It's late evening when you filter into the drinkery. Ersisas's place isn't anything special – a bit cramped and out of the way – but her prices are reasonably cheap, and she serves tea and coffee in addition to beer and cider, so it's become the place for you and your friends to gather. You don't get much excitement in your lives, but the two street lamps closest to the door don't work, and that makes you feel a bit like you're sneaking around, somewhat fulfilling the urge in you to do something illicit.
There are a few groups in the drinkery already, some regulars, some new, chatting and drinking by the light of the gas lamps. The table next to you is discussing how the recent loss to Rlyat might affect the price of tea and coffee. The newspapers mentioned that the Emperor died in the naval battle, but other than that, the only losses were some rocks barely deserving to be called islands. You're more interested in the outbreak of cholera on the north bank of the river.
Suddenly, everyone falls silent. You follow their gazes to the door and see-
But it can't be. Vakhas Tiria was sentenced to death closer to two decades ago, with the rest of that revolutionary cell. And yet she looks just like the woman of twenty in the portraits of her that have spread in the night. Ersisas has one hidden behind the bar that you've glimpsed. You have your own small one at home.
"Didn't they say she wasn't present at her execution?" you hear someone murmur.
"Indeed," she says, then walks slowly to the table. You can see why they found her threatening: she is tall, imposing, and looks like the First Emperor. "I lived."
She pauses for a moment, considering. "My face is unfortunately too well known for what I need to do next, so I cannot do this myself, but my friend Ersisas suggested you might be interested."
"What is it?" you ask. Your life has been boring and, despite the best efforts of the press, you can't help but sympathize with the revolutionaries.
"The new Emperor is at the palace to the southwest of the city, preparing for his deification. I want you to kidnap him."
"Kidnap?" someone from another table asks. "Or kill?"
"I need him alive." Vakhas Tiria leans on the nearest table and looks around the room. "Who's in?"
There are too many of you to convincingly pretend to be a single group allowed to be present, so you have been forced to split up in the night. Perhaps this is even for the best, as now you can act as distractions for each other if need be.
Your group has made it through the hedge maze thanks to Vakhas Tiria’s map and are now on the South side of the palace, in the gardens. The Sun is rising to the East, with the sky painted in pink and gold. It looks incredibly picturesque.
The head of the orangerie – currently on vacation with his wife – apparently had a habit of hiding the keys in the vegetable patches, instead of figuring out how to hand them securely from shift to shift. You thus slowly walk down the fields of vegetables, in search of the plot in question.
Soon you find a vegetable patch that looks slightly sad, like it gets dug up too often. There. The keys are hidden by the servants, so they’re probably in some funnily shaped clusters, but to figure out the previous shift’s sense of humor, you need to start digging.
In the end, too many of you volunteer to pass as a single group of servants, whatever the chosen cover story. Thus you split up and make your ways to the Palace grounds independently.
Your group is coming from the East, rising Sun behind your backs, as you sneak through the ditches between empty horse pastures. Soon you find yourselves at the stables that house the divine horses. You haven’t seen any – you’re actually very interested in seeing these horses that can outshine the Sun. Ersisas has a gray draft horse gelding, named Kul for the Moon, who can get somewhat luminous in dim light due to his color. You wonder whether the effect will be similar.
But before you can get anywhere near the divine horses, you need to convincingly pretend to be stablehands. Thus you climb up to the hay storage to drop some hay bales down to the stable proper. Vakhas Tiria thought the stable head might hide the sets of keys he sometimes needed to use to get to the Palace proper under some bales of hay. If not, well, these horses are divine; as their caretakers, you can surely talk your way inside.
The hay storage is dusty and there are a bunch of small bales up here. You find one corner that looks like someone might've stashed things under the bales.
Nothing to do but move that hay down. Time to get started!
Vakhas Tiria told you it would be a tight fit, but this is tighter than you imagined. You did wear last year's clothes, but it still pains you to see them scratched through with runs. But needs must. And you did volunteer for this.
You look around. This part of the cellar does look at risk of caving in – hence the giant crack you used to sneak in – and abandoned.
The moment the last of you is in, you sneak up towards actually used parts of the cellar. You sneak through another, thankfully larger, crack into a room full of coal, and somehow manage to navigate the mounds of coal well enough to reach the door without triggering an avalanche. The coal dust makes your clothes a total loss, though.
