Across the cerulean blue, that sparkling vista, cloud-skies and little white memories of a time repeating, streaked skies. Sails on the horizon, the port of Norapt and all its buildings as it reached for the sky and made itself into the world's grandest city- or, at least, one of the grandest.

The Orroyelans had always hated the Sakaxhy. On the cold-stone roof of that great hall, the highest place by far in all the city, he could see the remnants of those great war great wars and the disunity before them, the haphazard nature of the city both as it'd remained against the invaders and the invaded, the sudden expansion under the peace of the Sakaxhy. The order brought by a Orroyel ascendant. Long conflicts, written deep into the bones of society-

Society, however, changes. Innovation and white sails that clung to the horizon, the power of the political influence and the resurgence of empires. Sunlight, gleaming on dull stone and looking out for so long over the people of Norapt, the jungles of the isles on the horizon and beyond that, just barely, the vast seas of the world and the medium on which wars raged.

Above, through the blue, darkness like no other and the light of stars, invisible in the daylight but all so great, so powerful through what lay behind them. Orange bright lights that through their power held aloft something which fell, so long, eternities which he he could not understand, cold-

Moments that seemed so far away, here atop a sunlight palace. Laeo knew they were close, though. Closer than people thought they were… if Artic had his way, then the very act of atrocity would be carried out.

The world would taste fire… brightness, sunlight. The pure essence of destruction, harnessed by Laeo and sent to do his bidding. All he had to do was wait here atop the roof of a palace, looking out over the empire's will as it sailed. The Nola…

Paquel shifted beside her. This wasn't a social outing, however much they pretended it was- they watched their handwork and prepared for the world to hear. Or, in Paquel's case, watched for failure. "How do you possibly expect the Nola to fire on the Emperor's fleet? They're outnumbered two to one."

"The Nola have won more lopsided arrangements than a simple two to one battle on open waters. It wouldn't be the most…" Laeo shook his head, diverging from the tangent and returning to their true question. "When pressed enough, even the Nola can make mistakes. All we're hoping for is a mistake." He thought of possibilities, all the little things he'd whittled down until there was only one- this had to work. Otherwise war may not start, his country may not be sacrificed, and the world world would burn.

...and god would remain here, trapped on a planet it should have never been on in the first place.

Paquel drank deeply from a canteen of water- she'd forgone most of the courtly rituals to sit atop this roof and see- "What I don't understand is why you suddenly changed tactics. You had a perfect route to your war through the Nola in the city… all you had to do was keep disrupting, keep sending the people down into the arms of your agents. It'll happen eventually."

Laeo just smiled, looking out over those sails, those ships as they came across the far blue with their sales of white, the culmination of his plan. "It's simple, Paquel. Emphasis." Far out over the water, the sails came ever closer, confrontations unborn.

………

Blood. Scarlet, fire, gleaming of the light of eyes left unchecked, an intensity that defied the very imagination of mortal men. Two looked out from behind a door, trying to injure him with their primitive weapons, the effects of a humanity left unfettered, binding itself through the slowness of its evolution.

Scarlet blood. It was such a beautiful thing as it fled the confines that had been placed upon it so many years before, dragging out onto the wooden boards of some Nola ship- he hadn't bothered to learn the name. Only the Eternity Falling and the other sibilant deserved that respect, and Laeo…

He set about his gruesome task with an almost singular determination- propping up the bodies so that they appeared to be doing normal tasks at a distance. It might not last long under close scrutiny, but then again, gunpowder smoke covered well.

The fleet was coming.

He’d only killed the first among many, the blood of the leader staying the deep waters red. Ever-faintly, not quite noticeable but it was there, the powerful sight of slaughter, the too-dead left beneath and the not quite left above.

Empty eyes, staring into empty burning, the eyes of mind. The entire ship was made ready, cannons discreetly out, all so that appearances were upheld. Wind blew across the deck as he pulled himself lightly over a ladder, looking as the Orroylean fleet sailed ever closer, red flags to green, the royal will or Orroyel against the Nola’s holy desire.

Superseding it all, though the force of his will. Polarity Light would be found. These games were just another way of moving that forward, another way. He needed to find Iri… he watched as the ships approached, vision better than that of any human- white foam broke along the prow, weaves rising and falling in the wind of a sunny Royelean day.

The wind of the planet, the wind of all ocean and the cycle that he’d seen so many times, the cycle which was understanding. These humans knew so little about the natural order of the world that they inhabited. They knew…

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It made deceiving them easy.

It made destroying them even easier.

He propped up the last body, cleverly between the railing and the ocean breeze so it looked like he was just sitting by the flags. That was the most important thing, because his mission, the very reason he’d come out here in the first place, was intimately tied to those flags.

