Eliana had never felt more off.
The supposed ‘queen’ inspected herself in the full body mirror. An objectively gorgeous dress covered her objectively attractive curves. Black trims objectively harmonized well with the carmine fabric, tailored into a modest garnt that reminded of a dieval queen. Objectively, it could not be objected to, because it was objectively great. Too bad that the woman wearing it was just a useless failure of a creature.
‘Bad Eliana,’ she chastised herself. She repressed the urge to toss her head around. Her ssy hair had been straightened and carefully put into a single, queenly braid. She didn’t want to ruin that. ‘You can do this. You said you would fucking… fudging do this!’
For all of her attempts to talk herself up, the face in the mirror remained nervous. Dark knitted eyebrows contrasted sharply with her otherwise white hair and the extrely pale shade of her eastern-European complexion. The collar around her neck was the only part of her outfit that she was comfortable with. Everything else felt like she hadn’t truly earned it.
[Eliana Queen Dress: scdn.imgchest/files/b9cda5ae9e1c.png ]
“Is… this… really good enough?” Eliana turned the silver band around her ring finger, not knowing what else to do with herself.
“Yes,” Nia said.
“Yes,” Lyndell said.
Eliana turned to the duo that had been left as her emotional support. The creepy blonde bimbo and the successful failure of a genocide goddess stared back in all their passive honesty. “You suck at reassuring people,” the failed goddess complained.
Three seconds of silence.
“You’re gorgeous,” Nia insisted, barely capable of cramming any emotion into her tone.
“So beautiful,” Lyndell agreed.
Eliana’s anger at them imdiately shifted towards herself for being such a needy cunt. She was the third wife of the greatest man on the planet, a literal empress, and wore a dress custom-tailored for her by the strongest seer in existence. The cloth had been fated to be put into this shape around her figure and she still only saw soone unworthy in the mirror.
‘If those two cumdu- kumquats can believe in , I guess I can at least pretend,’ she thought. “Fine… fine!” Eliana sighed. “Co with … please?”
“We’re with you,” Nia assured with a slight smile.
“Always,” Lyndell echoed, taking Eliana’s hand.
Their fingers intertwined, as they left the safety of the dressing room and began their walk to the social gathering. Organizing one of them had been challenging, even with Nightingale’s permission to use her network. It had been put together on short notice, just a couple of hours, and pulled in from only two factions within Fusion. One was the political loyalists, because Eliana hoped they’d be patient with her.
The other faction Eliana was tied to whether she liked it or not. If she couldn’t take responsibility for them, then she couldn’t be trusted to do anything in the political arena.
“Do I really look okay?” Eliana asked as they walked. “I feel like the dieval shi-irt… dress is way overplaying it.”
“We are queens,” Nia retorted.
“It’s perfect for your new station.” Lyndell mustered another smile, showing the pearly white teeth behind her black lips. “There is no need to doubt yourself.”
Eliana disagreed, but she had put herself in this position. No one could stop her from turning back, but she would be so embarrassed if she did.
They reached a double-winged door, one of many inside Nightingale’s complex. After one more deep breath and an assuring squeeze of Lyndell’s hand, the blood mage let go of her fellow harette’s hand.
‘I am his dear broken angel,’ she thought, her insides knotting up in happiness and embarrassnt at calling herself that. ‘I don’t need to be flawless, just good enough not to be a burden. I can do that. I can-‘
All thoughts, positive and negative, went away when the doors opened. A cascade of voices, laughing and chatting, flew straight at her. Two hands gently pushed her forward, pulling away as soon as she walked on her own. Muscle mory took over, carrying her with an attitude she didn’t truly possess. The marble echoed under her steps, the very design of the hall emphasizing the sound and directing it to the people below.
All was quiet by the ti that her presence was announced. “Our hostess, Empress Eliana Newman, the Lady Sanguine, Third of the Imperial Choir, with the Sapphire Duchess Nia and His Forlorn Lady Lyndell.”
‘My title is so bad!’ That was the first thought she managed to have. It was closely followed by a prolonged internal scream, as she looked down the marble staircase. It existed solely for dramatic entrances, leading into a large enough room to house the fifty people that had been invited. They all looked up at her, waiting for her first move.
Eliana felt the beginnings of a panic attack rise within her. Courtesy of her innate ability, she could feel every step of the negative feedback loop happen. Stress caused the release of chemicals into her bloodstream. Her heartbeat accelerated. Her lungs moved but her throat constricted, allowing too little air to flow in. Adrenaline sharpened her senses. Less air, more focus, higher stress, even shallower breathing, on and on.
