Instead of the celebrations that would customarily greet an Emperor riding through Methrangia’s streets, morose and somber citizens lined the streets to pay homage to the new emperor, Rohmhelt. No musicians played that day. No great cheers rose from the throngs. Rather, sad and vacant stares locked on Rohmhelt, as though the whole city had been traumatized by the tragedy of seeing Solnaht Citadel collapse in flames before their eyes.

Rohmhelt rode at the column’s head atop a silver-haired horse with a near-constant scowl on his face. This was not an affectation. He was not attempting to appear strong and determined. Instead, he was masking his considerable dread on the approach to Solnaht Citadel, or rather its ruins. Normally, as he rode up Nimoros Avenue as he did that day, he would be able to see the great glass dome sitting atop the citadel and the several glorious shimmering towers ringing it. Their absence screamed at him.

Had I not seen it, I never would have truly believed this had happened, he ruminated. I should’ve dragged father away from here. I knew this was coming. I could’ve done more to warn him.

At the end of Nimoros Avenue, finally he could see the piles of rubble that had once been the greatest structure in all of Vorlanys. Shattered remnants of smooth black, green, and tan stones stacked over a hundred feet high over the whole of Solnaht Island in the city’s center. Some hundreds of soldiers had arrived early to search for survivors and anything else that had survived the destruction. They labored to the point of exhaustion, having carried huge numbers of stones in a short time.

When Rohmhelt dismounted just after the bridge, those soldiers’ commander barked an order for them to salute their emperor. Evidently, his command that none were to kneel before him had been received. Instead, the men simply crossed their right arms over their chest and laid their hand on their left shoulder as a sign of fealty.

“Hail, Emperor Rohmhelt,” the captain, a stocky young man, yelled.

“Hail to the Emperor!” the men responded in unison, a call which was repeated by those citizens lining the streets surrounding the island.

Somberly, Rohmhelt acknowledged them with a restrained wave. Part of his lethargy was fueled by the sickening and putrid air, augmented, he was sure, by the festering corpses lying below Solnaht Citadel’s rubble.

“Captain, have you found anything?” Rohmhelt asked even though he feared the answer.

“Your Imperial Majesty, we have recovered a number of bodies that were in the throne room, including… including…” he replied, seemingly losing heart to finish his sentence.

“My father?” Rohmhelt interrupted.

“Yes,” the captain said, motioning his head toward a covered body over by the island’s east bank. “We found him in the throne room’s wreckage. I must tell Your Imperial Majesty that you would doubtlessly find what became of the Emperor’s body most upsetting.”

Rohmhelt nodded, but moved toward the cloaked body.

“I need to see it,” he said.

“V… Very well. I’ll show peel the covering away, but I must caution that this is easily the worst thing….”

“Be done with it,” Rohmhelt motioned impatiently.

With a deep breath, the captain ripped off the covering, revealing the mangled corpse of Emperor Covifaht II. His eyes were gouged out into bloody abyssal pits, while shards of glass punctured his chest and stomach, and his arms and legs had been crushed and twisted by the stones that had fallen on them. Gruesome and revolting though it was, Rohmhelt did not flinch. He had seen this all before. His visions, which had panicked, depressed, and haunted him for three years now had dulled the horror. Finally seeing that this doom had transpired fazed him little, a fact which did more to upset him than the actual sight of his father’s desecrated remains. That this curse of premonitions had robbed him of the grief to properly mourn for his father almost caused him to laugh. There was an absurdity to it all that he couldn’t grasp. It almost all felt like a cruel joke. A solitary comforting thought came to him, though.

At least you’re with mother now. I know how much you missed her and how much she has missed you. Be at peace now, father. I will avenge your death. I swear it.

“Dig out my family’s mausoleum,” he ordered, referring to the sprawling labyrinth beneath Solnaht Citadel. “We’ll bury him next to my mother.”

“Very good, Your Majesty, the captain said. “I’ll need more men to…”

“You shall have them. Speak with Marshal Agrehn. However many are needed to this quickly.”

“I’ll need at least ten thousand men if…”

“We’ve got them, captain,” Rohmhelt said. “Send for me when you’re ready to lower my father into the crypts. I want to see him off.”

“Of course, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Matriarch Yldrina will oversee his burial rites to be sure that’s all done properly,” Rohmhelt continued in a detached tone. “I don’t know how he’d feel about a Karmandian cleric, but that’s my decision.”

“As Your Imperial Majesty wills it,” the captain responded weakly.

