The panic in the capital was not helped at all by an unusually early snow that blew in. If the earthquake wasn't enough to get people quaking, sudden snow, even if brief and gentle, sent shocks of terror and fear through the population. It turned out that getting the granaries early was a very good idea, although Pina had to call for reinforcements when the crowds grew too panicked.

With some help from the garrisons, she secured the capital granaries. A bush of shivering pike or swords was enough to keep the peasantry away to start with, but hunger compelled men terribly. Give them long enough, and they'd choose death by a spear over starvation.

The earthquake and the gentle snow had thoroughly terrified everyone in the capital, even on the highest levels of society… It happened to her, but more importantly, it happened to the train of senators who approached the granaries on the backs of their mighty destriers. They loomed over Pina, heavy warhorses snorting and scraping the ground with their hooves.

"Princess Pina," they dipped their heads and spewed the token pleasantries. Being called "Your Highness" wasn't terribly new, but being praised for founding the Rose Knights and instilling them with discipline was definitely a new one. Funny how she was correct now of all times.

"Senator! Is there something you need from this servant of the empire?" She put on her most saccharine smile.

"Princess. We hoped that you might discuss the control of the wheat…"

"I was planning a dole."

"Wonderful, princess! You are magnanimous as your father…" After more circling around, he finally got to his point: the princess would need some help in making sure everything was distributed fairly, wouldn't she?

She would. Just not with his help. She said as much, and his expression soured. But between him and the granary was a hedge of spears. Perhaps, if he had attempted to rally the people, if he had made to storm the granary before her first distribution, he would have done it, but respect for the imperial line won out, however narrowly. He limped away.

It wasn't popular, restricting the amount of food that everyone could eat, but there wasn't really another option. Her mathematical estimates were rough, but she figured that it would be a bad winter, even with the casualties from the earthquake reducing their need for food slightly. (Pots split into pieces, spilling their guts across the ground. Roads to repair so commerce could flow, lack of housing…)

Perhaps, if things were bad, their diets would have to be… supplemented. If a few horses needed to die for the sake of the empire…

Well, that was perhaps a bit hyperbolic- they needed food, but the value of a horse and its rider on patrol outweighed it. The people were scared.

The state of Valles offered a simple deal: they would join the Union (or perhaps just make it a union of multiple states in the first place) and would pay for their hijinks in recently harvested crops. Well, perhaps not said exactly like that, but the offer of food was clearly a sort of olive branch.

It would be helpful, tremendously so. While the river and still-incomplete canal provided a link to Italica, one that could bring foodstuffs by the boatload, they couldn't discount the feelings of the city. To starve the city would be an obvious disservice to them and would risk the lives of those Americans who would winter in Italica. Public discontent had already boiled up with the presence of industry- any reactionaries in Italica would have a field day with the Americans eating them out of house and home.

Becoming too dependent on Italica would cause its own set of problems. Their position downriver from them would prove a help there: they would stand between Italica and the sea, a Vicksburg of their own. An independent food source would give them even more leverage over Italica, a breadbasket to really live off of. Well, if the estimates in the letter were correct.

Legitimizing the Filibusters left a bitter taste in his mouth. A bunch of idiot runaways, toppling local governments… Interestingly, he didn't see any hints that they were stopping. Maybe they all settled down with their ill-gotten gains, but something told him they didn't just manage to calmly dismount the tiger.

He'd bet his right hand that if they integrated the Valles, they'd still get up to shenanigans, somehow. They would need a military to hold the region down, so that would either mean deploying his own troops to the area or allowing militias to form. Because trusting armed civilians to hold down a region won by armed civilians certainly wouldn't lead to more of the same thing happening or anything like that.

What limited the Filibusters at the moment was a lack of firearms and propellants. He didn't think they'd be lacking for lead, but finding saltpeter and sulfur could prove to be a real trick out there. Lack of supplies could certainly slow them down, but he didn't think they'd all just walk back to America to be chastised.

