A Reign to Ruin: The Prince Regent and the Summer King

PART III. Departure

◆ VAMIR ◆

The courtyard is a sea of red, black, and gold. Soldiers in quilted tunics, heavy chainmail, and surcoat line up in formation, facing the balcony of the Royal Palace. Leading the line is a cluster of knights on the largest bay horses I have ever seen, with shiny coats in bright shades of black and brown, and flowing tails and manes.

In the middle of this cavalry is a black carriage, flanked by spearmen and bannermen carrying poles with the red-and-black flag of House Ilialana—the sapphire insignia of the Azuries in its center—and the red-and-gold banner of House Cardan with its eighteen-ray sun crest.

This whole charade could have been avoided had we decided to travel by airship, one that could significantly cut travel time from three days to a mere five hours.

But here lies the problem: The airships have run out of fuel.

In the Glass Empire, airships can be a bane or a boon. A modern, man-made technology that hails from the Empire of the Elders, Eldcolire, airships are used chiefly for shipping and transportation. But the Glass Empire remains largely traditional, with most of its people still deeply steeped in their faith in the Old Gods. For devout worshipers, airships are an abomination; a blasphemy that dares to defy the will of the gods. It is, as they say, "man's attempt to reach the heavens and become more powerful than even the divine beings".

A folly, if you ask me.

But it is precisely because of this belief that only five of the eighteen kingdoms in the Glass Empire have accepted these man-made marvels as part of their everyday lives. And with a joint military treatise, kingdoms are forbidden to use airships in battle. Any monarch who infringes this law shall face the gallows with its swift and public hanging.

Still, this did not stop the kingdoms from building their own anti-aircraft weapons and defenses. When you have neighbors who are eager to identify your weaknesses and use it against you, it is far better to be safe than sorry.

Going back to airships, fuel is required to fly them. They run either on denatured cryostone gas or liquefied deuklodite stones—precious commodities that power up entire empires.

The first fleet of airships designed to run on cryo-gas came all the way from Eldcolire. Eventually, the Glass Empire learned to build its own airships. No sooner, however, did we realize a major drawback: the empire starkly lacks its own source of cryostones, a mineral that can only be found in the tundra and alpine regions of Eldcolire. Importing cryo-gas all the way from Eldcolire is not only costly but highly inconvenient as well, considering airships had to traverse the hostile empire of Willorion.

Everything changed when House Torzumin of the Moon Court discovered local deuklodite stones, which turned out to be a more feasible and longer-lasting alternative to cryo-gas.

Ossola, my motherland, is surrounded by valleys and rolling hills dotted with deuklodite mines. We are the first to harvest the stones in masses and purify them into fuel; using it not just to fly airships but to power most of the homes and machines in the city.

Much of the Ossolan population works in the mines. But while deuklodite stones have become an economic blessing, they also come with fatal consequences. Soon we realized that with the lack of proper gear, deuklodite stones harnessed in their raw form can be extremely toxic to humans, causing miscarriage and infertility among Omegas. To make matters worse, prolonged exposure can cause the lungs to harden and collapse, a disease we now call "crystal lungs". Death is extremely painful for those who suffer from it.

I look toward the hills where the mines are situated, and heave a deep sigh. The recent war had caused a labor shortage, with most of the men having been deployed to the borders to defend the kingdom. For many cycles, the mines have been abandoned, and the few remaining miners have fallen ill with the early stages of crystal lungs.