Fatima IV

PA 0 (4th month since arrival)

Originally, they’d planned for their next meeting to happen before in autumn, before the first snowfall.

That plan was immediately scrapped when a blizzard hit way earlier than anyone was expecting, signaling the start of winter with a bang. It dropped a good foot of snow at least, shutting down any travel and screwing up everyone’s plans. It also dropped the temperature severely, causing icicles to form on the edges of huts and a good chunk of the river to freeze over practically overnight.

It was so cold the chill seemed to penetrate even the thickest of blankets, and the only food they were able to eat was lukewarm stew. More than a few roofs had collapsed following the snowfall, forcing people to huddle together in their suddenly too-small huts. And did she mention how fucking cold it was?

Fatima, who had grown up in a desert, was not having a good time.

Well, okay, the first couple days had been fun, playing around in the snow—building snowmen, pelting Nadia with a snowball, etc—but as the days dragged on the frost burrowed into her bones and made her pray every day for the return of summer.

(She may or may not have attempted to crawl into a fire at one point to escape the chill. It was a good thing nobody was there to witness that, is all she’s saying.)

But now it had warmed up somewhat, and their panicked winter preparations had finished. So now, instead of meeting at the end of Autumn, they were meeting in the middle of Winter.

Luckily, the river wasn’t as bad as they’d expected it to be. Unlike what they worried about, the river didn’t freeze over—at least not fully. Only the edges froze, creating a slippery mess along the coast, while the rest stayed water. This allowed them to borrow Xian’s boats and sail up and down the river freely.

They couldn’t meet at the lake they had last time, since the snow made land travel next to impossible. Instead, since some trust had been established, they decided to meet in one of the villages. Issei’s village, specifically, since it was the closest to the midpoint between all them.

Which led to here and now, where Fatima was getting off her boat and entering Issei’s village for the first time.

“HRK!” she dry-heaved, stumbling out of the boat and onto the ice. “Gah! By Allah, that’s just—guh!”

She sat down heavily on the icy shore, not even caring about the mud getting on her clothes. “Why was that so bad!?” she whined, holding her stomach. “It’s a fuck’n canoe! Why did that give me motion sickness!?”

“Er, are you okay?” Issei asked from where he had been waiting for her to arrive.

“No! I’m fuck—I’m dying here! Fuck boats! Fuck cars! Fuck fucking fuckers with their movement and their fucking shaking and my fucking nausea!” she whimpered, ranting under her breath.

“…Are you… Sure you’re okay?”

“I’m…” she sighed, slumping against the ice, for once not even caring about the cold. “Well, okay, I’m feeling a bit better now. Just… just give me a minute. I’m trying not to die here.”

A couple minutes later, the Queen managed to get back on her feet. Holding onto the shoulders of the two people she brought with her, she managed to stumble her way over to where Issei was standing.

“Issei!” she chirped, forcing a smile on her face. “How are you!”

“I’m alright,” he smiled awkwardly at her. “But are you sure you’re fine? You still look kind of ill…”

“Nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” she sighed. “But enough about that. Please, let’s just move on.”

“If you say so…”

“I do!” she nodded decisively. “Oh, I almost forgot! These are the retainers I brought with me today—the man is Lestek, and the woman is Lada. Please treat them kindly!”

“Oh! Of course,” Issei gave the two warriors a shallow bow in greeting. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Tanaka Issei, the King of this village.”

The two behind her bowed back awkwardly.

“Well, now that we all know each other, aren’t you going to show us where we’re staying?” Fatima prodded Issei.

“Oh, uh, right!”

With that Issei led her through the village, pointing out the sights. It wasn’t that impressive really, being mostly a carbon copy of her own, but like a good tourist she ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at all the right moments, smiling at the aggrieved locals who had nothing better to do than stare at the weird foreigner.

