Cent. Calendar 17/12/1639, Royal Castle, Le Brias, Altaras, 4:50

Cluck cluck cluck!

The soft sounds of chickens going about their early morning routine could be faintly heard over the sound of the breeze whistling as it blew past the tiny metal slit separating the open window pane from its hinges. The inside of the castle had heat insulation in mind when it was constructed, and it did its job well, but the occupants of this one certain room found the insulated warmth suffocating, so they had opened the windows to their room some hours ago. Inside the brightly lit room was a long, elliptical table around which were seated several dozen men of considerable administrative standing as determined by their chafing, aristocratic wear, and medal-adorned chests. Littered all across the table were all sorts of quills both worn and hardly used, with ink splattered where there were papers. The men, whose half-asleep eyes and mouths that were partially agape, were scrambling to finish a set of papers so important their chances of being able to experience the rest of the day were more or less determined by whether or not they were able to finish it.

The men, however, were not fretting over a case of mental block or some irregularity with the implementation of the contents that will be inked on this set of papers. Sleepy as they are, they were mulling amongst themselves–and for hours at that–about the wishes of their dear monarch, Taara XIV, on what they should put. They’ve already clamored over every legal framework, international and domestic, and every possible hole that they might be able to slither into, but what their king demanded of them was borderline madness. The group of men, appointed administrators of the kingdom of Altaras, already have an idea of what the set of papers would contain, but the primary problem hounding them at this point in time was whether they should be writing them down.

“I don’t know... For the love of all things logical, I can’t be arsed into writing this down!”

One administrator grumbled as he crushed the quill with his enclosed fist–the 8th one he had gone through the last several hours. The others looked down on their completed papers, contemplating not only the life that they would lose by refusing to submit it but also the life that they would lose by submitting it.

“What His Majesty wants... it’s just impossible! This will never work!”

Another one groaned out loud, much to the panicking clamor of his companions.

“Shh!!! They might hear you!!!”

As they admonished him, their eyes turned to the door. For one second, their hearts skipped a beat, bracing for the moment that it would burst open to reveal a royal guardsman coming to take them away for “re-education.” Fortunately for them, the moment never came, and they sighed away in exasperation. Regardless, the huge elephant in the room remained.

“I never thought that I’d be writing such horrendous terms down–if you could even call them as such!”

“Indeed... This is not the work of any sane man...”

At this point, everyone was more or less convinced that there was no way out; convincing the king to change his wishes on the matter is suicide and so too would be coming up with terms that he would find unsatisfactory. 

The men looked at the clock hanging from the wall. It was already almost five in the morning–their dreaded deadline. Knowing that the consequences of what they will do are too much to swallow, the men relented.

“Damn it all!”

As if signing their death certificate, the men took to the papers and wrote down their “dreaded” terms.

・・・

Physically exhausted from having to work through the night and emotionally drained from the amount of pride and rationale they had to swallow, the group of administrators was led by a royal guardsman into the meeting chamber where His Majesty awaited them. As the heavy, lavishly decorated acacia doors were opened by a couple of guardsmen, the men were greeted by the silhouette of the king standing behind the meeting table. Unlike them, his eyes were well rested and wide awake, as if eagerly awaiting the next chapter in a developing story. To the men, his well-built yet aged face may have been well-lit underneath the flickering candles of the chandeliers hanging from above, but no amount of light could ever dispel the darkness they saw hiding beneath His Majesty’s smile. Knowing that certain death awaited them should they speak their mind, the men kept them in the one place where the king could never know of their existence–their hearts.

To hell with this man. To think that he’s here, eagerly awaiting this set of... “terms.”

After they’d all entered the room, the men all bent their bodies forward in a coordinated bow as a sign of respect for their king. Haggard-looking as they were, they felt more sorry for the ink they had to waste writing the terms. As soon as they got up from the bow, the man holding the papers handed them over to the king. The entire setting mirrored a ceremony–a funeral, to be precise.

Taking the set of papers from his administrators, Taara took a few moments to go over the neatly written terms. For every bullet point he skimmed over, the more his lips appeared to curve upwards. When he was done, his lips had formed into a smirk.

