Elemental Blitz

4

One young city guard managed to get a message out of Orleanspire. He got a messenger hawk up mere seconds before a Devil ripped his guts out. The hawk is bred for speed and endurance and makes it to Sapphirespire by morning. The capital city of the Sapphire Empire is a marvel. A tiered city that climbs and wraps around a small mountain, each surrounded by massive white stone walls. The city is a literal representation of the Seats. The top tier of the city, known as the Peak, is home to the First Seat elites and their servants. The middle tier is called the Belt. It is home to the Second Seats. The lowest and largest tier is the Base, which is home to the Third Seat. There is constant traffic from outside the city and between the Base and the Belt. The Peak is more rarified air. No one comes in from the lower tiers without written permission from a First Seat resident. At the center of the Peak is the Sapphire Palace, here is where the hawk flies and is received by a palace guard.

The Sapphire Palace, once home to Emperors and Empresses and their families, is now the office of the Senate. None of them live within the Palace except for one, and only because it is the only home she has ever known. Senator Eshoni TyVon, formally Crown Princess Eshoni TyVon, seats in her office going over the most recent reports from around the Empire. Everything from road work requests to reports on Anti-Senate groups that are starting to get more violent in their protests. It is not something she has to sort through herself; her staff could and would read through them and compile a report if she asked, but she wants to feel connected to the people she serves.

Eshoni just turned fifty last month. She is 5’6, and she has put on weight in the last decade with her soft living as a Senator versus her life as a Rebel Princess. Her skin is milk chocolate and is still firm, but her hair, raven black hair, usually worn up in a braided bun, has started to show streaks of grey. She is not conceded enough to say she has had a hard life; she was a pampered princess for most of her life, and now she is a pampered senator. Even during the most terrible years of her mother’s reign, when she decided to join the rebellion, she was still living her day-to-day life as a princess while people died and disappeared in their dozens daily.

She will say that she has had to make plenty of hard choices. Choices that would break others. She chose to overthrow her mother. She chose to put her entire family to the sword and then to live with that choice in order to right some of the wrongs they had done. She had wanted to die that day as well, but she stood and watched every execution, knowing that the people would need a symbol to rally around after the blood was spilled, but the blood had to be spilled before any kind of healing could begin. So she watched as, one by one, her mother, siblings, nieces, nephews, and cousins were all beheaded in front of the palace. That was the day her duty to her people became her reason for living.

She sits back and massages her hazel eyes before staring up at the ceiling. She struggles with what she has done and what she has lost. Doing the right thing is never without cost, but hers was so damn high. She reaches, and from under her sapphire and gold robe of office, she pulls out the platinum and diamond pendant. It is in the shape of a snowflake and cool to the touch despite being pressed to her skin under her robe for hours. It is always cool. No tools were used to shape the metal or carve the gem. The man who made this for her doesn’t need tools because he can control the elements of their world as easily as breathing. He made this for her twenty-first birthday, and she has never taken it off since he put it around her neck. The coolness reminds her of the day they shared their first kiss it was actually snowing.

Rexx Thorne was her first and true love. Is still though she knows that she has lost him just as surely as she would have if he were dead. He is the man that people wanted dead almost as much, if not more, than her mother. The Devil’s Executioner Bloody Rexx. None of them knew the man he was beneath, the monster that she made him into. Bearers of the Elemental Rings are normally seen as heroes. To the people of the Sapphire Empire, Rexx’s name will forever be associated with the monster he served. She knows he took no pleasure in the things he did. She has seen him at his lowest, in tears in a corner surrounded by bottles. He has the blood of men, women, and children on his hands and soul. And the hatred of an entire nation on his back. He is the only one that she could not give them. Who she could never give them. She protected him despite knowing that he would hate her and possibly be the biggest threat to the new Empire she is helping to build. A Ring Bearer is a force of nature who draws their power from the world. If Rexx wanted to, he would start a one-man war against the Sapphire Empire, and the chances are great that he would win.

