The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

The Greenfield Family.

It's day 2 of the Gathering, and today it's time to get creative. A bunch of wild and inventive ideas for different kinds of shenanigans our little group can get up to are about to ensue. So just sit back and enjoy, because this is going to be quite a ride.

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...-family/50

“Sykora is correct in her censure of Princess Dantia,” she finally says. “We must not be so callous as to consider the scouring of Maekyon anything but unutterable tragedy.”

Sykora’s eyes light up.

“Dantia of the Bright Covenant is correct, too,” Narika continues. “Though I take no pleasure from the speaking of it. Maekyon is far less developed than any world in the history of the Mandate systems. The polycrisis it faces is considerable. If the planet were to survive long enough to discover the sweep on its own merits, it would likely be after a significant population crunch. We must consider the intervention of the Empire in those terms, and through the lens of a world still in its tempestuous adolescence for whom annexation might save many more lives than dereliction would take.”

“I am not arguing for dereliction, Narika.” Sykora says. “And we are not here to guess at Maekyon’s imagined future. Perhaps it’s as dire as my fellows suggest. I have been commanded to make contact, and I have, and will continue to. My focus is not on hypothetical disaster but on concrete mitigation. How difficult would it truly be to maintain Maekyon as a Mandate world? It’s more effort—I know it is—but we are willing to make that effort. We are proven; we’re ready. The Eqtoran annexation was unorthodox and we have transformed it into a proud beacon of the Empire. There is so much that is unique about this case. It demands care. I know you’re aware of that, High Majesty. I know that Maekyon is as special to you as it is to me. That it’s the culmination of so many of your hopes. Your enemies lurk at its fringes; your prognosticators project disaster. Let us not sleepwalk into preventable catastrophe. Let us give it Maekyon the consideration it deserves.”

The Empress is silent for what seems to Grant like a minor eternity.

“Let us, indeed,” she says. “You are relieved of your annexation duty, Cousin Sykora. You are no longer the ruler of Maekyon. I give the world and its conquest to Princess Narika of the Glory Banner.”

And now, the continuation.

Grant’s horrified heart restarts like a paddle-shock. Behind her spindly glasses, Zithra’s eyes bulge.

“Grantyde isn’t—he’s—he’s not a fucking kink, High Majesty.” Sykora is incandescent with rage. “He’s not a disease. He’s the father of my children, he’s the love of my life, he’s—he is the greatest man I have ever known. The greatest person I have ever known. How dare you?”

She barks a laugh, giddy and liberated and terrified.

“Me, his pet? He makes me stronger than I ever imagined myself to be. You could never understand that, you—you lonely, bitter old woman.”

Zithra has ceased pacing. She sits back at her desk. She removes her glasses. “Be astoundingly careful, Sykora of the Black Pike, in the next words you speak to me. Choose as if they were your epitaph.”

“Here, then. I’ll speak slow for the chiseler.” Sykora sounds each word out with scorpion-tail venom. “I do not care if I am disqualified from the Imperial seat because I. Don’t. Want it.”

Her tail latches around Grant’s leg. He wills himself to stillness, to being the anchor she’s always needed him to be.

“Do you know what I saw,” she continues, “when I spoke to your daemon? Do you know what she told me? She—”

“I don’t know and I do not care to know,” Zithra says. “I am not an algorithm and neither are you. This is the real world.”

“She was alone.” Sykora does not relent. “Monstrously alone, in a barren, stripped-out world, with nobody to turn to but great edifices of herself. The environment that fit her best, that kept her going. It had nothing in it but her, and a dead reality to be reshaped by her. You call me sick? That is sickness.”

You think I wanted that? Or this? You impudent fucking infant?

“You think I wanted that? Or this? You impudent fucking infant?” Zithra stands from her desk again with a swirl of silken sleeves. Her face fills the camera, gaze bulging and furious. “You think I wanted this Empire? I despise this Empire. This firmament-wide mess we made, that I must spend my entire loveless life cleaning up, and you imagine me pleased with this?

“I am standing atop a castle of wickedness,” Zithra says. “And brick by minuscule brick, I am dismantling it, because it must be dismantled, must be stripped to its foundation before we can build something of virtue on its bedrock. I will be cold and in the ground before a yard of it is gone. And if I knock the ghoulish fucking thing over, if I misplace a single stone, then hundreds of billions of innocent lives will be crushed by its collapse. The project of ending the Empire goes beyond my lifetime. It goes beyond my descendant’s lifetimes and their descendants’ lifetimes. And this… this petty, selfish rebellion you flaunt in front of me. This is a sledgehammer where a scalpel must serve.

“You love your husband. You are loyal to your husband. Your husband is a college dropout night janitor. The fact that I have not had him shot is a testament to how worthy a man I find him; and he has many fine qualities; and his love is pure, and his heart is just; and he will never be able to make the decisions that must be made or feel the prudence that must be felt. Never, never, never. And as long as he cannot, nor can you. You are blinded if you cannot see this.”

She stares at her spindly fingers, flexing them as if to watch the thinning skin fold.

“I am older than I have ever been.” Her anger has vented out; her roar is reduced to a croak. “I am more in command of my faculties now than I will ever be again. I decline further. Another generation closer to death. Another generation has grown, and its brightest, most promising prospect has been leashed by a Maekyonite. How deeply, desperately sad.” She looks flatly up into the camera. “How gravely your heart has damaged the Empire’s destiny, Grant Hyde.”

Grant wants to be defiant and brave like Sykora. He stumbles after the feeling—he still hasn’t caught it by the time Zithra moves on from him, and he hates himself for it.

“My hopes that were in you, Black Pike, I now transfer wholly to your sister. The taking of Maekyon, I can no longer trust you with. I lay that at her feet as well.” Zithra nods wearily to Narika. “Earth is yours, Glory Banner. Proceed as you will.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/120617...ion-closer
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1419041...r/2594117/