Rex Germaniae was an old and vast realm. As powerful as it had managed to become over the near millennia since its inception, it was still part of an empire that was ancient and enormous. Rex Germaniae had wealth that could shift the balance of the world and an army that could smash it. Romulus’ empire was beyond a need to count its resources and its army could likely only be stopped by an impossible alliance of the rest of the world. Rex Germaniae was home to many modern innovations and craftsmen that created prestigious works of science and art. Romulus’ empire was the home to the very fundamental formulas that made magical research possible.

Rex Germaniae had long-standing and carefully crafted laws that were compromised by a large amount of red tape and noble meddling. It had a history with great shames, great accomplishments, many ups and downs and historical figures.

The Greater Empire had more statues of world-changing people than people could count scattered throughout its borders. Italy and Rome both were centres of great art. Its history was a long, convoluted mess that nobody would ever be able to fully sort out, due to a lack of complete records. Its legal code could hardly be called that. Every century, a whole battalion of scholars and administrators spent a year combing through the entirety of the law books. They struck superfluous laws from the books, kept those they deemed necessary and clarified those whose wording was rather muddled.

So was the theory, but the sheer girth of laws sorted and people involved led to a myriad of complications as to what was a good law and what wasn’t. In the end, much of the empire’s administration and law enforcement was usually left to more easily read local laws. Consulting the libraries worth of laws was only done in high profile cases.

Traditions had a tighter grip on the empire. Celebrations and rites that had been honoured for several thousand years were not as easily reformed as the question whether butter bread with salt should truly be illegal because the governor of a province in south Portugal had said so in the 16th century. Most people were quite certain they wanted salt and butter to their bread and circus, which was why so many events stuck around. Be it large feasts or the popular gladiatorial combat, used to keep the empire’s blades sharp, the populous always benefited in some fashion. Regardless, Lydia found some of the events tasteless.

One of which was the celebration for the annihilation of Carthage.

Using her private plane, the queen had flown from Berlin to Afrika, a confusingly named city that occupied the same space as Tunis. The city was named after Africanus, a title that had been given to Romulus for accomplishments in the mundane worlds he had achieved under the guise of a general. The name was inherited, albeit the governors had no blood relation to Romulus. Not since the last of his half-god children had died, at least.

Leaving the barrier of the city, she had been driven over to the site of Carthage’s ruins in secrecy. The mundane people seeing her would have been a problem. She did not exactly fit with the regular looks or cultural garb of Maghrebi. Once she was where Carthage had stood, that was no longer an issue. She entered the barrier.

The ruins of Abyssal Carthage were simultaneously more preserved and less honoured than their real-world counterpart. Being inside a barrier, the elements had largely left the ancient stone alone and the stone from which the mansions were fashioned had the further advantage of being magical in nature. The Abyssal city was a painstaking recreation of what had been the mundane counterpart, using new materials but keeping the layout and even dimensions of each building. Why one would go through the motions of rebuilding, brick by brick, the original city rather than just copying things was a question to which Lydia would never find an answer. Abyssal Carthage had been destroyed, from its people down to its history.

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Fresh salt crunched under Lydia’s feet as she walked towards a massive colosseum that stuck out of the middle of the ruins. Its architecture, despite using the same beige stone, was distinctly different from the ruins. The cheers that could be heard from that direction certainly contrasted with the desolate landscape.

Lydia passed many golems who slowly walked around. Each three steps, they reached into a basket they carried with them and tossed either salt or dust onto the ground. They avoided getting any on her, waiting for her to walk by before tossing the handfuls of particles in their fists. Once she had passed, they moved with mechanical unity. Looking over her shoulder, Lydia saw humanoid shapes in the resulting clouds. Visible for only one moment, the outline of knights disappeared again. The enchantments of her bodyguards’ armour adapted quickly to the changing environment.

Soon, instead of golems, she was walking past people. The cheers grew louder, then ever-present, as she made her way into the colosseum. A handler soon spotted her and guided her towards the internal area where she was supposed to be. It was one of many platforms lodged between the general watcher’s areas of the common folk. Flat, rather than tilted for the maximum number of seats, it was home to several extra luxuries such as grilling spaces and bars.

Her appearance was noted with a number of respectful bows and she spent the next ten minutes shaking hands. Like always, people glanced at her figure. Her curves were well visible, courtesy of her wearing her perfectly tailored clothes in as orderly a fashion as was possible. Uppermost buttons being open, revealing a fair bit of cleavage, aside. Unlike always, people were also looking at her weapon. Not only with surprise that she was wearing a different one than usual, but also with anticipation. Before she could come to a conclusion as to what that might mean, she was distracted by a disrupting comment.

“Ah, the queen finally deems the event worthy of her presence,” a sarcastic voice reached her from one of the bars. Lydia directed her gaze at a nobleman in a white suit. A constant airflow surrounded him, keeping any dust from settling on him and that suit as clean as the moment it was made. He was a great noble of Rex Germaniae, one of many aristocrats who held enough power locally that they could leverage on a higher level.

