“This is your first Royal audience?”

“Um, yes.” Shin attempted to will himself to stop fidgeting, only to find the feat beyond his abilities. “Is there anything we should know?”

“No,” intoned the fastidiously dressed attendant. “King Majesty is a man of the People. He does not stand on ceremony.”

At first, Shin had found the attendant’s clipped, almost mechanical replies a bit off-putting. But the longer he and his friends stood in the holding room, waiting to be summoned out to King Majesty’s throne room, the more he found himself comforted by the man’s brusque replies. There was no forced conversation, no idle banter, no unnecessary niceties. The attendant told the Shinki Itten contingent to wait in a room, and that he would inform them when they should leave it. Shin was confident that if he gave any information beyond those two areas, it was because it was truly vital.

Honestly, with as wild as things had been today? It was good to know where they stood.

“Oh,” the attendant remarked offhandedly, “One thing. If you go within twenty feet of the dais, the guards will kill you.”

Uh, hm. Good to know. “Okay, is there any other–”

“Don’t cast any magic, or the guards will kill you.”

“Well we don’t–”

“Don’t attempt any sort of mental communication with any member of the Royal Court, or the guards will kill you.”

“Seems–”

“Any items you offer King Majesty will be screened for enchantments, and if any are found–”

“Let me throw out a guess,” Shin cut in. “The guards will kill us?”

“No.” The attendant primly pushed up his glasses. “You’ll be rigorously interrogated. After that, yes; the guards will most likely kill you.”

Shin whistled. “Well dang, alright.” He heaved a dramatic sigh, folding his ears as he cast a regretful look towards Momo. “That’s really a shame; the traditional Shinki Itten Greeting involves nearly all of those things. Guess we’ll have to improvise.”

“Ah, jokes.” The attendant nodded sagely. “We like jokes; King Majesty has a wonderful sense of humor. Be careful, though; if it appears that your tone has shifted from glib to foreboding, the guards will–”

A sharp clink rattled the waiting room door, and it laboriously slid open.

“You’ve been summoned,” the attendant noted. “Have a pleasant day.”

For a moment, no one moved. But then Gero nudged her arm into Shin’s back, forcing the other kobold to take a step forward. “Good on you, Shin,” the woman said with faux solemnity as the Schemer glared back at her. “Taking the lead, as always. We’re right behind you.”

Ugh, Gero was already the strongest among them, and now she was sneaky, too? Once all of this mess was settled, Shin was going to have to do something about her.

Alright, fine. Nowhere to go but forward.

As Shin led the Shinki Itten contingent out of the waiting room and through the small side passage to the court’s chambers, he had to marvel at how different it felt. He’d already seen the whole throne room from the balcony, but now that he was on the ground floor? Now that he was making his way down the long walk, King Majesty’s dais ahead and flanked on either side by a line of implacable knights?

Every single detail that had gone into the design of the room, from the scale of the walls to the almost imperceptible slope of the floor to the negative space that inexorably drew focus to the throne itself, was to further a single goal: making sure that anyone approaching King Majesty’s throne knew exactly how powerful he was, and exactly how small they were.

At least they didn’t have much of an audience. A quick glance at the balcony revealed that it had thinned out considerably, with only a few other citizens still waiting for their turns. There were a few Players still idling about, though as far as Shin could tell they didn’t have any particular business with the Magica City court. The lithely armored woman with the polearm seemed to be deeply invested in her Status Screen, and the muscular man with the faintly piggish features was just staring blankly at a wall.

Fortunately, the presence of even deeply disinterested Players meant that the Princess wasn’t in her deeply unsettling neutral state. Instead she towered over her father’s throne, a full head taller than even Gero as she stared down at the audience seekers like a particularly regal giraffe. And the Evil Prime Minister seemed to be completely wrapped up in his own matters, conspicuously whispering and plotting with a nearby noble who was almost as obviously evil-looking as he was.

That just left King Majesty himself. And there was something deeply upsetting about King Majesty.

The exact nature of his discomfort had eluded Shin when he first laid eyes on King Majesty, but now that he and the seemingly-benign monarch were face-to-face he knew precisely what it was. There was the king, with his resplendent regalia and his glorious beard and his wise eyes, and every individual part of him should have ultimately created the picture-perfect ruler. But all of those pieces didn’t quite align, didn’t quite add up to what should have been the sum of his parts.

