The emperor took his seat within a luxurious cabin.

Together with him were the two generals of Dahaka and Tiamat, Ahzi and Rosa.

He had commanded the two representatives from Seraph and Qliphoth to return to their Skithblathnir and ready themselves for setting off.

He had sent his daughter off to play, and thus Brynhilda was not here either.

The three of them could talk without worrying about what their political rivals might come to know.

“Now then,” He said, leaning back lazily in his chair, “let’s get straight to the point.”

His gaze shifted onto Rosa, who trembled as a result.

She did not understand why she trembled, only that the intensity of his gaze and the seriousness in his stare gave her no small kind of scare.

Ahzi seemed to grow cautious in her defence but Sigurd raised his hand to calm the man down.

“Rosa, you will remain here, I want you to return to Silicia, to the Capital, to protect Gudrun...and my other daughter.”

Rosa trembled again, but this time in a rage.

She sought to object but knew she could not, it was a grave sin to argue against the Emperor’s commands.

She creased her brows however when the words ‘protect Gudrun’ echoed in her brain.

That woman was in the Capital together with her daughter, what could she need protection from?

No, not what but who?

“Is the Empress up to something?” Ahzi asked, again on Rosa’s behalf. 

“My worry is that she might,” Said the Emperor.

“She wouldn’t make Garner move, would she?” The old general shot Rosa a glance.

He did not wish to see her faced with such a danger, he did not want her to be devoured by that Immortal Tribe monster.

She met his gaze and cast him a frown, even still she did not speak a word but it was clear she did not feel all that grateful for his help.

“No, she wouldn’t be that reckless,” Said Sigurd, “That man’s the only thing keeping the Immortal Tribes from attacking us, after all.” ‘Besides,’ he thought but did not say, ‘that man dreads what Rosa has on her person just as much as he dreads my wife, does he not?’

“So it’s just your bad feeling?” The old General muttered.

“Your Majesty,” Rosa finally called out, “I know you doubt my strength...even still please give me the chance to prove myself in battle, I will not let you down!”

Her words were sincere enough to make the emperor smile, but he shook his head soon after.

The girl grit her teeth, for she knew that he had given her his answer.

“As you wish then...Your Majesty.” She turned to leave.

The emperor leaned back, he then called out to her after a moment of contemplation.

“Your Beacon,” He said, stopping her in her tracks, “Give it to Ahzi, let him use it.”

The girl’s five fingers opened and clenched multiple times, as for her right hand, it rose up to press upon her breast where a crystalline object lay hidden beneath her coat.

“This?” She uttered, her tone as unwilling as could be.

The Emperor sat up straight as she slowly turned around.

She saw there was nothing for it, and so she surrendered and yanked the stone from her neck.

She stared towards Ahzi in cold fury, and had to ask it again,

“Your Majesty...this?”

Her voice was weak, it was pleading.

She was trying to object but she was just barely holding back the trespass.

“Yes,” Said Sigurd, “give it to Ahzi.”

The sapphire clad general frowned as he faced his monarch, he looked upon the girl with great sympathy.

That Beacon was precious to her, Rosa had never parted with it since the day she was born, to ask such a thing of her was truly unthinkable.

Ahzi reached out to her but he didn’t take the Beacon away.

Instead he covered her hand with his own, closing it into a fist around the stone.

“All due respect, Your Majesty, I decline,” He said, “Garner fears this Beacon as much as he fears the Empress, to take it with us would be folly, especially if you plan to have Rosa be Lady Gudrun’s guard.”

“A good argument,” Sigurd replied, yet even then he didn’t voice any will to retract his command.

His power wrapped around the Beacon then, and he tore it from Rosa’s grip to then land in the palm of his own hand.

“I believe however that she will be fine, as long as she doesn’t tell anyone she lost it. Now, Ahzi, if you will not accept it, I will.”

Rosa stared blankly at the Beacon in her monarch’s hand.

She stood there lost in thought for the longest time, only after an eternity did she find the presence of mind to rip her hand free of Ahzi’s own.

She stormed out of the room, didn’t even stop for any of the normal civil niceties.

She slammed the door on her way out.

Sigurd could only scoff at the sight of it, but he chose to excuse her rudeness on just this one occasion.

“Such a child,” He said as he tossed the Beacon into Ahzi’s grip, “She probably has no idea what this thing is, nor the fact that I’m choosing to save the young pup by sacrificing an old dog.”

Ahzi took the Beacon and stared into it blankly for a long and quiet eternity.

Only after a while then did he turn towards his monarch bearing a frown in protest.

Were he any other man his head would surely fly for that trespass alone, but Sigurd did not begrudge his most trusted and senior general that much.

“You didn’t have to take it from her.”

The Emperor only cracked a smile in response to that.

“I’m just returning it to its rightful owner,” He gave in answer.

Those few words made Ahzi’s brow twitch in anger.

He put the Beacon away in his pocket, returned it to the place it had once belonged, and then took his seat with a violent thud.

“Ahzi,” Sigurd said with a sigh as he witnessed this crude gesture.

Suddenly, even the emperor found himself rubbing his brow in frustration.

For how long would he entertain this delusional behaviour? The answer was: No longer.

