PrologueHe is awakened by God's call, or the appearance of sixteen Sun rays peeking from four different windows. It is a sight that has blessed him with another day. Smell alerts him to an unexpected absence by his side. He can trace, through the nostrils, a trail of pink leaving the left side of his emperor-sized bed, entering the emperor-sized bathroom, and then leaving through the main door out of his bedroom. She must've done it sometime between four and five in the morning, sneakily enough that his body, rge, exorbitant, and impassable, did not notice.
YRATAK, Emperor of Kharett, begins his day by stretching. The guards by the door outside have been trained to notice that he has awakened by hearing the potent snap of his ligaments. Only then do the royal chefs begin preparing breakfast, while at least one guard awaits any particur orders. Today, one of said particur orders was, "Never, EVER let her leave again without my strict approval." He spoke it from the other side of the door, knowing well that others were listening and waited not for them to respond before he continued his routine. He only walked out of bed once he was confident that each step would be given with resolve. Because men, especially those tasked by God, are forbidden from stumbling.
He reached the bathroom and walked forth, reaching a mirror dispying the figure of a true ruler. He was intact: built of a dark brown body that has remained toned, though bruised in certain areas (with one or two noteworthy scars under the chest area), and with silvery medals beginning to decorate the trimmed jungle in his torso. Time was only beginning to come for him, much like his father and grandfather had once said it would. And, much like they promised to him, he would not fear time or age. He would welcome it and face death gracefully on its day, knowing it only is a gateway to something greater.
That day would not be today, though. He still had matters to finish. Many of them. Particurly essential construction pieces of his life's holy task.
The bathroom's floor was characterised only by a gift left behind by the pink-scented girl: a barely-used, barely-visible lipstick coated in a bright, even pinker matter, that... was... now... on him? YRATAK could not believe he had not noticed it moments ago, but a small patch of pink glitter was present between his often-tense neck and another on his split, perfectly shaved, powerful chin. It had to be cleaned immediately. Fortunately, he'd entered the bathroom for a reason, and in no more than forty-two minutes, he'd showered, letting no time be wasted under hot water ruminating around the pink-scented girl and her actions in the previous night. The lipstick itself was then discarded— or not, probably not, it was most likely put somewhere safe where peeking eyes would not find it. He discarded it from his mind, however, as more important things were at py.
Today, YRATAK will have a meeting. If the meeting went well, he would win. Or at least, his victory would become inevitable. If the meeting did not go well... he would win, too, but differently. Every py done since his crowning nearly fifty years ago has led to this moment of his, where destiny can only be a joyful sight.
If fate wished it so, he could very well let the person he's supposed to meet today be killed by his guards. Or by himself. He's carrying a dagger, after all, is he not? He's left the bathroom and fetched his dagger, a weapon almost his size, generally used for ceremonial purposes but today wielded in case he is forced to take a visitor's life.
By now, he is, too, dressed; and it must be noted that an Emperor shall not be reduced to repetitive Royal Garments. He considers himself deserving of a modest freedom of vestimentary choice. Today, he wears bck and gold, a subtle wear accentuating luxury. Gold in his shirt transitions well from the belt to the neckce to the crown: the most important wear of them all, rger than his head, the diadem only having a sor decoration at its centre and several peaks pointing as rays to symbolize the man's duty as representative of the Almighty Sun.
Needless to say, he also puts on the sungsses he is always seen with— today's model complementing the chosen palette and obscuring his light, very light eyes. He abandons his room and approaches the pce where he will expect his visitor, about twenty minutes from now.
YRATAK has learned to ignore the presence of others in his pace. He once denounced that it was unnecessary to keep a hundred or something idiots protecting from an invasion that would never happen, and that, even if it did happen, could be stopped by only himself and a bde. The bde he carried, concealed at his belt, received the Sun's light at the handle and spread it across the hall, made of a bright gold. At its centre, a smiling depiction of God, the Sun, said to be the one st image the eyes see before a blinding fsh of light takes you to the end: a fitting symbol carried in an item of death. The guards allowed themselves to be ignored but still saluted the monarch while restraining their fear of the tall man. One of the stained-gss windows that was opened brought wind in, and gently shook the Emperor's thick, dark braids, a few lingering droplets of wet falling down into the marble floor, soon to be cleaned by the ever-waiting cleaning men. His bck boots echoed the sound of authority to both ends of the corridor until he had traversed it. Only then did he meet one of the few people he allowed to speak to him first throughout the day, known simply as Trelidos, his top advisor.
