I had a speech.
Three pages of it, written the night before with Lola asleep against my shoulder, the holo still up on her chest. I had walked in this morning with it tucked under my elbow. “I’ll be conducting today’s debrief, my queen,” Lola said.
I blinked at her. “I prepared remarks. You asked me to.”
She smiled. “I read them last night. Good job, but at the last moment I decided it wasn’t needed.”
“Lola!” I wanted to tickle her, but she ducked, so I reached for a pen.
There were no pens. “Huh?”
“I had pens removed. Everyone has suffered enough hits, my queen.” She didn’t look up from her holo while she said it. Her ears were pink.
The team was already seated. Luna at my right with the exoskeleton humming under her chair, Ian beside her in a green sweater she had almost certainly picked out for him. Lisa sprawled across two chairs with a coffee that was eighty percent foam.
Katherine sat at the foot of the table, working through a plate of biscuits Pancake had clearly made to keep her hands occupied. Fty across from Lisa with a cup of tea he wasn’t drinking. Poundcake beside him. Yuki at the far end with a paper stack she kept touching. Lucy, in her navy peacoat, sitting backward on her chair, attending for no reason I had authorized.
Lola tapped her holo. “Three parts. Tactical recap, strategic position, the Crown’s response.”
“It was only two last night,” I said, going mentally over yesterday’s report.
“Page seven, my queen.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Page seven is where you put things you don’t want me to read.”
She ignored my note with a small giggle and tapped again. The room dimmed and Katherine’s stream came up.
The clip opened on the gravel bank. Luna at the front of the formation, the Ring of Shouting catching her voice and carrying it across four thousand soldiers. The stutter. The settling of her shoulders. I don’t want to do it alone anymore. The Broken Chain banner roared.
I had watched this clip eleven times now. I watched it again. Beside me Luna had gone very small in her chair, and Lisa, without looking, leaned her head against her shoulder.
“Fifty-three seconds,” Lola said. “By every metric we measure, the most effective field-commander’s address in the kingdom’s recorded history. It is the first one. The metric stands regardless. Mila has filed a written commendation. The commendation comes at the end. We are working chronologically, my queen.”
Luna nodded into the side of Lisa’s hair.
The next clip ran without audio. Lola was sparing us the long tax on the column, the Cursed Necromancers harassing from the southern ridge, the skirmishers loose alongside. What she let play was Mila’s voice over Luna’s. Cost: forty to sixty soldiers. Or twenty extra minutes.
And Luna’s, smaller: second option. Luna’s free hand had gone under the table and Ian’s was on top of it.
Then Fty. The slow, pale shimmer of the mass ward sliding into place across the whole formation, three hours of sustained coverage at full Doan strength. The wall came into view next. The Necromancers’ tower bristling with skeletons and Death Knights, Korven’s full guild on the crenellations. Luna and Katherine approaching the gate. The offer rolling across the dead field on the Ring’s voice.
Walk away. Take your guild and leave Rimebreak territory.
Korven laughed. His hand came up. FIRE.
Lola then went over the first part of the fight until we got into the tower. The footage moved into the hall. Korven at the foot of the stairs, helmet at his hip, the deal: Drop the others. You and I. Single combat. Right here.
He had read Luna correctly. The class fantasy, the Chronosblade instinct, all of it offered back to her, and Luna had been three-quarters of a step toward him when the red blur arrived.
MINE.
Katherine grinned at the footage of her own grin.
“Best part.”
The exchange played out. Two greatswords cracked the hall. Katherine pressing forward into the bind, Korven’s free hand catching her across the helmet, Katherine laughing through it. Behind them, in the same shot: Luna threading the gaps in the wild undead toward the back-rank casters, longsword high, rapier low. Ian’s Quick-Draw clearing the front. Fty’s healing arc finding Ian’s forearm before Ian himself had noticed the wound.
“That sequence is sixty-three seconds long,” Lola said. “Twelve players and roughly twenty wild undead eliminated in coordinated action.”
The blade fell. The chamber held its breath for a quarter second. Korven came apart along the seam.
“Big stupid face,” Katherine said, satisfied.
The footage moved into the veiled chamber. Veranthos.
Lola let his voice play through the introduction. The lecture-cadence. The dismissal of each member by category. Ian leaned forward when his own non-mention came up and pointed at the screen with both hands.
“There. He didn’t see me. I was right there with two daggers and he just skipped me.”
“You were the one who finished him,” Luna said.
“He still skipped me.”
Fty’s veil-parting came next. The slow white arc from his staff slid across each window. Daylight poured into the room. The footage moved on, and Fty cleared his throat.
“That was the moment I started the binding ritual.”
The table went quiet. I had read the report last night and was confused about what really happened.
“The whole fight?” Lisa said.
“The whole fight. The veil was the anchor. The light was the first rune. I needed the chamber illuminated for the cage to set, and I needed Veranthos to not look at me while it did. He never looked at me. He looked at you. Thank you for keeping his attention.”
Lisa managed something halfway between a laugh and a wet noise and put her chin back on her hand.
The duel played in slow motion. The mirror-magic. The tether at Lisa’s sternum, almost invisible against the daylight. Fty’s clean white cut breaking it.
“He was teaching me,” Lisa said.
“He was,” Lola said. “You took it because it worked, and then you killed him with it. That’s its own answer.” She looked at the table. Her hair fell forward, and she didn’t push it back. I made another note in the pencil I did not have.
The apprentice clip rolled. The pommel-blocked rapier, the moment the greatsword pommel was already inside Luna’s guard, the brief skip where the world rearranged and Luna’s longsword went into a wrist instead of catching a temple.
