"You are fidgeting," I smiled at my wife as she adjusted her formal dress. A beautiful composition of yellow silk overlaid by dozens of long knotwork patterns running up the flowing dress interwoven with silver threads. Her red mane was pulled back into a bun held by a sun-like headpiece. The Tiara-pin was matched by a necklace of opals and bands on gems running over her girdle and sleeves.

It was the dress for a lady of court and my wife wore it as if she was born to it, only my eyes saw the minute fidgeting in her fingers and the irregular flicker in her green eyes.

"I am," she whispered back in High Gothic while passing a hand over the silver markings under her eyes. Accents were a funny thing, Morygen spoke High Gothic with a formality utterly absent from her native tongue. "And you are not making it better by pointing it out."

"Perhaps," I shot her back a teasing smile and acted to reassure her.

Which got me a slap on the rear and an amused frown.

"It's only fun when I do it," She laughed before looking me up and down. "That aside, I think you look fit for court."

"With how much we spent on a tailor," I muttered as I inspected my own garb.

It amounted to a tunic scaled up to my size in the Ailbe colors. My belt was a heavy thing of gold-threaded knotwork and interwoven chains of gold. High-knitted sandals of Ur-Bear leather (another of the horrifying megafauna of the world) and numerous bands running up my arms and rounding my neck. The worst of it had been piercing the skin of my ears quickly enough to get the silver rings into place before the skin healed. It was all topped off by the knot my hair was pulled up into and bound by a Sun-shaped broach.

I felt like a fool.

"I hope that I do not look anywhere near as ridiculous as I feel," I admitted.

The outfit had cost a damned fortune, Morygen wore gems of her house and her dress had been weaved as tribute for her House. Every ornament that I wore had to be hand-crafted to suit my size.

Morygen laughed and rested her head on my stomach, "You're as handsome as always."

I snorted.

"Well, I suppose that it is not every day that one receives indorsement from a king," I admitted.

"Not every day," Morygen said theatrically as she adjusted my belt. "Although I think that you might have taken a bit too much off the king don't you think?"

"In fairness," I smiled. "It is not a perfect process and he did tell me to lean towards the side of caution."

The king now looked two of that world's years younger than the crown prince and was more than a little pleased with my success in the endeavor.

"And now you will have some royal backing at the summit," She winked mischievously.

"As it happens," I nodded.

The Guildmaster had managed to arrive unharmed some weeks past despite a tragic attack on his caravan. They claimed that they would have been felled by the suspiciously well-armed 'bandits' were it not for the miraculous aid of a pair of shadowy figures that carved through the bandit ranks like a damned lawnmower.

I was rather pleased that the Fear Gorta were proving a reliable ally.

The remaining Oathmasters and Sect-Masters would be arriving in the coming weeks for the summit.

And then I will make my move, I smiled.

"Try to keep your 'I'm going to rule the world' smile hidden during court," she poked at my side.

"I can only promise to try," I laughed.

There was a strange relief in admitting your nature to yourself.

I was a Primarch and a Primarch was a being that conquered their world unless they had a sizeable portion of their brain removed.

I had not intention of being a tyrant and was already formulating ways of avoiding it but even then, I had to count myself fortunate.

I had been lucky, I had landed on a world that needed to be conquered.

It was only paying lip-service to my morals, but it was more than I had thought I would get.

"Your plan is mad," she shook her head. "Knowing your luck, it'll work but it is still mad."

"Madness is relative," I teased.

"Something that you make a fine effort to remind me of daily," She countered.

"And I am relatively sane compared to my brothers," I pointed out.

She gave me a withering look, "I'll believe they are all you say when I see them, I'll not believe in horned nipples until I see them with my own eyes."

"Horned nipples, a shield on a backpack, chains, sleeveless void armor, entire human torsos," I listed off. "You will see every possible combination of lunacy."

"Horrifying," Morygen said in mock aggrievement. "And here I was thinking that you'd need a warning about how eccentric the court can get with court dress."

"And my brothers are sane compared to some of the wonders that you will see almost literally littering the heavens," I continued with genuine mirth making me smile at the mild horror on Morygen's face.

"Well it's a good thing that I'm open to new experiences," She shook her head while reaching handing me Calyburne in it's new silver-lined scabbard and tying it to my belt.

"Speaking of new experiences," I continued. "You really should walk me through those rituals again so that I can avoid making a fool of myself."

"You have a perfect memory," She raised a brow.

"True," I acknowledged. "But practice does make perfect, does it not?"

She stared at me cautiously for a moment before adopting a look of mock outrage, "You just think that I look funny when I do the rituals!"

Dress or not, Morygen reacted to my amused confirmation in a decidedly unladylike manner.

By which I mean that she leapt up to slap me without force.