“Heh. This is excellent!”

Taara commended his administrators, who simply smiled in return, unsure of whether or not to feel relief that they didn’t get “demoted” or sadness that they had a part to play in such a cruel act. He then beckoned on some of his servants waiting on the sidelines and handed them the set of papers.

“These are to be encoded in the kavun cipher and sent to our ambassador in Sios to be then forwarded to the Siosan government. It is to be prefaced with the urgency code A.”

“With haste, Your Majesty.”

The men looked on with shattered hearts. Now the king will bypass even his own foreign affairs minister to hand the terms to the Siosan government directly... As if that wasn’t enough, he ordered the terms to be prefaced with urgency code A, a level of urgency only to be used in the absolute worst case scenario. The men clenched their fists in regret for what they had just done.

5th Council of Noto, Villa Noto, Sios, 17:25

As the turmoil of the latest ring of developments threatened to upend the Altaras Strait into all out conflict, the seas–and correspondingly, the mood–was a lot tamer further to the east. Sandwiched in between the westernmost islands of Japan to the east and the island of Altaras to the west was a lone, elliptically shaped island in the middle of the ocean called Sios, ruled by a state whose name it borrows. Secluded inlet coves, harsh stony cliffs, and battered rock formations jutting out into the ocean like knives pointing against potential invaders were the hallmarks of the Siosan coast, with what little natural harbors there were having already been occupied by the island’s biggest cities. It is in one of these vacation vistas that a gathering of benign importance was about to take place.

Constructed atop a rock formation separated from the mainland by a slight wedge in the geology was a massive villa. Built with beige and white bricks, the shining particles embedded into its brownish clay roof tiles glittered in the harsh sunlight. A lavishly decorated stone bridge connected the villa’s equally massive complex to the mainland with its cast iron gates brandishing the characters “Villa Noto” in the local Siosan writing. Besides the complex system of winding paved pathways and gardens filled with exotic plants meant to confuse potential intruders was the parking lot, which was massive enough to be considered the villa complex’s distinguishing feature when viewed from above.

Due to the aforementioned meeting of benign importance, the normally empty expanse of black asphalt was filled to the brim with all sorts of motorized vehicles painted in a jet black color, which was the only characteristic that was in common in between them. The vehicles were cordoned off from one another by a grid of grassy, lawn-like separators, which acted to group them according to their allegiance.

“Oi, Matthias. Look at them purplenecks o’er there.”

“Ah?”

A group of sharp-eared men wearing black suits of equal sharpness eyed a couple of the so-called purplenecks–called as such because of their highly conspicuous purple collars–standing near a black car in the parking lot opposite them.

“What’cha trying to say, Romio?”

“Ya idjit, look at their car!”

Ignoring the ugly purple iridescence of the chrome-painted fenders, the black car that the purplenecks possessed a more streamlined, aerodynamic shape. Its wheels were lowered to what looked like an adequate yet sexy degree and the tint of its windows was about as dark as night. It was fascinatingly elegant to look at, with its headlights molded into a sharp, eye-like shape emitting a cool blue color. The more the man called Matthias looked at the car, the more his jaw dropped.

“Oh, shut up! An Emilkar Duncan 3?!”

“Told ya! Those Ardaghieri assholes get the best bling!”

Matthias threw his cap onto the ground in an open display of frustration.

“Why’d they have to have the Mirishial concession?! Those purpleneck asses!”

He turned to look at the vehicle next to them: a Dania & Jorgensen DJRI. Painted all around in a gorgeous matte black with curves that would make any housewife jealous, the DJRI was a handsome vehicle with which he had the privilege of being able to drive. However, being a model that was first released into the market ten years ago, it was already showing its age, with even more streamlined-looking cars being released by the Mirishial and Muish markets. As if that wasn’t enough, Dania & Jorgensen, its manufacturer, for some odd reason, had closed down indefinitely, meaning they wouldn’t be able to maintain their fleet of Leiforian-made vehicles for longer.

To make things worse...

“Eh? Is that them laughing at us?”

