M:   "I agree," a familiar voice said from right next to Johann, scaring the living daylights out of him, Rowen also jolted in its direction when it added, "Torture is not something one wants to wake up to."

"Mandoria!" Rowen shouted with joy, he pulled Esha's shirt back down and bolted for his husband, falling halfway because he was still getting used to his new leg. When he made it to the bed he nearly cried at seeing Mandoria's eyes open and a smile on his face.

Rowen instantly tackled him with a hug, causing him to groan but then slightly laugh, "I missed you too, Love."

"Don't do that again, you scared me half to death," Rowen demanded, though he laughed in pure relief.

"No promises, though maybe don't crush me so much if you don't want me hurt," the country joked.

N:   "He scared you half to death," Johann blurted out, "he almost made me meet my Maker when he spoke!" When he finally calmed down, he also hugged Mandoria, although he whispered, "Don't do that again."

Anglo chuckled as he made his way over to the Mandorians, "It's nice to see you awake, Mandoria, and I wish you a swift recovery. By the way," he turned around to Esha, "we have a guest who you might want to see."

M:   "So I heard," he remarked, "It is surprising how much you can hear when you're out cold."

Rowen and Johann helped situate him so he was still lying down but leaned up a little so he could see Esha. Esha on her end felt a little awkward being there, since she had been on her own for so long she wasn't exactly a social butterfly, though she begrudgingly took off her mask so he could see her face.

"Well, you're not at all what I expected," he remarked, Esha's head drooped in shame at first but perked up in surprise when he said, "I must say for being several million years old they sure have been treating you well, you look like you were born last century."

"I-I," she stuttered, shocked by his kind words, "Thank you, sir," she bowed her head and lowered her wings in respect.

Mandoria frowned at this, "Please, no need for formalities, I'm no king, not anymore."

"Well, technically speaking, you are," Esha innocently said, "if what I heard about your duel is correct, you didn't surrender and you somehow survived, that means that the duel was never finished so legally you are still the King Wing."

M:   Anglo smiled when he heard Esha, "That's amazing. So that means that none of the winged community have to join Prussia if he were to invade."

"But they are under the false prentice that they do," Royal pointed out, "maybe the reason why Prussia kept you afterward when you survived is for everyone to believe that you're dead, making everyone believe that he's the King Wing. We could announce that Mandoria's alive but that would risk the safety of the British Isles, and he could just challenge him again. As long as we don't, it would be like the placebo effect, but with winged countries joining Prussia thinking that they have to."

"Thank you for that analysis," Wales frowned, "that was perfectly timed." After he spoke, he lowered his wings in respect, as well as Anglo, and spoke, "Welcome back, King Mandoria."

M:   "Please don't, I'm not a king," Mandoria insisted, "Prussia defeated me, I may not have died or surrendered but he won the title fair and square, he is the king, not me."

"But he's not," Rowen tried to persuade him, "Esha knows the old winged laws, and if she says he's not the king then he's not, you are Mandoria, you always have been."

"No I haven't," the country retorted, slight frustration evident in his voice, "I have been a slave, nothing more, it's sweet that you all still think of me as noble but I won't accept it, I have been defeated, I'm not the king, and I won't tolerate being called one anymore, alright."

"But Mandoria-"

"I'm not asking Rowen, I am telling you, I'm not a king."

Rowen looked heartbroken, this was not Mandoria, he wouldn't accept defeat so easily, but since he was clearly not going to change his mind, the former captain sighed in defeat and looked away.

N:   "King or not king," Royal spoke, "you are noble. You don't have to have the title but you emanate that sense of nobility anyway, whether you like it or not."

For a moment, Wren took control and said, "But why do we even care about the wing laws? No one knows them fully, why they're made, and lastly, what is actually reinforcing them? What's stopping you from breaking the laws exactly?" The hybrid closed her eyes and blinked open, back to her primary self she apologized for what Wren said.

She turned to Esha and asked, "Is there any evidence, maybe even physical, to prove that a winged country is the King Wing?"

