"Enough!" ordered the Lord, letting her power slip enough to shake the castle around them, in lieu of shaking her clan leaders by their necks. Raskreia reined herself in once all of them had properly knelt before her. "It is my responsibility as Lord to plot a course for the future of our race, and I will not accept a future set by the precedent that traitors can slaughter my people with impunity!"

Ludis and Rajak looked at each other. "Lord," Ludis said, "It's our duty as clan leaders to handle matters like this for you. If the Lord takes the field personally, it means that we have failed."

She bit back the words 'two of you have failed' to come home. When they had children. Those traitorous scum had killed the parents of children who had not even reached their majority. No, they had made it very clear that they considered all of her loyal clan leaders children, and yet they had forced two of them into eternal sleep. "Ludis, you are the Guardian of the Sanctuary as well as the Shield of the Lord. Karias must remain here to sense any attempt to invade Lukedonia. With Rousare in Eternal Sleep, Gejutel will have command of the Central Order Knights," for now. Not only was he friends with him and more of them, but he seemed too calm in the face of his own child's eternal sleep. Yes, he would have seen many forced into eternal sleep before, but that was the only reason she wasn't using this opportunity to probe his loyalties and thus gain the precedent that she could, in order to guard Lukedonia against future traitors. "I will take Kei Ru and Rozaria Elenor as my escort."

"Where, my Lord?" Kei Ru asked.

She frowned, showing her displeasure at the idea that she might just wander aimlessly. She was Lord, the wisest of the nobles, they should respect her intelligence more than that. "The land of the Werewolves. They still live in human lands: the human organization will not have left them alone. If they do not have some clue to the whereabouts of the traitors, then they should at least know something of the human organization, and I will wrest the information from them." Tradition might not permit her to read the minds of clan leaders, but werewolves and humans were not nobles.

"If none of them have anything useful, I will return here," she said, to mollify them.

"When do we depart, Lord?" Rozaria asked, and Raskreia nodded to her in approval.

Raskreia stood up. "Immediately. We will not give the traitors time to prepare." Or Gejutel the opportunity to warn them. He remained genuflected, hand at his chest.

"But Lord," Ludis tried to protest.

"You are the future of Lukedonia," Rajak said, not daring her wrath by looking up.

"Silence!" When they obeyed, she reassured them that, "The future of Lukedonia is not as fragile as the traitors think. I am not as fragile as they think. Does anyone else wish to voice an opinion?"

"Lord," Gejutel said, looking up and wiping a tear from his eye. "If your father could see you now…" He cleared his throat to gain control of himself as the younger clan leaders looked at him. "It is her right and duty as Lord to sentence to eternal sleep anyone who dares to disrespect her Authority, for to damage the Authority of the Lord is to bring ruin upon the nobles. Yes, it does bring dishonor upon the clan leaders for her to be forced to act personally, but what honor do we have left, when half of us failed to give our Lord the proper respect?" He shook his head. "Ludis, our Lord has every right to force you into eternal sleep personally for the way you have opposed her will."

Was this some plot to curry her favor, or had Rousare's eternal sleep turned him against his old friends? In any case, she needed to shut him up: she had spent centuries getting her clan leaders to voice their opinions. How else was she supposed to know what was going on in their heads when she was not allowed to read their minds? It was that silence and secrecy that allowed so many traitors to slip her father's watch. "Ludis Mergas has a duty to ensure Lukedonia's safety, even if it risks being forced into eternal sleep, and Lukedonia is safest with its Lord and clan leaders here."

Gejutel nodded, in a way that was half-bowing his head. "Yes, Lord," he said, somewhat embarrassed at the correction, but mostly satisfied.

"Rozaria, Kei Ru, follow," she ordered, and swept her cloak behind her, striding from the room before she had to deal with any objections or worries. Kei Ru also had a duty to protect her, while Rozaria preferred to stay close to her: she had counted on neither of them objecting once she chose them as her escorts in fear of being told to remain behind.

Obviously a Lord could not go petition the Werewolf Lord in his own castle, so she landed on the edge of the island. "Kei," she ordered. "Go to the Lord of the Werewolves and tell him that I am here." She did not need to tell him to send her the response: he would want to be certain she was prepared.

