Nestled in the Capital of Eumelia was a building, a restaurant and leisure club. A building built largely of enchanted-glass, with some brick and gilded metal serving as support. The inner-confines of the club were closed off from the rest of the world with stained-glass, green hedge walls, iron fencing, and a large amount of voluminous curtains.
This club, the Briar-and-Spindle Social Club had been present in Vert-Melody, the Capital City of Eumelia, for over 250 years now. Since the time of its opening, the Briar-and-Spindle had more or less become an institution within the kingdom. Becoming a legacy establishment and place of leisure routinely patronized by royalty, nobility, and the rest of Eumelia’s upper crust.
Now the club itself stood almost empty. With all of its floors having been rented out, and closed off, by the Eumelian royal family. Despite the club itself being largely empty, the parking lot was quite full. Occupied by a mixture of Eumelia political convoy vehicles, and the vehicles belonging to various members of the press.
Inside the club, in the Briar-Spindle’s most decadent suite, the suite known as the green cloud suit. So named, because the room’s glass and steel structure was blended with life-essence nourishing green-cloud jade. The suite also happened to be one of the most private, and secure, rooms within the club having been enchanted with all manner of anti-surveillance and defense spells.
That same green-cloud suite was now currently the center of a storm of activity that was happening inside, and outside of the club, as the Queen of Eumelia waited to welcome an important state guest. This meeting was actually supposed to be more private than it had ended up being, but in this day and age, even the royal family had enemies trying to climb onto their heads and knock them down a peg. Polymnia intended to get to the bottom of who exactly leaked this meeting to the press, later. Right now, she had bigger fish to fry.
“Is he here?” said Polymnia. Speaking both to Alanna and to the head of the royal security team.
“Um…According to the text he sent, he should be on his way, your highness,” said Alanna. Staring at the empty air, as she read the messages that were logged into her system.
“We haven’t been able to track him, but our teams that our further out, have spotted a small motorcade on route to this location…Curiously, we’ve been unable to find any signs of their origins. The plates are local, the vehicles are the usual armored sedans, vans, and sports-utility vehicles, but there’s no sign of where they came from…they apparently just sort of appeared in the middle of traffic. Would you like me to have the Capital police department take a closer look, your highness?” said the Security-Chief.
“No, that's fine…Just make sure we’re ready to receive them,” said Queen Polymnia. Shaking her head.
“Understood, your highness…I shall make sure that club staff has been prepared and notified of our approaching guest,” said an aide to the queen.
Polymnia frowned as she gazed towards the one uncurtained window in the suite. The window wasn’t really a window, it was more an enchanted mirror that functioned as such, to give people within the suite a view of the outside without actually exposing them to the outside. The normally stalwart Queen felt uncustomarily anxious. She felt like a hound sensing an approaching storm. Every sense and instinct within the militaristic monarch’s body was warning her of approaching danger.
“That son of yours is really something,” muttered Polymnia. Giving Alanna a sidelong look.
“I…Yes, your highness,” said Alanna. Unable to really give a good response to that. She could feel it too. The last time Alanna had gotten any sense of her son’s strength was during the attempt on her life, but even that was no comparison to what both women were feeling now.
The thing that was approaching them was beyond words, beyond humanity, and almost certainly beyond the noble-ranks, and perhaps even beyond the sovereign-ranks. To the senses of all persons of martial- and/or magical- might present within the social club, it felt like the storm to end all storms was bearing down on them.
It felt like they were staring at the approaching light of nuclear annihilation. It felt like the world was about to end and there wasn’t a thing any of them could do to stop it. They were all overwhelmed and awed before the aura that they could sense making its way to their location. For her part, Polymnia couldn’t help checking and re-checking the feeds on her system messages, to make sure the whole city hadn’t been thrown into panic.