The same batch of purplenecks plus three more had noticed his open display of frustration and had gathered to revel in laughter as they pointed their fingers at him. Their snickering giggles and ridiculous faces...

“Meh, let the weasels snicker an’ jest. I couldn’t give two shits.”

Not even Romio understands, he thought to himself. Living in the Mirishial concession with his wife, they’ve had to fight uphill battles to keep the family home from being gobbled up by the ever hungry corporations, so much so that the processes it took to fight them have cost him more and more of his pay. He entered into his current job as a driver for the Cantissi family since the Ardaghieri shunned him for his inability to drive a car with a transmission system unique to vehicles of Mirishial make. On top of that, because of the closure of the local Dania & Jorgensen, he’s now forced by the family’s ridiculous sharks–its managers–to part with a sliver of his pay to compensate for the increased upkeep. How could life be this unfair? Why does he have to put up with driving such a second-rate car and be ridiculed for it?

These thoughts triggered a switch in Matthias as he clench his fist. Forgoing his chauffeur gloves, the man crossed the grassy boundaries of their parking lot to head towards the Ardaghieri side.

“O-oi... where ya goin’?!”

Seeing his partner discard his gloves, Romio could only think that he was up to no good.

・・・

Inside the carpeted halls of the Villa Noto, a lone elf donning a black suit with a pin of an orange-colored family crest on his lapels looked through one of the countless stained windows of the building. Sweat ran down his neck, which dampened his well-ironed shirt. He did not like what he was seeing, much less the options he had. Regardless, he felt that it was something that their Madame should be made aware of.

“M-Madame...”

He hesitantly called out to a woman standing a meter or so in front of him. The woman he referred to as “Madame” turned around, revealing the face of a beautiful middle-aged elf whose facial contours were about as razor-edged as her gaze. The man stiffened in more places than one as her steely green eyes met his.

“What is it, Gonzolo?”

“O-Our men are engaged in a fistfight with Master Ardaghieri’s men at the parking lot...”

Gonzolo looked away to avoid her gaze as he pointed towards the window. Taking one glance at the violence unfolding in front of the villa, Madame Cantissi simply exhaled.

“How regrettable.”

Uttering these words, the Madame walked away.

“H-Huh?! That’s all, Madame?!”

“Yes, Gonzolo. Do take down their names for me; we’ll settle on what to do with them based on my mood after this... meeting.”

As the Madame disappeared behind a pair of hulking mahogany doors, Gonzolo replied with an affirmative.

“Goodness...”

Sighing as she entered past the doors, Madame Cantissi found herself in the middle of a meeting chamber filled to the brim with men in black suits shouting at one another and hurling all sorts of insults. Complementing the hot air exhaled by the wine-drenched mouths of these drunkards was the suffocating amount of tobacco smoke that filled the chamber’s atmosphere. Gods, it was so chaotic.

“Announcing the arrival of the Cantissi family head, Madame Rouge.”

An announcer broadcasted to the room that she was now in the room, yet the pandemonium continued unabated–almost as if her entrance was equivalent to that of a mere servant girl’s. Inhaling in the familiar smell of alcohol and tobacco without coughing, Rouge Cantissi worked her way past the hoodlum of suits to her designated place on the grand meeting table escorted by her guards. Taking her seat, she finally opened her ears to listen to the babble her peers call an “argument.”

“Calling this council on such short notice...! Do you have any idea how important the deal we just missed was?!”

“There hasn’t been a council in decades! Why now? Why do we all have to be here?”

“If I have to be in a room with the Massini family for one more second, I will have to do something drastic!”

“Oh no, the almighty Master Avolino has spoken! Watch out, everyone; lest you have to smell the dead duck he ate for lunch as he gives his sermon!”

“Hahahaha!”

In an instant, the insults and death threats and the muddled atmosphere that was tenser than the suspenders of the porky Master Avolino melted away to banter and laughter.

“If we had gathered here to have some sort of hearty reunion, we could have picked an even better place than this hellhole.”