The next room is the boiler room. You consult the map Vakhas Tiria sketched and come to the conclusion this must be the north boiler room. Your guess is confirmed when you see the piles upon piles of furniture in the next room.
The room after that one is the one you're looking for. A giant chest of drawers covers an entire wall. One of the head maids stores a spare set of keys hidden amongst the clothing within. All you have to do is rummage.
The first drawer you open is full of winter clothes. You take a look at your own clothes, coated in coal dust and slightly shredded. Well. You're already going to steal the Emperor, so what are some clothes, compared to that? Might as well replenish your wardrobes.
Keys in hand, you walk to the doors of the orangerie. A bit of trial and error lets you figure out which of the keys opens the small, human-sized doors set into the huge doors that are used to bring the exotic trees inside for winter.
"Who are you and what do you think you are doing?" a man asks.
You turn to see a shortish man in the red coat and plumed helmet of the Imperial Guard. He does not look very amused under all of his gilt and epaulettes.
"We're the new kitchen hands," one of you says, and lifts up the basket of carrots. "We spent the morning digging up vegetables."
This does help your case significantly, but you see he still looks doubtful. "Look, let us explain," you begin. You're very grateful Vakhas Tiria made you memorize all those minutiae about how the palace works. Perhaps you could draw a diagram…
You bring the hidden carrots with you as you descend to the stables. The bales of hay are in a messy pile from being dropped down, so you stack them up neatly.
The horses are munching on the dregs of their breakfast of hay. In a little bit, the actual stablehands will return from their religious ritual – Vakhas Tiria was unfortunately unable to give you the details – to turn out the horses and muck out their stalls. You inventory the keys and consider the best route in.
"Shouldn't you be at the morning ritual?" a voice asks.
You turn and see an Imperial Guard: he's wearing the iconic red jacket, with some yellow roping and cording, and has the plumed sunburst helmet in his hands. He also looks young and incredibly new.
"We're here to give the horses their second ritual breakfast," one of you lies, holding up the carrots. "Would you like to help us?"
The young guard's face lights up. "Really? It, it would be an immense honor to assist in any way with the divine steeds of the Sun!"
"Of course," you say. You quickly glance at the nameplates on the stalls. "This here is Saras. Would you like to start with her?"
He nods, struck mute by religious ecstasy. Saras lifts her head and easily grabs the proffered treat with her midnight black lips. She's pitch black, but incredibly shiny. You wonder what she'd look like in the sunlight.
You move on, letting the young guard feed each of the horses in turn. It's slowing you down, but, well, you get an incredibly necessary break to admire the horses. You'll still have to convince the guard a bit, but with the carrots, you might even get him to vouch for you later if you play your cards right.
"There!" you exclaim, holding the last of the keys in your hand. Time is a bit of a wobbly concept, down here in the darkness, but you're sure you spent forever rummaging for the keys and the surprisingly fresh carrots. At least you got some snazzy clothes out of it.
You consider your pile of carrots for a moment, then decide that they'll make a nice snack for you: you've eaten things that were much more wilted. You set off in the direction of the Tower of the Sun, where your mark is purifying himself with sunlight.
The first few minutes go uneventfully, gas lamps dotting the dark corridors of the servant passages. No-one accosts you, perhaps due to the fact everyone is still supposed to be mourning the late Emperor until the current one's deification on the solstice.
Then you turn a corner and run into a guard. He's short and squat, a real wrestler type.
He looks at you suspiciously from beneath his plumed helmet. "And who would you be?"
"We're bringing things from stores to the kitchens," you say, incredibly grateful for the carrots.
"Oh? I don't recall seeing you around here," he says. "Is that a map? Why would you be carrying a map?"
"It's because we're new. You see, it's very easy to get lost down here."
"I suppose that's also the reason you're going in the opposite direction to the kitchens?"
"Really?" You swear, staring at your map. You should win an award for your acting. "Thank you! We must've gotten turned around at some point."
He makes a noise of sympathy. "I'll walk you to the intersection."
"Oh, thank you," you say, secretly hoping this won't delay you too much.
"Say, how did you get hired?" he asks as you walk.
It seems that you'll have to keep up the charade a while longer. And come up with an explanation. You're sure you can do this.
