May 1906 E-10
—
Ev stared at the ceiling of their grandiose, far-too-luxurious room in kes Pal’eca de-Rêve and desperately longed for sleep.
Their restlessness wasn’t new; they hadn’t slept well since waking up on the roof of the palace two and a half months ago. While they were jumping from city to city, helping satellite and outskirt worlds, and being jostled around by voidship battles, it made sense. But tonight they were genuinely exhausted, and they would have appreciated the ability to pass out on command for once. They had been grounded at the palace for almost two weeks now, and their inability to calm down enough to sleep a full eight hours was proving to be a problem.
Ev sat up and looked out the ornate, peaked window towards the bay of the capital. An electrical storm was sweeping through Aetheria centra and rain was pounding against their window and the thick concrete roof above them. At home in Averon, the storm might have been comforting. But here, where reality operated on a different frequency and some days everything felt like pure static, it was just one more wrong thing. A lackluster reminder of everything they had lost.
Two weeks since returning from Lorena and they were still in mourning. The knowledge that their tribe had been wiped out, along with their remaining family, still burned like a corroded blade in their chest. They ached for the familiar grip of their hunting knife, the feel of their old clothes, and the familiar brush of their hair against their neck—they had been forced to cut it when they first deployed with the 7th Battalion in March, then again when they returned to the palace. They missed their town. They missed their family. They missed not having this strange, peripheral sixth sense that made them jump every time they subconsciously sensed Talis moving around in his room. Everything was just a reminder of how different their life was now.
They watched the storm a little longer, staring out at the flickering lightning jumping from cloud to cloud, refracted and reshaped in the rain on their window. Then, once again out of options, they flung the sheets back and got out of bed.
They considered sleeping on the floor. Maybe the plushness of their bed, twice the size of the one they had slept in for most of their life in Cyresia, was part of the problem. They also considered meandering through the halls down to the medical station two floors below, and asking for a melatonin shot. They’d done self-sedation before, after long trips or rebellion strikes in Cyresia, they could do it here.
They paced along their front wall, the one that faced the city, and did not go downstairs.
Their front wall was dominated by three large, triangular windows that stretched from floor to ceiling and looked out over the bay of the capital. One was, Ev supposed, technically a sliding door that led out onto the balcony they shared with Talis, but the only difference was a little black handle to pull it into the wall. Currently, the balcony was as soaking wet as everything else outside, and water was pooling in the low spot outside their door.
Ev considered stepping outside and letting the rain soak them too. Maybe it would help wash away the sick, awful feeling they got whenever they thought about home, or being Emperor, or the hell they had unleashed by subconsciously opening that portal.
They didn’t do that either.
Dragging their hands through their too-short hair, Ev grumbled to themselves and stalked into their bathroom. Like everything else, their pretty-tiled bathroom was far too luxurious for their taste. The door into it was perpendicular to their front wall, and directly across from it was the double vanity with its sprawling, single-pane mirror. Next to it was an automatic toilet—Ev hadn’t heard of such a thing until they used it for the first time, jumped out of their skin, and had an incapacitated Talis explain it through fits of laughter. Then, on the back wall, was a large, walk-in shower that had both sonic abrasion and water cleansing capabilities. Ev flicked on the light, immediately slammed the panel to turn it back off, and shuffled over to the mirror.
That was another thing they had had to get used to: exaggerated light sensitivity. It wasn’t so bad in the day time, when they had time to adjust to the bright light of the outdoors, but their reaction to anything bright after lingering in the dark, or at night, was ten times worse than it had been before.
Their night vision was better, though. Ev looked at themselves in the mirror and sighed when they actually recognized their own face. Their skin was mostly the same; they had always maintained a soft golden tan that grew darker in the summer months, and despite being in Aetheria, which had no real sun, it was no different. Their freckles were still there, their nose was still the same, and their ears, and their bone structure. What was different were the markings—and the eyes. The thick orange stripes that streaked down their face from their lower eyelids were one thing. Some sort of strange, biological tattoo effect that had happened when they resurrected. But their eyes…
Their eyes were completely black except for the blue rings that denoted the edge of each iris, and the matching blue rings that edged their pupils. They looked like something out of their animated movies Viera rented after the last Time Vortex upheaval. Ev reached up and pulled at their lower eyelid, leaning in and examining both eyes. Not for the first time, they noticed the orange stripes flicked up at the corner of each eye like permanent eyeliner. They huffed and leaned on the countertop with both hands.
Viera would have loved this look on them.
Cosanna would’ve hated it.
Granted Cosanna would have hated everything about this, except for the fact that her weird cult rune had worked. She didn’t talk much about the worlds outside of [ x ], if she knew much about them at all, but she had always had something nasty to say when the radio in their old shack spewed news about the New Aetherian Empire. “Wretched, false-neutral imperialists,” she had called it.
