Kyou Kara Maou – Well of the Five Kings

Disclaimer: Kyou Kara Maou is not mine. Its original creator was Tomo Takabayashi, with character design by Temari Matsumoto. The anime was produced by Studio Deen.

AN: Sorry it’s been awhile. This story… there are too many directions to go, and it’s hard to pick… So in the end, I just decided to stick to, “It’s Christmas.” Thanks to everyone who reviewed!

Oh, for those who haven’t read the last chapter of The Ghosts of Trondheim, there’s been a bit of an arm’s race this past year amongst the Aristocrats, for the most extravagant personalized Tark-o-Gram stationery, for birth announcements, wedding invitations, etc.

Chapter 17 – Winterfair

Well of the One King

“Hey, sleeping beauty,” Manfred said softly, as Aldrich stirred and gave a great stretch. As usual, his soft blue cambric nightgown, and the covers, were thoroughly askew. This opened Manfred’s view to watch his gymnast-buffed rumpled husband stretch - a treat in itself. Manfred set aside his papers of government, and fully gave himself over to appreciating the play of muscle.

“Mm, how long have I been asleep?” Aldrich asked muzzily.

“About thirty hours, I think. You came in yesterday around dawn, and it’s a bit after noon now. Erick gave us the rundown on the closing of the well between worlds last night, when he woke up. I imagine Yuuri’s still asleep.”

Aldrich nodded and grew thoughtful, and sad. Manfred easily recognized this for the pain of saying good-bye again, to those brothers loved and lost, the dearest friends and relatives of Aldrich’s youth. Manfred interrupted that meditation with a slow and thorough kiss. “I hear you gave your heart to my son-in-law. Give it back.”

Aldrich laughed out loud. “Oh! Wait! Are you jealous?! I don’t think I’ve ever managed to make you jealous of me before! C’mon, Manfred, please? Tell me you’re jealous!”

“I ask for emotional reassurance, of your undying love and affection and loyalty for me, and this is what I get? Mockery!”

Aldrich pulled him close, and started unfastening Manfred’s pants. “Un-unh.This is what you get. Physical proof. I love you best. But first, you have to admit you got jealous. Just a little? Justonce?”

“You are impossible to stay mad at! Oh, alright, I admit it, atwinge of jealousy.”

“Good! Now prove to me that I’m with the better man.” Manfred finished undressing and bent to the task with a will.

-oOo-

“Ah, hello, Dietrich, Trenton,” Yuuri greeted the boys amiably enough, though he was somewhat taken aback. After several days sleeping off his showdown with Soushu, Yuuri’d decided to dress and attend formal supper tonight, as a way of easing himself into taking back the reins of the kingdom - tomorrow. Probably. But he found his formal dining room practically paved with huge sheets and rolls of paper and paints. The heirs of Bielenfeld and Gratz were hard at work with brushes, and... potatoes? Yes, young Dietrich was stamping designs and rolling filigrees onto the paper, with a selection of artfully carved potatoes. “Ah, what are you… doing?”

“‘Wrapping paper!’” explained Dietrich proudly. “Your Majesty’s mother told us about it, how in your world people wrap and decorate Winterfair gifts!”

Trenton nodded enthusiastically. His forehead and blond hair sported inadvertant warpaint stripes of red and green. “We can’t go into full production this year, of course. Only a few weeks left til Winterfair. These are samples.”

Conrad and Cecilie, Gwendal and Annissina drifted into the dining room behind Yuuri, and joined him to gaze down at the array of garishly decorated papers. Cecilie, eyes a-twinkle, asked, “Do you boys, by any chance, have something to do with the Tark-o-Gram Company?”

“The‘Tarkenburg-DvB Stationery Company’ is its real name,” Dietrich replied. “My father bought me half interest when I was born. Agnes von Tarkenburg ran it, but I bought her out a few years ago. She got too busy having babies.”

“Everybody knows us by ‘Tark-o-Grams’, though,” observed practical Trenton. “Maybe we should change the company name. I’m his partner now,” he added proudly to Cecilie.

“So at last we know who’s behind the recent inflationary pressures on Tark-o-Grams,” Conrad observed to Gwendal, with a grin.

“Aldrich,” Gwendal hissed back. “Gah!”

“Evening, Gwen,” Aldrich returned this as a pleasantry. He and Manfred had just arrived, with Friedrich and Erick and Efram.

“Boys…” Manfred began, aghast at the wreckage of the royal dining room.

“Brilliant marketing event,” Aldrich cut in smoothly, “Isn’t it, Manfred? Of course, we may have to set the smaller dining room for supper.Ducks,” he observed with a twisted grin. “Is that paper for me, sweet Diet?”

“This is for gifts from me,” explained Dietrich. “My Bielenfeld phoenix duck. I’ll give presents wrapped in my signature. But see Manfred, this paper is for you! It’ll be printed on gold foil for real, with the grapes and leaves and MvB stamped on it. Then you’d have a blue and gold ribbon - Trenton’s developing the ribbons - with a blue tag threaded onto it, embossed in gold, ‘a gift from MvB’. Then you tie it in a bow around the neck of your wine bottles. Easy! It’s a much more impressive presentation of your fine wines. And it leaves you free to concentrate on selecting the perfect vintage for each of your friends.”