Once you've finished explaining things to the guard's satisfaction, your group walks further down the empty orangerie. For a moment, you're alone – you would have imagined more servants, but perhaps this is part of Vakhas Tiria's plan – and you take the opportunity to gawk at the tall roofs of glass. The morning sunlight is filtering through, warm and welcoming, and everything is clearly lit. Something in you feels like you should be sneaking in the shadows, but Vakhas Tiria told you that the best way to infiltrate the place was simply to pretend you belonged, and you might as well trust her judgement in that, given that you've trusted her judgement enough to be infiltrating the palace in the first place.
Your comrades have struck up a conversation about the gardens. Good; it adds verisimilitude to your claim that you belong here.
Before you can join in, however, another guard rounds the corner. This one looks as fresh as the carrots you just dug up: gangly in a way that can only be youth, and a uniform wholly free of decorations.
"Hello," he says. "Why are you all going this way? Did I miss something?"
"Oh, no, no, we're simply delivering carrots to the kitchens," you quickly say.
The guard looks at you oddly before his face opens up in delight. "Oh, you're also new!" he exclaims. "Nice to meet you. I'm Tovil Linnia, by the way. Here, let me escort you towards the kitchens!"
Oh no.
Well, you did just spend quite some while perfecting your kitchen hand disguise. You'll just have to keep it up while convincing him he needs to be elsewhere. In an unsuspicious manner. You can do this.
The young guard is teary-eyed in religious esctasy once you're done feeding the horses carrots. One of you asks him where he was supposed to be going, he straightens up with a jolt. "Oh no! I was supposed to-"
"It's all right, if you hurry you won't be late," you say.
"Thank you for allowing me to help with the second ritual breakfast!" he says, rushes to the door, bows to the horses, and then bolts.
Well. Hopefully he makes it wherever he was supposed to be; you don't really want for him to gush about how he was late because the stablehands involved him in a ritual, triggering a huge investigation.
Actually, he'll probably gush about it anyway, and trigger some sort of jealousy or investigation at some point, but if it's tomorrow, you won't have to care about it.
The next doors in front of you are vast and ornate, carved from single pieces of oak, with high-relief sculptural panels telling the story of how the First Emperor and his horse-bride Sanul conquered the lands of the West, from the steppe to the sea. Bas-relief figures of other divine horses and notable early Emperors rim the scenes. The doors open surprisingly easily for their size. You close them behind you and take in the room they guard.
This must be the ceremonial room. There is a large altarstone, sunk into the floor, limned with gold. At one end of it is a statue of Sanul laying on the ground, giving birth to the Second Emperor. The statue is, if not of solid gold, then at least plated: Sanul shines like the sunlight she is made of. A horseshoe-shaped amphitheater of seats observes her and the altar.
A different door clicks. "But the rituals are complete?" a guard asks. He's at least middle aged, with a uniform more braid than not, and an incredibly bushy moustache.
"Oh, good, we actually needed to find someone," you quickly reply. "We were supposed to do some extra cleaning of the floors but we can't seem to find the cleaning supplies?"
"They're in the closet built into the back of the amphitheater. It's no surprise you didn't find them; it's a bit hard to see. I'll show you."
He is unsuspicious, but you are now burdened with cleaning supplies. "Thank you," you say. "Was there anything…?"
"I, ah, if you don't mind, I would like to meditate at the altar for a moment," he says. "I'm Innol Noria, head of the guards. If you are to be assigned to the stables and ritual spaces often, I expect we will see a lot of each other."
What new people would decline the head of the guards? "Go ahead; we'll be concentrating on the seating anyway," you say.
Hopefully he will leave soon. In the meanwhile, you should probably come up with some convincing chatter between each other…
"All right, here's the intersection. The kitchens are thataway. Good luck!"
"Thank you!" you say and wave the guard off into the distance.
You wait a bit before sneaking back the way you came. In a hushed conference, you decide to exit the cellar so you can pretend that you've been to the kitchens and have been sent out to deliver carrots as a snack to someone.
Aboveground, it's easier to see where you're going. You pass corridors upon corridors of oil paintings of the divine horses, sparkling in the sunlight. A vast mural on the ceiling depicts the story of the First Emperor and his divine bride Sanul, the Sun made flesh into a mare. This seems to be focused on the part where they conquer the land of modern-day Kharas, and then skips forward to their son the Second Emperor already present as a child, without going into his conception.
You spot a guard post up ahead the moment the guards spot you. Welp. Perhaps you can talk yourselves out of this as well.
"We brought you snacks," one of you says.
