Hundreds of thousands of soldiers hustled about the savanna like tiny insects, carrying out their various functions for their queen, or emperor in this case. Emperor Haidar Batra paid them no mind. He didn’t need to supervise such low-level subjects; he had people to do that for him, and people to supervise those people, and so forth. They might as well be insects, given how little he pondered their lives on a day-to-day basis. He had bigger things to think about, especially right now.

Surrounded by opulence, Emperor Haidar sat on his portable throne in full view of both his subjects and the Eterians far up atop the wall in the distance. Haidar knew that in many ways image was everything. He wanted his people to see him ruling confidently where the action was; legends were written about courageous commanders on the front lines, not about delegators who sent out others and stayed thousands of leagues away from danger. He also wanted his enemies to fall into despair, looking out from their pathetic hiding hole and watching as he moved about in comfort and freedom, just out of their reach. Not that they would be able to touch him even if they could get to him; Taras, his powerful bodyguard who almost never left his side, would easily be able to protect him.

Every day his army grew larger as reinforcements made their way from Ubrus, down the pass from Redwater Castle, and through the newly-conquered lands of Gustil before arriving here at Crirada. Even with the arrival of Kutrad’s forces eleven days ago, Haidar’s numerical advantage was overwhelming and only getting more lopsided. So why did he feel so sour?

“Summon my generals,” he instructed a nearby page. “Tell them it’s time for another war council.”

The man bowed and ran off. Haidar took a sip of wine as he waited for his underlings to arrive. The first two to arrive were naturally the two closest generals, though they took longer than he would have liked. Rutgar Moiras was in charge of the western camp, where Haidar currently resided. Along with him came General Gala Inagorri, the woman who ran the Imperial Army’s more clandestine operations. Haidar’s other three subordinates, Peru Barcos, Luki Arrino, and Auriola Maldi, would take longer to arrive, as they were each in the eastern, southern, and northern camps, respectively. The two generals knelt down before him, waiting for permission to stand and look his way. He didn’t give it.

“You’re late,” Haidar stated with a frown.

The two generals shared a glance. Rutgar coughed, before speaking. “Our apologies, Your Eminence. Word did not reach us immediately, as we were both visiting the Champion.”

Haidar’s frown deepened. “Any change?”

The man shook his head. “No. If her Batranala had not told me that she still lived, I would have taken her for a corpse.”

“Yes, not even the greatest healer in the Empire has been able to help her. It seems that we are on our own from this point onward. Speaking of which, General Inagorri, I read your report earlier this morning. Do you stand by its findings? I find it hard to believe that, after everything that couldn’t stop her, she would be felled by a child with an ordinary knife.”

“As did I,” the woman replied. “I double checked their findings myself. There was no poison the blade, nor in her wounds, and the blade itself was actually cheap and poorly made. The boy claimed to not know who he was attacking and even maintained the claim for a while under duress. In my judgment, were this a planned operation, it would require an unheard-of level of organization, resources, and capability that would have been better utilized killing somebody such as yourself.”

As Haidar stroked his beard, pondering General Inagorri’s answer, his other generals arrived. They kneeled beside the first two. Haidar sat there without speaking for a few moments, letting them sweat a bit and making his displeasure felt.

“Do you know why I called you all here?” he asked after a tense and lengthy silence. Nobody answered. “Go ahead, anyone. No? General Arrino, how about you?”

Luki Arrino swallowed. “Because Crirada still stands, Your Greatness.”

“Incorrect. Given the level of defenses, I did not expect the city to fall so quickly even with our superior numbers and firepower. However, I cannot help but be disappointed by the lack of progress I am seeing. They should be close to breaking by now, and yet they are not. I expect better from all of you. The Champion is gone. You can no longer rely on her to single-handedly turn every battle in your favor. Now is the time to show me why you are the highest-ranking officers in the Empire.”

“Our victory is assured, Your Highness,” General Peru Barcos replied confidently. “Given time, even walls as great as theirs will fall before your might.”

