King Harmon was annoyed. Annoyed and verging on pissed. He had grown complacent, he realized. In the short time before the Tournament began, he had grown accustomed to the iron-fisted, absolute control he held over the Ten Thousand Empires. It was so much simpler when he held absolute control.

Now, he had to deal with bumbling buffoons and empty-headed idiots again. Every minute his compulsion to end their lives grew ever greater. How could their nations even function with such simple-minded folk leading them?

Of course, that wasn’t a real question. Their countries barely functioned. The Wild Queendom had terrible birth rates among their shrouded, as men killed themselves rather than be subject to the tyranny of the Matriarchy, and women refused to have relations with the men they found so inferior.

The Fire Kingdom at least had some form of functioning society with strong foundations based on national pride. But their barbarity and refusal to interact with their neighbors held them back. They would raid, but they would not trade, and it hurt them in this new, modern Starry Sea. They had precious few of the etherships that had become so integral to modern conflicts and transportation.

Harmon could admit to himself that the Dread Federation was more adorably quaint than annoying or murderously frustrating. They had originally splintered from the Empires, and it showed. They used a similar political structure based around a noble class ruling over the peasantry but failed at the last step. The separation between the classes was more meritocratic than hereditary, which led to in-fighting and constant political instability. Plus, it let commoners rise to station. A travesty by any measure.

As to the Central Authority, Harmon could hardly look at one of their Central Council without immediately being overcome in a murderous rage. He had attended many Tournaments and suffered their presence before, but his newfound control over his own nation and the constant knowledge of their impending death made suffering their presence all the more difficult. He wanted to end them, immediately.

All of this, while immensely trying on his patience, was not the source of his current annoyance. No, the problem riding his mind into the ground was the clock. This meeting, one of the last, was far past its scheduled end time. This wasn’t odd; similar time frames and overly long meetings had happened even earlier this week, let alone at previous Tournaments where tensions weren’t so high.

The issue with this particular long-running meeting was that Harmon actually had planned to visit one of the events occurring today. Or rather, one scheduled to start several minutes ago. Worse, this meeting was meant to end with plenty of time left over for him to make it. All that time had been eaten up by useless talk about nothing of import at all.

“-an’t say that this isn’t an issue! The unshrouded are becoming too powerful with the rise of ethertech. Yes, they cannot compete with us now, but the difference between what could be accomplished with ether now and what was possible only a mere decade ago is so vast as to be unbelievable.” Matriarch Straubown spoke passionately. “Since when can any of us say we measured anything in decades? A century is too late. We must act now! The Central Authority cannot be allowed to continue such lax policy in controlling their subjects.”

“Their, frankly absurd, allowances for their lessers is disgusting and should merit consequences.” She glared at Archon Solarium, the Sun Seat of the Central Council. “Your unwillingness to control the lessers will spill over into our domains, which makes it our problem too.”

And this was why Harmon found the whole argument pointless, even though he fully agreed with the Matriarch. The CA wouldn’t exist in less than a decade if he had anything to say about it. Then he could handle their ethertech issues by controlling the industry, instead of the self-managing mess the Council had created. So her frustration, while understandable, was meaningless to him. Though he was sure the other nations would be coming after him once the CA was under his control.

Luckily, he didn’t care. He was going to buy up all the hyper-advanced ethertech the weapons broker would sell to him, take over the CA, then hand the weapons over to the ethertechnicians that survived and get them to reverse-engineer the armaments so that he could produce them at his leisure, successfully freeing him from his reliance on the mysterious and shady weapons merchant.

All told he would corner the ethertech market in one move and rule over it with an iron fist. No more peasant uprisings, no more defiance of the masses. They would bow, and they would bow to him. Which made the back-and-forth between the Matriarch and the Sun Seat over what should and shouldn’t be done as they tried to sway the other nations rather pointless.

Eventually, after another ten excruciating minutes of back and forth on something that had been reiterated a dozen times in slightly different wording, the meeting ended. Harmon left as fast as he could without looking like he had anywhere to be, which was not that fast. So it was to little surprise that he arrived at the arena to find the match over and another already started.

The meeting hall was just barely too far from the arena for his aura to reach, so he hadn’t even managed a peek at the match. Despite his exceptional aura senses, he was cursed with a relatively low range. His most potent, extraordinary abilities required line of sight to work.

He had planned to watch the first CA team, the one with the overwhelming concentration of talent and power. If Harmon could see them in combat, it would have made digging into their abilities easier. And he wanted more insight, desperately. Those five children, barely legal adults and certainly too young to hold real power, were a variable he was unwilling to ignore.

He had previously decided to not act overtly against them, and he held to that. They simply weren’t strong enough yet, young as they were, to warrant a threat to him right now. In the future, though…that was a different story.

If they managed to slip the Tournament while his plans went into motion, they could hide in the CA’s territory for centuries, building up enough power to strike back at his rule, possibly even topple it. No, he wanted more insight into their abilities so he knew how much of his present resources to assign to them to ensure a kill when the bodies started dropping.

