The Interior General caught up to the Marshal at the edge of the training grounds. The Marshal had not yet left for the morning cavalry drills, though by his location, he would depart soon. He stood atop a raised ridge over the stable grounds, surveying the Sun Army’s might. His left hand was raised toward the sun, either grasping for the distant light or shielding his eyes from it. His right hand held a red signal flag parallel to the ground.

Below the ridge, thousands of riders from the Sun Cavalry practiced maneuvers across the rolling meadows of the countryside. At the Marshal’s side, a single dark brown war-horse faced serenely into the wind, still and solemn as its master. It was lightly equipped with weapons and a water flask strapped to the saddle. As the General approached, the horse swung its head toward him.

The Marshal flipped the flag in a high arc that ended with the cloth pointing in the opposite direction. Below, the cavalry units sharply reversed their charge.

The Interior General cleared his throat.

“We need a better leader. The Gold King is no better than an ornament, and the Chancellor executes anyone who questions her command.”

The Marshal’s shoulders stiffened, but he did not reply. The raised left arm fell back to his side, casting brilliant light across his previously shaded features. The flag remained steady in his other hand. Tired eyes slid shut, and the Marshal tilted his face toward the sun.

“I know that you disagree with the Chancellor’s methods,” the General pressed on. “Why do you still serve her? A leader’s power only exists by the strength of their followers, and you are the Chancellor’s most influential supporter. The people fear her because they fear you. If you openly opposed her rule, we could...” The General floundered for a moment, but then inspiration struck. “We could bring back the glorious days of the Sun King. Isn’t that what you want, more than anything?”

The Marshal heaved a weary sigh, and his eyes fluttered open. They fixed upon the horizon, where the silver wisps of clouds laced across the infinite midsummer blue, casting an intricate network of light and shadow upon the fields below. He waved the signal flag in a small loop and thrust rightward again, and the troops below circled about. Pride and sorrow came over his face as he watched.

“Impossible. Such are the ways of the world. The Sun is gone, and the Cloud is our leader now. Do not waste time dreaming of what may never come.” The signal flag dropped to point at the ground. All upon the field below halted in place, awaiting their next command. The Marshal turned to face the General. “One day, you will understand why I serve. Perhaps, at that time, you will be ready to reach for a greater power. In the meantime, do not question my duty.”

Tucking the signal flag into his belt, the Marshal took hold of the horse’s reins. Marshal and horse began to walk down toward the waiting troops. The General did not follow.

The Interior General went to the Gold King and revealed to him the depth of the Chancellor’s influence. The Gold King listened but did not understand.

“Why are you telling me this?” asked the Gold King.

“I never believed in that whole oathbound nonsense, but—look. I swore to serve the Crown. Last I checked, you were the one wearing it. You should be the one in charge, not the Chancellor.” The Interior General’s voice grew as keen as any sword. “What good is power that you only use for another’s plans? What good is a crown that someone else dropped on your head? The throne isn’t truly yours until you claim it.”

The Gold King laughed. “I have the Marshal of the West at my command. There is nothing in this land I could not claim, should I desire it.”

But the Interior General had a sudden suspicion. He proposed a scheme to test whether the Marshal truly followed the Gold King.

Thinking it would bring no harm, the Gold King agreed to this scheme at once.

The Gold King did not often attend court, preferring to leave such matters in the capable hands of the Chancellor, who indeed possessed vastly superior measures of both policy knowledge and patience—the former a result of having written most of the Gold King’s policies with her own pen, and the latter a natural consequence of her immutable calm. However, on the day of the Interior General’s choosing, the Gold King did.

To the side of the throne sat the Chancellor, garbed in white as always, and spread upon a writing desk before her were countless reports that the Gold King himself gladly delegated to his underlings. The Gold King lounged upon the throne, presiding over court with a silent and watchful air.

Presently, the case necessary for the Interior General’s scheme arrived. A week previously, the Interior General’s underlings had arrested a retired commander from one of the Marshal’s elite units. The retired commander had appealed to the Marshal for a trial at once, pleading for leniency; in light of his long service record, the Marshal had agreed to consult the Crown for trial and judgement.

The convicted retiree now knelt on the flagstones of the courtroom, looking very pitiful indeed between the rows of high officials and petitioners within the court. The Interior General explained the crime, and the Marshal explained the impeccable service record that might counterbalance one moment of drunken brawling.

The Chancellor listened to both accounts, and then she pronounced judgement: “Death.”

“Imprisonment,” the Gold King cut in. As the Chancellor’s gaze slid from the convict to the King, only the tiniest twitch of one eye hinted at her surprise. King and Chancellor locked gazes at each other for a moment before the latter yielded, lowering her eyes to the floor.

The Marshal saluted in a vaguely throneward direction, though he missed the Gold King’s line of sight by a few degrees to the side. “As the law is written.”