Manfred looked bemused, no doubt envisioning how much time he’d spend selecting the perfect vintage for each person on his gift list. However Friedrich said, “I love it! I like the blue and gold ribbon and ‘gift from FvB’ tag. But this year, perhaps a light golden brown foil for me, bourbon colored, with scarlet Trond lizards on the paper. Hard to wrap a bottle in paper, though, isn’t it?” Similarly to Manfred, squire to the MvB plantation’s rich vineyards, Friedrich’s FvB plantation produced a top-shelf bourbon, amongst its less classy riverfront food processing industries. Both men solved their Winterfair shopping problem by simply sending bottles to everyone. Aldrich often did the same, sending AvB vodka, though as a sober alcoholic, he wasn’t really happy with the approach. Besides, as luxury items went, AvB vodka ranked somewhere down around FvB’s canned peaches.

“We thought of that!” pounced Trenton, who’d hastily grabbed a pencil to take Friedrich’s order. “For you and Manfred and Aldrich, we not only print the papers, but have them ready-cut and glued to deliver bags that perfectly fit your bottles! How many would you like?”

Friedrich considered. “Hm, big year, my first daughter’s birth, and two new grandchildren. Two thousand bottles ought to do it.”

Gwendal’s eyes bugged out. But Manfred capitulated. “Alright, sold. Good point about the children, uncle. I’ll take sixteen hundred, Trent.”

Trenton happily scratched down Manfred’s order, and looked expectantly to Aldrich.

“You know,” mused Aldrich, “I just love this wrapping concept. It opens up whole new vistas in gift-giving. Say, Erick, how’s the rubyfruit crop this year? Could you spare, say, twenty thousand?”

“We’re swimming in the stuff,” Erick admitted. As a child, he’d dutifully drunk his two-ounce rubyfruit ration with breakfast every evening, the magic potion that fended off malnutrition and scurvy in the high mountains. Lately his crimson grapefruity dose seemed to be arriving in beakers. “It’s yours.”

“Excellent! How much do you want for it?”

“No - it’s yours,” reiterated Erick. “They’re your rubyfruit trees. I can’t charge you for rubyfruit.”

“Oh, Erick, you’re so sweet! Thank you!” Yuuri and his advisors traded grins - only Aldrich would characterize Erick as ‘sweet’. Aldrich chided, “But, Erick, you’ll never get your treasury into the black that way. You’ve got to look at the value-added proposition. Let’s say, one and a quarter daistra apiece for each gift-quality rubyfruit, delivered wharf-side Castletown. And I want at least twenty thousand, so allow plenty for spoilage. Oh, and I’ll pay your people to stay on, and deliver wrapped gifts back to Walde and Trondheim. And I need them by next week. So you addextra for the rush job. You, too, Trent.”

Erick grinned, brilliant white fangs flashing merrily in the candlelight.“Absolutely!”

As Gwendal and Conrad looked on in open-mouthed horror, Aldrich turned back to dictate to Trenton, “I want 9 rubyfruit per gift box, so I need a nice outer box, and an inner 3x3 tray for the fruit, kinda like cardboard egg crates but bigger. Then, the four corner fruit will be wrapped one each in scarlet and brown, blue and gold foil. We’ll leave the four side fruit unwrapped, to showcase the rubyfruit’s natural beauty. Then I want the center one wrapped in a random selection from Efram’s sketches, you know, the rare races reborn last winter in Trondheim. Plus each of our children - hm.” Aldrich frowned.

“Widen it out,” suggested Manfred, instantly grasping the problem. The nine rubyfruit represent our seven children, plus the two of us. But we can’t call my Kieran and Bertram our children, because they were adopted. “Include your baby sister, your god-daughter Kieran, my grandchildren Ekaterin and Bertram, Greta of course… Efram, you can do some more sketches, hm?”

“Perfect!” said Aldrich, with a warm smile. “By next week,” he reminded Trenton. “Oh, and twenty-two hundred tags and ribbons, of course. The outer box - Lord Manfred, you’re giving me back Bielenfeld, right? Yeah, so, from-me-as-Lord-Bielenfeld, standard gold phoenix on Bielenfeld blue for the box. Only the tag gets my AvB monogram.”

An empurpled Gwendal looked about ready to pop. But Dietrich - who’d hurriedly scrubbed the paint off his hands - tugged at his sleeve. “Please, Brother Gwendal, Sir?” Gwendal hadn’t authorized this extension of step-brother’s half-brother to Brother, but didn’t care to correct the boy, either. He was a bit of a sucker for the diffident blond boy’s delightful manners, so at odds with Gwendal’sother blond baby brother.

Dietrich carried a huge looseleaf portfolio, and opened it to a page of beautifully colored designs. “I had these drawn for you, Sir, in case you wanted a Tark-o-Gram or something one day. Wrapping paper would be perfect for them. See, this is a Walde gryphon - wouldn’t that dark green look nice on gold foil? And Sister Annissina, here’s a Khrennikov mermaid I thought you might like. My artists are goblins, from the Walde Home for Disabled Goblins in Twinhall.”