The mood of laughter all but disappeared as the meeting chamber heard the feminine voice of Madame Rouge, the only female family head. As much as they could take her statement to be a joke aimed at Master Ardaghieri, they knew her for her no-nonsense attitude and spiky character, and so for the first time since the first head entered the meeting chamber silence befell the room. With the ambiance finally having been reset, they could get down to business.

“I’m confident you have a good reason to convene the 5th Council, Master Ardaghieri?”

All eyes turned to one corner of the table where a single young man sat, his cleanly cut beard was about as orderly as his perfectly upright sitting position. His hands lay crossed on the table as a look more mute and blank than the chamber’s aura hung over his face. He was Salvatore, head of the powerful Ardaghieri family, the owner of Villa Noto, and the youngest head present. Without taking his eyes off of wherever he was staring out to, he responded to Madame Rouge’s inquiry straightforwardly.

“The ambassador of the kingdom of Altaras has forwarded the government a set of terms for us to consider.”

With a clean snap of his finger, Salvatore had his men distribute copies of the Altaran terms to the other family heads.

“The deadline is midnight tonight. I’ll let you be the judge.”

The further they got through the papers, the Siosan family heads all showed varying signs of fury and rage; some even lashed out before they finished reading the terms in their entirety.

“Bullshit! You call these terms?!”

“‘Terms’ my ass! These are fucking demands!”

Having finished going through the terms, Madame Rouge calmly put the papers down and reached out for her pack of Leiforian-made cigarettes. Lighting it with help from one of her guards’ lighters, she held the cigarette to her mouth, taking in a breathful of nicotine. As soon as she was finished, she took it off with her quivering fingers and puffed out a cloud of smoke.

“This is impossible. The Cantissi takes the position that we must reject all of these terms.”

The other family heads look at her with worried and hesitant looks. As much as they agreed with her and wanted to take the same position, they felt the pressure emanating from the terms the Altarans had sent. Out of all the terms presented in the document, the most difficult to come to terms with are the following: the forced closure of the Parpaldian concession in the island, the seizure or freezing of assets belonging to Parpaldian companies both state-owned and private, the issuance of a statement (included in the terms) that would have them side with the Altarans against the Parpaldians for the Barezan granary explosion, and the honoring of the Altaras-Sios Friendship Treaty of 1587, specifically the article stating the ‘unconditional assistance of the other to a party in need of help.’

“What’s the matter? This is against our decades-old foreign policy. We can’t do these terms.”

“I do agree with you, Madame Cantissi, but...”

Established in the late 1400s, the state of Sios was once a backwater country deemed to be lower than their Rodenius neighbors to the south due to their lack of arable land and usable space as most of the island was densely forested and the harsh, rugged coastline made for bad commercial ports. However, the latter made good secluded havens for pirates, a unique trait of the island not lost on many opportunists as the trade volume in the straits started to balloon. The government of Sios, seeing the massive earnings the pirates made out of plundering the trade routes burgeoning in the Altaras Straits, struck a deal with the pirate clans that allowed for their presence in exchange for a cut. However, as the Altaran and Parpaldian states started to coalesce into major powers with serious international support and recognition, piracy dwindled in the straits as their rapidly industrializing navies began to crack down on disruption to trade. While this put the pirate clans in a tight spot, the industrializing societies of Parpaldia and Altaras gave them one more gift: refugees displaced by Parpaldian conquests and Altaran societal crackdowns looking for asylum and work. With this, together with displaced intellectuals from Altaras’s own purges of anti-royalists, the pirate clans carved out their own communities at the expense of the Siosan government; by the dawn of the 1590s, the pirate clans held more territory, firepower, and economic sway than the state.

In one final swoop of evolution, the pirate clans, now taking the names of their most affluent families, took advantage of the entrance of the Mirishials and Muish into the newly established Third Civilized Region by marketing Sios as an unaligned tax haven. Disenchanted by the petty politics of Parpaldia, the difficulty of basing their operations in Altaras, the hostility of both countries to one other, and the Siosan families’ willingness to ignore certain outlawed practices, the big economies of the west set up their operations on the island. In a generation, Sios went from disease-ridden refugee camps to neon light districts with financial centers rivaling that of Esthirant and Le Brias. With careful maneuvering and shrewd decision-making, the former pirate clans of Sios, having now taken their modern day form as multi-national criminal syndicate families, have amassed enough power to completely control the island and everything that happens on it, with its government now reduced to mere puppets. The former territories the families had were leased off to the major powers, including the likes of Parpaldia, Altaras, Leifor, and even Riem, as concessions.

