Roderia Town is situated along the coast, exactly two hundred miles south of the Royal Capital. The sea framing the town is exceptionally broad and deep, with two peninsula-shaped landmasses embracing the vast body of water like protective arms, shielding it from the volatile offshore winds and crashing waves. Considering the remarkably mild climate of the Altus Plateau region, where the coastal waters never freeze regardless of the season, the settlent possesses every prerequisite of a premium, natural deep-water port.
Consequently, Roderia's history as a primary mariti gateway can be traced backward into the lost, ancient eras preceding the current calendar. After Queen Marika successfully threw down her various powerful adversaries during the War of the Gods and established the foundations of the Royal Capital Leyndell at the absolute center of the Altus shelf, this coastal sanctuary evolved into the largest port town of the Golden Dynasty. It functioned as the absolute staging ground from which First King Godfrey led his heavy vanguards south to conquer Limgrave, and later, the eastern launchpad for his long crusades into Caelid.
If an administrator had to isolate a singular disadvantage within its geographical coordinates, it was simply that the town sat too close to the shadow of the Royal Capital.
Leyndell's existence was simply too monuntal to the Golden Dynasty and the continent at large; the currents of mortal migration and comrce were always more willing to flow toward the high palace gates than to stop at the docks. Thus, across the decades since the founding of the Erdtree's lineage, this coastal haven with its superior natural trics had never been capable of executing the final progression step to achieve the status of a true tropolis.
Over the past two days, however, Roderia had exhibited a frantic, colorful liveliness that far exceeded its baseline paraters. The Eternal Queen had chosen to attend the annual Eastern Expeditionary Legion morial Ceremony in her own divine person—accompanied by High Priestess Lansseax of the Ancient Dragon Temple, Prince Godwyn's two children, and nearly a hundred aristocrats of various ranks from the Upper District. The scale of the retinue completely obliterated the modest tradition of previous years, which usually saw nothing more than a solitary duke hand-delivered to the coast to read the scrolls.
The common populace recognized that the Eternal Queen was not rely the supre executive director of the Golden Dynasty, but a living, un-fused deity revered and worshipped by countless blessed souls. Consequently, this three-day morial convocation reached an unprecedented, feverish climax the exact millisecond her standard cleared the ridge. Every commoner drawing breath along the bay carried an imnse, fanatical pride at catching even a fleeting glimpse of the Queen's heroic silhouette; during the liturgical openings, it was no exaggeration to state that the entire town had completely emptied its houses to flood the avenues.
Yet at this watch, the Queen—who had hand-delivered a massive, soaring address during yesterday's opening rituals—had completely removed her presence from the suffocating press of the town center. She had quietly migrated to a vertical listone cliff overlooking the gray sea at the absolute periter of the settlent, insulated from the crowd by a handful of elite personal guards.
She issued a silent directive for her vanguards to maintain a defensive watch at the base of the crag, before lifting her golden-threaded silk skirts to walk briskly up the narrow mountain path.
The listone cliff wasn't exceptionally high, and Marika reached the flat summit in less than ten minutes. A sharp, clear sea breeze swept across the grass, rustling the white robes of an elegant figure who stood with her hands clasped behind her back at the absolute edge of the vertical drop. The woman remained completely motionless, allowing her wide linen sleeves to slowly flutter within the light currents of the gale.
The Queen wove her hands together, pacing with slow, asured steps until she anchored her silhouette beside the woman's shoulder, their eyes jointly tracking the calm, vast expanse of the distant horizon. She pursed her lips slightly, her beautiful voice cutting through the wind. "Lans... what paraters are your processors turning over?"
Lansseax remained perfectly silent for a long watch before her torso shifted, her human eyes tracking the deity's face. "I am evaluating the absolute width of Your Majesty's intentions."
Marika maintained her tranquil, flawless courtly smile. She tilted her golden head a fraction of an inch, a silent aristocratic gesture signaling the High Priestess to unfold her data.
"My scouts just verified that His Majesty Radagon hand-delivered a private, un-vouched invitation to Lucia's desk yesterday evening," Lansseax stated, her tone flat, calm, and entirely devoid of heat. "Lucia accepted the ledger within the watch. By the current trics of the clock, his boots have already cleared the staging grounds beside the Lake of Leyndell."
She monitored the Queen's profile, her expression un-blinking. "Your Majesty possesses zero requirent to deploy decorative rhetoric before my office. I demand to know if this entire configuration comprises a deliberate sche generated by your throne—and crucially, what dividend your house expects to harvest from the play?"
Marika t those cold, draconic eyes at close range, a soft, highly amused laugh escaping her lips. "It appears that if my mouth fails to deliver a sufficient translation for these two variables, the structural consequences for our alliance will be exceptionally severe."
Lansseax offered zero verbal buffer, her posture remaining stone-still.
"Very well," the Queen shrugged carelessly, turning her back to the path to face the edge of the listone drop. "In any event, as the primary sovereign allies governing this continent, there has never existed a single ledger between our houses that cannot be laid open across the table."
"Calculating from the season you and Fortissax first established your cloisters within the capital plazas to preach the ancient communion, our nas have been linked for ten winters, correct?" She lifted her flawless face slightly, her blue eyes fixed on the distant, un-clouded sky as her mory traced the historical lines.
"My engine calculates you should thoroughly comprehend my baseline character by this winter. Regardless of how the variables align, my hand will never force a sovereign entity to execute a restricted choice—because freedom comprises the absolute highest, most noble instinct of the mortal condition, and zero existences under the stars possess the divine right to liquidate that asset class. Not even I, standing as a consecrated deity."
