It was late in the afternoon when Illyana was brought to meet with Archchancellor Velasco in the upper reaches of the Obelisk. She was flanked by a pair of pikemen, adorned in finely tailored black surcoats. They had made no move to bind her wrists, or arrest her in any formal capacity.

But their stern, steely eyes left her under no illusions. Should she resist, or make things difficult for her overseers, then she would suffer a rather grim accident.

Tripping and falling with a pike accidentally lodged in her spine. The leading cause of death in palaces all over the world.

Not that she was worried. This was what she had wanted, after all. To finally be noticed by the man himself.

Still, inwardly, she had to wonder what she had just gotten herself into. She had never seen Velasco in person, and few people actually had. Everything she knew about the man she knew from hearsay in the street, with such tales being inconsistent at best.

To hear those tales, Velasco was either a demon from the Bleak in living flesh who could scorch a man to ash with a single thought, or a snivelling shaved kobold who had weaselled his way into power with backstabbing and lies. The truth was probably somewhere in the middle, she reasoned.

Her guards came to a halt at the sight of a massive red door, nearly twice as tall as Illyana herself. In the past it had been the solar of the Arcadian royal family, a chamber for private meditation (whoring, drinking, and general hedonism). Now it was Velasco's private office.

The throne room, somewhere on the ground floor, was blocked off and gathering dust. Supposedly, Velasco had never so much as sat upon it.

The guard to her right pushed the door open and stepped aside to let her enter. His face was concealed by the steel plate of his helm, but his eyes gave an unspoken command for her to go through. Illyana did so without a word, smoothing a crease from her ruffled red blouse as she went.

Archchancellor Velasco, as it turned out, was a man. A rather slim man, his skinny build disguised by an austere black and silver robe, with a gaunt face and beak-like nose. A red chaperon rested upon his otherwise bald head. His face was utterly unremarkable save for one detail: A glint of lime and silver that shone in his left pupil. The right was a dull shade of brown. He sat at his desk, slowly slicing strips from a steaming pheasant on his plate. He didn't look up, even as the door was closed.

Illyana drew closer.

"You know," he said, still focused on his meal. Illyana halted in place. "I am told that the gnomes of Glorydale have a saying: The rambunctious bee gets the hive destroyed. An unwieldy saying, gnomes are better at tending flowers than they are writing witticisms. But they have a point. It's always the individual whipping up panic that gets everyone else hurt, Lady Illyana." He skewered a piece of meat on his fork and deftly ate it.

Illyana narrowed her eyes at him. "Better that than to leave people shrouded in ignorance. If they are at threat, they have a right to know. People aren't stupid-"

"People are stupid," he bluntly told her. "Individuals can be clever, terrifyingly clever at times, but when they group together they regress back into a herd of angry, fearful, paranoid apes. They follow the crowd, letting the mob around them whip them into a frenzy, forgoing logic and individuality so they do not stick out from the group. And it is always the loudest, stupidest members of the crowd who were never constrained by logic in the first place, who dictate the flow of events."

Illyana watched him warily. She didn't doubt he had plenty of experience when it came to mobs. And yet he had managed to get to the top of the pile after the chaos, despite his connections to the reviled royal family.

She knew him to be a cunning man, even if his actions bewildered her.

"You know about the goblin menace, I trust."

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He scoffed, downing another mouthful of meat. "Lady Illyana, there is little that happens in this kingdom that I don't know about. Of course I know the horror stories cropping up in the countryside. But I am not being bone idle on the matter."

"But every time I try to raise the issue-"

He silenced her with a hard look. "Because the more people know about this matter, the more of a frenzy it will kick off. What will knowledge do for them, beyond making them panic? We are harangued with cries for action, demands for something to be done, while the tension leads to fighting and theft while fear and paranoia overwhelms them."

"Where I come from, our leaders are forthright with existential threats," Illyana replied in a low voice. "And I wouldn't have had to do any of this if you simply met with me, instead of shuffling me to a dozen different workers."

"If I agreed to meet with each and every loon that turns up at the palace, I'd never know a moment of respite."

They stood in silence for some time as Velasco ate. For a man who was a king in all but name, his meal was scarcely better than what one could get from a pub in the Merchant's Quarter. His robe, admittedly finely tailored, sported no flairs or flourishes to give the impression of wealth. Save for a pair of plain rings on his right hand, he wore no jewellery.

