As man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust.

So Shall You Reap

PAST

Evimeria, Tyche

They say the end defines the means, but Anaxeres realized from a young age that the opposite was true.

If you had terrible means—or if you used the wrong ones—you wouldn’t live to see the end.

Nephele Evimeria was one of Anaxeres’ more famous forebears. She was Lysimachos’ lover, killed by the Insane Emperor himself after the Slaughter began. There had been scandalous rumors of how her child—the Duke of Tyche after—had been Dantaleus’, of how she’d bewitched the entire Palace, etc. etc., but all possibilities of it being luck had been out of the equation.

She’d been reportedly very very callous, very very proud, and very very beautiful, which was apparently a very dangerous combination.

But what hadn’t been revealed to the public was her journals. Even though she hadn’t been a Cardinal, she had been in charge of the Imperial spies for quite a while—while she’d lived, until she’d died. My spiders, she called them. My eyes and ears.

Secrets.

So many secrets.

Anaxeres was enchanted with them while he was younger.

He’d gone gambling for the first time when he was thirteen. That was also the first instance where he’d shot himself in the head and lived.

It started with a kidnapping by a slightly off-kilter Denmaster.

“And— aww, Lord Anaxeres, you’ve lost—a hundred drachmas!”

The Denmaster smiled.

“All in a good day’s work,” Anaxeres said, voice trembling, just to keep the guy talking.

Mother please rescue me. Mother please—

Anaxeres remembered, very distinctly, almost wetting his pants. The warm light from an abandoned gambling Den, the stench of alcohol and dust so thick he’d nearly coughed, and the blurry face of a man who terrified him. Thankfully, all the guy had done was make Anaxeres play games with the former—card games, games the young lord knew due to his mother teaching him when he was younger.

Solitaire. Old Maid. Blackjack. Mostly Rhianite games—

But next, the Denmaster pulled a stack of cards and a golden gun from under the table.

“Alright,” said the Denmaster, after a moment’s hesitation. “We’ll begin the match! Whoever loses, takes a shot!”

That was also distinctly when Anaxeres remembered starting to cry.

The Denmaster prattled on, explaining a game, and the abducted thirteen-year-old boy was shaking.

His guards had been all killed—shot by that very gun; and now the kidnapper was reloading it so that there was a “chance game to be played.”

“You won’t play, will you?” asked the older man, daringly. He cackled. “Tyche is a fucking Tartarian city, little boy. And your mother’s running it into the ground by helping out Alina Evlogia and her cronies in Doxa—and you’ll be the price she has to pay if she doesn’t stop helping Evlogia right now.” He put his fingers out to retrieve the gun in the middle, withdrawing the game—

—And Anaxeres still to this day didn’t know how the fuck he put his hands forward and took the gun from the older man.

“L-Let’s play,” he managed to say.

A shocked silence, but Anaxeres didn't distinctly remember the Denmaster saying yes or no, or what he said, but the game had begun.

Younger him had lost—and oh, his hands had been shaking and his eyes had been tearing up, but the adrenaline was well worth it. Unfortunately, out of all the chambers, the first shot had been loaded. The bullet had slammed into his head with the force of, well, a bullet; and blood had cascaded from his head—and darkness, in all its hypnotizing kaleidscopic glory, had ebbed and flowed as he fell to the ground, trying to scream.

He remembered the Denmaster’s panic, but that was all he knew of that day before waking up in his bed a Dayhept later, amidst worried attendants; and Anaxeres had lied.

He'd said that the kidnapper had shot him.

The kidnapper was sentenced to death.

And that was the day when a lost gamble changed everything.

Because he saw the finish line that day.

The end.

They came when she called. Like dogs.

See, that was a barbaric comparison. Arguably.

But you could argue anything.

Anaxeres knew about Delphine’s secret strategy manuals. It was published under a pen name, of course, but given that the issue had first been raised through his network, he knew. Socialites, like Timaios and Josephine and everyone before them, could raise alarms and start scandals—and Anaxeres didn’t discredit their work: they were very good at what they did—but some secrets could ruin a nation while some just ruined lives.

It was just a matter of telling which was which.

Who to tell? Who was lying? Who was telling the truth?

Questions and answers, answers and questions.

He’d already tested his luck once, his mother kept saying before she died—why did he insist on doing so again and again?

Dance on the blade of a knife and you’ll get cut.

The Empress had told him a secret that could arguably ruin Gods.

“A trade,” she’d agreed. “For allegiance to a nation, why not a secret that could destroy it?”

And Greta had told him.

