Chapter 820 – Dragging Unity Through A Field Of Broken Glass.

Ardan Unity is easily the greatest threat to come from that world, and it something that I think everyone is aware of. I would go as far to say that even Arascus understands what sort of power a unified Arda would hold if that power could actually be directed into a single, unified cause. Yet I would like to sit here and just point at Arda, and state that their natural, vindictive, competitive urge is also their greatest weakness. If I were Ardan, I would even, most likely, be able to exploit it, yet am I not, and I cannot state what to do, or how to explain it to them, or when to state the words that would tear them apart.

This crisis of the Second Arc that Arda is facing is currently the single greatest threat to their world that they have come across. It would be an extinction without measure, and even now, when their entire world is holding its breath, they still do not unite. Major powers, although unable to truly threaten the Empire, still vie for their place in this new order as if Arascus will grant them a future if they just hint at it for long enough.

And that, truly, sums up the state and the mentality of this world. The Empire, as things currently stand, is the single most power and most efficient entity in the history of that world. By all metrics, no matter how the situation is analysed or how we gauge what their reaction should be, then the world should unite in order to pool its resources as the Empire is doing now, and then work to break the Second Arc, or whatever it is they plan to do.

Yet they do not. Even as every nation in the world gives piecemeal to the Empire, in hopes that whatever it is they are doing with the floating islands succeeds, no nation will adopt the same restrictions as the Empire, nor any save for Karaina and the Imperial-aligned Etala Government have made any moves for further Imperial integration.

Insanity, is it not? To have the destruction of the world be on a fixed time schedule, to have it be completely unfalsifiable, and to still think that there is hope to be had in individual success? Yet that is Arda, and this situation exemplifies just how stark and paranoid the Ardan mindset truly is. Currently, the Arascus Regime is the only power that can even dream of an integrated Ardan world government.

And now, you sit here and you talk to me of apologizing for the failed operation at Rhomaion. Where it to have succeeded, we would currently be in a hot war against Arda, and choirs would be marching through to secure land, and to put more pressure on the Arascus regime, and every step we would be making would not be on how to defeat the Empire, but how to divert enough of its attention from the Second Arc that they cannot hope to stand against it.

Let me ask the question, and I will be quick and succinct about it: Do you legitimately think that a world which is unable to unite with itself, which is on its third apocalypse within a five year timespan, is going to unite with you? They ransom their own shared existence with each other.

- Open Letter written by Archangel Rapheum, Warmaster of Paraideisius, freshly appointed.

“They’re dismantling the Tremali.” Iliyal listened to his grandson speak with far more emotion than he himself felt about the Tremali. From how Ilwin sounded, you would think they were dissembling Tremali the elf and not Tremali the aircraft carrier. But the grandfather could not help but smile. It was good to think that just because a ship he hated had his name, people were already growing attached to it.

“Good riddance to it.” Iliyal said. “I didn’t like it from the beginning.” And then, from the corner of the room, the woman who completed the trio in charge of tearing down Karaina spoke up. Sara Daganhoff, in a dress of crimson and black, as if she could not decide whether she wanted to impersonate Irinika or Anassa and settled on making a parody of both at the same time.

“You could at least pretend to be sad.” Sara said dryly. They had not started off well, when Arascus returned, their relationship had only gotten worse. Now, Iliyal was sure that the woman utterly hated him. Maybe it was because she sat close to Ilwin, and the boy had not really gone through the process of losing a human yet. It would come though, it always did with elves.

“It’s just a ship.” Iliyal said.

“Did Arascus message you on it at least?” Sara, Duchess Sara Daganhoff, asked.

“No.” Iliyal replied as they sat and watched the current news. This was supposedly Karainan television, but at least a quarter of the airtime was dedicated to Imperial news and how exactly the Epans were fairing in this long grind against annihilation. And today, it had been filled with story upon story, and clip upon clip, of people talking from Pheonix Nest, subtitled in Karainan, and then of the video of the Tremali anchoring into a drydock as massive arms extended from the sides to hold the ship up before it drained.

“What about…” Daganhoff stared at him as she poured herself another cup of wine. The tardiness in the Karainan detachment was an embarrassment to everything the Empire stood for, and everything it could stand for. “Kassandora?” She missed out the title on purpose.

Iliyal chose not to bother biting back at her but, at the very least, he had to at least told her he spotted what she was saying.

“Goddess Kassandora.” He stressed the first word. “Did not tell me anything. The navy was not my field in the Great War, it is not my field now either.” There were admirals for the management of these affairs, and ship captains, and all the forces of Imperial Bureaucracy behind the navy. All Iliyal could do if he stuck his head in was disrupt. That, he knew for a certain.

“So she hasn’t.” Duchess Daganhoff mused, curling a thick lock of almost black hair in her finger. “Divines, am I or am I right?”

“Divinity.” Ilwin agreed with the girl, that was the worst part. Here Iliyal had sent the man off to be safe managing a front that would… should not see any actual combat and the man had been assigned a succubus as his right-hand.