Eventually Issei brought them to the only interesting building in his village, a building he called the ‘Big House.’ Likely because it was a big house. It sat at the center of the village, looking more like a massive tent than a wooden house. Full on tree trunks had been laid against each other, creating a large cylindrical shape. Large swaths of furs had been laid overtop of those slanted walls, the browns and whites further setting it apart from the rest of the village houses. As he brought them inside, she saw that they’d dug a good five feet into the ground, making the inside of the building so much bigger than the outside made it appear.

“It’s not much,” Issei smiled awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “But this is the warmest building in the village. We normally gather together to eat in it for meals and stuff.”

“That’d have to get pretty cramped,” Fatima mused, looking around the interior of the building. “It looks big, but big enough to fit a hundred people…”

“Ha, yeah, it does get kinda cramped. And now that we’re going to be hosting a bunch of people… I hope the others don’t bring that many people with them…”

“It’ll be fine!” Fatima smiled, slapping the kid’s back. “We aren’t expecting a fancy castle and banquet hall for this. We’re just getting together to better define our alliance moving forward. This much is fine.”

“If you say so…”

“I know so!” she exclaimed. “Now stop doubting yourself. Be confident! You’re hosting some of the most powerful people in the world this week! You’ve gotta be confident!”

“That’s just making me more nervous!”

“Then that means you’re not trying hard enough!”

“That’s not how that works!”

--

Later that evening Fatima was lounging around the fire in the Big House, chatting idly with her retainers. They were playing a mini Mancala tournament to pass the time, or at least the crude version of the game she’d cobbled together in her spare time. The evening meal had finished over an hour ago, and now only a few people remained scattered throughout the building.

The quiet lull they were relaxing in was suddenly interrupted as the door slammed open, letting in the winter chill with it. A woman stood imposingly in the doorway, her eyes indifferently roving across the room.

“Avery!” Fatima cheered, jumping up from her game. “I didn’t think you were going to make it!”

“Fatima,” the other woman nodded brusquely, her scowl shrinking slightly as she caught sight of the other woman. “As I told Issei, we had some trouble with the boats. A thin part of the river had completely frozen over, and we needed to move over land for a bit. It was an… experience.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Fatima gasped, closing the distance quickly to give the other woman a sympathetic hug. The redhead tensed, before sighing and awkwardly patting the more energetic woman on the back.

“Come on, come on!” Fatima dragged her over to her seat by the fire. “Let’s get out of the doorway—it’s cold enough in here without leaving the door open. I made sure they saved you some food—you there, bring the leftover venison back out! Let’s get it warmed up for Avery as soon as possible!—Here, sit, sit! We’re playing Mancala! Have you ever played before? Don’t worry, I’ll teach you!”

Avery, who had been instantly overwhelmed by hurricane Fatima, could do nothing but grunt in vague agreement as she was dragged down next to the other Queen.

“Ah, I almost forgot to introduce you!” Fatima gasped, before gesturing to her retainers. “These are Lestek and Lana. Lestek and Lana, this is Queen Avery!”

The two retainers greeted the Queen politely, secretly relieved that their own Queen now had someone new to badger for the rest of the night.

“Ah, that reminds me, where are your own retainers? Don’t tell me you came here alone!?”

“No, they’re still outside,” she grunted, settling down next to Fatima. “We didn’t know if we’d have accommodations over here, so we brought our own tents just in case. They’re outside, setting them up right now.”

“Oh, that’s so smart! I didn’t even think of that! Oh, it was actually pretty rude of me to expect Issei to just house me without any payment, huh…”

“No no,” Avery reassured her quickly, having already discovered she was weak to Fatima’s… Fatima-ness, “I’m sure it’s fine. The kid already had this place set aside for us, I just overprepared like always.”

“If you say so…”

“It’s fine, really!” she repeated, frantically looking around as she struggled to think of something else to say. “You were here for dinner, right? Was the food good?”

“Oh no, it was awful like always. But I’m starting to get used to the lack of spices! I mean, they don’t even have pepper here!”

