The proclamation promised the destruction of the realm's enemies. The decree raised a thousand men from the houses loyal to the Winchester family. Bronzewing legionnaires, Thrush's legendary Rangers, and Lark heavy cavalry and artillery marched on Menagerie after the Winchester banner with its Cardinal wings spread across a field of black and red.

Cardin Winchester held the point atop the spear the Winchesters and their allies' respective war machines formed. Clad in his ancestral armor burning with sorcerous power and the ominous hum of the Winchester family's cutting-edge combat technology, Cardin led the way with a hell-fired blazed path of charred corpses and bleeding bunkers into the hide of Menagerie, the guardian beast-god of the Faunus empire and its subjects.

Cardin sacked Menagerie, razed the royal homes, and scattered the members of the Belladonna ruling family with the simplest spells. For the Faunus Empire, the rape of Menagerie was a day of infamy.

For Cardin, it was Thursday.

Cardin triumphantly returned home, and the welcome from his rapturous subjects was appropriately ceremonial. After Cardin was victoriously paraded atop an armored troop carrier and had accepted the tumultuous acclaim of his subjects, he had stopped at the columns of glory to inspect the campaign's prisoners in the shadow of his family's past victories carved in bas-relief up and down massive ivory columns. These vast structures were themselves trophies from older battles. Cardin's inspection was supposed to be cursory at best; the mines, the pits, or the markets were decisions he left to his servants who were competent enough in their duties. For the last prisoner in the line, however, an enticing female form wearing shackles for bracelets amongst the wretched made Cardin call for a stop.

The woman, the girl more accurately, was forced to her feet and stood before her enemy. Even with the pair of rabbit ears that emerged through her dusty-brown hair, the girl barely tickled Cardin's chin, and her slight frame fit in Cardin's shadow with space to spare.

With the train of his royal cloak wrapped with solemn dignity in his left gauntlet, Cardin's right gauntlet reached out and gently tipped the girl's chin so he could look better at her face. The girl replied with an expression of determined defiance. She was nervous and even scared, but she would not give Cardin the satisfaction of knowing that his height, his armor, his whole presence frightened her.

Behind the iron mask, Cardin smirked as the girl's false bravado amused him. It then pleased him to take his hand from the girl's chin and rip apart the front of the girl's top. To Cardin's delight, the girl's chest was slender, while her breasts were full and proudly presented for her master's pleasure. Did that same pride that filled the girl's chest keep her from screaming or covering herself at her humiliation? It was now Cardin's desire to find out.

With a tyrant's embrace, Cardin pressed the girl to his chest. The chill of his armor against her skin made the girl gasp, which allowed Cardin's mask to fall from his face and press his thin, hard lips against the girl's unguarded mouth.

"What is your name, little one?" Cardin had, at length, asked.

Velvet. A helpless gasp of surrender and despair. Yet, as Cardin threw his cloak around Velvet, it was only in his grasp that she finally felt safe enough to cry.

Revenge and reprisals are the warlord's lot, which is why an attempt on Castel Winchester, while unexpected, was not unprepared for.

Velvet tracked the intruders' progress past Cardin's castle defenses and personal guards in her sound-proofed room with her baby boy in her arms, her ears more than a match for the engineer's best efforts at insulating her chambers from the outside world, and it was easy enough for her to zero in on the sole pair of footsteps running through the castle corridors towards her room.

All the death and violence for this sole person and their near-impossible quest. It was only for the sake of her son that Velvet did not cry for this one person's futile efforts.

The door to her room soon burst open, and a fortunate specter of Velvet's past was framed in the threshold, just as Velvet had remembered her during more innocent times. That dark, velvet beret, that old pair of sunglasses, the stray lock of gold-brown hair that tickled Velvet's cheek when they shared kisses beneath autumn trees.

"Coco."

"Velvet!" Coco replied, "I'm here to take you home!"

"You are trespassing in my home, and for both our sakes', I beg you to leave."

Coco stared blankly at Velvet, and then the expression of confusion behind her sunglasses turned into understanding when she saw the bundle of cloth in Velvet's arms.

"His?"

"And mine," Velvet said.

"How?"

Velvet shrugged and said,

"What his body did not conquer, his love for me claimed."

Coco's response was overcome by a hideous roar as the wall of Velvet's room came apart, brick by earth-shattering brick. Cardin then emerged through the dust and rubble and floated down onto the carpet covering the floor. His ancestral armor burned with sorcerous might and technological glory—an avenging Angel from the pit who would burn the veil of heaven for his love and queen.

Coco brought her weapon to bear, a massive rotary cannon that smoked with furious intent, warmed up from the bodies it had dropped when Coco fought her way to Velvet's room.

Cardin's mask slid across his face, replacing the coldly cruel, blue-eyed fury at the intruder with an emotionless contemplation. It was as if Cardin had already decided to kill Coco, and the question of how painfully Coco would die only required a mechanical, automatic answer.

"Sic Semper Tyrannis, motherfucker!" Coco said as her cannon rolled to life.

"Where my wife sleeps," Cardin replied before he raised a hand that blazed a murderously wintery red.