[b]Vasilia![/b]

You are a fool for even imagining you can know the mind of an Emperor.

You play your game of posture and bombast. You play your game of bargains and exchange. You play your games as the hound believes earnestly that the master cares as much about the stick as it does. He is playing a game too, but a very different one: he is pretending that he is a human. A peer. Someone who can experience character growth and come to grips with mortality, weakness, mundanity.

He tears at his breast and laments his loss. He speaks of himself as a human with human flaws and human ambitions. And, fool, you believe him. You look upon that angler-lantern and believe it to have warmth. You believe that this is a mere man with a mere office, and now that the office is removed he can be a man again.

You do not understand what it is to be Emperor. What it is to look down upon the galaxy and call it yours. To stand before the gods and negotiate on behalf of life itself. To see the cravings of billions reduced to a flicker of unrest calculations on a cosmic spreadsheet.

If you truly understood he would not be able to trick you like this. If you truly understood you would have seen through his jovial lies and pretensions of humanity and pressed your forehead to the ground and prayed that would be enough. But then, if you truly understood you never would have let Redana aboard your ship either. Her illusion of humanity is just as deadly as his.

But, you do not.

So he is as he appears to you: a mere man. Broken and wretched and tired of fighting. A man who has been a prisoner and craves to see the stars. A man who was Emperor for forty years and Sisyphus for three hundred. Exhausted. Malleable. Looking for a new start.

"Of course," he said, "for cautionary tales and abject examples are my final Imperial duty. But a captain and  a princess do not seek out an emperor for tales and advice. Tell me, what humble service might I do for you?"

[b]Alexa![/b]

[i]Dear Alexa[/i]

That is all there is time to read before the constructs burst through the door, polychromatic eyes and salmon bridesmades dresses carefully tailored to render boxy infrastructure even less flattering than it was to begin with. This is all for the service of Aphrodite, after all, and it he is known to level particular unkindnesses at the bridesmaid who outdoes the bride.

"It is time. The ritual shall be conducted," said one, a towering giraffe-like gardener with blades and saws. "A day of war shall be concluded with a night of wedding celebrations, that tomorrow the war might resume. Before Apollo, battle. Before Artemis, revelry. In each, joy. So shall Elysium be built. Come."