The guards look at the carrots suspiciously. "The kitchens don't send us snacks. And what are these? Raw carrots?"
"Look, it's something to do with the rituals of deification, something about purifying all the surroundings," you lie. "We don't really know, either."
"There's a lot going on as well, so don't be too alarmed by weird stuff happening," another of you adds. It's a good call; your friends might get some extra leeway. Even if it might lead to you needing to concoct an explanation or three.
"Oh? Like what?" the most senior of the guards asks. He only has a bit of braid on his collar, but his comrades have none.
Concocting explanations it is, then. "Well, there's a lot, but…" you begin.
"Linnia!" the first guard calls. "Stop bothering the kitchen hands and come over here!"
"Whoops, I've got to go," Tovil says and dashes whence you came. You try not to cheer or sigh with relief.
Tovil. Really. Did his parents forget that babies grow up? Calling your baby a baby wren is one thing; having an adult called that is quite another.
You troop through the rest of the orangerie to the central corridor – some other large groups of people pass you by, giving you more confidence in your ability to blend. Both walls are brimming with oil paintings of the divine horses, sparkling in the sunlight. A vast mural on the ceiling depicts the story of the First Emperor and Sanul, the Sun made flesh into the divine mare. Together they conquered all the Sun could touch. The mural stops shy of depicting the coupling between them that produced the Second Emperor.
Finally, you reach a door with a bas-relief of a divine horse leaping to the sky. This should be the small antechamber that leads to the southern staircase.
Vakhas Tiria had told you that you need to simultaneously stand on several tiles. You see that the floor is laid out in a grid pattern. Columns occupy the corners of the room next to the door, but the room is otherwise square.
You cautiously test a tile. It squeaks. Its neighbor squeaks with a slightly different note. Interesting.
Well, all there is to do is to try them out!
At long last, Noria gathers himself and goes off to actually do some guarding. You maintain the pretense of cleaning the place just until the door clicks closed behind him, then hurriedly stuff the cleaning implements back into the cupboard and exit through another side door.
This corridor is wrought from gold: bas-relief divine horses with radiate crowns proudly gaze towards the altar room, with conquered peoples trod underfoot. The ceiling is a series of sunbursts. The floor, too, is gold, though without patterning.
A short walk brings you to the other end. The First Emperor stands in front of you in high relief, blood dripping from his saber, a radiate crown on his head.
When you open the door, you get to the antechamber of the eastern staircase. You see mosaic depictions of the Second Emperor marrying his divine horse-bride, this one black as night to symbolize the imperial dominion over night as well as day. She looks to be dead in the mural on the other wall, but you're not sure you ever heard that part of the legend.
The door to the staircase is limned by two large pillars that cut into the room. The rest of the floor is divided into large tiles in various shades of sun colors. Vakhas Tiria said they'd be pressure plates, and you'd have to stand on the correct ones to open the door.
You test stepping on one. It sighs gently. The one next to it makes a slightly different sound.
Looks like you'll have to test them all. No time to start like the present!
You finish up by telling the guards that you really need to get along so you can rearrange the furniture in one of the drawing rooms on the other side of the central tower. The guards wave you on.
It does not take you long to arrive at the antechamber to the northern staircase. You sigh in relief when all of you have filed into the room, safe from prying eyes.
The large tiles on the floor look somewhat odd, compared to the fine-hewed details of the rest of the palace. They're laid out in a grid which is missing the two corners next to the door that leads to the staircase proper. You know you're supposed to stand on some subset of the tiles, as a group, to open up the door, but Vakhas Tiria didn't know the correct set of tiles. Apparently the answer could be changed somehow.
"You know, if it's pressure plates, maybe we could just step on them all and listen closely?" one of you says.
The idea has merit. You nod and test the nearest tile. It squeaks.
"All right, everyone; let's get stepping!"
You stand on all the tiles you've identified so far and are rewarded with the door swinging open. You let out a collective cheer.
Abruptly, another guard appears, this one coming from the tower, plumed hat held in his hands rather than worn. He has an impressively bushy moustache and his uniform is more braid than not. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"We're a traveling band of entertainers, brought here to entertain His Divinity," one of you quickly says.
"We have deep and varied talents!" another pipes up.
The guard frowns. "Oh, really? I should have been told about this."
"It was meant to be a surprise, I think." The guard still doesn't look convinced. "Would you like a demonstration?"