Rohmhelt almost felt obliged to press the captain to see if he disagreed with the decision he’d made. His better senses prevailed, however. He could feel loyalties wavering all over. There was no need to do anything that would exacerbate the situation. The whole city had an unsettled air. All felt impermanent now. He understood fully why it was Parlon had chosen to destroy Solnaht Citadel. With that symbol of authority crushed, and Emperor Covifaht with it, nothing had certainty.

Rohmhelt continued to receive updates from the forced working to clear out the citadel’s wreckage while he met with his marshals, Queen Evinda, and Lohs at Heldraht Palace. During a pause in their deliberations, Rohmhelt stood at one of the windows facing toward what were now Solnaht Citadel’s ruins. It was a fine enough view of the sprawling mass that was Methrangia, but that had never been why he would stand at those windows. Impressive as the city itself was, it was no match for that glorious structure the angels had built for his family centuries earlier.

Lohs, standing slightly hunched over at his side, must have concurred as he sighed regularly.

“I never thought we’d be here if you were emperor. It’s a funny thing now, but I really had dreams of serving you in the citadel. If we prevail in what we’re fighting for, we’ll never see its like again,” Lohs said wistfully. Rohmhelt didn’t respond and the old man continued. “Actually, I suppose I never thought I’d live long enough for you to be emperor. Strange thing, I’ve seen other emperors, being born twelve years before your father, but he is the only one my mind thinks of as being emperor.”

That stay comment triggered a glance from Rohmhelt. Lohs forced a half-smile and chuckled.

“I meant no offense,” Lohs laughed, offering a mocking bow. “You’ll have to forgive me. Haven’t gotten past the shock of all of this.”

Rohmhelt nodded. His own feeling was much the same, except that part of his mind had almost treated his father’s gruesome demise as a banality with the innumerable times he had seen it. His greatest shock, instead, came from not yet accepting that he was truly ruler of the Methrangian Empire. That thought terrified him, filled him with wonder, and fueled his resolve to crush his brother all at the same time. Oddly enough, he also wondered where his own statues would reside now that Solnaht Citadel had been destroyed. That’s a thought for another time, he scolded himself.

“It’ll be a while until this all sinks in for me. When it does, I’ll probably scream,” Rohmhelt grumbled. “That’s how it was when mother died.”

“That truly was a tragic day,” Lohs said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen people quite as sad as they were when that news was read around the city. I remember you looking quite stolid during all of that. It gained you great credit among the people.”

“That was a shell.”

“Oh, I know,” Lohs forced a chuckle. “No judgment from me. It probably took me three months before my wife’s death truly hit me. I was too busy to think about it much. Then it was at some noble’s marriage, Lord Tralgahn I think, it overcame me all at once. Broke down like an old woman.”

Rohmhelt loosed a light chuckle at that image. He wondered if Lohs’s laughter over the years was his own shell, a complete deflection only different in form from Rohmhelt’s.

“I’m going to try to ignore the fact everyone’s looking to me now,” the Emperor said, changing the subject radically. “I’ll proceed exactly how I was before.”

Lohs sighed and patted Rohmhelt on the back.

“I hope you don’t truly think you can do that,” he said. “As a delusion to make life easier, I understand, but the truth of it is that you have come into the greatest title in the world. The people will expect more of you than they did before. It’s…”

Just then, a messenger from the army arrived to interrupt Lohs’s new version of his familiar diatribe about duty. A handsome young man, the messenger appeared embarrassed to have interrupted a conference between the Emperor and his most senior advisor.

“Your Imperial Majesty, Marshal Agrehn is ready to continue at your convenience,” the messenger said with forced confidence.

“Tell him I’ll be down shortly,” Rohmhelt replied.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the messenger said, bowing, before running down the stairs behind him.

Rohmhelt closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

“What was it you were saying?”

“Erm… I honestly don’t remember,” Lohs said, bewildered.

“That makes two of us,” Rohmhelt chortled, which brought a smile to Lohs’s face as well.

Down in what had, at one point, been Rohmhelt’s study when Heldraht Palace had been his home, Marshal Agrehn had laid down a large map of the lands immediately surrounding Methrangia and its near-in smaller communities. The map was littered with some dozens, possibly hundreds of small figurines that Marshal Agrehn had diligently placed for both armies. He continually received updates from a legion of runners he had assigned to scouts keeping an eye on Zarmand’s armies as well as those attached to each division of the Emperor’s armies. Each update caused him to move a corresponding figurine slightly to accurately represent its position.

