Against all odds, Athena had survived at least four certain-death encounters in the span of perhaps thirty minutes.

 That was a new record.

 Ugh, what a fool I am. Failing so spectacularly four times in quick succession is nothing to be proud of!

 She frowned as she looked at the pair of corpses that Her M—Highness had dealt with.

 As expected of the Exaltare’s own daughter, she’d dealt with them in incredibly short order while unarmed, even though she was just a child. It didn’t even feel real to her—the Exaltare, having a true flesh and blood heir.

 At first when Athena saw the tiny figure, she’d been so completely caught off guard that she forgot to draw her weapon. She’d worried that something terrible had befallen Her Majesty, like a bizarre curse that shrunk her down into some diminutive form.

 Which would’ve been awfully cute admittedly, but also extremely terrifying! …Oh Exaltare, please ignore your foolish servant’s thoughts! They are not worth your time!!

 …Thankfully, the truth was something far more benign than that, even if it flew in the face of everything she’d learned about their majesticient ruler. So much so that Athena wasn’t sure what to do with herself after being slapped in the face by the reality before her.

 Or, behind me, I guess. She glanced back at the door to Her Majesty’s study.

 She couldn’t possibly overstate how truly amazing a woman the current Exaltare was, having done something none of her predecessors had ever managed. Many vampires struggled to bear offspring even at the best of times, and the problem only worsened the closer to the zeroth generation they got. The price paid by the Exaltare for being of purest blood was the complete inability to bear an heir, thus the process of selecting one from the Seven had come about.

 She wasn’t even sure where Her Majesty could have even hidden the girl for so long. She didn’t look particularly old, but she had to at least be sixty judging by how she conducted herself. Or she was a particularly capricious fifty year old… She definitely seemed a little on the shy side. What an adorable little thing…

 “As expected of Her Majesty, she’s an incredible enough person to—Hhgdfgb!?” Her tongue suddenly twisted as she spoke to herself.

 Oh right, the geas. Good going Athena, no wonder she doesn’t trust you at all! Still, how’d she manage to keep a child secret for multiple decades with nobody any the wiser… I wonder how she even managed to have one in the first place… and who’s the father…?

 With a forceful flap, she unfurled a large black plastic refuse bag, stuffing the still-intact corpse into it leg-first. The bodies had already begun to decay, as was the fate of all humans embraced and turned into ghouls.

 Athena would’ve felt a modicum of pity for them, if they hadn’t attempted to take Her Highness’ life. These two got everything they deserved.

 But the way Her Highness stumbles over herself trying to act like Her Majesty… Ahhh she’s so adorable! Mhmhm, there’s definitely no way she could be a day over fifty. And you get to tend to her personally, Athena! Don’t screw this up now. This could be the opportunity of a lifetime!

 Finally, my dead-end life might actually move forward for the first time in—

 The rollercoaster of emotion she’d boarded didn’t seem like it’d be stopping any time soon, as the door behind her abruptly opened and shattered her reverie.

 “Aghk! Y-Your Majesty!?”

 “Toss this out too. And deal with the bodies by the elevator.”

 The Exaltare threw the bloodied scraps of the briar that she’d extricated from Lycoris out the door, forcing the poor maid to dodge out of the way.

 “Hahh… it does mean I have to deal with Her Majesty Exaltare Lilianna more as well, though… I’m not sure my heart can take it; there’s no way she doesn’t hate me.”

 But she trusted me with her daughter… perhaps it’s because I’m barely eight hundred myself, and she thought having a young and hip maidservant would serve Her Highness better? I couldn’t possibly dare to imagine what Her Majesty is thinking but don’t you worry Lycoris, big sis Athena will make sure you grow up just right and never want for anything a day in your life!

 Still, she wondered what exactly happened. She’d fully removed all of the barbs, but the moment Her Highness finished gulping down her meal, she started panicking…

 Perhaps she was wracked with guilt over drinking one of her mother’s personal favorites? That’d make sense; though… given how Lilianna was treating her, there’s no way the terrifying ruler would have cared, much less inflict any sort of punishment.

