The gnome in front of her looked like she still couldn’t quite believe this was happening as she stood and held out a hand for her to take.

“Then I believe we have come to an agreement, Hive Queen.”

Regina smiled and bit down on the sarcastic response of Please, call me Empress Regina. There was really no reason to get hung up on trivialities. Especially when she had just got what she wanted.

“Good, I’m confident you’ll find it a wise decision, as will I,” she responded as she gave a short handshake. Under the circumstances, she really didn’t blame the woman for pulling away quickly.

Regina wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it, but she fancied that the other person’s emotions and state of mind were more open to her, as if her recent practice had improved her skills. Maybe she was just still more focused on it. Or maybe the shock of unexpectedly meeting the Hive Queen-slash-Empress had discombobulated the gnomish woman and that was all it took.

Akilekil looked to be middle-aged and had rather striking, for a gnome, red hair she wore in a loose bun. She wore what Regina had come to recognize as business casual, including a dark vest and tasteful jewelry. For a city recently under siege and currently occupied, it was unusually put together. Then again, Regina had her suspicions of where Akilekil actually came from. The gnome looked like she was in control of herself and ready to exert that control on her environment, too. She appeared to be decently high up in the Moderate faction and also a leader of sorts of another, smaller faction, the Radicals — a name that would usually cause some concern, but the gnomes didn’t seem to use it like that. How that membership worked, Regina didn’t know, but it was fine if it did.

“Let me call a soldier to escort you,” Regina offered. “At least part of the way,” she added when she saw the gnome hesitating.

She finally nodded with a smile. “Thank you, Your Majesty.” She paused for a moment, and said a bit stiffly, “It was a pleasure to meet you. Goodbye.”

“You as well.”

Regina watched her leave for a moment, then turned. To keep this meeting more discreet, they weren’t in the main governing center of the city, but also weren’t too far from it. Regina made sure the escort was arranged properly, and also as discreet as was feasible right now, then made her own way back. She’d barely managed to get Max and the others to back off while she talked to the gnome, and now they were back in force, accompanying her and keeping close.

It was annoying, even if Regina understood where they were coming from, of course. Killing her might be one of the highest objectives of the Gnomish Confederation, and possibly one of the only ways they could hope to win the war. With her death, they would probably assume that the Empire would disintegrate, and for now, it probably would. Maybe in a few years, they would rally behind Janis, but as it stood, Nerlia was likely to go their own way. Kiara was hopefully invested enough that she’d at least want revenge and decide to keep aiding the hive if they continued the war, but she’d have her own issues to deal with, too. And no one really knew what would happen to the hive if she died for certain. No, it’s kind of hard to see a more realistic path for the gnomes to win, Regina conceded to herself. The numbers weren’t in their favor, at least considering the long-term trend. And they were on the defensive, currently. They had no real path to attacking the hive’s core bases, and they would have to do at least that to strike a serious blow to their war effort.

"Do you really think this will give you the results you want?” Max asked her, interrupting her thoughts.

“Obviously, or I wouldn’t have done it,” Regina said drily. She flapped her hand dismissively. “I can’t know what’s going to happen, of course, but I think it’s a reasonable chance.”

Max grunted, not looking very pleased. Regina didn’t mind. She supposed it was his job to be paranoid, professionally speaking. And it wasn’t like she was planning on just trusting any gnome without a good reason.

“What are we doing now?” Max asked.

“Well, I think Madris has mostly finished what she wanted to show me. Maybe one more session. Then we can head back … although I might have a detour in mind.” Regina covered a yawn with her hand. “First, I’m going to sleep, though. Being psychic is exhausting.”

They didn’t speak much as they returned to the center of the city, and luckily got to their assigned quarters without any further incidents. Regina had been given some rooms in the city hall, which she pretended not to know were hastily converted. Max and most of the others slept curled up in a cuddle pile on a stack of mattresses in an adjacent room, except for a watch rotation. Regina found it amusing to note that the human fighters present had clearly already grown used to the drones’ sleeping habits and didn’t bat an eye.