"I suppose that would work," he says. "Though you must have incredibly unique talents to be invited in."
Time to dig out your most diverse set of talents! You're glad there's so many of you; the sheer spread of styles is guaranteed to dazzle him. Though you should probably ensure that you showcase all of your talents, even the niche ones…
You stand on the tiles you've identified and the door swings open. You have a single moment of elation before you notice the baffled guard standing in the doorway.
"I wasn't aware of anything planned," he says.
He looks youngish, though there's more braid on his uniform than Khuyel Noria had. One of you says, "We're stablehand-priests, here to purify the various antechambers leading to His Divinity."
For a moment, you fear that he will see through your ruse and sound the alarm, but then he spots the hay on your clothes and immediately grows trusting. "I've actually always been curious about what the rituals of purification entail," he hesitantly says. "And what sort of education a stablehand-priest requires, other than the caretaking of horses."
Excellent! You know you are, collectively, very good at talking. You'll just have to ensure he ends up in awe at all your various and multifaceted talents. Hm, perhaps you should somehow ensure that even your rarer talents are showcased…
You stand on the tiles you've identified and the door swings open. You have a single moment of elation before you notice the baffled guard standing in the doorway.
"Who are you?" he asks. He has an impressive moustache and an immense amount of braid on his red uniform. "And why are you dressed like that?"
"We're a traveling troupe of thespians, here to entertain the Emperor," you lie. You certainly have the acting skills for it.
He waves a hand dismissively. "Pshaw. Theater troupes have props and such, while you're just dressed in off-season clothes."
"It's actually easier to have people play the props," one of you says.
"Yeah! I and my friend here play chairs!" another of you pipes up.
"Maybe we could demonstrate our varied skills?"
The guard looks marginally less suspicious. There's your in! Now to ensure you use all of your varied talents...
After you have the guard doubled over with laughter, he waves you through. "Go, go; I'm sure His Divinity would enjoy some entertainment – he's been rather down at the requirements of the rituals, lately. A bit of distraction would do him a world of good."
You nod sagely, like you had any idea what he was talking about, and troop up the stairs. These ones are of stone, and golden brown. The ceiling is covered with sky blue mosaic tiles laid out in waves. Gold leaf horses gallop up walls muraled with steppe grasses.
There's a smaller door at the top. The Second Emperor stares at you solemnly, holding a heart in his hands. You open it and file out into an antechamber.
A vast chandelier illuminates the room, the ancient crystals shimmering in the new electric lighting, casting glows with rainbow edges. The walls here are white, holding oil paintings of what you assume are more recent Emperors, each of them standing next to a night-black divine horse. "Noshaya venor" is inscribed in large letters on the wall above them. You wonder why they're specified to be the daughters-in-law of Nokhal, the Second Emperor's horse-bride, rather than of her equine mother-in-law Sanul, but perhaps that's due to their coat color: Sanul is always depicted as a golden bay, while Nokhal and all of these horses are markingless black.
The floor is a deep brown stone, and in it is a square grid, similar to what you found at the bottom of the staircase. You think you can see some faint specks of differing colors in the tiles.
Vakhas Tiria told you the grid here, too, is adjustable, with there being some indication of which of the squares are alarms and which are harmless. You think the Emperor might struggle on the way down – you are kidnapping him, after all – so you should figure out which ones are alarmed and dismantle the mechanism.
Nothing to do but get on with it!
You look up and spy a portrait of the previous Emperor: Rayaya-sanul-nishele-shuye-re-korutak. He is dressed in the same sort of sunburst robes as all of his predecessors, but without it, he would look rather … unremarkable. His skin is more tanned than gold, and his hair is dark brown, especially in contrast to the actual night-black divine horse next to him. The horse looks rather bored, and is called Noras. You're not sure about the wisdom of naming a horse "Hay", but, well, it's not your horse.
The horse in the portrait beneath the center of the "Nokhal's daughters-in-law" text is apparently called Vakhas, like your leader. Or, well, Vashas, in the archaic manner of speaking that they insist on clinging to in their inscriptions here. This Vakhas looks somewhat wary. The Emperor next to her looks annoyed, and past middle age. Apparently his name is Shuyeya-rayaya-nayor-shiviya-luvu-ka-kavutak; or Khuye-rayala-nayor-khivisa-luvuka-kavutak, how you'd say it: The golden Sun's son conquers to the end of the earth.
