The fighting was already over by the time we got to the military headquarters in the city. A few earth cultivators were working on repairing the old stone building, and things seemed just as busy as always with officers and aides going around with reports or correspondence. But there were more guards than last time I’d been here, and I noted the looks in the faces of most of the cultivators present. Something had clearly happened that had them curious.

Aston met us just after we’d entered the building. His hair was a little tousled, the only sign that he’d been in a fight. He bowed.

“How bad are things?” I asked.

“They’re already over here, my lady,” he answered. “But king Varis isn’t here, and I doubt this was much more than a distraction.”

“It would have been a win for him to get more intelligence or cause a bigger disturbance,” Tenira disagreed.

“Well, he can’t be aiming to win this, can he?” Kajare asked.

I frowned. “I don’t think he’s thinking very reasonably right now. He’s risking everything for a son that betrayed him.” The contrast to Terki was pretty sharp, I couldn’t help but note. “But you’re right, he can’t expect to win a full-out war even with the Empire occupied. Maybe he wants to force us to negotiate, extract concessions.”

“We can’t afford to lose face,” Aston said, probably to remind me. “The other vassals might get ideas, and if all or even many of them do so we’d have a big problem.”

I nodded. This wasn’t news to any of us. “Well, if there’s nothing left here, let’s get going. Kajare, can you handle goodbyes to your family? I’d rather not lose any time.”

“Of course, Inaris.”

I’d let the local commanders handle things here. Time was of the essence, so we hurried to the airfield while Kajare called his parents. He was finished just in time to climb into a plane, with a guard going for the pilot seat. I entered another two-seater, but sat in the back to let Aston do the piloting. Tenira and a few of my guards spread out over a handful of other planes.

We had to wait a minute for our flight path to get cleared, then Aston guided the plane onto the short, makeshift runway and we lifted off. I leaned back into my seat, glancing outside. We only took the fastest planes we had, so we should be quicker than any other reinforcements coming with the standard airships – and, hopefully, faster than the Velisha would expect.

I let Aston fly the plane while I leaned my forehead against the window and closed my eyes. Thoughts swirled behind them, and I had trouble ordering and sorting them enough to make or refine my plans. When I realized I wouldn’t get much further, I turned my attention to other things and recalled one of the stories I’d read here. I’d memorized it, so it didn’t matter if I had the physical book with me or not.

The flight didn’t take long. We didn’t quite reach the speed of sound, but we came pretty close, so the kilometers passed beneath us in a blur. Soon, we’d traveled the several hundred to the current Velisha capital, what had been a sleepy little city before the war, that was situated in a strategic position between two rivers. The front had moved out of this area months ago and was now several hundred kilometers further to the north-east, but we had to treat the Velisha forces themselves as hostile now. We were too quick for them to intercept us, though, and Aston and the other pilots skillfully brought us to a hard landing in the middle of a courtyard still obviously held by Imperial troops. Good thing the Velisha weren’t allowed to build their own large-scale shields. Smoke hung over the rooftops of the city, accompanied by the distant thump of explosions.

I left the plane after Aston, heading straight to the soldiers waiting for us to hear their report, while the guards formed up around us.

“The king and most of his elites have holed up in the castle, Your Highness,” the officer reported after straightening from his bow. “More of their fighters are trickling in every minute. We also have reinforcements on the way, though they will still take at least half an hour to arrive according to our best estimate. After the initial clash, there has not been much fighting, and our casualties are light so far, but we don’t have the numbers or strength to hold the city.”

I nodded, and Tenira asked, “What about Jian?”

“They started off by striking where we kept him,” the officer replied, clearly trying not to scowl and only half succeeding. “Most of our men guarding him were killed, the rest had to retreat. We’ve confirmed that he’s in the castle with the king.”

I sighed, but nodded. It would have been better to keep Jian in some highly secure stronghold, deep in our territory, rather than what was basically intensified house arrest here. But he hadn’t been convicted or even firmly implicated in anything, so far as anyone was aware, and in the interest of keeping things low-key and not pissing off the Velisha further, I’d decided it was good enough. The point hadn’t been to keep him imprisoned at all costs, anyway. Although I now wondered if I should have done more to discourage his father from taking action. Doesn’t matter now, though. And he’s still stuck.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We need to hit them before they can consolidate their position further. And don’t look at me like that, Aston. It’s pretty clear this isn’t the Storm’s work, that would have been done better, and there won’t be assassins waiting for me.”

Aston raised a hand and turned to give the guards orders to tighten their formation around us.

