’s web and confirmed what he had suspected. That was no mere clump of silk; it was a bundle of eggs.

  “We all have our part to play in the great narrative,” he recalled Hester saying. And she had added that she felt “privileged to weave a little more in my section of the tapestry.”

  James inhaled sharply, then quickly placed his palm under Hester, plucked her from the web, and looked at her more closely. He almost immediately breathed a sigh of relief. The spider looked much-diminished from the last time he had seen her, but that was not surprising. She had apparently been carrying a bunch of eggs before.

  But he detected life signs as soon as he touched her.

  So the spider was not dead.

  Even though Hester had reassured him that she was not dying quite yet, back when he left her here, he couldn’t help worrying a little.

  “Hester?” he asked quietly. “Hester…”

  The spider did not stir, and James decided to let her rest. He placed her back in the web, gave the egg sac another quick look without touching it, and then told Mina what had happened.

  The rest of the day was uneventful.

  James and Mina spent time with the children and Yulia, and when they were alone again, James gave her the Power Rod and Tome of Elemental Magic that he had acquired from the Blue Oni’s body.

  They went to bed early.

  Early the next morning, James woke as he felt the return of Dave and his hunting party to the Fisher Kingdom. James’s senses were sharper, and his sleep was much lighter, than they had ever been before.

  He kept his eyelids closed and watched passively, from a bird’s eye perspective, as Dave and his colleagues gathered the rest of the Army. James listened in on some of the conversations and confirmed: this was the moment.

  They were finally preparing to depart on the mission James had set them.

  The Fisher King continued reaching out with his mind, watching the broad pattern of the Army take shape across the morning as people were gradually summoned from their homes or even roused from deep slumber to serve his will. It reminded him of moving toy soldiers around on his mother’s living room rug—of playing at war.

  Now his people would really be marching off to wage aggressive warfare. For the first time, he would not be responding to others’ attacks. He would be acting as a conqueror.

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  James had doubts about his course of action. He felt slightly guilty for putting his soldiers’ lives at risk in this way.

  But he knew he shouldn’t. This was how kings had conducted themselves for thousands of years before the brief, bright flame of the age of democracy kindled and then died. It was how they expanded and secured their domains. Yes, the Roman Empire had grown that way too, in all directions, until they failed and collapsed.

  That was just the way of things in a state closer to nature—in an anarchic system. And the time had come to bring the old ways back.

  At the same time that hundreds of pairs of feet were moving across the Kingdom, bodies preparing to go forth and take territory, James also felt people stirring in the apartment with him. First, he sensed Mina. She woke up and turned to look at James—he continued to lay still, to see what she would do next—and, seeing that he appeared to be asleep, she rolled back to her sleeping position and tried to fall back asleep. The change in her breathing told him when she had succeeded.

  James’s next in-apartment observation was when Abhi stepped out of the children’s room into the living room. The little boy moved on tiptoe, apparently cognizant of the fact that the whole apartment was asleep. James watched Abhi curiously with the disembodied point of view that his powers gave him.

  After gently closing the bedroom door behind him, moving to the far corner of the living room, and looking around to make sure he was alone, Abhi started doing exercises. Push-ups and sit-ups, in sets of ten. He kept going until he had done a hundred of each.

  Then the little boy threw a hundred punches and a hundred kicks.

  He’s working out, James thought. Is he preparing for some threat he imagines in the near future? Or has he just decided he needs to be strong from now on, so no one can take anyone he loves away again?

  Either way, James sympathized with Abhi’s wish.

  Today, he decided. I’m fully recovered. Today I’m going to bless every member of my family who hasn’t received my blessing already. Abhi’s little workout routine would probably go further if he received the Blessing of the Fisher King.

  James’s consciousness left the apartment again and drifted through the air toward the hazy mists that had rolled over the jungle.

  Dozens of giant bats and squirrels were mobilizing into small squads. They were armed with nothing but their natural weapons—wings and claws and thick fur as armor—and they seemed quite excited, almost hyperactive.

  “We’re finally going to fight!”

  “Glory to the red squirrels!”

  “Conquest for the Fisher King!”

  After they had psyched themselves up sufficiently, they opened their wings and began fluttering through the air toward the center of the Fisher Kingdom.

