For another twelve years, Gressila fought her brother to get land rights for the people inhabiting the area. She fought to give them proper housing. Schooling? That would have to come in their next generation because she didn't have the time to reproduce any works of literature or remember much higher math that they could possibly comprehend.

She knew of course, that Lifera was plotting something. But he'd not left his keep much in that time. Several visits to neighboring kingdoms where he allied himself with a barbaric and cruel king, and the other almost lost theirs to his rages.

But she didn't know about his plot, and Gressila didn't much care. She was concerned that the crops that the locals were making had started to thin out over the last decade, and that didn't bode well.

"Crop rotation," she muttered, "but there aren't enough crops to rotate around here..." She sat in the darkness of her lowly wooden home, listening to the crickets outside and the endless burbling of the small waterfall which powered the mill nearby.

"Ah..." she sighed, smiling at last. "The Forest Walkers will be here next season and they will have news of the east. I'll ask them about things. Seeds, plants... imports..."

She drifted to sleep with a quill pen in her hand, and was awakened in the morning abruptly by the pounding of a metal-clad fist on her wooden door, and the sounds of a steed pawing the ground outside.

"Gressila," her brother's voice brought a wave of nausea to her throat. "I've come to say good bye," he announced.

The purr in his voice didn't go unnoticed by the woman, but she stood and swept the soot from her fire off of her fine hair and shoulders.

"Lifera. Good. Good bye." She said, barely opening the door. "I shall take better care of these people than you could imagine, I suppose."

"Oh, you'll do that I expect. You may even use my keep. I'm quite done with it. I will be heading to the Steel Desert and teleporting away. I'm so bored here. I cannot understand the first thing about your ways, sister. These humans are ... like gnats, only louder."

"And you're like a leech, only better dressed," Gressila muttered, and Lifera almost lost his temper and hit her, but he restrained himself. She was half-asleep, and that worked to his tremendous advantage.

"Well then I will see you, perhaps in another millennia. Enjoy your little dirty mortals." He said, and tossing his long hair over his shoulder he lept to his steed's back and kicked his heels into its flanks. They galloped away, and vanished among the trees.

His castle sat high over the forest, yet not so high that there were not other mountains beyond it. Gressila stood against the doorway and watched the dust from his steed's hooves settle in the bright morning haze.

"The Steel Desert, huh? Why not teleport out of the keep's courtyard? Or are you just running away? I think you don't have enough power to jump to an inhabited world, brother of mine..."

She did, of course, because she'd been conserving her magical energies all this time and concentrating on the important things: crops and health care. She would never waste her energy on a jump though, not right now. It would take her decades to recharge that energy should she use it, and she didn't want to get stuck somewhere less desirable than this world.

Gressila walked out of her home and into the small village on the edge of the woods. The Forest Walkers were expected, but would they be there soon enough?

"Falanch?" She asked of a man who pounded a heavy mallet into a thick leather hide, making a tarp for someone's home.

"Yes, elf? What is it?" He was never pleased to see anyone so she didn't take it as an insult.

"I've a request, your second son, he's a message runner isn't he?"

"He is," the man grunted, still hammering away.

"Is he in the village?"

"He's in the pub, where he always winds up." He looked up from his work, and added, "you've got work for him?"

"I do," Gressila said, "and I hope that the payment will be more than just for his work. Thank you Falanch."

She walked to the pub and found the young man, a fresh faced youth just starting to shave, and sat down beside him.

"I've a job for your legs, Felspar," she said. "I need you to check on the Forest Walkers. And, I need you to trail my brother."

At those words, the pub fell silent. There were few enough people in it at the time, but they all took in a breath.

"He's gone to the Steel Desert, or so he says," Gressila said, loud enough for the others to hear as well, "but he travels to the north, not the west. The Forest Walkers know the terrains and the people of the whole area, and I need that knowledge to keep up on him. He claims he's leaving the world for good - and I don't believe him for a minute."

The pause in the noise was replaced by a sort of relieved sigh - the people of at least this village and the nearby townships would be lifted of their horrible burdens to supply Lifera's 'needs'.

"I can find the Walkers, they would be interested in this any way. Do you want me to tell them to come early?"

"Yes, Fel. That's exactly it. And if they could possibly bring a map or a scroll that tells of the northern passages and lands, I'd be doubly appreciative. Ah, and," she said, pulling a note sealed with sticky sap on a tiny spot from her vest, "that they need to give this to their shaman. He will know what to do, I think."

"Yes Lady!" Felspar said, and began his journey the moment he had been given it. The others in the room watched as he gathered his goods and packed up, but some watched Gressila for her reaction.

"If you think you've reason to mistrust me, you have no idea what my brother is capable of. I intend to protect you from it, whatever his intent may be this time."

"You've been our protector for generations, Gressila," someone said, "but your brother has always been our bane, and no one rememebers when we were able to make our own decisions. Ever think of just leaving us to our fate?"

Gressila drew in a long breath, and nodded. "Yes. And the depth of guilt I'd feel when I see the results would be impossible for you to understand."

Gressila left the pub and began the journey to her brother's keep, where she would set up her alchemy lab and see about tracing him the easier way...