M:   "Well, there is the whole 'the largest wings rule' thing, and it was usually always true because when someone fights a king wing and they die, the victor will have the largest wings, and even if they don't, within a year they will grow rapidly until they do," Esha explained, "the only other thing I can think of is the ability to control other winged Eternals. I can't vouch for this since it's never been proven, but rumor has it that a king wing can't fall under the control of another king wing, I don't know where that came from since there is never more than one king wing, but I digress."

"Well the larger wings are out of the question," Mandoria muttered, he spread out his wing to show them, "Sure the feathers are gradually growing back but they're thinner and aren't as defined as before, I think that because of the damage my wings received they will be more for show than for flight, and whoever heard of a flightless king wing?"

"He has a point," Esha grumbled, "if an Eternal can't fly then he can't become a King Wing, whether he has wings or not."

N:   Royal frowned as she tried to think, but was rudely interrupted by Wren who told her in her head that Mandoria could be a penguin and penguins are cool. Confused by the interruption, she was about to speak again when Wren suggested something to her.

"That's out of the question," the hybrid snapped, and when Wales looked at her with concern, she quietly said, "Wren gave a stupid suggestion."

"Which is," Wales asked.

Royal sighed, "that I just challenge Prussia. But that's stupid," she quickly added, "Wren's bloody reckless to actually think that. I've never met him, he's much larger than me, and I don't stand a chance."

M:   "He's a deadly opponent for sure," Mandoria agreed, "he's cunning, fearless, and will disregard his own life for the kill, that's what makes him so dangerous, natin, if I, the former king wing for thousands of years, couldn't beat him then no one can."

"Well aren't you pessimistic," Esha muttered under her breath, then cleared her throat and said, "With all due respect, perhaps we could leave the topic alone for a while, we're clearly not getting anywhere with it and for some of us I don't think it is something we want to discuss first thing in the morning."

Mandoria nodded in agreement, then turned to his son and smiled, "How about we talk about how this little knucklehead snuck out yesterday, why must you always give your Hezyka heart attacks, you're going to kill him one of these days with your shenanigans."

Rowen was snickering to himself as Mandoria teased Johann.

N:   Johann weakly smiled at the comment and shook his head, "you won't be seeing me sneaking around any time soon," he replied but then fell silent again. For most of the day, the Mandorian has been quiet, just not in the mood of talking too much, and it really deflated his mood.

He tried to follow his father's advice, to sacrifice his morals for sanity, but he doesn't know how, and every now and then, a single tear would run down his face when he remembers.

M:   Mandoria's joking expression turned to one of concern, he looked to Rowen for an explanation, one look from his husband was all he needed to understand.

"I see," he muttered, turning back to Johann he took his hand and held it comfortingly.  "Johann, there comes a point in everyone's life that the innocence of childhood has to be broken, you had it broken very early with what happened in Saxony, however, I believe that Rowen and I had neglected to realize that we were still shielding you from the real world. The way my laws were set meant that you were never properly prepared that someday, as a knight, you were going to be in a situation where you were going to need to take a life."

He pulled Johann in and had him sit with him, wrapping his wings around him as he continued, "Finzenda, death is a part of life, it may come early for some but it happens eventually, everyone in this room, who lived a couple of decades or several million years, will all die someday, and there is nothing we can do about it. There is no way to completely justify killing, the only thing you can do is determine if it will save others. For example, the time the Prussians tried to kidnap Derogan, they were killed, but because they were Derogan was able to be saved, it doesn't justify the killings completely, but if they lived they could have come back and attacked us when we were weak."

Mandoria gently grabbed Johann's chin and made him make eye contact, "Johann, you saved a lot of people, not just Heinrich, and if you're going to save lives you often need to take one. Tell me, if you could go back to that moment, would you change what you did, would you let one unknown man live, in exchange for several friends, and possibly family's, lives?"

N:   "Nein," Johann replied almost immediately, surprising himself from how quickly he answered, so he spoke again but softer, "nein, I wouldn't. I care too much for all of you for that to happen. But," he paused as he laid his head on Mandoria's shoulder, "I just can't shake off the feeling of guilt."