We hurried the short way towards the king’s palace. This was the nicer section of town, so the street was broad and some of the mansions even had walls around them, but everyone seemed to have hunkered down. There wasn’t a single soul aside from my soldiers visible. We reached the palace quickly, and I found that a strike team of Imperial elites had already blown the gate of the wall around it wide open. Only a few scattered stones and twisted metal beams remained. From what my other senses told me, Varis and his people had retreated into the building proper.

Past the gate, several squads of soldiers, most in the higher stages, had hunkered down, and seemed to be trading potshots with Velisha peaking through the small, arrow-slit-like windows of the building. Neither side seemed very enthusiastic about pressing an attack, though. I checked the wards on the building’s walls, and came to the conclusion that they were pretty well-made, but not the best I’d ever seen. I could probably force my way through them on my own if I had a bit of uninterrupted time.

I straightened my shoulders and stepped forward, the hairs on my arms standing up at the shields my guards were layering over me. “Varis,” I called, in a voice loud enough to echo over the battlefield. “Come out. Let’s talk.” I waited for a moment, then flicked a bit of darkness qi against the walls. “You can meet me here, or we can force our way through and collapse your house on top of your heads. I won’t be in a very good mood then.”

My words trailed away into the silence, and as it stretched on I started to think I’d misjudged him. Then the front door creaked open and a pair of Velisha soldiers carrying heavy, enchanted metal shields passed through. They were followed by four more until the king himself came out, trailed by another group of guards.

I smiled and took an enchanted cylinder from my storage ring, tossing it onto the ground beneath me as I walked forward slowly, careful to let the guards keep up. Tenira stiffened and Kajare fingered the hilt of the sword he’d strapped on, but none of them said anything as they accompanied me.

Varis might have been in the seventh stage of cultivation, and higher than Aston, but I’d gotten a good read on him. He had earth affinity qi and was better suited to holding his ground and duking it out close up than springing a quick attack. Besides, I still felt intuitively that I wasn’t in much danger, and I doubted he could hide any tricks from Rijoko.

“Imperial Princess,” he called, then bowed. “My apologies for the hasty action, but I simply couldn’t allow my son to remain imprisoned any longer.”

I narrowed my eyes, giving him a cold stare. “Your son betrayed all of us, including you. He serves my father’s enemy and conspired to kill me. I would have let the reckoning stop at him, but your actions here are utter idiocy.”

Varis grimaced and glowered at me. “I only have your word against his, my lady. And I can’t let my son be killed while I stand idly by.”

“Why would I be after him if he hadn’t earned it? Besides, you’re not saving him like this, just extending the danger.”

The Velisha clenched his fists. “I see you don’t understand a father’s love.”

That stung a little. Sure, Rijoko might not love me, but my human dad from Earth had shown me more than enough to understand how a father’s love worked. “I’m sure King Terki loved his son, too,” I said. “He just loved his other children, as well. And he knew that he would be harming them, and all of his people, if he let that snake go.” I gestured around us. “Varis, this is your land, these are your people. You should be protecting them. You know they can’t stand against the Empire. The only thing you did is endanger yourself and the rest of your family, too, along with all of your people.”

The Velisha visibly took a deep breath. “It doesn’t have to come to that, my lady. We will not go quietly into darkness, but it is not my intention to fight unless I need to.”

I cocked my head. I knew what he wanted. A very thin hope to gamble everything on, to be sure. That he’d be a hard enough nut, a big enough problem during the current war, to force compromise. Most likely that had been his intention all along, to bargain for Jian’s life.

If so, it had been doomed to fail from the start. But … It would be so very easy, the thought came to me unbidden. Just spare them. Maybe have Jian quietly assassinated later. I shook my head. I won’t. I don’t even want to.

“You overplayed your hand,” I said. “You’re in open rebellion. If we let this go, our buffer zone against the Zarian will fold in on itself. We’ll risk defeat in this whole theater of war. I know you’re not much of a general, neither am I, but it’s pretty simple.” I shrugged, letting the tension flow out of me even as I watched them for signs of an attack. “I suppose I could thank you, for giving me the opportunity to field-test something under real conditions.”

He blinked, looking like he didn’t know what to make of that. “My lady, please rethink this decision …”

“You know, I haven’t used my bloodline as fully as I could have,” I continued. “I’ve been starting to do more with it. And who would have guessed, but the easiest path to provide guidance for is the most vague, badly understood one.”

“What?” He drew his weapon, a black halberd, and his guards readied themselves as well.

I turned and flicked my hand at the object I’d let fall earlier, feeding another little bit of qi I’d quietly gathered into it. Varis’ eyes jerked to it, and his aura unveiled itself, filling the space around them with stony weight. But he didn’t attack, and the chance was quickly taken from him as the place around the anchor seemed to shift. For an instant, I could almost feel space itself rippling under familiar but strange qi. The air seemed to break in half as loud crack rang out. Then a person appeared where there’d been none, and a heartbeat later a whole group of elites surrounded her.

