“Not really, no,” Constance shook her head, fixing Emma with a reassuring smile. “None of us want to see the Empress removed from power. I-It’s complicated.” Constance moved her chair around the table until it was next to Emma’s. Constance settled into the chair and leaned forward once again, capturing Emma with her eyes.

“I-I don’t understand,” Emma admitted.

“Ever since the last Emperor, Ashton, stripped the treasury bare and fled leaving only his sister, Laura in charge, Azadora has had an Empress on the Sky Throne,” Constance began slowly and carefully. “For over 1600 years the Empire was stable. It was prosperous and peaceful. Then…then those fucking monstrosities were invented. Those gods be damned batteries.

“In less than 200 years the Empire has descended into the mud with every other nation. We abuse our citizens with no care for their well-being. The nobility squabble and scrabble like rats. They sell their children to the highest bidder all while pretending to be better than those with less power than themselves. The rich get richer off the backs of the poor who get poorer and poorer until they’re forgotten altogether. People are simply commodities to be sold, leased, abused, and exhausted before being tossed aside when their usefulness has run its course.

“Atrocities are at best ignored, at worst actively encouraged by the Imperial forces, the Council and the Order. In most cases they’re the ones committing these barbarous acts! All three groups are so deep into their politics and petty power struggles they don’t have time to do what they should be doing; taking care of the people they purport to rule over. And it’s all because of those fucking batteries!”

“S-So you want to do away with the batteries?” Emma cocked her head slightly to the side, surprised by Constance’s sudden outburst.

“No!” Constance exclaimed, shaking her head before continuing more calmly. “No. The batteries serve their purpose. They provide money to those who volunteer and can save girls who are approaching Discharge. But there has to be a more humane way to achieve the same results! There has to be!” Her voice had taken on an air of desperation and despair, and she held Emma’s hands tighter.

“We-we’re not revolutionaries,” Constance shook her head, regaining control of herself again. “We don’t want to scrap the system. We want the Empress to be safe. We want and need the Order to continue their research into magic, and we want to expand the council, so everyone feels they have a voice. We don’t want to return the Empire to some long lost mythical ‘glory’. Honestly! We want the Empire to be better! We want her to be a bulwark against the type of evil the groups are so keen on perpetrating against innocent people! We want to take back the Empire’s decency, Emma.”

“I see,” Emma said, relatively sure what Constance was describing was, in fact, revolution.

“The world is a fucked up place. I just want to do everything I can to make it a bit better,” Constance insisted.

“That sounds wonderful,” Emma murmured, shaking away the vision of her mother’s dying eyes staring helplessly at her while her bloody hand reached out from beneath the wheels of the carriage which had crushed her. She pushed away the screams of the nobleman and his driver berating her mother’s still warm corpse for damaging their vehicle.

“I don’t have the answers, Emma,” Constance admitted with a sigh. “All I know is you have empathy. You have concern for others. You want to do the right thing.” Emma’s eyes flicked up to Carrisyn’s and darkened.

“Do I, though?” Emma asked quietly. “Do I really? I killed those boys in the alley, Miss Constance. Not only did I kill them; I destroyed them utterly. Even afterward, in the warehouse, I thought about stealing money from them. I don’t think I’m who you think I am. I can’t even brush my guilt away by saying it was some mystical force inside me. Yes, part of my mind was horrified by what I had done, but part of me reveled in the ‘justice’ I had wrought.”

“Do you know what a Summoner is, Emma?” Constance asked quietly. Emma thought for a moment before replying.

“Um…someone who summons things?” Emma asked after a moment. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know much, I’m afraid.”

“No!” Constance chuckled. “That’s exactly right! We summon things! Specifically, we summon monsters, Emma. We open portals to a realm of demons, strike a contract with them, and unleash them on our foes.”

“That sounds…scary,” Emma finally admitted, trying to wrap her mind around what she’d been told.

“It really is,” Constance nodded. “A Summoner has mere moments to strike their bargain before the demons from Hamistagan come rushing through the portals they’ve created. Demons are deceptive creatures. They will twist your words, twist your intentions, and twist your desires if given any chance to do so. Most Summoners don’t survive long past their training. The demons turn on them and devour them. Many of us make the fatal mistake of believing the Demons have human emotions. Human failings. Human flaws. They do not.

