Chapter 195: Stress

"I have compiled the preliminary reports from the Eastern border garrisons, and I must urgently request your signature on the updated mythril export manifests before the Imperial Senate convenes at—"

Alistair stopped dead in his tracks.

His crystalline emerald eyes, previously focused on the Archduke, had inadvertently drifted toward the corner of the room.

They landed on Seraphina. More specifically, they landed on the material Seraphina was currently folding into a somewhat chubby paper pigeon.

The color entirely drained from Alistair’s flawless, porcelain face.

The heavy, leather-bound files in his arms began to tremble.

His jaw went slack.

He let out a sound that was somewhere between a dying teakettle and a strangled sob.

"By the blinding light of the Sun God," Alistair wheezed, practically dropping his files onto the desk as he clutched his own chest.

He pointed a shaking finger at Seraphina’s play area. "Your Grace... the child... the feral, sugar-crazed little gremlin..."

"Alistair," Kaelus’s voice rumbled from behind the desk, a low, cold warning that caused the ink in the inkwells to vibrate.

The Archduke did not look up from the document he was reading. "Choose your next syllables with extreme caution."

"She is folding those Parchment!" Alistair shrieked, completely abandoning his aristocratic composure, his voice cracking into a panicked, pre-pubescent octave.

Alistair wasn’t exaggerating.

The paper Seraphina was casually creasing into a beak was not standard stationery. It was thhose kind of parchment, a rare, expensive material forged by high-elven enchanters. \

It was imbued with microscopic threads of starlight, designed exclusively for drafting unbreakable, century-binding international treaties.

A single sheet cost more than a modest county estate.

And Seraphina had a stack of about two hundred sheets sitting next to her half-eaten cream puff.

"She is making a bird out of the gross domestic product of a small province!" Alistair wept, genuinely hyperventilating, pulling at his beautiful blonde hair. "That parchment was imported specifically to draft the non-aggression pact with the Eastern Kingdoms! And she has... she has drawn a smiley face on it with charcoal! The fiscal irresponsibility is shattering my soul!"

Seraphina paused her folding.

She looked up at the hyperventilating, ridiculously handsome aide, her dark eyes wide and blinking with artificial innocence.

"It makes very good wings, Auntie Alistair," Seraphina chirped, deliberately using the forbidden title just to watch his eye twitch. "The shiny strings in the paper make the ducks look very magical. Do you want a duck? I can make you one that looks like a very angry princess!"

Alistair let out a wounded, suffocated gasp, pressing the back of his hand against his forehead in a gesture of pure, melodramatic agony.

"Your Grace!" Alistair begged, turning to Kaelus, looking as though he were about to literally fall to his knees. "I beseech you! Confiscate the parchment! Give her some mud! Give her clay instead! Give her the standard-issue bleached wood-pulp! We are hemorrhaging tactical funds on origami!"

Duke Kaelus von Nacht finally looked up from his desk.

The terrifying Reaper of the North rested his chin on his steepled, black-gloved fingers.

He looked at the weeping, beautiful scholar.

Then he looked at his daughter, who was happily holding up a highly expensive, starlight-infused paper frog.

Kaelus’s violet eyes did not hold a single ounce of regret. They held the unyielding, astronomically arrogant pride of a man who would gladly burn the empire to keep his child entertained.

"The standard-issue bleached wood-pulp gives her paper cuts, Alistair," Kaelus stated, his voice a flat, deadpan drone o uncomprofmising finality. "Those perchments possesses a superior, friction-less texture. It is optimal for her delicate joints."

"Paper cuts?!" Alistair wailed, his soul leaving his body. "She crushed an Archdemon! She has the physical durability of a mythril anvil! She is not going to perish from a single paper cut!"

"I will not risk it," Kaelus sneered softly, returning to his documents. "Procure another crate of those perchments from the treasury. Ensure it is the batch with the gold-leaf trim. She prefers the aesthetics. Now, present your reports, or leave my... office."

Alistair stood frozen, a broken, defeated shell of an administrative genius.

He looked at the ceiling, silently asking the gods what sin he had committed in a past life to be subjected to this level of financial torture.

With a heavy, shuddering sigh of absolute resignation, the beautiful aide mechanically presented his files, glared venomously at the tiny Sovereign, and practically fled the room to go cry in the archives.

***

As soon as the heavy oak doors clicked shut, plunging the study back into comfortable silence, Seraphina dropped the innocent-toddler routine entirely.

She wiped her sticky, frosting-covered fingers on a pristine silk napkin, her eyes narrowing with sharp, calculating focus.

"Alright, grandpas," Seraphina whispered to the empty air of her snack corner. "The shiny man is gone. Back to work."

The air around the plush cushions immediately shimmered, the temperature dropping with the distinct, tingling chill of the ethereal plane.

Manifesting from the floorboards, the walls, and the obsidian globe were dozens of translucent, pale-blue spirits.

The ghost-staff of the Capital Estate, eager and bored by centuries of inactivity, had fully mobilized under her command.

They crowded around her, floating in mid-air, looking at the newly folded stack of origami with the eager anticipation of recruits waiting for deployment.

’We are ready, Sovereign,’ the echoing, aristocratic voice of Bartholomew, the Head Butler, chimed directly into her mind via their telepathic dark-mana link.

Bartholomew was currently occupying the form of a particularly sleek, aerodynamic paper swallow. ’The new chassis material is exquisite. The threading significantly enhances our spiritual conductivity.’

’I know, right?’ Seraphina transmitted back, feeling incredibly smug about her misappropriation of government funds.

’Alistair almost had a stroke, but it was worth it. Your signal range is going to be tripled.’

Seraphina cracked her tiny knuckles.

She reached out, placing her small hands over the freshly folded pile of paper frogs, badgers, and ducks.

She closed her eyes, channeling a pulse of her Supreme Dark Core directly into the starlight-infused paper.