M:   "I know, and that is normal," Mandoria replied, "I've lived so long that it was pretty much impossible for me not to take a life, and those deaths have haunted me to this very day, my most regretful moments was when I was like Esha, slaughtering humans because they were destroying the world I knew and loved. I live with that guilt every day of my life, but I have learned to put it aside so it wouldn't affect my duties or family. It may not seem like the right thing to do, but in order to move on from trauma you need to put it away and focus on the good things instead, can you do that?"

N:   Johann didn't respond for a moment, only staring into space as he listened to Mandoria's words, and after a moment he slowly nodded. "I'll try," he muttered, and he added, "Could we not ... continue talking about this?"

"That's fine," Anglo spoke, but he stopped when he heard footsteps approaching and he sighed, "Here comes the entity." Just as he predicted, Saxon stormed into the room, visibly annoyed.

"Who bloody let England and Scotland work together," he demanded, "well, let me rephrase, who let them two try to work together because it's clearly not working." Royal pointed at Anglo, and the entity turned to him, although his tone was much calmer, "you see how two heads are better than one, but with them, it's the absolute opposite. I just passed them near the garrison and the pair are just arguing about how the soldiers should present themselves for the upcoming ball, and the poor men are just standing in confusion. I had to go and dismiss them myself."

Wales shook his head, "That's why BE does this, not our fathers." He got out of bed and walked over to the door, "let me see if I could help."

M:   Mandoria chuckled at the mention of England and Scotland working together, or lack of it, "Oh that brings back the memories of Zalia and I when we first combined our kingdoms, we had different ways of ruling so it could get quite heated sometimes."

"It also did with us," Rowen added, "being the royal advisor was easy enough, but when we wed and I basically became the second king it was hard to have more say in matters than before, butting heads was not uncommon."

"Wait, you two are mates," Esha said surprised, "an Eternal bonded with a Short Life?"

The couple nodded, Esha had a lot of things she wanted to say about that but most of them would probably just get her a punch in the face, so she remarked, "Well, I guess you two weren't really thinking of the long term were you?"

N:   There was an awkward silence that ensued, and Anglo just looked at Esha, wondering if she even thought before speaking.

"Not going to lie," Royal spoke, "I was thinking that too," which got Anglo to tell her to be quiet, "but the thing is that when you love someone, you don't think about the consequences, because the thing at the forefront of your mind is that you are with the person you love." She lifted up her head slightly and looked over to Esha, "is that too much to ask?"

M:   "Well, Eternals don't mate for life," Esha explained, "it would be impractical with our long lifespans, it was illegal for a mated pair to remain together longer than three centuries, or if they have more than 5 offspring together. And since both males and females could produce offspring the limit was 20 per Eternal, if we had reached the limit of offspring we would be taken to a birth control mage and have a permanent spell cast on us that would prevent fertility."

"That sounds awful," Rowen declared, "why would you put up with such inhuman acts."

"Because our species depended on it," Esha said, a light bitterness to her voice, "because of our long lives, if we reproduced too much we would become overpopulated and in turn start destroying the world we lived in for resources. Luckily most Eternals never lived to see their 100th birthday due to the dangerous creatures we shared our home with, griffins especially preferred to hunt us more than anything else, so as long as we kept birth rates to a minimum and don't mate for life, the natural balance and the gene pool would remain strong, that is, until the Short Lives came."

N:   Johann lowered his head, from the number of times he has heard what the humans, or how Esha calls them: Short Lives, he feels sorry for what his species has done to the Eternals. "I know it's late," he said, "but I'm sorry for what we humans have done to you, and there is nothing that could change what we did to you, but I'm sorry."

M:   Esha tisk to the apology, "Mass genocide on a biblical scale, no amount of apologies could ever make it right. Though I'd say that we took you down with us, your civilization was so advanced that it rivaled ours, you were able to take down an empire millions of years old in a matter of months, but we didn't go down without a fight, and because of that we set your evolution back to animalistic, your annoying black powder guns are nothing compared to the mass destruction weapons that wiped out a whole world."

 There was another moment of silence, everyone feeling down at all the depressing topics that kept coming up.

"Well, now that we have got our daily dose of depression," Mandoria commented, "there has to be something good or fun we can do, oh, and what did I hear about a ball?"