“Well?” Harmon wasn’t an idiot. He was aware of the possibility that he would miss the match. So, he had a man in place in the crowd to inform him regardless. Obviously, his input would not be as telling as Harmon’s own senses, but it was better than nothing. They met outside the arena, in a side street with little of interest and, therefore, little traffic.

“I…My king, I find it hard to say anything of import.” The observer looked at a loss, unable to meet Harmon’s eyes.

“What is that supposed to mean? Tell me how the match went. What abilities were used, what combat styles or formations?” The King of the Vast Kingdom was having none of it.

“T-That’s just it, my King!” He glanced around furtively as if looking for a way to escape. “There was no fight. The shorter pale one, Liliana Meteoris, simply buried the whole arena in a glacier. The Wild Queendom team lost in an instant before any attacks were exchanged. It wasn’t even really a fight.”

“That…Hmm,” This was unexpected. Of all the members of that team, Harmon had counted the Meteoris girl low on the list. Her and the unknown, age-changing woman ranked last on his list of concerns. But freezing an entire arena was a lot of shroud for someone their age. “How fast did she manage to do this?”

“Instantly.” The response was immediate. “If I’m being honest, my King, I’m not sure I could have stopped her if I was the one fighting. It was impressive by any metric. Not just for those her age.”

“I see. Leave me. You will be rewarded for your services appropriately.” Harmon waved the man off. He could hardly be blamed for having nothing to report if there was literally nothing to report. Even he would have had trouble gleaning anything more from the others if they didn’t even fight.

The observer bowed deeply before running off like all the demons in every unshrouded hell were after him.

This was unfortunate on multiple levels. First of all, Harmon’s resources in the upcoming purge were already thin on the ground. Not knowing the strength of five of his targets was a concern. If he devoted too much or too little to ending them, it could have knock-on effects on his plans.

The obvious answer here was to just watch their next match. But this led to the second concern, and honestly, the greater one. Harmon could deal with rebels if the five children escaped him. Truly, he could. Even if he never learned more about their capabilities, he was planning on sending a minimum amount of force to deal with them, as there were more important objectives.

No, the next match posed a greater problem because those five would be fighting his son.

Harmon could quash a million rebellions if needed, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever produce an heir as adept as his Simon. The boy was a prodigy in economic control, more than capable of moving in political circles, and had managed to inherit the Vast family signature shroud domain. Harmon had over one hundred children across tens of thousands of years, but only one had lived up to his exacting standards.

It was unfortunate, bad luck of the highest order, that he had to be born at the same time as those monsters. He was unwilling to put his heir on the line against such overwhelming force without knowing what they were actually capable of. Deaths happened in the Tournament of Powers. It would be no fun if there was no blood, and normally Harmon fully approved. But he could not lose Simon.

Thus, his conundrum. He must learn more, but he had no avenues to do so anymore. The CA children had managed to conceal the majority of their strength, leaving him with little recourse. It set him on edge, having such uncertainty.

Ultimately, he just had to watch over his son’s match and, if he must, intervene to save his life. Hopefully, the boy wouldn’t need it. From what he’d sensed afterward, the CA team had not killed their opponents in this match, even though they obviously could have. If they were that permissive, Harmon would abuse it to the ends of the Starry Sea and back.

Simon just needed to remain neutral and not antagonize them. An easy task.

{}

“What is that?” Caeden stared at the growing cluster of people ahead of them. They had only made it halfway back to the Hearthhome when they ran into this mass blocking the road. They’d been taking their time, despite Lily’s words about being hungry. Now that all of them were so strong, they were less concerned with assassination attempts, so they weren’t really in a hurry.

Now, they were stopped by an ever-gathering group of people, shrouded and unshrouded alike, gathered around some event they couldn’t see. Of course, the crowd wasn’t really stopping them. Everyone here had a way to fly. And they could find out what was going on if they wanted to. All of their auras easily covered the crowd’s center.

So, Caeden did just that. He took a peak and focused his aura senses on the core of the crowd. Immediately, he saw a man, a young man around his apparent physical age. So, he was less than a percent of a percent of Caeden’s actual age. Which was apparent, as he seemed to be throwing a tantrum.

“Stupid peasant, standing in my way! If I want a confection, I’ll have it! I don’t need to stand in some stupid line!” He was currently kicking a man lying on the ground. A woman and two children were watching on in horror from the side. They were all unshrouded, while the tantrum-thrower was not. Caeden was getting a front-row seat to shrouded power abuse for literally the first time in his life.

It was just as bad as Lily said, though the horrors she had seen dwarfed this petty crap. Either way, Caeden was finally in a position where he didn’t have to put up with it.

Patting her hand, Caeden unwound Lily’s arm from his. She nodded in approval, stepping back and letting him handle it. Snowball appeared in her arms, and Sky manifested on her shoulder, both in their baby forms. Lily wasn’t the only one that had powered up in the Blade Forge. They were always with her now.

“Erik, with me. Pretty sure that guy’s about to have some ruptured organs if he doesn’t already.”

“You got it.”

They both jumped the crowd.