A decisive human. "All right then. It takes a night to slow people, so you may as well come back then."

"All right. I suppose I'll come back whenever it looks like it's getting dark."

"We'll anticipate you."

Well he'll just... wander south? He's approaching the edges of his territory, maybe he can, like, spy on people.

They're very very still and totally spy-able on.

Well that's great. Maybe if he wanders far enough south he can like... learn something about the Byzantines. Or the Muslims. Learn where everything is down here, learn his way around all of the cities for when he eventually conquers them. That's probably useful. Someday he'll look back on this and think it was totally really convenient how he got kidnapped by fairies that one time.

They ask a lot of fairies before they stumble on ones who met the Emperor. 

"He gave us a name," they say indignantly. "A significant one. The minute he met us."

"I suppose we never told him not to."

"Well you should have!"

"What'd you do -"

"Taught him the language, killed him. Don't speed up mortals and send them off to bother other people, that's just irresponsible."

"He'll be somewhere else now. I don't know where."

"He swaps bodies. If you see him, I'll pay for him."

       "And where do I find you?"

"- don't really know, honestly." But he gives them directions to the court.

Sigh. "Back to Akershus and then south for the children?"

"Guess so, yeah. You don't have a guess where he might be next?"

"I don't have succession memorized that far down. It's elective, so it changes."

Nod. "Well. Hopefully he has a couple more bad times and gives up on the fairies idea."

"Yeah. Hopefully."

"And if not, we can totally stab him with a magic knife. Since he's still in a life's worth of debt to us."

"Yeah. If we can find him. - mostly thinking more and more about how much food debt the kids must be accumulating, it's probably not a good idea to leave them where they are much longer."

"Yeah. We should go."

And they travel back along the coast to Akershus, where they can pick up Dyre's family. His family is super confused about a lot of things, but while they're kind of disappointed and confused and scared about having to leave home and not inherit anything (at least for the time being), they're also pretty happy that he's back to his old self? At least the ones who were old enough to remember what he was like before. His wife, at least, appears to be very willing to trade her status for the man she married.

And then they can head south.

"Keep expecting to wake up unable to move someday because he - did something funny. But I guess he's not stupid."

Hug. "Not yet, anyway. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault. It'll hit you too, and that's my fault."