Weekly Drabble #239: Those Who Will Not See (Patreon)

This week's prompt is 'i can see it now' from EBB and with that, we return to the newly-named Mercy of Serpents arc. Enjoy!

~

Those Who Will Not See

Emissaries and ambassadors of a dozen worlds stood in the galleries along the throne room within Sparta Evolved. Freed slaves stood shoulder to shoulder with the men and women who might have once owned them, nobility and commoners, pirates and civilians alongside each other. Their dress and demeanour, hue and bearing might differ wildly, but they all wore the symbol of the Ascendancy on their breast. Though some were more self-interested than others, they had all embraced their new nation and had taken their place within it.

The Warlord had no time for the squabbles of the past, no matter how deep those feuds and hatreds might run. Those who couldn’t accept the new order were cast aside.

Through unity, ascension. In disunity, destruction.

Humanity had had thousands of years to overcome their fractious nature. In that time, many would-be unifiers had risen and fallen. Time would tell if the so-called Ascendancy would be more than just a footnote in history. If, of course, there was to be anyone left to tell that history. Only the Warlord’s innermost circle knew of the Serpents. Some didn’t even believe it, considering it either a self-made mythos, or the hallucinations of a half-dead man aboard a broken starship. These men and women served for the belief in a unified humanity, stripped of the cruelties and factionalism that had led to so much suffering, while some served for their own ends.

Lady Virago watched those officers and governors with a close eye, as she knew the Warlord himself did. The Ascendancy could not fall to petty internal politicking and power struggles. It had to be better than that. It had to bring all of humanity together before the Serpents awoke and swept down upon them. No one knew how much time they had; years, decades – perhaps even centuries. Or maybe much, much less. Perhaps their chance for survival had already come and gone and even now, the ravenous Serpents were descending upon the shimmering lights in the darkness that humanity dared to think was their inviolate domain.

All they could do was try, though. Try to hold back the coming night as a single, united front. Only a unified humanity had that chance. Every world and every nation looking to its own affair and not fighting for the greater whole was a weakness that could doom their entire species.

Through unity, ascension. Through ascension, strength. Through strength, survival.

Killian watched as the doors to the Great Hall opened and a procession entered. Her lips curled up ever so slightly in a smirk. She looked to her left; the Warlord was sitting on his throne, half-mask in place. To his left was the head of the Ascendancy’s civilian governance council, Emeritus Erasmus Ermine. The emeritus was a very stoic, very composed man and disliked jokes about the acronym of his name and rank. He had been a professor of law and humanities for most of his life, until a slave raid had seen him forced into a new position: a court jester of sorts for the Black Baroness. It amused her to have him speak of laws and philosophy, asking for his opinion before meting out her cruel justice to those who defied her, often directly contravening Ermine’s words. Still, she’d listened to him just enough to make him think he could influence her. Enough to give him hope. That had amused her even more.

Like Helfer, Ermine was now driven by a desire to make sure such barbarities would never be repeated. He brought a careful, considered and well-educated perspective to the Ascendancy, though he and Virago had clashed previously – and doubtless would again in the future. Currently, he stood in collected repose, his expression composed and patient, that of a senior professor at a conference waiting for his moment to speak – but only if he had something to say, and only when he had considered how to say it.

Killian sometimes envied that about him. She had had to learn to look before she leapt, a trait the Warlord himself had cultivated in her. When we are faced with a problem, our instinct is to do something,he’d told her once. No matter what it is, taking action feels like we addressing the problem, but there are times when doing something is worse than doing nothing. That lesson had taken years to fully sink in and even now, she had to remind herself of it.

That lesson was, in fact, why Erasmus was here and why the Warlord was willing to treat with swine that he despised. Ruling with an iron fist and unifying humanity strictly by force of arms was direct action, and it punished those who’d transgressed against their fellow man, but it left ruin and wreckage behind. Willing allies were better than broken subjects.

She’d had to learn that lesson, too. Even if it often was a bitter pill, as it was now. The general turned her attention back to the open doors and the arriving supplicants. The master of ceremonies’ voice rang out clearly through the hall.