Regina took quite a while to fall asleep, but at least she got an uninterrupted night’s sleep after that. She felt more refreshed the next morning. Unsurprisingly, one of the first people she saw was Madris, who seemed as fresh as if she didn’t need sleep (she did) or hadn’t only come back after Regina fell asleep.

“Good morning, Your Majesty,” she said with a cheerfulness that Regina was pretty sure was intentionally obnoxious. “I hope you’re ready for more training, with a bit more effort this time.”

“How wonderful,” Regina muttered sourly.

She didn’t complain, though, and instead followed Madris back into the city. There, they did much the same as the previous day. But Madris mixed it up a bit, combining several aspects and factors. She seemed to take delight in pushing Regina, and always had some twist or additional difficulty ready to increase the challenge. Regina was almost starting to suspect she just enjoyed the chance to mess with her sovereign without consequences.

Finally, after going on another search through the city looking for a specific mind while also keeping up a mental conversation with Madris and a rotating cast of people she linked in, their training was drawing to a close. Regina managed to find a woman with anti-social personality disorder who was currently pregnant — she was not going to ask how or if Madris knew there was exactly one of those in the city; she was going to keep her illusions, thank you — before she had rotated through all the Delver officers, and her teacher brought her back to the center of the city.

“I expect you to keep practicing in your spare time. You have gained some skills, but you might lose progress if you fail to keep them sharp and integrate them properly.” Then Madris smiled. “But you made good progress, Regina.”

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Regina smiled back. It was actually quite satisfying to hear that. “I’ll certainly keep it up, as my responsibilities allow.” Although part of discharging her responsibilities might include using these psychic abilities. She wasn’t going to let the prospect distract her right now, though. Regina shook her head lightly. “I intend to head to where they’re building the new capital. Do you want to come?”

You could have told me that earlier, Max grumbled.

I’m pretty sure you were already aware, Regina replied, amused. She hadn’t exactly hidden the information, and Max was good at picking up on her intentions.

“I believe my schedule is open,” Madris said. “Why not? Let’s see what you’re building there.”

“They’ve barely started building,” Regina warned her.

Still, she was curious to see it for herself. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for arrangements to be made so they could leave. Regina met with a few of the officers in charge again, and made sure she was fully informed of the situation at the front while she was there, before her entourage took off. Max had actually lost a few of his tag-alongs to the war, she noted, but with Madris accompanying them, not to mention the flying drones, they were as safe as could be.

Regina again took the opportunity to fly under her own power for a bit. She would have preferred to fly alone to clear her head, but getting to stretch her wings, even constrained by having so many others with her, was nice. She was afraid she was starting to get out of shape. She would definitely have to increase her training once they got back. At least the Empire was largely established as a thing now, so hopefully things would calm down.

The trip was actually a little bit longer on the way back, but Regina took the chance to observe the countryside below her. The construction of the new capital city had started, but at first, they’d actually focused on building up an outpost to facilitate the movement of building materials and the like. It was located beside a river, a relatively small one that would later wind its way to flow into the Danube, or Dannan as it was called nowadays. Regina was thinking about broadening it to make it better for river-borne trade and shipments. Maybe they could even dig a canal, too. For now, it might be better to focus on train tracks, too, which weren’t constrained by existing bodies of water.

For now, the big construction site was largely supplied by the surrounding towns in the vicinity. This area was the border of Cernlia and Nerlia, so it wasn’t too populated, but trade had been moving through here for a long time. They had gathered a large workforce, including both sapient and Swarm Drones, War Drones for the labor and Production Drones to get custom materials, as well as human workers. A lot of stonemasons, carpenters, builders and the like had been recruited along with unskilled laborers. Paying them all and organizing the construction might be the single largest expense the Empire currently fielded, apart from the war. But it was manageable.

"They’ve made some good progress for the time invested,” Madris commented. “However, I admit I almost expected something more exceptional.”

Regina glanced over at the dark elf, who showed no reaction to a Winged Drone Mount as if she rode flying hive drones every day, and shrugged. “There’s really not much to be done differently,” she said. “I mean, they’re setting up foundations and refining plans, still. Once the real building starts on a larger scale, the drones’ techniques will probably show more. Also, I’m not exactly an urban planner, so I’m not really involved in this.”