She landed in my arms and dropped her outrage in favor of laughter.

"You really need to hurry up and make me taller," She laughed. "I'm too damned short for this!"

…

I had long since discovered that castle Wygalois was a place of insane decorative standards.

Or at least that had been my impression until I entered the main halls leading to the throne room.

The halls were covered in long murals to dedicated to the Immram, the Final Knight of Gwyar.

A stylized giant in steel plate fighting all sorts of great beasts and armies of small men with swings of his blade and conjuring lightning from his outstretched hands. Other symbols were suns, outstretched hands reaching towards the heavens and winged lions among countless other variants which I supposed were meant to represent the nobility of the kingdom from the way in which they ended merged to the form of the giant.

The colors were etched into steel and stone alike and colored by dyed steels and corded patterns of cloth.

Somehow the mass of different materials so painstakingly integrated made it more grandiose as its sagas stretched deeper into the fortress, the knight becoming more grand with each tale as we proceeded down the halls.

House Ailbe marched down the hall in ceremonial garb while crowds of lesser nobility lined the halls to either side of us, the vassals of our house arranged from eldest sworn to the more recent conquests. Each house head held a tall banner embroidered with their crest, great banners swaying under the light cast by great crystalline chandeliers which relayed light through some Treasure which I did not recognize.

Our delegation was led by Lord Antur. The rejuvenated man carried himself well in a garb which outshone every other regalia present, silks over an ancient suit of burnished adamantium said to have been worn by the ancient knights of the Ailbe. On his brow he wore a circlet of overlapping sunbursts made from red gold and embedded with great gems of polished topaz and cut rubies. In his ringed hands he carried a banner twice his height made from two staves of intertwined gold and bronze which forked off at their apex to hold onto the ancient banner of the house.

Behind him came his wife in a gown of red and bronze ringed with white to represent her house of birth and overlain with a latticework of bronze and a thin circlet of diamond and topaz. Thin chains of white gold ran down the latticework and bound into a thin knotwork belt. The entire piece had been commissioned to emphasize her rejuvenated form save for the gold dust trailing her eyes to symbolize a matron. The woman took entirely too much joy in her children to disguise place as a mother despite once more resembling a maid.

I marched along with my wife behind them as their nearest sworn kin, their daughters and sons kneeling elsewhere in the castle for they were sworn to other houses and their heir still away seeing to some enterprise.

Then Ymer and her cousins in complex pieces and the white eye-marks of blossoming youths and behind them the highest ranking members of the household in pieces worn by a hundred generations of predecessors.

I found myself liking the fondness for patterns and meanings behind everything that the people of Gwyar did. House sigils to show allegiance, knot works for strength, lattices for mental strength, chains for duty, armor for honor, gems for virtues and a hundred different meanings. One could literally write a reasonably sized encyclopedia for every hidden purpose for the dress and even the meanest beggar tried to incorporate some meaning into his garb even if it was a crude knotwork belt of rags.

I felt horribly out of place with my freshly made jewels and somewhat excessive ornamentation given my relative lack of status. It hardly made me more comfortable that something inside me was thoroughly aware of how I was outshining everyone present due to my sheer scale.

Each delegation rose as we passed and join in our progression until we reached the gates of the throne room at the head of a small army of nobles. None were allowed to speak in these hallowed halls except by royal leave so the army matched in a cacophony of clinking boots, swaying cloth, ringing chains and sandaled step without a single voice.

Even the cacophony was ordered, Morygen had taught me the movement pattern for the great ritual which we were undergoing. How my own steps and movements could add to the song of the march which had been painfully orchestrated for weeks in advance.

The throne room was at the exact heart of the fortress and the gate stood before a crossroads where each of the five chief lords stood at the head of their own delegation.

I idly listed off each of the five houses but they paled before the monstrosity which was the door to the throne room proper.

The titan-sized double gates were a stylized tale of the kingdom's foundation.

The bottom of the doorway showed hundreds if not thousands (one thousand, four hundred and seventy-two but a primarch's mind can be distractingly pedantic) of nondescript figures warring on each other with the stylized rise and fall of cities around them. However, the warring figures waned and then vanished towards the center of the frame from where six great knights of gold and silver arose from what I gathered was a relief of Wygalois and marched upward in a v-like pattern over the gate. Each literal knight was mid-strike bringing down great swords, lances and hammers upon the warring masses below, I idly noted that I recognized the Ailbe sun on one of the stylized breastplates.

Their cloak were caught upwards from the strength of their blows and a miniature narrative for each of the knights drifted up the gate. Some fought armies, others great beasts and one even fought a great demon, but they all culminated the same way.

Five knights swore their oaths before the one whose legend rose the highest and raised his blade to the apex of the gate.

Quite the door, I mused as ancient mechanisms ground to life and granted us admission.