(3rd Person POV)
Ilseveire's eyes widened.
The man should have been on the ground. Trembling. Broken apart from the inside, the way every target of Night Terror had been before him.
Instead, he looked excited.
'What the hell is this?'
Arthur met her gaze directly, grinning. "I didn't know you had an ability like that. You actually got my dopamine going. Can you do it again?"
"Dopa — what?" Ilseveire blinked. The word meant nothing to her, but the confusion lasted only a moment before something sharper replaced it. "Who are you? No one has ever shrugged off that Divine Blessing. It is one of my most powerful gifts — granted by the Goddess of Night herself!"
Arthur's expression didn't shift from its easy amusement. "A Divine Blessing, then. Interesting."
He already knew the deities of this world granted blessings to mortals. As a deity himself, he had wondered more than once whether he could do the same — but the answer was no. He wasn't part of this world's pantheon. He wasn't recognized by this «Origin». In practical terms, he was a foreigner with no standing among the local gods.
While he turned that over quietly, Ilseveire studied him with sharp, recalculating eyes.
"You are clearly no ordinary person," she said. "I don't believe I've encountered you before in this kingdom. Are you from abroad? A foreigner who decided to settle in our lands?"
Arthur chuckled. "You recovered from that shock remarkably fast."
Ilseveire smiled — thin, controlled. "There is no point in staying shocked. It wastes time." She tilted her head. "Besides, you are not the first person my Night Terror has failed to affect."
"Oh?" That caught his attention. He could understand why a Divine Blessing wouldn't work on him — he was a deity, sealed or not. But others?
"For instance," Ilseveire said, letting her gaze drift toward the desk, "the elf beside you. Principal Saza. Night Terror has never worked on her either."
Saza waved it off without ceremony. "I simply have more experience than Your Highness. If you had lived as long as I have — a few thousand years of accumulated resistance — your Night Terror would likely land without issue."
"No need for modesty, Lady Principal," Ilseveire said with a light chuckle.
As the words left her mouth, she was already casting something else. Quietly. Without gesture or warning.
«True Appraisal» — a second Divine Blessing granted by the Goddess of Night.
It was designed to reveal the status of anyone she targeted. Attributes, affinities, strengths, weaknesses — laid bare in a single glance.
She turned it on Arthur.
What came back was nothing.
Not "nothing" in the sense of low values or hidden traits. The appraisal returned row after row of [???] — an unbroken wall of question marks. An entity so far beyond the blessing's reach that it couldn't even begin to parse him.
Ilseveire kept her expression perfectly neutral, but behind it, something cold moved through her chest.
She had never seen this. Not once. Even Saza, ancient and formidable as she was, had never produced a reading this opaque. Arthur Pendragon wasn't merely powerful — he was unreadable.
The appraisal wasn't entirely useless, however.
It could still map relationships. And there, threaded through the otherwise blank field, one connection burned clearly: «Love» — deep, saturating red — linking Arthur to the silver-haired elf seated beside him.
Ilseveire's gaze slid sideways. The name surfaced: Firfel Pendragon.
The surname made it obvious. His wife.
'I see.' A thread of satisfaction wound through her thoughts. 'He's completely devoted to her. The depth of that red leaves no room for doubt — this isn't casual affection. He would move mountains for this woman.'
Her eyes cooled.
'I may not be able to control Arthur directly. But if I can control her, I won't need to. He'll follow.'
She continued speaking with Arthur and Saza in the same warm, unhurried tone, giving nothing away. But behind every smile, the calculation ran.
'Not now. Not here. I'm sitting across from someone that the True Appraisal couldn't even begin to read. If I make a move in front of him, there is no telling what happens next.'
The risk outweighed the opportunity. For now.
She manufactured a graceful exit — expressing interest in seeing more of the city, and mentioning that she had heard a great deal about the famous film, The Wizard of Oz, and wished to see it for herself.
Then she left.
The room settled into silence behind her.
Saza looked at Arthur. "What do you think of her?"
Arthur leaned back in his chair. "Interesting. Extremely cunning — more natural talent for scheming than my elder sister Lucy, and that's not a comparison I make lightly."
Apollonia giggled. "That's so mean, Arthur. Lucy would kill you if she heard that."
Firfel and Sylwen smiled quietly, both of them knowing Lucy well enough to picture the reaction.
Saza didn't know the woman, but she gathered enough from their faces to get the idea.
---
A few days passed. Arthur decided to remain in this world for the time being.
