When Tessa's consciousness begins to stir, she's first aware of familiar voices around her.
"...shame you're not a woman. Hmm...do you have a sister, perhaps?" (voice 1)
A long silence ensues.
"No...I don't. Also, as I mentioned, I came to your planet alone, and I have good reason to believe that no more of my kind will ever come here again." (voice 2)
The first voice sighs deeply.
"Ah, yes, so you did. Well, no matter. Your life is long and I'm sure you'll have many children. Err, may I ask, Princess...how long will we have to wait for you to have the first one? I think we can all agree – the sooner the better." (voice 1)
A third, familiar voice enters the conversation, sounding...irritated.
"No, no you may not ask. And there's nothing to agree on, because it's not something that anyone other than me and him will be discussing or planning." (voice 3)
A fourth voice sounds amused and reproachful.
"Forgetting someone? I expect to be there when it's discussed, when it's planned...fufufu...perhaps when it's conceived, too!" (voice 4)
The second and third voices are raised in unison, laced with bewilderment.
"What!? That's n-" (voices 2 & 3)
A fifth voice enters the conversation, sounding extremely flustered.
"Uhm...Princess...err, my Lord...sorry to interrupt, but I believe Mother is regaining consciousness." (voice 5)
Tessa's eyes slowly flutter open, white light blinding her vision as she becomes aware of a soft, comfortable pressure along the back of her body. As her eyes focus, she notices that she's staring up at the ceiling in a room. Glancing around, she sees that she's lying down on a plush, leather couch.
She recognizes one of the royal palace's informal meeting rooms, which includes multiple couches and a coffee table. It's a room that Mizuki has often met with the royals inside, though Tessa is unaware of that.
As the fog clears from her thoughts, Tessa takes stock of everyone present in the room with her. On the same couch, beside her feet, there's her daughter, Selena, watching her with a concerned expression. Elsewhere in the room, spread across other couches and chairs, there's Elira, Ilina, Jorah, Mizuki, Nina, Alto, and a couple of royal palace staff.
As her eyes settle on Mizuki, however, he stares back at her, and the weight of his gaze makes her body tremble involuntarily as the color drains from her face.
There's nothing special about the way he's looking at her. His lips are just barely curled into the smallest of smiles, his body language is relaxed and open, and his eyes hold a sparkle of amusement, as though everything he's observing is casual entertainment.
In short, it's how he's always looked at her. The gaze that she has always interpreted as deep assurance that everything will go his way, and on the off chance it doesn't, he only considers it a novel form of amusement. The gaze that makes her feel like a side character in her own life.
It's the gaze that, as of this morning, always made her grit her teeth in frustration, reminding her every second that it lingered on his face how much she loathed his presence and his attitude.
Alas, that was this morning, and now she can only feel fear and the spinning of the ground beneath her feet when she meets Mizuki's gaze. Now, the world is not the same as it was this morning.
More accurately, the world is exactly as it always was...she's just finally seeing it, and Mizuki, clearly for the first time. It's her world that has been changed forever by this day...this, meeting from hell.
She remembers clearly how it started...
Mizuki waltzing into the meeting a bit early, following behind Lady Nedonera with his typical, quiet arrogance. Of course, she'd fully steeled herself to maintain her normal, polite facade towards him for the day. The recent news of the train that Lady Nedonera built was all too enticing, and the Elder Dragon had made it very clear in past encounters how much she adored Mizuki.
For the chance to have and study an item that could allegedly transport cargo and hundreds of elves across the country and back in a day...well, she'd even put up with Mizuki's presence with a smile.
Begging for gifts wasn't something she enjoyed, but she'd already had a spy try to study Alara's train by becoming its operator. Her fear and anger towards Mizuki had only grown when she found out that spy was identified by Mizuki within minutes and thwarted, even though her spy had already evaded the ever-shrewd Alara's detection. Still, the whole event had left her convinced that it was far too risky to try and get what she wanted through force or subterfuge.