"Yes, Lord," he said bowing, after a glance at Rozaria. Her fighting style worked best with distance and prepared ground: with her staying with the Lord, Kei Ru could be certain that the Lord would be well protected from any escort the Werewolf Lord brought with him, while Kei Ru was the best able going among unknowns.

A responsible Lord would come immediately, to give her what she wanted so that she would go away as fast as possible. This island was volcanic: they could lose their entire homeland, and certainly all they had built, if a noble Lord lost their temper here. However, the Previous Werewolf Lord was well known to be both completely irresponsible and a friend of his, while Maduke was the same breed of scum as Lagus Tradio: polite sniveling to her face, undermining her behind her back.

Once she sensed Kei Ru was far enough away, Raskreia turned to give Rozaria her orders.

"Lord, Elenor, this werewolf wishes to know what the… young Lord wants from him, and without sending a message ahead." Despite Kei Ru's attempt to be properly elegant, barely restrained rage leaked from the message. Clearly, the scum had insulted her now that her father was no longer awake to take steps when she was insulted.

She could not tolerate that disrespect. If scum like this thought her weak, they would force more of her nobles into eternal sleep. "Rozaria."

"Yes, Lord!" Rozaria said eagerly, waving her hands over the staff form of her soul weapon.

Above them, Blood Witch's summoned form fired.

It was unthinkable for the Lord of the Nobles to go as a petitioner into someone's hall, but it was simplicity itself to destroy that hall. Concern for her clan leaders had made her consider warning Kei Ru, but she did not wish to insult him. His soul weapon would protect him, and retreating would make him miss the expressions of the werewolves who had dared mock her in the presence of the Ru clan leader.

The werewolves were still in confusion when she landed with Kei Ru between her and that worm Maduke – a pity the werewolves hadn't overthrown him yet, but it had only been a few centuries. Having his castle destroyed around him, and watching him be completely unable to do anything about the insult, would make the werewolves aware he was not invincible and she could hope they would remove him before the thousandth anniversary of her father's eternal sleep.

To make things clear even to the slower ones, she summoned a blood field.

She heard the werewolves who were standing around uselessly exclaim that she was, "The Lord of the nobles!" and begin to mutter and whisper.

"The Lord of the Nobles," Maduke agreed with a smirk. "So you've dared to leave your island. Not very smart of you to risk another two clan leaders when the last died so stupidly, for mere humans. I do have to thank you: this way the nobles won't outnumber us in the Union. Not that we'll need them much longer. Juraki, Dorant! Time to become Union Elders."

Raskreia drew out Ragnarok, ignoring how the island began to quake around her. The werewolves would think it was a display of power and the clan leaders would think it a sign of her wrath. No one had to know it was a sign of her incomplete control over the power of her soul weapon, but she could sense there were no humans nearby to be caught up in the devastation.

She lowered her blade and flicked out a blood tornado, face impassive.

A pity she couldn't train on Lukedonia without ruining her island, she thought as it engulfed Maduke. His scream as it tore into the ground, carrying him down and down was almost drowned out by the roar of the tornado and the rumbling of the earth, but she could sense his mind as it ceased to exist.

Overkill, especially inside a blood field, but she needed these werewolves to witness her power. Despite her worry about causing a cataclysm, she couldn't allow someone to survive an attack a Lord meant to kill. A lapse in her dignity would encourage more attacks on her people. She almost had to thank Maduke for giving her the opportunity to practice wielding Ragnarok before she faced the traitors.

The tunnel might have reached down into molten rock, but it wasn't too large. There weren't any humans on the island, so she could hope that she'd managed not to kill any. She'd aimed down deliberately to minimize the dust thrown up into the atmosphere.

The werewolves were standing around as she dismissed her sword: after a minute a blue-haired one ran to the edge of the pit left by her blood tornado to look around for Maduke, shielding his face when he was met by a hot blast of air from the depths that ruined his clothing and melted his jewelry to his skin, but wasn't fool enough to go jumping down into the rising liquid rock in order to check.

"No way…" A blond one said, dazed.

"She killed the Lord… that brat of a noble killed the Lord! A noble killed the Werewolf Lord! Kill her! Kill her now!" An old-looking one was the first to recognize reality… Or not, because he was idiotic enough to attack the Lord. Kei and Rozaria moved to shield her from his attack.

"Stand aside."

"Lord?" Rozaria raised her other hand to create a second shield as the blue one lunged at Raskreia's back.