Well, Ev supposed that made them a wretched, false-neutral imperialist—not that they wanted to be. They cringed and glared out at the storm, wishing distantly that a stray lightning bolt would find them. Once upon a time, not terribly long ago, they would have rather taken an arrow to the chest then believe they’d one day serve any governmental regime like the New Aetherian Empire. Cruelly enough, it looked like they never had a choice. Whatever had been controlling them while they fought their way through the Tournée de Coronae and their first weeks as Emperor certainly hadn’t cared to ask what Ev’s political leanings were, or what their family would think of them becoming the Emperor of the largest fascist oligarchy to ever grace reality.
They hung their head and laughed. Since when did they care what their family—specifically Cosanna and the village elders—thought?
Ev poured themselves some water using the plastic cup they’d stolen from the mess hall last week and left the mirror behind.
Melatonin shots be damned. In a way, they wanted to be awake now. Everything had moved so quickly these past few months that they hadn’t had time to process anything. Maybe this restlessness was their body’s way of telling them that they needed to sit back and absorb their new reality. Think things over for a bit.
They made their way back to bed and sat crosslegged at the top, setting a fluffy pillow behind their back and pulling the sheets over their legs. They continued to watch the storm.
Before all of this—waking up in Aetheria and everything that followed—they had been in a rough spot. The strike they had failed to complete that dealt the final blow to their relationship with Kalei was one of several recent failures. The Averonian State Trade Confederation (the conglomeration of federal bureaucracy, Big Tech companies, and financial tyrants on the Averonian mainland) had been closing in. In truth, Ev had known before they sliced into Vodé-Cyresia’s death boards that it was entirely possible that their tribe—their rebel cell—had been wiped out.
Besides that looming fear, their relationship with Kalei had been rocky for months. The two of them had never seen eye to eye when it came to leadership tactics, and as they shouldered more responsibility with the deaths of two of the village elders, that divide only grew. The duel that ended Ev’s first life had been a long time coming.
So there was that. Things were already bad, and Ev just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
And in all honesty, were things much better now?
Cyresia had been almost entirely wiped out, if not completely. Ev was thousands of warppoints away from home. They were the newly-crowned puppet king of the largest imperialistic regime to have existed since Era 3, with new abilities and no way to understand them or why they had them in the first place. They didn’t know who they could trust, nor did they have any reason to seek those people out. What were they going to do, overthrow the Empire just because they didn’t like it? They didn’t even know anything about the Aetherian Empire! Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Sure, maybe they’d shut down an insurrection and denied Ev all the facts about it and why it had happened. And sure, there was something strange about the Imperial Vanguard, and the way no one talked about what they did while in its service—and Ev would know; they’d tried to ask more people besides just Talis. And okay, maybe there was something nefarious about the whole “control magic” thing being integrated with the Council…
Ev cursed and let their head fall back against the headboard. Yeah, this was a mess.
One good thing. Just find one, they told themselves.
In the corner of their vision, the time blinked in faded orange-red: two-fifteen in the morning.
There.
Vodé-cyresia hadn’t exactly been “technologically forward”—the newest piece of tech Ev had personally owned was a clunky HOLOpad from 1883, the year they were born. It was mostly due to circumstance; very few rebellion members had the funds to purchase new tech on their own, so they were stuck using what had survived from generations past. Old computer terminals in public locations like street corners and libraries, battered but efficient outdated HOLOpads and wrist cuffs, and the occasional over-ear screen projector were common.
Now, Ev had two 1905 HOLOchip implants under the skin at each temple. They could access the holonet whenever they wanted, no service terminals needed, with virtually no restrictions they had seen. Ev had always known Averonian tech was old, but having a transparent, semi-solid orange screen in front of their face with unlimited holonet access really put it into perspective. That, in most ways, was a good thing.
Aetheria also had much more advanced medical technology—no more threat of infections, not with as much bande as this dimension had access to! Ev sagged. As good a thing as that was, it just reminded them of how depleted their own stores had been in Cyresia, and how much worse it had gotten just in the twelve years since their parents’ death in one of the State’s big raids.
Aetheria also had much more advanced protective gear, which made Ev grimace even more. How many lives could have been saved if people in Cyresia had had even the flimsy plastoid-and-steel chestplate they wore? Or basic helmets that weren’t two or four decades out of date? What about weapons? Ev knew a dozen people who could have benefitted from having a plasma rifle that didn’t run the risk of backfiring into their faces every time it discharged. What could Vodé-cyresia have done with equipment even a fraction better than theirs had been? With better planning? Ev swallowed. Better leaders.
This wasn’t working. They were going to send themselves down a spiral that Talis would have to drag them back from in the morning if they didn’t stop thinking like this.
Ev pulled up their HOLOscreen instead, watching the news scroll crawl across the top of the generic search screen it opened to. The whole screen, projected somehow using their eyes, natural body heat, and biological magic reserves in some unfathomable way, was a vivid orangish red. Like a sunset. Absently, their eyes flicked to the time and date in the right corner.
May 21th, 1906. Ev laughed wryly and rubbed their eyes.
They had turned twenty-three four days ago.
Ev swatted their screen away and jokingly raised a toast to themselves. They had missed their own birthday. It wouldn’t be the first time, but usually Viera or someone would remind them before the day had passed, often accompanied by a shortcake or their favorite dish for dinner. It’d been a long time since no one had remembered their birthday.
