(Nic's point of view) 

I toss the aged relic down in a fit of anger, "Why is it that my command is constantly met with this reckless amount of disobedience?!" My voice booms off the heavy marble walls of the city council building, startling even myself with the intensity that seems to command the elements to stand at attention.

One of the few last remaining structures from a time so long ago, seeing the garments had pushed me over the edge and brought me too close to an end goal I didn't desire.

 Flinching, I clutch my chest and sit heavily in the padded chair, collapsing myself down into its form in an unregal manner. The knife wound had been superficial but the pain of a high-motion area was causing me constant problems. "Get that out of my sight!"

"Your Majesty." Sulema bows as she picks up the heavily decorated coat and cape that the kings before me had worn for such occasions, that I had worn because I owned them once upon a time. The gold and deep hues of the outfit were preserved by professionals and kept under lock and key in a steadily failing museum. 

It had been put back in a section that had been deemed 'unsuited' for modern eyes. Caspian had effectively been erasing our side of history long before this ever came to fruition. 

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I stop the burn welling in my throat to snap at her. "Sulema." My voice is steadier. "I'm-" Sorry didn't quite fit, it had seemed that we were at a divide when it came to power among our people. 

With the constant need for vigilance, there was no possible way for me to do it all and my experience in assigning tasks was minimal at best. I had only ruled a nation and managed it with the help of a handful of trusted eyes. Doing it all on my own would not work for much longer.

They could see it, the fatigue on my face, the way my mind almost seemed to want to drift into a fog in moments of silence. I wanted to hold my son, and I wanted to have a single moment of peace, but the world was unkind in that it so desperately needed my every fragment of focus as we neared the end day on our ever-ticking clock. 

With the government on our side, opinions were abundant, and yet none of them were the right ones. None instilled confidence that my departure wouldn't result in our immediate demise, I had to prepare them for life without me, as I always considered that a possibility.

What the people wanted was a king, what they needed was a council. But, as the days went on, it became more and more clear that finding those people to run these ruined cities would prove to be no easy feat. Time and time again, these artifacts had conveniently appeared. They hoped I would step into my role, but King of a nation was quite a different title than King of the world.

 One I was not prepared to accept. 

Sulema pulls her lips into a thin line, offering the smallest of smiles. Her gentle face was composed with understanding. "I understand. It's been rough."

"You have no idea." I sigh. "Please. Call me Nicolas. Someone has to." I miss being Nic. I had been spoiled, the role of housewife had suited me just fine. I missed 'Nic'. I missed casual conversation.

She curtsies and I let it go as she runs out of the room with the glimmering pieces of clothing. A gentle soul that didn't deserve my wrath. As she exits, Ryan enters with Fadri, Ryan appearing amused while Fadri is not so impressed with my lack of royal clothing. 

"Your Majesty, we have to make a statement." Fadri encourages. "The people need to see you as you were, to feel compelled to act for you. I know you don't want to be King but it's a statement piece." 

Why had Fadri not given up his two-toned vessel? Where was the man he was impersonating? 

"It's not that I don't want to be King." I corrected him, though that was also the case. "I don't wish to rule this world on my own. This is simply a scapegoat, a ruse, it is not possible and doomed to fail for one man to rule everything. Have you read a history book?

 No one person is meant to have so much power, I know exactly what putting those clothes on would do and I'm not willing to do it. I am happy to be the King of whatever need be, it is my birthright, but to control all is not what I agreed to."

Fadri shakes his head in disbelief, "I will never understand how one can turn down total control. You could do whatever you wanted. You could stop all of this today." 

How wrong he was. The romantic idea of being the end-all was just that, an idea, a lie. People hardly listened to me now, it often made me wonder what they would do with my piece once this was all over. 

Ryan scoffs, "That's why he's in charge, isn't it?" His northern accent sounds odd compared to the heavy French I had surrounded myself in. 

Thankfully, Ryan had stepped in as my ambassador among the men while I attended political meetings. They trusted him, he'd lived amongst our enemy in his time with the bounty hunters, his fighting skills lacked finesse but his ability to take orders and execute far exceeded many of our rebels turned soldiers. 

"It's not about what I want, Fadri. I know you want revenge, but blindly following only my rule puts us right back where we are now. The goal is to find Fergus, not to reform the planet in a mere few weeks."

Spying his increasing frustration, I nod in acknowledgment. "There will be a time and a place. Anything worth doing is worth doing correctly, it will take years... decades.. to fix this travesty."

Every day, the deadline grew closer. Every day I felt the drain on my body. Right on time, Helen strides in with Landon at her side, I'm not blind to the fact that Tyler is not with her and would probably come to join me for training after this gathering ended. They had been spending more and more time apart since our stand against Gabriel.

Behind them enters Pascal, Legardo, Lotta, and finally, Albert. We sit at the massive table as I scan for Senator Campbell. 

"Johnathan is still missing... though it doesn't seem to involve foul play, we can't be too sure," Lotta responds to my wandering gaze. "I've got Ron keeping tabs, just in case he returns home. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if he ran."