“She’s not your daughter, no matter how you wish it was so.”

The old general said nothing.

Sigurd was not of a mind to let the matter end with just that.

The Emperor cast his oldest general a firm look and spoke on.

He was very scathing with his words, but only because he was of the conviction they were right.

“You realised a random whore was with child and thought it may be your’s?

You went so far as to give her your Beacon in the hope it would protect her.

You even stopped the matron from feeding her the “potion” that would’ve done away with the child as normally occurs, but all for naught.

That girl is not your child, Ahzi, as Tiamat’s favour well proves.”

After all this was said, Ahzi still remained silent.

Though he knew all of that was true, none of it stopped him from doing the things he did.

Regardless of how things had turned out, that experience had shaped him to the man he was today.

“Why can’t you let it go?” The Emperor asked.

He was exasperated, it's true, but his tone, for the first time, betrayed a bit of weary sympathy for the old general, who was, incidentally, both a friend and subject, as well as half a mentor to him.

The old general relented after a time, and faced his monarch with a very tragic smile.

“Because I fell in love with her mother,” He said nothing more.

The Emperor didn’t say anything more either after that.

What was even the point in trying?

What Ahzi “fell in love with” couldn’t be called a woman anymore, only a husk, a mindless drone that only did as it was told.

What he loved was just a doll, just an idea, but he had gone quite far for her.

The Emperor leaned back in his seat, his heart was rendered weary by his subordinate’s naivety and sincerity.

Finally, Ahzi turned away from him, yet he did not immediately take his leave.

“Thank you,” He said.

“For what?” Sigurd asked.

Truly, he didn’t know at all what he was being thanked for.

Ahzi met his eye but briefly, and that was when the man then came to realise his mind.

“For protecting her,” Ahzi took his leave with those words, and Sigurd could do nothing save creasing his brows.

He wanted to say that this was not the reason he had chosen for Rosa to stay behind, yet the words got caught in his throat.

Indeed, no matter what may happen it was still safer here for now than it was going to be in Muspelheim very soon, perhaps, just perhaps, he too had been swayed by sentimentality?

The Monarch cracked a defeated grin as he turned to face the ships in port.

How often had he criticized his wife for her habit of acting on emotions and yet now it seemed that he was not so different himself.

____________________________________________ 

Within the Capital of the Nidhogg Empire, the City of Silicia, a black dragon lay chained to the sandstone ground.

The bindings around him were massive, each chain interwoven with the walls of an old colosseum.

The beast lurched up its head.

The hundreds of soldiers who surrounded it raised their spears in terror.

The creature’s eyes opened wide in all their sapphire splendour.

The world beneath its feet trembled as it turned to face the south.

The knights trembled, this behaviour was different from what they'd seen of the beast until now.

The Dragon indeed did not lash out in rage this time, and nor did it struggle against its chains either.

After a while, in fact, the creature bid to lay back down, it was as if it did not even care.

They heard it snicker as it slumbered, but the soldiers realised nothing amiss.

They all assumed that perhaps the beast, which was once a man, had given up in its struggle.

They believed it was snickering at them out of stubborn contempt.

Yet within the darkness, within the very body of the beast, a man opened his eyes.

Those eyes too were blue, and they shone bright like a cat’s in the abyssal black.

He was silent but his thoughts were sharp and loud.

He focused on the scene outside, he knew that Sigurd had departed and he also knew that the Emperor’s Mistress, Gudrun, had not.

Everything was going just as Brynhilda said it would.

The man thought back on the day that she discovered him, it made him sick to his stomach to do even just that much.

She did not tell anyone about him only because she wanted him to kill that woman, a wholly one sided contract had been forced upon him, a bid to slay an innocent woman.

The man’s gaze fell upon the palace walls.

He saw her on the highest balcony, a woman clad in a red regal nightdress, that was Gudrun, Mistress of the Emperor.

The servants held an infant in their hands as she looked back and forth between that babe and the distant south beyond.

This woman was the lover of his sword adversary, but still, the man had his disagreements about killing a helpless woman and her equally helpless child.

The dragon went back to sleep, for it didn’t care a whit.

Centuries old, his long lost and then regained humanity had time and again been desensitised to the idea.

Murder was murder to its mind and it didn't matter the age, sex or sheer number of the victims who met their deaths at its jaws.

The man understood this, it saddened him to no end.

"We'll make our move soon, Fafnir...but not quite yet."

He waited, waited until the darkness fell completely.

Only then did he bid to emerge from the dragon’s scales like water phasing through the roof of an old and dilapidated building.

He approached the chains that bound his draconic companion.

He could see even in this pitch dark, this wasn’t a unique trait amongst the Platinum Class, but it was strengthened in his case.

He had the Dragon's blood, and with it, the eyes of the beast that could pierce any darkness save the very, very bleakest from which no light at all existed to begin with.

He reached out one by one, stroking the chains.

They sizzled and smoked, but only lightly.

The metal weakened, but it did not break just yet.

Before the sun rose then he walked back towards the dragon and sank again into its scales.

Bit by bit, every night, the chains that bound them were corroding under his hands.

They did not have long left to wait as of now.

The chains were all but already rotted away.