Netta held court a few hours after her address in the VIP suite of a horrifically expensive restaurant on the 250th floor of the tower. At these altitudes, much of the city’s central district could be seen from above, even the more mundane sky-towers. Low-priority air traffic could be seen in the distance as Netta’s existence created a no-fly zone around her location. Part of the new security measures she had announced into law, among nearly half an hour of additional announcements dictating major societal and policy reforms. Government shills and her own network of contractors and collaborators would be filling public and private forums with discussions in favor of these novel changes, and Alinean generational groupthink would enforce consent, if not outright support.
A handful of elves knelt respectfully before her, pointedly avoiding her direct gaze, as Netta was now the most powerful political figure in the Empire. It was said that the Tyrant could see and hear through the senses of the Godsworn, serving as his local avatar when his direct awareness was called upon. This was mere propaganda - the Godseals functioned as parasites and were not designed in a mindset of insecurity. There was no need for the Tyrant to know the plans of his servants when the Godsworn were unable to reach a level of strength capable of threatening him.
That lack of power had horrified Netta and sent her inner self screaming for a few hours when she’d learned the true nature of her exalted status. It was a major driver of her current motivations.
Netta sat silently, judging the fal- and pir-morph elves before her. Fair of hue and features to the point of genetic distinctiveness - the familiar calling cards of noble Houses. Their existence began as pre-Empire holdovers from the Ascension Wars. The Tyrant saw fit to uplift them with preferred status in the Empire by both law and custom. It was commonly rumored that this was because the Tyrant’s own parents were a fal-morph and pir-morph coupling. Netta’s ancestors were iro-morphs, only a single grade lower. Legally, there was no difference. But socioeconomics told a different story.
Fortunately, Netta knew for a fact that these young lords and ladies were, with two notable exceptions, idiots. It’s not that they were uneducated, or even unintelligent. They were just simply idiots when it came to her. It’s why she’d picked them. Competent enough to work on their own, given direction; foolish enough to be led like komma-beasts to slaughter. They even thought of themselves as her friends and allies. Netta didn’t allow fraternization while conducting business, and she had been all business for the better part of a century now.
“Comrades. Rise. We are all friends here. Our status is not so exalted yet that you must observe such formalities.” she finally said gently. But she still used the royal plural. A small elevation above her would-be betters. They rose obediently, but still carefully did not make direct eye contact.
“We are so glad you were all able to make it here so quickly, given the transformative nature of the last few hours. Shall we begin with our usual routine?” she continued deferentially, pretending she was not the obvious leader while making action impossible without her input.
“I can start,” an elf with clear green eyes said in a steady voice, his figure clad in blackened metal plates woven into a tight-fitting fabric, before stepping forward to address the group, “I have met with the Celestial Host’s most senior executives, and they have assured me that unit morale and cohesion will not be affected by the…recent reforms. They have taken great pains to ensure that their loyalty to the legitimate authority of the Lady Godsworn remains as steady as it is to the Tyrant. Reports are coming in of widespread dissatisfaction among the lower enlisted not currently stationed in active duty postings, so I am unsure of the exact nature of their enthusiasm..." His steady tone continued on like this for several minutes, thoroughly giving a deeply researched analysis of Alinean military doctrine when tested for real world readiness.
Netta hummed at the information and let the Flow fill her, allowing a separate tract of thought to elevate itself outside of her immediate awareness and work on the new information in real-time. She had been conservative in her choices when declaring a state of war for the Empire, giving active duty status to the most staunchly pro-Tyrant unit commanders in hopes that the round-ears would promptly return and they would destroy each other in a bloodbath far away from any serious consequences.
The council of administrative generals must have been so desperately bored without any serious threats that the idea of fighting in a city made for gods against unknown alien combatants must have been like a combination of the most addictive chemical on Elikos and raw sex. Letters of intent to volunteer had flooded local recruitment and processing offices to millennium-level highs. Practically a third of the legally-allowed recruitment quota was just gone, and it hadn’t even been a full day yet. A further reform to increase the size of their standing armies would be needed by the end of the week; the generals had already given their blessing. Retired soldiers still hale enough to be fit for service had also been making enquiries to senior staff of calling up disbanded units under old banners - units that hadn’t seen recorded battle since the Ascension Wars.