The late Emperor’s dalliance, a son that had been erased from history and memory. Until Anastasia Andino had died, only two people had known Nikephoros’ secret—Greta had erased her father’s memory, and Orion’s; leaving no trace of the Emperor’s violation of piety.

Why, she was practically handing Anaxeres a weapon.

But why?

What was true? What was false?

Anaxeres stood at the entrance of the Den. It bore the curse of Tychean infrastructure—the tops were choked with mist, giving it the ghastly old Evimeria look, but the entrance was decorated with twinkling lights that served as homing beacons in the fog. The Duke himself donned a cloak that shrouded his frame and shoulders, silken on his skin and gloves, as he stood in front of the door.

Aeron Andino.

If used wisely, this could be a thorn in Greta’s side. If used incorrectly, and Anaxeres had no proof to back up his claim—if the Duke would publicize the secret behind Aeron, at all—he’d be practically inviting the Imperial Family to his doorstep. Even his dear friend Arathis, if the former wanted to, would have no mercy.

The Duke had pledged his allegiance to Greta’s reign, as well as surrendering his—and Tyche’s—control over the Imperial spies. Greta having control only extended towards the duration of the (potential) conflict that the Empress hinted at, and based on the hints the newly-crowned Empress was playing a very dangerous game.

But aren’t we all?

The gambler, after another moment, crossed the threshold and sat in a corner after greeting the Denmaster. Flint.

A man came soon after, speaking to Flint in a friendly tone, before casting a glance towards the Duke. Anaxeres was tempted to wave, but he put on his mysterious persona and sat solemnly, hands clasped. As Aeron drew nearer, the dim lights of the Den (the Den like that very day, the gun and the blood and the thrill) shifted and revealed a face that looked nothing like Nikephoros—sure, there was a resemblance; but it was faint.

That was bad.

“Heya there, mate,” said the dealer. “How may I help yer?”

A thick Tychean accent.

Anaxeres leaned back.

“I’m looking,” said the man who’d tempted fate, “for an Aeron Nameless.”

He would see the end.

Diamandis, Notus

They say the end defines the means, but Petra realized from a young age that the opposite was true.

They stood.

Some argued that the people of the world had only one thing in common—amidst all that vainglory and greed and selfishness—and that was the desire for conflict.

Sure, others argued back, the human race was a violent one; but to say conflict was human nature would be to excuse the “bad” actions of the individual and praise “goodness” in other people when it was what is expected.

How much bad could you blame on “human nature” and how much good was the individual themselves?

A person wasn’t born a blank slate—they were already written on by birth, by whichever circumstances they were “destined” to be raised in, and for Petra those circumstances had been as the illegitimate child of Diamandis.

Petra Castellanos.

Petra’s mother had been a good mother.

Yes. A good mother.

It was in her memory that they took over Notus and nearly destroyed the Diamandis duchy.

Yes. In her memory.

Totally not because of the fact that Petra wanted money and power.

Of course.

The general and their comrades, battered bandits and rogues, poured beer into mugs as the group who held three quarters of Notus talked. One man with a grizzled beard and a beer-stained mouth drunkenly clambered atop the long oak table, staggering at times as he raised a full-to-the-brim mug.

“To all the Gods!” He lurched. “All the people we’ve sacrificed, all the people we’ve doomed! Everyone who’s abandoned us, everyone who called us lost, we—” he thumped his chest violently, spilling alcohol on the pot roast near his boots “—fight! And I’m here to give a toast to our general. Bastard that they are, bastard that all of us are, they brought us together. Rogues, cut-throats—even old Rudolph there, who stole my beer when I was on shift near the walls—are here for you.”

The drunken man raised his goblet.

“A toast! Huzzah to our army of the lost and abandoned!”

“HUZZAH!”

The inn erupted in laughter after the toast, scarred bandits cheerily exchanging jokes and gory anecdotes—it was as if this was a family gathering, and not a celebration of a takeover of a Cardinal Stronghold. Sure, once in a while the conversation would take a concerning turn—“Didn’t we kill that noble family because they were trying to support Diamandis?” or “Wasn’t that the Republica spy that tried to poison the general?”—but it was lively even when it wasn’t.

Republica and Imperi, spoken hand in hand like a mixed language, flooded the room; even some Tartari expressions here and there.

Of course, in other places, even knowing some of the Union’s language would get you mauled; but here—Notus being the most Kato-friendly place in the Empire—it was less religious blasphemy and more, “hey, where’d you learn that?” But Notus was different in the way that you didn’t really have the time to ask questions: if you weren’t busy worrying about whether you’d get robbed in broad daylight, you were busy worrying about finding who to rob in said broad daylight.

