2026 Monthly Story Challenge #8

Dragonslumber Part 1 (Wordcount 16,600)

By Jayde Holmes

______________________________________________________________

The Invader and the Egg

The Empire of Chaane never reached a consensus on whether it was better for the emperor to be asleep or active. Emperor Lacaan the Sixth had been a sleeping emperor, laying transformed from reptilian man to giant beast in the Dragon Chamber with his ten heirs.

There were no public viewings of the chamber in those days, but royal artwork suggests it was possibly even grander than it is today. Gold is needed for the transformation from reptilian to dragon, so Lacaan and his heirs laid on piles of it. But it was not just gold the royals were given for their dragonslumber. Jewels and tomes and magnificent clothes and artworks filled the circular room. Above the slumbering green dragons was the base of the Dreamspire, and a giant pearl made from the ancestral dragon Chaane hung at its base, spreading Lacaan’s consciousness into the dreams of his subjects.

A sleeping emperor had an intimate view of his empire. He could come to his subjects in dreams, in a way, and was able to wake whenever he sensed a problem that needed his attention. Otherwise, the Council of Lords his mother Maarigee had formed during her reign handled the daily running of the empire, with a trusted representative of the emperor keeping them in check.

One of the problems with a sleeping emperor was that the pearl could only link the emperor to other descendants of Chaane. There were blind spots in the empire that a sleeping emperor could not see, resulting in problems that only an active emperor, talking face to face with their subjects and leading armies or diplomats to troubled areas, could fix. And of course, foreign relations were neglected while the emperor was in dragonslumber.

Long ago, Lacaan’s sister Sama had been the preferred heir. She had planned to be an active emperor, who travelled to the outer provinces to smooth over tensions, and who would establish trade deals to refill a treasury depleted by three generations of sleeping emperors. A sleeping emperor consumed excessive amounts of food and gold, more than even the most decadent of active emperors.

The council at the time though were quite happy with an emperor who did less direct ruling, so they crowned Lacaan as soon as Maarigee died and married Sama off to the King of Nessa. The High Lord of the Council announced that if she wanted to secure an alliance with their neighbours, marriage was the best way she could do so.

Sama had gone along with her humiliation, believing it was necessary for peace within the empire. Her grandson, Tsvalai, proved to be less forgiving. He was denied the throne of Nessa due to his place in the birth order, but he could feel Emperor Lacaan in his dreams, lording it over the empire once promised to Sama. Before he even reached adulthood, he set out to avenge his grandmother.

Tsvalai came to Chaane with a small cavalry of beastriders and a battalion of firelance experts. Some sources state that even at this time, his firelancers were experimenting with prototype hand cannons. That force would not have been enough to conquer Chaane, but he was also able to recruit jaded Chaaneans of Nessan heritage and Forsi freedom fighters, who’d resisted all attempts to be assimilated into the empire. As they marched through the outer territories, regular green-scaled Chaanean people joined him, believing that the return of an active emperor would bring relief from Lacaan’s massive taxes.

He was even able to find allies with connections to the palace, allowing him to strike directly at the throne.

As Tsvalai marched towards the capital city of Dii’antaa, the ancient city on the plateau full of stone towers and basking gardens, his agents oversaw a bloodbath in the dragon chamber. Lacaan did not see it coming. Or if he did, he could not wake up or warn his representative in time.

Lacaan Six and his heirs were slaughtered. Tsvalai loyalists hung his banner in the streets, declaring the return of beloved princess Sama. Or at least of her spirit. Lacaan’s loyalists were powerless to stop Tsvalai’s advance. With the sleeping heirs all purged there was no consensus on which of Lacaan’s many other children and grandchildren should lead. Battles raged in the palace walls, fought by pen and poison, as different strands of propaganda wove their way through the streets.

If Tsvalai’s propaganda had won, then history would tell the tale of a long-lost Prince of the Linage returning to right the injustice done to noble Sama. Of how he purged the palace of corrupt officials squabbling for the right to turn one of their children into a greedy sleeping dragon whilst the people were robbed.

The artist Palaani painted a masterpiece depicting Tsvalai returning the gold and jewels of the outer provinces to their people. Two massive pigbeasts stood beside him towing wagons of gold, and his scales seemed much greener than a Nessan prince was likely to have.

He would have remained an active emperor, since even in those early days his older siblings saw the Chaanean territories he had claimed as theirs. Him and his descendants would have become protectors of the empire, in a way that greedy, lazy, sleeping dragon king Lacaan Six could never have been. He easily could have been the hero of our history.

Instead, a dancing girl, Ilzig, placed her freshly laid egg on the throne and offered to be regent until Lacaan’s youngest came of age. She had been Lacaan’s conjugal during his last waking, and all the factions of the council, army, and royal family had viewed her as easy to control. They united around Lacaan’s last egg, which conveniently didn’t make any demands or play favourites, and finally they barricaded the capital.