It is in this current state that the island finds itself mired in the developing tensions between Altaras and Parpaldia over hegemonic dominance. Having survived previous outbursts of tense diplomatic standoffs between the two thanks to their adamantine stance of being unaligned to any party, the island has formed an image as a safe haven for espionage between opposing states, in addition to establishing a norm that goes by this: “one is never to touch Sios by any means nor force it into any position.” The current terms presented to them by the kingdom of Altaras go against this very norm. Now that their foreign policy, having proven successful up to this very point, was put into question, the families were at a loss on how to respond.

“How do we know that the Altarans won’t respond with force if we don’t agree to this?”

The family heads nodded in agreement with this view. After all, without any precedent, anything goes. To this, Salvatore responded.

“While I do understand where you are coming from, the Altarans coming up with such appalling terms has already put them in a very tight spot.”

“Agreed. This was simply not a smart move.”

Madame Rouge added as she took another puff of nicotine from her cigarette.

“We will reject these terms, and in order to add pressure on the Altaran government not to pursue this policy any further, we will politely warn them and remind them that we are capable of leaking these terms to the public.”

The other family heads were wowed by this suggestion from the young head of Ardaghieri. The man was definitely worth his weight as the head of the most powerful family in Sios.

“Seeing as they’ve handed it to our government through backchannels and it came not from the mouth of their king, they definitely intended to keep it a secret.”

By placing their hands down, they guarantee the preservation of Sios’s independent foreign policy and status as an unaligned state while at the same time allowing the Altarans a discreet exit. Should smarter heads prevail, they will take the prudent way out and save themselves from the embarrassment of being caught with their pants down.

“If there is no opposition to this policy, we will commence the drafting of the reply to be handed to the government, who will then wire it to the Altaran ambassador before midnight. Might I remind you that we will convene again to examine the Altaran response.”

With a light slam on the table from Salvatore’s hand, the meeting between the syndicate families of Sios, the true holders of power on the island, has adjourned.

Cent. Calendar 18/12/1639, Royal Castle, Le Brias, Altaras, 6:00

“My king...”

A man of lanky build and in formal dress pressed his gloved hand against his heart as he bowed before his sire, who stood some distance from him, facing the other direction towards the red light coming from the rising sun. The king rested his hands on the brick balcony rest, his head slightly raised to face the salty sea breeze blowing in from the city harbor. A silence that was almost as solemn as the king’s silhouette served as the preface to what may have been a development that was downright unsavory for everyone involved. Standing behind the tuxedo-wearing man were the nervous faces of military officers, the king’s chiefs of staff, and his various civilian administrators, some of whom had been involved in the drafting of the terms they sent to Sios.

Everybody else had already received the memo of Sios’s reply to their demands, which were issued an hour before their deadline. No one expected the reply to be any different; which is precisely why the king’s ragtag group of hand-picked officials one may call a rudimentary “cabinet” was on edge. There was little doubt among them about how the king would react.

“Sios has given their reply...”

The man spoke, squeezing every bit of strength he had in his person to be able to do so. Taara turned his face to the side facing his way, eyeing him with a glare, the meaning of which he immediately understood.

“T-They reject all demands... In addition, they’ve warned about the risk of pursuing the terms, adding that they have the liberty of issuing a public statement regarding them.”

A slight tinge of sourness lingered on his tongue as the words left his mouth. Never before did it feel like he had just said something so awfully uncouth to the king. Such a distasteful outcome was not his fault and yet he felt as if he was the one going to be admonished for it and it was not just him; everybody else in the room felt as if they had done a disgraceful disservice. When the king raised his head and turned around to face them, the ministers and officers twitched; it had cost them a cosmic amount of energy just to steel themselves from turning tail and running at that very instant.