The Lord of Cold Places wished to send a message to the Nola, the Orroyel before the human Laeo’s plan came into fruition. He needed them to know… Laeo needed them to know, something that would bring Iri to him even if he didn’t quite understand how. It was unrelated, but nevertheless, he found himself trusting the human-

The scion of darkness stood beside the bow of the ship and looked out onto the approaching fleet, and watched carefully for the flags he knew were coming, because he knew so much through the eye of the machine, the cold nature of eternity and his very being. “Slow down, prepare for boarding,” The wind catching the message and sending it fluttering on colored flags.

Orders were orders. Force came against them, fifty Orroyel warships against Nolabo’s thirty, twenty of which were barely armed with a single gun. It was, after all, a merchant convoy.

Arctic raised the flags- “The will of Holy Nolabo is that you desist. We will not suffer the same indignities forced onto the natives.” The Nola had a fearsome reputation, and it was evident- even with just how much he outnumbered them, the Orroyel commander took his time in deciding whether or not he should approach. Still, logic prevailed and the Orroyelan boats drew ever closer.

Flags of red snapping in the wind, so many sails and the ships of war as their fleet came upon them. An interception, the spark of a conflict-

Gunpowder smoke. A white plume and the crack of twenty-odd cannons as his ship fired, rigged as it was. The Orroyelans responded immediately, firing back, their weapons of war smashing into the hull and tearing it asunder, and then moving onto the other ships with some minor firing. There was commotion on the ships behind him.

This was the crucial moment. Seconds more and the ships behind him would surrender, reveal his plan or plead the insanity of their leader and it would all unravel. So said the human, and even he had been distrustful about his ability to orchestrate something as grand as a confrontation of fleets.

That was fine, though. He didn’t need to orchestrate the confrontation- all he needed to do was orchestrate the destruction, and destruction was something he did very well.

Beneath the waves, resting on the seabed so many hundreds of feet below, a black form flared orange. So many missiles and the weapons of war, the force of death, slipping through the water with an incandescent brightness.

Death speared the water from beneath the wings of his ship.

Sound and fire and the very nature of annihilation as hypersonic missiles impacted the hulls of the ships, utterly destroying them in a conflagration of fire and smoke, shock waves that echoed out across the harbor. One after the other, the sound of a confrontation went wrong. So much destruction as to be almost suspicious, but he made sure a few Orroyelan ships survived.

Against the flames of the Orroyel, Arctic’s eyes burned...

………

In the space of ten minutes the entire Orroylean and Nola fleets were destroyed. Paquel looked on in horror and excitement as the confrontation played itself out on the horizon, visible and audible from so far away. Even Laeo was impressed… so Arctic had managed it. He didn't know why he’d doubted him.

“The Nola just… annihilated them!” It would be a confrontation that went down in the history books as a stunning Nola victory, the sort of thing that would inflame the Orroyel. The sort of thing with-

“Emphasis.” Laeo sat back and plastered a wane smile over his face, relaxing. “Which carries more emphasis? A bunch of Orroyel continuously search and attack and oppress a clearly disparate faction of people within their own empire, with their only connections to Holy Nolabo economic and cultural…” He paused, looking out over the pillars of smoke, both the white of gunpowder and the black of burning wood and sails and pitch, the power he wielded. “Or, an empire and a confrontation. A direct battle between the empires of the world?”

“...how?” Paquel just stared numbly, astonished- both by the scale of his power, and the destruction. Laeo tried not to wonder how many people he’d killed then. How many people he’d given to a grave that was- water. Death…

He watched a dawn of death, the end of an era, the end of the Cerulean Peace...

He watched the spark of a war.

………

The Lord of Cold Places, Polarity Arctic, waited for his ship to drown itself. A burning conflagration of wood and pitch, bursting apart at the seams and destroying itself. It was one of the last to fall, and he watched so coldly as it sank into the dark water.

He sank with it, breathless- letting himself fall deeper and deeper to where he knew his ship awaited for him. He looked up at the sunlight as it receded so rapidly, fading from white-brightness to cold blue, to the deepness that was as space-

There was no care in his eyes, because he didn’t… not about the fleet, not about the palace in Tasadir or the two wars he’d started or the third that had raged on or even the deaths of so many humans over so many years that was their existence as the sibilant devoted the fullness of their energy to finding Polarity Light.

He didn’t even care about the world itself. As the darkness swirled around him and swallowed all light except for the burning brightness of his eyes, he knew that- if it meant Polarity Light and the proper conclusion, the only conclusion, then the whole of the world would burn...