There's really only one Emperor here who looks cast from the mould of the First Emperor. His name is Tasul-shuyel-suya-shuya-voyase-velotak: The great dawn is the funeral feast of dark night. He has the golden skin and night-black hair, matching the horse next to him – Kiktos, for blackberries – and gazes imperiously at the viewer. Kiktos, for her part, seems to be doing her best to radiate "horse" without any expressions. Like all the other horses here, she is pure black and markingless.
You wonder what the current Emperor, Rayala-vakhala-kivir-tasu-yuruse-kavutak (it's the present; you refuse to use the archaic forms), looks like. The previous Emperor, Rayala-sanul-nikhele-khuyere-korutak, doesn't seem to have been anything special or remarkable, and recently got himself killed in a naval battle with Rlyat. The current Emperor is thus his brother or son or something, but you don't spy a portrait of him, with or without a horse.
"It's good to see His Divinity in such knowledgeable hands," the guard says. "Uh, you didn't hear it from me, but some of the rituals … he really seems to be reluctant about them. If you see him, maybe reassure him somewhat?"
"Of course," you say. "It is a heavy burden to bear."
The guard nods and begins walking towards the stables. He stops at the door and turns back to you. "So, if you have the time … could you tell me how it went, later? I'm Kikol Keria. I usually guard the stables in the afternoons."
"It might take a few days before our schedules line up, but we'll do our best to seek you out," you promise.
"Thank you," Keria says, and finally leaves the room. You hurriedly file into the stairwell.
You would not have thought it was possible to grow immune to luxury and splendor, but that you have. The eastern stairs are the most holy, facing the dawn as they are, and thus the most opulent. There is a mural of the young sun on the eastern wall, bloody with its afterbirth, painting the entire sky red. Divine horses gallop forth along the northern and southern walls, accompanied by sun's rays. At the center, there is a statue of the First Emperor, facing east, palms raised in worship. A skylight above him lets in the light of the late afternoon.
The golden steps bring you to a landing. Vakhas Tiria said that surprisingly, this entrance, too, had alarms whose places could be rearranged. You can see the grid where they must be. There was some manner of hint to help figure out where the traps were this time. Time to get started!
On the landing itself, the southern wall is a mural to a victory against Kharas's southern neighbor, Chuharah. The Emperor Tasul-shuyel-suya-shuya-voyase-velotak is depicted lit by a sunbeam at dawn, holding a radiant sword, with the Emperor of Chuharah begging on his knees while the armies of Chuharah crumble and flee for their lives from the cavalry of Kharas. The victory is real, and taught in all schools that teach history, though the actual scene is not: while the gains in land were notable, the Emperor of Chuharah was not anywhere near the scene of battle, and probably neither was Emperor Tasul-shuyel-suya-shuya-voyase-velotak.
The northern wall has a mural of a victory against your eastern neighbor Zlas. (Military campaigns against your main enemy, the archipelagic matriarchy of Rlyat, generally involve getting in an unaesthetically horseless boat and getting navally humiliated.) An Emperor sits astride a divine horse that shines like gold, saber in hand, as the armies of Zlas flee for the mountains that divide the countries. This is probably the reign of Emperor Evu-re-rayal-tasuse-yuruse-umatak, when Zlas was driven to the other side of the mountains after a century of occupying the northeastern corner of Kharas.
You look back whence you came and, with the reflected light from the sparkles no longer hitting your eyes, you're able to make out the colors of the divine horses on the northern and southern walls of the stairwell. They're different: the southern wall has buckskins and golden bays in the vein of Sanul, while the northern wall has black horses in the vein of Nokhal. You suppose the color coding makes sense, with the noontime Sun being golden in the South and the Sun never shining from the North.
"Tasul rayal evuya nesheya yuruse unatak," golden letters proclaim above the door you want to open next: The great Sun owns the world beneath the sky. You wouldn't be surprised if there had been an Emperor by that name at some point; it sounds sufficiently pompous. The heavy door beneath it is solid wood, the First Emperor on one half of it and Sanul on the other, carved in mid-relief. Sanul looks imperious. You wonder what the current Emperor looks like. Probably not like the First Emperor, but will he have the night-black hair and golden skin in the mould of Sanul and the First Emperor, or will he look like a normal person?
When you've dismantled the final trap, you turn to the door. For a moment, you consider knocking, but one of your friends starts pushing on the door first, so you join in.