 Even just bearing witness to that side of her felt… blasphemous, as though Athena should’ve been cut down where she crouched just for thinking about it.

 Tying up the bag around the corpse, she took an enchanted specially-absorbent sponge to the blood soaked carpet. It was thick and had soaked in, reeking unpleasantly of the foul taint all ghouls bore, but fortunately it hadn’t started to dry out yet.

 Why didn’t she just erase my memories instead!? I feel like I’ve been cursed with the burden of knowledge! Aaagh, Your Majesty, why didn’t you just kill me!?

 No, no no you can’t think like that anymore Athena, Her Highness’ wellbeing is your responsibility now! You can’t screw this up!

 Plus, it could potentially be a foot in the door to get herself back onto the political floor. The thought of rubbing it in the faces of the members of the Ochros family that she was the personal handmaiden to the first true heir of an Exaltare in… ever, was a delightfully sweet brew.

 “Heh heh heh. Serves them right for abandoning me like that. Or maybe I should be thanking them? Since now I get to—hhbllgbh!”

 After silently bagging up the pair of bodies, securely stowing the brambles in a hazardous waste container, and sponging the blood off the floors and walls, she wiped the sweat from her brow and began hauling the refuse down the silent hallway.

 It was a little disappointing she didn’t get to dispose of the stupid fools who’d dare tread upon Her Majesty’s private sanctum herself, especially because it meant Her Highness had to suffer the humiliation of staining her hands with their worthless blood.

 Worse still, she looked like she wanted to drink it. It pained Athena’s heart to think she’d forgotten to even feed herself for long enough to feel so desperate, especially at her age. It must’ve been hard on her, having her mother be so busy with her duties as a ruler.

 She could envision the Princess in her room, mournfully peering out the window or into the hall waiting for Her Majesty’s return…

 I certainly won’t let her starve, don’t you worry Your Majesty!

 Arriving at the main lobby for the floor, she slapped a button to open up the maintenance chute and dumped the bagged corpses out along with the filthy cleaning gear. Wiping her hands, she turned back around to face the simple yet elegant gold-lined doorway to Her Majesty’s private quarters, and looked at the shriveled up bodies of the guards laying on the cold beige marble tiles.

 There were obvious puncture wounds on an exposed patch of skin and—given the relative positions of where they lay—at least one of them had gone up to the ghouls when they arrived on the floor, while the other was closer to the door with their spear on the ground beside them.

 What sort of amateur gets done in by an assailant with a knife? I guess it wasn’t really a normal knife, but honestly! Her Majesty’s private guard should be of better stock than this.

 Though really, it was the fault of those worthless humans who’d dared intrude upon Her Majesty’s domain. They’d cut down a vast number of soldiers, far more than any reasonable human should be able to… but ultimately they weren’t even able to lay a hand upon Lilianna.

 And their foolish crusade ended in obscurity, as Her Majesty had seen fit to not even announce what’d happened, instead choosing to cite unrest among certain discontented nobles and let them point fingers at each other. It wasn’t even a lie, either. Those humans had to have been pawns in some family’s scheme, there was no chance they could’ve made it this far otherwise, and another wave of intruders showed up right after.

 Serves them right! But… I wonder if this will be a continued trend? Surely whichever of the Seven is responsible wouldn’t keep trying to push their luck like this… They’ll burn through all their chips before they even take a hand off of Her Majesty or her daughter.

 At least, I hope so… I’d really rather not have to clean up this sorta mess every couple of weeks for the next few years…

 Grumbling and mumbling to herself, Athena vigorously scrubbed the main foyer, eager thoughts of her future job serving Her Majesty’s adorable daughter filling her mind.