One could tell Gwendal really, really liked the green Walde gryphon. “The… Walde what?” asked Gwendal.

“The Walde Home. Your father Lord General Hugh endowed it quietly, after the Great War, to care for abused and disabled goblins. They’re wonderful artists.”

“Mm,” sighed Cecilie, with a wistful smile. She nodded to Gwendal to corroborate the story.

“Could I have the mermaid wield a golden trident?” inquired Annissina. “Abig one, the size of her tail flukes. Maybe attacking a rat? Mm, no, skip the rat, just the trident.”

“Ahem, Annissina! We don’t send… thousands of Winterfair gifts like the von Bielenfelds! No one does!”

“Actually,Gwennie, no one sends them to us. Except them. Because you’re a miser,” observed Annissina. “Though I don’t know what we’d send.”

“I love those little spice cookies they make in Bruscella,” suggested Aldrich. The half-human sanctuary of Gegen Huber’s Bruscella sat at the Walde base of the Trondheim Escarpment. “You know the ones, Erick - they serve them at the elevator way station?”

“Yeah, I love those. And those Maou scones from Lutenberg - nice shade of purple,” replied Erick on cue. Though technically Bruscella was part of Walde, both cities were really Conrad’s turf. They were throwing a bone to their autonomist coalition partner Conrad.

In appreciation for this, Conrad looked daggers at Erick. Dietrich flipped a page. “Brother Conrad, Mama-chan sketched this for you. I think it looks more like a sword than a flower, but she called it afleur-de-lis. Maybe that, in your colors, on silver? And,” the boy flipped some more large pages, “Tante Cecilie, I had these drawn for you - your flowers, Secret Gwendal, Conrad-Stands-Upon-the-Earth, Beautiful Wolfram, and - Cheri’s Sigh?” It was just like Dietrich to memorize something so thoughtful.

“Oh!” cried Cecilie. “Sweet-Diet, they’re beautiful! These drawings are from Hugh’s home for goblins, too? You can count on my placing an order, darling.”

“Squid cakes,” suggested Annissina. Gwendal stared at her, hard. “They’re a delicacy in Khrennhaven, Gwennie. The manufacture of squid cakes is an important women’s cottage industry, empowering the widows of seamen -”

“I love their soap,” interrupted Aldrich. “Their fine seaweed soaps do wonders for dry winter skin. Giving them as gifts might increase demand, extend their market reach across Shin Makoku.”

Annissina grinned in triumph. “Soap it is, then! From me,” she added to Gwendal, who grimaced. He hadn’t realized that his wife intended they both spend money hand over fist on Winterfair. “Gwennie! You’re the Chancellor, you have to think of your social position!”

Gwendal swallowed. “Yes, dear. Little gryphon bags with tags, to fit a couple dozen cookies each. A… thousand.” He swallowed harder. He wasn’t at all sure he could come up with a thousand people to send gifts to, but if Manfred could send sixteen hundred… Of course, he’d neglected to consider that the three Lords von Bielenfeld were retired military commanders andprofessors at the Institute and Aristocrats, and thus had scores of ex-students and ex-subordinates, as well as fellow squires and Lords to lob bottles at. And in practice, their gift-giving habit was good marketing.

“Yes, Sir, Lord Chancellor! Thank you, Sir!” said Trenton, writing up the order.

Diet flipped a few more pages. “And Lord Erick? These designs I have double, one for night sight, and one for day. They look the same, to the other eyes.”

“Really?” Erick studied the dual designs with interest. To Yuuri, the night-sight one looking impossibly garish and chunky, the white-outlined colors downright weird, but the smaller light-sight device was quite elegant. Both were the standard Trond ouroboros - a ten-legged lizard chomping its own tail, a mystical symbol of the cycle of life and death. But Erick sighed regret. “That’s wonderful, Dietrich, if you could find a printer who can manufacture both at quality. But even if you could, I can’t afford this gifting game.”

“You might be surprised, Lord Erick,” suggested Dietrich. “First, we do all our printing now in Twinhall - your hometown, Sir. I’m delighted with their prices and quality, so our wrapping paper will be manufactured in Trondheim. That will keep your costs down, since most of your gifts will never leave the mountains. Also, I’d like to promote The Book of Babes, which comes out in a few months. Tarkenburg-DvB is the publisher. Several of the pictures and essays in Efram’s book are from your own von Trondheim royal family.”

Dietrich handed Erick a sheet of calculations. “If you were willing to send out our book excerpt, just the pages on your own family, to your Winterfair gifting list, it would all be marketing for Trond-manufactured products. If we combine that with your monthly newsletter to each Trond hall, plus send maybe a hundred down below… They’re not much bigger than a deluxe Tark-o-Gram. And I’d split the cost with you. So we could do it for this.” He pointed to the bottom line, considerately written for Erick’s eyes, in huge blocky letters.