It was an Imperial thing.

“Another!” bellowed a drunk bandit, after leaning back and stumbling into another drunk bandit, who leaned back into, lo behold, a crowd of drunk bandits. The atmosphere didn’t shift but the bellowing drunk got a kick in his rear and was booted onto the floor.

Playing cards were distributed in a corner—the entire pub was filled with Petra’s army—and a woman threw a royal flush down to an uproar, cackling as she raked in piles of twinkling drachmas. Appetizers were clinked together instead of glasses, miniature cubes of meat meeting each other in unhygienic cheers, and the celebration continued like a parade no one could stop.

Except it was, Petra thought.

Stopped, they meant.

With the obstruction of a knife slicing into a cake—except the cake was moldy and had the texture of a stone, making the knife’s entrance a jagged hammering of an axe that brought out all the annoyance it possibly could—the raucous chaos was interrupted.

The doors to the tavern crumpled in, and an army of soldiers marched in.

At the head was a woman dressed in the uniform of the Imperial Army—the Notian branch—who was, conveniently, Petra’s father’s beloved henchman. She made a beeline for Petra, the festivities pausing as everyone rose to their feet and reached for their weapons, and so Petra smiled as they came face-to-face.

They didn’t get up from their seat at the table, and at that the woman wrinkled her nose distastefully.

“Petra Castellanos,” she acknowledged, drawing out the words, “I am here as a messenger from His Grace, Duke Diamandis of Notus, and to inform you that you have been recognized by the current Duke of Notus as a successor to the Diamandis Duchy.” As if the words were poison, the woman pressed her lips together and kneeled afterwards, the guards behind her following.

“I—” again, like the words were poison “—pledge my allegiance to the line of Diamandis.”

A long, long silence.

And then Petra laughed—they laughed long and hard, pulling their lips into a hard grin in the silence that followed.

“Well,” the general said under their breath, “sure took you long enough.”

Petra Castellanos, Ducal Lord of Notus.

If their troops demanded to ignore the surrender—and it was basically a surrender, they’d come to understand—and shove past to take Notus through violence, Petra wasn’t sure how much losses they would take (not could take, the wording was obvious—the rogues, as they’d taken to calling themselves, had the upper hand here).

Petra’s father, the old man, was offering a ceasefire instead of bloodshed. With the Duke’s official recognition of Petra’s title, all was well and good. Of course, the general had killed their father at the behest of, well, revenge; but after that all was well and good. Petra’s best people were awarded seats at the Notian Council and the title of Chancellor, and the former had finally strong-armed the Empire into submission—meaning that the Emperor Nikephoros himself would see Petra’s standing—and the conflict had ended.

They heard what others said.

Strategy or brute force? How much of it was luck and how much was ability?

Petra was at the center of the storm, so they couldn’t really see the sheer size of it; but they knew that what they had done was, as everyone else told them, “incredible.”

They’d led an army of the lost and abandoned, and won.

The ends define the means, after all.

And they would see the end.

Diamandis, Notus

-After a Certain Republica Consul Was Told to Betray His Country

Two figures stood, in the tent.

“The point of all this,” a Ducal Lord said in the silence, “is that we’re giving the guy enough rope to hang himself, and—I know I hated when people did that to me, but...does the fucker really deserve it?”

A Duke put his hands on their shoulders. “Does anyone?” Anaxeres asked quietly, his broad face for once still.

Petra shook the gambler off. “I’m not asking if this is right, Naxy,” they rebuked in a lowered tone. “I’m telling you this is wrong.” Their eyes were heated as they met the Duke’s gaze—clear as water, Anaxeres’ eyes always had been: serene as a madman awaiting death. “The fucker doesn’t deserve it,” Petra continued. “And I’m not saying it because I’m a bastard, too—I’m saying this as a person.”

A beat.

“Are you going to stop doing this,” Anaxeres said, “just because it’s wrong?”

Petra snorted. “You’re asking questions that you already know the answer to,” they responded, voice plummeting to a whisper. Bandages shifted over their wounds, scars mottling their arms, as they spoke again. “Can we stop at all?”

The ends justify the means.

Both of them looked, through layers of fabric and sky, at the Sky they were under. On it glistened a splattering of stars, constellations that formed stories, and they would form their own.

What is a person’s destiny, if not to die breathing in the Sky?

Where is a person’s destiny, if not written in the stars?

There would be an end to all this.

And both of them would live to see it.