He was just…a mimicry. A camouflage. A series of markings on the husk of some unknowable creature, designed to fool the unguarded mind into thinking it had the shape of a king.

Shin immediately knew two things. One, if most of the Players only interacted with people like King Majesty, it was no wonder that they seemed to think that the citizens of Magica weren’t ‘real’. And Two, he wanted to be out of this place as quickly as he could possibly manage.

“Introducing to the Royal Court of Magica City,” the gaudily dressed herald proclaimed, “Representatives from the Council of the Shinki Itten Alliance!”

Alright. Time to get this done with.

King Majesty’s face stretched in a smile as the kobolds and Bittercup dipped into precisely proper bows. “Ah yes, Shinki Itten!” He leaned forward on his throne, thoughtfully stroking his beard. “The Royal Cartographer is quite peeved, I’ll have you know. She’s been forced to update all of our maps, after all!”

“Ah, ahem, well,” Shin fumbled, silently wishing that King Majesty would blink a little more often. “Our sincere apologies, Your Majesty. We are quite small, at least, so hopefully she won’t waste too much ink on us?”

The king rumbled in laughter at Shin’s half-hearted joke as his Evil Prime Minister abandoned his performative plotting to join the conference. “Guests from so far away!” he crooned, running the oddly long nail of his pinky finger down his cheek. “Surely, then, you’ve brought a singularly rare gift to show gratitude for the unimaginable honor our king’s invitation is for you?”

Shin and Momo shared a quick glance; fortunately, they’d discussed this already. The bottle of sake that had been intended as King Majesty’s gift was long since emptied, put to distinguished service in the plot to have Shield devoured by a giant fish. And frankly, that might have been for the best? If one of the extremely serious looking guards got it into their mind that the bottle of strange alcohol might have been poisoned in some way, Shin had no doubts that this audience would have taken a very dark turn for the Shinki Itten contingent.

Luckily, a gift of a somewhat more ephemeral nature had presented itself.

“We are a humble people, Your Majesty,” Momo admitted, every inch the High Priestess in spite of her modest words. “And while our humble offering will certainly fall short of the grandeur of this court, we can only hope that our fervent prayers for the continued goodwill between our peoples will be gladly accepted.”

With that she bowed her head, a hush falling over the court. King Majesty leaned forward again, curiously straining his ears in an attempt to make out the kobold’s whispered words. At first, it seemed as if nothing was happening. But then a chiming tone began to fill the throne room, resonating through the walls of the grand chamber even as a second and third tone began to layer above it.

“Oh shit!” The polearm-wielding Player exclaimed, her Status Screen completely forgotten. “The Gods Smile! Fuck yes!”

King Majesty’s face split in another almost-beatific smile as more and more divine notes joined the Godly chorus. The Princess clapped her giant hands together in wonder, and even the Evil Prime Minister couldn’t resist a faintly impressed expression as the Music of the Gods filled the throne room. “So many of them,” he mused, fussing distractedly with his pointed goatee, “Is this really a–”

“Great Gods’ Blessing!” the Player screamed as a tenth tone joined in, bouncing up and down in her chair with such ferocious glee that she nearly shattered it. “It’s a fucking Great Gods’ Blessing!”

Such was the sense of excitement and wonder in the throne room that when an eleventh voice joined in, little more than a silvery tinkling, it was almost completely unnoticed. Almost. He might have imagined it, but Shin thought he saw a flash of emptiness washed across King Majesty’s face for a moment. A glimpse, perhaps, of what truly lay beneath his kingly facade?

But that troubling thought could wait. As the Music of the Gods began to fade from its grand crescendo, a massive prompt appeared in the air above King Majesty’s dais.

>The Great Gods Smile upon Magica City! (Great God’s Blessing, One Hour, Unlimited)<

“Omigod I’m so fucking lucky,” the Player cackled, snatching up her polearm as she bolted for the exit. “I’m gonna grind my fucking ass off!”

“Well!” King Majesty breathed, beaming with something close to delight, “If this is Shinki Itten’s idea of ‘humble’ I shall await our official mediation with great interest!”

Shin blinked. “We’re honored, Your Majesty. But it isn’t as if you’ll have to wait very long, yes?”

“No, no; I suppose not,” the King admitted, waving his hand. “A month is not so long a time to wait, certainly.”

A month? “The mediation is…not for another month?”