 ＊　＊　＊

 Within vaulted white-walled halls lined with glowing gold, a man with similarly pale golden-wheat hair reclined underneath a low-frequency artificial sun as he sipped deep scarlet tea from an ornate cup.

 Emerald green vines crawled up latticed walls, and immaculately sculpted rose bushes covered in eternally-blooming whites, blues, and purples formed organized waist-high hedgerows.

 A fresh breeze—crafted by magic—blew through at semi-regular intervals to stir the foliage, lending a fresh spring air to the indoor gazebo.

 The man’s name was Cedric Idra, and while the Idra family had multiple elders serving as its oligarchs, he was the current speaker for the family. His position was about as lofty as one could hope for at his age, and well positioned to take a seat as one of the true leaders of the family—and their society—if he continued to play his cards right.

 However…

 He set the cup back down on its saucer and pinched the bridge of his nose as his attention was drawn to the push notification sent to his mobile, prompting an unpleasant frown to form on his flawless face. The fangs he’d sent to nip at Her Majesty appeared to have failed spectacularly. Or so he could only surmise, as both of their signals had vanished at nearly the exact same time.

 It’d cost a pretty penny to slip a pair of ghouls into the seat of the Exaltare’s power, but he’d thought they were well positioned to cash in one of their family’s favors to the Vanas. The gluttons were easy enough to please, he could likely just send them another village’s worth of human if he ever needed to grease the wheel again in the future.

 Cedric folded his arms and closed his rose-gold eyes, letting out a quiet hum. The Exaltare had begun acting queerly after dispatching the human invaders—the fruits of another of House Idra’s many schemes.

 Though that made it sound successful, which… he couldn’t say was actually the case. They’d certainly thinned out Lilianna’s private guard, but he couldn’t tell what they’d actually done to the infuriating woman herself.

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 It was clear it had some impact on Aphtangloa, but he’d sent the ghouls in to figure out what exactly occurred. Had she suffered a grievous wound? He was skeptical of the notion. She was a second generation child with a nearly four thousand year rule—quite the respectable length to hold the throne for. Though, she’d betrayed her Drimus roots and filled that time by introducing all manner of insipid new-age policy. Things like true land ownership rights for thin-blooded plebeians, taxation laws on workshops employing ghoul labor, and most damnable of all was that spire that served to give a voice to those lesser races.

 Even just the thought of how she’d crippled Idra by further diluting power caused his blood to boil, the teacup on the table simmering.

 But she’d ruled for almost four millenia, and was undoubtedly of exceptionally pure blood. There was no chance that mere humans could inflict a genuine injury to the heritor of the zeroth.

 If not injury though, what? A curse perhaps, placed by that vain and feckless “Hero” in his last moments? The strange luminous magic vines barring the door to her throne room seemed to point towards that… but his little pet seemed to think that the human died to create those.

 The only other possibility that stuck out in his mind was that she’d chosen to capture one of them, and was dedicating every spare moment to interrogating—or simply torturing—the human, at the expense of her duties as ruler. Though what information she would even seek from a lowly sack of blood, he couldn’t begin to fathom. Nor did he care much to try; even the thought of that filled him with a deep disdain and revulsion.

 Regardless, he would have his answer eventually. It was simply a pity to be forced into making their desire that much more obvious. The Idra family would have benefited greatly if they’d gained intel on just what their most Exalted Ruler was up to without requiring favors to be called in. Especially not with the man he had in mind.

 But he refused to suffer another setback like with that grotesque eyesore that she’d erected the other century. If he wanted results, then there was no better positioned person to get them.

 He picked his smartphone off the table and pressed his thumb on the polished glass reflecting back his handsome visage, unlocking it via Face ID. Thumbing through the rows of various contacts, his fingers settled on a mint-haired man.

 Reclining in his seat as he pushed the call button, he began drumming his fingers across the table to a tune only he could hear. It was but one small part of a grand chorus, as for every individual plot foiled, two more would take its place.