Trelidos was small. Small not only when compared with the two-meter-tall Emperor but also when compared to your average man, to your average woman, and maybe even when compared to your average Labrador dog. He made a proper complement to the Emperor's height, although he struggled logistically to communicate with him without climbing to the tall man's shoulders, which is, of course, something he was not allowed to do. Their solution was for the Emperor to be given a headpiece every time Trelidos had something to say, and for Trelidos to carry a microphone with him at all times. In the event of an urgency, the Emperor often lifted Trelidos by the neck of his shirt and brought his entire body closer to his ear so he could hear him better without interfering technology.
The comically small advisor had few words to say today, but they were important things, carrying their little urgency with themselves. "Good morning, er, your majesty, er, sir." He stuttered despite saying the same thing to him every morning, but he spoke fluently when dictating the rest of his morning report. "We captured Merebold this morning. The hotelier was very helpful — he told Ydra that she would be back for lunch. She did not seem to suspect anything, but, er, we have her exact location pinned as well just in case." The advisor cleared his throat before he continued. "Liya, um, she was not an easy target, sir. She resisted more than we expected. We had to put her down —" The Emperor's breathing shifted for a moment when he heard it, and even that little movement of his brow was enough to send a chill down the advisor's bloodstream. Trelidos feared for his life. "No!! She's not dead, I mean, er, not in that way. We just had to, sleep her, um, with sleep leaves. She is alive, I mean, just sleepy." Trelidos seemed to lose track of his script. He prepared his debrief hours in advance every day, but today he seemed more agitated than usual.
He, much like many of the castle's highest ranks who knew of today's meeting, wondered why The Emperor wouldn't deal with this woman in particur 'the easy way'. It was disorientingly unusual for the Emperor to 'meet' someone he did not have an absolute agreement with. When he did, it was usually in a dark room filled with sharp equipment specialized in making political prisoners say things they promised themselves they would never say. So when he announced he needed a young scientist seized and brought to his throne room, whose only particurity was the woman she was married too, eyebrows were raised.
"She is waiting for you in the throne room. The men will only remove the bag from her head once you are prepared to meet her, your majesty." Trelidos said.
Despite not responding to any of Trelidos' words, the Emperor listened carefully and concluded their conversation with a nod, and by removing the headpiece from his head, pcing it in a dedicated little box at the end of the corridor, as they'd both reached the end of it while talking. In front of the Emperor and Trelidos now y a door that was humongous for one of them and a bit compact for the ruling man.
YRATAK heard a woman's struggles in the adjacent room.
As he opened the door, he was welcomed by the sight of his throne: a rge golden structure with a soft gradient of reddish plush welcoming him to find his so-exclusive seating. The throne seemed to flow naturally into the floor, decorated by a series of marble decorations depicting an abstract massacre of warm hues. The throne y atop an elevated ptform, with a long, two-step stair dividing the ruling man from visitors and servants, in this case, the tter being two of his guards holding an adult woman with a bag on her head.
He did not let her whimpers or groans distract him— instead, he let the throne seduce him in as it did every day. YRATAK loved a good stroll, a proper deadlift, and even a spar with the weakest among his trainers, but he admittedly found a certain comfort in simply sitting on the throne and having an even higher vertical advantage over everybody else.
Behind his throne, and therefore behind him, too, there is a great, rge painting of a strange valley featuring two god-like figures. On the right, a woman enveloped in golden feathers with the inscription "Fortune" under her. On the left, a man sculpted after the Emperor, but with the Sun painted above his neck, and with an unclothed body that glowed like the great star. The Sun's presence in the painting appears to have been incorporated as a modification many centuries after the original painting was produced. One can even notice that the man is surrounded by certain purple artifacts, indicating the former, vandalized presence of a goddess underneath. The two figures appear to be kissing, but the artistic alteration adds an air of awkwardness in the retionship between the dispyed God ruler and the Angel of Fortune. The Emperor does not need to watch the painting again. He knows it by heart. It is far more interesting to see his visitor's squirms.
"Motherfucker, I know you're there. Coward! Beheading me while covering my face!" The girl's words were garbled by a makeshift mouth gag, visible once the Emperor gestured for the guards to remove the bag on her head.
"Behead you?" The Emperor said, overseeing the woman. Despite her audacious, vulgar speech, her eyes were clearly terrified to be here. The bag that now y on the floor was humid with a dreadful sweat. The Emperor appeared amused. "I like that offer." He pointed his dagger toward the woman. They were distant from each other, but she could still feel the bde's impending doom. "But I'll decline. You have served the Empire best with your head over your shoulders." He stood. "Liya Merebold, is it? I wish we could have met at a better time. Surely you can understand me sending subordinates to meet your colleagues throughout the years. I cannot afford to take visits to Ibraleshi territory."
