They told me to pack for a diplomatic jaunt and I packed for a murder mystery—blankets for theatrics, a pen for signing people into servitude, and a small vial of cynical patience that I keep under my collar. The Imperial carriage rolled east like an accusation wrapped in silk—Mhelfrancovince sitting with the private gravity of a man who could rearrange coastlines if he lost his temper, Nikkibella perched with the lethal calm of a woman who has negotiated peace while balancing a glass on her knee and is quite good at breaking both if necessary, and me, Benetton, in the upholstery because I have responsibilities and impeccable taste in laps. We had not announced our coming like a choir; we arrived like a punchline that preferred to land before anyone had time to laugh. Before we left, there was a moment—one of those domestic, private hums of conspiratorial joy where statecraft smells faintly of brunch—and Mhelfrancovince, who is the kind of man who treats secrecy like a family heirloom, leaned across and whispered, "Incognito, yes? No court wigs, no banners, nobody recognizes us. Think of it as a holiday with better catering."
Nikkibella's smile was the diplomatic equivalent of a grenade wrapped in velvet. "Incognito," she said, folding a glove into a pocket as if she could fold away titles the way one folds napkins. "We shall be peasants. We shall taste the food of the land, pretend the water is unenchanted, and possibly flirt with minor officials to see how honest they are under linen." She paused, eyes glittering like a bank vault with mischievous intent. "Also, Mhelfrancovince, bring less armor and more sarcasm. Your face has been doing serious things for too long." He grinned, which was an event that should have required a city proclamation because people in power rarely grin without first clearing the room of witnesses. "We will go as ordinary folk," he murmured. "We shall listen. We shall learn their grievances and file them in the appropriate tray marked: 'Do Not Open Unless There Is a Riot.'" I rubbed my whiskers against the leather. Incognito for them is like a picnic with tactical reinforcements; for the kingdom, it would be a small play in which everyone thought they were the lead and the Empire had written all the stage directions.
Caed Gwen called itself a kingdom with the kind of earnest delusion that births bad statutes and worse hats. King Hansel—blessed with the sort of jawline that looks good on coins and the ethical subtlety of a taxman at a coronation—claimed he was descended from Alicorns, which is to say he fancied his lineage aerodynamic and morally self-cleaning. He practiced purity the way certain men practice lawn care: obsessively, with suspicious soil amendments, and always loudly enough for the neighbors to take notes. Farmers cursed his name not because he loved farms but because his taxes read like a ransom note with a polite salutation. Merchants muttered creative synonyms for "theft" when they spoke of his tariffs; the markets had invented new swear-words and exported them as regional delicacies. When Nikkibella smiled at him across the treaty table—her smile a velvet blade with an invoice—the man's confidence folded like a cheap spoon in gravy. He signed because he was cornered, flattered, and human enough to believe that a ceremonial title could replace the one thing he was losing: actual power.
There was a particular scene I insist you imagine closely because it involves both subtle shadow magic and the finest example of Nikkibella's talent for turning kings into circus props. King Hansel had retreated with his ministers and generals into a room that smelled faintly of old perfume and newer panic. They spoke in the manner of frightened men who clip their sentences like coupons. "We cannot," one minister hissed, "we cannot let them reclassify High Rock. If we give up the tax farms, the coffers will dry." Another genuflected to the command of honor and murmured about troop loyalties and horses that might, in fact, prefer a more aristocratic rider. Hansel, whose hands trembled in a way that suggested royalties are allergic to accountability, paced like a man who had forgotten where he kept his decency. "We will not be pushed," he said, which reads bravely on paper and pathetically in the presence of a duchess who has a compulsory smile and a private arsenal. "We are the bloodline—"
"You are entitled," corrected one general, who had served under a dozen improbable kings and preferred bluntness to poetry at breakfast. "You are salaried by the state. The bloodline is a charming accessory, like powdered wigs in a humid climate."
While they fretted, Mhelfrancovince, who has a talent for shadow-work the way some have a talent for baking, flexed the darkness like one might flex a legal precedent. He did it the way barbers flex their scissors: casually, with a habit that would not alarm unless you knew the cut was about to be permanent. Shadows pooled around the feet of Hansel's ministers like spilled ink and whispered suggestions—paperwork anxiety, ledger nightmares, very particular fears about pensions and audits. The effect was not dramatic theatre so much as a slow and precise choreography of unease. Nikkibella, who had been given to the small cruelty of domestic optics, made Hansel her private puppet. She tapped a glove against the table and suggested—ever so gently—that the king might sign a treaty that would keep his head attached and his title fashionable, provided he agreed to a clause that would keep the Empire's engineers on call for repairs and the Imperial Bank in charge of coin flow. She made him a cushion of legalese and then sat on it, and the king signed because a signed cushion is better than a scandal with banners.
The terrified conversation in that antechamber was worth the price of admission. "If we refuse," one minister whimpered, "they will confiscate the saltworks." "If we comply," another said, "we will have dignity and no coins." Hansel, faced with the choice of maintaining a myth or preserving a stomach, opted for the stomach; he signed beneath duress because duress has a special way of making a man practical. He did so while Mhelfrancovince's shadow-magic stitched a faint ledger across the floor—a pattern that would make later audits feel like fate. "Remember," Mhelfrancovince intoned, in a voice that is better used for bedtime and bad omens, "this is not vengeance. This is order." Nikkibella, who had been idly tapping a treaty clause into a rhythm, leaned forward and made a small, vicious jest at the king's expense that had the air of a feathered tickle and the teeth of a trap. She referred to his Alicorn ancestry in the most polite of ways: "It must be hard to be so mythically correct all the time while dealing with such pedestrian problems." The king laughed, which was courageous and hollow at once; he laughed because to refuse is to invite spectacle, and spectacle requires a budget.
When the treaty was signed in the Hall of Echoing Sighs—so named because diplomatic rooms tend to prefer melodrama—the ministers and generals filed out with ranks intact and dignity diminished. High Rock was demoted into a Duchy with the emperor's smile attached like an expensive crest, and the banner that once bore Hansel's proud insignia was replaced with a subtly awkward new pennant that read: "High Rock: Now With Extra Administration." It is surprising how quickly a populace will adapt when water runs cleaner and bank ledgers look friendlier; it is also surprising how bitter a man will be when his hat no longer implies tax immunity. The mercantile classes cheered because electricity made accounting less of a medieval parlor trick; the farmers grumbled because the tariff schedule had not yet stopped being a bleeding innovation.
All of this—our incognito jaunt, the king's flaying, the ministers' fainting—made for excellent theatre and a practical result: Caed Gwen became the Second Realm under a treaty written with the economy of a butcher and the flourish of a calligrapher. We left behind arc-cores humming politely in mill basements, a university that would teach young men and women how to calculate a debt and then enchant it politely, and a king who had the consolations of a title and the private certainty that he had been bested by style and law. I sat on the carriage cushion as we departed and licked a paw, because it is my duty to keep the margins of history tidy. Mhelfrancovince tucked a map into his inner coat and smiled with the tired contentment of a man who prefers results to glory. Nikkibella, who had left a slight scorch on the treaty's edge where she absentmindedly tested a charm, snorted and said, "Next stop: optional humility." I purred, which is to say I recorded everything, as a cat will, in whiskers and ink—because empires are made of men who sign and women who make them want to.
High Rock Guards
They were soldiers in the blunt, tired sense of the word—men who had learned to salute before they learned to swear, who polished buttons the way other people polish grudges—and they clustered in the castle's innermost courtyard with the pale, ruminative terror of livestock called up for auction. "Did you see the thing with the treads?" one whispered, voice like dried parchment. "It— it flattened the gate like it was bread." "That was not a tank," another said, which is to say his imagination had been politely murdered by experience; "that was a small, angry mountain that ate a gate and left tire marks for a love poem." They argued about nomenclature because names are a form of courage: "APC," someone offered, and another man corrected him like a man correcting a confession, "IFV, you prat. It had a cannon that sounded like a bell that hates you." A third soldier, younger, with a face shaped like a bad decision, kept repeating, "They brought trucks that look like gods and boots that looked like laws," and the repetition was not for emphasis so much as it was a prayer. Someone else, older, with knuckles like savings accounts, said the thing that people say when they try to be practical: "We should've fired at it." A pause, a small, shameful silence. "Against what?" asked a man who used to be in the cavalry and still spoke in the polite cadences of horses. "Those things are armored like sins and have more paperwork than a cathedral." The laughter that followed it was an animal thing—half hysteria, half grief.