In accordance with the Chancellor’s verdict, the convict was promptly dragged outside and executed. Seeing this, the Gold King was understandably surprised, and he began to grow wary of the Chancellor’s power. As the next cases came and went, the Gold King dared not contest his Chancellor’s judgement again, fearful of a repeat in his subordinates’ disobedience. However, with each case, he grew ever more displeased at the notion that control had slipped from his grasp.

After court, an incensed Gold King summoned the Interior General in secret.

“Why did the Marshal not obey my command? I am King, and even the lowest farmer knows that the Marshal’s loyalty is foremost in the land.”

“You may be King, but you are not the one to whom his loyalty is sworn,” the Interior General said. “Remember the exact words of the Marshal’s oath: he would serve the Sun King’s Legacy. Only one person alive knows whose name your predecessor endorsed in his dying breath, but I suspect it wasn’t yours.”

A slow horror dawned upon the Gold King’s face. The one who controlled the Marshal controlled the Empire’s armies, and through them the Empire itself—such was the sway of the highest military officer, unifier of the West and famed vanguard of the late Sun King. To not stand on the Marshal’s side was to not stand a chance at all. If the Gold King were to have any shot at regaining his rightful power, they needed to act swiftly before the Marshal could be commanded to act against them.

“Find me some trustworthy soldiers,” said the Gold King, “and we shall reclaim the Crown’s authority from those who have usurped it.”

The General saluted, and the vicious determination of a hunter shone in his eyes. “I know just the people.”

The Gold King turned against his Chancellor, declaring her a traitor and a usurper, and thus ordered her imprisonment. By the time the Royal Guard reached the Chancellor’s offices, she was long gone, and with her the royal seal of the Gold King—for a Chancellor who presided over state affairs had ever more use for the seal than a King who idled away his days in wealth and luxury.

Amid the chaos, the Gold King noted the Chancellor’s absence but not that of his state treasure, and so bounties of unimaginable wealth were only posted for the former’s head. Bounty ads and wanted notices promising mountains of wealth soon decorated every inn and waystation throughout the Empire’s lands.

The Chancellor and her supporters—a scant few dozen veterans and family members of the Marshal’s elite troops, for the common citizen loved the Gold King above all—fled the Capital mere hours in advance of the Gold King’s edict.

Unluckily, one of the Chancellor’s supporters was no supporter at all, but rather a spy of the Interior General’s informational divisions. The spy reported the Chancellor’s escape plan at once, and the Royal Guard soon arrested the Chancellor. The Interior General recommended execution, but the Gold King did not have the heart to slay the one who had given him the throne in the first place.

“As Chancellor, she was an effective administrator. The new road systems helped all travelers, and crime dropped by tenfold through her policies. With a mind like that under my control, I could lead the Empire into a new era,” the Gold King reasoned. “If only she did not serve her own unfathomable ends! I will treat her civilly to gain her respect. Once she is loyal to me, and no other, all will be well in the Empire.”

The Interior General protested strongly against this idea, insisting that it would be wiser to end a sly schemer than let her continue to plot against the Crown, but the Gold King’s mind was set.

Henceforth, the Chancellor was imprisoned in the high towers of the guest palace, permitted every material luxury but stripped of all power and station. Surrounded by the Interior General’s faithful Royal Guard and the Gold King’s handpicked palace staff, the Chancellor could influence nothing.

If the Gold King sought to buy her service, he was sorely disappointed. The Chancellor refused to touch his gifts, living simply despite the extravagance offered. Civil affairs slowly began to crumble without the Chancellor’s watchful eye, but she would lend neither word nor idea to settling the Gold King’s plight while trapped within the palace towers. Her pen wrote only poetry; her mind turned only to gardening; and the Gold King despaired of the administrative duties that he had never learned to manage himself when delegation had proved easier.

Were the Chancellor of lesser temperament, she might have raged against the imprisonment. Yet the Chancellor valued results over methods and rationality over emotion. Caged, her mind could drift from the near future to more distant horizons—and thus she planned.

Thus was distilled the essence of true Order: a dream, a vision, and a reality to come.

As it so happened, the Marshal had left the Capital two months previously, riding with several thousand elites to the southern lands to reinforce the border garrison troops. Were he still present, the Interior General might never have dared imprison the Chancellor. Yet while he was far from the Capital, this most important figure was quietly placed under house arrest. When the Marshal learned of turmoil in the court, he feared for the Chancellor’s safety. An oath made long ago remained unfulfilled; he could not fail while breath still remained in his body.

The Marshal mustered the southern armies at once, leaving only a bare minimum for the border defense. Plans for a southward campaign were abandoned. Instead, all available standing troops of the south were summoned to aid the Chancellor, true Heir of the Sun Empire. If the Gold King had imprisoned her, then the Gold King was the rebel, and no other—for the Sun King’s Heir was the one to whom all sworn Sun Revolution subjects owed loyalty, now and forevermore.