N:   Wales and Saxon were gone a while ago to deal with England and Scotland, so Anglo instead explained, much happier that the conversation changed, "Yes, there is a ball coming up, although it's not going to happen in a couple of months, it's the largest one we have every year that's why we're preparing it this early."

The country smiled to himself as memories of the past balls in the last centuries, every single one memorable, "It's the Yule ball, a tradition that I brought when I first came here, and it has been celebrated back home as long as I could remember. Celtica had her own version of Yule and would sometimes visit us during our celebrations in the rare years we weren't raided by Vikings. Anyways, the celebrations were always in our culture, but the actual ball was introduced by my Vater, who wanted some order before people went to party and drink, and he would invite neighboring countries, at the time they were only Germanic, to join in."

"But the ball is mainly filled with humans," Royal asked, "how come?"

"There were so many people you could invite in my time," Anglo answered, "Roman Empire controlled a lot of the land we knew, and," but he stopped himself from continuing, his mood shifting slightly to one of sadness, but he quickly brushed it aside, "not everyone was available, so the only people we could turn to were the humans. We made it so it was a time when the countries would come together and put their differences aside, well, most do, and we would invite the people, whether the rich or poor, to come and enjoy their time, and maybe some countries. Although," he looked at Mandoria, "we may have to rethink about bringing other countries for your safety."

M:   "Oh no, I don't want to stop you from having a good time," Mandoria insisted, "you can bring countries if you want, I can convene myself somewhere else."

"Are you sure Mandoria," Rowen asked, "you used to love balls, don't you think you'd feel upset that everyone is having fun and you're not?"

"Maybe, but again, I don't want to ruin everyone else's time, and I'm sure there are countries that are looking forward to it, no, I'll pass."

"You can help me patrol," Esha suggested, "you would not believe how many drunk humans stick their noses where they don't belong, I constantly have to scare them away if they get too close to my camp."

"Nonsense," Rowen dismissed, "I think you both should be there, number one, Mandoria is technically a retired country like Anglo so no one would attack him, not to mention I am sure by now the world knows he's alive so it wouldn't be weird if he was there, if anything I think people would be overjoyed. And number two, people are not like how they used to be Esha, we respect countryhumans, no one would try to hurt or shame you, I think everyone would be extremely fascinated with you, on the contrary."

"Fascinated," Esha repeated, looking confused and surprised, "no one's ever said that to me before, well, except maybe a baby Scotty, do you really think I, a relic of a lost world, would be accepted?"

N:   "Yup," Royal answered, "See, some of us Brits are fascinated with the past, that's why we opened up a museum, so we can gain more knowledge about the people before us as well as learn from them."

"So if it's fine, I'll invite some of the countries then," Anglo said.

"Some," Royal chuckled, "I think your definition of 'some' is quite skewed. You are referring to the French, the Iberians, the Low Countries, the Scandinavians, although they seem to reject the invite every time."

"I wouldn't blame them," the winged country shrugged, "after what Saxon did to Kingdom of Norway, I wouldn't blame them."

"Fine," the hybrid continued, "the Italians-"

"Father doesn't like Kingdom of Italy," Johann interjected, "he even refuses to drink some of his wine because of him."

Royal gave a sideways look at Mandoria and shrugged, "I don't blame him, he keeps on saying he wants to bring back the Roman Empire, and there are some people who don't really have the fondest memories of RE, so we just find him annoying." She took a moment to take in the list she said, "Wow, that's a lot of people."

M:   "Yeah, it is," Esha agreed, nervousness in her voice, "I don't know if this is a good idea, I've never been around so many people before, even before the extinction, I was always a wilderness person, living off the land surrounded by the sounds of nature, I lived close to a village so I socialized and even had a few friend and mates. but nothing as crazy as this."

"It's not that bad, balls can be very fun," Mandoria said, "in fact, if I am correct in assuming, the Yule ball is usually a masquerade, so if you wanted you can wear a mask so you feel more comfortable, right Anglo?"

N:   "That's true," Anglo nodded, "Everyone has one, and something about wearing a mask reveals people's true selves, so you might see Scotland as the calmer one in comparison to England, but the moment he can relax, it's definitely not the case."