That would need a delicate, ambitious touch to handle properly. The memory of the old Houses was long, and their distaste of the most meritorious units under the Tyrant’s conquest was a well-kept secret. In those early days, the Houses had still been capable of fielding demi-Divines - a state that Netta herself sought. A step beyond archmage, demi-divinity was the first and last taste of godhood ever seen in the lands of Elikos until the Tyrant managed to fully ascend to True Divine, and slaughter or imprison every demi-Divine left, both friend and foe. Eventually, he would experiment on the living demi-Divines until they were all spent, lost to torment or crippling sequelae. The result of this research had been the Godseal.
The Houses probably still held some secret copies of their ascension rituals and methods within their ancient keeps - the Tyrant had somehow changed the rules to ascension after he’d managed it, and the only reason the Houses still existed is that the Tyrant saw no reason to destroy what could be compelled with strength. He had been right - once the Houses were given assurances of their continued existence and elevated status in the nascent Empire, they had solidly placed themselves as reliable pro-Tyrant conservatives, always in favor of enriching themselves and maintaining status quo.
“If they actually had the audacity to try anything, the Houses would soon no longer matter as a political or economic force. The Tyrant’s public favor kept them afloat, and without the state-enforced monopolies keeping the Houses flush, our wartime military and economic reforms will swiftly reduce their financial empires to smoldering ruins if need be. And without their wealth, they will find themselves with few friends beyond the walls of their palatial estates.” Netta left her musing to comment to the male elf after he made mention of many House-affiliated elements within military units and noted in particular that they had started requesting specific reassignment to groups known to be under House scion leadership - a blatant attempt at the creation of long-banned House militias. Netta would never allow such an obvious threat to coalesce. The House strategists must be testing her authority and awareness, to see if she was just as far-seeing as the Tyrant.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
If she allowed it, the Houses would have a concentration of military power not seen in an age, and as long as they were on the battlefield, they would continue to accrue accolades and honor, perhaps enough to create a war hero or three. Netta could easily envision an attempted putsch or similar veteran-led rebellion within a thousand years of the war’s end, assuming victory.
Netta was not the Tyrant. She wasn’t prideful enough to allow a potential enemy room to grow. Nor was she powerful enough to be immune to a scheme - not yet, at any rate. Imperial loyalty to Netta above all was what she required for the duration of this conflict, at least until she could spare the time to research the Human’s Divine armaments. She would not be truly unassailable until the secret behind deicide was discovered and neutralized.
This would probably require the conquest and subjugation of the Humans. A well-defined conflict based on self-defense and popular support? Such a war would be effortless to maintain.
But the invasion and occupation of an entire world? Netta knew the Empire inside and out by this point. Few, if any, of the rich and powerful would be interested in slumming it on an alien world while they rebuilt it to suit Alinean tastes.
The green-eyed elf - Lysandro, Netta remembered. An old, traditional name. He preferred to be called Ken among friends. The chosen moniker came from an abbreviation of the name of the hero from an Ascension Wars-era epic, whose deeds were so apocryphal it was still uncertain whether they had actually existed. His idealism about a figure who bullied the strong and protected the weak had made him a perfect target for Netta’s indoctrination program.
He was actually one of the two people Netta could tacitly trust - thanks to indoctrination, he was most definitely in love with her, and she allowed him to think those feelings were reciprocated. This made for an unbreakable shackle on his behavior, and if he ever wised up, Netta would just wipe his memory and brainwash him gently back onto the right path. She’d almost done so twice now, and each time she instead chose to bring him deeper into her confidence to keep his trust. Running him as an asset had started to bother her after the second time, and she was becoming concerned that her act was starting to bleed through to her actual emotions.
She didn’t enjoy it, knowingly lying to Ken. It was one of the few things that still reminded her she was not Divine - she still had a sense of guilt and remorse. The Tyrant was incapable of most emotions - they had been shriven from him during apotheosis, so it was told. Netta wasn’t actually sure if the stories were right about that - Divinity changed a person’s status and the nature of their existence, but it didn’t drive one to insanity - it merely reinforced whatever motivations and ideals the Divine held beforehand, in perpetuity. A state of the eternal now, unlike a lesser being subject to temporal whims.
