Within the royal halls of Jupiter’s Platinum Palace, the Sovereign sat the throne. The open air entered the hall from the high ceiling above, which resembled the pillars of a greek temple. He slumped, his aged body slowly rotting away. In the hall behind him, several Platinum Class prisoners of war were marched before an empty bath. Their flesh was aged, but they were not old, just tired and worn. The men who restrained them, the Sovereign’s private force, slit their throats open. Blood filled the bath, it was man sized and took ten men to fully fill.
Melany of Venus was able to preserve her lady’s life for unnatural years through the use of her Platinum Class blood, these men were much the same. The Sovereign stood up, this treatment was slowly giving him fewer returns as the years passed by. He was certain that his days were well and truly numbered. Still, he could not die, he was not willing to die. Feathers fell from the ceiling above, a bird squawked into the hall. The Sovereign reached out, letting the animal land upon his outstretched arm. The creature then melted, fusing into his skin. Thoughts and memories appeared in him, they were not his own but rather that of his kin. He watched Erus’ fight with Mourn and learned of the man’s escaping, with a force of seven thousand men willing to serve him in toe. However, the Sovereign quickly saw something which made him not care about this in the slightest. Erus lacked the knowledge to have known, he could not have seen what his grandfather now saw.
“Mourn’s dragonhide...is blue?” By bathing in the blood of an animal, a person could learn to better imitate their form and structure. When this logic was applied to dragons, men like Avance, who had tamed such a beast, could gain a form akin to armour sewn from the scales of that dragon. However, there were ten True Dragons, in Nidhogg. Five of those dragons were long dead, but five remained, one of those five was Fafnir, the black dragon, born of a covetous king who hoarded wealth and riches until it undid him. However, among the four other surviving dragons, there were: Tiamat, the pink dragon born of fury and rage. Then there was Seraphim and Qliphoth, twin dragons, one white, one red. Then there was Dahaka, the blue dragon born of malice and evil.
The ten ruling houses, nine noble, one royal, of Nidhogg had been named for the dragon whose bloodline it was bound to, Avance happened to bear the blood of the Fafnir House, that was how he came to tame it and how he came to wear its scales. However, Mourn’s armour was not black...it was blue. The one who gave him that power then could not be Fafnir. “Damn!” The Sovereign roared loudly into the royal hall, “Damn it! Cain, you bastards! I know who you are working for! I know who pulls your strings now!” The mystery was never hard to see, he had suspected it subtly. How else could Cain reach their shores without Nidhogg’s aid. However, even if you could see it coming, even if you knew it was true, would you dare to believe it? Would you not hope, somewhere in your heart, that the obvious truth wasn’t true? Cain’s actions, from the start until now, it was all a prelude.
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On a marble stone porch that was suspended high over a vibrant white city, two men played cards at a table. One of them, clad in an air of serenity, was Mourn. The other man was a figure clad in robes fit for a hunter. The Lord of Artemis, the city of hunters. The Ragnarok that lay beneath Saturn was a vast forest that expanded far beyond the canyon alone, the land joining it became flat in this southern point, thus Artemis was built here to protect the City of Jupiter.
The lord played his hand, upon the cards were eight different kinds of symbols, Unremarkable, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Soldier, Leader and Monarch. Each hand had five cards, and each card could defeat the previous one on the list, but if you had two or more then their power could equal the one above. However, for some reason only with a full hand of Unremarkables could you somehow defeat the Monarch, of which there was only one in the entire deck. Should Monarch be drawn, it was almost always a win, unless your enemy had what would otherwise actually be the worst hand in the game. Due to the rule of discard and redraw, it was rare for that to happen. Like that, Mourn played the Monarch card and won the game. The Lord of Artemis grumbled and raised his hands, he leaned back in his seat as his fur-lined clothing trembled in the wind.
“An amusing game, if a bit dull,” He said with an irritated look. Mourn shrugged, he could care less about his comrade’s bitterness. He turned his head, glancing towards the table nearby. There Uriel sat, her posture polite. She dressed the part of a noble’s daughter and sat down staring at them with a glass by her side. She glanced the lord’s way, Mourn followed in time. The Lord of Artemis picked up three cards, the Soldier, Leader and Monarch cards, and stared at them with a curious look.
“These three, they don’t correspond to men...but gods, don’t they?” He glanced Uriel’s way. Indeed, this was a game played by many in Cain, and the point of it was not simple play, it was a mental exercise to train the brain and think a certain way. Uriel nodded her head, then turned away. She faced the horizon, the distant north where Venus City lay. Artemis was itself the furthest from Mercury they could’ve gone, only through the mines under the city could they even make it unnoticed all this way. Thanks to that fact Jupiter was none the wiser, but it also meant she had no idea how the battle at Venus was going.
“Are you worried?” Mourn inquired as he and the Lord of Artemis resumed their game.
“Hardly,” Uriel replied. Indeed, she wasn’t worried, the people she sent there were all ready to die, even Metatron. She wasn’t worried...she wasn’t sad or shaken in any way.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” Mourn said with a grumble. He played his hand, putting down five Unremarkables straight away. The Lord of Artemis frowned, he threw his hand away. The Monarch flew in the wind, falling to the floor. Indeed, when the game starts, to avoid losing to the Monarch early, Mourn had come to practice this as his opening move. “If Metatron fails, what then?” Mourn asked as he drew five new cards to keep up the game. Uriel turned her gaze away, she looked towards the city below, full of fountains, fruits and meat aplenty. What a bustling city it seemed to be, though only on the surface.
“Even if Beatrix isn’t in Venus anymore, even if Metatron somehow fails to burn the place down, the city is still doomed.” Mourn paused his game, as did his opponent, who was still struggling to figure out whether his hand was good and not. Both men looked her way, curiosity and a little bit of doubt in their gaze. However, among them, Mourn was first to realise what she meant. Indeed, a certain figure came to mind, a beast with a blue hide.
“How can you be so sure of that?” The Lord of Artemis inquired, for he did not know of that man, nor the beast that accompanied him. Uriel’s expression remained indifferent, yet concealed within her gaze was a malice that managed to subtly scare the lord into a more cautious mindset. He didn’t doubt that this little girl was not actually a little girl.
“How do you think we got past Nidhogg...how do you think we crossed the northern sea?” She asked him, and he was no fool, he realised her meaning. He lowered his hand and frowned her way as Mourn peered towards the heavens. The young man leaned back in his seat and cursed softly under his breath, that’s what came from knowing what was coming next.
