Ado was not unfamiliar with the work needed to govern a city; she had, after all, sat in on most of the decisions made regarding her father’s rule for as long as she could remember.

Which wasn’t to say she was an expert.

She’d been given plenty of exposure, but that was not the same thing as actual instruction. She was cleverer by half than any of her brothers, but Ado would have gladly accepted knowledge in favour of wits any day. Had she been working entirely alone, she would have been quite in over her head. Fortunately, she was not.

Whatever might have been said about Silenos Shaiagrazni from an ethical standpoint, Ado had to admit…The man was a better ruler than her. Better than her brothers, better than her father. Perhaps better than any other she’d seen.

His plans were unorthodox and bizarre- something she mistook for ineptitude only briefly- but implied a philosophy of design for her nation which might actually have worked in its integration, despite being entirely alien to everything else about it.

It was, of course, a gradual set of changes being prepared. No alterations as large and invasive as the ones he had planned could have ever been done quickly, Ado was to let her nation’s culture and infrastructure slowly mutate over years, even decades.

She’d heard stories of Vampires or Demons, Demigods and Archmagi sustaining their lives through many centuries and manipulating the world from behind the scenes with plans that outlasted an entire human life. Reading through the schematics prepared for her felt like being on the other side of those stories. The villain’s side.

Well, that was fine too. Ado had grown up on other stories, stories of Grecascnia, from her mother. A land where women studied whatever they wanted and ruled when they were best suited for it, of learning and knowledge. It was hard not to see everyone around her as a villain, with that sort of comparison. Silenos Shaiagrazni at least had plans to stop people starving in the street, peasants included.

Her thoughts, and her work, were interrupted by the same thing. A runner, hurrying into Ado’s new office with sweat painting their face and exhaustion animating their chest. They spoke through deep heaves, clearly not one born with Vigour- most of her father’s actually swift messengers had been shot from afar by that barbarian Baird during the invasion.

“Your…Presence.” The wheezing peasant gasped. “It’s…Requested by…By Master Shaiagrazni.”

Ado could see the physical effort he was putting into spitting out the rest of her new ruler’s ridiculous title, and she spared him the effort with a gesture and a quick motion to her feet. “In the throne room?” She asked, receiving confirmation with a nod, and hurrying to make her way there.

It was not a long walk. Just a month ago, it would have been. Ado’s father had always kept his administrators and counsellors relatively far from the throne room, feeling more comfortable with some appropriate distance between the merely powerful and the divinely-ordained.

The contents of the throne room had changed, too. All the old heraldry torn down, and the ancient throne newly crowned by growths of bone and sinew shaped around it by Shaiagrazni himself. Ado still felt slightly queasy looking at them, even after all the days she’d had to adjust. She felt queasier still seeing the caster himself standing by them.

He seemed to have gotten taller, and certainly fouler of mood. It was almost enough to distract from the statuesque figure of King Galukar, just a few feet from him. Or the weasel on the other side.

Ado had never met Collin Baird, but she’d heard descriptions and seen renditions enough to recognise the murderous rat. It appeared that he made a habit of sitting in on the occasional meeting of import, when he wasn’t busy murdering her father’s bannermen and Knights from a horizon away.

The boy was already speaking when she entered, and Ado steeled herself to listen. Bracing for whatever seditionist nonsense would slop out of his mouth.

“They’re a month from Kaltan, and closing fast. Big army, but moving like you’d expect of an undead force. Faster than you’d expect, really.”

He looked worried, not petulant. That surprised Ado for two reasons. The first, of course, was that she was well familiar with the dull, smug arrogance inherent to all Kaltans due to generations of poor breeding and management.

The second was because she’d heard reports from just a handful of assassins and warriors who’d managed to close into melee with the boy, and not one of them had ever described so much as a nervous swallow. As they told it, even when he was staring down his own death, he’d been unflinching as a statue and sharp as a razor.

She didn’t see that now, only a pale face made clammy with sweat.

“...What is happening?” Ado asked, managing to just barely keep the words from escaping her as a girlish squeak, fear eroding what little composure and certainty she’d managed to claw back for herself since Shaiagrazni’s conquest.

All eyes fell upon her, and it was a testament to the evident danger of her situation that not a single pair did anything at all to further scatter her wits.

“The Dark Lord is approaching Kaltan, and possibly our current location.” Silenos Shaiagrazni replied, speaking with uncharacteristic…Gentleness. No, not that. With uncharacteristic uncertainty.

“The Dark Lord himself.” Ado whispered. He could have punched her and not done so much to inspire confusion and fear. “I…How, what sort of forces is he bringing to bear, what-”

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She was interrupted in her questioning, but by an explanation. It was not a long one. Apparently there wasn’t much known about the Dark Lord, though Shaiagrazni conveyed what had been confirmed so quickly that Ado almost struggled to keep up regardless. By the time he was finished the conversation had naturally progressed a shade.

“What sort of forces could be mustered from the Kingdom?” Shaiagrazni asked, gesturing to a map Ado had somehow missed, laid out beside the throne just barely peeking from its shadow. It covered the city, and the regions surrounding it.

He was indicating several towns and larger villages, all within a dozen leagues of the city. All wholly exhausted of able-bodied fighters during the desperate attempts of Ado’s father to repel the initial invasion. She told Shaiagrazni as much, then winced as he raised his hand and gritted teeth in anger.

For a moment she was certain he would kill her, or change her. Instead he simply jabbed a thumb into one of the numerous moaning faces etched across his cloak, sneering as he twisted the digit deeper into the soft tissue and elicited ever heightening pitches in the agonised cries it let out.

“Inconvenient.” The caster said, with all the emotion of a turnip. “But not unexpected, we have other options available to us.”