So, she'd hoped that, if she played her cards right, Nedonera would simply grace her with a train of her own at the nobles' meeting. After all, Alara had tried to kill the dragon's precious Mizuki, and Nedonera still gave her a train and helped her develop her territory.
So, why would Tessa be an exception?
Naturally, she soon learned that Nedonera had never given Alara a train in the first place...not really. The Elder Dragon inexplicably considered whether to build trains a decision for solely Mizuki to make, and she even went so far as to suggest that the nobles direct their begging and gratitude for them towards her human servant.
Some nobles took her at her word and turned their requests to Mizuki, but they were all shocked to see him turn them down without exception, citing that none of them could be trusted to not endanger their own people if given a train.
Tessa even had to listen to Mizuki's cocky little elven pet condescend her, agreeing that she'd somehow be a danger to her own people, and lecturing her of all people about magic. Needless to say, the exchange made Tessa's blood boil.
Acquiring magical knowledge and using it to help her people was the basis of her whole personality. Others would often accuse her of being cold, calculating, conceited, or unfriendly, and she was perhaps all of those things. However, she felt that it was a consequence of devoting her entire life to becoming wise enough to protect her people. If nothing else, she felt that her knowledge of magic and her devotion to the elves were beyond reproach.
So, finding out that Nedonera's magic was divine in nature, and thus, that replicating the trains was fundamentally out of her reach, and that Mizuki and Alto were speaking the truth when they spoke about her ignorance on the subject...it was infuriating.
What irked her more than anything, though, was that Mizuki seemed fully aware of her ignorance but chose not to mention it himself before, claiming that Tessa would have never believed him. It irked her because he was right...if Alto and Nedonera hadn't been the ones to bring it up, seemingly against his wishes, she'd have never accepted such an explanation from him.
Finally, buried among all the frustration and anger that the conversation about the trains brought, there was also fear. The experience had reinforced for Tessa just how cunning Mizuki was, and how much sway he had over Nedonera. After that conversation, she was already starting to worry about the influence he'd indirectly acquire through Alara, who she could easily see rising to economic superiority and acting as Mizuki's pawn out of gratitude.
Such worries were only set ablaze when it was revealed that the Empire was planning to invade their kingdom, and that the warning came from none other than Mizuki himself after meeting with the Emperor.
What if Mizuki had been working for the Empire all along? She'd just had a bitter lesson in underestimating his cunning. What if he was acting as a double agent – telling them about the invasion to gain their trust, just to be able to redirect their forces where they'd be crippled? What if he was giving them the trains, which the elves were left with no understanding of or control over, as a poisoned gift? To lay the foundations for Empire troops to invade deep into their country with Mizuki's help, before the elves could mount a proper response?
Such was Tessa's paranoia and fear once the Empire became involved in the conversation. It was her worst nightmare since childhood come to fruition...an unstoppable force of humans coming to violate the only safe haven for the elves in this world. To wipe out or enslave them all.
This deep-rooted insecurity is why, when Mizuki suddenly revealed that Belmod had been killed by his adventuring party, and that Nedonera was posing as his human subordinate in that party, Tessa wasn't reassured. Quite the opposite, in fact. The way Mizuki justified the murder of seventy elite soldiers and the ruler of the most powerful human nation on the planet, it sounded to her like it was completely his decision.
It became painfully clear to Tessa in that moment...Nedonera's deference to Mizuki went far past a casual interest in him. For him, she'd joined his adventuring party, debased herself as a human, and even slaughtered the entire central power structure of the Empire. Tess had often wondered if Nedonera would hesitate to kill someone from the elven nobility if they offended Mizuki too greatly, but now she had no doubts.
When Tessa had asked Nedonera why she'd follow a human's orders like that, the dragon had merely giggled like a schoolgirl – completely uncaring for the slaughter – and proclaimed how much she valued Mizuki's company. That convinced Tess that Nedonera would slaughter the entire elven government, royalty and all, just because Mizuki asked her to. The realization had caused her a terror so profound that she nearly fainted for the first time right then.
Little did she know, she hadn't even begun to experience true terror.