“Yes!” Avery nodded, relieved to have found something else to complain about. “They have some wild spices, but the taste…”

They spent the next hour or so chatting by the fire, Avery slowly relaxing from her normal rough demeanor into something almost approachable as she got more comfortable.

Finally, long after the sun had gone down, Issei slammed the door open, stumbling into the Big House. He looked half-asleep, and ended up slumping down on Avery’s other side with a tired groan.

“I don’t know if Xian is coming today,” he grunted, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “I just can’t stand out there any longer. It’s freezing and dark and late. I don’t know how my guards do it!”

“Years of practice, probably!” Fatima chirped from Avery’s other side. “Though I am worried about Xian—last time I saw him he seemed to have gotten the hang of the whole sailing thing. I’d have thought he’d be here first.”

“Who knows,” Issei sighed. “Should we get started without him?”

“No, we’ll wait,” Avery told him, frowning. “We’re here because we’re part of an alliance; we aren’t going to exclude a quarter of that alliance just because they’re a little late.”

“O-oh, right, sorry…”

“It’s not like we have much to talk about anyway,” Fatima shrugged, tapping her leg. “These blizzards are shutting down pretty much everything—I don’t think we’ll be able to do anything until Spring, no matter what we decide tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I guess not. This meeting feels kind of pointless when you put it like that.”

“Bah, nothing in life is pointless!” Fatima smiled at him from the other side of Avery. “We’re politicking! That means going to a lot of pointless meetings with people that accomplish nothing! That’s just what world leaders do!”

“This isn’t a pointless meeting,” Avery sighed. “We’re preparing for spring. We’d have to do this eventually—might as well get it done early.”

“You see, Avery’s a good politician,” Fatima nodded at the other woman. “She just made it sound like we’re doing something important!”

“That’s because we are, you impertinent woman!”

--

It was the morning of the next day that Xian arrived, sailing up the river. Surprisingly, he was alone, sailing the boat himself.

One of Issei’s men threw a rope at the other king, who caught it, tying his boat to the makeshift dock on the edge of Issei’s village.

“King Xian,” Issei bowed politely to the older king, who stepped off his boat with ease.

(Fatima wasn’t jealous. Motion sickness was a perfectly reasonable response to sailing. Really!)

“King Issei,” Xian bowed back, his expression calm and polite. “Thank you for your warm welcome. I look forward to experiencing your hospitality.”

Avery rolled her eyes. “How polite. Now, can we finally get on with our meeting? I don’t want to waste another day doing nothing.”

Xian frowned slightly at the woman. “Queen Avery, while I understand your impatience, you must always be polite to your host, regardless of personal issues.”

“Says the man who arrived a day late.”

“…I thought you said we’d be meeting today?”

“No…” Fatima trailed off. “I told everyone to meet three days after I sent out the message.”

“This is three days after I got the message.”

All four of them paused, realizing they were still unused to accounting for primitive travel times.

“No matter,” Xian sighed, shaking his head. “I apologize for my lateness, but we have bigger problems at hand.”

“Bigger problems?”

“Yes,” Xian nodded decisively. “Recently, I’ve been exploring the coast around my village. The coast extends far, and I believe I might even be settled along the ocean! But a few days ago, I found another settlement, a village that was once ruled by one of us immortals.”

“Huh, that’s pretty worrying, are they…” Fatima began, only to trail off as the implications hit her.

“Once?” Avery hissed, her face darkening with anger and fear.

Xian nodded solemnly. “Yes, once. The village is no longer ruled by its original king—that person was killed, and a new king has taken over. They call him King Enzo, the Conqueror, and the King of the Sea. For the past few months he’s been subjugating cities up and down the coast. And I believe that soon, he will set his sights on me.”

The man sighed tiredly, before bowing to the surrounding monarchs. “I know our alliance is fresh and untested, but I must already ask for your help with this. Please, help me defend my home.”

9,930 God-Kings Remain