“So much for being our friends... Gentlemen, by refusing to align with us, the Siosan syndicates have chosen to align against us.”

Clenching his fist as his graying eyebrows contracted into an intimidating scowl, Taara made his seething anger all too clear, even in the roughness of his breath. As for his ministers, officials, and military commanders, what they saw before them was a sight they had never seen before. There was not a time in memory distant or recent that they had seen their monarch so agitated and... unreasonable. They, too, shared a common hatred for the scheming, imperialist thugs from across the strait, and they, too, knew that no one had any more valid reasons to be angered than Taara. He had never been the same since Her Majesty, Yasmin, perished in his arms after taking two bullets to the chest decades ago. But even given all the reasons to loathe the Parpaldians and to wish their empire an infernal end, none of them could ever justify their sovereign dragging all of them down this path.

“Deploy a squadron for Messina as our reply. We must act now while we have all the international support at our feet!”

Everybody else in the room was petrified at the words they had just heard. No one could believe their ears. A naval squadron to Sios?! That is even more unreasonable than the demands they’ve just issued! The king has gone absolutely nuts! While their collective dissatisfaction with how the king is handling this situation rang true in their hearts, there was simply no way in hell that they could ever say that to his face. Almost immediately, the chiefs of staff started formulating the words necessary for them to try and convince the king to see reason.

“But, my king...!!! That is an escalation we absolutely cannot sustain!”

Their foreign affairs minister, carrying with him his own disgruntled emotions after His Majesty had bypassed him in issuing the so-called ‘terms’ to Sios, also attempted to get the king to dial back this foolish decision.

“I second his assessment, Your Majesty! Be that as it may that we have a blank check from the Mirishials to freely conduct subterfuge against the Parpaldians, sending a naval squadron to force our demands is something not even they could stand for!”

“Please, reconsider this decision, my king!”

So pleaded the kingdom’s top bureaucrats to their monarch, yet their reason fell on unyielding ears. The king’s eyes and face, already swollen red from the fury of being shamed by the Siosan rejection, grew even more menacing to look at. His lips slightly parted from one another, revealing his incisors in an intimidating fashion that mimicked that of a wolf baring its fangs at its prey-to-be. Before long, this angry wolf barked.

“NO! I’ve had enough of being pushed around, not least by those Parpaldian-backed Siosans!!! They must be made repentant for their brazen insolence against the great kingdom!!!”

Parpaldian-backed... what? Now the king was spouting utter nonsense. Oh, how they wished his daughters were here to calm him down, but the only one with guts to stand against him, Lumies, was still locked away in the tower for her “unrepentant behavior.”

“But, my king...!!! We cannot have more of these illogical actions!”

“We absolutely cannot proceed with this action, Your Majesty! No one will support us!”

Concern for Altaras’s wellbeing and standing, as well as for its people and their families, spurred on his ministers and officials to get the king to reconsider, their fear of what the future holds having turned into the fuel that drives their defiance. The king, however, heard nothing but ungrateful noise from the very people he elevated to power. For every chord that struck true and for every nerve their words touched, the more the king’s fuse shortened. Their harsh tones and even more hostile words were like metal shards being forcefully scraped along a long stretch of blackboard, irritating and vexing to the point of madness. It did not take long for Taara to reach his boiling point, after which he could no longer bear to control the blazing wrath that was tearing through his soul. Following one wave of his finger, he opened his mouth, unleashing the pent-up rage that had built up.

“GUAAAAARDDSSS!!!”

In mere moments, the green-uniformed guardsmen at Taara’s command burst into the room bearing loaded rifles affixed with combat bayonets. Seven of the best riflemen in all of Altaras formed ranks in between Taara and his ministers, the pointed ends of their serrated bayonets facing the king’s “ungrateful” cabinet. After less than half a minute, the only sound that could be heard in the room was the soft, dry clicks from the guardsmen disabling the safety on their rifles. The ministers, officials, and even the military commanders who held seniority over the guardsmen they faced froze where they stood. Again, there has never been a moment in Altaran history when the monarch summoned the Royal Guards to have their guns pointed at his own administrators. It is in this turbulent chaos that they realized two truths: they were powerless against Taara both in their offices and outside of it, and that he was fully capable of ordering his men to turn on his own people.