I grinned, studying the qi closely. “Beautifully done, San Hashar.”

The general inclined her head to me as her elites moved up to join us. “Thank you, my lady. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

It had taken me embarrassingly long to realize that while I’d seen her use air qi, she only did that for utility and because her main tool was hard to use. Few people had spatial affinity qi, it was mostly used by artificers and enchanters to make storage items. The fact that she’d managed to claw her way up the cultivation stages and ranks with it, forming and improving her own arsenal and toolkit, was impressive. And most of the guidance I’d provided was just conversations about physics, what I remembered of relativity and the like. She’d known the basics and took to it like fish to water who happened to be a math and physics whiz. Though to be fair, I had gotten and shared some interesting insights into her qi, too.

We turned our attention back to the Velisha king, whose hands had tightened around his halberd. His group was now clearly outnumbered.

“You might think you’re still the strongest person on the battlefield,” I acknowledged. “For all that’s worth. General San?”

“Yes, my lady?”

“End him.”

I’d barely finished speaking the words before she was on the move. The rest of the guards and soldiers had finished sorting out their formation and preparing their strikes, and joined her an instant later. I put a shield of darkness qi around myself, which should eat any attack that came too close, and slowly stepped backward. They could handle this one.

I couldn’t actually see San Hashar, but at the speeds they moved that would have been a problem, anyway. I managed to parse what my qi senses were telling me well enough, though. The general and another officer in the seventh stage from her elites were taking on the Velisha king. He might fancy himself a warrior, but he spent more time doing paperwork than fighting and even less in real combat. He was the kind of opponent she’d eaten for breakfast before getting her stars. Most of the stone gathered around him as a defense simply vanished, torn away. A lance of fire burned through most of his shield beneath it.

I spared a moment to assemble another Void’s Nibble technique and throw it into the tightest knot of Velisha fighters, eating their shields so my guards could mop them up. By the time I returned my full attention to the fight between the seventh stagers, Varis had lost a hand, half of his hair and was barely keeping ahead of San Hashar’s attacks. He was distracted by a hail of icy knives from another fight, and trying to sidestep it was his last mistake. I felt his aura wink out of existence as if cut off from the world by my general’s spatial qi.

After that, the fight didn’t last long. We had the advantage and weight of numbers and cultivation, and the Velisha were quickly ground down.

“San Hashar,” I called out as the last of them died. “It’s time to storm the palace. I want you to look for Jian, make sure you get him.”

She bowed and led the charge into the building. It started creaking right away, and not long after the last of the elites entered half of the roof in the back section blew off. I tapped my fingers and glared at Aston until he had his guards secure the grounds so I could move more freely.

“Success, my lady,” he finally reported, a small smile on his face. “What should we do about the royal family and the rest?”

I frowned at the palace, thinking about that. Then I shook my head. “Tell San Hashar to take Jian somewhere close by and kill him. I’ll be leaving.” There was no point even trying to break through whatever defenses Jideia had given his mind. Kiyanu might be able to, he was good at telepathy, but he was too far away and I didn’t want to give my enemies the chance to take advantage. “The rest of them …”

“You’re not going to spare them, are you?” Kajare asked.

I sighed. “Everyone who’s of age and fought against us will be killed. We’ll take the children. Maybe some loyal nobles can take them as wards. Or even sects, or schools.”

“And the Velisha nobility?” Tenira asked. “What little there is of it.”

“From today on, none. There is no more Velisha nobility. Hear that?” I paused and gestured in the direction of the city. “The fighting is still ongoing. We need to crush resistance completely, and there’s no going back from that. The Imperial army will have to seize and hold the whole land.”

“You’re annexing the Velisha,” Kajare realized.

“More or less,” I confirmed with a grimace. “It’s a drain on our forces to occupy them, but I don’t see a better option. They’re almost in the Empire already, anyway. The normal people should not be affected too much by this. I’ll appoint an Imperial governor, as soon as the fighting’s done, I guess.”

Or ask Kiyanu to do that, I corrected myself. I need to clear everything with him, anyway.

“Probably the best they could realistically hope for,” Tenira agreed, even if she didn’t look happy.

“Let’s go,” I said and started moving back the way we’d come. “There’s still more to do, and I made a promise to myself to avoid battlefields.”

Kajare grinned. “A little late for that. But better late than never, I suppose.”

I rolled my eyes at him and continued walking through the ruins of the outer gate.