They were twenty-three. Gods.
Viera’s birthday, the twenty-fifth of February, had long since passed. She had likely died before it happened, meaning she was eternally stuck at age fourteen—and that she at least had never been forced to have Cosanna’s weird cult rune tattooed on her person. Ev would never have to try to cope with the knowledge that maybe she was out in the multiverse too, resurrected like they were, alone and without someone to trust. Despite the way she had gone out, she could finally rest. Ev was starting to doubt they ever would.
Speaking of the rune, it glowed in the dark. Obnoxiously so. Maybe its blue light was another reason Ev couldn’t sleep. Always the hotblooded one, they slept in their Imperial-issue boxers and nothing else these days, except the occasional tank top. Talis seemed to practically live in his underarmor jumpsuit—it’s what he was wearing almost every time Ev saw him, and he said he slept in it. They had tried that, but they either got too hot or too uncomfortable. The synthetic fibers rubbed uncomfortably whenever they tried to get comfortable enough to sleep in a real bed, as opposed to upright in a gunship.
But thought of potentially keeping the rune covered by attempting to sleep in their jumpsuit was tempting.
Ev drank the rest of their water and got up to put the cup back in its place. When they got back into bed, the storm was beginning to let up, passing by over the citadel and capital at last. Ev sat at the head of their bed again and combed through everything else that had been bothering them these past two weeks, now that they had time to think again. They stopped on the glaring red flag that was Emperor Tainnos II and xer executed former cabinet.
What kind of government executed the inner circle of the former ruler once xe was dethroned in ritual combat?
Ev paused. Absurdly enough, that made sense in a place like Aetheria.
But Tainnos was an enigma all unto xerself. Ev barely remembered xem save for flashes of that final fight of the Tournée de Coronae. Xe had had red skin and thick, blue-white hair, and eyes that blazed like miniature blue suns. When Ev had fought xem, xe was wearing armor uncomfortably similar to the set Talis wore from the Imperial Vanguard. Other than that, Ev knew nothing about xem. Nothing about xer alleged policies, nor xer past actions, nor xer personality. Xe was just a ghost in their fractured memory, a name on the list of Emperor’s Ev had seen in a dark, ceremonial-looking room in the first floor of the citadel proper.
What did that lack of knowledge say about how the Aetherian government viewed its Emperors? What did it say about censorship if Ev couldn’t find anything more than a few news articles about them on the holonet?
Too many holes, too many questions.
Ev was still trying to wrap their head around their limited position in the Aetherian government—if they ranked between a branch commandant and the High Council, were they just a military pawn, or did rank carry political weight as well as parasocial military weight?—when a sharp crack! of thunder made them nearly jump out of bed. Outside, a spectacular light show was finishing up, accompanied by lower, rolling booms thunder. While their heart rate drifted back towards normal, Ev sank down under their bedsheets.
They still had more questions about rank. Theoretically, they held some sort of political weight within the Imperial Council, and therefore the government. They seemed to act as a sort of liaison between the High Council of the IAF, the branch Commandants, the MMD, and the Imperial Council. And, somewhere in the mix, they also held some sort of voting power. But then also, theoretically, the Second and Third Councilmen were the acting heads of the military, Second Councilman Shas especially.
So did he outrank Ev? Did Ev outrank him? Were they on the same level but in different branches of government: military operation and political maneuvering? Ev didn’t know, and they really wished they didn’t care, but they did. Immensely. If there was one thing they had left, it was a conscience, and their conscience didn’t well agree with the possibility that their new status as Ae’teria Imperialis Empera may just be a fancy way of identifying them as an Imperial pawn.
Regardless, their eyelids were finally beginning to feel heavy. All of that, it seemed, would make for some interesting conversational material with Errison in the morning during PT (Ev didn’t want to think about their harrowing schedule these past few weeks, dear gods).
Ev began to drift off as they mulled over the confusing sadness they felt towards their predecessor, their lack of understanding of Aetherian politics and of their new SIC, the absence of their family, and the mystery of the rune that glowed stubbornly on their pectoral.
They mentally listed the names of everyone they had lost. Gone, but not forgotten. Scouting ahead. Vodé-cyresia.
They murmured a prayer to Cyresi—Cerise, to some—the patron of Vodé-Cyresia. Ev was never particularly religious, but times change. “Vodé-Cyresia” literally meant “all under Cyresi; since Ev was the only one left, they supposed it couldn’t hurt to put in a bit more effort.
When sleep finally claimed them as red light began to peak up from Aetheria’s undersky, Ev was merely dreaming about the roving landscapes and jagged cliffs they’d grown up on. Tall, blue-green trees thick with birds and creeping moss and glowflies; craggy, sea-washed cliffs on the south beaches that had once connected to a larger continent; soft yellow sands where the sea had seemed to meet land for all eternity. And finally, they thought of that last day spent with Viera and Cosanna on the beach they had adopted each other on.
Viera Damsen-Stark. Elder Cosanna Maketa. Gone, but not forgotten.
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