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The cyclops' frame shuddered for a moment, her eye closing as the spirit took hold. When it opened, it was with a new determination.

"Not yet, milady." The healer's hands moved, one on the enchantress' brow and the other over her strained womb. Power surged through Frida, far more than the cyclops herself possessed. Emma jerked like a puppet whose strings had been taken up again, her eyes flying open as a magic she only knew through borrowed memory flooded into her. Her back arched clean off the bed.

Hrothbert had gone still, and not with the usual cessation of motion that signaled anger. It was the stillness of somebody trying very, very hard not to break.

Emma settled back onto the sheets, her eyes closing again, but her breathing and heartbeat steady and color back in her features. Some sort of altered state had taken her over, almost trance-like.

Frida (or whoever was using her body) straightened, blood staining her deft hands. "The rest is up to her. Empress, your father sends his love."

Pine-green light shimmered, and a figure stepped out of Frida. Kaok would recognize her, but only from a dream of Emma's.

Red-haired, green-eyed, tall and shapely, clad in simple, bright green, the woman steadied the Cyclops before turning to the others in the room.

Raising his eyes to look upon her, the sorcerer stood abruptly-

Silver-blue light flashed in a burst of uncontrolled magic, and every last piece of glass in the Estate shattered. Windows, bottles, mirrors, all burst into tiny shards of glittering transparency, falling to the ground like snow.

Their gazes met, and more emotion than Emma had seen in more than a decade of marriage made itself known in his eyes.

"God chooses to mock me at my weakest." Hrothbert said, his voice quavering.

"No, cariad." She held out a hand to him, the ring finger encircled by gold. "I'd like a word."

He took her hand, spellbound, and could not suppress an intake of breath when his skin met hers (warm as it had been in life). They vanished under a ward, still there but protected from sight and sound.

The enchantress did not respond, but it was clear that she was giving all of herself to the task at hand. Her hand found Kaok's, and squeezed (perhaps a little too tightly) as muscles contracted and instinct took hold.

Frida (if she was up to it) would be highly useful in aiding the last few moments.

A few unexpected guests had arrived on the Bainbridge estate. The style of their armor marked the as war criminals. They were the remnants of the Dragonheart Empire. Under the order of their commanding officer (Warlord Amplitudo), the soldiers were ordered to procure any and all magical artifacts. The moment they arrived, they caused a ruckus. Anything in their path was trampled.

The soldiers were a little caught off guard by this elfish woman’s demeanor. Rather than rage, like they had expected, they were greeted with a stern look and a chastising tone. So surprised were they that they stopped.

“Ma’m?” one of the soldieries uttered.

Ashamed of himself, one of the soldiers took out a kerchief and started to scrub the mud he had tracked in. This in turn caused another soldier to smack the back of the repentant soldier’s helmet.

“We’re here on business,” one of the soldiers said, stepping forward and revealing himself as the leader of this small platoon.

“There’s no harm in telling you,” the leading soldier said smugly. “We’re here for magical artifacts.”

“Warlord Amplitudo,” he answered. After answering, he motioned for his men to continue their work.