Although Lydia’s main problem nowadays lay in her political rivals that held positions of similar importance to her own, internal affairs nevertheless existed. Naysayers unhappy with her rule, from her reforms that took more power away from the nobility to her foreign connections, all served to keep a powerful coalition in steady opposition to her. The man that had addressed her, Franz von Wittelsbach-München (a cadet branch of the house that ruled over Bavaria), was one of the leading figures of that opposition.

Even as queen of Rex Germaniae, Lydia couldn’t properly punish someone whose main holdings were in Bavaria. It wasn’t land she owned directly. She could ask the ruler of that domain to do it in her name, but that was unlikely to be met with agreement. Nobles rarely punished their kin, keeping their family was part of what kept them in power as head. As such Franz was in a position where he could be the verbal attack dog of her detractors.

“Did your foreign master finally let you go?” Franz mockingly asked.

“I have no foreign master,” Lydia responded calmly, while walking past the man. Little exchanges were all she needed to give him. A courtesy, a little more than she would have given the paparazzi. Whenever she could, ignoring them was what she preferred to do.

“Ah yes, that’s why you looked like this when you drove home the other day,” the nobleman pulled a photograph from an inside pocket of his suit. With a casual flick of his wrist and an accompanying breeze, it flew over to Lydia. The queen caught the fluttering picture with rising annoyance and inspected it.

The picture showed her after her birthday party. Despite all the debauchery in the car, she came out clean looking. John’s habit to carry around steamed towels was what made loving him in all environments easier to justify. However, her dress and hair were not sitting as well afterwards as they had been before. Not even the few metres between her car and her door were an area where she could let her guard down.

“Your obsession with my looks is rather crude,” Lydia responded and tossed the photograph aside. Nothing on it was so compromising or insulting that it warranted tearing. Doing so would have just given it more meaning to the curious onlookers, who doubtlessly would be able to access a digital version at some other point. “You entertaining people to stalk me is frankly creepy.”

“We need to keep tabs on our queen somehow, given how often she trips over to America to be a good toy for her master,” Franz ignored her complaints and continued to lay into her. “A latebloomer he may be, but he has no family history. What can John Newman possibly offer to Rex Germaniae?”

Lydia rested her palm against the ornament at the end of her weapon. She could feel it vibrate under her touch, eager to be drawn. She could have sliced him open just as easily as she could have insulted him further. Neither were the course of action she found fitting for civilized society. “Trade,” she answered earnestly, “opportunity, research, military assurance.”

“A cock in your ass?” Franz suggested with a laugh, stroking some of his black hair backwards.

“If I desire so,” Lydia retorted and straightened up, emphasizing the beauty of her face and body. That bit about her fetishes had gotten out to the public courtesy of Maximillian, in the time between their break-up and their fight in the tournament. “I would not call my personal bedroom affairs of advantage to this kingdom of ours. They are strictly how I prefer to love.”

“However you want to engage with that blind dog is-“ Franz suddenly stopped, as if the air in his throat had stopped moving. Nervously, he continued. “Just a single insult to your master and the mask slips, doesn’t it?”

Lydia stared silently. The amount of poison she wished this man to swallow couldn’t be expressed in words and so she left it to her gaze to communicate every bit of contempt. Although he maintained a smile, it got continuously more nervous and twitchier around the corners. “Enjoy the evening, Franz.” Her voice was as cold as winter steel when she turned away and walked towards the edge of the platform.

The fight against her political enemies was a never-ending one. She would have faced enough resistance over her goal of strengthening the meritocracy alone, but the relationship with John did truly complicate things. Because he continued to be a hot topic in the Abyss, as any rapidly rising power could be expected to be, a lot of things surfaced every given week. She couldn’t count the number of times she had been asked about something happening in Fusion in a press conference about her own affairs. It also happened to John, but much less frequently. Part of that was that he was the builder of a society, while she had to continue one. Another part was that she, as a harem member, would always seem subservient to some degree. That was the natural impression the barely informed would have. It was also the impression the malevolent would reinforce whenever they could.

There was a particularly large oak chair with yellow cushions at Lydia’s destination. Aside from its size, the extension on top of the backrest and location at the centre of the row of chairs indicated it was for her. German continued to be spoken all around her, as she sat down and looked over the arena. There were a number of different platforms, each with the flag of the area hanging down from it, surrounding a central battle ground. Every platform was filled to the brim with people.

‘How peculiar,’ Lydia thought. The event was popular with the people, but most of the ruling class usually avoided it. They came every few years for the battles and, like Lydia today, almost none of them attended the salting ceremony that preceded the combat. Watching a bunch of golems get put to work, alongside a number of rites and speeches, simply wasn’t that interesting. Today, it felt as if every important person of every corner of the Greater Empire was in attendance. ‘Are they here just to fight?’

Carthage was defeated but the empire was unwilling to reduce its martial tradition. Aside from salting the earth, this day served as yet another excuse for people to fight each other in gladiatorial combat. Lydia preferred drills and combat exercises over this spectacle, but it was effective in its own way.

