Enlightened Empire

The excited bustle of the street entered the room through the paper window, yet infected no one inside. From inside the strange apparatus under the opening, unknown vapors escaped and filled the air with sharp smells which tickled Primus’ nose. Strange flasks and tubes bubbled and burned. Though Primus knew about the concoction brewing under the mysterious machinery, his view on the apparatus was blocked by the masked figure of the witch doctor.

With a strange magic seal made from paper and an unknown blood red root, he probed at his concoction. His shoulders tensed, Primus watched with trepidation. The brew had already failed too many times and like before, both he and his fellow assistant anticipated another explosion of curses in the laboratory.

"Eureka!" With the witch doctor’s bizarre chant, his gloved hand shot up in delight, satisfied with what he had seen in the magic seal. His brown, insectoid eyes brushed past the helpless assistants and onto his next target. Slow and deliberate hands took up his brew, before he moved past a table filled with loose stacks of paper. With tiny steps, he arrived at a bed of glimmering coals and settled the bottle atop a lattice, above the heat.

His work now prepared, the witch doctor revealed his most horrific of ingredients. From a glass he procured what could only be a human finger. A shiver ran down the assistant’s spine as he understood that the missing bits of skin and flesh indicated the finger’s heavy use in all manner of magic. Primus watched the witch doctor take great care as he cut off part of the finger, shredded it into small pieces and dropped them inside the concoction before he began to stir with a translucent wand. Once the spell was cast, he turned and moved towards his assistants.

Already used to his role, Primus handed the witch doctor a cloth. After he had taken on the tissue and taken off the amber glasses, the witch doctor returned to his human form; he once again turned into Prince Corco. With a sigh, the prince wiped the sweat off his brow and cheeks while he summarized the results of his magic.

"Goddamn, if only Ronnie could be here. Turns out, making hydrochloric acid is a lot harder than you’d think, especially if you’re an amateur. Now it’s done though. We just need to wait for the tissue to dissolve and we might get some answers."

"What answers might those be, Prince Corco?" Primus asked.

"Well, the one about my father’s cause of death, for one."

"But what about the treasury’s sendings? Would those not be useful? Were they not meant for just this purpose?"

Primus looked over to the pile of documents the prince had ignored up until now. They constituted the empire’s financial reports for the past year, or at least excerpts from them. Two days ago, they had been sent mountains’ worth of these things. As he looked at the young heir, Prince Corco raised a brow. As before, he voiced his dismissal towards the efforts of the royal bookkeepers.

"That stuff? Worthless. I expected it to be bad, but not to this extent. Someone clearly jumbled these up and made sure no one would be able to find anything. It’d be tough enough if we had more hands, but by myself this is impossible. Take all our Fastgrade accountants and we could work through this mess in a month or two, but for now there’s no point. That’s why we’ll have to get creative," he concluded as he bent down to his glass of magic brew, were the finger had begun to dissolve.

"But I have read stories like this about the ancient witch doctors." Although he was sure the prince would never try anything sinister, Primus was still worried to be part of some black magic ritual.

"Don’t sweat it, kid," said the strange pale man with the golden hair to his side.

Dedrick, he remembered.

Though after the banquet’s slaughter, everyone had just called him ’golden devil’. "If you stick around for a bit, you’ll see strange feats from the boss and his people all the time. Back in Borna he bought some old mine full of bitter salt. Had his alchemist buddy do some of his weird magic and out came the highest quality salt you’ll ever see. Sold it for a pretty penny too. After a while, you’ll just learn to ignore this stuff."

Brought back into the talks, the crown prince looked up from his work. "That’s why I hired Dedrick’s wolves, actually. Everyone thought there was some hidden salt deposits in the mine, so I had to make sure none of the good knights around would get together a couple of their peasants and storm the hill. Of course, there never were any deposits." Corco gave a mischievous smile.

"Back when we left, it didn’t stop you from selling the thing like there were, did it?" the devil showed a toothy grin. With a frown, the prince looked away to the side, focusing on his concoction once more.

"Well, there is always more important things than integrity," Corco said. "We needed enough capital to kick start not only an economy, but a revolution. When I got that letter six months ago, we sold all our assets overseas to buy ships and materials, but it’s still not gonna be anywhere near enough. We’ll have to start somewhere local, make one place all nice and tidy and then go from there." As he talked, the prince continued in his work and dropped a coiled strip of copper into the glass beaker.

