Netta made it past Axios with the correct counter-phrase alongside an empty promise to look into the surveillance malfunctions in his security systems. After she had made her way out of the magical intelligence’s awareness, Netta stashed all of her metal and jingly bits in a pocket space before immediately breaking into a light-footed sprint as she fled the empty halls of the Palace of Stars. She had just pulled off the most successful revolutionary act fifty thousand years in the making (admittedly with inexplicable help from the Tyrant, which would not stop baffling her).
Technically it was a bloodless coup. The Tyrant murdering her seniors wasn’t part of her scheme and she hadn’t honestly expected all of them to perish in the battle, had they actually been deployed. Still, it bothered her.
Time was finicky inside a Sanctum, and an awake Sanctum actively bent the flow of time around them to allow for complicated research to be performed without the risk of containment failures from dangerous experiments. At Netta’s request, the Sanctum dilated her time within the facility to fake a convincing alibi. What felt like minutes to her was actually closer to six hours.
As the priestess crossed the final threshold and descended the steps at the entrance of the palace with outwardly serene composure, she stared once more at the sky. Dawn was now approaching over the western horizon, already bathing the furthest reaches of Communion’s wards in rejuvenating light, recharging the city’s protective shield enchantments after their expenditures keeping the city intact from stray shots between Divines. Netta would have to ask the aristocratic House in charge of running the arrays on what sort of damage, if any, had been done to the shield’s capability.
She had an uncomfortable feeling that the shield’s full capacity would be needed again.
Soon.
She still couldn’t shake the sensation of paranoia that the Tyrant had left with her during their brief conversation. Humanity, from the Tyrant’s perspective, was a blight on the universe. A race of short-lived, narrow-sighted, avaricious sapients that craved all things novel and unknown to them. She wondered how they had managed their collective wisdom without immortal archmages to safeguard it. Even without magic, Alineans could survive for a thousand of their years with little physical decline in their mental or physical function. But the round-ears had nothing like that. Or did they? Such information wasn’t in her purview as Tyrant Node Three-Seven.
Netta let the Flow fill her with magic, and she compared it to the sensation of being entwined with the Sanctum. A pale lonely echo, where once was completeness. It felt ersatz. No wonder ascension was so difficult - the very flavor of power was utterly different. Almost alien. Netta felt the Flow caress the metaphysical form of the Godseal. Usually, the sensation was warm, like touching a well-insulated object at high heat.
Now she felt only a weak difference in temperature from it, and even hints of corrosion on the symbol - the Godseal itself had changed, somehow. Most likely due to the events of last night. Netta put off investigation until the final arc of her plan was complete.
Phase One consisted of making friends in low places - soldiers, scribes, technicians, maintenance staff, analysts, teachers, thieves, con artists and criminals. That had worked out okay - she had a few people who were privy to a certain level of trust, and two in particular about whom she had zero doubts as to loyalty. Over several years, Phase One had coalesced into a subtle network of information brokerage and mutual aid, people helping people out of binds that, strictly speaking, were unseemly for a person of Netta’s elevated status to be involved with.
Societal expectations, however, were not part of Netta’s awareness. She had public relations staff for that sort of thing.
Phase Two was all about leveraging Phase One’s soft power into actionable power, a manipulation of people and events that shifted the moves of the great and powerful. That, apparently, had gotten the Tyrant’s interest, and she would have to re-examine all of her previous gains. Perhaps some of her more impressive Phase One accomplishments had been helped from the inside? Too much remained unknown. It tumbled amongst her thoughts, the problem being assailed from all sides by possibility in much the same way as stone was polished by tumbling abrasive and water.
Once again, the Flow was used to intervene in her own thoughts and bring her back down to a functional level of calm. But even the Flow was now suspect. Had the Tyrant designed the meditations to allow propaganda to become internalized? The Mantra worked, there was no doubt of that. But now every aspect of the Tyrant’s rule would need to be scrutinized. How much did he know, and who else knew?
