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That was not to say that everything was going perfectly, however. Far from it. New worries were arising every day, it seemed.

Such as the whereabouts of the Lord Zeff Elroy.

His disappearance had disturbed everyone, especially Grandma. And it had not escaped anyone’s notice that this disappearance had come only after Zeff told them all about a sudden offer from the Monster of the East.

An offer to leave this battlefield behind and enter into Gohvis’ protection, where Zeff would be able to meet up with his lost daughter, Emiliana.

That had certainly been a surprise. And discussing their response to that offer had been their first real act as a reunited council of Rainlord heads.

Unlike the Golden Council of the Sandlords, the Rainlords had no formal title for their gathering, because the government of the Wetlands was not entirely run by the Rainlords. It mostly was, maybe about seventy percent, but there had still been plenty of non-Rainlord leaders and officials going around.

If more of the members had been present for the meeting, the official government name for it would’ve been the Congress of Western Sair--or the Wetlands Congress, as some called it.

Which led Diego down a whole other rabbit hole of worry, of course, about the current state of Sair. Of their subjects, who’d been forced to endure hell at the hands of Abolish.

He tried not to dwell on that too much, right now. The time for that would come.

Naturally, the decision regarding Gohvis’ offer had been one of rejection. A few of the reapers had expressed an interest in accepting, as did Zeff, but even they seemed hesitant about it. In the end, the vote to decline was not merely a majority but fully unanimous.

Which was a little surprising, actually. A couple of the reapers, most notably Mevox, were infamous for being contrarians and voting against whatever the majority sentiment was.

Perhaps even Mevox was not in the mood to be playing around when matters were this severe.

So Zeff’s disappearance was doubly confusing. One would’ve thought that if he wanted to see his daughter that badly, then he would have cast his vote in favor of acceptance.

‘I don’t know,’ said Yangera when they’d discussed it privately. ‘It actually makes a strange sort of sense to me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Zeff was in an impossible position. Torn between his two great responsibilities. That of a leader and that of a father. Perhaps voting the way he did was him trying to do right by us, and him disappearing was him trying to do right by his daughter.’