Chapter 8: 1-7

Jolene is away at school and the prince has been coming to the audiences in the throne room ever since he got bock.  He's even sitting in his own little fancy chair they got from somewhere off to the side a bit.  Between him and the king, the queen is sitting on her own slightly smaller throne as well.  I agree that it's good publicity and that it'll help the prince learn how to better be the king once he takes the throne but something about it all just feels off for some reason.  I could swear that half of the time neither of those two are even paying attention to what's going on while they think about their own things.

This particular audience, however, even I am paying attention to.  Just as the youngest princess declared a few years ago, war has come to this small and peaceful kingdom.  There are six countries that sit on this kingdom's borders and three of them have already begun a joint invasion, two of them are refusing to interfere in any way, and the last one that the queen is from is claiming that they don't have the resources or availability to help for at least another year.  It's a good thing that the king has been practicing with me recently or I'd actually feel disheartened from the news.  Now I'm looking forward to being brought into battle once more.

I doubt that I'll be brought into the war room or wherever it is that they're going to discuss tactics so I have no clue what all they're going to do about this but I sure hope the king doesn't just sit back and try to direct his armies from here.  I'm pretty much just in wait mode at the moment since I've already heard all the information that I can do anything about or really think about.  I'd try to listen more about who is attacking from where or with how many of what but since I won't be privy to any strategy meeting I think my time would be better spent doing something else. 

I've been working on myself a lot in the year or so that Jolene has been away and have gotten a lot better with my vision.  So good, in fact, that I took another gamble and tested a little something during one of the king's sparring sessions.  I've been holding back on focusing my vision when I'm being held so that I don't accidentally feed that to the king but I finally managed to pull it off.  The king didn't seem to notice at all when I tried to focus on some of the people a couple rooms away while keeping the vision that I was giving the king the same.  I've been trying to work on my vision in all sorts of ways and that was a pleasantly won gamble but it did take a lot of effort, like trying to write something down while reading something in a different direction.  I've been trying to pretend that I'm being held to practice doing it whenever I can.

The other big thing about my vision that I'm currently ignoring the audience to work on at the moment is focusing past my normal vision range.  I've finally managed to work on my vision in general to cover most of the castle.  At first I thought that even though I was working on it more than normal that I had somehow slowed down in how much I was improving but then I had a revelation.  What I'm normally trying to improve is the area of my vision so if you do simple math and look at how much the area is improving then I might be improving even faster than when I just worked on it a little bit at a time.  It just seems to slow down as the area grows larger because the radius is increasing less with the same amount of area increasing.  That's my working theory anyway.  With that thought in mind I decided to try and work more on pushing my focused vision out past what my normal vision radius is and I can get it about five meters further than where my vision normally ends right now.  I'm using the unrealistic goal of trying to find Jolene at school as my motivation even though she'll be back long before I ever get to that point.

The last thing that I want to work on but haven't really found a good or safe way to do so is to try and shove a feeling that I don't have at that moment through my empathy into someone.  For instance, if I'm feeling happy but I want someone else to think I'm angry then I want to be bale to shove that anger towards them.  This came from the thought that if I can get good enough at doing something like that then maybe someday I can even adjust people's feelings somewhat as well.  To explain that better, right now I can make someone feel that I, or at least something else from their viewpoint, is angry or happy but I want to be able to make them feel angry or happy...or afraid.  That's my long term goal, anyway, but without test subjects to use I have to set it aside for now.

Oh, look, the audiences are finally over and the king is calling for a war meeting.  I'll just sit here and keep doing my own thing while you go figure that out, then.  I can see that word has already spread to some of the soldiers as well because they're starting to gather up.  I'm really getting excited by all of this.  Oops, I almost rattled a bit out of excitement there.  That was a close one.  I better just ignore everything for now and keep working on my vision practice before I accidentally let myself slip in some way.  Hmm...I can almost see some people outdoors.  Urgh.  Trying to keep that up for too long is difficult enough but trying to keep it on someone who's moving just strains me to the point of it being painful.  I guess a light rest for a bit before I push myself some more is in order.

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Yes!  Forward, king!  I can see the enemy army already so we're extremely close.  I might have seen them sooner but since I'm in this sheath this time around the king isn't holding me and I get no vision from him.  I can hear a few screams of 'War Demon' coming from the enemies so that's helping my mood quite a bit.  Oh, looks like it's time.  The king isn't even giving the enemy army a warning like he did last time, he's just straight up calling for a charge.  Well, that works for me.  I'm ready to share vision whenever you're ready to start, king.

He's grabbing me now and running ahead of the rest of his own army.  Here's some vision and let me just be proud of you in secret for leading the charge.  I do kind of wonder why we never come across rains of arrows or anything but it's a fleeting thought that I have no way to figure out by myself.  The king stops suddenly as a spear suddenly stabs forwards and I'm glad he could see that in both of our visions.  Swing me!  I can make there be a lot less spear, you know.  Like that, yes.

I get to draw first blood in this battle, too!  I split the first guy's face and torso in half as I'm swung straight down through helmet, armor, and all.  The king isn't even giving the other nearby enemies time to react as I immediately get pulled out and swung sideways to cleave the next guy in two at the torso.  Someone is trying to make a move in the king's blind spot but with me here there are no blind spots!  Eesh!  That's the first time I ever blocked a powerful attack like that with the flat of my blade and it was definitely unpleasant.  Let's kill this bastard for it!  Ah.  He's running away.  Coward!  Well, at least I get to cut this guy's head off since he moved in to try and stop us from chasing the coward.  Wait, I get to take off two heads with that swing?  Amazing!