Plugging intelligence leaks would be the stuff of nightmares, but at least she could now call upon an organization of thousands, soon to be loyal only to her.
Which required Phase Three: selling a plausible-sounding story to the entire apparatus of civil and cultural hierarchy. Funnily enough, this was actually the part she had the least trouble with - all her social maneuvering had taught her the skills required of any professional politician or similar criminal underlord. Not to mention, as the youngest of the Thirty-Seven, she got the job of being the literal face of the government: it was her likeness on public-address illusion arrays across the continent, and her voice delivering information on a range of topics, from news and the weather to educational and promotional primers for various government and religious fronts. She was the Alinean Empire, Divines be damned! She already had the trust of the people, and as long as she could act no differently from before, it would be too late for anyone that discovered her duplicitous acts.
Phase Four was to Ascend and openly take control of the Alinean peoples, but Ascension had been impossible for nearly forty thousand years - the Tyrant’s Godseals had kept him firmly in control. All previous attempts at rebellion had ended in complete destruction of the faction involved and their extended families out to several generations - a thorough purge that was held up as an example to any threat against Alinean unity. Alineans, therefore, had a healthy fear of radical change as the result of societal, cultural, and biological manipulations from the Tyrant’s seat of government, keeping everyone on a clear but undefined goal of slow-and-steady progress implemented over decades and centuries, rather than weeks and months. When high-speed locomotives were first introduced, the rail lines themselves had been built across the entire empire in only several years, coming in ahead of schedule and on-budget. It had taken another half-century for them to actually be used by enough civilian travelers to warrant further investment into the infrastructure.
Breaking that habit, or even attempting to, was previously seen as the highest order of heresy capable of an Alinean citizen. Now she would have to openly encourage it as a matter of public policy.
She’d rather fight Humans while naked, armed with only an adult toy and her wits. Netta felt like that much was a fair handicap.
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The sun continued to rise, and with it Netta’s timetable continued to advance forward. Commanding the Flow, complex tethers of magic were used to denote places in relative space-time before establishing a connection between them, creating a stable radiant golden wormhole through which Netta daintily stepped, transporting her halfway across the megacity in a single stride.
Most mages had unique wavelengths attuned to their mana, and using light as an indicator of magic being actively worked was such a built-in safety measure that many did not even know that such tools were not necessarily needed to form completed spells correctly. The most elite military squads utilized children taught from their first steps how to cast quietly and discreetly, for operations where the intervention of the Tyrant or his direct servants was considered impolitic or overkill. Netta had this training as well - she’d been forced to unlearn how to use magic after having the Godseal placed upon her and then been retaught by her seniors around the clock until she showed at least as much proficiency as the weakest of them. Not that she could have called a thousand-year-old mage with a Divine as backup and thirty others of similar or greater strength to call upon in battle “weak.” So, technically, she was perfectly capable of just invisibly folding space around her to deposit her someplace else a great distance away. But it would be seen as an abuse of power and a poor example to citizen-mages. Hence the (personally) vulgar, very visible, display of magical competence.
However, Netta was burdened with a public-facing persona that could be looked to as the ideal for Alinean societal expectations. She had been forced into multiple dramas and plays broadcast to the entire Empire starring herself playing some kind of cultural archetype to the point where Netta wore her business “skin” everywhere. She could never be seen to break character. To do so would be to lessen the power of the illusion.
And how she needed every scrap of power that illusion held right now. For now she would tell a lie, perhaps the greatest lie ever told in the ageless histories of the Alinean peoples, or maybe even Elikos as a world. For it would be a lie based in truth, warped in such a way that no doubt would question it, nor dare to imagine that it was not whole and complete.
The revolutionary priestess emerged in front of an elegant sky-tower made of glass and steel that rose on golden spurs into the high atmosphere, a massive magical antenna located at the very top that broadcast on public channels everything that the Ministry of Communications deemed worthy of general dissemination. Netta was always worthy.