Erick’s eyebrows rose above his sunglasses. He passed the page to Aldrich. “Am I taking charity from your son, now, Rick?”

Aldrich glanced briefly at the paper, shrugged, and handed it back. “I trust Dietrich’s numbers. As for charity, my son’s going to make a mint selling from the quality and capacity of Twinhall’s paper mills. Take him up on the deal, and enrich Trondheim. Oh, but Diet - on the down-below versions, leave off Ilya’s essays on -” Aldrich indicated Yuuri with a slight jerk of the head.

“Yes, Chichiue,” Dietrich nodded dutifully. “Maybe I should leave them off the night vision exerpts, too?”

“No!” cried Erick. “Oh, include Ilya’s religious essays! Those are excellent, especially - oh. No, we’ve got to include Ilya’s vision of the Yuuri moon. It came true! And it’ll make people feel better, and more at-one with the down-below. Definitely.”

“Ah - ‘Yuuri moon’ ?” Yuuri inquired.

“The new moon,” explained Greta, who’d joined them. “We named it after you, Yuuri. You see, Ilya had this vision of a purple moon named Yuuri, with Morgif’s face on it, that symbolized the Blessed Yuuri stretching forth his protection over all the nations and races, Mazoku and human alike. That’s perfect, so we went ahead and named the moon Yuuri. To go with the sacred writings of the cult of Yuuri the Savior.” She beamed at him happily.

Yuuri smiled back at his daughter, the kind of pasted-on smile that hurt the jaw muscles. “What ‘cult of Yuuri the Savior’ ?” he inquired, as pleasantly as he could manage.

“Um,” replied Greta, desperately looking back over her shoulder for Wolfram. He sheepishly arrived last to supper with Adelbert and the damp-haired Bertram and Frieda. Clearly an emergency rebathing had held them up. “Chichiue Wolfram, you didn’t even tell himabout it?”

Erick looked crestfallen. “Aw, hell. You mean the prophecy didn’t come true? Instead we made it come true?”

“Wedidn’t make a new purple moon,” said Manfred, defending his choice as acting Chancellor. “I just told everyone else Yuuri made it, like Ilya said he would. People looking at the moon in fear is exactly what the enemy wanted. Much better that it be a good omen. Especially after all the well-merging craziness, the evil storm, and the sudden deaths from Earth plague, before we got Yuuri’s‘in-laws’ in quarantine.”

“Oh, I’d wondered if quarantine might be wise,” said Friedrich, while Yuuri was still gaping. “With the usual run of starving refugees, of course we would. But they seemed quite healthy?”

“Walking epidemics, the lot of them,” said Manfred. “A few months’ graduated quarantine should work out most of it, but a few are contagious permanently. Some of the most diabolical venereal diseases I’ve ever seen, Friedrich - you’d love them.”

“Oh, really! Worse than hiccups? I shall have to go visit. Are Yuuri’s parents in quarantine, too? I hope they’re not penned up with the sexual lepers.”

Dietrich made a face and looked imploringly at his father to stop this talk ofsex. Yuuri strongly sympathized, his fingers twitching into fists at the idea of his parents being quarantined to prevent them from spreading venereal disease. Aldrich murmured, “Dietrich has a point, Father. Let’s only discuss venereal disease at supper, not the sexually-transmitted ones.” Friedrich nodded a solemn apology to Dietrich.

“I’m sorry, Chichiue,” said Wolfram softly. “It’s my fault that -”

Yuuri looked at his beloved in concern. Funny, he hasn’t been in our room when I’ve drowsed awake. I haven’t seen him since just after the battle. He looks despondent. Yuuri assayed a soft smile at him, and put a hand on his back. Wolfram just cast his eyes down in shame.

“None of that, pretty vixen,” replied Manfred. “You’re still a novice at public health. However, I should have thought of quarantine sooner.”

“Sounds like you reacted promptly and successfully once you realized the danger,” replied Aldrich. “I think you did a brilliant job, Manfred! On public health and welfare, as Lord Bielenfeld, and as Chancellor. Don’t you agree, Gwen?”

Yuuri nodded whole-heartedly, and shook Manfred’s hand.

“Um, yeah, thank you, Lord Manfred,” Gwendal grumbled. “Can we eat yet?”

Alas, Wolfram and Adelbert had taken their eyes off Bertram and Frieda during this exchange. Now the children squealed in glee. Bertram’s feet were out of his shoes and plastered with red and green paint, Frieda’s hands in yellow and blue. Both busily applied their body-part stamps to a stretch of honey-bear bee potato-printed paper, which Dietrich obviously intended for Wolfram.

“Wemake paper for Chewy and Wimpy!” Frieda cried proudly.

“Me, too!” said Bertram. “Bite me! Heheh.”

Thus invited, Frieda obligingly bit his leg.

Bertram screamed in hurt and terror, and catapulted into Wolfram’s arms, leaving red and blue footprints all across the room, and up Wolfram’s formal dinnerwear. A horrified Adelbert delivered Frieda a few sharp spanks. Not a girl to back down easily, Frieda screamed like a banshee and raked her father’s face with her paint-smeared nails. Humiliated, Wolfram and Adelbert headed off to the nursery for bathing again. Bathing themselves, that is - no doubt the children would be offloaded on the nannies.

