Smoke rose from the charred ashes of what was once her city. Her home. The mighty city of Haven. The city whose wall stood against the tests of time and repelled thousands of invading armies like a cliff warding off the ever hungry waves of the seas.
Gone in a matter of hours. Eviscerated and massacred like the armies it had held against. Nothing but a pile of tattered rubble.
The beast had made it look easy. It's fire melting stone, it's tailing thrashing and shaking the very foundations of the earth itself. It had been easy for the beast to take everything away from her, from her people.
Haven would be avenged. She swore it.
"We must request aid from the Marcher Lords. They will provide it, lest they wish to be known as the lord who abandoned the people of Haven."
"But at what cost? What will be the price for their assistance? We all know that no lord is truly generous, and that whatever kindness they pretend to give comes with strings attached. And let us not forget that the Marcher Lords have been discontent with what they have seen as a lack of crown intervention against the bandit tribes."
Funny. Not even the destruction of their homes prevented her councillors from arguing.
"The Crown has been purging the very bandits the Marcher Lords complain about." Pyrrha ground out coldly, hands gripping the arms of her 'throne'. It was a wooden chair that had been bought from a now destitute antiques dealer. Pyrrha's true throne lied buried beneath a mountain of blackened marble. "If they are so incompetent that they cannot handle the survivors of the very foes I have defeated then I question the need for their aid at all."
Her councillors glanced at one another wearily. They dared to argue about politics now. Their homes had been destroyed. Their people burned and buried beneath the rubble of their own houses. Hundreds of thousands were homeless and cold and starving in a vast camp outside the ruins of their former city and yet they bickered like the children they were.
"My Queen we cannot survive without aid." One of her fools for advisors stated cautiously.
"And we cannot survive if word of Haven's destruction spreads. What do you think the Atlesians will do once they realise the heart of Mistral is gone? Do you believe they will allow the continuation of our unchecked interference in their affairs? What of Vale? Will they continue to allow our merchantmen to pay a lesser toll as agreed by the Vytal Treaty? What do you think the Marcher Lords you think of beseeching for aid will do, once they realise their Queen is homeless and without a fief? Will they remain as loyal as they were when I had the heart of Mistral at my back or will they revolt?" Pyrrha demanded and her ever wise councillors remained silent. The Crown was unprecedentedly weak. It's treasury plundered by the very beast that had brought Haven low and the political power it held due to the sheer size and productivity of Haven now gone.
"We need aid. Yet if we beg for it we will be weak and would be usurpers will decide there is no better time to try their luck against me. Where is Lord Hector?" She asked.
"With his wife my Queen." One of her jesters disguised as councillors replied. Pyrrha hid the wince she felt. The poor woman had been trapped beneath a burning rooftop during the destruction of Haven, trying to save her young boy. She did not have long in this world before she would join her son in the cold embrace of the Great One.
"Send word to him he has my permission to borrow 120,000 Lien from the Banker's Union and a further 150,000 front the Banker's Guild." Pyrrha said, not bothering to stop herself from rolling her eyes at the expected outcries.
"270,000 Lien?!"
"The interest alone will kill us!"
"Nevermind interest! We have no money to even pay off half of what would be owed regardless!"
"My Queen surely you-"
"Do you challenge me?" Pyrrha asked, feeling a viscous satisfaction storm inside her at the silence that suddenly fell. It was suicide to challenge the authority of Mistral's monarch regardless of their skill at ruling. A monarch was the absolute power on this earth, given to them by the Great One Herself. To go against the monarch was to go against the Goddess and no-one risked the wrath of the Goddess.
"O-Of course not Your Greatness! We all know the true might of your Imperial Majesty but we fear that some of the…lesser consequences of such an action may have escaped the notice of your great eye due to their insignificance." Grovelled one of her fools.
"Oh?" She asked, raising a brow and feeling amused at the man's grovelling. "Do tell what has escaped my 'great eye'."
"W-Well the sheer size of the loan significantly outnumbers what we have left in the Treasury. Even if all the funds are used to rebuild Haven we would only haven enough to rebuild perhaps a fourth of the city and construction would take an indeterminable amount of time, not to mention the rubble from the ruins would have to first be cleared. The interest would add up overtime and we simply just would not be able to repay the loan, damaging the Crown's credibility greatly."
"I have a plan to acquire funds you need not fear. I simply need a starting loan to begin them." Pyrrha replied.
"My Queen how certain are you that your plan will enable you to repay the loan and in time to prevent total bankruptcy?"
"Certain enough. All you need do is send the messenger to Lord Hector. I trust he will handle the rest. The rest of you may go and spread the word of my newest Diátagma."
"My Queen?" One of them asked.
"No-one is to spread word of what happened to Haven beyond the Guardian Forts. Merchants must be vetted and due their business in the Guardian Forts themselves until the city has been rebuilt to some extent. In the meantime, we will begin work clearing the rubble ourselves. There are more than enough people for this. Any who break this command will be executed. Any merchant who passes through the Guardian Forts from this moment will be executed and their goods seized. Am I understood?"
"Yes, Your Imperial Majesty." They murmured as one, filing out of her tent.
Pyrrha sighed, hating the way the chair dug into her back. Hating the weight that rested on her shoulders and the stress that came with it. Most importantly she hated herself, allowing the weight of the dreadful burden that was responsibility from turning her into something she knew a younger her would despise.
She wanted to sleep, to rest for a while. But every time she shut her eyes she saw yellow flames flicker, heard the wails of a terrified city and felt the tremors as the beast forced its way through stone to the heart of the Imperial Palace, the treasury. She saw golden eyes filled with malice and hatred, and she felt the fear that gripped her then gripped her once more. It would have been easy to do something brave. To throw the spear of the dead guardsmen slumped near her into it's exposed, vulnerable eye. Maybe that would have driven off the beast and Haven would be damaged but standing.
But she had frozen. The Red Queen froze. She had fought in battle, executed her enemies and slaughtered dragons almost single handedly. But a single golden eye had made her freeze.
Something about it had bugged her. The hatred that dwelled in it was different to the malice she'd seen in the eyes of other dragons, dragons she had slain. It was one of familiarity, bred of contempt. It was one of spite and frustration and anger. It was the same anger that dwelled within the eyes of Pyrrha's chattel, foes she had defeated in battle. But that then raised a question of its own. If Pyrrha was right and the anger in that dragons' eyes had been the same as the burned in the eyes of her slaves, then what and most importantly who had been able to enslave a dragon, let alone a dragon of such power?