The heavy thing swings open, revealing an opulent drawing room. The ceiling is decorated with a golden sunburst mosaic, and everything glitters with the early evening sunlight. The only furniture is a plethora of golden sculptures of the divine horses that fill the room. It seems you'll have to play hide and seek with the Emperor.
"Oh, there you are!" someone says. He sounds young.
When you find him between a sculpture and the wall, you see that he looks even younger – perhaps in his very early teens – but is nonetheless wearing the gold-encrusted sunburst robe that marks the Emperor. He's sitting on the floor and has a book of some sort in his hands.
"...you're the Emperor?" you ask. You were expecting someone … older. With gravitas and dignity. Not this … dumpling-faced child. However fitting his coloration may be.
"Yes," he says. "Rayaya-vashaya-kivir-tasuse-yuruse-kavutak, officially, but please just call me Aril."
"Aril. All right, uh, we disabled the traps outside the door, so if you'd come with us?"
Aril slides the book he's been reading in one of the horse statues and shucks off his sunburst robe. Underneath it, he's wearing – well, it's white, and might not be too indecent – but one of your friends wraps their cloak around him nonetheless.
You lead the way through the mosaic. Aril follows you cheerfully. You hope Vakhas Tiria doesn't have anything too painful planned for him; he really is just a sweet kid.
"So, what next?" Aril asks.
"We're heading to a rendez-vous point outside, and then we'll wait for our friends."
Aril bites his lip. "Do you think I could free my fiancée as well? Please?"
You trade glances with each other. On one level, it makes sense he'd be married off as soon as possible to make heirs, but on the other, he looks a decade too young by commoners' standards. "Your … fiancée?"
"Yes. Where is the rendez-vous point?"
You tell him. Hopefully she's on the way.
"Okay, I'll meet you there!" he says, then slides through a gap in the wall that wasn't there before.
"Oh no," one of your friends says. They've described your mental state perfectly. "What do we do now?"
"Maybe the others will catch him?"
"He doesn't look very Imperial, though. They'd think he's a scullery boy."
A few minutes of hushed argument later, you decide to limp in defeat to the rendez-vous point and hide in case Aril alerts the guards and they arrive before your friends. You're really not looking forward to explaining this to Vakhas Tiria…
As the final trap gets dismantled, you and your friends all cheer at your success. You check once more to ensure you've dismantled all the traps, then turn to the doors. You make eye contact first with the First Emperor and then Sanul. There isn't really an obvious place to push. You wonder how the people who usually use this entrance get in.
There's a muffled thunk to your left. You look at the wall, but no, it's still a mural of Kharas's victory against Chuharah, with no doors in sight. If there's someone on the other side, well, they will not be walking in on you … at least, not until you enter the Imperial chambers. At which point you're sure you can continue talking your way out of things if need be. Or simply grab the Emperor and leg it.
You end up using the First Emperor's shoulder and Sanul's chest to push open the doors. The room that greets you is glittering with the evening sunlight, with a gold sunburst mosaic on the ceiling and the room itself a maze of statues of divine horses.
The closest one is your favorite, you decide. This divine horse has just finished tossing her head, mane still floating down as she gazes at you imperiously. Her tail is likewise just finishing a flick. All of her hooves are firmly planted on the plinth.
Though you really would like to see some colors other than gold at this point. Perhaps a nice bronze, even. Hopefully the Emperor doesn't have golden skin and golden hair.
You set up a grid pattern and search to the best of your abilities, but find no-one. One of you eventually comes across a discarded gold-encrusted robe, so your friends must have gotten here first. You decide you might as well claim the robe as a souvenir while you're at it, so you do your best to fold it up. It's incredibly stiff. You wonder how the Emperor managed to do anything while wearing it: you'd think even bending his arms would be impossible. Though you guess Emperors don't really have to do anything at all all day.
Well, you had a lot of fun infiltrating this place – especially feeding the horses carrots – but all good things come to an end. Time to head to the rendez-vous point and see what this Emperor looks like!
The sunburst robe seems rather small, so he's probably very portable. Perhaps he'll also be willing to answer your questions? You really want to know why Nokhal was dead in that one mural of the Second Emperor in the room with the pressure plates…
You reach the rendez-vous point. It is curiously empty, for all that the Emperor was obviously already kidnapped. Did your friends have to rush to the city ahead of you? You don't think you heard any sort of alarm go out, but…
Then one of your friends pokes their head out from behind a bush. "Oh, good; we were afraid it would be guards."