Under normal circumstances, he would have returned to the home world by now. But twelve days wasn't long — and he wanted to see what the princess would do next.
He was that curious.
There was also the practical angle. If he could find a way to bring Ilseveire under his influence, she would be an extraordinary asset for establishing himself in this world. But that was easier said than done. She carried the direct protection of a deity — the Goddess of Night herself. That alone made her a different kind of problem.
So he watched. And the days unfolded.
Ilseveire, to her credit, moved with patience. She didn't push. She didn't negotiate. She simply... befriended everyone.
She visited the Eastern Theatre. She took meals with Apollonia and Sylwen. She spent time with Firfel — more time than with anyone else, in fact, and always with a warmth that appeared entirely natural.
Arthur noticed all of it.
He didn't fully understand why a princess of her standing — first in the line of succession, with a kingdom's worth of obligations pulling at her — would choose to linger in a provincial city making friends with the companions of a man she had met once. If it was a play to win his loyalty through goodwill, it was a slow one. And Saza's warning sat firmly in the back of his mind.
'Ilseveire is not a simple princess.'
He took that to heart.
But so far, she had shown nothing overt. No demands, no proposals, no attempts to leverage her position. The only thing that pricked his instincts was how deliberately she was drawing close to Firfel — closer than to anyone else, with a consistency that didn't feel accidental.
Whatever Ilseveire had in mind for his wife, though, Arthur was confident Firfel could handle it. She always could.
---
A week after the princess's arrival, the flat-screen televisions went on sale.
The electricity infrastructure was in place. The broadcasting framework was ready. Arthur had been waiting for the right moment, and this was it.
Ilseveire was fascinated. She examined the device with the focused attention of someone cataloguing a weapon, turning it over in her hands before asking pointed questions about its construction. She called it a Magifact — the common term in this world for magical artifacts — though this was no artifact in any sense she understood.
She bought one immediately.
That alone moved the needle. When word spread that the First Princess of Nordsturn had purchased a television, the hesitating commoners stopped hesitating. Nobles who had been waiting to see which way the wind blew placed their orders the same afternoon.
Within two days of the release, roughly a thousand units had sold — a significant number for a city of Eisen's size.
But it wasn't the princess's endorsement that sustained the demand. It was what appeared on the screen.
The first broadcast was a program called N.E.W.S.
Two anchors sat behind a polished desk, speaking directly to the viewer, delivering reports on events happening across Eisen City and beyond.
Trade disputes in the merchant quarter. A collapsed mine shaft in the northern outskirts that had trapped fourteen workers. A new tax proposal under review by the City Lord's office. Weather patterns moving in from the eastern ranges.
Information that, until now, most citizens would never have learned about at all — or would have heard thirdhand, days later, distorted through rumor and speculation.
Now it arrived in their homes, clearly spoken, while they sat in their own chairs.
"Did you hear about the mine collapse? It was on the news."
"The City Lord is raising taxes? Since when?"
"They said a merchant convoy was attacked on the northern road — I have a cousin on that route!"
The reactions spread through the city like a second wave. People who hadn't bought a television crowded into the homes of those who had.
Taverns that had purchased one for their common rooms found themselves packed. Conversations shifted — not just about the device itself, but about what it carried. For the first time, ordinary citizens were informed about events they had no prior awareness of, delivered in real time, without needing to leave their doorstep.
The word news entered common vocabulary overnight.
---
In her room at the finest inn in Eisen City, Ilseveire sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the screen.
The anchors were reporting on grain shipments arriving from the southern provinces. Routine information. Mundane, even.
But her hands were trembling.
"I must have him," she whispered. Her red eyes reflected the glow of the broadcast. "No matter what it takes."
She leaned forward, fingers laced tightly together.
"He built a device that delivers information directly into people's homes. That alone would be remarkable. But this--" She gestured at the screen. "He is not merely informing them. He is deciding what they hear. What order they hear it in. How it is framed. Which events matter and which ones don't exist."
Her voice dropped lower.
"Whoever controls this controls what people believe. Not through force, not through decree — through perception. He could shape how an entire population views a crisis, a law, a war, a ruler." Her fingers tightened. "He could make a king beloved or despised without lifting a sword."
The implications kept unfolding the longer she sat with them, each one worse — or better — than the last.
Arthur Pendragon was either the most dangerous man she had ever encountered, or the most valuable.
And Ilseveire was determined to make him the latter.