With his petty ministers now silenced from airing their fiddling concerns, Taara resumed what he considered to be more important business. He pointed his finger toward the navy chief of staff like a hostage taker pointing a gun at his hostage.

“How soon can we get a squadron to Messina?”

Fully knowing he had no other choice but to answer the king and play along, the navy chief of staff answered frankly.

“A day at most. The entire fleet is on high readiness, just as you ordered weeks ago, so we can get a squadron down to Messina by the day after tomorrow.”

Taara raised his eyebrows as if to signal that he wasn’t satisfied with this answer.

“No, if we are to prove ourselves serious, it mustn’t just be any squadron; it must be helmed by a Villatam-class–no, two of them!”

Once again, the king’s irrational preferences trumped all the ones that came before. For them to send two of their Villatam-class ironclads, which was half of the entire class as a whole and themselves considerable capital ships in their own right, for a gunboat diplomacy mission in Sios was–under any and all circumstances–a horrible decision. Not only will two of their most powerful warships be out of port while the Parpaldians are gearing up for war, but they also run the very high risk that the squadron could be caught alone and off guard by a bigger Parpaldian task force. The navy chief of staff mustered the courage to speak out about this even as the king’s guards had one of their rifles directly pointed at his head.

“Your Majesty, we have credible intelligence that the Parpaldian 1st Armee Corqueuxima is gearing up for deployment near the Philadean southeastern coast. Whether it be for training exercises or a fleet review, we cannot completely ascertain, but in my opinion, this is enough of a risk against sending out a squadron helmed by two of our prized capital ships to Messina...”

Taara’s right eye twitched slightly upon hearing this, to which he promptly pointed his finger to another official in the room, the representative of the Altaran intelligence organ. Now that he’s on the spot, the representative, too, felt the need to regurgitate something that aligns with the king’s wishes. In spite of his inner rational consciousness clamoring for him to speak the truth, he relented to Taara’s pressure.

“A-Actually, we’ve j-just gotten our hands on new intelligence t-that suggests the 1st Armee Corquexima is... r-rescheduling their deployment to next month...”

The representative and the navy chief of staff looked at one another, their eyes on the verge of tears. Both of them understood the immense risk this policy direction entailed on Altaras, but their self-preservation instincts, especially when facing the barrels of the loaded rifles of the king’s guardsmen, prevailed. As for Taara, having gotten what he wanted to hear, he puffed his chest and exhaled a great chuckle.

“Hah! See? The stars have aligned for us!”

The administrators all felt a great weight fall upon their shoulders. If anything, it was as if the universe was out to kill them in the cruelest and most sadist of ways.

“I expect to hear from you again to report on new developments with Sios.”

With his administrators dismissed from his presence at gunpoint, the king of Altaras was left to his own devices to brood over their following actions.

Cent. Calendar 20/12/1639, off the coast of Messina, Sios, 6:30

“Ah, what a morning.”

A man relaxedly sighed, swallowing the bitter mouthful of mildly hot tea from the cup he was holding as he loosely leaned on the vibrating steel structure that made up his ship’s bridge.

Turning to the left, he could see before his eyes the gigantic cylindrical steel structure painted in a glorious titanium white, but the primary source of awe-striking beauty could be found in the form of a set of long 5,7 kasin (248mm) cannons jutting out of their respective barbettes. Oh, how beautiful the powerful guns appeared as they towered over the shower of waves crashing against the bow of his ship, the ironclad Orhasli, one of the most powerful warships of his kingdom. To the right, his eyes were treated to the sight of the long trail of foaming water left behind by the powerful twist and turns of their screw propellers, and beyond that lay the Hudaden, the Orhasli’s sister ship, followed by five third rate ships of the line in two lines staggered from one another. Looking up, he could see their mast towering high into the sky, lending its support to the hoist line that flew the colors of the Royal Altaran Navy ensign: a long banner in a tricolor of blue and white.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?”