They compared notes like sailors measuring storms. "It came down the main road first thing," said the corporal who had been given a map and had interpreted it as a challenge. "Armored trucks, and then there—one of their machines—how do you say it?—a crawler. It rammed the gate like it was angry at stone." "It beeped," piped the youngest, eyes wide. "It had a horn that sang like a funeral." "It was a war-horn, not for summoning but for paperwork," muttered someone who had seen war twice and decided it could be contained in legal form. They spoke about the men in the armored silhouettes—uniforms incompatible with the idea of courtesy, helmets that reflected a sky the way a mirror reflects your worst memory. "I saw a banner," a man said, and his voice went small, "black, with a sigil like a ledger." The group fell quiet as men do when they are asked to remember the smell of smoke.
They worried about the king in the way men worry about a roof during a storm: "His highness signed it," someone said, as though reading minutes from a ledger instead of delivering a prayer. "They had him at the table and a pen. Called it a treaty. He didn't even look like himself." "No," said another, "He looked like someone who had been offered a cushion in place of a crown." A soldier with a mouth full of tobacco spat and said, "When the cannon went off and the rampart fell, I thought the walls had finally decided their own allegiance." There was a little, bitter humor then—because humor is how men file away panic like one stores peat in winter. "Maybe the rampart wanted to be renamed," someone offered. "The rampart has rights now."
The men debated the new reality in the way people debate weather: with superstition and invoices. "They brought their Hellheim lot too," whispered one who had seen the walking dead parade in the Empire's festivals. "We've heard stories—skeletons that march, wraiths that keep civic hours. We are supposed to be scared, but the worst part is—they have schedules." "Do skeletons take leave?" asked a man, more curious than scared. "Do they request Sundays?" They laughed again, which sounded like bones clicking in a chest. "They march at dawn," said the corporal. "They have banners, and their drummer lacks the decency to be quiet." "At least the dead don't grumble about rations," someone said, which was true and cruel in the same sentence. Another soldier, hands in pockets, said with a ragged, tired honesty, "I was ready to fight someone for salt. I did not think I'd be fighting a future auditing committee."
They traded gossip in the old way—by placing scandal as a coin on the table and watching it spin. "One of the engineers—Imperial lot—walked through the market with a satchel full of ledgers," said a vendor-turned-soldier. "He said he was here to wire the mills and check the carbuncles beneath the streets." "Carbuncles?" someone echoed, because the vocabulary of the Empire had the same audacity as a guest who uses your best spoon and then rewrites your will. "He meant arc-nodes," corrected the engineer from the battlements. "They'll change how our pumps run. They'll make us efficient and then bill us for gratitude." "We might have clean water," said a man, almost as if that were an apology. "We might have light in winter." "And we might have an audit," replied another, like a benediction. The trade-off of progress had the arithmetic of a thief: subtract dignity, add infrastructure, square the ledger and subtract sleep.
A corporal with a cracked tooth and the stubbornness of a rumor asked the practical question: "If we resist, will they...burn us?" It was asked like one asks whether an illness is contagious. "They will not burn the whole town," said the older soldier—calm, exhausted, and fond of calendars. "They will take things in steps. They will give you a pharmacy with a clause and later a tax that starts small then grows like a fungus." "We are outmatched," said another, and there it was: the part of the conversation that smells of afternoon rain on paper and defeat. "They have more men, more machines, and more laws than we have reasons." A younger man gave a small, foolish roar and said, "Then we ambush." Someone smacked his shoulder like that was a joke and a prayer both. "Ambush what? Their tanks? You think we can stop a file with a spear?" The youth's face collapsed into something close to laughter, and the captain swore quietly in a language that was chiefly kidneys and old sorrow.
In the courtyards, the soldiery produced strategies designed in the currency of bargaining: "If they take the saltworks, we will sabotage the mills," one plotted. "If they take the mills, we will poison the well," another said—an idea that tasted of desperation and moral rot. "No," breathed a voice like someone who had once read a book in the light of a candle and decided life was a slightly worse story, "we do not poison. We hide the keys. We hide the papers." The plan humbled itself into petty theft because treason is easier to carry than suicide. They agreed then—quietly, in the way men invent a compact while the earth still holds its breath—to keep secrets like they kept their coats: folded and close. "If they ask us to parade in front of their banners," said the spare, "we will march and sing loudly enough to confuse their musicians and then walk off in different directions." It was cowardice planned like artistry.
Above them, on the battlements where officers argue about maps until their fingers ache, the generals spoke in a different language—one of honor and service and the bitter arithmetic of obligations. They understood the physics of defeat because they had seen it in the eyes of men who were paid late and loved always. A general, square-jawed and composed like a ledger, told the soldiers he had a plan. "We will not fight their machines," he said, as if admitting this were a kindness. "We will survive this by making them need us. Repair. Labor. We will be necessary." The young men chewed that plan like spelling bees. "Make them need us?" one asked. "They have their own engineers." "Yes," said the general. "But their engineers cannot read the soil the way we can. They do not know the stones. We make ourselves indispensable, or we die. Those are the choices." It was a sermon in realism, and the soldiers filed it into the shelf marked survival.
When the sun went down, the courtyard smelled like soot and the residue of a demolished gate. Someone lit a small, defiant fire—nothing grand, just a kettle—and the men circled like a council of sheep who have learned that shepherds sometimes wear new uniforms. They drank bitter tea and shared scraps of news that had the newscycle of a plague. Someone sang a rude rhyme about the Empire's etiquette and everyone laughed until their mouths tasted like iron. They were terrified in good company and planned in bad faith at times, because terror is contagious and cunning comes from habit, not bravery. They felt, all of them, like a town whose house had been restamped and whose owner had been told to smile. There was fear and there was a stubbornness like lint: impossible to remove, and strangely comforting. They would sleep, when they slept, with one eye open and one hand near a spear; they would wake with the smell of treads and the memory of a gate that had been eaten by a machine that hummed like a government office. They planned to survive in flimsy ways: by small thefts, by reticence, by making themselves an inconvenient necessity. And by morning, the world would have shifted a little, the gate would be a memory, and the men would have stitched a new kind of quiet into their uniforms—one that reads like a receipt and costs more than anyone can pay entirely in coins.
The Armageddon
High Rock saw its sky eaten by a shadow the size of an accusation and learned, in one loud, embarrassing gasp, what it meant to be on the receiving end of Netherward engineering: a battle airship, all brass ribs and bad intentions, descending like a judgment day with flutes. It was not poetic. It was a machine with a name that smelled faintly of tax audits and theatrical doom; the locals called it Armageddon because whoever painted its nose chose subtlety last and bravado first. Imagine the thing floating over your cathedral, blimping like an ungodly wedding cake, and then imagine a duchess stepping out of it in a coat that suggested she had once negotiated peace while juggling grenades for fun. Nikkibella spat leather and iciness on the ballroom floor, alighted in a manner only slightly less graceful than a meteor, and the court magicians, who had been allowed to keep their reputations by the grace of provincial boredom, fell from dignity into worship. Mhelfrancovince teleported like a man who was tired of doors and preferred to skip them; he appeared in the throne room with the polite irreverence of someone who had better things to do than wait for formalities, as if the air itself had been instructed to behave and had chosen obedience for once. There was a hush that smelled like old vellum and very new fear, because when you are confronted by an empire that renders your metaphors obsolete in one elegant swoop, you have to invent a new vocabulary of terror on the spot.
The courtiers did what courtiers do: they found new ways to kneel, new ways to arrange their faces into the exact expression that says 'I was always loyal' while secretly counting how many coins they could smuggle away before the auditors arrived. The palace magi—those provincial conjurers who had once considered their best spells as tasteful smoke effects—stared at our arrivals with the hungry reverence of parishioners who realize the altar they worshipped was merely a very expensive prop. Their calibration rods clattered like teeth, their sigils dimmed with professional envy, and one of them, a rotund man with fingers perpetually stained by ink and regret, whispered to another, "They have synchronization that rivals the old legends." He meant the way the airship's wards sang like a choir of accountants and the way its propulsion coughed up a heat-signature that read as both industry and blasphemy. Nikkibella—who has the habit of making the frightening infuriated and the infuriated frightened—smiled and chose the throne room's velvet without bothering to ask permission; she sat like a woman who knew where grievances were kept and had brought the tax code with her as a dessert.