Helen rolls her eyes at the thought and she looks so much like her grandfather in the simple gesture that my heart threatens to burst. "He's a coward. I'd bet a lot of money he went home."

"Even so, we will keep searching," Pascal reassures. 

It feels like a waste of time but if he were captured, he'd undoubtedly release all of our intel to Gabriel, or worse yet, Caspian. 

"Lotta and I have made contact with the ambassadors of Austria and Germany, it would appear our message has started to spread and there is great interest in an alliance. All over we are seeing riots of magic users and humans alike, trying to break free from the system. They are ready whenever we are to mobilize."

Mobilize on what? We lack a destination. The enemy surrounds us, taking an army to find Fergus seems reckless.

Legardo frowns as if this isn't good news. "And seeing record deaths.." he reminds her. "Civilians who want no part in this are being slaughtered by the thousands merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Leo said his hometown was purged the night they left... they are simply waiting for us to clean out the cities to form our army and they're murdering everyone who conspired but stayed behind. 

This is how a rebellion dies, nobody will come if their families are left unprotected. It's foolish to think we have the upper hand merely because they're leaving us alone."

Slowly, I stroke my chin as I consider this. He makes a valid point, while Legardo had been unwilling to join our council, I desperately needed someone familiar with some sort of battle. Raised by his mother, she had not been shy with the history of their family, he had learned knowledge and that must count for something. 

Besides, I welcomed his appearance, some days it was all that kept me sane to remember that my reason for existing would return.

Without Xavier to keep me occupied, I fear I might go mad with loneliness. Frustrated with my musings, I attempt to harness my attention to focus on the conversation at hand.

It's Albert's turn to look frustrated, "Which is exactly what kept us from retaliating in the first place. Artifice runs too deep, he knows where all our people are. Kid, I thought you shut Artifice down?" He demands, glaring towards Landon who raises his hands in his defence. 

"I'm just trying not to go to jail!" Landon complains nervously. "I just distracted Artifice, to shut it down, we would need to get to a central hub... Gospel is doing a fantastic job keeping Artifice's eyes off of us but they can still use it for general look-up as that's a massive database. Erasing that would take.. gods, who knows. I'm a simple hacker, this is much more complex than anything I've ever dealt with."

The thought of using our already nervous force to attack a heavily guarded station wasn't reasonable. Even with the government's help, Caspian was so far above and beyond what the government was capable of. We had secured food, supplies, and electricity, but as far as means of transportation we were thoroughly grounded. "How goes transportation?"

Silence falls over the crowd. Few of us had ever driven much, let alone built a vehicle. The crippled society lacked books, tools, and knowledge, anything that could be used to build the cars of today was strictly prohibited from the public domain. 

Landon slowly rests a rolled-up piece of paper on the table, nervously glancing at us. "Well, I was gaming last night-"

The heavy eye roll and collective groans cause me to scowl across the table before encouraging him to continue. "Please, Landon."

"The characters in the game use a type of motorcycle, I noticed a bounty hunter had one on television during a cut frame on the news. If we could harvest some of the parts from the downed machines, plenty of people in the harbor towns are used to working on assembly lines, we could put them to work helping to assemble parts to make these motorcycles."

Legardo clears his throat reluctantly, "I've seen one... I went through a... er.. phase. I could probably help you. The frames going to be tricky."

"We have a factory close by that designs the buildings, there must be some sort of material in there?" Lotta taps the table to pull up a screen, typing in the location to pull up the massive warehouse. "Yes, this is where the robots go for service." 

Leaning in my chair to catch sight of her screen, I drum my fingers thoughtfully on the table. "Is there an Artifice system in that building?"

She shrugs, "Probably?"

It might be a long shot but without control of the system, the warehouse might very well be closed to us regardless. With a casual nod, I turn my attention back to Landon. 

"Can you access those files again if you had an Artifice database in front of you? Pull them off and save them for future use. I'd like to see exactly where all of Caspian's hot spots are. I want to know where his people are so we can begin to target his home bases and keep them on the run. We must make communication with Spain and begin the process of connecting hubs. If we don't get a handle on this, there will be no controlling it when I make my leave for Romania."

The crowd erupts into nervous murmurs and I feel the anxiety creeping into my throat. We were a mere eighteen days away from Christmas, how on earth were we supposed to make this into a reality? 

After a long moment, Landon nods. "I will try. Though if it's hot spots you want, they're easy enough if you track by heat signatures. More activity, more power, more heat. Literal hot spots."

Landon, Lux, had been nothing as I had expected him to be but the quirky teen was proving to be worth quite a bit to our cause. He'd yet to unite our parties yet he was single-handedly keeping us out from under the eye of the every present AI. 

Leaning back into my chair, I wince as my fingers slowly trail over the stab wound underneath the dense aviator jacket I'd come to covet. It was one of the few things I'd managed to steal from Verando before he left for Spain, the fact that I had not heard from him was slowly eating away at me and my mood. I could only assure myself so many times that he would call before I began to doubt it myself. 