After a long pause, Yuuri replied to Gwendal, “Yeah. Let’s eat.” The group turned and headed for the more casual dining room. “So, Conrad. You remember Christmas in the States, don’t you? My mother adored it, all the shopping and lights, and never let up after we returned to Tokyo. Somehow, I didn’t think the cultural contamination would work quite this fast. A commercialized Winterfair...”

Conrad nodded sad agreement as they passed into the hall.

“Where’s Günter, by the way?” asked Yuuri.

Erick supplied, “He left after I decked him. The Günters chose to swap worlds, so we’ve got the Evil One now. Took us by surprise.”

“Erick, you want to be careful with that,” suggested Conrad. “You’re awfully big to go around decking demons. You could kill a man with one blow.”

Erick stared him down with blank black sunglasses. “He poked me in the chest about ten times, outlined his plan to castrate every troll and drunken elf, to prevent us from spawning. Hit him to shut him up.”

“I see. This is going to be fun,” Yuuri allowed. “You don’t suppose… No, I’m sure the nymphs wouldn’t have swapped them without Günter’s permission. Surprising, though, as you said. Isn’t that a one-way trip? He didn’t even say good-bye.”

Manfred dawdled behind, holding back his husband in the dining room. “Aldrich, darling,” he prompted. He gritted his teeth and held up his hands to indicate, the state of this room.

“Hm? Oh, yeah! Boys, great job! Wrap this up and join us for dinner. Be sure to tip the servants extra. And Dietrich - I want you to expense the tips properly this time. They’re not operating costs, they’re…?”

“‘Marketing entertainment expense’,” supplied Dietrich.

“Good boy! So - dinner?”

“Actually,beloved, I was suggesting they clean up after themselves,”complained Manfred.

“Well, that’s just silly, studmuffin. You wouldn’t want them cleaning your dining room. They’d smear paint everywhere, leave puddles under the chairs, and then the servants would have to work twice as hard later. Respect the skill of the professionals, I say. And pay them handsomely for it.”

Dorcas and Doria, the sample professionals waiting by the door, nodded their heads emphatically in agreement.

-oOo-

“Hello? Is someone in here?” Yuuri called softly at the door to the kitchens. He’d heard someone clanging around, but the room was pitch dark. It was well past midnight. Yuuri’d intended to spend some quality time with the skittish Wolfram. But Wolfram had been called away hours ago, to assess quarantine needs on another outbreak of Earth influenza in the garrison. Yuuri’d ventured out hoping to catch him and bring him to bed.

“Yes, Sire, it’s just me,” Aldrich called out. “Oh - sorry.” A couple candles bloomed into light, stuck into wine jugs on the worn kitchen table, where Sanguria and her minions worked and ate and gossiped incessantly. But they’d long since gone to bed. Aldrich had apparently been cooking for himself. He slid an enormous omelette, bursting with veggies and mushrooms and cheese, onto a plate. “Want some? I’ve got tea steeping, too.”

“Ah - sure, if you have enough.” Aldrich appeared to have enough for a family of four. “Couldn’t get to sleep again just yet?”

“No. Well, I think my body’d be willing. That Maou thing you do really wears you out, doesn’t it? But, my head’s … busy. And I didn’t want to keep Manfred up.”

Now that his eyes were adjusting, Yuuri could see that Aldrich’s eyes looked a bit bruised and puffy. He’d been crying here alone in the dark, cooking. “Everything alright, my Lord Bielenfeld?” he inquired softly.

“Certainly, Sire,” Aldrich replied formally.

“Ah - call me Yuuri,” Yuuri replied, then laughed at himself. Aldrich gave him a lopsided green-eyed grin in return. “Right, I shouldn’t have called you Lord Bielenfeld, then. Sorry. I just - Truth is, ever since I woke up, I’ve been worrying about Wolfram and that… you giving your… heart… to me… thing.”

Aldrich easily decoded this for the non-question question it was. “I’m a tutoring professor of unconditional love, Yuuri. I take on the students who’d have trouble loving their own mothers, or even theirdog. Which means I have to love some of the most unlovable people you’ll ever meet, into loving themselves, until they can love others. Wolfram knows that. Intellectually.” They both chuckled.

Then Aldrich allowed, “Of course, you’re not one of them. It was no effort to give you my heart. I do love you, Yuuri. It’s an honor and a privilege to call you my liege lord. And husband to my stepson. And hopefully, friend. And you’re pretty damned attractive as well. But! I’m head over heels in love with Manfred, and have been for over a century. And no offense, but you’re what, a tenth my age? No, Wolfram’s got nothing to worry about from me. Though, I must admit, Manfred did insist on hearing me say so. I kinda liked it, actually.”

Yuuri smiled broadly, and breathed out tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “No offense taken. Thank you, Aldrich. I feel very much the same way about you. Including the honor and privilege. You made a good Maou. I almost feel an imposter as your liege lord now. Sure you don’t want my job?”