Ordinarily, feeling even a fraction of this kind of aetheric-energy within the capital would have resulted in the emergency activation of military-law within the country, and a lockdown of all neighboring regions to Vert-Melody. Yet, somehow the other party had made it so that only the people present in the club could feel his approach. Which was actually even more terrifying, because giants were scary enough but at least you felt their footfalls long before they arrived, a giant that could tiptoe would simply be a calamity. An unavoidable disaster.
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After only a few minutes more, the man of the hour arrived. His convoy arrived with four vehicles. He stepped out of the backseat of luxury sedan that had ridden in the middle of the convoy, and he entered the building with a retinue of ten men and women. Polymnia’s people immediately set to the task of trying to find out exactly who the hell the people the man had on staff were. Meanwhile, the man himself entered the green-cloud suite accompanied by a single female attendant. He was dressed in a simple but stylish suit, dress-shirt, and tie. He’d eschewed dress shoes for a pair of flat top sneakers.
The Queen and her people stood to great the newcomer as one would a foreign ally. Her “show” guards, the ones in ceremonial uniforms, stood at the forefront alongside the queen. Polymnia’s real guards, were hidden amongst the social club’s staff. The Queen stepped forwards her hands resting on the scepter she held as a nod to the official and ceremonial nature of today’s meeting.
“Greetings, Mister Holst. It is a pleasure to finally be able to host you,” said Polymnia.
The man stopped, placed one hand on his chest, and gave the Queen an expert and courtly bow. One that was properly respectful to the Queen and her status as head of state, but just shallow enough, to make clear that he was doing so from a position that wasn’t that far off.
“It’s an honor that you were willing to host me, your majesty,” said the enigma named Ellis Holst. The alleged eldest son, of her friend and most trusted vassal, Alanna Dorothea
Polymnia assessed the man as he and she exchanged the formal bullshit, flattery, and niceties that served as the established greetings and opening statements for events like this one. As for as first impressions went, the man had made one hell of one. The power she’d sensed as he arrived was still clearly present, if mercifully contained, and Polymnia found herself morbidly fascinated by the discovery that what she was seeing was just the surface. There was more to the man’s strength than what she’d seen. He hadn’t just been saber-rattling or trying to make himself look impressive, which honestly might have been preferable to the revelation that she wasn’t holding a tiger by the toe, she was holding onto the tip of a dragon’s tail.
Looks-wise the man was definitely a Dorothea. He looked so strikingly like his mother that it would have been ridiculous for anyone to argue otherwise. They shared the same dark caramel skin, they had the same thick, wavy, and somewhat curly, purple-pink, bubblegum-pink hair. The yellow in their eyes were different shades, but the sharp shape of their eyes certainly resembled one another. Their features shared the same elegant aesthetic, even Polymnia suspected that the man's unnamed father had ended up affecting the "arrangement" of the boy's looks. The man was clearly Alanna’s son, and it honestly made Polymnia wonder how she hadn’t known about him before.
If there was a difference between Ellis and the rest of the Dorothea’s it would have been one of scale. The man looked average, or almost slight, from a distance, but up close he was a veritable giant. Built both tall and broad, his figure looming, dominating the room. Beyond the man’s physical dimensions there was a larger-than-life quality to him that made it feel like he was the main character of the world. Or like he was the sole real person present, while the rest of them were puppets added to fill up seats.
Polymnia knew enough about magic and cultivation to understand that this was yet more proof of the man’s power. The weight of his existence out-shining theirs, making the Queen half-wish she’d called up one or two of the Melody family’s old monsters so they wouldn’t be losing so much momentum like this.
Finally, in terms of the man’s aesthetics. He’d dressed well, and cleaned up excellently. The Dorotheas were one of Eumelia’s “prettiest” families, and the man was clearly no outlier there. In fact, the aura of attraction his looks seemed to exude was so strong that Polymnia briefly, mostly jokingly, considered adding to her number of husbands. The man’s looks combined with everything else about the man, led to Polymnia putting serious thought to the possibility of having a few of her daughters, or possibly her sons, see if they could run into the man socially to see how they got along.