The Marshal’s troops were swift and well-trained in coordination above all. They attacked the Capital on the open plains while tunneling beneath the walls, breaching the defensive walls from multiple angles. Working in rotation, the Marshal’s army laid siege day and night, never ceasing for a moment but to swap spent troops for newly refreshed ones.

Against this onslaught, not even the Interior General’s elite Royal Guard could defend the city. In the time of one week, the Marshal himself rode through the streets of the Capital, and the Gold King had last been seen fleeing with the Interior General.

The Marshal personally traveled to the guest palace to release the Sun King’s true Heir.

The Heir sat at a writing desk next to her window. When the Marshal approached, she set aside the pen and looked out from the window. Her expression was as serene as carven stone. She watched levelly as the Marshal rode forth with his armies, and she watched levelly still when the Marshal dismounted to approach on foot. When the Marshal blasted the door of her gilded cage to dust, the Heir smiled faintly.

“Why do you turn against your King?” asked the Heir.

“I have but one King in all the world, and his Heir stands before me now,” replied the Marshal. He dropped into obeisance that he had only ever performed for one other, for to serve the Heir was to serve the Sun King. Always had the Marshal served his true leader, and always he would.

When the Heir beheld the armies that the Marshal had mustered, satisfaction seeped through her impassive mask. Control over the Capital had been restored. Indeed, there was much to be done. With the Marshal’s loyalty secured, no desire was beyond the Heir’s grasp—and she had but one desire: order.

Come the month’s end, the Heir openly took the reign title of Cloud Queen, now fearless with the confirmed might of the Empire’s armies and top Marshal at her behest. Her territories expanded quickly, growing from only the Capital to the whole of the central expanse. By the turn of the season, two-thirds of the Empire had pledged to follow her sovereign rule, and her lands spanned from the western sea to the edges of the great forests.

Within the Cloud Queen’s domain, the military police hunted and eliminated all who might dispute their new leader’s legitimacy, condemning both openly guilty and suspected alike. Only through firm policy enforcement could peace arise among those learning to accept new leadership: this principle the Cloud Queen understood well, and through the Marshal, the people soon understood it well, too.

As rumor had it, the Gold King and his Interior General had fled westward, taking refuge in the deep wilderness and remote farmlands of the sparsely settled expanse. The Marshal sent patrol units hunting for the two who had dared betray the Heir, but those patrols that returned were either empty-handed or had only the vaguest of rumors concerning the rebels.

Some patrols did not return. The Cloud Queen noted these paths and soon had developed a rough map of the Gold King’s influence.

Once, a key supply runner for the southern provinces sent grain rations to the west without due authorization. The exact routes aligned with the Cloud Queen’s suspicions of a Gold rebel movement. This grain transfer could have been a premature response to reports of poor harvest from the region, but it could also have been a show of support for the Gold King’s fugitive loyalists.

However mundane the former, the Cloud Queen would not tolerate the possibility of the latter. After a brief trial, she sentenced the supply runner to death.

“A warning to any others who might attempt treason,” the Cloud Queen said.

As soldiers stepped forward to escort the convict to his grisly demise, the supply runner flung himself to the floor at her feet.

“Mercy, my Queen! It is the standard procedure when crops are short. Getting authorization would have taken two months, and by then the towns would be starving. I thought only of the people’s health—never of treachery or the Gold King,” pleaded he. “I have served the Sun King loyally for nearly forty years. He liked officials to take the initiative. He would never have had a man executed over a misunderstanding.”

A cold light flashed in the Cloud Queen’s pale eyes. “I am not the Sun King. I cut loose ends.”

The Cloud Queen walked off, hands clasped behind her back. As the court doors closed behind the Cloud Queen, the supply runner exchanged shock for rage.

“Truly, a Cloud has passed over the Sun,” the supply runner spat, fueled by the courage of the condemned.

The Marshal waved a hand. Light flashed from his metal gauntlet, accompanied by the boom of thunder. Blood spattered the ground. The supply runner fell and did not move again. Crimson pooled around his head, and the smell of cooked meat slowly wafted through the room. The Marshal knelt by the body, his own red cloak draped around his knees in a loosely matching semicircle. He laid a gentle hand upon a motionless shoulder.

“The Cloud is our Queen, and we shall be grateful for our Queen’s command unto the end.” Standing, the Marshal turned away from the scene. “This is the only mercy that we who serve are permitted.”

The Marshal exited as well. Behind him, two soldiers glanced at each other, then at the closed door.

“He’s changed,” one said.

The other shrugged. “Times have changed.”

The soldiers dragged the supply runner to his grave.