The man was approached by another man with a thick, gray beard, the symbols on his shoulder pads indicative of his rank as captain.

“Absolutely.”

The man grinned in response to the captain before taking another mouthful of tea from his cup. He then placed the cup and saucer down on one of the platforms nearby, in turn picking up a cap adorned with a six-armed star in glistening gold–a cap only worn by those who bear the rank of Yarbar (Commodore). Placing it comfortably on his clean-shaven scalp, he let out another sigh, this time with hints of forlornness.

“If only we came here under different circumstances...”

“Indeed. So much for its beauty...”

One may be forgiven for thinking that this was a couple of nerds giggling amongst themselves over the awesomeness of the warship they’re in, but the cries of seagulls begged to differ, for several kilometers out to the south lay the breathtaking vista of the city of Messina. The intense orange glow of the rising sun ran past the clouds obscuring the horizon itself and onto the window-filled towers of the Siosan city, appearing like a skyline adorned with glittering ruby gems as far as the eye could see. To its sides lay the untamed nakedness of the original Siosan coastline, its jagged cliffs and rocky coastline contrasting the flatland estuary upon which Messina was built. Century-old gun emplacements, relics of a bygone time when more rudimentary cannons were still the norm, decorated the tops of the cliffs flanking the busy harbor. Against the more modern surplus Mirishial and Muish weaponry that bristled the gundecks and barbettes of the Altaran warships, these were laughable defenses at best.

But launching an attack was not what they were here for; at least, those weren’t their orders.

“Captain! Orders directly from the Chief of Staff!”

A young man from the communications room came running to the captain and the squadron commander, extending to them a small piece of paper. When the captain took a look at it, all he found was a string of characters that made no sense.

“It’s gibberish...?”

Not to the commodore, it wasn’t. When the captain gave it to him, he applied the appropriate decoding procedure for this cipher and immediately made sense of the string of gibberish. With empty yet resolute eyes, he looked back at the captain.

“Get your men to action stations, captain. I’ll relay the orders as soon as more come in...”

“Yes, sir!”

As the seven-ship Altaran squadron took their positions at the mouth of Messina’s harbor, their sailors began preparations for what was to come.

・・・

Meanwhile, inside the city itself, the local government office in Messina, a building of pathetic size in comparison to its towering neighbors and occupies a space that was hardly more than 15 square meters, was in an uproar. Manned by an equally paltry size of 40 government employees that were paid less than the grunts of the syndicate families, they were nevertheless at the forefront of an emerging threat to not only Siosan sovereign integrity but also to the peace of the greater region.

“Dammit, why won’t the regional office pick up?!”

The office director screamed as the phone returned another frustrating round of “currently unreachable” messages. He was at his wits’ end and was on the verge of pulling out every single strand of hair on his scalp.

“Why did the entire office have to be issued a day off?! Of all the fucking days...!!!”

He screamed and squirmed in his office chair, powerless to do anything more than sit and attempt to phone his higher-ups, while the situation continued to deteriorate. As he was about to begin pulling out the hair strands from his eyebrows, one of his staff haggardly burst into the room.

“D-Director...! The Cantissi’s Messina office responded!”

Hearing that one of the more powerful families had decided to lend an ear to their pleas was music to the director’s ears.

“Fuck! Patch me through!”

Just as he was about to pick up the phone again, he felt a powerful shockwave run through this desk and office chair and up his entire body, followed by its audible manifestation.

Boom!

The ear-splitting roar of the Altaran warships’ guns rocked the building, which promptly switched on the director’s survival instincts, causing him to take cover underneath his sturdy wooden desk.

“Gods... Are we really under attack???”

The director clutched the phone underneath his hands as he shriveled into one corner. His words echoed the collective thoughts of every person in the city, both Siosan and foreign, as the thunderclaps of the Orhasli and Hudaden’s powerful batteries in action signaled an all new low in the emerging flashpoint between Parpaldia and Altaras.