Ado was so fixated on the effort of trying to confirm whether it truly was her father being tormented, that she almost made the near-fatal error of letting Shaiagrazni’s words breeze her by unnoticed. She hastened to rectify that particular mistake.

“I beg your pardon, sir.” She breathed. “What, uh, what options exactly do you speak of?”

She thought back to the abominations which had stormed her city’s walls, and found herself wondering whether he was intending on making more from the non-combatants among their citizens. Surely not, it was people like that who would sustain the Kingdom for years to come in times of peace.

“The dead of this nation are numerous, and many thousands are fresher than a single year. If we excavate them from the various mass graves and battlefields scattered around the countryside I will be able to add to the undead already among my forces.”

Ado was quick in speaking up, but not as quick as King Galukar.

“That is a guaranteed way to spur your new subjects into open rebellion, and that would make it impossible to muster any kind of defence against an external attack with your rule so poorly established. However many monsters you have, if a hundred thousand people fight from a hundred thousand shadows they will be an inconvenience you cannot ignore, or fully remove for some time.”

“You’d know all about the inconvenience of rebellion.” Collin Baird murmured, affixing dark eyes on King Galukar. The giant did not seem to hear.

Shaiagrazni paid no heed at all to the interaction of his subordinates, his focus apparently consumed with the problems at hand and the barriers encasing their solutions. His eyes were holes, leading to some immeasurable pit.

“I do not need to raise them as undead.” He breathed, slowly. “I could simply utilise their biomass. I need living, sentient matter to create a functional grotesquery- but that is only for the core of its mind. I can expand the body by reshaping any tissue, even necrosed.”

“That would be no better, in the public’s eye.” King Galukar noted, and Shaiagrazni’s jaw tightened ever further.

“Then I…I see.” He sighed, face contorting with an orchestra of emotions. For a long moment, nobody spoke. Then Shaiagrazni broke it.

“We will expand to new territory.” He said, with finality. “Most rulers, I suspect, are not so stupid as this Kingdom’s monarch was, and his fate will stand as the warning I intended it to. There ought to be at least one nation nearby we can absorb without significantly weakening in a tedious conflict first. They will serve to bolster our strength, particularly if we begin negotiations before word of the Dark Lord’s approach reaches them.”

It made sense, though Ado found herself rather queasy at the thought of boxing in another monarch in so shameless a way.

“That might put you in a difficult political situation, if nearby nations see us as a growing power, and believe that you intend to continue expanding as a result, they may well view you as the larger threat than the Dark Lord. There is, after all, a great deal more distance between his territory and theirs than yours.”

Shaiagrazni considered that, but it was Baird who provided an answer.

“So pick one who's already made alliances with the Dark Lord.” He suggested, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Ado felt a stab of irritation as Shaiagrazni looked consideringly at the boy while he grinned away.

“You have such a city in mind then?” The caster asked, instantly vaporising the smugness from Baird’s expression and leaving the scoundrel to falter.

“Ah, uh, no, I don’t. I’ve been a bit busy since arrival-”

“-But I believe I can help you there.” Ado interjected, seeing her own chance. “I was never groomed for ruler, but I made sure to study all the relevant details about my nation regardless, including our neighbours. You, I think, would benefit most from allying with the Staligans, their capital of Ironbane is not so far from here.”

Galukar’s lip curled at that, face twisting as if he had something rancid on his tongue.

“Demon-worshippers.” He spat.

“So some of the rumours say.” Ado shrugged. “Allies with the Dark Lord, in any case, and years-old ones at that. You’ll find no perceived threat among the locals should you choose to crush them, you may even be thanked.”

Shaiagrazni eyed Ado for a moment, suddenly considering.

“Why did you go to such lengths in learning so much about your surrounding area? Were you, by chance, planning to overthrow your father?”

She had never in all her life answered a question so instantaneously, at least not without any deception.

“No!” Ado assured him, heart turned to a wardrum within moments as she realised how close she was standing to an abyss. “No, I would never, you must-”

Shaiagrazni raised a hand in silence, and it silenced her. He sighed.

“I see, a pity. I had dared to hope you’d possessed the morals to recognise your duty of dethroning such an inept ruler. Nevermind then.”

Ado decided, then, that she was going to have a very tedious time in working out exactly what it was which drew the man’s ire, and resigned herself to it. He was speaking again before she could dwell on the issue.

“Where is this Ironbane city?” Shaiagrazni asked.

“The mountains.” She hurriedly explained. “Near a large natural crest to them, surrounded on all sides by peaks and sort of…Sheltered, if you can picture it. They’ve never been a terribly strong nation but they’ve never once been successfully invaded.”

“Natural defences?” Baird asked, demonstrating his idiocy once more with the sheer obviousness of his question.

“Yes.” Ado replied, patiently. “The city surrounded on all sides by mountain peaks has a lot of natural defences. It’s impregnable. And it’s surrounded by Vampires, which make crossing the few passes that might lead you to it treacherous. I would recommend at least trying diplomacy first, it is far more likely to succeed than an attack, however potent your forces.”

Shaiagrazni considered that quickly, then nodded.

“I see. Then we must send envoys, small in number and potent in combative power.”

Ado was nodding for almost a full second before realising what was being implied.

“I-”

But it was too late, Shaiagrazni’s face was already turning to Baird.

“You will accompany her, you have already proven yourself a skilled negotiator when it comes to the Dark Lord’s servants.”

The bastard didn’t seem half so bothered by it as Ado, which she imagined made sense. Rats didn’t worry about filth when they crawled over a human.

“Any questions?” The caster asked, and Ado slumped.

She had none that would change things.