She had poisoned him the night before what was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives on the same spot where they shared that first kiss. She had used a mixture made for her by a witch who guaranteed her one drop would kill its target within ten seconds. She had injected him with far more than that. She had watched the man she loved writhing in agony before mercifully falling into a coma. She had chosen the three people she trusted most to help her smuggle his chained body out of the capital, giving him injections of poison along the way. Two now work on her staff now work on her staff and the third is the head of one of their new orders. She has never asked them what happened during or where they took Rexx. She knows he is still alive; she would fill it if he were not. The door to her office opens, and the only person she loves more in the world rushes in with a beaming smile on his face.

“Good morning, Mommy,” says her nine-year-old son Braxian TyVon, as he runs across the office to her, “What are you doing? You promised we could go to Peak Place for breakfast.”

Eshoni tucks the pendant back under her robes as she turns her chair to catch her son as he leaps into her lap. She showers him in kisses and crushes him in a hug like she does every morning while he laughs. This is her other reason for living. Her child, her life, her last connection true connection to Rexx. Braxian has skin slightly darker than her own but lighter than his father’s. His eyes are a lighter hazel than her own. His hair is black with streaks of white. His face is already so much like his father’s. He is her everything. The next through the door is Ami, Braxian’s nanny.

“By the Gods, I am so sorry, ma’am,” says Ami as she makes her way into the room with a scowl on her face, “I turned my back for one second, and he was gone.”

“It is fine, Ami,” laughs Eshoni, “Thank you for getting him dressed; I will take care of him this morning. Take the morning off.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” she bows her hand and then glares at Braxian, “We are going to have a long conversation, and we are. We will be reading the entire Ninth Cadence of Romulus, so don’t make any plans.”

Braxian pokes his tongue out at her, which she returns before fixing herself, bowing to Eshoni, and leaving.

She gives Braxian a playful pop on the head, “What have I told you about torturing Ami?”

“Wait until she has had her coffee,” says Braxian with a grin before he tucks his head to block play smacks.

Eshoni is still playing with him when her Senior Aide, Isabella Parrish, walks in a few moments later.

“Isabella, are you okay,” asks Eshoni as she sees how pale her normally bright and smiling aide is, “You look like you have seen a ghost.”

“Ma’am, we just received a hawk from Orleanspire,” says Isabella in a trembling voice as she crosses to her desk to place a small piece of paper before her.

Eshoni looks at her as she picks up the piece of paper that is dotted with red droplets to read, “Devils have taken Orleanspire.”

Eshoni’s blood runs cold, and her mind slips from mother to senator, “Summon the Senate to an emergency session. Send word to the city guard to go on high alert and start the process of preparing to close all the gates into the Base from the outside. Tell them to get as many people inside the city as they can before they do no checks or papers necessary. They are to keep the gates open until the Senate commands them shut. Once they close, no one enters or leaves until the Senate comes to an agreement on what to do next. I want all military leadership at this session as well, with no exceptions. Have hawks sent to every spire telling them to do the same.”

Getting orders snaps Isabella out of the shocked haze that overtook her, “Yes, ma’am. It will be done.”

She bows and runs from the room. Braxian kisses her on the cheek before he hops off her lap with a sigh. The same sigh she notes for the thousandth time that his father used to let out when he was annoyed but resigned.

“We will do it another time,” says Braxian as he walks to her office door, “I will go find Ami and not annoy her. Love you, don’t work too hard.”

With that, he sprints off again. Her son’s innocence is both heartwarming and heartbreaking as she retreads the message over and over. Devils have taken Orleanspire. The number of devils that would take is one Eshoni is too terrified to even guess at. A city the size of Orleanspire is home to over a dozen Devil-Monster Hunter guilds. Devils are far more powerful than any normal monster and are extremely rare, though sightings have increased in the last fifteen years, but there have never been reports of them in numbers that could take an entire city. No, they are in uncharted waters here, and if they can't navigate them, she fears it could mark the end of the Empire, if not the world. Most of all, she is afraid that the only man who could help them is one who likely wants them all dead just as much as many want him dead. She closes her eyes and takes in a deep breath as she realizes the day she both longed for and dreaded has come. She has to find Rexx. She has to get him to help them, no matter the cost.