Aldrich smiled and poured the tea. “He was Maou over Hon Makoku, notShin Makoku, Yuuri. Shin Makoku would not accept a Trond overlord. I was never a contender here. And you are a contender for greatest Maou of all time. Though I don’t think you’ve quite exceeded the twenty-fifth at sheer Maou-craft,yet. Getting damned close, though, and you haven’t been at it as long as he was, yet. And in the theological realm, you’ve already far exceeded him.”

Yuuri was basking in the compliment. It meant a great deal to him to have someone as talented as Aldrich praise him. The reservation about the twenty-fifth Maou actually strengthened the statement. No gushy excessive praise like Günter’s came from this vassal. But then Aldrich had to remind Yuuri of his recent apotheosis. “I’m, ah, not entirely comfortable with this ‘Yuuri Messiah’ business, Aldrich. Is there any way I could…?”

“Duck out? No. Well, I suppose you could die young, but we’d rather you didn’t.”

“Ah, thanks. I mean it’s… but… I didn’t… You’re a theologian, right? This is a… farce. I’m not a… god.”

Aldrich looked at him sympathetically. “I tend to disagree, Yuuri. What definition, a god? Acts like a duck, quacks like a duck. The Yuuri cult calls you the redeemer of the drunks, the salvation of the ghosts of Vladimir’s Last Stand, the resurrection of the races of Trondheim, the Boom Falls Messiah. Who sealed the deal with a nifty new Maou-colored purple moon. These things are true, Yuuri.You perform miracles. You saved my people. Shinou was a god. So are you. I don’t imagine that’s very comfortable. I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. If you got too comfortable with your deification, started demanding people bow down and worship you, I’d be near the head of the lynch mob working to curb your enthusiasm. But I thank all the other gods for sending you.”

“‘Head of the lynch mob’,” Yuuri echoed wryly. “Thank you for your love and support, Aldrich. Funny thing is, I agree with you on that one. If it ever does go to my head, yeah, please, ‘curb my enthusiasm’. Though I’ve no wish to become a martyr.”

The sun went out on Aldrich’s expression. “Wise choice,” he murmured, and sadly applied himself to his omelette.

“Thanks for listening, Aldrich,” Yuuri said softly. “But, you never told me what your head was spinning about, before.”

And Yuuri gently coaxed Aldrich into talking. About Aldrich’s martyr Uncle Otto, first Lord Trondheim, father to Aldrich’s own foster brother Franklin. About the lunatic-and-space-cadet team of the foster brothers Wolfred von Bielenfeld and Julius von Wincott. The affable big big brother Adeldan von Gratz, husband to Aldrich’s pseudo-sister Sophie, and how they’d been so happy together, until their son Adelbert ran off with Manfred to join the army too young. And Glynda, the vivacious happy wife, who could have been saved from a life of desperate madness and misery, by a simple drop of water. As Yuuri continued to make encouraging noises, the tears flowed.

“I keep thinking, I shouldn’t have avoided Glyn, you know? I should have faced her, told her, in the other well. Or Diet - maybe I should have let Dietrich see her. I should have loved instead ofprotected. But I was so scared for us. Scared of Glynda, being well and happy. How warped is that… I thought of pulling what Günter did, going back to be with them again. That’s insane! I love my life. I’ve never been so happy as I am with Manfred now, but… I miss them, Yuuri, oh gods I miss them! When I confronted Soushu, that’s what I was thinking. We demons don’t get old, we just can’t bear to keep going after a while, after so many have gone on before us…”

Yuuri stepped around the table to cradle his friend’s head on his chest, and stroked his hair while he cried.

“Yuuri,” breathed Wolfram. He’d walked in to see them like this, in the intimacy of the wine jug candles, stolen away in the dark kitchens.“You - !” And he turned stiffly, starting to flee with dignity.

“LORD WOLFRAM!” barked Aldrich. “Get back here! You’re not nearly as cute as your father when you get jealous.”

“You -, you -” Wolfram spluttered.

“Ah, Wolfram,” said Yuuri. “This isn’t what it looks like…”

But apparently Wolfram wasn’t speaking to Yuuri. He puffed up in his best injured pomposity, and demanded, “My Lord Aldrich, you gave your heart to my husband when I could not. I… failed His Majesty and Shin MakokuWhat are your intentions now?”

From his crying, Aldrich was too wrung out emotionally to give this any credence. “Wolfram. Sit. Eat.” Aldrich mopped his face while Wolfram sat, ramrod straight at attention, eyes fixed on Aldrich, pointedly ignoring Yuuri. Aldrich sighed. “Wolfram… I gave my heart to Yuuri because I could. I do love him, and I love you. It doesn’t change anything. As for you ‘failing’ - hells, Wolfram. Your baby Bertram was possessed by Soushu. When the other Dietrich was possessed by Soushu, I could barely keep my mind on what I was doing. But if my baby was possessed - ! I would have been a basket case!”

“But - he was. Dietrich was possessed by Soushu, too,” Wolfram said without thinking. “And you kept your head -”

“What?!”Aldrich was out of his chair like a rocket.