“Given time?” Haidar repeated. “General Inagorri, what is the status of Stragma these days?”

“My agents report that Stragma has settled into their winter home of Hoxoni,” she replied. “In normal times, they would likely pose a threat by the turn of the season when they migrate to Kukego. However, given the work of our agents, the social fabric of their society is pulling apart and the chaos prevents them from coming to the aid of the other countries. Crirada will have fallen long before they can restore proper order to their nation.”

“Yet the chaos was created not by our people but by another party, was it not? The flow of events in Stragma is no longer under our control. Can you say with complete certainty that Stragma will not pose a threat to us by the turn of the season?”

“I...” The woman hesitated. “No, I cannot.”

“So you see, General Barcos, we have no choice but to operate under the assumption that our time is limited. Crirada is the single locus of meaningful resistance left outside of Stragma. We must destroy it before the thaws, or we may find hordes of Stragman warriors moving north and cutting off our supply line from Obura. I will not risk being stranded in another continent, warring on two fronts. Crirada must fall so what we can hold off the Stragmans while we clean up the rest of the world. Do you understand now, General?”

“Yes, Your Grace. Thank you for enlightening me.”

Haidar paid the flattery no mind and continued. “I want our soldiers hammering the walls every day, as much as possible. Wear them down. Grind them to dust until there is nothing left. Every day more Imperial legions arrive, while Eterium and Kutrad have nobody left to send. If I have to pay three of our soldiers for one of theirs, I will. Understood?”

The generals chorused their assent.

“Excellent. Now, rise.”

The generals gratefully stood up, a hint of relief on their faces. Doubtless, they expected Haidar to lay down a severe punishment for their lack of results, but he felt it was better to just give them a warning this time. Only a fool would go mess about with his army’s command structure in the middle of battle. Such methods, while perhaps providing immediate returns, would only hamper progress in the long run, and Haidar always made sure to keep the long run in mind.

“I want an update on all the other strategies you each are working on,” Haidar said. “General Maldi, have you made any progress tunneling?”

“No, Your Imperial Majesty,” General Maldi replied. “As you know, Supreme General Erizio Astalaria is the greatest earth Observer in the entire world. Try as we might, we have not been able to make a single tunnel beneath the walls without him detecting us and collapsing the tunnel. As long as he remains in the city, I do not expect much success in that endeavor. I would recommend reassigning the earth-moving teams to other tasks.”

“No, keep them working. Astalaria is the best commander they have. Anything that distracts him and takes him away from the job of command is worth doing.” He turned to the next person. “General Arrino, when do you believe that your pet project will arrive?”

“Not for at least another thirty days, Your Grandness,” the man replied reluctantly.

Haidar’s eyebrows shot up at the number. “Thirty days?! Preposterous! You assured me that they would be a mighty force to be reckoned with, but a force that never shows up for battle isn’t worth anything, general.”

“My apologies. I assure you that you will be delighted by their strength, Your Eminence, but you know how hard even one of them can be to transport. Taking dozens of them through The Divide has proven to be a considerable challenge.”

Haidar snorted. “Don’t talk to me about challenges. You have twenty-five days to get them here, or else. Don’t disappoint me more than you already have.”

“Y-yes, of course, Your Highness. I wouldn’t dare. They will be here, I swear on my family and my name.”

“Good.” Lastly, he turned back to General Inagorri. “General Inagorri, what is the latest from Agent Agharia?”

“Agent Agharia reports that he still needs more time,” responded his commander of clandestine operations.

“Still more?! Can anybody get anything done around here without taking a season to do it?!” Haidar could feel his ire growing.

The woman coughed. “If I could remind you, Your Greatness, Agent Agharia is a perfectionist who strives to find the optimal solution at all times. That is how he was able to hand us Ofrax on a silver platter. Because we’d tasked him with delivering us Redwater Castle until just last season, he has not had much time to properly prepare Crirada for us. He claims, however, that he is getting closer and that their gates will open for us soon. Given the result of his last operation, I would advise letting him work the way he desires so that we do not hamper his genius.”

