“You there, what’s your name?”

 “Bueh!? Err, Daryl. No, wait— My name is Daryl Alkyne, Your Highness.”

 The guard standing watch by the main hall elevators all but jumped out of his armor, still adorned with the same flowing cape as the night prior.

 He offered a crisp salute, crossing his wrists over his chest and curling his hands up like claws—or perhaps wings—when Lycoris approached and asked her question. It was the same gesture that every guard had done up until now, so she could only surmise that it was the standard salute for Aphtangloa vassals.

 Lycoris raised an eyebrow and folded her arms expectantly.

 “Sir Alkyne, then. Do you have any hobbies?”

 “Hobbies… Your Highness?”

 “Reading, painting, you know. Leisure activities.” There was a slight hint of irritation in her tone that she couldn’t bother to mask.

 “Oh, no, no of course not! I would never think to waste time on such frivolities when the security of the Transfixion of Heaven is my duty!”

 “Hahh… I see.”

 Lycoris’ shoulders slumped and she put a hand to her face, unabashedly displaying her disappointment. Outbursts of emotion were considered uncouth for the rich and powerful, but she could probably get away with it, looking like a child and all.

 Moreover, she should be allowed some disappointment, given that this was the sixth or seventh guard that’d given her nearly the exact same response. It was completely unbelievable besides—even she had a hobby. It just happened that her hobby had involved practicing with a sword, and it was convenient to train other people at the same time.

 It wasn’t work if she was doing it for fun.

 Her initial plan was to get to know the guards a little better, both to ensure that she would notice if they ever ended up replaced or compromised in some way, and also to establish a rapport with them as a senior… well, she technically didn’t hold a military position at present… but the king, or exaltare, was the ultimate commander on any battlefield.

 And any good commander knew that forming a bond with their soldiers was paramount to ensure loyalty and honest communication in case trouble arose.

 Thus far, she’d completely failed to get even a single one to open up to her. They all gave the same canned response of “absolute loyalty to the Throne.” Needless to say, it was more than a little disheartening.

 “They can’t all seriously be this boring, can they? I mean… even I used to have hobbies, sort of. No matter if it was just playing cards with the other guards on nightwatch or stacking stones, the soldiers were always doing something to fill the time. There’s no way someone could survive such banality!”

 As she waved farewell with a smile and strode down the hall, Lycoris privately threw up her hands and grumbled to the maid just behind her.

 “I’m sure they do, but surely you must realize that they can’t simply say such things to the Princess. Even I… I-I, I mean I would never think of anything but serving both Your Highness and Her Majesty!”

 “Even though it’s obvious you’re hiding something, I somehow find that to be the most believable thing you’ve said,” Lycoris flatly grumbled, “but what’s wrong with trying to get closer to the people serving under me? How else will I know how to treat them, what I should take into consideration when selecting potential reassignments or promotions or platoon deployments? It’s important to pair people with matching personalities!”

 “P-Pair… them? Your Highness, far be it from me to dare suggest that my opinion might outweigh your own desires, but perhaps it would be best to not try and ship the guards… They do have families after all.”

 “Once more, my attendant has said something utterly incomprehensible… Don't explain. I was talking about military squads! In case they have to be deployed in a battle!”

 “…Why would Your Highness need to worry over such a thing, though?”

 “Why wouldn’t I? After all I…”

 Lycoris trailed off, stopping mid-step to put a hand to her chin. Why did she need to care? She had taken for granted that she’d need to establish a rapport with the guards as quickly as possible, but… it wasn’t like the decisions on who to deploy in an emergency would fall to her anyways. Not yet.

 And if anything, Lilianna would probably seal her in the Elysian Sanctum while Athena stood guard outside.

 That aside, there was still one other important reason Lycoris could think of to get to know all of her would-be protectors: To prepare for the event that they became something other than her protectors.

 Establishing a bond would make it far less likely that they would ever turn traitor. Or, if things came to that, perhaps they would even take her side. She was hardly a stranger to the idea that a sovereign could have a difference of opinion with their heiress.

 “…I still think it's important to understand them, just in case something happens to Mother. I know that sounds impossible, but… what if their interests were tested, or their loyalty or—”

 “Then they would be executed on the spot. The guards here have no choice but to obey Her Majesty’s orders. If she commanded them to throw themselves off of the top of a building, they would obey without hesitating. It’s pointless to bribe or tempt Her Majesty’s guards.”

