The Emperor part 2

Mornings in his garden provided Pan his only respite. Sleep never satisfied him now that he could not remove much of his armor for very long, and any pleasures of the flesh he may have once enjoyed now lay outside the realm of possibility for him, as his condition required intense focus and a specific harmony of the body. No human in recorded history had ever lived as long as Emperor Pan of the Brass Republic, and the cost of this longevity weighed heavily upon him. To tilt his will against the chaos of the universe, Pan gladly sacrificed his health, but maintaining a balance between this self-sacrifice and an inability to realize his dreams required discipline. Fortunately, the garden allowed him to collect his thoughts and focus quietly.
He could spend no more than half an hour here before his immediate presence began wilting the plants, but Pan’s routine concluded before that. Here, he moved between the flowers and bushes, gently pruning them and guiding them to grow in harmony with the others. Bees performed their duties and the Emperor could direct his draining aura against whatever insects or parasites he didn’t wish to have here. No gardners worked under him, and no others were permitted in the garden, for here and here alone Pan had absolute control over the world. Here, he had accomplished his dream, with his daily duties an affirmation. A bell rang in the distance.
A small bell, but one designed specifically to draw Pan’s attention if he stood alone in the garden and needed to attend to an emergency. Taking a moment to pause and assess the flow of the city’s prana, Pan felt no drop in this energy and resumed his work. An assault or fire or some other catastrophe would doubtless have created a clamor beyond the walls of the Imperial Villa, and he felt no need to disrupt this sacred time. The bell rang again, and then stopped abruptly, as though one of the praetorian guards had silenced it and warned the would-be interloper that their definition of emergency almost certainly differed from the Emperor’s.
***
Lucretia couldn’t help but fidget, as minutes ticked by in the hallway with the impassive praetorian who’d stilled her bell ringing. The guard now stood silently in front of the mechanism and had ignored Lucretia’s pleas; though she had stopped trying to convince the man, the urgency of Lucretia’s message gnawed at her, and fear of letting down her superiors worked up anxiety in her until she began wildly wondering if she had even the slimmest chance of taking the praetorian’s sidearm and forcing her way through. Before the resolve to do anything so drastic caught up with her musings, the door next to the praetorian slid open soudnlessly, and the Emperor himself stepped out.
Lucretia had never seen the Emperor up close, and her jaw went slack as he turned to stare at her. Taller than most men and clad head to toe in armor made from orichalcum and brass, the Emperor cut an even more imposing figure than his stoic guards. The cherubic face on his mask belied the sad but hardened eyes staring back at Lucretia, and the spines on his shoulders crackled with collected prana energy as if on cue. “You rang the bell.” he stated flatly, and Lucretia took a second to realize he wanted her to speak.
“Y-yes, your holiness. The senate sent me...”
Pan raised a hand to cut her off. His mood palpably darkened, as though his anger leeched all warmth from the room. Lucretia shivered slightly, and the praetorian now appeared slightly nervous. “The Senate is not and will never be an emergency. They no doubt sent you to bait me, because you’re young and foolish. This is your warning to not ring that bell again.” Lucretia nodded silently. The Emperor continued to stare, and it took the praetorian gently prodding her for Lucretia to continue. “Of course, your holiness. My deepest apologies.”
“I’ll bring it up with the Senate later. What’s your name?”
“Lucretia, your holiness.”
“Like the senator who most delights in these little games. She wouldn’t be the same woman who sent you to me, is she?” Lucretia nodded and then continued, desperate now to relay her message and depart. “Consul Saldana has completed his initial mission and now aims to launch punitive raids against the tribes who participated. He’s set on salvaging warmachines and trying to punish the people of the Northern Continent with one cohort of men.” “Does that conclude your message?”
“Yes, your holiness. I beg your forgiveness, but Senator Lucretia insisted that this matter required your immediate attention.” “Come with me, young page. I will see to this matter personally.”
Lucretia the page followed wordlessly as the Emperor, flanked by half a dozen praetorians, walked to the center courtyard of his villa and boarded the personal skyship waiting there. The vessel’s craftsmanship had no peer, with a unique graceful design and a hull made entirely of polished brass and orichalcum. The flight took mere minutes and almost seemed superfluous, but the impression made by landing a skyship in the middle of the thoroughfare outside of Senator Lucretia’s estate couldn’t be overstated. When the Emperor himself strode off his vessel’s ramp, the guard who had approached hesitated, unsure of what to do. Lucretia the page rushed to catch up.
“I am here to see the Senator.”
The guard, clearly nervous, barred the way forward in the customary stance of senatorial guards. “Your holiness, I-” the guard stopped mid sentence as Pan swiftly and fluidly closed the gap between the two and placed his hand on the guard’s chest. His strength vanishing instantly, the guard drasped feebly at the Emperor’s hand, but the color already drained from the guard’s face and his breathing became rapid and shallow. Black tendrils snaked up the guard’s neck and down his exposed arms, but by the time they reached his eyes the guard already lay dead on the walkway, his body appearing almost shriveled. Lucretia’s jaw dropped and she stared in horror, but the Emperor and his guards walked toward the estate unconcerned, and the page hurried after them.