There was terror that moved with armor and terror that moved in whispers. The armored columns that crawled through High Rock's avenues were not medieval beasts; they were machines with manners, all angular efficiency and just enough brutality to make a gate feel like a suggestion. Civilians who had watched war once on painted banners now saw it in the street, up close and loud as a scandal. A tank—call it a tank if you like, though it was more like a steel excuse with teeth—took a gate as one might take a stubborn cork: it rammed, the wood asked politely to be liberated from its context, and the gate folded with a dignity that was more about physics than irony. Imagine being a man whose hands once tethered ropes and now seeing steel chew a bulwark and feeling an ache so particular it tastes like the ash of your old life. Soldiers in High Rock looked on with a mixture of professional horror and the embarrassed recognition that their training was a historical exhibit now under the shadow of an upgrade. They stood with their spears and their outdated things and learned, via the loud schooling of artillery, that modern war was a theatre in which they were no longer the actors.
Then Nikkibella descended like a comet that prefers silks to molten trails. She walked into the throne room, eyes like a woman who has memorized the dictionary of threats and now reads it for pleasure, and she circled the dais like a general checking the seams in a garment. Mhelfrancovince materialized from a ripple in light, and the king—Hansel, the man who thought ancestry was a decorative virtue—saw the two of them and shrank two sizes in dignity and about five sizes in plausible sovereignty. He was still a man with a crown but now with the sudden and unfortunate clarity of a man who has discovered his crown is, in fact, a hat hired for a funeral. The court magicians tried their tricks—ribbons of flame, polite illusions, a conjured stag meant to remind the Empire that Caed Gwen possessed cultural myth—but their tricks, which once satisfied a town's appetite for spectacle, seemed now a children's show when compared to an airship whose hull hummed like a library of ancients and whose crew moved like a regiment of clocks. Provisioning the awe, Mhelfrancovince permitted a small demonstration of shadow-work, not to frighten but to administer a practical lesson in the lexicality of fear: you shadow a ledger, you make auditing feel like prophecy. A clerk in the back fainted for reasons that had less to do with fainting and more to do with a life that was suddenly audited.
There were murmurs about the Netherward's combination of arcane and technological engineering—the sort that made the High Rock wizards' teeth ache with envy. "Their wards are calibrated like banks," whispered one of the senior magi, the one whose beard was threaded with the gray of too many nights and too few comfortable conclusions. "They bind magic to circuits, not unlike the old engineers bind steam to propellers. It's... modern. It's efficient. It is terrifying." It was, and the observation died into a posture of worship. You must understand that the Netherwards do not merely cast spells and polish armor; they patent both and then invoice you for the privilege. Their magitech hummed with the civic pride of an accountant who learned how to summon storms and made them pay interest. Arc-cores were delivered with maintenance manuals and a polite clause about sentience: you sign the warranty and also sign for the potential of appliances that might develop opinions. High Rock, whose sorcery was traditionally embroidered and perfumed, now had to learn arc-ore contracts and municipal service plans, and there is nothing more humbling to a wizard than reading a three-page indemnity clause about a familiar.
The political theater was orchestrated precisely. Nikkibella, who reads statesmen like menus, set the stage for the Treaty with the practiced cadence of a woman who had once sold a smile for a county and now sold that county back with interest. Mhelfrancovince, who prefers his power wrapped in the napkin of plausible deniability, offered the king a contract that smelled of safety and interest rates. "We provide you with upkeep," he intoned, "we secure your aqueducts, we install arc-cores in your mills, and—in exchange—you accede to administrative realignment." It reads prettier when printed on parchment stamped with a seal, but in practice it translates into control made comfortable. The king, presented with an economy that promised not to starve his stomach if he allowed the Empire to regulate his coffers, chose the stomach over the myth and signed with hands that trembled like a man whose crown had just been resized to fit humility.
From my vantage, up on a stack of treaties that smell like ink and small regrets, I watched the whole farce with the clinical impartiality of someone who has seen humans arrange their dignity like hobbyists arrange bonsai: small, deliberate mutilations dressed as cultivation. There is a look that crosses a face when the world supplies you with sockets and with audits in equal measure, and that look was Hansel's as he signed. The populace—ever pragmatic when there is light and hot water to be had—clapped like people who had been promised bread and discovered a bakery that also offered slightly instructional pamphlets about citizenry and its obligations. Farmers cursed the tariff scales and merchants recalculated with glee because ledgers finally looked legible, and somewhere in the bazaar a child bought an arc-bubble that sang lullabies and announced municipal notices in the voice of an overly polite herald. High Rock adapted because people are like that: they swap old sorrow for new sockets and file resentment under "future hobby," and the Empire, which prefers its annexations signed and its annexed politely caffeinated, set up a school where engineers teach and wizards learn the value of an invoice.
We left High Rock with an airship that cast its shadow like a promise over the countryside, with a king who kept his hat and lost a few illusions, and with a city that would in time adore arc-light the way it once adored moonlight—tentatively, and with complicated second thoughts. As the Netherward fleet unfurled and the air boiled gently under the propellors, I licked a paw and made a perfect note in my ledger—one line that would later be invaluable should anyone ever ask: "Annexation complete. One king retained, dignity reduced to ornamental status. Make sure the funeral budget includes confetti."
Caer Hund and the Making of a Margraviate
Fort Leighdaa took its title like a teenager picking a band name—sudden, earnest, and horribly permanent—and Caer Hund, which had always smelled faintly of iron and bad decisions, was folded into our ranks with the theatricality of a recruitment poster and the practical menace of a bus full of knives. The Order of the Witchblades were mercenaries who kept honor like an inconveniently sharp tool; they sold it to the highest bidder in the old days and to a more punctual payroll in the new, and when they agreed to a Margraviate under Viserian they did so with the ceremonial shrug of professionals who know how to turn loyalty into a ledger entry. We renamed them Omicron-02 "Witcherblades" because nothing cements allegiance like a bureaucratic codename, and we made the whole arrangement nominally sovereign to Grand Duchess Caraianna—because if you want to integrate edge-lords into the state, the best way is to make them feel supervised by someone who still cares about both poetry and sanitation. Major Gerald DeRivian, a man who wears battle and bureaucracy the way other people wear cologne, took the company helm with the appetite of a leader who enjoys the sound of his own metaphors and the discipline of a man who once strangled a problem with a necktie.
From where I sat—always where governments keep the finest ink stains—this integration was an example of our empire's particular brand of mercy: recruit the strong, perfume them with titles, and give them enough paperwork that they forget to plot short-term rebellions. Viserian, who had the kind of charisma that looks like an incantation when you watch him move, accepted a Margraviate because, frankly, the title comes with a lot of things mercenaries appreciate: legitimacy, a steady payroll, and the right to have one's funerary rites honored on an annual holiday. His men liked the uniform change because uniforms make cruelty look tidy; they marched now with a badge and a contract instead of a receipt and a grudge. Margraviate or not, Caer Hund stayed Caer Hund in spirit—drums in the night, a smell of iron in the wind, and an order that prided itself on knowing how to clean up the gore other people left like bad reviews.
There was theatre, naturally. Every creation of the Imperial calendar requires ceremony, which is to say we did the thing with banners and a speech someone had written in three voices and then edited down to a single, vaguely inspirational paragraph. We reclassified the fortress, pinned the crest, and issued a proclamation that read like a love letter with an interest clause. Grand Duchess Caraianna sent a lovely embroidered parcel—practical gifts like thermoses for the stout-hearted and manuals that read, "How to File Your Grievances Without Getting Eaten by Paperwork." In return, Viserian presented a sword that had seen too many sunrises and a face that resented being courteous. Gerald DeRivian—sharp, efficient, and suspicious of poetry—smiled as if smiling were a tactical advantage and then accepted his new role, which included being a Senior Operative Agent of Section 13, the shadowed heart of Mhelfrancovince and Nikkibella's retainers; part black ops, part diplomatic cleaning service, all of it absolutely terrifying in a polite sort of way.