As I get stabbed into the torso of some idiot who thought it would be smart to just charge forward at the king I go ahead and give the king my little reward of slightly sharper vision.  Good, looks like he can handle it.  Now let's wade into the enemy lines and slaughter them all!  Or not.  I guess the king is getting older after all because he just doesn't seem to have the energy he used to.  I guess we can just stay near our army as we hack and slash a hole into the enemy army, then.  One, two, three, four, fi...wow, good dodge enemy soldier guy...and five...

Hmm.  I just don't feel like I'm as covered in blood and guts and gore as I did that one time years ago.  I won't reward you with even more vision if I don't get that, you know?  Well, you just keeps swinging and slashing and stabbing, I'll try and help you not to become as tired by adjusting things a bit here and there.  Like this slash here, let's turn the blade just a hair and ya...see?  Cut's through people like butter that way.  Oh no, a shield?  Whatever will we do against you?  Yup, shields don't really stop me so there's no need to look so surprised.  Goodbye.

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Well, not that we've been going at it for almost fifteen minutes I can finally feel like I'm coated in red from that last little splash so here you go, king, here's some even better vision.  Ah.  I guess with you being both tired and not as young and fit as you once were that that was a bit too much for you, huh?  So we're heading back now?  Oh well.  We cut down a reasonable amount by ourselves, so hopefully the rest of our army can handle it from here.

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So, after three days of pretty much the same thing from the first day repeating itself it looks like we've mostly won here.  Since I'm being carried around by the king I get to hear all the reports and plans that he hears.  We're going back to the castle for now while the part of the army that's here will stay here to finish cleaning up for a few more days.  Then half of that will come back as well to bring prisoners and get resupplied while the remaining half will stay to watch for more invaders.  We'll likely head out again to engage with the next country and push them back after all that's done.  I just hope that there'll be enough country left after this is over.

Since I'm being carried back by the king I also get to listen to him grumble and complain about he's getting too old for this already.  If I think about it, he's probably right.  It doesn't really feel too long ago that he brought me into that first little war but I'm technically immortal so my sense of time might feel a little off from normal people's.  If I didn't see the people around me going to bed each night then I'd probably not even notice that one day had ended and another had begun.  It's a little saddening to think that I'll have to witness this king's death since I do like him and all but I suppose this is something I'll have to get used to over the course of my life.  I'm sure I'll end up with true wielders over time that I grow to be even more fond of and then have to watch die, as well.

I can't really complain about it, though.  This was technically my decision in the end.  I chose to be what I am and live like I will so complaining about some of the minor things that I don't like about it would just be me being crass.  

Well, the king isn't actually wielding me at the moment and there's a few days until we get back so I guess I should work on my vision some.  Maybe I can even make a kind of mental map of the areas we travel through.  Damn.  I'm only now realizing that I should have asked the gods for a built in mapping function.  Maybe if I try hard enough I can end up with one or something similar?  It's worth a shot.  I have centuries to get something like that up and running and if I start trying to work on it now then that's all the sooner that I'll have it.  How do I do that, though?  Hmm.  I'll just have to work hard and figure it out...

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So the prince wants some war achievements, huh?  For some reason, it really doesn't surprise me all that much to hear that.  It's annoying how he's complaining about not being allowed to wield me in order to make those achievements, though.  I mean, think about it you silly prince: you can't even wield me on a normal day without getting a splitting headache and dropping me immediately.  How do you plan to wield me in an actual combat scenario?  I'd like to ask myself but I'm glad the king is currently asking the same thing even if he's asking in a slightly nicer way.

Woah there!  I will not accept having my handle wrapped up just so you can hold me.  I don't even get what the point of trying to wield me in battle would be if you're trying to make it so you can't even use my supposed abilities.  Seriously.  Who decides that they want to take a cannon to a battlefield but not use the ammunition or gunpowder because that's the part they can't handle?  Bringing that kind of cannon is useless.  I don't even understand why the king is currently considering it.  It just makes no sense unless you want to die and lose this war.

Good job, king.  You tell your son how silly that is and...and why is the queen suddenly getting in on this?  She's never even tried to touch me so why does she get a say in how I should be handled?  I honestly can't believe this stupid conversation is happening.  I'm about to be intentionally restricted just so some stupid boy can try and look good in a war he can't afford to lose.  Just bring your own fancy decorative sword!  If that's all you need to be qualified for an achievement in wartime then leave my hobbling out of it and let the king use me like normal.

Good.  Yes, if you want an achievement by going out on the battlefield then you can just go without me.  I'm glad the king is seeing reason and deciding that he should just take me to a different theater of battle while his son goes to do his own prancing in some other location.  I can tell that neither the queen nor the prince are too happy about it but it seems that there's not a lot of room for argument since the king is trying to win while they're trying to look pretty.

Wait, what?  How is that a good compromise at all?  Why would you even let them compromise here?  I don't see how not getting to show me off equals getting to go to the hardest battlefield.  You aren't even planning on fighting so what's the point of you going there?  Come on, king, I know you aren't necessarily the smartest guy around but don't let them talk you into something that foolish.  You should be able to recognize it's a bad idea as soon as they start mentioning the diverting of troops you need elsewhere just to make sure it'll be okay where the prince is going.  That means he's going to be literally worse than useless; he's going to be detrimental to the other fronts while providing little to no benefits to the front he's going to.  I'm not even a master at war or a tactician and I can see that.

Well, it's not like I can really interfere here.  I just hope that the prince is getting some silly war achievement is worth gambling the fate of your kingdom's survival on.  You should realize this also means that we're going to have to do even more at whatever battlefield we go to for a while to make up for the lack of troops now, too.  I won't complain about seeing more use but you're just not in the right shape to be able to pull this off...

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