Rohmhelt stood with Queen Evinda and Lohs at the table’s opposite end while Agrehn silently completed his latest round of updates.

“There,” the marshal declared after moving a final horse figurine slightly eastward. “Now, the situation. We have three hundred thousand men in the city proper as of this evening with another two armies, two hundred thousand men, arriving after dark. Another two armies north, another two armies south. The Gadisians and their one hundred thousand will be joining the far southern flank. Those six armies the late emperor had assembled are somewhat depleted from defections after…”

“They defected to the one who killed their Emperor?” Evinda interrupted with incredulity.

“Quite so, Your Majesty,” Agrehn replied in a rapid clip, dispassionately addressing her point. Rohmhelt wanted to rage about that disloyalty, but he knew he should save his strength. “We’ve gained some of theirs to offset. Discipline has been erratic in preventing these things on both sides. Some have just run off altogether. Most of these men have never seen any war. The cowards are showing themselves.”

“All told, we should still have my brother outnumbered, even with all of these issues, correct?” Rohmhelt asked.

“Oh yes, and by a good margin,” Agrehn said, pointing to the approximate ratios of figurines on each side. “There is a complication. I’ve said before that our forces are of an inferior quality. That has not changed. They have superior cavalry, archers, and heavy infantry. They have veterans of recent wars. Our men have seen nothing. Therefore, it is my strong advice to Your Majesty that we remain behind the Nehal River and let them come to us.”

What Agrehn offered was something very different from what the Emperor had envisioned. In Rohmhelt’s mind, his armies, the largest ever assembled in the world’s long history, would sweep aside his brother’s forces and deliver swift justice for his cowardly murder of their father. When he closed his eyes, he saw his legions swamping Duronaht’s and delivering an ignominious defeat that would resound throughout the ages.

“I understand your recommendation,” Rohmhelt said in a measured voice. “I’m uncomfortable surrendering the initiative, however. Why would they choose to attack across the Nehal? Might they go somewhere else to outmaneuver us?”

I’m sure Agrehn will find my military thoughts incredibly stupid, the Emperor mulled after he finished speaking.

Agrehn breathed deeply, as though he was considering how to phrase the matter in a more delicate way than was his instinct.

“There are two factors cutting in our favor at this time,” Agrehn rumbled. “One is that we occupy the capital and second is that I suspect their morale problems are worse than ours. You have every legitimate claim to the throne. Your brother is stating that support from angels in rebellion against the High Angel should give him legitimacy. He has to win a victory, and soon. His one way to try to delegitimize you is to defeat you.”

“You’ve given this some very good thought,” Lohs chimed in.

“A commander must think like his opponent if he is to beat them,” Agrehn replied simply.

“A good one anyway,” Lohs chuckled.

Rohmhelt looked to his queen and Evinda’s eyes signaled agreement.

“I’ll trust your judgment, Marshal Agrehn,” the Emperor declared reluctantly.

“This is one larger question, Your Majesty,” Agrehn immediately replied.

“And that is?”

“What do you hope to achieve from this battle? What should I consider your objective?” Agrehn asked with a quill in his hand to etch down the instruction.

Rohmhelt could feel his face droop at the question. It hadn’t been a topic he’d considered carefully. Despite meetings with marshals and generals some dozens of times during his reign as king, war had always been an abstraction, something that he likely would never face. His only consideration had been victory.

“My brother’s head,” Rohmhelt said. “Will that be possible?”

“I’m not aware of any war that’s been won in a single battle,” Agrehn said with his eyes seemingly scanning his mind for such knowledge. “There was the battle against Bohruum won by the angel Myrvaness. That’s the only one I can think of.”

“Perhaps it’s time to set a precedent,” Rohmhelt spat.

Agrehn shrugged and glanced over the map.

“I will make every attempt. However, there is another matter. Should those angels aligned with your brother decide to intervene, I don’t know what we could possibly do to stop them.”

“Surely those supporting Forynda would come in on our behalf to stop that,” Queen Evinda interjected before Rohmhelt could speak.

Agrehn raised his eyebrows and looked at each of those standing at the table’s opposite end.

“That is not my domain. I have never spoken with an angel in my entire life,” Agrehn said.

“I have, more than I’d care to,” the Emperor grunted. “Of course it somewhat defeats the entire purpose of fighting to get the angels out of this world if we’re relying on some of them to save us from the others.”