“Announcing His Most Royal Excellency, Defender of the Six Blessed Stars, Guardian of the Tunesi and Caliph of the Grand Alliance of Six Crescents...” As the man’s many titles were rattled off, a fillip of contempt touched the woman’s expression and her smile turned brittle. Killian’s smile turned brittle. She supposed with her own titles of ‘General’ and ‘Lady Virago’, she could see how someone might accumulate such titles, but there was a stark difference between what she had, and what the Caliph had been given.

She had been born with a serial number, her name decided by her master and even then she’d often only been called with a snap of his fingers. She had earned, with blood, tears and struggle everything she had. The man entering the great hall now had been born to power, reigning over a nation, conquering those weaker than him and ruling them as a master did his slaves.

“Killian.”

The Warlord’s voice, so soft that only she and Ermine could hear him, was a gentle reprimand. She said nothing back, thought shelet some of the tension and hostility bleed out of her expression, taking comfort in the knowledge that it had been her campaign that had brought the Grand Alliance of Six Crescents to this court, humbled and all but defeated. Not utterly, but close. There was still the opportunity for this to end in their nation’s destruction. It depended on how prideful their ruler was.

Given what she had see from their High General Goodson, Killian was not optimistic. Some men would rather die than adapt. Some would rather lose everything than surrender even a portion of it, even if that meant dooming themselves and everyone around them.

“...Majesty Ahmed Mahmoud Javed Maaz Priorbless, third of his name,” the master of ceremonies finally ended the string of titles. His dignity observed, the Caliph entered the throne room. His lined, hawkish face was set and expressionless, but there was a scowl in his eyes. He had been summoned to Sparta Evolved like a menial. At first, he had resisted the Warlord’s invitation. At his hesitancy, the master of the Black Fleet had sent Unforgiving to raze one of the Alliance home system’s outer defence installations. The message had been taken to heart and the Caliph had made arrangements to come to the Black Fleet.

The Caliph was an old man; perhaps about sixty, at least in biological age. He was closer to two hundred Earth years old, the recipient of some of the finest life-extension treatments known in this region of the galaxy. Treatments that were limited or denied to his subjects and serfs. His cane, an affectation intended to make supplicants and rivals alike think him more inform than he actually was,tapped on the polished black deck of the throne room, his eyes darting between the honour guards stationed at every column and the crowd of other outer-worlders who’d bent the knee, or wholeheartedly embraced ascendance, his gaze passing over the many slaves among them with disdain, just as Goodson’s had.

And speaking of the good general...The other man was in the Caliph’s entourage, once again bedecked in medals and a spotless dress uniform. Killian wondered what conversations had passed between the men once Goodson returned with the knowledge that his Caliph had intended that he be killed. She caught his eye and smiled. He looked away.

The procession slowed as it approached the Warlord’s throne, stopping a meter from the steps to it. The Caliph looked up to the figure seated upon it, his expression taut, like a wire about to snap.

The Warlord chose not to leave his guest waiting, and stood to greet him.“Caliph Priorbless. I am pleased to see you. I trust your journey was without incident.” His tone was controlled and even, though the damage to his face always added that rough edge to it. Occasionally, Killian wondered what it would have been like to meet the smooth-talking confidence man: if she would have been disappointed,or if even then, there had been something within him that set him apart from the rest of the dregs of humanity.

“It was,” the Caliph replied, his eyes drawn to the Warlord’s mask and the edges of scar tissue that it didn’t quite cover. “I am... grateful for this chance to honour your request and-”

“Ah-ah,” the younger man said, raising a scolding finger and cutting off the most powerful man across twenty star systems. Such an insult would have earned most others a severe punishment, but the Warlord ignored the stares and hostility from his guests. “I did not make a request, Your Highness. I had you summoned.”

“You do not summon the Great Caliph!” one of the monarch’s hangers-on huffed, a young man. There was a slight family resemblance; presumably a nephew. He didn’t have the same violet garb as the pair of the ruler’s sons that were in attendance; one of those two hissed at him to be silent, but the other man ignored the reprimand. “You disrespect him!”

The Warlord met the indignant man’s eyes. “I do,” he said. “But no more than he did when he sent High General Goodson to me as if I were a raving animal that needed to wet its fangs.” He turned to regard the scowling potenate. “And I have little time to waste. You are here for one reason and one reason only, Great Caliph. Will you end this war now, while there is still something left of your nation to preserve, or...” he smiled thinly, the confident grin of a wolf knowing that its prey was trapped. “Shall we see where this goes?”