Eternal
Again you think: How can you really punish such dedication? Casimir tried to kill you for similar loyalty and while you wouldn’t kill Jennifer, sending her away would most certainly be the same thing to her.
While you are lucky to have someone so dedicated and even though she explained herself somewhat, you don’t really understand why. Then again, you never fully understood Semra’s obsession for you either. Some motives only make sense to the mind that creates them.
“Very well. I will find a place for you, but what of your son? Surely you want your son don’t you?” you ask.
“Yes! Yes of course I do. It’s just if I left him he probably wouldn’t care at this point, but he’d make things difficult and probably try to stop me if I tried to take our son Marcus with me. Then there’s Marcus to think about, I can’t reasonably whisk him away from his father. He still loves him. So um, can you arrange for something to happen to my husband?
“Wait…you want me to kill him?” You ask.
“Well…I mean…(Sigh) I dunno…”
“You better make up your mind Jennifer, because once its done, its permanent you know.”
“I know! I know! Alright…” Jennifer says and starts mumbling to herself and staring upward as if she’s weighing all the pros and cons. After a few seconds, she gives you her answer.
“Okay, do it. Kill him.”
“Very well. He must’ve really pissed you off.”
“It’s for the best in the long run. He poisons my son’s mind with anti-Empire ideology at times. He’s practically a dissident, he might as well die.” Jennifer says with absolute certainty.
Though you can tell in her eyes that while she’s successfully convinced herself of that, there’s still some tiny part of her that is sad her marriage has come to this.
Strangely, you feel a little odd doing this too. You can’t even begin to count how many deaths you’ve inflicted or ordered and yet this one feels weird to you. You’ve never even met the guy, but you’re essentially you’re going to be murdering him and “taking” his wife and son. On the scale of things its a far cry from orchestrated genocide of an entire race, and granted you aren’t struggling with it like before you decided to kill Casimir, but its just something that makes you feel a little off.
You have an Eye take care of the situation and to make it look like an accident for the boy’s sake. It naturally all goes off fairly quickly and successfully. It’s barely even noticed, after all what’s one “accidental” death of an average citizen compared to the thousands dying on the front lines with the Xi every day?
After a funeral (again, to keep up appearances for the boy) and a trip back to the surface, Jennifer returns to Apex with Marcus who is taking his father’s death pretty well, though you imagine Jennifer has probably been trying to mold the boy to her liking.
As for your other promise to Jennifer, you aren’t really sure how to proceed, mainly because you don’t really have much for her to do. You already have your official advisors and generals and the like. To be honest Jennifer was probably serving you well enough as a propaganda outlet with her museum constantly promoting Empire values, history and such.
So you leave her to continue such work. She still owns the museum of course, but has someone else run it now. In the meantime she works on the thing that originally brought her back to you in the first place, her new book.
Of course this involves several sessions of her asking you some questions and going over the book’s content. And sure enough, you and Jennifer do experience a bit of rekindled closeness during such time.
It’s not the same as it was, and you’ll never feel as strongly for her as you did for Alison, but you’ve learned to enjoy the moments again if only because the Xi problem dominates the most of your thoughts and blocking out the constant pain your body is in makes up the rest.
In a couple weeks you receive word from one of your scientists that in order to work on the disease to kill the Xi, experiments are going to have to be done on captured Xi. Naturally you agree that a few forces can be set-aside for capture missions and think nothing more of it.
When you briefly mention this to Jennifer she has another perspective on the situation.
“Experiments on the Xi huh? Sure that’s a good idea?” Jennifer asks.
“Well I’d rather that our armies just focused on killing them, but if capturing a few of them is going to lead to something that will eventually kill all of them, then I’m all for it. Don’t worry, every precaution is going to be in place for our scientists.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean are you sure they should just be experimenting on the Xi?”
“Who else would they be experimenting on?”
“Well, our own people for one. How do we know this germ or whatever is going to just affect the Xi? I’ve had an opportunity to read copies of some of those notes that the gnomes left while I’ve been up here in Apex and maybe your other people missed something, but I got the impression that the gnomes were planning to design something that wasn’t going to just wipe out the Xi.”
It’s odd, but that had completely slipped your mind. You figured the gnomes were just going to bomb you out of existence or something similar. Makes sense that if they planned biological warfare on a grand scale for the Xi, they’d do it to the Empire as well.
“That’s good thinking…so you believe we should what? Round up some folks for experimentation?” you ask.
“Well it couldn’t hurt. I mean we don’t want to release something that’s going to kill us all.” Jennifer replies.
“Okay, well I’ll let them know immediately to start emptying out the prisons for this project. Pretty sure there’s more than enough for a good diverse mix of our population.”
“You think?”
“Well mostly humans, but thanks to their violent personalities, there’s more than enough kobold and orc criminals in the prison system.”
“What about elves?”