Of course she had sensed his decision to attack inside her own blood field, but she didn't want the clan leaders to think she did not consider them capable of doing their duty. They'd endured insults from the traitors along with her.

In answer, Raskreia drew Ragnarok. "Create shields around the battlefield."

When they didn't get it she suppressed an internal sigh. Sometimes she wished she was as foolish as the traitors claimed. It was very difficult to be so much smarter than those around her. She needed to make them understand their will, but speaking the obvious was both excess noise and it would insult their intelligence and undermine their confidence. "There are children and other innocents on this island. They must be shielded from Ragnarok."

As nobles, they had a duty to protect those who could not protect themselves from entering eternal sleep against their wills. That coupled with their duty to obey her orders should override a clan leader's duty… which was not to protect the Lords, they were very capable of protecting themselves, but to ensure the Lords never had a chance to fight personally. Not when humans and even the weaker nobles could not possibly survive if the Lord took the field anywhere near them.

"Of course, Lord!" Kei Ru bowed to ask forgiveness for not executing her order immediately and sprinted for the edge of the battlefield.

Rozaria looked worried for a small second – out of care, not deliberate disrespect – but then teleported to the side opposite the other clan leader.

With the clan leaders occupied generating shields Raskreia permitted herself the liberty of a smile as she turned and flicked another blood tornado at the scum attacking her back. It was one of the Lord's duties to ensure that nobles remained honorable, after all, because so many more were forced into eternal sleep if they were not. It was easier to be honorable if one's opponents were also honorable, according to his companion, and while it irked her to take advice from a law-breaker (blue eyes were forbidden, yet he flaunted them, sometimes even wearing glass to draw attention to them!), she did not mind having a good reason to kill the dishonorable first.

She was glad she'd already regained control over her expression when the blood tornado hit the shield and it flickered like that. She needed to get better at putting less power into her blows, and quickly, or Rozaria and Kei would be exhausted by the effort of maintaining the shields and unable to protect themselves from any werewolves who attacked them trying to escape.

Trying to put as little will behind it as possible, she flicked another attack at an older one, and tched at herself when the blood tornado was twice her height across.

It was no use trying to aim a small attack at someone like that. He reminded her of Lagus Tradio too much for her to entirely suppress the desire to break him. He used up a little more of the tornado's power than she'd expected, at least, and there were two more werewolves who dived in thinking he'd survived long enough in there that they could pull him out, so at least some of the attack's power was spent before it hit the shield.

Hmm, that old man was the one who had ordered an attack on the Lord: obviously he had to die, along with the two who had obeyed Maduke's order to attack noble clan leaders. She'd already dealt with the blue one, the blond was… cooperative enough to announce his presence with a summon. That presented a problem: she had no idea how much power would be used up destroying that summon, but at least she could direct her attack under it, and then use her control over blood to change the direction of the attack?

Yes, it was pleasing when reality complied with theory. The blood tornado flew up into the heavens instead of hitting Raskreia or Kei's shields. It would be visible from quite a distance, but while she might feel sympathetic for anyone the human organization killed because of it, right now she had two clan leaders to protect. Losing two clan leaders already was bad enough: to lose four would look like carelessness, and support Lagus Tradio's argument that she was not competent to be Lord.

Perhaps she should practice hitting them with the sword itself for awhile. That would also give her the opportunity to practice her mind control. Not that she couldn't keep up with them if they tried to dodge, but a Lord couldn't flail around. It was inelegant.

She grimaced after cleaving the blond one's body in two. No, she couldn't practice her mind control on these werewolves, she decided, after repeating the experiment on three more in hopes there was some variation among them, like noble clans. Using mind control on werewolves was nothing like using it on nobles, and she couldn't develop bad habits. With nobles, the challenge was the initial breach of their natural defenses: with werewolves, it was child's play to take instant control of them. Any pureblood child could do it. The challenge with werewolves seemed to be that the longer she remained in control, the more time they had to learn how to oppose her power and develop defenses. If she was less powerful then there might be some value in letting some werewolves live long enough for her to figure out what the most common werewolf defense mechanisms were and how to defeat them, but she was Lord. Once she took control over someone's mind, they would continue to breathe only if she allowed it.

Looking around, she saw that none of the others here were strong enough to justify a blood tornado. That was a pity when she needed the practice reining in her power, but she couldn't put Rozaria and Kei Ru in danger because of her inadequacies.