Conversation in the marshalling hall was staged like a cooking show where everyone knows the recipe is actually a legal document. It began with Nikkibella arranging her gloves and Mhelfrancovince folding a map the way one might fold an apology—neat, precise, and with a corner you could hide a small scandal in. Boninacarla stood at the ready with paperwork that smelled like old oak and municipal discipline, while Viserian and Gerald both brought the sort of tension that makes a room feel like a blade factory. I curled on a map because I like to know where the ink will run, and also because a good cat must supervise every official moment.
Mhelfrancovince: "We need stability on that border. The Witcherblades are experts at controlled violence; give them structure and they will give us obedience."
Nikkibella: "Give them titles and a pension plan, and they'll tolerate the inspectors. Also, please give them fewer opportunities for spontaneous existential duels in taverns. It unnerves the accountants."
Viserian: "We do not require lectures on civility, Duchess. Our men fight with honor and leave nothing behind but questions."
Gerald DeRivian: "And we ask—no, we insist—on autonomy for operations and a direct line to Section 13. Black ops don't do well on committee schedules. Also, my men will not abide by the ceremonial cake ritual; it is a hazard."
Boninacarla: "The law requires a council for margraviates, and you will be responsible for civilian safety and infrastructure checks. You shall not simply enforce by terror. There will be audits."
Viserian: "Audits can be arranged. We will provide receipts for the monsters' heads we deliver. The receipts will be convincing."
Mhelfrancovince: "The Empire will fund reconstruction and provide integration programs—schools, municipal posts, and veteran's care. In return, the Margraviate pledges troops for border defense and accepts the Ombudsperson's oversight."
Nikkibella folded her gloves into a smile. "And you will file your grievances by the tenth of the month. We prefer our grievances regular and accompanied by coffee."
Gerald smirked, the sort of smirk that suggests he has seen the underside of a life and prefers not to talk about it at dinner. "We will sign. And Section 13 will place a liaison. I will personally oversee counter-intelligence and ensure any rogue magi are very inconveniently celebrated with silence."
Viserian nodded once, like a man confirming a duel. "We keep Caer Hund. We become Margrave and receive the responsibilities. We do this without dishonoring those who died under our watch."
Mhelfrancovince dipped his pen habitually. "Then it is settled. Dame Boninacarla will prepare the instrument. Duchess Caraianna will ensure the Witcherblades are integrated into the Omicron battalion. And Gerald—Section 13 will make sure your operations are efficient and mercifully unromantic."
Gerald's laugh was small and practical. "Mercifully unromantic is my favorite directive."
We signed things. There were toasts made with bitter tea and a solemn promise to not break each other for sport. The Order would be Omicron-02, bound to serve under Grand Duchess Caraianna, and Gerald DeRivian would be commissioned as both a company commander and Section 13 senior operative—because what says 'we trust you' like giving a warrior both a medal and the keys to the department that opens people's secrets. Viserian accepted a Margrave's coronet that sat awkwardly alongside the scars he bore like trophies; the coronet was heavy and his hands were steady. We promised pensions for veterans, reintegration programs for conscripts turned mercenary, and a civic festival where the Witcherblades would parade with clean weapons and ethically sourced banners.
There was the practical follow-up: witch-blade training synchronized with imperial protocols, insertion of municipal law into Caer Hund's halls, and a delicate cache of trust-building measures—markets rebuilt, wells warded, and a public works contract to build a road that would link Caer Hund to the supply chain. We wrote amendments into local statutes that let the Margrave adjudicate frontier disputes swiftly, but with the oversight of the Ombudsperson and the Ministry of Justice. We created a small office for veteran grievances—staffed by someone who knew how to translate blood into benefits—and a stipulation that the Witcherblades would not be deployed against civilian protests unless explicit national security threats were declared.
After the signatures dried, after the banners were folded and the ceremonial cake—oddly shaped like a sword—was cut, Viserian clapped Gerald on the shoulder with a force that suggested friendship was best expressed by bruises. "We will keep Caer Hund safe," he said. Gerald, who had long ago learned that trust is a conditional contract and blood a metaphor many used sloppily, grinned like a man promised a good fight and a tidy bank account. "We will," he said. "And Section 13 will keep us from becoming the monsters in the stories. Mostly."
I made a neat note in my ledger that day: Omicron-02 established; Viserian Margrave; Gerald DeRivian dual-commissioned; obligations and audits scheduled. I licked the ink with my tongue because it's important to affix signatures with approval and because a cat's approval is a rare thing. The Witcherblades marched away with banners that smelled faintly of iron and the fresh application of official stamps. The Empire, as ever, integrated what it needed with the polite violence of paperwork, and Caer Hund, in the new legal language that tastes of rust and promises, began the slow business of becoming Margraviate—military might wrapped in ribbon, danger upcycled into duty, and mercenary honor made to look tidy enough for civic parades.
Vanhard, Viscounts, and Very Questionable Consent Forms
They took a town that preferred dust and polite superstition and made it a campus with a warranty; that is the Netherward way, equal parts charm and invoice. Vanhard smelled like chalk, old incense, and the kind of academic exhaustion that becomes a civic perfume when you wear it long enough; they woke up one morning to find their pigeon-littered courtyards spruced with arc-lamps, their pigeon-litter supplemented with grant applications, and their charmingly primitive labs rebranded as research units that require liability coverage and three signatures from emotionally fragile familiars. The Netherward University of Science and Magic — Vanhard Campus, NUSM-Vanhard — arrived with an acronym, a crest, and a mandatory welcome orientation that included a legal disclaimer detailing what counts as a controlled experiment and what counts as a public hazard. "Do not unsocket the elephant-rune," the pamphlet said in tone that was equal parts helpful and passive-aggressive. "If the elephant-rune begins to question ontology, please file Form E-13b and offer it a biscuit." It landed with all the delicacy of a ledger falling off a high shelf and took root like bureaucracy always does: in places you did not know were hollow.
Archmage Herodotus Fangliorne accepted the directorship with the calm of a man who has catalogued the apocalypse and found it had a useful index. He looks like a footnote in a tome of older, more polite disasters: long, ordered beard, spectacles that make him look like he critiques the stars for incorrect punctuation, and hands that gesture the way librarians stamp overdue guilt. Under the Local Government Area charters the Ministry had supplied, University Towns are Viscounties, and therefore whoever wears the rector's hat also reads as the Viscount; so by the accident that comes from writing law on top of habit, the Archmage became the De Facto Viscount of Vanhard. He did not ask for the title because titles are cumbersome at the best of times and give you paperwork; he took it because the hat had pockets and because a Viscount's auFreyjaity streamlines grant disbursements. Now he must be both an academic and a municipal magistrate, a role whose contradictions make his beard shimmer with the faintest affronted pride.
Grand Duchess Iveszia Netherward, who runs the Ministry of Education, Culture and Arts like a woman who arranges revolutions into tasteful color palettes, came with the sort of presence that smells like policy and perfume. Princess Boninacarla Netherward — Minister of the Interior and Realm Administration, which is a title that makes the phrase "we need more forms" sound like an embrace — arrived in practical boots and a face that has never been convinced by a single thing that lacks a schedule. The three of them met in the great lecture hall where banners hung alongside arc-projection screens that alternated between "Campus Map" and a live risk matrix that blinked the color of faint shame when anyone mentioned "experimental reanimation." I perched on a stack of budgets directly behind Herodotus because a cat's first duty is to witness signatures and his second is to nap on important documents.
Iveszia opened with charm that was a kind of policy weapon. "Vanhard must be excellent and useful," she declared in the tone one uses when confiscating a person's curiosity for public interest. "We will fund scholarships and endowments, but research must align with Arcane Council standards and national priorities. We require transparent classification of projects: public, restricted, prohibited. We will support industry partnerships, but patents with predatory clauses will be judged harshly and publicly corrected." Her eyes gleamed like a woman who enjoys the frisson of culture and compliance. Herodotus smiled with the gentle air of a man who indexes mischief and files it under "case studies." "We will comply," he said. "Our curriculum will include ley stabilization, thaumodynamical ethics, applied wardcraft, and a compulsory course on lab safety for familiars. We will register high-risk projects with the Arcane Council and maintain an internal ethical board. Our library's restricted stacks remain accessible to bona fide scholars, not profiteering guilds."