Fortunately, Manfred moseyed in about then, carrying the baby twin Avram. “Nice going, pretty vixen,” he commented wryly. “Aldrich, honey -Dietrich is fine. You will not run into his room, and wake him in the dead of night, and flip both of you out. Right, honey? Here. Hold another baby. What’s with the convention in the kitchen?”

Aldrich reluctantly sank back into his chair. Clutching affable little Avram clearly helped. “Why are you up? Something wrong with my mellow fellow? He’s not fussing.”

“No, Avram’s fine. Thomas woke me because Efram was whacked with remorse over Frieda biting Bertram,” explained Manfred. “Efram felt it was all his fault. And foxy friend woke up, too, so I brought him along.”

“Just‘foxy’,” corrected Aldrich. “Not ‘foxy friend’. That was Wolfred’s name for you, Manfred.” Sadness stole over his face again. Manfred stroked his back. “That’s what Yuuri and I were talking about, Wolfram. I was just… grieving absent friends, all over again. Your husband’s virtue is intact.”

“Thomas?” asked Yuuri.

“Our valet,” Aldrich reminded Yuuri, but asked Manfred, “What’s Thomas doing here?”

Manfred replied, “Friedrich wouldn’t leave until he was sure you and Dietrich were OK, and Thomas couldn’t wait any longer to see Friedrich, so…”

Aldrich looked at him puzzled. “Our head servant,” he stated blankly.

Manfred shook his head and smiled gently. “As in, some servants give better head than others?”

“He -! D’oh!” Aldrich laughed softly at himself, and chalked up a point in thin air, that Manfred had got him. “All these years I’ve been wondering if my old man were celibate, or just really,really discreet. And he had a live-in lover in his own apartment. And this has been going on…?”

“Probably inherited the valet with the castle,” confirmed Manfred. “Thomas helped Friedrich raise the four of you, after all. Discreetly, of course. He always says, the best place to hide something is in plain view.” He hugged Aldrich’s head. “Let’s go back to bed, hon.”

“Ah, Wolfram,” said Yuuri, as the older men decamped. “I actually came down here looking for you.Are you ready to come to bed, my love? My only love.”

“You’re not… disappointed in me?” Wolfram asked querulously.

Yuuri held his eye with a soft smile, and took him in his arms. “Never, love. A little jealous of Bertram sometimes, maybe.”

Wolfram gave him a tender little mock punch. “Oh, Yuuri! I do give my heart to you! But the children…”

“I know. And I love you for it. Let me show you. In bed.”

-oOo-

Well of the Prince of Darkness

Though everyone wondered what exactly it meant that Garena was the ‘Prince of Darkness’ - and whether Good Günter might ever come back - Garena was his usual forthcoming self. He didn’t show up, so they couldn’t ask him. Good intentions of ‘getting things back to normal’ were gradually abandoned by mutual consent, in favor of just sliding into the two-week Winterfair visiting season early this year, and stretching it out to a month. Likewise good intentions of ‘getting explanations from the nymphs’ were sort of let go. The Mazoku Aristocrats had more or less had their fill of nymphs for a while.

Winterfair was already in full swing, on the day the von Bielenfelds had appointed for exchanging their ever-so-well-wrapped gifts, when Garena appeared, and waylaid Manfred on his way to the bedecked audience chamber for the unwrapping.

“Well, welcome, Garena,” Manfred greeted him guardedly. “I’m glad to see you for the holidays.” Though, he wasn’t.

“Come with me,” invited Garena. He led Manfred out into the box maze behind Castle Bielenfeld, where Aldrich had grown the saplings that birthed their twins and Wolfram and Yuuri’s Ekaterin, scarcely two months before. En route, in lieu of explanation, Garena said, “There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

The winter-bare saplings of Foxy, Moxy, and Kat, sitting forlorn in the snow, had been joined by three new saplings, planted after the garden had been put to rest for the winter.

“What…?” asked Manfred. “Wait a minute - those seeds! Aldrich and Wolfram’s seeds! I put them in my drawer, and then - ! This is them, isn’t it? How dare you!”

“We’ll talk after,” Garena demurred. “This tree,” he said, touching a small Ponderosa pine, “is the tree of the Prince of Darkness. Please hold my hand.”

Manfred frowned at the proffered hand for several long seconds, before he grudgingly took it. In the year and a half since the revelation that Garena was Manfred’s ‘father-father’, the relationship between the two men had failed to warm. To some extent, this was due to Garena’s seeming disinterest and dislike for his long-lost son. But for his part, Manfred wasn’t an easy oyster to open emotionally at any time. He already had a father in Wolfred, whose memory he honored, and a mother in Phoebe, with whom he shared a comfortably mutual dislike of long standing. He wasn’t in the market for a third parent. Aldrich and Friedrich’s occasional attempts to bridge the gulf between Garena and Manfred had pretty much fallen flat.