She forced her eyes shut. The room remained thankfully quiet. Her awareness turned inwards and back. Two assuring presences stood behind her. Two years of gently stroked hair and reassuring kisses gave her plenty to anchor her mind to. She focused on her breathing first and foremost. Once she managed to force a full breath into her lungs, the negative feedback loop was broken. The stress response diminished. Her heartbeat slowed to a slightly accelerated pace.
‘Don’t fuck this up,’ she told herself. “Th-thank you a-all for being here,” she stuttered. ‘GO FUCKING KILL YOURSELF, YOU USELESS COCKSOCK!’
“It’s our honour,” Tamara assured.
Eliana’s eyes flitted over to the brunette. It felt like an eternity ago that she had entered Eliana’s life… well, it had been almost two years, which was most of the ti since she had been reborn. mories before she had been released from the tank in that basent were beyond fuzzy. She rembered the torture as one blob, refusing to disseminate any individual mory. There was much before that, her own life as Eliza, the multitude of lives that had flown into Thana. They were there, but often felt more like files she could access if she wanted to. The uncertainty of who of her halves she was did not help either.
Tamara’s identity, at least, was certain. She was the first of the Bloodborn that had found her. Back then, Tamara had been a deprived husk of a person, thinned by her fiending for a fresh dose of Thana’s blood. It was a dependency the Bloodfallen had created in many people and one they could not remove. All that could be done was treat it by administrating that blood frequently.
The Bloodborn were that second faction in the room. Of them, Eliana knew Tamara the best. The two of them had been stuck in a room together for over three weeks, the brunette watching over then-Eliza while Thana had been throwing a particularly intense tantrum. They had kept in contact after, becoming friends beyond the affliction that tied them together.
“You had an announcent,” Tamara whispered to Eliana. “You can do it.”
“Why is everyone believing in ?” Eliana grumbled. “No, don’t give another reassurance, I might throw up.”
“Then just do your thing already,” Tamara urged.
“…Yeah…” Eliana pulled her shoulders back and took another step forward, now standing at the very edge of the uppermost step. ‘Talk like your Master is watching,’ she thought. Was it a debauched way to motivate herself to behave properly? Yes. Would it work? Hopefully. Imagining this as a scene already made the dress sit a little more comfortably. “I apologize for the delay, this is my first ti appearing in this station.”
Her sudden confidence seed to stun the people below. It stunned her as well, but her mouth kept moving anyway.
“In the absence of my husband…” The word broke her queenly expression in favour of a crazy grin. She raised a hand to hide it, while she recovered “…and with those that usually would work to address the issues of the elite busy, I have elected to take on the duty of retard wrangling… I an… uhm… fuck! Fudge! Gah!”
“Deep breaths!” Horace shouted up from the crowd. The effective face of loyalists in parliant gave her a simple thumb-up when their eyes crossed.
“Right… so… I have elected to be the voice of the Imperial Choir during his absence. Before you turn to the Creator Puppet, I request that you bring your issues to . I know that I am inexperienced and inadequate, but I would like to be… not that.”
Eliana always hated that no one below stared at her judgentally. Why was she the only one putting herself down?! Damn those nice fools!
“Also…” The third wife of John Newman gulped, her mouth suddenly dry. It was ti to make the announcent that everyone was waiting for. “…as confird by my magic and the chanics of your emperor… I am with child.” The announcent caused the silence in the room to be shattered irreversibly. Loyalists and Bloodborn alike cheered for their pregnant empress. Tamara broke the code of conduct, leaving the herald’s position to give Eliana a tackling hug.
The overflowing positivity managed to finally put a smile on Eliana’s face. There was nothing in the world, absolutely nothing, that filled her with more pride than being an expecting mother. Years of fantasizing about being bred were but an impure prelude to the wondrous reality of being the nourishing bed for a new generation.
“An official announcent is yet to be made, so please keep this under wraps!” Eliana requested, then descended the stairs. Nia and Lyndell followed behind her, though the ancient Lorylim was swiftly pulled aside when she spotted the coffee-chocolates.
She was swiftly sward by the most important mbers of the crowd. There was an informal hierarchy to the Bloodborn and an established one to the mbers of the House of Commons and House of Exceptionals.
