RY 799, 10th of Ascending Water

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RY 799, 10th of Ascending Water

The Lady of Thorns waves a hand over the polished starmetal surface of the mirror, and the image it holds of a man, rugged and confident, roguishly handsome and perfectly at ease striding amongst his crew and bellowing orders, fades. Although she can only watch his lips move, she can almost hear his voice as he calls out the commands she has heard from him so often before. She has no illusions about her being able to observe him without his knowing, but he never reacts to her scrutiny, as if that little bit of defiance contributes somehow to his illusion of freedom. I know you're watching me, his staged obliviousness screams, and I don't care. I'm free of you.

And as she does whenever she concludes such a session, the Lady smiles wryly, because she knows it is only so because she permits it.

Her apartments are wonders in their own right, sumptuously and impeccably furnished. She slips out of her massive bed, waving away the handmaid who approaches with a fur wrap in hand, instead clothing herself in liquid light that flows from the bracelet on her wrist, its arcane orichalcum spinning attire for her from pure Essence. As a matter of whimsy, she chooses a dress with a high collar and long sleeves, as if in concession to the winter cold she no longer permits to bother her.

Bare-footed, she pads out onto her balcony. The icy marble beneath her toes is a sharp contrast to the warm, thick carpets within the room, but the sensation is no less pleasant, as her breath steams in the air and the Lady of Thorns contemplates her city.

Within living memory, the city she presides over was a place of unspeakable horror. The dead ruled over the living, keeping them barely alive for their amusement and gratification and strange urges, and a rotting mountain of flesh had stolen the sun with its shadow. A terrible dread lord had gripped the city in his talons, and the stuff of Oblivion had come spurting out, creating corrupted swathes of Creation in which the very laws of life and death had been subverted.

Then she had come with her Circle and cleansing fire, and fought long and hard, achieving victory at great cost. She remembers with a twinge the loss of the little bronze-skinned girl who had followed her with such devotion, convulsing on the ground, reaching with numb fingers to the legs that lay some yards distant on the ground, her abdomen riven in twain by the Mask of Winter's dread daiklave. The memory of it makes her glance over her shoulder, at where a great soulsteel helmet hangs over the mantle. Occasionally, some light flickers in those eyes, the consciousness within that artifact bound to an eternity of impotent torment. Sometimes, the sight of her vanquished enemy lets her believe that the loss of her only true friend was worth it. This is not one of those times.

The ingrates of Thorns had greeted their saviors with suspicion and Immaculate disdain, calling them Anathema and demanding the right to join the decrepit Scarlet Empire as a tributary rather than remain a free city state under Solar rule. The tears from her Circlemate's death still drying on her cheeks, Shrike's eyes had blazed with incandescent fire, a flame that licked forth from her mouth as she spoke the words that sent one in five of the citizens of Thorns -- the old, the feeble, the sick, the lame, the insane, the stubborn, the useless -- marching into the sea, wailing as their legs obeyed orders their minds howled and railed helplessly against. After that, things had been easier.

With the help of her fellows, she had rebuilt the city of her birth, made it great again. Over time, one by one her Circlemates had left her. Wrath of Fallen Kings, frustrated by her endless games of bait-and-switch seduction, had taken his army to carve out an empire from the rich expanses of the South; his final battlefield lies under two miles of glass, from where the last blow of the Locust Crusade was struck, the strange Alchemical Exalted sealing their fate, the fate of their dying god, and that of their staunch foes by preserving everything two thousand miles north of the Elemental Pole of Fire in imperishable adamant. Determination of Mountains, driven to despair by the unheeding pettiness of the people he kept trying to raise beyond their baseness and vulgarity, now dwelt along among the broken towers of Chiaroscuro, half of that ancient crystal shattered by his own hand as he brought those elder towers down upon his own disappointing failure. That odd Infernal Exalt, slain during the failed Reclamation, dissolved at the cusp of his victory by nothing less than the spear of the Unconquered Sun himself, the usually-collected man perishing a raving, hulking monstrosity with a thousand crushing invisible hands and green flame instead of blood erupting from his wounds. Laughing Falcon, now Dour Peregrin of the Endless Wastes, a pawn of that paltry Deathlord who holds frozen Halta as the last bastion of Abyssal power. Wind of Lament, his starmetal armor shattered by her own hand, the first to rise against her and the first to fall, harboring some secret core of sorrow and resentment since the Day of Drowning, apparently convinced that she represented the first of a new order of demented, debauched Solar god-monarchs. Sometimes, she permits herself to wonder if he might have been right, before dismissing the issue out of hand.

After all, her people are happy. The Orb of Peace and Order that she wears mounted as the centerpiece of the Crown of Thunders ensures that. They follow her laws and regulations scrupulously, and that obedience is its own reward, as its act of subservient compliance to her Exalted will triggers a rush of euphoria.

The Lady of Thorns, formerly known as Veil-Winged Shrike and a number of other aliases before she set such things aside, calculates that the third generation of Thorn-citizens born under her rule would have achieved such transcendent aesthetic perfection that her armies of gilt-clad warriors would bring the forces of the Realm to their knees without a single blow being struck. Until then, she taps an idle finger against the railing, and wonders how everything could have gone so terribly, terribly wrong.