TUW 8: Death in the Empire

5 | Thenaserine

Still, the Sovereign's soldiers had their hands full in retrieving every single adviser in the Court of the Commons living in Thenaserine. The plan was to gather them in a room and April would speak to them about joining Synketros' cause. That's April's job—convincing the rest of the Unseelie Court to pledge their allegiance to the Sovereign; it eluded her as to why she's out here, picking off Cardovia's soldiers one after the other.

How long would they take extracting those nasty nobles?

More specks of black flitted deeper into the rubble that Thenaserine was slowly becoming. What in Pidmena's name were they doing?

She slung the rifle on her shoulder, spread her wings, and launched off the roof. The wind bit at the locks of hair that escaped her hasty bun, driving them to poke her in the eye or tickle her ears. Stupid hair. Why couldn't she just shave her head and be done with it? The Seelie Court masters would freeze their hearts should they realize April would have to pose for her Imperial portrait as bald as a griten worm.

Then again, her road to the Imperial Crown was one filled with hardships and complications to the brim. It'd be a miracle if she managed to make it back to Edgerift, because not only was the island gearing for one hell of a war, April found herself right in the middle of it. And it's not even the fault of the previous Imperial power. These organizations and their leaders had been lusting after chaos and ruin for as long as the end of the Cardinic Wars. At least, that's what April heard from the inner circles and the rumors circulating the talk among the low ranks.

Her boots crackled against the loose shingles when she landed on a new building. This one could have been a textile shop or a jeweler—April couldn't give more than a damn about it. What mattered was that its sloping roof, accompanied by a long-dead chimney, provided a full view of the Heiress' plan in taking control of Thenaserine.

The black-clad soldiers stood up from their handiwork, revealing a wooden box with a metallic cube slotted in its middle. Several wires stuck in weird arrays around it, a strange red light blinking on the cube's face facing the sky. April squinted through the haze of smoke and disturbed dust, noticing the soldiers push each other out of the way in a sort of panic.

Why would they run? Were they planning to escape the Heiress' clutches through this war? Death would have been a preferable route, wouldn't it?

The entire street exploded. A force threw April backwards, sending her tumbling on the roof's other side. With gritted teeth, she reached out and clamped her hands on the ridge, stalling her fall. Static ate most of her senses. The air bore a specific color of rust and beige—the color of the cobblestones. Did they just...?

A grunt escaped her pursed lips when she hefted her weight up the roof, poking a part of her head past the ridge. Thenaserine burned. The flames climbed up the stone and brick buildings, melting everything in its way into a sludge or a pile of ashes. Screams decorated the afternoon sky, ringing from both the horizon and the immediate surroundings.

This simply wouldn't do. They wouldn't get away with doing this to her people. To her city.

Her magic ripped through the surface. She pointed it towards the flames, letting her trail—her signature—wrap around every rebellious flicker and thick tongues. Then, without much effort, she called the air from their core, pulling it with a force one would exert with a rope. A snuffing wave sped across the whole alley, plunging the cobblestones in another kind of darkness it hasn't known. The dying huff echoed in the silence that followed.

Enough.

She had seen enough.

Destruction wouldn't solve anything, and neither would trying to get more people to join a madwoman's cause. April speared for the heavens, leaving a trail of fluttering feathers in her wake. Her eyes scanned the pockets of space below her, searching for the black spots disturbing the near-empty place.