 That was how his family retained their place as the grandest among the Seven, even with a woman on the throne who spat in the face every tradition their kind took for granted. Her stance had become quite clear after she secured enough power to throw her political weight around in the face of the three-pronged alliance of Idra, Ochros, and Vanas.

 Even more revolting, she was apparently quite popular with the common folk. When the Ochros had attempted to hurt her reputation by forcing some of the commoners into slandering her on social media, she’d taken their lumps with a laugh rather than having them burned at the stake like her predecessors would have.

 That she would even throw away her pride in such a manner proved how little she deserved her seat, and yet the majority of the families thought that having a ruler so well-liked by their empire was a good thing.

 He blamed the Ochros for not ordering harsher censuring of her practices, but they’d argued back that anything more would expose it as an obvious ploy on their part. At least he’d been able to demand they make up for their blunder, which was the only reason he was even making this phone call right now.

 ‘Speak.’

 “That is what I should be demanding of you, Tethos. The ghouls—”

 ‘Are dead, yes. I’m aware. You needn’t strain your ears for every changing of the breeze.’

 “You’re sounding like a harpy.”

 ‘And you’re lucky I’m too busy to pay a visit and rip your fangs out. So? What do you want? I’m a touch preoccupied with burning bridges—for your sake, might I add.’

 “Are you still in contact with that one childling sent to the palace?”

 ‘You can’t be serious…’ The man on the other end of the call sounded exasperated. ‘The only reason we haven’t disowned that bumbling fool is because the Exaltare has taken a personal shine to her.’

 “And that’s exactly why I need to pick her brain. I don’t care if she’s willing, she surely must have stumbled across something. There are only so many Traditionalists that harlot keeps within her wingspan, and our mutual friend in the Vanas will likely have his head rolling before the week is over.”

 ‘It’s yours that will roll, if you make a habit of vocally denigrating Her Majesty like that… what about that toy you acquired the other decade?’

 “Useless, outside of being able to appear beneficial to Her Majesty by crippling that group of humans before they could set forth in her keep.”

 ‘Aren’t you the reason—’

 “Tethos.”

 The other party fell silent for a long while. Cedric took the opportunity to savor another sip of his tea.

 ‘I’ll see what I can do, but we’re already skating on thin ice here. It wouldn’t surprise me if she already caught on to our tail.’

 “I expect great deeds of you, Pale One.”

 An exaggerated, decorumless sigh came through the speaker. ‘And may great rewards blossom forth, Infinite One.’

 Tethos wasted no time in hanging up after their ritualistic call and response. Cedric stared blankly at his phone for a few moments, before opening up BlueStream and looking through some recent uploads.

 The commonfolk may have been too thin-blooded to understand the Traditionalists’ wisdom, but on occasion their wit was at least worth entertaining oneself with. Especially when directed at the other families.

 Having overcome the minor bump on his road to glory, Cedric let his thoughts wander once more as he accented his tea with a side of junk food entertainment.

 ＊　＊　＊

 Thomas Rhineheart had been a soldier fighting on the frontlines, for the glory of humanity. The vampires had sent a small detachment to cull their numbers, quietly purging—or perhaps harvesting would be more accurate—those too far away from the capital to receive assistance from the King’s five glorious Rays—the hand of the Goddess, the knightly order that shielded humanity from the fiends that kept them boxed in at the edge of the world.

 He had been, because the vampires had raided the town he was assigned to protect and saw fit to drag him back to their nightmarish empire of eternal night and darkness.

 As the bloodsuckers did with the civilians they abducted, they kept him alive and repeatedly harvested his blood, like cattle on a farmer’s ranch. They even punctured his ear with a tag, though he had no idea what the square-shaped symbol on it was.

 He learned in his time at the ranch that the monsters spoke the same language—as if out of spite toward the Goddess that watched over humanity—though he didn’t particularly want to hear the topics they went over in his presence. It was mostly talk of which ones were on their last legs and should be shipped out to a “glue factory.”