It was decided, much without my input, that we would begin the task of moving civilians to jobs in the factory and begin work on building the motorcycles. I opted in that we should patrol with our lycan cohorts, for now, the fastest means of transportation we had at our disposal.

 I'm fully aware that I have yet to answer the question Legardo had laid so heavily on the table.

  What did we do for the families of those left behind to be slaughtered? 

What could we do? 

The group seemed too impressed with themselves to bring it up again and my thoughts were flying past my mind's eye so fast that I couldn't conjure a solution in the bustling space. 

We couldn't send our reinforcements home but keeping them here meant death for their families. 

In our time, it had seemed there was almost an etiquette that had led to our demise. It had been known that one did not kill leadership and one did not attack the families of those fighting. The Lycans followed no such rule and attacked ruthlessly from all directions, wiping us out in a matter of months.

 Here, once more, it was happening again. We hadn't managed to beat them then, how were we supposed to do it now? 

Helen glances up from her phone with a look of shock and taps the table to pull up a large projected screen. "Look at this."

It's as if the universe had decided that I needed a glimmer of hope, I needed something to keep me going. 

Projected on the screen before us was the spark of an answer. It was a mobilized force, run by a singular bounty hunter turned good. The young pale-haired man stood before a woman with a microphone, he spoke our message, encouraging them to stand up against Caspian's evils and to join together to protect their homes. The destruction around him was immense, smoldering houses crumbled in the background as machines burst into flames and toppled over to useless heaps. 

"We are not alone. You are not alone. You are enough to stop this." He encourages, his age surprises me, it's not often I see those younger than me in a position of power. "Honor the Good King." 

The vague message does not indicate where the wave of rebellious energy was headed and yet, I feel as though it was meant for me. As gunfire erupts in the background, the screen goes black and the room is once more electric with comments and concerns. 

"We have to help them," Legardo demands. 

Helen taps quickly into the hovering pad. "They're in Spain, maybe they're working with Papa?"

"Can we see if Leo recognizes him?" I offer hopefully. "If your Papa knows what's good for him, he's on his way back here as we speak." 

I can't do without him much longer, my lack of physical contact was doing strange things to my mental state. I was struggling to reset, struggling to cope with a 'dry spell' the size of the largest desert. My body yearned for any sort of attention, so much so that even hearing his name prompted my heart to quicken. 

"Helen, is there a bar in that town?" 

She types slowly, causing Landon physical pain at her reluctant taps. "Mmm.. I don't..."

Landon cautiously steps beside her, "May I?"

Helen happily hands it over, much to Legardo's low rumbling growl. Fumbling through at a speed I can hardly make out, he mumurs to himself before peering at me from beside the slender woman. "Two. One quite close to where this video was taken."

"Was this not live?" I manage, between my excitement and my desperation, I wonder how I'm coherent.

"No. This was taken three days ago, the same day Leo arrived in our city. Actually..." He captures the image with his fingertips and throws it up to the big screen on the table. "We have a good deal of activity in this area, it just can't get through to our main broadcast because it's so close to Caspian. He must be covering it up, it also appears there's a very large compound close by here."

Albert makes a face, not looking so convinced. "We would have seen that..."

Landon shrugs, not looking for an argument. "Well, it's not on a map. But this space-" he points to a vacancy in the map. "It is registering a heat signature way too high to be anything but a massive compound. If you're wondering where Caspian is, I've got one really good guess. If he's not there, I'm sure some of his stuff is. This group is less than one hundred miles from this spot. In fact..." 

He presses a button and article after article pops up, each one more brutal than the last. Towns burned to the ground, mass shootings, rebel activity, and a militia forming faster than can be contained, it seems that Gospel was doing more than distracting Artifice. 

"Hmm. Curious."

"What is this?" I don't know what to make of the program we thought was quite simple. 

"Well, it's meant to keep Artifice busy. Artifice is a helper robot so I guess it makes sense that this is what they would talk about. Artifice is technically following orders by killing these people, maybe it has a moral dilemma and it's 'venting' to Gospel. Gospel records everything Artifice says and tracks patterns, I didn't think much of it but now I'm glad I did. It's been talking about this nonstop for three days."

"Where was the last hit?" 

"Ariege, France, yesterday. Another bounty hunter by the looks of her clothes. Maybe we're dealing with a rogue group, much like Ryan?"

The fire mage nods, "They look enough like bounty hunters. I made the switch, makes sense that others would, too."

Or it was a warlord scorned on a mission to conquer the world. 

"Have Gospel continue to track this activity, we need to keep an eye on this growth and see if they need any aid. Capsian seems comfortable there, I'd like to make it very uncomfortable for him..."

 Pushing away from my chair, I need fresh air. The thought was enough to make a chill run down my spine, I needed a distraction.

Looking towards Legardo, he's one of the few I can trust to be tactful. "Find that bar, give them a ring, and see if they have any leads as to what Verando's plan is if he's even been there. Everyone report back here tomorrow morning for another briefing. Helen, can you come with me? There are some things I need to attend to."