“Dunno. They don’t tend to last long in prison from what I’ve heard. I guess we’ll take our chances if we don’t have a lot. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
You thank Jennifer who is very happy that you’re pleased with her and begins discussing some parts of her book again.
Year 564
You look over your balcony and stare at the grand view of the surface below. The Xi have been starting to establish great hills of earth where a central hive is located. This is a good thing since it makes targeting key locations a lot easier.
Small porcelain bombs of infection meant for the Xi are going to be dropped from Airships anywhere the Xi are greatly located. There are even kobold commandos that will be doing their best to deliver the disease more directly. (Turned out the little scalies were the most resistant to the disease in the first place)
It all rides on this plan and you certainly hope it will work.
Jennifer comes to see you and holds your hand. As gentle as she is you still feels a sharp ache going up your arm causing slight recoil of it.
“Damn it. I used to be so young and strong once. Now I’m just this…old bag of broken bones.” You remark.
“You’re the Emperor.” Jennifer says.
“Well for now anyway. Won’t be long before that won’t be the case. Just hope this plan works so I’ll be remembered if only for a little while longer.”
“Of course it will work.”
You flash a smile at Jennifer who smiles back. In silence, the pair of you watches an airship in the distance drop its plague bombs onto a Xi hill before returning back inside.
Weeks pass and you continue to receive steady reports of large numbers of dead Xi bodies being found and Xi attacks dropping off completely in places. The plague has worked.
Better yet, you’re not getting reports of mass sickness from your own people. Well there have been reports of your elven citizens suddenly getting sick, but you can’t save everyone.
It’s still a long road ahead to rebuild the massive damage the Xi did, but this is a positive step in the right direction. Jennifer’s book “Eternal Leader”, which had been released shortly before the bug bombing suddenly sees an increase in popularity and sales.
Celebrating good fortune all around, you officially make Jennifer your consort making her very happy. Which technically makes her son your heir. You don’t have much time to teach him the ins and outs of rulership. In fact in your condition you can’t even teach him the art of combat or magic, but Jennifer had him enrolled in a military school shortly after she made her home in Apex (You’ve barely even seen the boy), so you’re guessing he’ll be okay in that department. After all, it isn’t like the old days now. Combat is becoming an increasingly non-personal affair. How you’ve defeated the Xi is proof of that.
Plus Jennifer will probably do her best to guide him. She’s already proven adept in the advisory role.
You don’t know how long you have left in this world, but you think you’ll be taking it easy for a while.
And why the hell not? You’re the Emperor.
While you are lucky to have someone so dedicated and even though she explained herself somewhat, you don’t really understand why. Then again, you never fully understood Semra’s obsession for you either. Some motives only make sense to the mind that creates them.
“Very well. I will find a place for you, but what of your son? Surely you want your son don’t you?” you ask.
“Yes! Yes of course I do. It’s just if I left him he probably wouldn’t care at this point, but he’d make things difficult and probably try to stop me if I tried to take our son Marcus with me. Then there’s Marcus to think about, I can’t reasonably whisk him away from his father. He still loves him. So um, can you arrange for something to happen to my husband?
“Wait…you want me to kill him?” You ask.
“Well…I mean…(Sigh) I dunno…”
“You better make up your mind Jennifer, because once its done, its permanent you know.”
“I know! I know! Alright…” Jennifer says and starts mumbling to herself and staring upward as if she’s weighing all the pros and cons. After a few seconds, she gives you her answer.
“Okay, do it. Kill him.”
“Very well. He must’ve really pissed you off.”
“It’s for the best in the long run. He poisons my son’s mind with anti-Empire ideology at times. He’s practically a dissident, he might as well die.” Jennifer says with absolute certainty.
Though you can tell in her eyes that while she’s successfully convinced herself of that, there’s still some tiny part of her that is sad her marriage has come to this.
Strangely, you feel a little odd doing this too. You can’t even begin to count how many deaths you’ve inflicted or ordered and yet this one feels weird to you. You’ve never even met the guy, but you’re essentially you’re going to be murdering him and “taking” his wife and son. On the scale of things its a far cry from orchestrated genocide of an entire race, and granted you aren’t struggling with it like before you decided to kill Casimir, but its just something that makes you feel a little off.
You have an Eye take care of the situation and to make it look like an accident for the boy’s sake. It naturally all goes off fairly quickly and successfully. It’s barely even noticed, after all what’s one “accidental” death of an average citizen compared to the thousands dying on the front lines with the Xi every day?
After a funeral (again, to keep up appearances for the boy) and a trip back to the surface, Jennifer returns to Apex with Marcus who is taking his father’s death pretty well, though you imagine Jennifer has probably been trying to mold the boy to her liking.