Tolerating this sort of wild adventuring would have repercussions… but if they were offering food and the foundations of what could become a much larger, mixed-origin army, there was some reason to consider them. Some. He had read his Roman histories, knew what would happen if the armies grew disloyal and unattached to the state.

That would be a problem, wouldn't it? As they expanded their 'Union' they would have to make their way into people's minds, into their conception of politics. Instilling American identity in a people used to divine right- in a country where superpowered apostles roamed- would be difficult. Perhaps impossible, in the same way he knew.

They had already accepted Italica's friendship, and all that would mean.

America would be made anew, a crossbreed of Saderan institutions and old-world principles, spawned in a fortress city on a holy hill.

Winter crept ever closer, and eventually, the canal project was delayed. Progress was actually quite good, but wasting valuable calories on work in the cold seemed like a bad idea.

The state of housing in Alnus wasn't stellar, and it hadn't been even before the refugees came in. For the less fortunate– no surprises regarding who that happened to be- space was quite tight. American architectural knowledge was all well and good, but putting it into practice was another beast entirely. At the very least, their growing fabric industry ensured sufficient clothes and blankets.

Everyone was gently encouraged to learn a craft or do something productive during the winter days, if not already engaged in manufacture. Not something too strenuous, but something that should hopefully keep their minds on survival and not on the mess that was the Valles letter. Well, if you could ignore the fact that the food they were eating was, in part, from the Valles.

It wasn't anywhere near the standards of food they had grown used to in old America, but it was basically all they had. Processed white bread was a distant memory now, like so much of the world they had left behind on the other side of the Gate. Office workers picked up carpentry, handled planes instead of paperwork, and store clerks distributed rations.

All the while, the machinery of the American government hummed on. How many representatives was the State of Valles to receive when compared to Alnus? They certainly didn't have a census yet.

Obviously, they were interested in keeping power skewed towards Alnus, and they had the means for it. They had the most technology, but they also had legitimacy. Alnus Hill held America's courts and whatever passed for her halls of power. (Drafty halls that chilled when the wind blew in, but halls of power nevertheless.)

They wouldn't be impeding the growth of institutions in the Valle- they were just making sure it was done right. That is, not by rebellious idiots.

The Filibusters were nearing the sea now, laying plans to take the great cities and towns of the coast. The gates would be shut tight to any suspect individuals, but hunger would do much to encourage sympathizers inside the walls. At least that was the hope.

While their numbers had grown significantly, garnished by revolting peasantry, they didn't have siege pieces. Those were a bit too unwieldy to steal, after all, and left them with whatever catapults or collapsing tunnels they could slap together themselves.

There was also the lingering thought of magic. While the Filibusters were bold, they were all aware of how deadly magic or monsters could be. What few magicians they found generally proved unwilling to join up with them- they typically had some vested interest in the social order, after all. They were patronized by nobles, made the lion's share of their money off of commissions and the like.

(Some token attempts to 'forcibly convince' magicians were made, but they were always considered risky. The Americans didn't know the proper way to imprison mages, after all.)

Behind the siege camps, there was the whole of the 'state' of the Valles, hundreds of captured farmsteads that once formed the Empire's breadbasket. The produce now served as bait or a bargaining chip for the people of the cities: hunger was persuasive, and any militiamen foolish enough to sally out in an attempt to grab food were brutally chastened.

Unfortunately, food was about all they had at the moment. There were some token efforts by blacksmiths and the like to produce firearms and such, to begin properly arming the people, but it was proving difficult, alongside acquiring gunpowder. Massive saltpeter farms were being set up, but those took time, and sulfur was another difficulty…

Civil unrest in Valles was its own sort of beast. Most farmers enjoyed their liberation from the feudal yoke- and whatever they had snatched from their previous landlords- and while they liked American liberties, some were perhaps a bit too liberal. Law was, at best, meted out by militias, and practically all sentences were extrajudicial. It was not a good time to be too divorced from your community, and previous grudges were often paid back with interest.