 “Wait, what? H-How in the world does that work!? That sounds… like wicked Vampire magic to me.”

 “All guards in her service are put under a geas that ensures their loyalty when they’re sworn in. It’s not inherently harmful on its own, and when they retire it’s lifted. There’s nothing wicked about it, especially since they have to willingly agree in the first place! …I suppose you haven’t really taken any formal history courses, and Her Majesty hasn’t seen fit to explain the attempted rebellion against Lilith Aphtangloa.”

 “I’ve heard the name before, at least.”

 “There’s… a lot of fanciful stories about her, but I’ll stick to the historical accounts.”

 They continued walking down the halls, Lycoris attempting to establish contact with whatever guards she came across to little success, while Athena regaled her with a tale of a tyrant long-dead in between.

 Apparently, Lilith had once been a son of the Deyfros family, a former member of the Seven. Having been deemed the most suitable—or rather, only remaining—candidate at the time, he… or she, was chosen as Heir-Significate, and eventually succeeded the throne as Exaltare.

 The problem, however, was that the Deyfros were… ambitious. Like the Sefer and Idra, they were one of the “original” families—whatever that meant—and they had dreadfully strong opinions on how the world should work.

 But after taking the throne, their formerly loyal pawn had a sudden change of heart, deciding that the methods they’d used to seat her were too extreme, rejecting their plot to dismantle the other six families and become the one and only true rulers of the Empire.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

 The Empire she inherited had grown indolent, and was ill prepared for the Deyfros family’s schemes.

 They had already placed several key agents within other families, to prepare for when Lilith would have called upon them. Those agents had instead been repurposed to destabilize her reign, her former family trying to drive a wedge between her and the rest of the Empire, hoping she would come crawling back to them.

 And yet she stubbornly defied them, maintaining her power base by continually drafting vampires into Aphtangloa’s armies to campaign across the continent, subjugating the Plainstriders and nearly reaching all the way to the Sylphlands.

 Her influence and might was stretched thin as a result, and the Deyfros saw this as their chance to snatch the palace and Aphtangloa lineage out from under her. It was a complete disregarding of tradition and shook the foundations of the Empire—much like current events, Lycoris mused.

 Naturally, Lilith was wary of them, and ordered the arrest of any agents among the Seven that her intelligence forces had identified.

 But she’d acted too late, as the Deyfros had already infiltrated the royal guard sworn to protect her.

 When she returned to the palace—not the Transfixion of Heaven apparently, but a much older structure in the old capital of Sonfeallan—she received a hero’s welcome, many of the populace celebrating the success of her latest campaign.

 That night, Grand Duke Murond Deyfros confronted her in the midst of the party, Aphtangloa soldiers at his back as he decried her as a heavy-handed tyrant, painting her as the one attempting to oust the other families.

 Given that she had excised several of their key members, the other families backed him, failing to see through Deyfros' deceptions and fully believing her to be as tyrannical and power-mad as the Grand Duke claimed. At his command, a thousand soldiers were given the order to betray and depose the Exaltare.

 Lilith Aphtangloa tore out her father’s heart, and then in a single night, reaped one thousand soldiers with her fabled scythe, and fled the city after somehow destroying the palace with a firestorm grand enough to level the old capital, its flames hot enough to melt even the bedrock.

 “Accounts on what happened after are scattered, and this is where fables and legends take over for actual history. Personally I think she pulled a star from the sky and dropped it on the city. The ruins at least look like a meteorite struck, and there are still a lot of unexcavated, strange minerals left where the city once stood.”

 The two of them had relocated to a small parlor meant for entertaining guests, as the girl had become enraptured by the maid’s storytelling and wanted to hear the rest uninterrupted.

 It was a room as well-furnished as anywhere in the palace, stocked with its own (locked) cabinet of bloodwine even. There was an empty fire pit that looked long-unused, and some odd metal and glass objects that Lycoris didn’t recognize, but Athena simply waved her question away and said they were for projecting images for meetings.

 “So then… What happened? I mean, I’ve never heard of the Deyfros before, and obviously Mama is the current Aphtangloa, so Lilith survived, right?”