Before her full Ascension, she would come clean and absolve herself of mortal weakness, to ensure her mindscape was exactly engineered to her goals. She could not afford obsession nor compulsive attachment. A small, lonesome part of her that craved true companions and a powerful partner would need to be excised as well - to be Divine was to be necessarily isolated from all others. Godsworn could, through a combination of factors, withstand their direct presence for a long duration without ill effect, but normal people? They could find themselves gibbering idiots or comatose, if a Divine was not circumspect in their handling. Proxies were much easier to utilize for that reason. It was the basis for her assumption of power.
And Power obeys Will.
Unite in purpose, under my Will. The magical statement had come from the meta-cognitive thought process created from within the Flow, examining the next person to speak - a red-haired girl with burnt orange eyes and a generally severe disposition. The lightly bronze-skinned Krysta was actually the second person to have her trust - but only because she knew betrayal would cut both ways. While Netta was a rebel by any sort of legal definition, Krysta was a truly dangerous revolutionary and thought-criminal. Her personal refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of Divines as religious figures or heads of state would have signed her death-warrant if it was ever made public. Krysta believed Netta to be a fellow revolutionary, and this was ostensibly true - Netta did indeed dislike the policy decisions and societal manipulations of the Tyrant. But she wasn’t a terrorist, even if she’d had to borrow from their playbook for a while.
“Netta, the Ministries are losing their collective shit. All of them are trying to coordinate with your office for continuity protocols because you just told everyone that everyone’s bosses are dead and the Big Bastard is in the super-wizard version of a coma. Practically dead. If the bureaucracy breaks down before our reforms have time to work, we’ll be collapsing into a full economic freefall. We’ll lose the popular front, and the military will have trouble keeping order in the middle of a war while the families of soldiers starve because our grain price-regulating systems freak out and the ensuing clusterfuck makes most people’s money worthless. These things require constant maintenance while on a war footing, at least until we can implement a proper post-scarcity economy.” Krysta was never one for soft speech, which Netta privately loved but publicly had to chide her for gently.
“Issue a memo with my authority to immediately promote all senior Ministry secretaries with Deputy Director-level clearance to full Minister status. They can fill vacancies however they like, so long as our target goals are met,” Netta responded decisively, before lowering her voice. “Oh, and Krysta?”
“Yeah?”
“Language, please.”
Krysta gave a short, barking laugh. “The day I watch my fuckin’ language is the same day you can confidently say I’ve been replaced by a changeling,” she said shamelessly, staring her down with faux-impudence. Netta responded with a serene smile that she knew got Krysta going. This little back-and-forth was their way of having fun.
Krysta stepped back after giving her report, wandering over to the provided buffet tables and casually assembling what was looking to be like a very impressively-balanced sandwich while Netta watched with growing hunger. Very well, she would allow the point.
“So that’s Ministries and military done with, what’s next? Hauti, speaking of grain price-indexing, what are our agricultural sectors looking like? We’re going to need to start stockpiling supplies for troop logistics - this war will not be won overnight.” Netta took charge and gestured for an intellectual-looking elf with dark violet eyes and half-moon spectacles (which were a completely unnecessary affectation that Netta did not understand the purpose of), who stepped forward after (to Netta’s eyes) needlessly adjusting his frames on his nose.
Netta would spend many hours with her policy council before they adjourned and Netta could finally head home - well, her new home. The pre-Ascension dwelling of the Tyrant had been made into a combination holy site and functioning hub of executive authority, a unique reminder of an architectural style long forgotten by modern-day Alineans. The bedroom suites alone could be larger than municipal sports fields in some wings.
As the sun set over the bay that took up most of the eastern horizon, Netta settled beneath the sheets of a massive plush bed, a pile of finely-bound books with ‘The Price of Ambition’ written on their spines in various volumes stood next to her on the nightstand.
The series evidently focused on the life and trials of a young elf hero with dreams of Ascension who tries to blindly chase his dream, narrowly avoiding death and becoming entangled with the politics of the high and mighty. The prose was functional but lacked serious punch, Netta finally decided.
Netta went to sleep that night with fantasies of the Tyrant’s face when she spoiled whatever he hadn’t read yet for him.