“They know only how to destroy and kill. They have no remorse. Which fits well as most of us have no remorse, either. We do as we are told. We summon monsters of destruction and unleash them on our foes. And even if we do have moments of remorse for the destruction we cause, we console ourselves by blaming it on the Demons we’ve dragged into our world. We’ve created an absolution for ourselves which is nearly flawless. We did nothing. The Demons did it all. Thus, we are blameless and clean.”

“Even you?” Emma whispered.

“Especially me,” Constance fixed her with a wry smile. “You don’t survive as long as I have as a Summoner and do the things I have done without that built in excuse.” Constance squeezed Emma’s hands tighter and stared at the younger girl intently.

“We live in a world of shirking responsibilities” Constance shook her head sadly. “We Summoners are prime examples of that. We have mastered it, in fact, and the monstrosities who do our bidding are the perfect foil. We look down upon these creatures as beneath us even as we use their power for our own purposes. The death they bring is a perfect opportunity to remove all guilt we may feel as it is them and not us directly which brings it. It’s a grotesque, yet perfectly choreographed dance of mutual need.

“Their world is one of absolute power. The strong subjugate the weak to consolidate that power and the weak in turn seek out those weaker than themselves to enslave in hopes of raising their own strength. I have stared into the abyss of Hamistagan while summoning. I have seen the peaks of the mountains blazing with lava. I’ve seen the forests alive with flame and the lakes alight with fire. It is a world of chaos. A world without pity or mercy.

“But this world. Our world. Should be different. The fact you felt guilt while doing nothing more than protecting yourself, as is every person’s right, speaks volumes about your character. You have the wherewithal to question your own capacity for good in light of your actions. You have empathy and compassion and kindness. You can bring about the change this world needs to step away from becoming Hamistagan, and we can stand by your side.”

Emma’s mind seemed to groan under the weight of sudden expectations she was ill-prepared for. As long as she could remember, her life had been focused simply on making it through the day, surviving the night, and repeating the ritual the next dawn. There were no demands placed on her other than to leave an area others had claimed or to remain mindful of the garbage cans which had been poisoned by angry merchants.

When the cold winds of the Season of Snow tried to steal your breath in the dark or the torrential rains during the Time of Rebirth threatened to drown you, the world tended to shrink to a pinhead focused on nothing more than survival. She had never cared for the machinations of those in authority except when it came to avoiding the city watch. The decisions made in ivory halls and within well-apportioned back rooms were of little importance when your belly was empty and the cold reached into your very bones and left you aching, brittle and weak.

With a single event, suddenly the weight of the world was crashing down on her. Her world had expanded frighteningly, and she was more terrified than she’d ever been. She could control where she scavenged for food or where she laid her head, but now she felt she had no say over her life at all. With the gazes of the mighty and the powerful, once focused on each other and their struggles for supremacy, now turned directly toward her, she found their attentions suffocating.

“It’s ok!” Constance patted Emma’s hand reassuringly. “You have been bombarded by changes. It is quite a different reality for you, I imagine. Take your time to find yourself and get your bearings. We still have time. Explore the manor and even the grounds within reason and in the presence of one of us. We will keep you safe.

“Take this breath and we will talk again when you’re ready,” Constance smiled at her warmly. Emma’s lips tugged upward, and she nodded gratefully.

“Th-Thank you,” She finally managed.

“There’s no need to thank me!” Constance patted her hands once again before sitting back and taking her teacup back in her hands. “Enjoy your day, and we will have a fantastic dinner this evening!”

“If she lets any of what ye said slip it’ll be our heads on the block, ye know,” Kiley said, emerging with barely a rustle from the hedge south of the fountain after Emma left. “Ye’re puttin’ all our lives in th’ hands o’ someone we don’t even know, Connie.”

“Didn’t you, yourself, say you had a good feeling about her?” Constance sipped gingerly on her tea as Kiley sat heavily in the chair Emma had vacated.

“Yeah,” Kiley admitted, running her hands through her long red hair nervously. “But I’ve become attached to my head, ye know. I’d like t’ keep i’ a bit longer.”

“Fate waits for none, love,” Constance replied. “Besides, let’s be honest, our heads were on the block the moment we decided on this course of action. The headsman’s axe is simply moving a bit faster, now.”

“No’ a cheery thought,” Kiley sighed with a shudder.

“Changing the world isn’t accomplished with cheery thoughts, love. It’s won by steel and bone and blood.”

“Aye, but whose?”

“If we fuck this up?” Constance sighed uneasily. “Everyone’s.”