“Hmmmmmm...” Haidar muttered. “Very well. You are correct, his work in Ofrax was a feat of sheer brilliance. However, make sure to impress upon him the limits of our time window. We can’t have him taking years like he did last time.”

“Of course.”

“Excellent. You are all dismissed.” The generals bowed as Haidar stood up and walked over towards his tent. The chill air was making his joints ache, but that was nothing a warm bath couldn’t fix.

The tent was one befitting an emperor such as himself, twenty paces high and hundreds of paces in diameter, and contained multiple rooms filled with luxury within. An Emperor had to have standards, no matter where he went. Ordering a hot bath drawn for himself, he sat down on a cushioned chair while Taras left the room to give Haidar some much-needed privacy. He ate a small snack as the bath water was prepared.

A pleased sigh escaped Haidar’s lips as he lowered himself into the tub. The hot water did wonders to soothe his joints and loosen tense muscles. Being Emperor of the great Ubran Empire, he couldn’t show his stress. But that didn’t mean he didn’t suffer it all the same. To say that this conquest was the culmination of generations of planning and work was putting it lightly. If he were to botch the final phase, he would not only go down as the man who failed, but he’d also tarnish the centuries of planning that had gone into this endeavor.

Much work had gone into preparing Nocend for Ubrus’s invasion, with the goal of dividing the nations and preventing them from properly mounting a unified defense. The oldest case was that of Drayhadal. The isolationist elven idiots had agreed to a secret peace treaty centuries ago, with the promise of support in their war with Stragma being all that was needed. Other countries had been much tougher, and Haidar had been forced to modify or even abandon plans as the situation throughout the continent had changed over the years.

One such example was Stragma. He’d sent in his undercover agents over twenty years ago with the goal of fomenting a slave rebellion that would at the least paralyze the country for seasons and at best bring the entire society down around it. However, plans had changed dramatically in the last few seasons, and what was supposed to be a bloody class war had turned into something else, something much harder to predict. Still, the unrest in Stragma had managed to achieve the desired outcome, at least for now, and his people could still make moves to ensure that it continued in the near future.

Otharia had been another example, a gamble that he’d had to arrange quickly. The consensus across the world had been that Otharia was a backwater nation that posed no threat. So little of a threat, in fact, that originally Haidar had not even factored them into his prospective plans. But then something had happened and a strange man of unknown origin had appeared and conquered the country all on his own with an army of terrifying metal beasts. The way he’d appeared out of nowhere and his might suggested to Haidar that this man was somebody like Gabriela, a being from another world entirely.

As soon as word had come of this “Lord Ferros” and his ascension to ruler of Otharia, Haidar had thanked his ancestors for their foresight. Specifically, he was grateful for the schemes of Emperor Rakorin, who two hundred years ago had managed to embed several Ubrans inside the xenophobic nation in the hopes of stealing the only thing Otharia had worth stealing: chimirin, and the plant and recipe that made it possible. Such a feat had proved impossible at the time, as Otharia guarded their chimirin with a fierce paranoia. However, that protection had failed during Lord Ferros’s takeover and descendants of the original agents, still loyal to the throne, had managed to steal both a large amount of the drug and some plants and get them out of the country.

While the drug would prove useful in the upcoming days, it had perhaps already provided its greatest boon already: helping convince Lord Ferros to turn against Eterium, and by extension the rest of the continent. The Ubran descendants had reported that a good amount of the drug and plants had already been taken when they’d stolen their own, and it hadn’t taken Haidar long to deduce where the missing goods had gone. Eterium was not only the most powerful nation in Nocend, but it was also the only nation to share a border with Otharia. They had likely coveted the fabled liquid for centuries.