Once she had crossed her legs in an equally nonchalant and controlled pose, she felt an impact on the back of her chair. Reika bowed down into her chosen royal’s field of view and offered (or perhaps demanded) one of her chins to be scratched. Obliging with one hand, Lydia raised the other. Within moments, a servant hurried over and asked, “How may I be of service, my empress?”

Lydia looked over at the young lad, someone’s third or fourth son most likely. Nobles were in a habit of sending their untalented and younger children to become high-standing servants to serve as political gifts and spies in equal measure. This was one of the few aristocratic games Lydia found herself in support of and wished to actually be expanded. It would serve the talented children well to learn some humility by having to serve for a few months or years.

“Queen,” she corrected the young servant. “Your prioritizing of the fatherland is noted, but this is an imperial event. Refer to me with the correct title, if you want to avoid blunders.”

“Y-yes, I’m most sorry, my queen,” the young man stammered. Either he was honest or extremely good at acting. Lydia leaned towards the latter.

“Fetch me some raw meat from the cooks,” she spoke her order and the servant hastily nodded and walked away with measured steps.

Lydia noted that, but looked away before anyone could wonder if she had any real interest in the young man. Cooing into her ear, the queen’s attention was pulled back to Reika. The goddess was looking around with one head and bowed down conspiratorially with the other. “His performance is truly well composed, but flawed in the end,” Lydia spoke, feeling that the eagle agreed with her take on the servant. She tapped her left armrest. “Position yourself here, it will make the feeding easier.”

Reika jumped and, without opening her wings, landed where she was meant to be. It was a nimble manoeuvre, especially for a creature of her size. Since Reika had been reborn for Lydia 9 months ago, she had grown from the size of a hatchling to that of a proper eagle. She would still grow a bit more, until she was larger than all naturally found eagles, but she would never become unfathomably huge.

‘I should inquire if John or one of the girls may want to bring Velka the next time they visit. Both are guaranteed to appreciate the tumbling partner,’ she thought, ignoring the rising applause that commented on some feat in the arena below. She cared little for the fight or its depiction on the hovering screens overhead. The lack of an announcer helped to just blend out the scenery.

“Here you go, Lydia,” a displeasing voice reached her ears. It wasn’t displeasing in tone, a tiny unsteadiness wasn’t enough to truly earn that moniker, but the person it was attached to was to Lydia’s disliking. Suel sat down on the chair next to her reserved for one of the electors of Rex Germaniae. In mockery of their surroundings, he addressed her in fluid Polish. “I caught that little liar who you tasked with getting this. Did you know he hopes to get a rich patron to fund his takeover of his house? The primary heir died in the Five Days War and all other children are equally untalented. What a poor fool.”

“Lord of Pontis.” The queen kept her disdain barely veiled, while taking the bowl filled with raw meat from his hand. “What moves you to leave your dedicated domain?” she asked and gestured over to where the flag of his realm was displayed. It was a large bat on a red background. Aggressive to look at, almost offensive, and introduced just within the last twenty years.

“I wanted to flex my intellectual muscle for a little bit.” Suel grinned.

Lydia took one piece of meat out of the bowl and offered it to Reika. The Reichsadler inspected it for a little while, using both heads to look between it and the vampire-esque Lord of Pontis. “If he poisoned it, he will face dire consequences,” Lydia whispered to the goddess. With that assured, Reika bowed down to have her meal.

“As if I would poison a patron god.” Suel sounded actually offended. “I walk a tightrope between being useful and being a bother to be removed. Something that rash and useless would throw me in a very unwelcome spotlight. Sitting in the outer domain and pulling some strings, that is how I operate.” He gestured around. “Speaking of strings, I pulled a few, can you see?”

“That would explain the above average attendance of this event,” Lydia analysed immediately, “and why some people inspect Strimata with such interest.”

“My oh my, the Gamer did truly improve more than your body.” Suel clapped in an impressed fashion. It coincided perfectly with the applause that announced the end of the current fight. “You weren’t as fast on the uptake in the past.”

“My love’s presence in my life did improve every aspect of it,” she responded, another strip of meat getting picked out of her hand. “More intriguing to me is the question why you would go out of your way to assure additional exposure to his most recent creation.”

“Because everything is connected,” Suel responded, “and the amount of projects I tinker with to gather my small advantages is vast. To start with, I may have manipulated the flow of information to further incentivize a good target for you to play their hand today.” He gestured with his head over the railing of the platform. “My timing, when it comes to this, is impeccable.”

Lydia looked into the arena and watched Lord Africanus march towards the middle of it. The governor of this imperial domain was covered in a plate armour of bronze colour. The way it reflected light made it clear that it was Baelementium. Under his left arm, he carried a helmet, a roman design complete with the red feather cap. His right hand carried a spear that shimmered silver-white, a priceless mithril weapon. Inferior to Beatrice’s spear, that much Lydia was certain of, but not by much and only by virtue of a lack of Collimets. An additional armament, a sheathed short sword, dangled from his hips.