“Retard wrangling, hmm?” Magnus asked with a mild smile. As one of John’s best friends, leader of the Fateweavers and one of the first Viceroys, he was obviously invited.
“Shut up!” Eliana snapped back. “I’ll fix it.”
“A personal recomndation,” Horace chid in, a wine glass in his hand, “do not fix it too much. Get control of it, yes, but I think it’ll serve you well to approach politics with a bit of crassness.”
“It will?” Eliana asked, unconvinced. A servant lady – they were all ladies, because of course they were – brought the bred empress a glass of cranberry juice. It fit in with the wine crowd.
“The elitist might underestimate you because of it and the populists will find it charming,” Horace explained. “More importantly, the people will know that you are still you. Don’t force yourself to engage in a style of politics that works for the other mbers of the Imperial Choir.”
“A good term, by the way,” Magnus chid in. It had only entered the common awareness yesterday, through a press release.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Eliana said and sipped on the sweet juice. Then, she downed the entire glass. She needed to cover her tastebuds with rich tastes after all of that stress.
“Here,” Nia said, all but shoving a bonbon in her mouth. Eliana devoured it voraciously.
Once the loyalists had all delivered their congratulations, the future mother of Fusion’s heir-apparent managed to move herself and the Bloodborn to one side of the gathering. Nia and Lyndell stepped away at that point. They had clearly prediated forcing her to grow by withdrawing their physical support at this mont! The smart bitches! Now they were on the other side of the room!
At least Eliana already knew this crowd.
“Now, everyone,” Tamara spoke up before she could, “our Bloodmother-“
“Never call that! I told you before!”
Tamara chuckled, a teasing smirk on her face. “-is trying to speak more eloquently, so let’s not expect the usual cusses.”
“Fu-dge you!” Eliana barely managed to salvage that one. “I am trying not to curse in front of the baby, okay?” She shook her head, sending the single braid falling down her back. She imdiately pulled it back in place. Maybe she would beco comfortable in her own style of politics at so point, but for now she was going to emulate the more successful won she knew. “There will be so reorganization with all of you.”
The Bloodborn quieted down, now listening intently. Many of them, after having been returned to reason by a fresh dose of her blood, had initially cursed their fate. Entirely appropriate, since their fortunes were now bound to an unstable womanchild. All this ti later, however, everyone had found so sort of arrangent with their situation. There was a camaraderie to be found in their affliction.
“Since I am now a noble, in na anyway, I will need so subjects and you lot are the obvious choice,” Eliana told them. “Doubly so since I am going to try to be sowhat important for Fusion while I can’t rip the spines out of my problems… so I would like to organize all of you into my support staff. Bit fu- screwed up to say it, but because of who you are, I can trust you with state secrets and stuff.”
“It is screwed up,” Tamara agreed, “but not like you haven’t tried to cure us.”
delnick first, then Delicia had attempted to eliminate the addiction the Bloodborn had to Thana’s ichor. Neither had succeeded. The changes ran deep, granting them such boons as rapid regeneration, but the fuel for those boons was external. They needed the blood to sustain their old selves in the sa way any human needed water to survive. That was just the reality of the situation. Eliana categorically refused to afflict anyone else in that way. For those that already suffered it, living in her proximity was the only way forward.
“We’ll help in whatever way we can,” another mber of the crowd said.
“Say the word, we are all decently competent.”
“Eh.”
“The fudge you an, ‘Eh?’”
“Did you just say fudge?”
“Hey, if the Lady Sanguine says we shouldn’t curse, we can try.”
“I hate that title,” Eliana complained. “I hate it so much.”
“It’s good though.”
“Yeah, it fits you.”
“Stop telling I am good! It’s obviously a lie!”
“No, it’s not!”
“Shut up!” Eliana snapped back. “And help organize you morons!”
Calling them morons was, obviously, misplaced. The Bloodborn weren’t a random crowd, they were the guild leaders or second in commands of the organizations in and around Springfield that had been strong enough to catch the attention of the Bloodfallen. Each one of them had the drive and ability to have led a small group of Abyssals. That made them a much better stock to work with than most.
They proved that much by rapidly sorting themselves by their specialities. Talkers, warriors, crafters, and so on, each of them sharing or reminding the others of what exactly they were best at. Eliana had to do barely anything. In a way, she had stumbled her way into the perfect set-up for the new position she had chosen for herself.
All she had to do was not disappoint everyone around her.
She would pretend she could do that.
User Comments
0 comments from readers