Two guards waited in a foyer for the main building of Senator Lucretia’s compound, and one rushed Emperor Pan, wielding his spear with both hands. Pan accepted the blow, his armor absorbing the impact without so much as a dent, and Pan himself didn’t flinch. The guard’s spear snapped and the Emperor grabbed his face, crushing it in one armored fist like so much over ripe fruit. The second guard wisely placed the butt of his spear on the ground and rendered a salute. “Your holiness!” he sounded off, his salute fixed in the air. Senators typically hired legion veterans as guards, and while capable fighters, few felt greater loyalty to their senator than to the Emperor who paid their pensions and for whom they fought in the first place. Behind his mask, Pan allowed himself a brief smirk to congratulate himself on suggesting this arrangement all those decades ago.
“The Senator.” Emperor Pan needed no more than to state this for the guard to step out of the way. Though he didn’t open the door for Pan and his retinue, he made no effort to stop them as they proceeded. Lucretia followed in a daze, unsure as to what was happening, and fighting down the horrific realization that this could be somehow her fault. As the party moved purposefully through the building, the Emperor turned and looked Lucretia directly in the eye. “Don’t think that some action or inaction on your part lead to this” he stated, his deep voice reverberating around the hallway. “The senator sent you with urgency to agitate me, nothing more. She likely suspected that I would kill you in a fit of pique, and she’d gain some political capital. Fortunately for you, she has misgauged my temper.” Two more guards outside the Senator’s private chamber looked at the Emperor and stepped quietly to the side, and Pan threw open the final door between him and his goal.
Senator Lucretia sat in a steaming tub carved from marble, a luxury enjoyed by only a handful of the richest senators. Lucretia the page marvelled at how calm her namesake appeared despite the intrusion. Even the Emperor seemed to respect her calm facade, though he would not let that deter him from his purpose. The senator put a well-practiced smile on her face. “Your holiness, please forgive me for not standing to greet you properly, but this is rather outside of normal social convention.” Likely expecting a tense negotiation masquerading as conversation to follow, the senator’s facade dropped as Pan strode forward and shattered the marble tub with a savage kick, spilling the steaming hot water out over the entire room. Senator Lucretia slid out with the gushing bathwater, only to be caught by Emperor Pan. “Enough, senator. You’ve overstepped your bounds, and will serve as an example.” Senator Lucretia kicked and yelled, but Pan paid her no mind as he walked out of the bedroom, dragging her by the shoulder.
What happened next changed the course of Lucretia the page’s life. As she wrestled with the revelation that she’d been an expendable pawn in some senator’s scheme, Emperor Pan dragged a naked, squirming senator out of her estate and began marching down the avenue toward the senate building with her in tow. Lucretia and the guards followed, and onlookers began lining the street as word of the spectacle raced ahead of Emperor Pan, who never slowed even as Senator Lucretia’s protesting turned to pleas for mercy, her clean feet and legs collecting cuts and scrapes and filth from the city streets. When the procession reached the senate building, several senators and their guards had gathered. One, mustering her courage, stepped forward. “Your holiness, this is highly irregular. May I ask what Senator Lucretia did to warrant this treatment?” “Treason. The senator sought to undermine the campaign of my co-consul to avenge our losses in the west, and also purposefully sought to bring disorder to this city for her own benefit. In my capacity as the emperor and guardian of Balleron, I condemn her to die.”
Senator Lucretia regained her composure somewhat, and mustered as much of her stately eloquence as she could in her current position. “Senator Camilla, the Emperor is deceiving you! I merely sent a page with an update, which he has misinterpreted in his madness and allowed to consume his reason!”
Pan stared at Camilla dispassionately. “Whom do you believe, senator?” he asked, his voice unnervingly level. Camilla looked at the other senators, who stared at each other in turn, as their guards gripped weapons tightly hoping that they wouldn’t need them. The weight of this moment threatened to squeeze the air from Lucretia’s lungs, and the page would later reflect on this single moment as a turning point in the Republic’s history. No assassin or group of assailants had brought down the Emperor after dozens of attempts, and he’d be forged in the greatest war the Republic had ever seen. None here knew whether the assembled guards of a dozen senators could take down the Emperor, or if they would even try. Every senator including Camilla seemed to be waiting for someone else to say something, for another senator to strike the spark and assert Senate power regardless of the consequences, yet none did. Camilla bowed her head and stayed silent.
“Senator Lucretia, for betraying the Republic, and the order it seeks to bring as a light among all our fellow humans, I sentence you to death. May your execution serve as a reminder to others that justice will find all who would disrupt what we’ve built here over these tumultuous centuries.” Taking a spear from one of his guards, Pan proceeded to impale Senator Lucretia unceremoniously and with disturbing ease, with the point of the spear coming out of her right shoulder. He then drove the spear point into a stone archway of the Senate building, where Lucretia’s final moments ticked agonizingly away. The assembled crowd stood silently, watching the spectacle unfold, and few realized in the moment what magnitude this action had. Pan looked at the assembled senators and knew he had cowed them. Their chance to rebel against his rule openly had passed, and none would now take the risk, nor trust any others enough to coordinate anything. For Lucretia the page, this moment made her realize a glimmer of the Emperor’s grand vision. The order he sought and the forces of chaos within his own city that he struggled against became a little clearer to the naive young page, and ignited a fire of curiosity and passion within her. For everyone else, the death of Senator Lucretia symbolized the death of something else, something far greater, though none dared even try to voice what that might be.

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Even though NaNoWriMo is past, my WIP continues! This is a segment I wrote today that is based in this world and part of a much larger narrative.