Boninacarla, who speaks continent-sized problems into manageable checklists, leaned forward. "Vanhard is a Viscounty now," she said, "and we expect municipal responsibilities to accompany your academic ones. You will manage arc-node deployment data, maintain maintenance schedules for municipal arc-cores, and host a registry for experimental familiars and constructs. If an experiment deviates into the populace, arc-warrants will be issued and Section 13 will coordinate containment if necessary." Her tone was practical, bordering on affectionate cruelty. "Also," she added, "students participating in internships with municipal services will be required to attend civic training. We will not accept rogue labs that believe consent is an antiquated courtesy when summoning sentience."
Herodotus blinked like a man cataloging a new species of administrative peril. "We propose apprenticeship tracks," he offered, "where a second-year thaumaturge may be assigned to the Directorate of Bridges to learn how to bind a span without binding its passing souls. We shall collaborate with Section 13 on defensive wards, with the Arcane Council on classification, and with the Ministry of Defense on non-discriminatory counter-enchantments. Our research units will produce at least one publicly beneficial patent per academic year, to be shared under non-extractive licenses." He said "non-extractive licenses" like someone offering biscotti at a tribunal; it was both an olive branch and a mild legal threat. He proposed an ethical board with representatives from the Arcane Council, a Section 13 liaison, a student-elected advocate, and an Ombudsperson appointed by the Ministry to receive grievances from familiars and citizens alike. "And," he finished with arch modesty, "we'll have a course on consent specifically applied to summoned entities."
There was a moment where everyone in the room realized how much of civilizing a town depends on mutual suspicion being arranged into neat forms. Iveszia, amused and pragmatic, raised a hand to note the funding conditions. "We will provide an upgrade to your arc-cores and maintenance funding for three years, but this will be audited. The Ministry will reserve the right to audit the university's restricted projects in cases where public safety appears compromised. We will insist on an open registry for high-risk experiments that the Supreme Tribunal may review on petition." Boninacarla added, "And Vanhard must host municipal technicians. We will insist that your engineers train local workers in arc-core maintenance. This creates employment and ensures local knowledge retention; we do not want towns dependent on itinerant experts who vanish when the invoice is due."
The talk turned almost inevitably to patents, guilds, and profiteering — the bugbears of any modern civics class. Herodotus, whose private hobby is numbering spells like editions of a rare book, declared the university would attempt a middle path: "We will patent ethically, and where possible, issue public-use licenses for technologies that improve civic life—water warding systems, non-combustion bread ovens, and enchantments that prevent livestock misbehavior. Private parties may hold patents on enhancements, but the core public benefit remains accessible." Iveszia smiled with the satisfaction of a woman who has just filed a particularly pretty injunction. "We'll have a clause for emergency public-use auFreyjaization in the event of arcane disasters. Also—do ensure your student associations have grievance channels. There is no better public relations than a Freyjaoughly heard complaint."
They signed a memorandum of understanding that read like a love letter to bureaucracy: NUSM-Vanhard would receive funding, the Archmage would accept civic duties as de facto Viscount, the university would provide municipal training programs, and oversight mechanisms would be installed involving the Arcane Council and Section 13. Section 13's involvement was phrased in the kindest possible civic language—"liaison for containment and audit coordination"—but everyone in the room knew that meant certain experiments would be quietly excused into secure facilities and that black-ops cleanup might be required for the occasional over-enthusiastic conjuration. Boninacarla smirked at Herodotus and said, mildly, "Do keep your familiars on leashes and your homunculi unionized. We want innovation that doesn't bite back."
When they rose, there was tea, and the tea tasted like victory with a hint of paperwork. I licked the margin of the memorandum—my own small seal of approval—and noted in my ledger the clauses they'd formed: apprenticeship hours, public-use patent obligations, an ethics board that includes familiars' representation, municipal technician training, and a Section 13 liaison. The campus would educate a generation that could both enchant a bridge and file a warranty claim if it haunted badly. The Merits of Civilizing, that is, are not simply lights and latrines; they are forms that make the spectral inconvenient, ledgers that disarm resentments, and curricula that teach children to code wards and read bills with equal vigor.
Outside, the town's pigeons adjusted to arc-lamps and scholarship posters; a baker added a small ward to his ovens and began printing "patent pending" next to the daily scones. Students argued about ethics in dormitories while familiars queued for counseling hours. NUSM-Vanhard would flourish, which means it would produce brilliance and accidents in roughly equal measure. And somewhere, in my neat handwriting and with a paw smudge, I recorded the single enduring truth of the day: to civilize a place, hand it knowledge, a hat that gives municipal auFreyjaity, and at least one person willing to audit the consequences. I purred, because the cat who watches the empire knit itself into law must occasionally approve the stitches.
Viscounties, Vacuumed Capitals, and Family Reports
They took the small towns and folded them into Viscounties the way you fold bad habits into an heirloom box—neat, with labels and the faint, inevitable whiff of regret—but oh, how gleefully the merchants loved us once the arc-grids went live and the plumbing stopped performing its weekly existential crisis. Gleánville's bakers learned to time their ovens like bankers time interest, Devon's cobblers started invoicing with decimals that made poets weep, Buena's market stalls began offering "enchanted convenience" packages, Gwen Lich discovered that arc-light makes ghosts behave better on canvases, Hertz started a short-lived but surprisingly lucrative industry in mood-enhancing streetlamps, Lixella averaged three fewer public brawls per month because sanitation improved and so did temper, Pontaria put enchanted flushes in public latrines and achieved civic nirvana for reasons the philosophers never discussed, Racoon Ravine rebranded as a culinary hub because its raccoons now had electricity to power tiny artisanal grills, Bairfield found its queasy middle-aged men learning spreadsheets like a new form of prayer, Cainborn hosted a microbank that made thrift into art, Loremarc sold municipal bonds that came with complimentary tote bags, and Maliore discovered late-stage capitalism has a particular charm when your grandmother can finally pay for her cataract ointment without mortgaging a cow. They queued for sockets the way medieval pilgrims queued for indulgences—except we served them with brochures, a coupon for their first arc-lamp, and an ironclad municipal warranty labeled "Netherward: We Bring You Sockets." Arc-grids hummed like a choir of mildly judgemental bees; chimneys exhaled less sorrow and more predictable soot; taverns rewired their kettles to broadcast announcements in dulcet tones; and the local poets, initially sore and dramatic, eventually learned to rhyme about amortization and the secret erotic allure of reliable plumbing. The Empire traded convenience for compliance as if it were running a particularly benevolent conscription program.
And while the towns adapted and made peace with modernity, the Great City of the Netherwards—the place that used to issue summons like valentines and host treason with hors d'oeuvres—it was almost three months now since it had been ripped, with the rude politeness of a book removed from a shelf, into this world they called Terra Isekai, which sounds like a travelogue written by a cartographer after two nights on bad wine. For three months the city existed somewhere, away from its empire on earth comprising of Patagonia's gusts, Australia's flat insolence, South Africa's wide horizons, and Antarctica's polite threat; bureaucrats had to update maps, astrologers demanded hazard pay, and the postal service recalibrated its expectations about what counted as "accessible." The Emperor, Francorleone—who wears authority like a well-tailored coat and family dinners like a scaled-down parliament—decided the sensible response: if the universe gives you an unexpected continent, annex it. He ordered expansion with the calm of a man ordering dessert: pick the most efficient option, and if diplomacy fails, see if artillery prefers the savory course. Conquest, treaty, annexation, or charming the mayor with arc-cores and a municipal bank—that was the menu, and Mhelfrancovince, Minister of Imperial Defense and Security and a man who has learned to file sorrow like receipts, was tasked to run the buffet.
So Mhelfrancovince, who in family circles is both a strategist and a charming disappointment at card games, brought his report to the Emperor and the Grand Minister with the casual tension of a son presenting both his grades and the family sword. The salon smelled of wax and the faintly smug scent of men who grew up on political cartoons and now star in them. The Emperor reclined with the approval of someone who has had history's best seat; Grand Minister Mhelvayne, his son and the empire's chief skepticism officer, perched like a man ready to turn a sermon into a spreadsheet. "Well?" said the Emperor, the single-word prompt that in our house means give me facts and forego the therapy. Mhelfrancovince unrolled maps like a baker lays dough and began in the language of logistics, which is to say he spoke of arc-cores and auditors with the same cadence most men give to lullabies. "Aronafields is reorganized: Viscounties and Baronies installed; municipal grids active; NUSM-Vanhard producing technicians; small resistances contained by patrols and civic benefits; tariff protests remain manageable. Caed Gwen signed the Treaty under duress: High Rock reclassified as a Duchy and Hansel reduced to ceremonial Hat; Caer Hund elevated to Margraviate as Omicron-02 Witcherblades under Grand Duchess Caraianna; Fort Leighdaa similarly reclassified; Florian Valley gifted as a Duchy to the Elves, Dwarves and Faefolk under Duchess Francine Fiendblaire and placed under protected reserve statutes; smaller towns absorbed and adapting." He mentioned the airship Armageddon with a smile that read like someone who has discovered that theater is half ordinance and half optics. "We deployed units, integrated local elites, established banking reforms, and embedded Section 13 liaisons where arcane risks intersect civil life."