  James allowed his consciousness to shoot across the air, to the sky just above the swamp. He saw Samuel and thirty of his fellow alligators already marching out of the swamp. Perhaps because they knew they were a bit slower moving than some of James’s other citizens, they had apparently chosen to rise early and get a head start on the day.

  He was about to send his consciousness into the underground, below the central part of the Fisher Kingdom, to where the Goblins and the Mole People lived, when his mind was pulled back to his physical location. Someone was shaking him gently.

  “Skapi, I think it’s time for you to wake up,” Mina whispered directly into his ear. “I can hear people marching outside. I think the Army is gathering. They will be waiting for you to send them on their way.”

  James smiled, turned, and kissed her on the lips.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll get dressed and see them off.”

  He put on his usual battle gear, the Royal Exoarmor, and he ordered Roscuro to turn into a short sword, which James hung at his side.

  He said good morning to the other members of the Robard household—everyone was awake now, from Yulia to the babies—and then, accompanied by Mina, he descended the stairs. He was already composing a message to the Kingdom as a whole.

  As he stepped down into the entryway, Mina rushed ahead of him and opened the door, so that the first face the waiting masses saw would be their King’s.

  James and over a thousand soldiers of various Races saw each other all in the same moment, and a little cheer rolled through the crowd.

  “Yeaaaahhh!”

  James thought he recognized Damien’s voice leading the cheer but couldn’t be sure. If Damien was there, he was somewhere near the back of the crowd, alongside the wolf pack. James could just barely make out the three-headed figures of Luna and Romulus in the distance.

  But he didn’t try to focus on individuals just then. He let the sheer size and strength of the force wash over him

  The Army looked incredibly formidable in the morning light. The courtyard between the apartment buildings and the community center was packed to bursting, and James saw there were even some people trying unsuccessfully to get more space for themselves without stepping on each other’s toes.

  There were hundreds of men and women in armor that almost glowed in the sunlight and robes of various types, many of the figures holding gleaming weapons; hundreds of Goblins armed with weapons they had made themselves, filling in the sides and gaps where larger species could not stand; Samuel and dozens of his fellow alligators looking ready to rip into the nearest enemy with their claws; the bats and squirrels with wings furled around their bodies, eager to take to the skies; and of course, the wolves, quiet at the edges of the crowd but as deadly as they ever had been.

  “Sir.” Dave stepped forward from the front of the Army and saluted James crisply.

  James returned the gesture instinctively.

  “The Army is ready to accomplish your will,” Dave said emotionlessly, his eyes steady and cool.

  “Is that right?” James asked quietly. Then, much louder, he shouted, “Are you ready to conquer?”

  A roar ripped through the crowd, as if they were lions rather than the motley assortment of different species that made up James’s military.

  “Raaaaahahhhhhh!”

  The more human-like creatures threw fists or claws up as they cheered, and even the wolves leaped into the air to show their enthusiasm.

  “I take that as a y—yes!” James yelled.

  He stumbled over the last word, but saved the sentence, as his eyes lit on the masked man called Bear. The mysterious figure stood far in the distance, outside the courtyard, between a couple of the apartment buildings.

  Bear still wore his mask, but he felt as if he could sense the man behind it smiling.

  James kept stern control over his facial expressions, maintaining the pleasant smile he had been displaying for the Army rather than the annoyed look he wanted to give the masked man.

  Now he pops up again, huh? Well, it doesn’t matter. Even if I’m doing what he wants—even if that’s why I have the feeling he’s smiling—maybe that means he’ll finally just leave. It’s not as if he’s trying to get me to lower my guard. Mom and Anansi both vouched for him to some extent. Focus!

  James began his announcement to the Kingdom as a whole, simultaneously speaking it and transmitting it through his Fisher King powers.

  [Citizens of the Fisher Kingdom, I have an exciting announcement to make. As you know, just recently, our brave explorers left us to map the region to the West of the Kingdom. Well, today, we take the next logical step toward securing the world for our friends and loved ones! Today, the Army will embark on a mission to liberate Central Florida to the East Coast. It is a shorter trip than the Expeditionary Force’s journey West, but the Army is eminently prepared to fight for every inch of ground if necessary. If you would like to say your goodbyes and wish good fortune to the brave fighters going forth to secure our region, now is your opportunity. Today, their path of conquest begins…]