She thought back on Thalborea, on the wealthy lords and aristocrats she had known and rubbed elbows with. Hard to believe a man so plain towered over their ilk in importance.

Once he finished, Velasco set his knife and fork aside before steepling his pale fingers. "When the revolution broke out, I was away from the capital at the time. Busy meeting with a diplomat from the Skale Isles. I took my eye off Sirian for but a few days, and that stupid, odious, inbred little creep managed to ruin-" He trailed off.

Velasco's face, up until now, had been like a mask of chiselled stone. But a brief flash of anger had flashed across his face, traces of purple colouring his brow. He gently cleared his throat.

"I am not sure if you were around at the time, but it had been a harsh year. A poor harvest across a swathe of Arcadia, coupled with a plague stewing in Sentinel. Tensions rose, and an angry mob had formed at the palace, demanding food and aid. Ordinarily I would be the one to resolve such situations peacefully. Sirian, instead, dealt with the problem."

A grim frown settled on her face. "The hanging tree," she said. She had only heard tales of it, described by weathered old men who looked as if the world would collapse beneath their feet when they told the tale.

The chopped remains of a truly massive tree stood in the outer courtyard of the Obelisk, surrounded by a ring of carved stones. At its peak, with a veritable sea of dense wooden branches, it could have hung the corpses of fifty men without issue.

And had been used to do so.

"Being frank, displays of brutality can only do so much to quell a populace. And Sirian had done his share in the past, often when I wasn't around to curb the worst impulses of his disgusting reptile brain. And this time it was not enough to calm the citizens of Sentinel. No, they were angrier than ever now."

Slowly he rose to his feet. Despite his age, which Illyana surmised was ancient by human standards, there was no stoop in his posture. He stood like a man who had had his spine surgically replaced with a steel pipe.

"It was difficult to get back into Sentinel when the chaos started. Angry mobs, stoked by those who had been fermenting rebellious thoughts for a long time, kickstarted violent riots in the street. Even the Brotherhood did not expect it when members of the city guard, and crown soldiers turned traitor and joined these revolutionaries. Even they had had enough."

"Yes... I hear it was a bit of a bloodbath," Illyana murmured.

"Well, eventually, I managed to get into Sentinel through some of the more obscure entryways known only to the upper echelons of Sentinel." He sauntered across the marble floor to the hearth. The dry logs inside caught alight at a simple gesture from Velasco, as if he had simply willed them to catch fire. "I avoided the worst violence on the streets, but I certainly saw a fair bit of it with my own eyes. All the anger, resentment and bitterness that had been festering for years. Things could not go back to being what they once were, I understood that much at once."

He turned toward her, managing some semblance of a smile. It was the kind of smile one would see from Velasco as the executioner was preparing the guillotine. "I used one of the obscure entrances into the palace and found my way to the throne room via a hidden passage, just as a vanguard of revolutionaries were in a standoff with the last loyal king's guard. It was inevitable that as soon as fighting broke out, the revolutionaries would eventually win. The fellows leading the charge were good at killing, good at leading the mob. But could they rule a nation? Oh no, surely not. And so I decided I would manoeuvre myself into a position to be the head of the host." He raised his right hand, and tucked his left behind his back. "I slew Sirian with my own magic, before their very eyes."

Illyana watched him warily. Exactly what had happened in the throne room was surrounded by a myriad of rumours and tall tales, and it was hard to say if there was any truth to any of them. And, in truth, even she wasn't sure if Velasco was being entirely truthful.

"It took a good deal of finagling, and promises, and honeyed words to get those revolutionaries to trust me. But I have always considered myself at negotiations. And in truth, none of those fools wanted to actually rule when I explained the many responsibilities the throne would foist upon them. And so long as I didn't call myself a king? They were fine with entrusting power to one man again."

"Why tell me all this?" Illyana asked, folding her arms.

"So that you understand something rather important. Contrary to what you may think of me, I love this nation. And I will go to great lengths to ensure that it survives. I am not ignoring our crisis, as you believe, and even have men actively investigating the matter." He turned, meeting her eyes, his own gaze colder than the grave. "But if you wish to help me deal with the goblin situation, you are more than welcome to put your blade to use."

"Archchancellor, are you asking for my services as a mercenary?"

"Mercenary implies you are being paid, Lady Illyana. And you waived that right when you chose to become a public nuisance." He gave her a smile that filled her with more fear than any glare or snarl ever could. "This would be more akin to... penal labour."