The Emperor's laugh was small and sharp, the sort of sound that trims hedges and reputations with equal efficiency. "Good," he said. "Maintain the Noble Roll—no freelancing titles for toddlers—and ensure the ombudsperson's office is not overwhelmed with petitions from newly electrified matrons." Mhelvayne asked about timelines and attrition like a man arranging chess pieces into a budget. "Supply lines?" he asked, fingertips tracing routes with a familiar impatience. Mhelfrancovince's answer was both technical and familial: "Arc-core nodes in mills stabilize logistics; NUSM graduates trained as maintenance cadres; banking reforms rolled out in tranches; Section 13 embedded in frontiers; minimal imperial casualties; local friction—tax riots, market skirmishes, a few over-enthusiastic ents—handled with measured force and civic placation. We suggest monthly reports, expanded Section 13 where arcane contamination risk is high, and cultural programs to normalize coin over curses." The Grand Minister smirked as if hearing a particularly savory footnote and said, "And the new realm beyond the horizon?" because empires treat novelty as a box they must check.
Mhelfrancovince leaned back, the posture of a man who knows his family will praise the spreadsheet but not the cost of the soul. "We'll proceed with the same playbook: diplomacy where efficient, annexation where convenient, occupation where necessary. Infrastructure first—arc-cores, banks, schools—then titles and local participation. Keep the kings wearing hats but make the taxman indispensable. I recommend increased cultural outreach and a triage of local grievances: mediate, fund, or incapacitate the loudest troublemakers." The Emperor grinned, the expression of a man who finds the smell of ink irresistible and the sound of a signed treaty sweeter than perfume. "Then do it," he said. "And Mhelfrancovince—don't forget to bring back a souvenir. Preferably not an insurgent, those are hard to pack."
They traded barbs like kin: the Emperor teased Mhelfrancovince about his choice in ciphers; Mhelvayne corrected an unnecessary adverb in a dispatch with paternal fondness; and Mhelfrancovince promised to prioritize stable governance and return with charts and maybe a minor legend tamed. I, on my ledger and atop a stack of stamped policies, recorded everything with the pathological precision of a cat who understands political gravity and the comparative usefulness of warm laps. Outside, the Viscounties hummed with arc-light, the towns queued for sockets, and the Empire expanded with the tidy cruelty of administration—lights first, consent negotiated later, and always a polite receipt for the annexation.
Dissent, Docket, and Delightfully Awful Consequences
We celebrated achievement and bureaucratized dissent with the manic devotion of people who have discovered joy in standardized forms; arc-lamps glowed over protest banners and the municipal office stamped grievances with a cheerful efficiency that made riots look like poorly organized festivals. There were protests on the quay about tariffs that taxed salt as if seasoning were a moral failing—old women chanting about brined memories, dockhands writing limericks on placards, a poet reciting elegies for free sodium while sipping civic tea and making it look tragically ironic—and there were riots in market squares because a distillery sold a liqueur that tasted too much like "home" and therefore reminded the populace that nostalgia is politically combustible and, when mixed with tax increases, is basically a Molotov cocktail in polite society. Love affairs began across treaty tables: hot, ill-advised, ending with formal duel minutes lodged in the civic archive because our bureaucracy insists on paperwork for everything, even romantic misadventures—one noble swore his heart in the margin and then tried to duel for a misplaced comma; the clerk added a line-item for fencing fees, which made the widow's pension application suspiciously detailed and oddly sentimental. Parliament held hearings that smelled of bad coffee and malice; witnesses were sworn in beneath banners that read "For the People" and "Also For the Ledgers" while the Grand Minister read reports with the careful sigh of a man who keeps budgets and consciences in the same drawer and occasionally sacrifices both to expediency. Emperor Francorleone watched from his raised chair with the indulgent calm of a man who knows his assent is final but enjoys the theater of pretense—he liked to watch the show, to see ideals wrestle with accountants, to see a rebellion become minutes on the docket and then a footnote with a penalty clause. Mhelfrancovince and Nikkibella treated family politics as a dueling sport: whispered jokes like bayonet thrusts, barbed affection that left bruises in public policy, and the kind of fierce cooperation that comes from being married to strategy rather than each other; when they bickered, treaties updated in real time and someone, somewhere, took a long-suffering note that would later become law. Meanwhile, I, Benetton, perched atop a ledger because what else does a cat do in a state that values receipts over romance, flicked my tail at a clerk's neck (for morale) and coughed up a hairball on the map because empires, like cats, shed sometimes and someone needs to make the mess historical.
You must understand the volatile arithmetic of dissent here: offend the pocket, offend the stomach, and people will protest; offend the myth and they might set the statue on fire, which is both dramatic and messier for cleanup crews. Some noble houses refused to fold; they preferred the old arithmetic of bloodlines and independently funded militias to arc-cores and municipal audits. They sneered at modern accounting like it was a trend and at civic engineers like they were itinerant grave-robbers, and for a while they considered secession a charming hobby. The State responded in a manner that is both elegant and terminal: first by stripping titles—public decree, inked and perfumed with ceremonial solemnity—whereby a proud Duke woke to find his sash a piece of nice fabric and his household staff suddenly classified under "temporary layoff," then by confiscating properties under the legal umbrella that we call "forfeiture due to treason," which is bureaucratic for "we will take your castle and turn it into a school and a tasteful museum about why you were unwise." Some were exiled so far and so politely that even the birds did not find them; others were offered clemency in return for civic service, a career pivot that read less like mercy and more like forced internships at the city works. And when all else failed—because there will always be those who prefer tragedy to resignation—the penalty included the worse, which here is a public execution for treason: solemn, heavily documented, and performed so the record might be neat and deterring. Executions are bad PR, so we made them oddly theatrical: a public reading of the indictment by the Ombudsperson, a musical flourish by the civic band, a final sermon by a chaplain who incidentally accepted municipal grants for "spiritual reintegration," and then the door to the scaffold closed on the sort of ending that the peasantry had cheapened into legend and the noble houses had thought themselves immune to. There is nothing like the quiet ink of a verdict to make an aristocrat understand the modernity of mortality.
We had a late-night strategy huddle in the Ministry annex where the light tasted like paper and the coffee posted its own warnings about caffeine dependency. The room smelled faintly of burned toast—someone had attempted to make morale muffins—and the attendees were our usual mix of competent menace and resigned efficiency: Mhelfrancovince with his diplomatic restraint and the kind of quiet that precedes decisive acts; Nikkibella, who could make a treaty feel like a threat wrapped in silk; Princess Boninacarla, Minister of the Interior, with a list of municipal regulations that read like a symphony of small cruelties; Gerald DeRivian, the Witcherblade turned senior operative of Section 13, who wore the patience of someone untroubled by the ethics of killing if it meant the city slept; and me, the observant and opinionated cat who keeps minutes in whiskers and ink. The conversation was low and practical because when you discuss removing a lord's title you must also discuss what to do with his hounds and whether they may be adopted by the municipal pound or require euthanasia for tax reasons. We were talking about houses that still would not submit—old names that believed the ink on a treaty is less binding than the oath by their forefathers' skulls—and how we had dealt with them: abdication for those who preferred to step down with dignity and a small pension, titles stripped and properties confiscated for those whose loyalty proved a fiction, and execution for treason when the offense required a statement louder than a press release. Gerald, who has seen more monstrous experiments than most, never flinched. "We give them a chance," he said, voice flat as a ledger, "we offer mediation, indemnities, land swaps, and comfortable retreats. Most choose exile or pension. A few choose tantrum." Nikkibella clicked her glove and smiled like a woman with a sharp pencil and worse jokes. "Tantrum is a phase. Tantrum plus private army equals paperwork and then public order. We prefer the forms."