"You aren't welcome there." As Liya begins to choke on her spit, the Emperor motions for the piece of tissue in her mouth to be removed. The guards do so aggressively, pulling it hard enough to hurt her lips. "You'd be dead before you made it to Tatsubo."
Her hands are tied, she wears a yellow polka dot dress, and is just below average height for an Ibraleshi woman. Somewhere in the middle of the Trelidos-to-YRATAK scale. Her hair, of a mossy green colour, looked short and recently cut. It barely reached her neck, but while the bag was on her face, it was dishevelled to the point where most of it obscured her face. Her skin was pale, probably more right now than it already is, and her eyes oval-shaped, with smeared make-up around them.
Determined not to kill her yet, YRATAK ignores her protests. "I will be brief, knowing well you have a honeymoon to return to." The man's teeth were of a bright white, but they did not all share the same uniformity. Liya, on her end, shivered at the mention of the honeymoon, unable to show any faked fierceness any more. "Your 'Telemate' has revolutionized the transport of goods as we know it. It is a device that has given us an edge over the world." He breathes in, and his face seems to point toward one of the stained-gss windows, with a depiction of Miralis — the world. "Nonetheless, in less than a year, we have moved past the priority of moving only wheat and minerals. We —" His hands are csped together, and what was formerly a fake familiar tone had become that of a general. He looks like a politician choosing his words carefully. "Between now and the next decade, Laia Laboratories will need to develop a way to transport thousands of people across many kilometres of sea in less than a day."
By now, Liya had begun speaking in a lower volume. "An invasion."
"An Empire that does not grow will soon shrink..." The Emperor held his dagger, knowing its bde had yet to cut its st throat. "... And we are far from owning a nd spread where the Sun does not set."
"This God of yours," Liya faces the Sun, visible through one of the stained-gss windows. It is hard to ignore its presence. "Must've fried your brain, too, if you think I'll help you wage war against the world." The Sun's wrath is ever-present. And she smiles, still. "Fuck you. I won't."
YRATAK's eye shivered. The dark sungsses were meant to conceal these reactions of his. His rage, channelled from God's, was exhaled so he remained at the psychological advantage he preferred. "I figured." He slowly approached Liya, walking down the steps, nearing her. "It would be a shame, however, if I finished the job with Ydra, would it not?"
Liya's eyes squinted ever-so-slightly, and she moved slightly as the Emperor approached. "Y-Ydra?" Her tone trembled, but the confusion was earnest. She did not know any Ydra.
"Oh," The Emperor was extremely pleased all of a sudden. One could feel a trance piercing his sungsses from the burnt eyes. "She never told you her real name, did she?" But behind his glee, the name 'Ydra' reverberated as an icon of hate. He spoke of her in ways he didn't speak of anybody else. "Your 'wife' doesn't trust you for shit."
Liya crouched, her hands still tied. A sudden, sharp pain invaded her stomach, and she could only fall into herself. "You're lying." She lied to herself. "You're sick. She's —" Liya struggled to keep herself sane. Visible in her eyes was a mind realizing more than it should.
Ydra, Ydra, Ydra, the name had been pnted in her memories long ago: a historical figure, or the daughter of one, rather: a girl decred missing from the world, meant to be found and executed when she was only eleven years old. Ydra Yiemmansek was thought to have fled, or perhaps to have died fleeing, or perhaps to have escaped the Empire and become a newspaper saleswoman abroad. But no, Ydra had not fled, she wouldn't! Ydra Yiemmansek had learned stealth from her parents, even if they never lived to raise her. Liya hated herself for not having figured it out sooner. The threads suddenly joined vague moments of her mind. It couldn't have just been a happy coincidence that her wife was an orphan, born 'somewhere near the capital', with strange, particur interests in politics, a tallness reserved for queens and two gorgeous brown eyes that could lead a continent to war. It couldn't have been just a little peeve, for her wife to feel uncomfortable sharing details of her past. Or that she refuses to engage in any non-critical form of state bureaucracy. Liya felt betrayed. Her thumb rubbed on her wedding band as it sometimes did. Except now, it found no comfort in feeling the texture of their engraved names around the golden circumference. One of the two names, "Liya", was that of a hurt woman. The other, "Salih", was made up. The real one, "Ydra", was nowhere to be seen. Liya wished she'd known from her. Would she have ever known, had the Emperor never told her just now? Would it have been a deathbed confession or some kind of spur-of-the-moment thing? Would it have come up in conversation eventually? Layers upon yers of pain settled on Liya's heart. She did not know the history of Ydra Yiemmansek by heart (it is likely nobody does any more but the woman herself), but it is certainly no happy infancy to be persecuted to death by an Emperor. Liya hurt. How much of Salih — how much of Ydra's pain did she not know of?