Her leather slipper casually kicked a loose piece of gravel from the ledge; the stone spun through the empty air before plunging into the surf below, throwing out a sequence of widening alchemical ripples across the gray water.
"To claim that this lakeside crisis comprises a preditated blueprint generated by my sche is clearly an overestimation of my administrative capacity, Lans. I rely hand-delivered a possible choice to their horizons. The opportunity to select a trajectory has been laid before every player from the absolute beginning of the calendar. Radagon possessed that opportunity, and Lucia naturally recognized his own leverage."
"But your absence deliberately led his vanguard into the most volatile, dangerous sector on the board," Lansseax countered, her voice dropping into a freezing register.
"Your calculation is fundantally flawed," Marika answered smoothly, her tone completely level. "Across the paraters of this material cosmos, na a single configuration that has ever been insulated from danger?"
"Across the winters your office has navigated this continent wearing the vestnts of an Ancient Dragon Priestess, your eyes must have logged thousands of archives detailing families shattered, separated, and destroyed by circumstance. And this structural trauma continues to manifest even within the borders of this so-called prosperous age administered by the Golden Order. Relying on your centuries of operational mory, did your vanguard not witness vastly bloodier, darker, and more horrific scenes during the Unification Campaigns? Or earlier still, during the War of the Gods?"
She turned her face back to the sea, her expression tranquil yet absolute. "Our generation has never drawn breath within a peaceful, tranquil world, Lans. From the common laborer sweating in the mud to the divinities anchoring the thrones, zero entities comprise an exception to that geotric rule."
"Of the five children born of my own womb, two carry an permanent, flesh-eating cosmic curse from the outer rafters. And a secondary pair is recognized by the common masses as living symbols of absolute calamity—imprisoned within the cold, filthy, putrid basents of the subterranean sewers to this exact watch, forbidden from executing a solitary step beyond their chains. Those children were never even granted a window to choose their own ledger."
Her lips moved with a microscopic vibration, a faint smile breaking through her features—a line thick with an ancient sorrow and a profound, cynical mockery. "Within a world assembled on those trics... when have even your own scales or my divinity ever possessed a single fraction of true, un-bound freedom?"
The Queen paused, her head shaking as she cleared the dark data from her processors. "I have permitted my vocabulary to drift. You should understand within your own heart that Lucia's transit to that pavilion carries zero terminal danger for his fra. Caria's ancestral reverence for Farum Azula's prestige completely outclasses their respect for the Erdtree's administration. The underlying logic that prompted my crown to keep him within the capital walls wasn't restricted to leaving a defensive margin for Radagon; it was because my office genuinely desires to harvest those three incoming children."
"Rennala has allowed her cognitive engine to be completely blinded by her affection for a transient; her clinical stability has imploded across the recent winters. She has ceased to function as the Supre Lunar Mage who once commanded the absolute structural respect of my own vanguard. She exists now as nothing more than a foolish, broken woman who spends her midnights staring blankly into the amber shell of an un-born egg," she sighed softly. "In her current state of decay, she will do nothing but systematically ruin the peerless, nation-shattering talent clutched by those three siblings."
"Of course, I freely concede that this configuration simultaneously functions as an active stress test for Lucia."
"My engine assus you still preserve the transcript of our conversation before that child's carriage first cleared the capital periter. Your house demanded the manifestation of a New King—an apex operator capable of leading the Ancient Dragons into the next epoch," she turned her body fully, her blue pupils locking onto Lansseax with an absolute, un-varnished candor. "And what my throne requires are countless world-class Heroes capable of leading this entire era across the precipice."
"Since his boots first touched our cobblestones, that child has executed his trics with excellent precision. But it is only by stepping onto that grass today—by resolving this gridlock with his own steel—that his fra has legally set foot on the path we engineered for his ascension. Is the math incorrect?"
Lansseax stared intently into the depth of Marika's blue eyes, her draconic senses actively auditing the emotional currents churning beneath the deity's skin. The Queen simply t the diagnostic scan with absolute, quiet stability.
After a long watch, the High Priestess drew a deep, resetting breath into her lungs. "For this watch... my office chooses to validate Your Majesty's ledger."
"However," her tone violently shifted, the atmospheric pressure around the cliff dropping a fraction of an inch as her voice took on the un-yielding density of a draconic declaration. "Your Majesty must preserve an absolute mory of this clause: the baseline foundation of all future administrative cooperation between our houses—and the structural peace treaty binding the Golden Dynasty to Farum Azula—rests entirely upon the physical preservation of Lucia. My office can accommodate the nominal risks present during his growth cycles. But my vanguard will never tolerate a single hidden sche engineered to violate his fra. Upon this specific coordinate... our empire will not fear paying any cosmic price imaginable to enforce our deterrent."
The syllables vibrated with an permanent, terrifying determination—the precise syntax of a sovereign ruler delivering an ultimatum on the literal eve of total warfare.
"Naturally," Marika replied, her smile returning as she casual accepted the weight.
With the diplomatic friction temporarily managed, the two supre entities turned their eyes back toward the northern horizon, tracking the distant line where the capital spires t the sky. Following a long, heavy silence, a sudden, soft smirk touched the Queen's lips. "But parsing the imdiate data, Lans... do your processors genuinely calculate that a three-moon-old dragon youth possesses the trics to properly resolve this lakeside crisis?"
This ti, it was the High Priestess of Farum Azula whose features relaxed, a confident, serene expression lifting her brow as she delivered a decisive nod to the sky.
"Without a solitary fraction of a doubt."
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