"No, we didn't bring any. Say, what does the Emperor look like? Did he put up a fight?"
"...he ran off to grab his fiancée."
It is only fear of discovery that keeps you from shouting. "What????" you whisper with invective.
"Look, he just vanished into some crack in the wall," your friend defensively says.
Your argument is interrupted by the sound of hooves. Fear curdles in your heart and roots you in place. Other friends attempt to throw themselves behind any sort of cover, however small. All you can do is clutch the sunburst robe to your chest. It may be an obvious sign of guilt, but you will go down with it.
"Oh, there you are!" a – well, he is obviously much too young to be a guard. He's riding a divine horse, though, black as night and glossier than oil.
"Aril?" your friend in the bushes asks.
"Here's my fiancée, Saras," he says, dismounting. He is perhaps in his painfully early teens. "I'm very glad you came; the deification involves marrying a black horse, killing her, and eating her heart, and I really don't want to do so at all!"
"Wait, was that what that mural with the Second Emperor and Nokhal was all about?" one of you mutters.
"This is the Emperor?" another asks.
"I recognize that horse!" a third one exclaims.
"Please, just call me Aril," he says. "I take it Vakhas Tiria sent you? Could you bring me to her?"
You exchange incredibly confused glances. You knew this had to have some form of inside job component to it, but never would have guessed that the Emperor himself was in on it.
Well. "This way, then," you say, and start on the road to Ersisas's place, trading stories as you go.
It's late in the evening when you get to Ersisas's place. The streetlamps are already on, and a figure is standing in the gloom where a few of them are broken.
Then the figure turns, and marches towards you, resolving into Vakhas Tiria. She keeps walking, reaches her arms out in surprising welcome-
-and Aril throws himself into them. He's shorter than her, but with the same coloration and face inherited from the First Emperor…
"Missed you, mom," Aril says.
Vakhas Tiria ruffles his hair. "I'm glad you're safe," she tells him, then turns to the rest of you. "Thank you for rescuing my son."
"...you're welcome," you awkwardly reply.
Your conversation is cut short by Aril excitedly tugging at his mother's sleeve and insisting on introducing her to Saras, who has been watching the proceedings with all the imperial bearing Aril lacks.
Mother and son bring Saras over to make friends with Ersisas's draft gelding Kul. Perhaps they'll be staying here for a while, or at least keeping Saras here. You think it would make for a nice enough headquarters for further revolutionary activity.
You, on the other hand, need to sit down and make sense of this all with someone. Luckily there's a bunch of people in the same predicament nearby, and you're already at a place to drink. You file into Ersisas's place and discuss the adventure of your lives.
Though this has left you with something of a hankering for more. Perhaps the future will bring something…
It's been a few days since you kidnapped – or perhaps liberated – Aril Tiria, and absolutely nothing seems to have changed. Vakhas Tiria said this would be what happens: inertia will keep any system going for a while, even if the lynchpin has been removed. She's gotten Aril a job as a public writer of letters, so that people would notice if he disappeared. She herself is apparently working as a meteorologist, now, which leaves her a lot of time for correspondence. You're not sure where, exactly, they are staying, but Saras lives with Kul behind Ersisas's place, and as a result, mother and son spend their time here as well. As you are now technically mid-revolution, the nature of Vakhas Tiria's plotting has also changed.
"What I'm most worried about is the infrastructure," she says, after neatly avoiding answering any questions about what she did between her escape from the Palace a year and a half ago and her return to Kharas from Rlyat. "We will inevitably have an era of warlords, when the military realizes the absence of Imperial power and the stablehand-priests cannot convincingly lie about it anymore. We are in position to seize control of several cities, including this one, but to do that, we would need localized popular uprisings, which require some form of transportation. The stablehand-priests will be too concerned with hiding the Emperor's absence and clinging on to power to care about infrastructure maintenance. I've run the numbers on what is most vulnerable, and it seems it would be the metro."
You nod. The metro lines are new, and while they are extremely popular, you expect that they could be hit hard by social disruption.
"The roads and even the railroads should stay, but with the coffers of the Empire closing, the labor required to maintain the metro will not turn up to work." She rubs her temples and sighs. You're very glad you're not in her position. Though you do enjoy the metro…