As for your other promise to Jennifer, you aren’t really sure how to proceed, mainly because you don’t really have much for her to do. You already have your official advisors and generals and the like. To be honest Jennifer was probably serving you well enough as a propaganda outlet with her museum constantly promoting Empire values, history and such.
So you leave her to continue such work. She still owns the museum of course, but has someone else run it now. In the meantime she works on the thing that originally brought her back to you in the first place, her new book.
Of course this involves several sessions of her asking you some questions and going over the book’s content. And sure enough, you and Jennifer do experience a bit of rekindled closeness during such time.
It’s not the same as it was, and you’ll never feel as strongly for her as you did for Alison, but you’ve learned to enjoy the moments again if only because the Xi problem dominates the most of your thoughts and blocking out the constant pain your body is in makes up the rest.
In a couple weeks you receive word from one of your scientists that in order to work on the disease to kill the Xi, experiments are going to have to be done on captured Xi. Naturally you agree that a few forces can be set-aside for capture missions and think nothing more of it.
When you briefly mention this to Jennifer she has another perspective on the situation.
“Experiments on the Xi huh? Sure that’s a good idea?” Jennifer asks.
“Well I’d rather that our armies just focused on killing them, but if capturing a few of them is going to lead to something that will eventually kill all of them, then I’m all for it. Don’t worry, every precaution is going to be in place for our scientists.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean are you sure they should just be experimenting on the Xi?”
“Who else would they be experimenting on?”
“Well, our own people for one. How do we know this germ or whatever is going to just affect the Xi? I’ve had an opportunity to read copies of some of those notes that the gnomes left while I’ve been up here in Apex and maybe your other people missed something, but I got the impression that the gnomes were planning to design something that wasn’t going to just wipe out the Xi.”
It’s odd, but that had completely slipped your mind. You figured the gnomes were just going to bomb you out of existence or something similar. Makes sense that if they planned biological warfare on a grand scale for the Xi, they’d do it to the Empire as well.
“That’s good thinking…so you believe we should what? Round up some folks for experimentation?” you ask.
“Well it couldn’t hurt. I mean we don’t want to release something that’s going to kill us all.” Jennifer replies.
“Okay, well I’ll let them know immediately to start emptying out the prisons for this project. Pretty sure there’s more than enough for a good diverse mix of our population.”
“You think?”
“Well mostly humans, but thanks to their violent personalities, there’s more than enough kobold and orc criminals in the prison system.”
“What about elves?”
“Dunno. They don’t tend to last long in prison from what I’ve heard. I guess we’ll take our chances if we don’t have a lot. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
You thank Jennifer who is very happy that you’re pleased with her and begins discussing some parts of her book again.
Year 564
You look over your balcony and stare at the grand view of the surface below. The Xi have been starting to establish great hills of earth where a central hive is located. This is a good thing since it makes targeting key locations a lot easier.
Small porcelain bombs of infection meant for the Xi are going to be dropped from Airships anywhere the Xi are greatly located. There are even kobold commandos that will be doing their best to deliver the disease more directly. (Turned out the little scalies were the most resistant to the disease in the first place)
It all rides on this plan and you certainly hope it will work.
Jennifer comes to see you and holds your hand. As gentle as she is you still feels a sharp ache going up your arm causing slight recoil of it.
“Damn it. I used to be so young and strong once. Now I’m just this…old bag of broken bones.” You remark.
“You’re the Emperor.” Jennifer says.
“Well for now anyway. Won’t be long before that won’t be the case. Just hope this plan works so I’ll be remembered if only for a little while longer.”
“Of course it will work.”
You flash a smile at Jennifer who smiles back. In silence, the pair of you watches an airship in the distance drop its plague bombs onto a Xi hill before returning back inside.
Weeks pass and you continue to receive steady reports of large numbers of dead Xi bodies being found and Xi attacks dropping off completely in places. The plague has worked.
Better yet, you’re not getting reports of mass sickness from your own people. Well there have been reports of your elven citizens suddenly getting sick, but you can’t save everyone.
It’s still a long road ahead to rebuild the massive damage the Xi did, but this is a positive step in the right direction. Jennifer’s book “Eternal Leader”, which had been released shortly before the bug bombing suddenly sees an increase in popularity and sales.
Celebrating good fortune all around, you officially make Jennifer your consort making her very happy. Which technically makes her son your heir. You don’t have much time to teach him the ins and outs of rulership. In fact in your condition you can’t even teach him the art of combat or magic, but Jennifer had him enrolled in a military school shortly after she made her home in Apex (You’ve barely even seen the boy), so you’re guessing he’ll be okay in that department. After all, it isn’t like the old days now. Combat is becoming an increasingly non-personal affair. How you’ve defeated the Xi is proof of that.
Plus Jennifer will probably do her best to guide him. She’s already proven adept in the advisory role.
You don’t know how long you have left in this world, but you think you’ll be taking it easy for a while.
And why the hell not? You’re the Emperor.