“Yes, but I don’t think we have the luxury of being, um, too principled about all of this,” Lohs chuckled. “We need to make it to the future to see if we have one without the angels living amongst us.”

“Father’s last wish that I heard was that we wouldn’t have to call on them.”

“With respect, Your Majesty, that was a mistake,” Lohs retorted firmly. “I loved your father as though he was my own brother, but he’d latch his mind onto some silly ideas.”

The Emperor opened his mouth briefly to object, but he couldn’t rightly do so. Lohs’s point was correct. Emperor Covifaht II, his dear father, had committed himself to more than a few foolish notions. Perhaps none had been more damaging than the thought he could face down a threat as grave as Parlon without assistance from angels allied with Forynda.

“Alright,” Rohmhelt grunted again. “I’ll make sure we get protection from Vorlan or Simel or any others who will give us their aid. Anything else?”

“Nothing so important as to keep you from that,” Agrehn replied dryly. “Once that threat is contained, other matters become far simpler.”

Necessary though it was, thinking of begging any angels to intervene on his behalf caused Rohmhelt’s stomach to turn. Worse yet, now that one vision had come true with his father’s gruesome death, he saw a path to the countless others that had flickered through his mind. Every step he took, he worried that he was setting those events in motion. When he thought of it, he felt as though the future came hurtling toward him.

Regardless, he stood atop Heldraht Palace as a fine mist fell upon Methrangia, dampening the city’s various odors and making the smooth stones on Heldraht’s roof slippery. His moistened and miserable solitude would doubtlessly prove a magnet for at least one of the angels, he surmised. They had no difficulty interrupting otherwise placid days. They would have to appear in a more desperate hour, he surmised.

Four Solnahtern guards had accompanied him and stood silently as raindrops pinged away against their armor. He wanted to call out in loud outbursts designed to draw at least one angel’s attention, but he dreaded even a slim chance that those calls would become rumors among his armies, undermining morale at a most crucial time. He appreciated the Solnahtern’s constant vigilance and grandiose appearance, but there were any number of conversations and incidents that had seeped into public discussion that could only have come from gossip through their supposedly secretive ranks. All of that considered, none of those betrayals of confidence had been severe enough to warrant an inquisition. Not yet, at any rate.

At last, with a chilly gust, Simel appeared directly before Rohmhelt, his head bowed in either deference or shame.

“Your Majesty,” Simel mumbled. “You appear to be in need of counsel.”

“Counsel?” Rohmhelt let out in a pained laugh. “No, a simple assurance.”

“What assurance?” Simel asked, his face turning upward with an air of confusion about him.

“We need to make sure that when I fight my brother it will be just our armies. I’m not making father’s mistake. I’m not sending you away. I need to make sure that we won’t be facing Parlon, Myrvaness, and whoever else my brother has surrendered his to honor to for help,” Rohmhelt declared. “If they intervene and we aren’t protected, the whole world will fall into Omonrel’s and Parlon’s hands. Think of it.”

Simel’s face provided no sense of any guarantee. Instead, it was as steely and distant as ever.

“What you seek from me I cannot promise. Forynda is committed to remaining in Ceuna,” Simel said. At Rohmhelt’s palpable frustration, he continued, “She seeks to avoid the morass that would come from her descent onto this world.”

“Tell me, how is it that she would accomplish her objective, removing the rebel angels, if they slaughter all of those mortals who are loyal to her?”

“Your logic is sound, but I greatly fear that logic has quite little to do with what is transpiring both here and in Ceuna.”

Feeling as though he were about to go mad from what Simel had told him, Rohmhelt paced about for a few moments before resuming.

“Keeping Parlon and the others out of this war has to be something the High Angel desires. Simply stop them from attacking our armies. The threat that she comes down and destroys them all has to be enough to scare them. A threat. That’s all I need. If this is just a battle between my army and my brother’s army, I win,” Rohmhelt insisted, bordering on yelling.

“You must understand,” Simel began wearily, “Forynda takes advice only sparingly and she receives demands most unfavorably. Her mind has been set on a single course on this matter. I will endeavor to alter her decision, but in the time we have I can make no assurances.”

“I’m sure your words can move the High Angel,” Rohmhelt said, smiling.

Simel’s response, however, was dour as ever.

“If that thought brings you comfort, embrace it,” Simel murmured before disappearing.

The new emperor slept little that night due to considering his present predicament. Worse than his worries was the simply annoying thought that his brother had prospered by swearing total fealty to the likes of Parlon and Omonrel. Rohmhelt, by contrast, had followed his father’s path of adherence to the High Angel’s edicts. His rewards for his stoic loyalty had been absent.