As she approached the glass double-doors, a very visibly distressed elf with short-cropped purple hair and a clutch of binders in her arms rushed out, not quite sprinting in Netta’s direction. Netta allowed her within three meters of her person without punishment, but stopped her forward movement with a gentle exertion of the Flow before allowing the short-haired elf to match her speed from the side.
“Milady, I’m grateful you’re here, but you are running late! We had to prep your auto-illusion proxy but it started shorting out a few minutes ago - oh kilido, you haven’t enough time for your usual makeup team, we may have to alter the light in the studio -” the harried elf spoke in a torrent before Netta raised a hand as they crossed the polished marble flooring of the atrium before taking a lift-platform to the actual broadcast studio on the 75th floor. The building had hundreds of floors, but the Ministry of Communications used very few of them, usually only the lower 80. The rest were either private residences for the Tyrant’s most favored, or the obscenely powerful. Some floors were leased by factional concerns, and a few government intelligence organizations operated with little oversight or concern on floors that weren’t publicly listed on the building’s schematics.
“Good morning to you too, Wynna. I apologize for my tardiness - the duty of my station took precedence,” Netta finally said in a patient voice, perfectly polite as was expected of her, “and I have been informed that it is a matter of the utmost priority. For Immediate Broadcast.” she continued, enunciating the capital letters for emphasis. Wynna looked briefly terrified, but nodded vigorously in agreement.
“Of course, of course, we’ll get it sorted out. I’ll have Inday get the breaking news graphics ready. Are you sure you want to be the one to deliver it?”
Netta gave a slow, thoughtful nod in response. “Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s related to my position as one of the Godsworn.” Inwardly Netta did a slow dance of malicious glee. The amount of satisfaction she would get from being seen and then believed as she said whatever she wanted to with zero culpability was intoxicating.
The lift-platform finally stopped at the 75th floor, doors opening to reveal a large open news organization’s workspace with a normally-clear glass partition showing a broadcast studio at one end. Images could be displayed across the backdrop for effect or to obscure sensitive information being worked on in the background, like a surprise announcement from their number-one personality representing the government. Currently, the backside of the newsroom was opaque as a pre-recorded audiovisual fluff piece about an endangered species of magical bird was being broadcast to pad time.
Netta gestured and permitted a swarm of support staff to surround her, helping her change outfits while she moved into position. When they were finished, she examined her image in a reflecting mirror spell, making sure every part of her appearance was correct.
Tresses of pale silver hair hung in perfect half-curls around her chest and shoulders, framing a (to Netta’s judgment) perfectly adorable round face, with small features and brilliant pink irises. Her skin glittered like it was coated in diamond dust, a pale twilight hue being the only indicator of her heritage from the Shattered Lands. She was taller than most elves, and her limbs were especially well-developed and muscular, as was currently high fashion among the to-do of Communion’s upper strata. She’d even had some (very minor) flesh sculpting done to improve the size and shape of her breasts, balancing a line between attractiveness and outright seduction that she knew was very popular among certain segments of her audience. Her dress was a rich scarlet fabric of shimmering weave that clad her body in a vibrant, fiery aura, leaving her with a backless top and wild, waving ruffles down the back of the skirt. Netta was insistent on forcing the trend despite it being an unusual display. A very small heresy, just for her. Her only flaw was the damnable Godseal, still faintly glowing in its place, branded into the flesh of her forehead, just above the centerpoint of her elegantly shaped brows.
She pointedly did not allow a frown to form as she gazed at the physical reminder of her shackles.
“Yes, I think we’re ready now. Let’s begin.” Netta finally said after a moment of contemplation. The coterie of hangers-on visibly relaxed with relief while in retreat from her august personage while she took her throne in front of the cameras with carefully controlled poise and expression.
Show them nothing you do not wish them to see.
The lights transitioned from controlling darkness to erasing shadows as the filler segment ended and the [LIVE] signal light flashed from behind the cameras. Netta took a small, imperceptible breath in preparation before beginning, “Good morning, Elikos. I am Netta Godsworn, and I bring news from above…”