The dawn was just beginning to break over the horizon as Aranea looked up from where she sat, cat-like, on the roof of Zegnautus Keep. It had been a long, long week, and as the sun rose she was glad to finally be done with it. Not that that meant much, not anymore. It was, what, ten years now since she joined the Empire? Oh, what foolish days they were. She'd been so young back then, and if she could go back in time and give herself any advice, the only thing she would say would be, 'Stay the fuck away from the Empire, kid.' If only. Aranea didn't really consider herself to be the reflective kind. It wasn't particularly her style to sit lamenting on the mistakes she'd made and the failures she'd experienced. It had always been her motto to act, not think. But damn, if this wasn't the day for some serious contemplation about her life choices then she didn't know what was.
She wasn't completely sure what she'd been expecting when Verstael had asked her to accompany him into the research sector of Zegnautus Keep. She wasn't completely sure why he'd asked her in the first place. The man was a first class creep and she'd never particularly bothered to conceal her opinion of him. The only thing that came to mind was that the other primary slimeball in charge, Ardyn Izunia, had something to do with it. She wouldn't put it past him. Certainly, it would have been enough to put anyone off their lunch. Or their job.
If she'd known what the Empire was doing to the daemons she hunted for them...would she have stopped? Perhaps not. Money was money, after all. But all the money in the world wouldn't have been able to sway her if they'd showed her those monsters from the outset. A shiver ran down her spine just thinking about it. Really though, she should probably have seen this coming. She ought to have known that nothing good would come of anything that Ardyn was involved in, and he had his fingerprints all over this mess. Who thought that hunting and catching daemons was a good idea anyway? They were monsters, through and through. 'You, obviously,' her subconscious whined at the back of her head. She'd have told it to shut up, but she hadn't fallen to such depths quite yet.
For a moment, she wondered whether asshole the third—Ravus Nox Fleuret, knew about this clusterfuck too. Probably not. Ravus was an ass, and had probably the worst attitude of any of her 'superiors,' but he wasn't pure evil like Verstael and Ardyn. Then again it wasn't exactly like he'd be able to back out if he didn't like where the Empire was headed. Well, he would, he just wouldn't survive for very long afterwards, and he was smart enough to realise that. Every once and a while she almost felt pity for him. Almost.
One person who definitely didn't know was the Oracle, even if her brother had been fairly unsubtly feeding her information about what was going on in the Empire for years. Ravus had about as much sense in him as a Garula, that was for sure. She honestly wasn't completely sure how he hadn't been found out and summarily executed yet. Her Ardyn senses began tingling whenever she thought about it though. She shuddered again. No, there was no way the Oracle knew what was going on in Zegnautus, if she did then she'd probably have tried to spark some sort of rebellion by now. Might've worked too. She certainly had a certain charisma her brother was sorely lacking in, and it was daring as hell of her to continue with her mother's role in spite of the Empire pointing guns at her from all sides.
How the hell had she even gotten here? The answer came to her fairly easily. Same reason everyone else had through all of history. Just following orders. She hated the phrase and the cowardice that went with it, knowing it was no godsdamned excuse. But now it also applied to her, and never in her life had she felt such...shame. Aranea Highwind wasn't supposed to feel shame. She had made her living off killing people or things for money, and never once had she felt ashamed for it. Never once had she felt ashamed of asking for more, for doing the bare minimum expected of her, for deliberately screwing people over if it benefitted her. But this...this was something else. And even she couldn't sit and say 'just following orders' when her time came to make amends.
Could she even do that anymore? Wasn't it too late now? More and more people were vanishing every day, and orders from 'Command' were getting increasingly vague and unsettling. Silence settled over Gralea like a choking smog. It shouldn't be like this. And she was at least partially to blame. Because she'd known. She'd always known—at least a little bit, that something wasn't right. That the MTs that Niflheim had created with such carelessness were something else—something wrong. That the Empire shouldn't have her chasing daemons when there was a war they ought to be fighting instead. But perhaps there was something she could still do...
Her motto was to act, not think, but this time she needed to think about it. Soon they would be sending her after the Prince...then, she might be able to do something.