"First you’ll have to get that crown of yours, boss."

"Yeah. That too." Corco took a careful look at the copper before he turned around with a flippant answer. Meanwhile, Primus decided to find a distraction, before the two would start another fight. They had been doing that a lot.

"Still, to me this seems an awful lot like the rituals in those old stories. It truly is too fantastical." Primus wasn’t very good at distractions.

"Talking about stories. The Raven and the Snake, was it?" However, to the good fortune of the other two, Dedrick was a lot better at it. Eyes enlarged in surprise, Primus looked over to the mercenary. How could a foreign devil know the stories of the Yaku?

"I heard what the boss said to the dumb one after the battle," the devil explained with a shrug. "Just wondering what that was. So what’s the story?"

When Primus looked over to the prince, he seemed immersed in his brew once again. For now, the young master thought it prudent to give the answer himself, lest anything went awry in the final steps of the ritual.

"It is an old tale, about the past of our people. Back in the days of yore, our ancestors lived across the Weltalic Sea-"

"Well, a few of them did," Corco interjected, his back still turned.

"...but the people of the lands envied the ancestors for their strength and courage and pursued them. Overwhelmed by the enemy numbers, the ancestors were forced to leave their homely shores and find their luck across the uncrossable, unknowable waters."

"Because they were Arcavus fanatics by the way. Our dudes didn’t want to play along with the Arcavus bullshit and so they were squashed," Corco buzzed in again. This time, Dedrick took the bait.

"Just cause you got locked out of their fancy school doesn’t make Arcavism a cult, you know? Getting kinda annoyed here."

"I can’t see anything positive in a religion which lets you become a god. It’s presumptuous. That’s a good word. ’Presumptuous’." In disbelief, Primus stared at the Prince who kept mumbling the same word to himself over and over, immersed in another strange thought.

"Well, how about ’man’s potential knows no bounds’? Doesn’t that sound like the stuff you spout all the time? You keep degrading Arcavism like some warmongering cult, but at the foundation, it’s a religion of peace. It’s not my fault you don’t get it."

"So that’s how you’d describe Arcavia? A continent of peace?"

"That’s just the Lords and priests being bastards as always. I never said most of the nobles aren’t a bunch of power hungry, money grubbing leeches. But that has nothing to do with the teachings. People can believe in good things and still be bad. Most people are bastards anyways." After Dedrick’s voice had turned dark, silence returned to the hall for a moment. However, even now the prince wouldn’t let up.

"Sure. I’ll give you that. Still, the whole ’become a god’ thing is way too much. Stuff like that can only ever lead to unhealthy consequences."

"So the Ancestors!" At this point, Primus had been thoroughly fed up by the constant banter. Since Lord Saqartu had gone out to convince the southern lords to switch sides and the warrior Fadelio had been sent off to do heavens knew what, he had been forced to spend several days in the company of Corco and Dedrick. They would argue over everything, and it would always devolve into drawn-out, pointless quarrels. Things wouldn’t be so bad if only they would let him finish a sentence for once. With what he hoped would be an annoyed look on his face, he took a careful glance at the two squabbling friends, to assuage the effect of his little outburst.

"Would you please continue that story for us, Primus?"

"Yeah, I wanna know what happened with those ancestors."

"So...," he gave the two a critical look and was gifted with a harmless smile and encouraging nod in return. "The ancestors were driven from their ancestral lands and into the sea. Lost and adrift, they knew not what to do, other than follow the path the stars would show them. In the middle of the ninth night, at last, an enormous snake rose from the waves. The beast had black scales, dark as the depths of the sea, a head as large as a man and it spoke in a human tongue.

"’Do you wish to find the lands of silver? On his mission, this messenger will travel past them this very night. Follow along after my tail and you will find what you seek; find more than you could ever imagine.’

"The ancestors, blind from hunger and desperation, thought themselves saved. Even when all others had lost their faith in the great Pacha, they had always stayed true to the real faith. Thus, they were convinced Pacha had sent them a messenger from the heavens to reward their stalwart nature. And so they answered the celestial messenger.

