The Imperial Palace is the most fortified single location in the galaxy. It outshines Capitas. Ceron would fall before the Palace. Demeter's Forge, for all its terrors, would break upon the anvil of the Palace. And all this before it caught fire.

"Do not weep for me, beloved citizens," Empress Nero said from one hundred billion screens and speakers. She sat upon her throne of gold, holding aloft a glass of her beloved wine, the same wine that could be found anywhere on the city. "Drink with me! This wine is the blood of my veins. I bled myself dry on the soil of Tellus so that you could, each of you, drink along with me. Feel this experience! And then look upon your neighbor and realize that they feel it too! They have drunk of me as you have! They have been through Hell as you have! They have risen from the grave as you have! All of you, every one of you, entombed within the shell of Tellus have been on a voyage together, a voyage grander than any other! You have traveled across the length and breadth of the galaxy and the citizens alongside you are not simply your cell-mates, they are the friends you have made along the way! People of Tellus! Humanity, reforged! Remember your birthright, your inheritance, the possibilities that are open to you as a united species! You have seen what the Endless Azure Skies has dreamed together, and the works their unity has made possible! 

"But humanity has always surpassed! That is why I love you so, oh sons and daughters of Prometheus! You have reached beyond! You have risen to meet every trial placed before you, setting aside your differences and acting in unity, forming immortal bonds of friendship, forging immortal heroes of legend, raising immortal nations into history! You bound the galaxy in starlit gates, and when those failed 'midst the storm, you set sail upon the black like the mariners of old! All of this awaits you again!

"So do not weep for me. I shall ascend to those immortal ranks and watch you from eternity. I will see how you lash and tame this savage galaxy once again. I will cheer as you collar the wolves and break the skies. And I wait with breathless anticipation to see what new project you will begin from your rightful seat of galactic mastery! It will surpass my dreams and win my heart, as it always does. I am sure of this. I believe in you. I have done all this for you, and to see what you will do next."

The palace burned. Biomanced roses flash and crackle and ignite like fireworks, sending glorious cascades of sparks up into the sky. The deranged glory of it is a shock even to eyes jaded by the vision of Capitas; Capitas was a stagnant thing, for all its beauty, designed to last forever. The burning palace of Empress Nero is using forever as kindling; her twisted shadow's mobile palace was but a pale foreshadowing of the scale of her intentions. Her death was to be one last common experience for humanity, a God crucifying herself on the altar of man.

But it was not complete. The distortion of the incomplete planetary teleportation had the palace fading in and out of reality. Clifflike walls snapped and slid, the ocean raged and snapped as it was forced aside for the roots of towers, and then rushed back into the vacuum when they departed again. Defensive legions fled in terror, pouring down the steps and through the gates of the inferno, diving out into the raging sea in their thousands - columns of black dressed maids, phalanxes of golden-robed aristocrats, routs of soldiery, archivists cradling relics in their hands. Waterfalls of bodies falling out into the ocean, spilling into the sea like oil spills. Empress Nero had ensured that their paths would be free, their evacuation protocols were well rehearsed, and she waved them good-bye from her screens as they fled her madness.

The wind raged. Helicopters have always been violent affronts to the laws of gravity and aerodynamics, beastly machines that want nothing more than to crash, and these are not ideal flying conditions.