The flying drones lowered and they circled above the site before slowly setting down in front of the outpost. A group of people had formed lines to greet them. Regina jumped down from her mount and walked up to them, noting who was here.

Neralt wasn’t, at the moment, although she still intended on giving him some responsibility for the city’s construction. His Abilities made him too valuable in that regard. There were a few sapient drones, notably Ina and Ash, as well as some Cernlians and a few Nerlians. Mostly engineers, architects and those hired as city planners, though they rarely actually had experience with that.

“Welcome to the city, Your Majesty,” several of them welcomed her.

Regina put on a smile, introduced her companions and didn’t mention that she thought calling it a city was a bit arrogant, or at least early.

“Let me show you around, if you like,” Ash offered.

Regina gave him a smile and nodded. It was nice to see him again, and at least she could sense he showed no dissatisfaction with being assigned here instead of the war front. Regina supposed she might have been a bit biased in assigning him here, but she might feel just a little protective of him after he almost died previously. She tried not to let on that she remembered him lying in a coma when she saw him, but that kind of thing tended to stick in one’s memory. Perhaps more importantly, though, he was doing good work here. Like Ina. The two of them might be slightly unconventional choices, but she believed they both brought valuable skills to this project.

Perhaps still influenced by her earlier training with Madris, Regina kept a metaphorical eye on her psychic senses’ reads on everyone, as she followed Ash and the others through the construction site. It was coming along nicely, she supposed, even though there was still a lot to do.

She had put her foot down and refused to have a large palace planned as her residence in the city. Instead, there would be something like a government center as the heart of the Empire’s operations. They were also going to build a residence for her, where most of the sapient drones currently in the city would probably end up living as well, and she planned to make it a bit of a ‘safe space’ for them. And for herself as well. She would probably spend some nights in the government center and would have a bedroom there, but it was the principle of the thing. And hopefully, they would advance to more ‘modern times’ quickly so there would be fancy hotels she could put foreign envoys and important guests into.

For rather obvious reasons, the government center was one of the first buildings they had started on, placed straight in the middle of the new city. The foundations had been dug, with the help of Drone Workers and War Drones, and walls were being put up.

“We’ve included most of the planned defenses already,” Ash explained, gesturing at a still-open hole that showed the tunnels forking underneath. “At least regarding the outer skeleton of the building.”

Regina nodded. She was sure they were doing good work. After building the defenses of two main hive bases, they’d learned something.

She was also impressed that they had managed to get this far despite the season. It was still winter, with the ground partly frozen. She expected the real building to start once spring came.

“And the connections for amenities in the interior?” she asked. “Have you prepared …”

Regina paused. For a moment, she just froze and stared into nothingness, barely registering the low spikes of concern from the drones and confusion from the others.

Then she wheeled around. Regina ducked, then alerted Max at the same time as she slipped into Ash’s mind and into control of his body. Her younger drone let her willingly, quieting himself to observe and watching carefully.

It happened very quickly. An arrow shot through the air at where Max had just stood, glancing off his blade, and then a second sailed over their heads. At the same time, Ash jumped towards one of the engineers close to them, tripping him just as the guy was about to jump forward — and put himself into position to block the arrow.

“Everyone calm down,” Regina ordered loudly, keeping her voice even. At the same time, she released Ash’s body, but he continued to hold the man down. The other warriors present quickly joined them while several magical shields layered over Regina.

“Another assassination attempt?” Max asked, voice tight.

Regina tilted her head and watched them. The one who shot the arrows had already been found by the flock of flying drones, who were currently bearing down on him. He might have used an illusion to hide his weapons, but that didn’t work against her psychic abilities. She was just glad she’d kept up her practice.

“No, I don’t think so, actually,” she said slowly. “It feels more like someone arranged this … staged to ‘stop’ it and ‘rescue’ me, perhaps?”

She took a step forward, looking down on the engineer. “Tell me, who schemed this? One of the nobles of my court trying to create the impression of a debt?”

It wouldn’t have killed her anyway, of course. She still had defenses like Max’s Shield that was still on her. But it was rather annoying.

The man looked into her cold stare and gulped. She took some satisfaction from the fear and panic he felt.