 Athena scratched her cheek thoughtfully. “Well… With the destruction of the city and the death of Grand Duke Deyfros, the other families declared martial law and appointed a temporary figurehead. After, the surviving members of the Deyfros family vanished one by one, as though the Ancestors were spiriting them away for the sins they committed. Then, the Vanas seized the opportunity and rose to fill the power-vacuum the Deyfros left behind. They were already kind of on the way up, given their control over the food market.”

 The term “food market” caused Lycoris to blanch as she recalled just what their primary “product” was. But she pressed on with her questioning.

 “But what about Lilith?”

 “Nobody’s really sure. It wasn’t until several years later that the truth of what’d happened came out, and her name was posthumously cleared. Around that same time, a girl with silver hair and red eyes was discovered. She claimed to be the next Exaltare, chosen by Lilith herself, but nobody could verify that outside of her obviously carrying Aphtangloa blood.”

 Lycoris nodded thoughtfully, “That’s a pretty classic trope, the one chosen by the Goddess arrives to guide their people…”

 “Goddess? I wouldn’t go that far. Lilith wasn’t exactly the best ruler. Quality of life was fairly poor under her, considering how focused on territory expansion she was and how all the family in-fighting disrupted the supply chain for the common folk. It’s no wonder everyone believed she was a mad tyrant who slew all her guards and her own family…”

 “But she was obviously betrayed!” Lycoris exclaimed, ignoring the fact Lilith was quite literally the sort of world-conquering Tyrant she’d sworn to slay.

 “Anyways, the next Exaltare was more or less just a puppet who held no power, given that she wasn’t properly selected as Heir-Significate and the Exaltare’s seat was at its weakest without even a single soldier to its title or city to its name. It was the one that came after her that held the reforms to ensure absolute loyalty of her guard.”

 “W-Wait, but I wasn’t properly… Um, isn’t this very very bad for me!?”

 If I’m not taken seriously, then doesn’t that mean those stupid seven families will just walk right over me? If they do that then there’s nothing I can do for humanity!

 “Hahaha, but you’re Her Majesty’s actual child by birth. It’s a completely different situation!”

 “How can you even be so confident about that…”

 “Because you can stand side-by-side with her and declare it together. It is true that Lilith’s disappearance and the surfacing of her heir was fuel to the flames of doubt, and legends quickly began spreading that she’d found a way to break the cursed shackles upon the Aphtangloa bloodline and bore an actual child. There’s still some crazy cults out there waiting for the day she’ll ‘cure us of our sun-sickness.’”

 “…I guess that’s why blondie asked Lilianna if she’d pluck the sun from the sky, then?”

 “B-B-Blon…*ahem* It’s a fairly common insult stemming from that, yes.”

 “Haahh… I hope that I don’t end up causing as huge a shock to society…”

 “Don’t worry, no doubt Her Majesty has already concocted a flawless plan to ensure your safety, Princess Lycoris. Besides, who cares if people have already started coming up with rumors about your connection to that old legend?”

 At least Athena seemed confident, even if Lycoris had found quite a bit to worry over in the retelling. And it was true that Lilianna had promised that Lycoris wouldn’t face any unnecessary hardship without her.

 That last part was a little troubling, especially considering she had no idea which people Athena could be talking about. But rather than tear the bandage off, she decided to let the sleeping dragonewt lie, for the time being.

 “Well, thank you for sharing that with me, Athena. I was worried that I’d be charting completely unknown territory here, but it sounds like there’s some historical examples I can at least learn from. Even if they may not be the most factual accounts…”

 “Your Highness… Y-Your words are far too compassioniderate for the likes of me! Please, do not waste any expense on—”

 “What’d I say about putting yourself down like that? Come now Athena, shape up. ‘Tis a time for celebration, so hold thy head high,’ and all that.”

 “Ack! M-My sincerest apologies, Your Highness! I’ll gladly offer… er, um, I mean… A-Are you feeling hungry at all yet? Perhaps we should return to your room for a late lunch.”

 “Hmm… Perhaps. I’m not feeling thirsty— or, ‘hungry’ just yet. Might as well keep trying to get the guards to say something while we make our way back. I’m sure at least one of them will be willing to open up to me! There’s no reason to be afraid of a little girl after all. …Maybe I should try asking them in a cutesy voice instead?”

 “But your voice is always cute, Princess.”

 Pinching the bridge of her nose, Lycoris let out an exaggerated sigh.