"’Yes, oh wise emissary, we will follow wherever you may lead.’

"Right away the men grabbed the rudders and adjusted the course, determined to follow along the snake’s tail; determined never to lose its sight. They were blind for they could not see the beast’s sly grin and sharp eyes. Suddenly, from the sky! From within the moon! A tiny raven, feathers dark as the night sky, descended to the ocean and took seat on the ship’s bough.

"The raven said, ’Be not fooled, mortal children! Beyond here lie only cliffs, to rip the boat to pieces!’

"The snake was angry and replied, ’Nasty, envious bird! Do not rob these faithful men of their just rewards!’

"The men felt the snake was right! How dare this little raven say they had been fooled! They were no fools, just honest men rewarded for their faith! How dare this creature slander the celestial messenger! The men began to curse the bird and threw stones to shoo it away, yet through the noise, the raven spoke again.

"’Do you not see the beast’s black scales, which reflect its black heart? If it knew of silver treasures, would it not be sparkling and resplendent? What does a beast of the sea know of the treasures of the land?’

"The men looked at the beast and truly, its scales were black as the depths of the sea. They were angry for they had realized their mistake. The vicious snake had tricked them! They threw paddles, axes and shields, whatever they could find. The great Pachacutec, hero of the people, took out the snake’s left eye with a well-placed blow, and with hisses and curses, it sank back to the depths from whence it had come.

"The men thanked the raven, for they had now recognized the true emissary of the heavens. They asked the bird to show them the path to their new promised lands.

"The raven however shook its head and spoke, ’Believe the strange in desperation and you can only perish. Put trust in yourselves and put trust in the earth. So long as your faith will not break, you will find salvation.’

"And thus the bird flew off, back to his home on the moon. The ancestors meanwhile had decided to continue along their old course, following the path of the stars. Three days later, they would safely reach a land of abundance, their new home."

"Well, that was weird." The devil couldn’t resist a comment.

"They are the words of our ancestors! How dare you, barbarian!" Primus shouted. This savage had no right to judge the ancient Yaku myths!

"Calm down. The dimwit just doesn’t get it." Calm in his voice, Prince Corco stepped in to explain the truths of the ancestors to the dull outsider. "Here’s the point of the story: When you’re desperate, most outside help will only exploit you. Work hard by yourself and you will find success. Also, wisdom will always trump slyness. Rather than be clever and go with some mystic messenger, the men use their own wisdom and navigate by the stars. It’s a good fable."

Once he had explained the meaning of the tale, the prince returned to his brew, to leave his assistants with their own thought. In the meantime, he gave the strip of copper inside the flask a critical look, before he used great care, and tongs, to extract it from the liquid. He dropped the copper on the documents of the treasury and began to dry it. At this point, Primus really wanted to complain, but by now the atmosphere had gotten tense. Even though the two assistants didn’t know what the witch doctor was doing, they felt the ritual had reached the most important, final step. No one spoke a word until the prince turned around once again.

"Well, this really should come as a shock, but at this point I can hardly even muster any anger," he said with a deep frown.

"What could it be?" In confusion, Primus stared at the small silver beads formed on the copper strip.

"It’s mercury. Uhm... quicksilver, I mean. The emperor was poisoned," the prince presented the shocking revelation in a calm voice.

"Impossible! Who would dare!?"

"That’s what we’re about to find out. Another step closer to the mysterious conclusion. But first," Corco looked out of the window, and Primus followed his view. Although they had spent the last few days holed up inside, they had more princely work to do today. According to his own estimate, it was already well past noon.

"We need to get going. Time for our appointment." With deft movements, the prince put away the copper and his gloves before he put on the robes hung at the door. Today, they would meet an important lord and attempt to win him over to their side. However, they would have to hurry or risk being late.

"Primus, you come with me. Fadelio is busy, so I’ll need someone else to play assistant. Dedrick, you... look after the stuff and make sure it all runs smoothly. Seeya." With only his irresponsible words left behind, Corco stormed out of the room, Primus hard on his heels.

"Hey, what does that even mean!? Hey, your highness!" As the sound of the baffled and confused devil faded away behind him, a smirk of retaliation crept onto Primus’ lips.