“Yes? Was that not the delay that was requested?” King Majesty glanced towards his Evil Prime Minister. “Was that not what the Quercus delegate requested, Caspazar?”

“Indeed it was,” the outlandishly malevolent man confirmed. “He was quite specific. One month’s delay, and that the summit would be in Quercus.” He arched a knife-thin eyebrow. “He was quite certain that both sides had already agreed to this?”

Shin desperately hoped that no one in the Royal Court was up to date on kobold non-verbal communication, because his ears and tail and posture screamed out in staggering contrast to the calm tone he forced his voice to maintain. “When? When did they say this?”

The Evil Prime Minister raised his other eyebrow. “Today? I doubt their audience was more than a half hour before yours.”

Shin let that revelation sink deeply into his brain, then quickly dipped into another bow. “Well then! I suppose there is nothing more to be said! We shall look forward to enjoying Your Majesty’s presence again in a month’s time!”

With that he whirled around, practically bum rushing his companions towards the exit from the throne room. “What’s going on?” Gero insisted. “What did he mean that was all decided?”

“We’ll figure it out later,” Shin hissed back, “But right now we need to get out of here. Something is wrong, and I don’t want to be here when we figure out what it is.”

Shin had experienced setbacks before, experienced failures before. There had been plenty of moments where his schemes had failed to play out in the manner he’d planned for. But for the first time in his life, Shin had the distinct impression that he’d been outflanked. That someone, somewhere, had managed to out scheme him.

They stumbled down Magica Castle’s marble stairway, blinking away the flare of the city’s permanent sun. A frenzy of sorts had broken out in the streets, the Players that normally clogged every avenue with their loitering now rushing this way and that as they attempted to not waste a single second of the Great Gods’ Blessing. Such was the excitement and activity that Shin almost missed the single point of serenity that was seemingly waiting for them at the base of the stairs.

“Oh, you finished quickly,” the man who’d been seated next to Shin in the balcony remarked, idly scratching under his turban as he returned to scanning the streets. “Majesty must not have tried for his usual speech after you preemptively one-upped him with the Great Damn Gods of Magica.”

“I suppose not,” Shin slowly responded as Bittercup went very still beside him. “What does that have to do with you, though?”

The man shrugged. “Well I’d hoped to finish up my personal matters first, but it’s not really a–” He paused as he noticed whatever it was he was looking for, raising his arms as he called out. “Hey, I’m over here!”

“Daddy!” called out the little boy, rushing towards the man as best as he could manage while carrying a stuffed dragon that was practically bigger than he was. “Look at what I won!”

“My gosh~!” the man gasped, eyebrows raised as he slapped his hands to his cheeks. “You won that at the carnival?! How did you do that!”

“The ring toss game!” the little boy proclaimed, puffing himself up in intense pride. “Mister Carmello didn’t even help me once!”

“Carmello!” the man demanded of the hulking shape that shadowed the boy, his tone dripping with faux seriousness. “Is that true? You didn’t even help him one time?”

“I did not,” the medium-sized mountain in a tailored suit confirmed, his voice the sound of a steel beam being ground into powder. “I did not help the Young Master even once.”

“Carmello!” the man cried out as he swept the boy up into his arms, the child giggling in unrestrained delight. “Is my boy a ring toss genius?!”

“It is possible,” Carmello agreed, the ivory of his curling horns glinting in the endless sunlight. “He is the Young Master, after all.”

For his part, the boy couldn’t seem to extract himself from his giggle fit. “You look so silly, Daddy!”

“Hm? Oh! Oh yes, of course.” The man shifted the boy to one arm as he turned back to the Shinki Itten contingent, a mischievous gleam in his eye. “Fun Fact about elves: if they can’t see your ears, they’re practically face-blind. So all you really need is a hat,” –He pulled away his turban, revealing dark brown hair and long elven ears– “And maybe an extra embellishment or two,” –He reached up, popping a cunningly disguised false nose away from his face– “And voila! A perfectly passable disguise, even if a certain someone really should have known better.”

He winked at the utterly petrified Bittercup before passing the boy off to his garganto bodyguard, turning to face the group as he truly was. “It’s really been long past when we should have been introduced, don’t you think? I’m Glandem. What's up, Shinki Itten?”

Just as he had with King Majesty not long before, Shin was struck with an immediate realization as King Glandem was finally standing before him. That no matter what else he might have been, Shin knew one thing for certain.

This was another Schemer.