The first Veranthos kill. Luna’s Paradox Slash opening the ward at the back of his neck. Ian’s All-in driving four dagger strikes into the gap before the second was complete.
“Two seconds long,” Lola said.
Ian was staring at it. “He came back. The whole thing didn’t work.”
“It bought me time to finally begin,” Fty said.
Then Katherine’s fight. Then Lisa folded on the marble. Then Fty’s runes. The staff standing alone on the marble in a quiet room.
“That concludes the tactical recap.”
She pulled up Mila’s commendation.
“By recommendation of General Mila and by the Crown’s own assessment, Lady Lunaris is to be granted the count title.”
Luna’s mouth opened, shocked. Lisa made the small noise I had learned to recognize as the start of a tackle, and Luna’s free hand came up and gripped her arm. “Big sis. Don’t.”
“I am being restrained, Cute Queen!” Lisa theatrically fought against Luna’s hand.
Lola tapped the holo. “In addition, the Crown grants a count title to Lady Lisa.” She squealed, went around the restraint and tackle-hugged Luna, who absorbed it without flinching.
Lola turned to Fty and Sir Pancake, eating his biscuits.
“No.”
Both declined.
Lola turned to Katherine, who clapped her hand on the table hard enough that the biscuit plate jumped. Poundcake steadied himself without looking. “NO BARONY. Barony bad for Glory.”
“Acceptable. Lady Katherine declines the offer. On the record.”
“ON THE RECORD.”
Lola turned to Ian. “The Crown notes that the eligibility of a Count-by-marriage attaches to a spouse upon a legal partnership in the future.” Ian’s ears went the color of Lisa’s hair. Luna was looking very hard at her exoskeleton. Their hands were still under the table.
Their hands were still holding.
Lola tapped the holo. The page changed.
The image was low-resolution, the kind that came off a holo held during a stream. Toxica’s face, smug, captioned in white block text:
WHEN THE CORPO QUEEN OFFERS YOU “INTEGRATION” 💀
Below it, Korven on the wall, helmet under his arm, hand raised in the moment before FIRE.
Captioned: FOREIGN INVADERS GOT INVADED 🔥🔥🔥
The third was a cartoon wolf in a suit chasing a smaller cartoon dog away from a tower.
Rimebreak: We Came in Peace (With 4000 Soldiers).
I stared at it.
“Page thirty-six,” Lola whispered. “Strategic position. Toxica started a meme war the moment the assault began. The guild’s Earth-side roster mobilized within minutes. Dmitry ordered a full attack, and it’s partly effective. The footage of the offer is being recut to remove the part where they laughed. The footage of the volley is being framed as defensive. Their guild has a small but committed audience that does not fact-check. Twelve thousand subscribers. Rising.”
Lisa’s mouth had fallen open. “But, but! We gave them an offer. Luny did!“
I didn’t answer.
At the far end of the table, Yuki had made a small sound. She tried to retract it, which is the only reason I noticed she’d made it.
“Yuki.”
She didn’t look up. Her papers had become very interesting.
“Yuki, don’t be afraid.”
She drew a breath that wasn’t steady. “I have friends who lead guilds. On Earth. From—from before. They joined the empire along with people in their guilds. Yesterday. Ralph and Dylan. They put it on their channels and said that we—we bully people.”
I let out a long sigh. “This is a disaster, but do they know Rimelion is real? That if I die there, I die for good?”
“They know. They still think—they used the word corpo. They think Rimebreak is a big corporation hurting the little guy. They think Korven’s guild was just trying to live and we—they think we’re—” she stopped. “They think you’re a villainess, Charlie. To them, you are pure evil.”
Nobody moved.
I gave them the offer. I gave Luna the words, and Luna carried them to the wall, and they laughed at her, and they shot at her. I sent four thousand soldiers because Veranthos was real and the miasma was real. I sent the offer first.
I am not evil.
…am I?
My hand had gone to the inside of my wrist. There were no pencils. Lola had removed them. Sitting at the head of the table, looking at a cartoon wolf chasing a smaller dog, I was for the first time today grateful to her for it.
Lisa was already moving.
She crossed to Yuki in three strides and wrapped her arms around her. Yuki, sitting still, let out a small noise and disappeared into Lisa’s shoulder.
“Listen. We gave Korven a chance. Luna gave him a chance. We held the offer open, and he laughed at it, and he shot at her. Your friends are wrong about this one. Big corpos do hurt small people in general—they’re not wrong about the pattern.” I nodded to myself. “They’re wrong about this one. You don’t have to defend us to them. You don’t have to defend them to us. I understand why they think that. I understand why people pick the underdog story even when the underdog shot first. I’m just sad about it. I’m sad they’re on the wrong side, but I’m sure when they’ll see what we built they’ll change their mind.”
She squeezed once and didn’t let go.
I looked at the meme. I looked at the still of Korven calling fire. I looked at the page Lola was about to turn to, which I knew contained counter-narrative strategies and a budget I did not want to read today.
“Lola. Counter-strategy can wait until tomorrow.”
“Yes, my queen.”
I reached for where my pencils would have been and remembered.
Poundcake set his cup down. “The bread does not argue with the fire. It rises, or it does not. The baker tends the oven.”
Then he picked up a biscuit.
“Thanks, Panc—I mean, Poundcake.”
“My queen.”
Lola’s shoulder was within reach. I did not lean against it. There were eight people in the room, and I was Queen of Rimebreak.
But I imagined leaning against it. That was enough for now.
Author's note: I re-wrote this like three times, it took me four hours and I'm still unhappy with parts of this chapter, it felt like the arc isn't finished, but we need to move on to the next arc. Ugh. Thanks for reading, truly. Hopefully you liked this arc.