Slowly, American law crept out from Alnus Hill, carried and enforced by mounted military policemen, but there was only so much they could do during winter when the snow began to settle and their feed had to be rationed carefully. Outside of Alnus and Italica, American winter was its own special type of disorderly…

The scheme to kill the dragon was thought over and argued over almost to the point of insanity. Dozens of plans were drafted and discarded all while the dragon rose hell around them; however, a 'workable' solution was reached.

Unfortunately, even their workable plan had a few issues. It would be a very hungry winter for the dark elves- although that was probably preferable to being dead- but with their food supplies, something like a bait could be set up. The dragon would occasionally take small breaks when it had eaten its fill, and all the food the elves had accumulated would work… even if it wasn't the preferred dish of humanoids.

What made feeding the dragon worthwhile? Some nasty poisons whipped up by the Americans and Lelei's magic. It took a lot of squinting at chemical reactions and a lot more very careful work, but the end result was a very nasty mix of chemicals that were placed in the cavities of the dragon's food.

Unfortunately, the poison didn't prove quite enough to kill the beast, even if it did make the dragon retreat back to its nest to suffer from… well, something like a draconic bellyache. With its energies mostly devoted to protecting its eggs and using its strange magics to fight the poisons in its guts… the Americans could set up something big.

If you sat down and did the math, it was probably something like a few percent of all the high explosive on the planet going off at once. Admittedly, that wasn't saying much- there was very little to go around- but for the dark elves, it was something like a theomachy, a divine battle that sent the hills rumbling as smoke rose to the heavens.

When the smoke cleared, they could see their work: the eggs were shattered, half-developed embryos freed from their eggs and caught up in death, while their terrible dam wept foul blood from a grievous wound. There was cheering- until the dragon turned to look at them, letting out an ear-splitting roar. The Americans and the elves ran for the caves and hid, the heat of the dragon's fire so terrible that they could feel it deep underground. If not for some magic on the elves' and Lelei's parts, they might have cooked or asphyxiated in those tight passages…

Creeping out of the caverns they hid in, they saw that the dragon had not gone quietly- in its last moments, it had been possessed by the fury of a grieving mother, and the land suffered for it. Although they didn't know it at the time, the Americans and their new elvish allies (or subjects, considering how thoroughly their previous way of life had been destroyed) were looking at the beginning of a massive swath of destruction.

Sadera and the Kingdom of Elbe were in no state to estimate the amount of damage done, but it had to be hundreds of acres of prime forest turned into charcoal, farms obliterated, and countless livestock cooked in their fields. It was said the mountainsides steamed where the dragons had passed, and the land where the beast had finally died was so hot that it took a day before anyone could even approach the corpse.

Why didn't Giselle interfere to protect the beasts? Well, there was a bit of a divine spat going on. Hardy wasn't on the friendliest terms with the rest of her pantheon at the moment, what with the Americans seizing a holy site and interrupting the usual business of worship and sacrifices. An undercover apostle had already investigated the American church at Italica- one that was already accruing tithes.

Rumors of American religion had already spread broadly, and the apostle in question picked up a few things while quietly observing a mass. Theirs was a jealous God. A God who shamed the deities of Egypt with signs and wonders, who shattered the empires and brought the haughty low with a rod of iron.

Omake:

Lelei looked up at the stars, alongside one of the Americans. It was a marvelous sight, but their discussion eventually wandered onto the subject of models of the cosmos. More specifically, Lelei took some issue with the heliocentric model.

"But the stars stay the same brightness throughout the year, right?"

"I suppose…"

"So it must be so far away as to make parallax negligible. And if that's far away, and still has a visible width… a heliocentric model would require stars several times the diameter of Earth's orbit."

"That's…. Uh, well. It's what the scientists back home agreed on."

"The scientists won't impress Rondel." Lelei shot back.

"Rondel?"

"The city of mages."

Another chapter with flags yay. Check out the Archive for such juicy details. This time, war pennants. The first is a variation on the American flag. The second flag… well, that's if things start getting really crazy in Sadera.

Not a big fan of Nina Paley for the most part but Apocalypse Animated is this spectacular set of gifs depicting Revelation, and it's a total trip. Go check it out, it's all creative commons.