A thin beam of violet shot out from his middle finger. The image grew distorted, the machine’s nozzles sprayed Fog in violent sputtering bursts, and it emitted a horrendous chorus of mechanical grinding and the ringing of its bell. Zel felt a subtle instinctual gnawing telling her to get back and she abided, just in time for the machine’s casing to spill Fog from its seams before it buckled inward and imploded into a heap of crumpled metal.

Just one question dwelt on her mind.

“What the fuck is a telephone?”

Crovacus had just called an emergency senate meeting, using the time he spent waiting for the senators to prepare his material. The senate meeting chamber was unremarkable in decoration or furniture, equipped with the same well-polished wood as the rest of town hall. Even its layout was basically just one big room with a horseshoe-shaped table and some seventeen seats - one for the governor, twelve for the senators, and four for any guests. If it were up to him he would’ve bought his own comfortable seat, but one of the old codes dictated that, if possible, no one senate member may have a more opulent seat than another.

Looking through his papers, he took a sip of his flask filled with Fivefold Philter and sprinkled a small amount of daytime dust under his tongue. He’d slept for only two hours, yet thanks to the first batch of the near-miraculous elixir he felt… Well, he didn’t feel great, but he certainly felt infinitely better than two hours of sleep. The alchemist had advised that daytime dust would help bestow more immediate energy to round out the Philter’s longer-term restorative effects, and the governor gladly partook. It wasn’t entirely because he trusted the alchemist, seeing as Crovacus had had a hand in popularizing a paste version of the yellow drug in Grekuria. 

The senate members filed in one by one soon enough. Most notably the two Pateirian senators arrived first, closely followed by three of the younger Ikesians and the single other Grekurian. All of them seemed surprised by the sudden improvement in Crovacus’s apparent health, and unsurprisingly three were visibly displeased - the Pateirians and one Ikesian who had previously expressed some well-meaning if misguided nationalist ideals, believing that an Ikesian city-state should be led by an Ikesian. The aforementioned senator was the youngest, and Crovacus felt the need to prove himself to the young man - if only to temper his risky demeanor into something that would better serve Willowdale. 

The meeting of the senate went about as well as he’d expected, that is to say rocky at best, for a simple reason. His presence at the meeting instantly made all his suspects clam up, and his apparently improving physical state reflected on quite a few senators in a bad light. Murmuring, sideways looks, even outright hateful stares. These suspects were both the Pateirian senators and two excessively wealthy-looking older Ikesians.

Eventually, rote work and uncontested propositions bored Crovacus enough that he stopped bothering to appear alert, even if he was listening. It was then that a mind-boggling proposal shocked his system and forced him to full attention.

“No, we cannot restrict the citizenry’s freedoms under the promise of returning them after suspected war criminals and terrorists are eliminated. I am not just saying that it would be wrong to do so, but we simply do not have the legislative power to do such a thing. The rights of Willowdale’s citizens are carved in stone, and the oath that I swore upon my induction as provisional governor is a binding geas that forces me to abide by that stone,” Crovacus rebutted, exaggerating the reality of things as naturally as he breathed. It was true that Willowdale’s governors had historically sworn upon a particular carved stone, and that the ritual of it held a certain degree of binding power that was akin to a geas. Unlike a modern geas, this ritual wasn’t a soulbinding contract that would sooner lead the subject to their death than let them break its conditions. It more-so just caused him unpleasant intrusive thoughts and headaches whenever Crovacus seriously considered a course of action that he knew was against Willowdale’s best interests.

“It has come to my attention that yesterday while I slept, the senate made motions to pass a bill that would dissolve core aspects of Willowdale’s exclusive democracy and limit the citizenry’s ability to override the senate through referendums. Most abhorrent of all, the bill seeks to significantly loosen the requirements to become a citizen, as well as remove the minimum residency time required to apply for citizenship.”

“I have chosen to veto this bill in its entirety, as well as reinstate the single-subject clause three years early. To those in the senate who do not have Willowdale’s best interests in mind: I am obligated to civility, but there are others who aren’t. Willowdale is not an occupied province, its citizenry voted to comply with the treaties out of their own free wills. These people are not subservient, they are not afraid of those who govern them. They view us as public servants in the most literal sense, some consider the best politician lesser than a miller. In fact, let me bring up the only thing that I am certain will convince you.”

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat, and retrieved two card-thin slips of milky-white quartz. As predecessors of contemporary photographs, this archaic and expensive method of pict-capture still held certain significant advantages, including full colour. Unlike paper photos, the quartz slips were impressively resistant to the ravages of time, only vulnerable to sudden impacts. Secondly and more importantly, they couldn’t be edited or easily copied. Any alchemist worth their salt would be able to detect alterations to the item’s subtle enchantments.

“Seventy-three years before the Unification, there was a certain governor who had a private aethermancer break the geas,” he began, showing the first slip. The first slip which he showed was a portrait of an excessively noble-looking individual, his relatively subtle outfit betraying vast wealth through selectively chosen ornaments such as the cufflinks. 

He put the first slip down and held up the second one, prompting a wave of disordered noise. It displayed that very governor’s mangled corpse, his upper half stuck between a pair of large cogwheels and ground into paste.

“With his oath no longer truly binding, he went to great lengths in his attempts to abolish the Exclusive Citizenship Act, for reasons that have been lost to time. He was accused of treason and assassinated by a local miller who shoved him into the mill’s cogworks. When the miller was tried for murder, the jury refused to convict him and even cheered for him.”

Crovacus put the slip face-down on the table as he directed a stare at the two Pateirian senators.

“I wager Willowdale’s people will hesitate even less when it comes to foreigners,” he said.