There were almost a dozen werewolves left: they couldn't all rush in at once without hitting each other, and they paused, looking at each other in dismay. "Surrender," she said calmly before they could make up their minds about who would go first, sending the message into their heads as well despite the fact it would make them more difficult to mind control later. She needed the challenge. "And I may allow your continued existence."

Indeed, she was the only one who could allow them to stay alive. They'd all joined in on an attack on the Lord in the presence of two clan leaders: Rozaria and Kei were required to kill them unless Raskreia ordered otherwise.

"You killed the Lord!" one of them raged.

Raskreia said nothing, because that was the natural outcome of Maduke ordering an attack on her clan leaders in her presence. Even werewolves should be able to figure that out, and she didn't wish to state the obvious.

"We'll die before we let a noble dishonor the family!"

"If that is your will," then she was quite grateful. Werewolves might not be humans, but they were still helpless against a Lord, and it was wrong to attack those who could not fight back. That was why the Lords were not supposed to be allowed to attack anyone. However, if it was their will to die, then using a Lord's wisdom to find a way to keep them alive in order to avoid dishonoring herself would be forcing them to go against their own wills, the greatest crime of all.

It was meaningless for them to fight her, but dying to help her get control over her power and protect the nobles was not a meaningless death. That was good, now she had two reasons not to feel guilty about slaughtering them.

Then again, she thought as they charged her, that word, slaughtering… Should she let one stay alive longer so she had more practice fighting them and their deaths accomplished more? No, it would be cruel to give them false hope, and she couldn't let anyone get the idea that werewolves like these could last more than a second against the Lord of Lukedonia.

When her blood field was empty she dismissed it, and Ragnarok.

Her clan leaders rushed to her side, and were thankfully observant enough not to ask if she was alright.

It was a real pity that Maduke was one of the few in there she could justify using a blood tornado on, and it would have been undignified to attack a peon and let him think he had her permission to live after he insulted her like that. She'd thought that at least one of the werewolves would acknowledge her power and surrender so she could permit them to live and answer questions. Now there was no one left in the ruins of the castle that she could ask about the traitors. But, thanks to Kei Ru and Raskreia's efforts, there were still werewolves relatively nearby.

Raskreia's father taught her very little. That was one of the things Tradio used to argue that she was too young and ignorant to do her duty as Lord. The older clan leaders all knew her father wanted him to be Lord, but the reason her father told Raskreia for why he never answered questions until she learned to stop asking them was that it was a Lord's job to figure things out on their own, and she needed the practice.

One thing he had made very sure to teach her was earthquake safety. It was the only time she had ever left Lukedonia before the attempt to train in an area with very few humans that may have frightened the Union enough to attack her clan leaders to force her to stop trying to master her power, in fact. He had shown her the various types of volcanoes and cracks beneath the earth. He wouldn't do anything that even came close to teaching her how to use her power, but he'd had her watch as he let his own power loose around a few of them, until he decided she had observed enough that she could figure out how it worked on her own.

She used those lessons now. The island was smoking a little, but she confirmed again that this wasn't one of the volcano types that would explode, taking the island with it, or darken the sky, taking most of humanity with it. It wasn't a bad idea to leave the mountain burning to remind them that she was not weak, but it would be irresponsible to use Ragnarok again. Unless the werewolves were sheltering the traitors. Which they were not. Pity, that would have been convenient.

In canon Gejutel was of the opinion that the biggest problem with Raskreia as a Lord/the reason the traitors didn't respect her was that she didn't decapitate enough idiots. Of course he's 'yes good' to her deciding to decapitate people in general, although the whole thing with his baby in Eternal Sleep does mae it more so.

The way the Union looks down on the young Lord kept Maduke from powering up – he wanted the power trip of being able to kill her with both hands tied behind his back. Whoops.

A pissed-off Lord anywhere near a supervolcano would end very badly for the human race. One of the backstory ideas I like playing with – like Raskreia experimenting with her power being responsible for Tunguska – is a pissed-off Lord accidentally caused the Toba eruption approx. seventy thousand years ago. This caused the Lords to remove themselves to Lukedonia, hoping the separate dimension and power-dampening castle would prevent further incidents until hominids became less fragile. They didn't order the rest of the nobles to join them until much later.