But because Manfred figured this was his own child-tree, he took Garena’s hand, and Garena grasped a branch. And instantaneously, they stood before the same little pine, but on Tariel and Garena’s hill in the Krist Fens, in the full bloom of springtime. The others would have recognized it as being much like the well of the two nymphs. But Manfred hadn’t seen it since infancy.

“Manfred… oh, my beautiful foxy friend,” Wolfred said from behind him. Manfred whirled to look in astonishment. Wolfred strode forward and grasped him by both arms, drinking him in with his eyes, glowing with joy. “Oh, to see you again! When the wells crossed, it was agony, everyone coming and going and talking about you, and everyone could see you except me…” Wolfred swallowed, tears welling over and down his cheeks. “And Manfred, I so wanted to see you! I’ve hounded Garena night and day and twice at sunset ever since then, anddemanded to see you!”

Manfred stared. It took a moment to adjust for the change in age. For of course Wolfred had died when he was younger than Manfred was now. And in Manfred’s memory, himself and Wolfram, whose resemblance was so strong, both looked like Wolfred. Yet he could see now that Wolfred looked more like a medium-tall Friedrich. White-blond hair tufted out behind his ears, in a lanky wild lynx sort of look, over narrower, piercing green eyes. “I… look like Garena?” Manfred said wonderingly.

“You sure do!” Wolfred laughed. “And good on ya! Well, you look like me, too. But mostly you look like you - the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.” He gazed on Manfred in rapture another moment, then cocked his head to one side with a soft laugh. “But you’re not really much like him, are you? My Manfred. So much harder. So much more like me.”

Manfred had started to pull away in discomfort at being compared to his flower-child other he’d heard so much about. But he stopped in surprise when he realized Wolfred wasn’t complaining. “Do you… mind?”

“Mind!? No. Tragic, though. You could be sweetness and light, and die young. Or I could die young, and you could be hard as nails in my place.” Wolfred sighed, and smiled with a depth of compassion that simply never had time to mature, before he’d died as this Manfred’s father. “I’ve heard what you’ve suffered through. I’m so sorry. But it’s formed you well.” Wolfred nodded in approving appraisal. “You’re a strong man, and a good one. I was so proud to hear of you taking on public health and welfare. And Lord Bielenfeld and Lord Chancellor on top of that, during the crisis. And sevenkids, good ghouls,Manfred, what were you thinking? A man to rely on, when the going gets rough. The highest virtue of the von Bielenfelds. I’m proud of you, son.”

“Even though I’m not like him?”

“Argh! You see, that’s why I had to see you myself!” Wolfred took Manfred’s chin in his hand and looked him straight in the eye with a feral green-eyed demon smile. “I adore you, foxy friend. You lived, and thereby confound your enemies! Don’t you know that could only make me love you more?” And he held Manfred’s eye until his son matched his leer perfectly. “That’s my son!So! You fell in love with my Nunkie, huh? I pounded the pretty little troll for that!”

Manfred laughed out loud. “Yeah, thanks, I had to patch him up afterward! We adore each other, Chichiue. We’re maddeningly different. But we delight in each other’s existence. Yeah, we fell in love.”

Wolfred nodded. “Like me and Garena. OK, then. I’ll let Nunkie off the hook, but only because he makes you happy.”

“Speaking of which… He’s waiting for me now. And the kids and Friedrich. To open Winterfair gifts.” Manfred said it with vast reluctance. To see his father again, and have his father approve of him, was a gift beyond dreaming. But, Aldrich and the kids would go mental if he disappeared now, and hell knew what crazy stunt the visiting Yuuri and Wolfram might get up to. Those two always went off half-cocked.

“Nope!” cried Wolfred. “This well lies outside time and space, Garena’s own personal universe. We’ll return the same instant we left, no matter what time we spend here. Getting Garena to bring us here again might take some doing, though. Please, foxy friend, stay with me a while. I’ve missed you so.”

At this mention of Garena, Manfred glanced around. “Speak of the devil. Where’d he get to?”

Wolfred nodded. “Yeah, that’s part of why you need to stay. It’s high time you and Garena fell in love all over again. And that might take some doing. Because emotionally, foxy friend? You take after him! So I’m not letting either of you go, until you’re father and son again! Because I say so!”

And Wolfred always got his way. The man was a force of nature.

-oOo-

There were ten seeds altogether, growing in the Aldrichs and Wolframs during the showdown with Soushu. As they’d seen before, great magic whilst ‘pregnant’ resulted in far more powerful seeds than usual. Though - the gentle loving magic of the Midsummer Calling resulted in their children. Like the more desperate magic of restoring long-dead races, the showdown with Soushu, created…something else.

But that’s another story.

-oOo-

The End.

-oOo-

Sorry, this overlong story hasn’t come easily. Thank you to all those who stuck with it to the end!

I may take a long break from writing fanfiction. Or maybe add some more vignettes to Shining Moments. Maybe the tale of the first wedding - Annissina vs. the Rats. Or Aldrich and the Rubyfruit. Or The Year of Evil Günter. Or maybe just give it a rest with KKM, and finally get back to my Legal Drug sequel-prequel. If you care, please say so...

Please review? Reviews energize me to write again.