 He’d been truly naive in every sense of the word back then.

 But his life had improved since those days. Not by much, but anything beat life as a domesticated beast.

 Even being a monster.

 He wasn’t exactly sure why they chose him, given that he was just an ordinary man like any of the others they’d captured that day; but when the vampire’s fangs sank into his neck, he felt his painful past fade away as a new future embraced him.

 From that day forth he was servant to the Vanas Family—royalty! Or… something close to it, apparently.

 Unfortunately, his masters’ nobility had no bearing on his position or treatment.

 Despite his middle-aged physique, he quickly discovered he had twice the strength and endurance he once did—because he’d been immediately set to work in the mines for them.

 In essence, he’d been upgraded from livestock to slave.

 The vampires had their own array of political bullshit that he found just as impenetrable as when human nobles mingled and schmoozed about, but one thing he did understand was that there were two main factions at play: The Progressives, and The Traditionalists.

 The house that owned him aligned with the latter, which perhaps explained his treatment.

 He had no idea how long a hundred years really was until he’d spent that much time underground, the sun and sky a distant memory in his mind.

 He stayed sane by listening to the stories of fellow ghouls belonging to the Vanas, slowly accumulating knowledge and, gradually, he began to puzzle out the impenetrable tapestry of vampire society, as told by its leftover scraps.

 Thomas leveraged that, along with what he knew of supply lines, human resources, connections, and every other scrap of information he could drag out of his wizened brain to escape that hell—to prove himself useful to his masters.

 They’d been impressed, and eventually he found himself in the capital of Ljosdeyja, with the palace of the Exaltare as the towering centerpiece of the entire grandiose city. He remembered being awestruck the first time he saw all of those structures that thrust toward the heavens, hundreds of needles all straining against the fabric of the deep burgundy clouds that loomed overhead.

 His role was simple: get into the good graces of the Sefer family, as they held the most radical views on rights for ghouls like him, and feed the information back to the Traditionalists. It was an easy job, and he was eager to do it after spending an eternity below the earth. Especially given how much kinder the Sefer treated him. For the first time in a century he was even given a private living space, albeit a small one.

 On occasion his job even took him into the grand cathedral-like antechamber of the Transfixion of Heaven itself—though he was always accompanied by a vampiric representative. The current Exaltare was more willing to lend an ear than most, but that was like saying a battleaxe was more likely to leave an arm intact than a stone-spitting drake, so the representative from Sefer accompanied him for his own protection whenever he spoke about how ghouls suffered under the yoke of the Traditionalists.

 He meant a lot of what he’d said, too; it simply rang hollow when he knew who his true masters still were.

 One particular day, however, a different set of orders came in.

 He was to escort another pair of ghouls into the palace. He’d never met them before, nor had the Sefer representative.

 It was blatantly suspicious, all the moreso given what’d only just happened the other week. But when he considered the abyss that awaited should he fail, he saw little harm in using his meager amount of political pull to let a pair of fellow ghouls in.

 What even was the worst they could do? Ghouls were incapable of using magic at all, and while they were strong and lived until their minds collapsed, they were basically mewling kittens compared to an actual vampire.

 So he let them in and quickly left, not wanting to be caught alone in the palace nor with the pair of cloaked travelers. He’d asked them which house they belonged to, if any, but they said nothing to him—not even the smallest of talk.

 After parting from them, he mentally bid them good riddance. He had half a mind to complain to his contact in the Vanas Family, but…

 He was never given the chance.

 That same day, he was called back to the palace in the evening, a feeling of dread welling up inside him.

 When he walked through the towering doors, awaiting him was a firing line of soldiers, as well as a steel-eyed woman with short, blade-like ash-gray hair to match—Her Majesty’s High Executioner, Lesath.

 After four hundred and ninety five years, Thomas Rhineheart’s strange twists of luck finally failed him; he was dead before his knees even touched the ground.