Haidar had ordered three of his best agents in Nocend to assassinate the otherworlder using chimirin and a deadly poison stolen from Eterium four hundred years ago to give the illusion that they were Eterian assassins. If they’d succeeded, then the threat would be removed, but if they’d failed, with luck Lord Ferros would believe the attack to be Eterian in nature. While the man had shown himself to be stronger than even Haidar had thought possible, he’d also shown himself to be a fool and bought Haidar’s ruse entirely. By the time the man realized the truth, it would be too late, and Haidar would be able to bear down upon Otharia with the full brunt of his forces. No matter how terrifying Lord Ferros’s metal beasts were, there was no way they could stand against the might of all of the Empire.

Pulling himself out of the now-lukewarm water, Haidar dried himself with a towel before getting dressed. Normally there would be other people around to dry him and dress him, but even Emperors had to make sacrifices when on the road. Emerging from his tent and calling for a page, he issued one last summons before heading back inside to wait.

Not long after, Chitra Batranala arrived and was announced. The Batranala knelt before him perfectly, as was her way. In many ways, Chitra would have been the perfect wife for him, had he been thirty years younger. Flawless in beauty and action, with a sharp mind and a sharper wit. It was a shame that her status as an orphan prevented her from marrying into the Batra line. Haidar had done the next best thing and made her a Batranala instead, as her talents were far too good to let waste anywhere else.

“Rise,” he said to the kneeling woman. “I wish to congratulate you on a job well done. I knew that you were the perfect person to manage the Champion, and I must say that you exceeded even my wildest hopes.”

“I thank you, Your Imperial Majesty,” Chitra said with a graceful bow, “but anybody could have done what I did. Gabriela was desperate and we simply provided her a solution to her woes.”

“Nonsense. You had her wrapped around your finger with your charm. Now rejoice! Your task is over and you will return to the comfort of the palace, away from all of this bloodshed.”

The woman frowned slightly. “Then who will care for Gabriela?”

“Come now, my dear. As much as I wish it were not so, she is dead. If it makes you feel better, I will give her a funeral grander than any Champion has ever had to honor her contributions to the empire.”

Chitra immediately knelt down before him. “Your Grace, she is still alive! I know it! Please do not give up on her just yet!”

“Every healer that has looked at her has been unable to fix her. At this point, it seems obvious that even if she is not dead, as you claim, she is still broken beyond repair and can no longer heal herself the way she used to. She has no use to us any longer.”

“The healers are wrong! Please, I beg of you! If you give me a chance, I believe I may know how to save her!”

Haidar scowled. “Explain.”

“It’s taken me days of thought, but I believe that I have figured out the problem. It’s not that she can’t heal herself, it’s that she doesn’t want to. Her body may be broken, but it is her spirit where the true damage resides. If I can just reach her, I know I can fix her. I’m sure of it.”

"And how would you reach a woman who has not even moved a finger since they found her blood-covered body in Begale?"

“There... is a potion, one I found in the Imperial Library several years ago, called the Deadman’s Draught. It is said that it has the capability to bring even the most injured person back for a short time. If I can create this potion, I may be able to bring her back long enough to heal her spirit and then she can do the rest herself.

Haidar scoffed. “If such a miracle potion exists, why have I never heard of it?”

“Because it only works for a short time and once that time is up the person will die, no matter how healthy they were before taking it. It had little use and so was labeled a curiosity and forgotten. Please, Your Greatness, just give me a chance!”

“How long will it take to create the potion?”

“The ingredients are rare and must be prepared in a specific way. It will take time to gather all the required materials. Perhaps twenty days?”

Haidar knew that he should squash the whole idea right then and there, but he found himself unable to say so when he stared into the woman’s gorgeous, pleading eyes. What would it hurt to keep the Champion’s body for a little while longer, anyway? It was just one tent in a sea of them, guarded by a few soldiers. He had more soldiers than he knew what to do with.

“I will give you this one chance.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty! I promise you, you won’t regret this.”

“I’d better not. Now leave before I come back to my senses.”

Chitra exited the tent and Haidar leaned back in his chair and chuckled. It wasn’t going to happen, he knew, but if somehow his Champion returned to the fray... Crirada wouldn’t stand a chance.