Could she have done more to deserve the truth?
The tears in her eyes did not move the Emperor, who was now convinced things had gone way, way better than he anticipated. Liya Merebold was known to put up fights, but she was currently curled up to herself, paler than ever, and sobbing. She barely flinched when the tall man approached her, his shadow rge enough to block the entirety of her body, and he crouched to get closer to her.
"If it makes you feel any better," He grabbed her from the colr of the white shirt underneath her dress. The woman cked a reaction; her eyes pointed vaguely onward, broken, and betrayed. YRATAK lifted her into the air, effortlessly, blocking the Sun's entrance with her head, raising her high enough that dropping her could harm her, especially as stiff, weak and tired as her body currently is, almost like a corpse's. The Emperor, still, marvels in the prey he's caught, watching the tears keep rolling down her face, and her brain refusing to acknowledge the truth that's just been said to her. "If it makes you feel any better...!" He repeats. "I am mad the cunt has been hiding from me in pin sight, too. With innocuous short hair unlike her whore mother's unruliness, and with her father's chin disguising the genetic fucking pgue of Trance... believe me that I would rather crush her to dust right this very moment than let her keep breathing an air she doesn't deserve." Liya's eyes return to life for a moment, only to feel a terrible fear. Her wife is going to be killed. YRATAK continues. "But you see what I want from you, do you not? The one way everyone can stay alive and happy." Holding her up, still, he tilts her. From up there, Liya sees his eyes up close, behind his gsses, a moonscape of light surrounded by dark skin. Despite being barely visible, the woman finds evil within the grey pupils. She struggles to say anything. So he continues. "Build the machine. You have one year."
Suddenly, Liya is thrown. Like dirty rags, or like a torn doll, she is thrown across the room with a force she'd heard described in propaganda but never experienced against her own body.
YRATAK felt he was throwing someone else: the pink-scented girl, deserving of kinetic punishment for allowing herself so many liberties but not even giving him the courtesy of staying after a night. The feeling of vindication was brief. And guilt never came. He was born without it. Or perhaps it was stripped away from him by the Sun, on his third birthday, when he was brought to the highest peak in the Empire, and lifted toward the Sun at noon, for his eyes to see His glory until it burned in his sight...
Liya falls on the marble ground, and a pain in her knees and then her shoulders seems to temporarily wake her up. Life returns as a constant to consider. It needs to continue. She slowly stands up on her own, and a guard undoes the rope on her wrists. She feels none the freer. Her body is paralysed, and she struggles to run away. Perhaps fortunately, the way seems to be blocked anyway. YRATAK is not done with her.
He gives one step forward, and she suddenly feels like she has been stabbed in the chest. Compared to all of herself she owned when she had left their hotel room this morning, she was now deathly terrified of the Empire. She seemed to flinch and tremble the more he approached, and he suddenly leaned in to speak to her again. "Am I clear?"
Liya felt her breath cut short. She could not stop crying. Why was she crying? She needed her eyesight to be clear now more than anything. "Yes." She nodded. She only wanted to be out of here. As soon as possible. Her face was soaked with both sweat and tears as the humongous face of evil looked at her closely. "Human teleportation. I will discuss it with Doctor Muias, my boss, and —"
"Trekkos will not need to be convinced." The Emperor's hands were now behind his back. One could hear his fists were clenched. "All you need to do is build the machine." His head jerked toward the principal door of the throne room, which was just then opened.
A guard appeared to guide Liya out, and the Emperor only heard a voice fading out as he gave her a series of orders, including but not limited to never speaking of this meeting with anyone outside of official Imperial delegates, who would visit her workpce periodically for updates on the construction of the expected device.
Trelidos returned to the Emperor, chippy as the little man is, to congratute him on a successful meeting, and said a series of sentences that arrived in his brain as white noise. Something about spying on Liya Merebold's progress, something about making sure she does not leave the country... he pays little mind to it, or even struggles to pay any mind to it, and decides to withhold any meetings or operations for the rest of the day. An exhaustion falls upon him, immediately attributed by him to the busy schedule of the week prior.
The sungsses obscured well the mencholy with which he returned from where he came from, crawling back into the Emperor sized bed from which he awakened, to try and gather back into his memory: That of a pink scent that had abandoned him somewhere during the previous night, after he fell asleep peacefully while delicate hands began their usurpation under royal sheets.