That sensation was strongest in the morning when it was announced that the army had managed to successfully unearth the imperial crypts below Solnaht Citadel so that Emperor Covifaht II could be given an appropriate funeral. For the people of Methrangia, Rohmhelt had the Solnahtern and three divisions from his army mournfully parade a closed empty coffin to satisfy ritual requirements. It was merely to be a distraction from the primary event. Overcome with grief, he elected to hold only a private ceremony within the crypts themselves. Many of Covifaht’s closest confidantes in the Imperial Court had been killed by Parlon, along with servants and attendants whom Rohmhelt had wished to have in attendance.

As it was, Matriarch Yldrina presided over a delegation consisting of Rohmhelt, Queen Evinda, Lohs, several leading military officers whom Covifaht had befriended, and a few elderly former servants who Lohs had invited. They stood aside in the crypt as Covifaht’s remains were interred in a tomb already carved years ago near the end of a line of some two dozen tombs, dating back to Methrangia’s first emperor, Emperor Solnaht. Rohmhelt noted that three other chambers had already been carved to complete the row. They sat empty and he wondered if Methrangia would endure long enough to fill them.

Yldrina conducted the varied rituals that would have customarily been done in a far grander setting, likely in the basilica on the citadel’s north side before its destruction. Some of words and motions felt odd in the cramped confines of the dark grey stone crypt. After concluding the burial rites with a song in a low murmur, Yldrina walked up to Rohmhelt with her head bowed, concealed entirely within her hood.

“Now, any who wish to say any words to the body so that the soul might hear them as it travels to Ceuna, you may do so now,” the Matriarch said in a voice that crackled and popped like a fire’s embers.

Without hesitation, Lohs stepped forward to Rohmhelt’s right and walked to tomb’s entrance. He took in a deep breath and knelt, placing his hands on the stones before the tomb.

“Goodbye, old friend. I’m sure you’re already enjoying being back with your dearest Gyndrys. I’ll try my best to help your son, Rohmhelt, who is following your able example. I wish your peace until that day when we are all joined again in Forynda’s warmth,” Lohs said somberly. After rising off his creaking old knees, he moved aside and motioned Evinda to step forward.

Haltingly, Evinda stepped forward from Rohmhelt’s left. Her black dress did not reflecting any torchlight, leaving her head’s red skin and white hair appearing disembodied. She, too, knelt before the tomb, though her young knees allowed her to do so more gracefully than Lohs had.

“Most of my life I was proud to call you my emperor. I was also proud to call you ‘father’ for what proved to be far too short a time. You kindly accepted me into your family and I will never forget that,” she said with a mournful lilt. “I vow the utter annihilation of those who did this to you. Their cowardice will only be matched by their lamentations once your loyal son exacts his vengeance. With Forynda’s guidance, our triumph will be swift and total.”

Rohmhelt exchanged a brief glance with Lohs as Evinda rose. The old man smirked with raised eyebrows. Neither had any notion of what she would say. Those words had certainly been informed by more direct Kyosok sensibilities that had evidently not yet been suppressed by stifling Methrangian protocols.

At last, it was Rohmhelt’s turn. He considered kneeling, but he recalled his words that he would not have any kneel before him. He knew his father would have appreciated the same sentiment and instead decided to greet Emperor Covifaht’s tomb as though he were speaking to his father while he still lived. He could hear Lohs and Evinda murmur to each other, but he paid it no mind.

“Father, please forgive me for what I will do to my brother for what he did to you,” Rohmhelt declared. “I pray that mother will understand. Our shattered empire will never be again as it was. We both know that. Using the example you gave me through your strength and resolution, we can forge it into something better than our ancestors left it. I swear this in your presence and theirs. Whether I am Methrangia’s last emperor or whether our line endures for another thousand years, I will not let all that our family has fought and suffered for amount to naught. I pray that you are at peace knowing that.”

After he was done speaking, Matriarch Yldrina motioned for the gathering to proceed silently through the crypt and back out onto the partially-removed remains of Solnaht Citadel. Just as they arose, the false funeral procession crossed the river and into the still-intact outer walls. Behind this stone veil, the ruse was dispensed with. The people had the ritual they needed while Rohmhelt had his. For Rohmhelt, burying his father vanquished any remaining illusions for him. He was now the Methrangian Emperor Rohmhelt I.