Mhelfrancovince, who is both weary general and devoted family man, folded his fingers like a man who has learned to fold chaos into plans. "We start with the carrot: titles preserved in name if they accept civic responsibilities. The viscountcies need their mayors. We offer integration: municipal roles, training, a place in our ceremonial calendar. If they refuse, we move to forfeiture. If they raise arms, we react with targeted operations and public trials. Our message must be consistent: the Empire can include you or remove you from history." Boninacarla produced a list: "Asset seizure templates, trustee appointment forms, a schedule for public auctions to repurpose confiscated lands into schools and parks, and a provision for maintaining former houses as heritage sites contingent on public education use." Gerald chimed in, pragmatic as a knife: "Section 13 handles containment—detain the ringleaders, extract intelligence, and where necessary, neutralize those who would cause the city harm. There will be trials, yes, recorded and indexed. Execution is last, but the legal language must justify it beyond reasonable doubt so history cannot claim we were arbitrary." I flicked my tail and added, mentally if not aloud, that a cat's endorsement is useful because few families ignore the omen of a cat choosing a ledger over a lap.
We concluded with a plan that smelled like ink and iron: negotiations, documented offers, a grace period for compliance, then the slow mechanisms of administrative seizure if necessary, and finally, if provocation persisted, a fair trial and a punishment calibrated to deter. The notion of family—our clan—wasn't simply blood; we enforced kinship with glare and statute. The imperial family converses casually in the public hall because in our world politeness is a performance and brutality is an administrative task. The message to the recalcitrant houses was straightforward and delivered with all the warmth of a tax notice: bow, bargain, be useful—or we will reassign your ancestral holdings into new hands and charge you for the cleaning. I recorded the minutes, licked the page in approval—because ink sealed by feline saliva is somehow more binding in the Netherward—and sat on the final copy until someone took it seriously. There is a cruel joy in governance: you turn rebellion into paperwork, and paperwork into order, and somewhere along the line the people begin to believe that the hum of their new sockets is the same thing as peace.
Dinner and Oaths
There was one dinner—that was the dinner—and if you could bottle its atmosphere you'd get something that smells like brandy, burnt vellum, and the faint regret of a man who once trusted his barber; it was the kind of meal where omelettes were folded with the precision of treaties and heated butter was applied like rhetoric: generously, and with an intent to distract. The ministers of Caed Gwen sat opposite our emissaries like chess pieces given narrow human expressions; their jackets were starched into positions of authority and their faces had the exact polite terror of men who'd learned to be wolves at a distance and lambs when the ledger opened. Mhelfrancovince, who clears his throat like a man announcing the weather and the sudden demolition of a rival's dignity, began with the kind of sentence that should have come with a small drumroll: "We offer integration, law, and trade." It landed like mild thunder because thunder at dinner is polite if accompanied by dessert. He added judicial structures, education, and the protections of the Constitution as if listing a menu; he tacked on Helheim Horde patrols for hazardous sites and Margraviates for border security the way a concierge suggests optional insurance—necessary, a little theatrical, and sold with a smile. A general from Caed Gwen muttered about sovereignty the way a man complains about a broken watch: he wanted the concept more than its weight; he wanted fewer audits, more parades, and a crown that still had the nerve to collect taxes without due process. Nikkibella, whose smile signs documents and occasional pacts with similar efficiency, added the infrastructural charm offensive—arc-light wiring, maintenance schedules, and a deluxe package that included dragon-sweeping at a modest surcharge—and the room, for reasons that are still historically entertaining, laughed despite themselves.
After the ceremonial toasts, somewhere between a course called "We'll Fix Your Aqueduct" and a dessert named "Non-Lethal Reclamation Soufflé," I slunk away from the public theatre to a side table where the interim ministers of Caed Gwen nursed their cup and pretended the sugar would calm the tremor in their palms. They were, as you might expect, delighted in the way people are delighted when someone gives them sockets and a slightly humiliating pamphlet on how to vote without starting a small civil war. Boninacarla—Minister of the Interior and Realm Administration, who treats municipal reform like a sport and paperwork like a ritual of purification—sat primly with her own tiny stack of municipal forms and a pen that had been known to sign away problematic pasts with a flourish. I, Benetton, took my appointed place on the warm ledger because there is no more honorable seat in any hall than that which overlooks both ink and crumbs. The interim ministers, men and women who had kept the realm standing during lean times by way of courage and inventive taxes, spoke in the kind of half-whispered gratitude that visits people who've had a miracle and also a bill.
"Arc-light has changed our markets," one said, voice brittle with relief and bargaining power. "Our ledgers no longer look like prophecies; we can plan, invest, and stop arguing about the weight of coins by candlelight. The distillers—yes, even the distillers—have reopened and they no longer call their product 'home' so loudly that it becomes a political act." Another, a former tax officer with the patience of monks and the manner of survivors, added, "Our children study by arc-lamp now. Our midwives can sterilize their tools without summoning a minor demon for assistance. We pledge fealty because you gave us sockets and our grandchildren a future that doesn't smell like hunger." Their loyalty was the kind bureaucracies buy with light and sanitation: sincere in the immediate sense, strategic in the long one, and punctuated by gratitude that smelled faintly of relief and stale ration biscuits. Boninacarla took notes, which read to me like a ledger of affection: grants, pledges, loyalty clauses, and a small annex about cultural festivals to keep nationalism from becoming nostalgia-shaped powder-kegs.
Mhelfrancovince strolled back with the tired benevolence of a man who's endured many breakfasts and fewer illusions; he sat and listened like a judge who wanted to be impressed and found his own facts more intriguing. "We do not ask you to forget who you are," he said, the family tone softening the edge of law. "We ask that you be Netherfolk in law and partners in governance. You receive titles, public infrastructure, and representation. In return, we ask for obedience to the new legal order and cooperation with our institutions." He phrased compliance like a bargain and not a threat; the civil engineers had learned that infrastructure is a better weapon than rumour in the long game. The interim ministers nodded, their hands clasped because gestures matter and because hands make credible witnesses when signatures are required. "We will pledge loyalty as the first cohort of naturalized Netherfolks," one declared with a careful, ceremonial cadence. "We will introduce the municipal councils and train our people in the voting system. We will celebrate the Empire's festivals and preserve our own rites as local heritage with the Empire's blessing." This last clause was important; it framed submission as partnership, an arrangement that tastes better on parchment and sometimes even in practice.
Gerald DeRivian, who had been present at other meals where the stakes involved blades and liberty rather than omelettes, sat with the measured stillness of a man who has watched monsters and politicians trade occupations. He offered a practical note that read less like a sermon and more like a memo: "We will ensure security for your first elections and train local constabularies. Section 13 will act discreetly; we do not deploy force where persuasion suffices. However, where rebellion threatens, the law will act swiftly and with precedent." His voice had the honest chill of someone who has both cleaned up and started fires for the sake of quiet towns afterwards. There was, as ever, a necessary honesty to the proceedings: loyalty had to be more than a phrase; it had to be a predictable pattern in paperwork. Boninacarla replied with a bureaucrat's kindness: "We will set up municipal offices and a fast-track for naturalization paperwork. There will be incentives for merchants who comply and assistance for rural communities who integrate our arc-core maintenance programs. We prefer consent with infrastructure to coercion with cannon."
The interim ministers accepted these terms with the kind of gratitude that owes its sincerity to survival. They clasped hands with our emissaries, signed the ceremonial parchment—inking the old bark with new law—and, for the first time, the civic archive would record their pledge to the empire as naturalized Netherfolks. They promised to teach voters to sign legibly and to treat ballots as objects of civic worship, which is both optimistic and administratively sensible. They agreed to municipal obligations, to an Ombudsperson who could process grievances with the sympathetic coldness of someone who knows which boxes to check, and to a small fund to preserve local culture within the imperial framework. In essence, they promised to be governed and to govern in return—not the naivest bargain, nor the cruelest. They asked for guarantees: that their local rites would be protected, that arc-cores would remain under local stewardship for a specified transition period, and that titles granted would be respected insofar as they recognized local dignity without undermining national law. We signed a public pledge, made it ceremonious—because ceremony makes contracts feel real—and the ministers drank to mutual futures like people who had both fear and hope for dessert.
