Prince Zai speaks quietly, remembering the name from the strange flight plan filed with the Dominion. “It’s Port Azuru… isn’t it?”

  “And your hometown for the foreseeable future.” The General inhales, moving towards a padlocked locker on the command deck.

  Five numbers in sequence to complete the combination lock, the file drawer slid open to reveal two crimson colored binders. “If Dominion Intelligence is second to none, then I must wonder what great things can your Apparatus accomplish… I plan to find out.”

  Two languages for two cultures, one in the Tiancin Alphabet and another in Central Ensolian Script; distributed to their assumed associates.

  IDENTITY BRIEFING, said Sophia’s; and she takes it, opening it to reveal a series of seemingly official documentation written in the foreign text.

  The General stares down the male intruder. “Prince Zai, you are aware that your family does hold a Summer Residence here in Port Azuru correct?”

  “I am.” He tiredly informs, taking the documentation from her. “I’ve only visited it once a…” It’s almost hard for him to remember, eyes squinting. “... a very long time ago.”

  “Well that’s good, you already know where you’ll be staying.” General Marchland continues to brief, these lofty royals no longer family or superiors but uneducated, undisciplined operatives. “The Tiancin Political Apparatus has provided you two with cover stories for your time here. I was informed that you will pose as a pair of newlyweds from Yunclair; covered as merchant families or something along the lines of that.”

  Prince Zai is immediately on the task, already reading through the precise language of an Apparatus writer while Sophia is utterly murdered by it; trying to get through the smutless, plotless sterile words hand-written upon her pages.

  “Officially you two royals would have made it to Landfall, completed the rites of arrival and all that sort. The truth: you’ll be nicely squirreled away in this peaceful town away from all the Court drama, until it all calms down of course. We’ll be dropping you off on the Residence’s grounds about four clicks from town. And don’t worry about conspicuousness, it’s obvious that the Apparatus has thought this through with a… concerning degree of planning.”

  She gazes out of one of the deck’s portholes, watching as one of their escorts, the Erythryn Coast’s, turbine engines suddenly ignites the sky. An explosion sending a shower of sparks like meteors falling to the world, noxious smoke spewing as fire suppression systems try to stem the burning lines of fuel.

  “Normally I wouldn’t be so keen to let your people sabotage my flagship and one of her escorts, but if it's for the safety of the realm and ordered under Imperial Writ I suppose I can make exceptions. Funny though, isn’t it Commandant?”

  HEY, Auntie is talking to you! A part of Sophia’s council informs after a few seconds of contemplation, most of the mental operations still stuck trying to understand this incredible development.

  “Huh?” Sophia dumbly looks up from the pages.

  Auntie Clarisse smirks, strolling back to the floor window. “Seems like everyone in the Marchland Family will have their aerostatics bombed by the end of this decade. But unlike your father though, we haven’t been privileged enough to be climbing the Thumb of the Goddess when the bomb went off.”

  Some awful groan echoes throughout the hull of the Argent Dawn, like some wounded animal about to collapse from exhaustion.

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  The pipped whistle echoes through the announce system, followed by a single klaxon that rings four times, breaking for two seconds, and another four to close it off.

  Emergency landing procedures. Sophia’s mind thinks, almost beginning to panic before the reassurance of Auntie’s warm smile brings her back.

  “You are aware that your father is still alive right? Annie didn’t forget to tell you?”

  “She did.” The Fourth Princess pauses, then shakes her head. “I mean, Mother did tell me before we left—”

  “Good. I’m glad he got a little delayed.” Auntie interrupts her. “I did after all, walk my dearest Sophia down the aisle instead of him.”

  She will never let Father live that down.

  “And I hope you won’t find out the hard way Zai—” The General turns to the intruder, her expression returning to a cold scowl. “The Elise family may be spineless, scheming royals, but remember that your… partner is half Marchland. And we Marchlands aren’t easy to kill.”

  Prince Zai gulps, keeping composure. “Your family has quite a storied history.”

  “That’s putting it gently. We are a line of old barbarians and knights… despite Arden’s disposition. And we don’t shy away from the difficult decisions when faced with them. You understand what we are capable of right?”

  Sophia could read something more within her Auntie, of a brewing rage at this lowly male before her.

  Oh she’s pissed at this arrangement. One of the thoughts snaps its fingers.

  Justified. Another concedes. She doesn’t know him, I mean you’d probably be pissed if…

  Well do we even know him?

  There’s a bit of mingling at the suggestion, before another thought returns the council to its main topic. Ok this is not rage, Auntie’s not angry she’s too level headed for that. She’s playing this game of emotions for your sake. It suggests, continuing. She’s tryna scare him, making sure he won’t do anything bad to you while you’re out here.

  General agreement through the mumbles, before Sophia herself takes to observe the Prince’s reaction to this.

  And like a statue he stares the General down, but something within him emits palpable fear at the words aimed right at his royalty. Something deeper than just his own skin and pounds of flesh, this thinly veiled threat was directed towards those beneath them. His blood-contracted love to his people: the men, women and children of Tianci, suddenly beneath the arming mechanisms of air-burst shells and incendiary bombs.

  We made the Divine Covenant. When you forbade yourselves from the devastation of that war between our kind and yours, to promise to never unleash the atrocities you once witnessed. But yet look at what you have done. You have once again fallen to the seduction of science, peering into the atomics of your creation to refine your violence. We know because we were there to witness it:

  We were in the metals that made your flying ships, we were the volatile phosphorus in your bombs, within the canned air you breathed and the glass sights you used to watch a city burn; we were in the charred wood and brick and concrete, we lived in the carboned flesh of the children and mothers and fathers: and in one night a genius loci died.

  You brought forth this atrocity, justified as much as you could’ve. To save a million lives you consumed a hundred thousand, you and your cold calculus made this. No monsters or demons possessed you, it was you and your humanity.

  And if ordered to, you would do it again.

  A lifetime ago Commodore Marchand was the one to deliver the order to firebomb Kotimaa. Aboard the battleship Wrath she sent the transmission, confirming the War Council’s decision.

  This General’s hands had touched the pyre, she was as guilty as anyone on the Council and the crews of the ships above.

  And this thinly veiled threat she leveled at the Prince was as real as a gun held to his chest.

  The General coldly cuts her next words. “We have around ten minutes before landfall, I suggest you two get ready to disembark.”