"If you need a getaway if it's too much," Royal spoke, "I usually am further away from the action so I might be around the edges of the ball," she tapped the side of her head, where an ear would be if she was human, "gets too loud for me."

M:   Esha hummed, "I don't know, I mean, I'm leaving in a week like we agreed, it's not like I will be around here in a few months."

"Well, I say at least think about it," Mandoria said, "who knows, in a week from now you might find that you don't want to go back to living alone in the woods."

The female country shrugged, not commenting further on the topic, but her head did perk up when she remembered something, "Oh, I almost forgot, I made a healing mixture and there is enough left for you."

She beckoned Rowen closer so she could give him the healing water to give to Mandoria, which he did and the former kingdom drinked it without question.

 "I don't suppose there is any breakfast left to go with this," he jokingly asked, "I missed it after all since I wasn't awake yet."

N:   "I'm sure the cooks can whip up something quickly for you," Anglo said, and he walked over to the door, "I'll go and ask them now."

"Anglo," Royal called out, and he turned to see the hybrid trying to concentrate on something, "go check on England. I shouldn't be able to hear him shouting from this far, and he said something about Ireland."

Anglo shook his head, "Let me get a servant to get your breakfast, Mandoria, while I go prevent a war," and with that, he left.

The moment he left, the hybrid sat up and swung her legs off the bed, winching when she did. One of the doctors insisted that she stayed in bed, but she ignored them and she looked at her feet, since the doctors took off her boots earlier, and they were both inky black which slowly blended into her blue calves, and she sighed, "Wil is not going to like this." Suddenly feeling self-conscious, she grabbed her boots and began to put them on.

M:   Esha saw her feet and hummed with interest, "That's cool that your feet are a different color, Eternals, or at least the true ones, don't have markings like that, our skin is one solid color."

"I noticed that too," Mandoria said, "my body is one solid shade of red but my sons had blue stripes, Derogan even had our crest on the right side of his chest."

"Interesting, I wonder what happened to cause the younger generation to do that," Esha pondered, "back in the day the only markings an Eternal had was the one on their face, or if they had animal body parts they could have markings that way, I knew a man that had an equine's hindquarters, his fur was mostly a light blueish grey with white splotches."

N:   "This is different," Royal spoke solemnly, looking at her foot while she tied up her boot, "it has no relation to the mark on my face. This water droplet," she pointed at the mark over her right eye, "is something that emerged, ie not having a countryhuman parent, has. A sign of nature shows that we are from the earth, some choose to change their flag afterward but my brother and I chose to keep ours. But this," she pointed at her foot, "is something hybrids get if you are pushed close to the edge."

She sighed and looked up to the group, "I don't know if you know much about hybrids, but we could undergo the Split, and only one of the alters can survive, and it is both Wren and I's best interest to not split. But this marking on my feet is like a reminder that I am a couple of steps closer to splitting, and the only thing I can do is wait until it goes away. Kingdom of Two Sicilies is also a hybrid, and she's like a mentor to me about this kind of stuff, and amazingly she only has the tips of her fingers in this inky black color." She fell silent as she put on her other boot, and when she finished she stood up, although winced again from the pain, it was bearable this time.

"I just feel uncomfortable when I see it, as if I'm looking at my impending doom," she added as she stretched out her wings, both of them sore from her lying on them.

M:   "Hybrid, never heard of those before," Esha said, "is that another thing that newer Eternals have?"

Mandoria nodded and gave a quick summary of what a hybrid is, Esha too nodded once she understood. She also stood, with some difficulty, and announced, "I know that I agreed that I was going to stay at least until Celtica came, but that didn't include staying in bed all day," she took up her bag and her bow and arrows, then turned to Royal, "there doesn't happen to be an archery range is there, I like to shoot targets when I'm bored."

"Say, that is a good idea, Esha," Rowen said, "I remember how Johann used to bow hunt with me back home, maybe you can take him with you, because if this troublemaker isn't doing anything for an extended period of time he gets restless, and lord help us all when that happens."

Mandoria snorted in his throat at that.