The western wing of the Palace had the best views out of any section of the complex.
Facing the Capital, its numerous greenhouses and sunrooms have held an untold number of flora, fauna, and even more so; has hosted an uncountable number of royal guests over the course of the building’s long history.
And he, who now sits in that simple varnished oak chair, is just one more.
Dressed in a simple dark tunic with a simple gold royal talisman inlaid on his right chest; a hawk with open wings, the young man seemed to be wearing the exact same clothing as Sophia’s coming-of-age a week prior. Though unlike before he was now illuminated by the light filtering through the triple paned glass panels of the sunroom, enough that the Fourth Princess could get a much better look at him.
Thin and tall, sitting nearly perfectly straight in an almost flagrant demonstration of a perfect, at-alert posture. Dark hair at midlength and mildly unkempt; while a sharp face brings together a quantity that was already represented by that single photograph her siblings had all obsessed over like insane stalkers.
There was a small set of tea laid out; the simple bone white ceramic kettle steaming with freshly boiled water and two cups inlaid with silver atop their rims currently remaining empty. Sophia catches the soft, sweet scent of fresh chamomile in the air, picked just for this occasion and brought here for their mutual enjoyment. Her gaze is drawn towards the still open chair from the pair laid out at the center of the sunroom.
She quickly, with much grace and demure, takes the seat. Hands brushing any extra fabric away from her sitting position and gently placing her bottom onto the woven, lacquered fiber (Naomi just yesterday had held a dulled rapier to her waist all day to ensure Sophia wouldn’t do her usual collapse and slouch seating methodology).
Alright, nice entrance. Now, you know what must be done. Eyes. Look into his eyes and start it strong. Bring it forth carefully, with confidence. Remember, that long ago Sophia the Second, Princess of the Realm, once stared down a dragon as she slew it so it’s in your blood to face this… very hot prince ok?
Ok, ok, ok. Sophia thinks to herself, mentally clapping her cheeks. Everything hinges on this. My family, my future: the Imperium itself. I am the Fourth of the Silver Throne, Sophia the Eighth. I can do this.
Sophia Elise the Eighth blinks just once before raising her gaze towards his, towards those almond black eyes.
Oh Goddess…
Prince Zai had lived in this world for far too many years; she could see it in his gaze, in the way he carried each breath into him, and in the way his dark irises adjusted to the light reflecting off her skin. Like the flickering of a fire burning out, she senses the movement of something just beneath the surface of those irises.
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In just twenty-two short years, his soul had held vigils to horrors that no human should ever see in an entire lifetime. In twenty two years he has held the guilt of watching his subjects march to war, never to return to wailing mothers and fathers. In twenty two years he has seen families cannibalize their own children in animalistic hunger. In twenty two years he has watched as his dominion turned upon itself in confusion and unrest; utter desperation. Never, for twenty two years, has he had anyone to watch over him, to fight against a universe that ceaselessly plunged daggers into his back.
Sophia, His eyes ask her, no words exchanged as she just stares at him. Is it more terrible to be powerless, caught in the relentlessness of fate? Or to be powerful, and yet utterly unable to bend that power toward good. How awful is it, to be unable to do anything as your world collapses around you?
But he’s still alive, and even more she feels a gentleness in him that shouldn’t be there. Like a bird’s nest weathering a hurricane, some fundamental piece of his existence still remains, still holding onto one last hope for his people.
She quietly pours, from the kettle, two cups of tea for them both.
The sunroom itself was quite a sight. In fact, from the fifth floor one could see above the planted tree lines and towards the sprawling emerald gem of the Imperial Capital.
Two and a half million imperial citizens lived here, at the beating heart of the Ensolian Continent and the Imperium at large. Nestled in what once was a river valley, over the past three thousand years of habitation the once pristine locale had slowly, and in more recent years quite suddenly, become a new biome in its entirety.
From once rolling pastures and farmlands have risen the incredible might of the imperium’s people. Buildings of stone and wood built in antiquity, both in the Steel Era and Silver Era, dominate the old city quarter closest to the Palace. Tiny apartments, ancient taverns, and street sellers peddling their goods through storefronts older than literal nations. It was like a small cross-section of living history had been taken and dropped right back here; the foreground to a nation undergoing a leap even the most insane philosopher of those long gone eras could never have imagined.
Like fingers dipping through the surface of the earth to the sky, Capital’s twenty grandiose towers stand mightily amongst the rising apartment complexes and commercial centers. Reinforced concrete, mass-produced in the northern provinces, was transported down the Amoureuse River by barge; mixed and subsequently poured slowly layer by layer into a harrowing steel structure that at the time to a young adolescent Sophia, seemed to resemble some awful crucifix rather than the bones of an architectural marvel.
But now, with their monumental forms covered in beautiful arching glass facades, they served as symbols of an empire more eternal than any civilization before it. It was said that the Ensolian Imperium purposefully allocated their less desirable diplomatic embassies at the foot of these incredible, hundred story tall towers: so that in every single moment of their work either in spy or statecraft they would have to be reminded of the nation in which they had to live under.
Even now work was breaking ground on another one; this ‘Imperial Tower’ supposedly taller and grander than all the rest (a statement spoken and achieved by the last five that were built, it seemed that architects and engineers were always trying to one-up themselves in this day and age). From the palace sitting on the Immortal Hill, and with some ocular assistance, one could note that its massive metal skeleton was beginning to take shape like some fragile house of cards.
Incredible, wasn’t it?