As the night ended, the candles guttered and the servants cleared plates with the dutiful speed of people who have seen empires invented and filed. The interim ministers rose and swore allegiance with the same loose precision that nobles use when they hope not to wake to confiscated estates. They would be the first cohort of Netherfolk in Caed Gwen—citizens in good standing, recipients of arc-lamp distributed dignity, and participants in municipal life. And I, perched on the ledger where their signatures dried, made my final note: they promised loyalty because we had provided them sockets, courts, and a future with fewer hunger-driven elegies; they pledged in law what they were not yet sure they felt in heart, which is the way most marriages to states begin. I curled, purred a small diplomatic purr that read like feline approval, and recorded the moment—the dinner, the pledge, the omelettes—because history prefers to be notarized and because when a city becomes a naturalized citizen, someone should have a comfortable place to sleep on the file.
Hansel's Almost-Accident and the Quiet, Brutal Clean-Up
You should have seen the expression on Hansel's face the moment the treaty left the parchment and entered the ledger; there are faces that are weathered by time and faces that are weathered by entitlement, and his was the latter, a portrait of a man who believed titles had teeth and discovered, with rude clarity, that teeth require upkeep. He signed under duress, which in the polite theater of statecraft is considered both a confession and a civility, and for a beat the room balanced like a tray tilted by a careless hand—diplomats had their napkins folded to look calm, ministers pretended their hearts were still for business hours, and the generals arranged their jaws into expressions of civility the way one arranges a blindfold for a duel. I watched it all from my favored perch on a stack of municipal forms—because if history is a ledger, the cat should be on top of the entries—licking the margin of a map for emphasis and preparing mentally for the inevitable mess of ego meeting law.
Hansel's trembling hand drew a contract that smelled of vinegar, victory cake, and very bad futures for anyone who still thought lineage was armor. The man's fear was not mortal in that cinematic way; he did not fear the blade so much as the loss of an audience. For a narcissist, status is oxygen and the prospect of suffocation produces odd theatrics: he kept rehearsing how to look hurt without looking ridiculous, how to appear dignified while conceding power, and how to smile like a man who'd had his hat resized for humility. When the signing finished, his eyes flicked to us—not to the Empire, mind you, but to the courtiers, the ministers, the people who kept score via ledger and gossip—and in that gaze there was the raw terror of someone who feared being unreadable at a dinner party whose stakes are empires. He was saved from immediate gratefulness by a practical intervention that could have gone very wrong.
You should credit Hansel, to his small merit, with stubborn courage. His arrogance is the sort that might have translated into a heroic delusion on a battlefield but becomes dangerous in council when it insists a man's title outweighs an act of war. After the signing, in a fit of old habits and poor counsel, he raged privately—thin, performative thunder across the anteroom—about dignity and ancestral rights. He must have thought his words would be whispers and that his ministers would move in sympathy like obedient shadows. Instead, an overheard curse, a concealed blade, the wrong syllable to the wrong spy, or simply the wrong man's patience could have turned the evening's ceremony into a very tidy scandal; one dagger in the back, one oddly quiet extinction, and his title might have been stripped in a more permanent, less bureaucratic way. He nearly provided his own death certificate by personality and prose.
That's where Gerald comes in: Gerald, who wears the history of too many battles the way other people wear souvenirs—practical, a bit gruesome, and with a polite list of things not to discuss at dinner. We found him across from the treaty table, a man with eyes like a ledger and a face that had negotiated with monsters and returned with both trophies and invoices. He was not sentimental. He also has the exquisite taste of someone who prefers quiet resolutions—surgical, final, and preferably with paperwork after the deed. When I brushed against his boot, he glanced down and gave me a look that said we will keep the city sleeping tonight. He had a plan that did not involve poetry or pomp: de-escalation, relocation, and, if necessary, a discreet demonstration of consequence so evident none would suspect law in the morning.
We had a brief conversation in the corridor—soft, necessary, and written in the kind of language polite states use when they confess to having claws. "He nearly lost more than a sash," I purred, which in cat-speak means the man almost traded ceremony for absence. Gerald, who once taught a troll to read contracts as a method of diplomacy, replied in a voice like a file being closed: "Stubborn men make poor allies and faster enemies. We neutralize threats quietly. Arrest for treason is a spectacle; a missing heir is a mess. We will formalize his humiliation into statute." He liked statutes; they make consequences predictable and give bureaucrats jobs. I asked, with all the feline curiosity that graces me, whether he'd actually cleanse the problem with violence. Gerald smiled—a small, pragmatic curve—and said, "Violence is inefficient for paperwork, Benetton. We prefer legal death: stripping titles, auctioning estates, and a public trial that is dramatic enough to terrify imitators but administratively tidy. If necessary, however, we have options that leave less paperwork and more silence."
That sentence is worth placing on a shelf where the Empire keeps its more delicate implements. Gerald's preference for legal theater over bloodshed is not born of mercy but of economy: an execution leaves bodies and questions; an administrative erasure leaves a prize for loyalists and a museum plaque. Still, there are times when men choose tantrum over negotiation. Hansel, bent on maintaining myth, flirted with that line. He rallied a few retainers who still thought banners are arguments and not paraphernalia, and one of the more gullible captains staged—adorably and disastrously—a small walk-out meant to look like protest. The captain's protest was organized about as well as a tavern brawl planned by poets; it fizzled when the Witcherblades appeared in a manner that was cinematic without being wasteful. Gerald had them pinned, not with blades but with the offer of a contract: integrate, serve in border militia, and receive pension, or forfeit estates and live under surveillance. Most accepted with gritted teeth; a few preferred exile, which our maps handle well.
We then formalized Hansel's condition as law—not to humiliate but to neutralize. He kept his title as Duke of High Rock, an artifact for tourists and for the occasional family portrait, but the powers that used to accompany the sash were distributed among oversight boards, borough magistrates, and an ombudsperson who had the distinct joy of being inefficient by design to test patience. It is a delicate, delicious cruelty: to give a man a hat and remove the stage. Hansel, who had feared death, found himself alive but irrelevant, which is worse for men who breathe through praise. He lingered at banquets with a face like a rehearsed spectator, smiling when the camera required it and fuming when the cameras looked away.
Gerald and I walked the parapets later that night, the city breathing its arc-lamps like a sleeping beast, and we spoke of precedent. "We make examples, Benetton," Gerald said, folding his hand around the hilt of a blade that had earned his restraint. "Not to kill, but to teach. Law is a blade that cuts tidy, and sometimes people forget it uses a file." I flicked my tail in agreement because the lesson had claws and consent. "Does he know he was saved?" I asked, because ego is a tender thing and people need their theatre. Gerald's answer was dry and exact: "He knows only that he is spared and diminished. That is his punishment and his mercy. Pride learns through absence."
In the morning, the town read the proclamation like scripture: Titles redistributed, duties reassigned, the Duke's role ceremonial and his powers rescinded by statute. Public opinion, swayed by arc-light and the convenience of clean water, cheered for the change the way crowds cheer for a particularly satisfying rink installation. Hansel kept his hat and a small pension; the Empire kept his lands and repurposed them into mills and a school that taught ledger arithmetic and municipal loyalty. As for us—Gerald, I, and the archives—we filed it away: another solved problem, another neat precedent, and yet another moment where realpolitik dresses as civility. I licked the ink on the final page because signatures are delicious and because the cat's seal of approval makes history taste better, and perhaps a little cruel.
This is what annexation looks like in droplets: civil engineers and a parade of auditors; a bank that pronounces interest rates like benedictions; an army that rearranges banners into cooperative formations; and a population that learns, in gradual increments, to love the conveniences and curse the clauses. For every benefactor who praised the arrival of modern plumbing there was a poet who lamented the loss of the old night, and every inventor had a neighbor who worried about what happens when arc-ores hiccup in winter. The Realm imposed governance, of course, but we also brought weird little joys: a bakery that produced bread stamped with protective sigils, a tavern that served coffee that made you sing the municipal anthem at three in the morning, and a theater that would stage the Treaty of Caed Gwen as tragicomedy with a surprisingly positive critical reception. I recorded it all in my ledger—ink and fur and the occasional nap—because someone must keep the receipts, and because when history asks why an empire takes a kingdom, you may as well have the cat's version: blunt, snarky, and suspiciously accurate.