Tsvalai became a foreign conqueror, who slayed benevolent Lacaan and his children during their slumber. Who terrorized the outer territories alongside Forsi cultists, and who besieged the capital for two years, starving the citizens.

During this bloody invasion, the egg split apart during a war cabinet. Ilzig had placed it on the throne during the meeting as a reminder to the generals who ignored her that there was still a royal family for them to heed, but she had not expected it to hatch yet. Two eggteeth cracked the shell open, and two reptilian girls fell through the eggshells at the same time.

It is said that seeing the birth of the twin empresses gave minor general Omtaan the idea of destroying the reservoir walls and flooding Tsvalai’s main encampment. When the invader was forced to retreat, the new empresses, so obviously born to rule, were credited with his defeat.

Sereg and Maake

The two girls were named Sereg and Maake. Or rather, Sereg the Fourth and Maake the Second.

The Chaane empire had been founded at a time where males ruled the worldly kingdom, females the church, and those that didn’t fit into either category were ignored. That philosophy was challenged when Sereg the First succeeded her father due to a lack of male offspring, and defeated when she named her daughter Maake as her successor in spite of her male offspring.

Ilzig insisted on the names, despite opposition from powerful members of Lacaan’s inner circle. Ilzig would go on to insist on more controversial things as the twins grew. She chose co-mothers from amongst her commoner dancer friends, instead of from the daughters of the council lords. She invited a Forsi priest to bless the girls after their various baptisms, and as they became old enough for tutors, she insisted on them having teachers from as many provinces and ethnicities as she could manage.

“It’s too dangerous for them to leave the palace.” Ilzig said when challenged. “We need another way to help them understand all the people they will rule.”

Ilzig’s eccentricities were tolerated because anyone who offered to replace her became a perceived danger. She still tried to come across as a puppet regent, but she was developing the skill of being selectively controllable, changing which lords she allowed to pull her strings depending on what she thought about their policies. Her influence did not go ignored, and the earliest memories Sereg and Maake formed were of being played as pawns in various plots to oust their mother.

In the third year of their lives, and the fourth of their reign, the invader Tsvalai became stable enough in his conquered city of Newea that he could invade Inner Chaane again. This time, his army was well equipped with the newly invented Nessan hand cannons, and he destroyed every army that got in his way.

Ilzig took her daughters to meet with the refugees that poured into Dii’antaa. The girls were horrified to see so many people, including children and the elderly, burnt by fire lances or missing limbs due to Nessan cannons. The girls cried, and hugged some of the refugees, and the things they saw and the stories they heard on these visits would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile, the lords looked on, disgusted to see the empresses amongst the rabble. They were so enraged that the Council fell in line behind Lord Kyon, Master of Illasa, and voted him regent after Ilzig was mysteriously kidnapped.

Maake and Sereg were by this point more hardened than most young children their age, but they clung to each other for three whole nights crying once they realised their mother was gone. As their co-mothers were replaced with daughters whose parents Lord Kyon owed favours to, Maake forced herself to stop crying and spent every moment where she wasn’t holding her sister glaring silently at the ladies who had replaced her co-mothers.

“Why aren’t you sad anymore Ma’a?” Sereg asked one night.

“I am Sere” Maake said. “But one day, we’ll be empresses, and we’ll make the empire all better.”

“Will we be able to get Ma back?”

“I don’t know” Maake said, her voice quivering as reptilian cry-chirps tried to start again. “But in our empire, no one else will lose their Ma because the lords are bad. There’s never been two empresses before, we can fix it together. If you want to.”

“Yes Ma’a” Sereg said, “Our empire will be the best.”

After that, Sereg joined Maake in glaring at the new co-mothers, and soon the girls set about making the ladies lives as miserable as possible. None of the co-mothers appointed by Lord Kyon ever received a boon from the empresses.

Lord Kyon did not last long as regent. There is a lot of mystery surrounding his death, but it appears his lesser lords back in Illasa had expected more riches and lands when he became regent and were displeased when their lot remained unchanged. Kyon died in his sleep the same day his two oldest daughters were killed in a Forsi terrorist attack. His young son rode to Dii’antaa with a regent picked from amongst Kyon’s lesser lords. The council were not keen on the idea of a regent with a regent, and gave the position to Lord Twile of Kollanasa, despite the outrage of the new Illasan regent.

Lord Twile also did not last, but Lord Kyon’s son, also named Kyon, became a lifelong friend of the two girls.

Tsvalai’s second invasion lasted five years, and the girls lost count of how many regents they went through in that time. Tsvalai was kept at bay by general Omtaan, who long ago had driven him from the plateau days after the twins had hatched.

Omtaan was a formidable general who had climbed the army’s ranks despite being the illegitimate son of a lesser lord, and despite being rumoured to have Forsi heritage. At the start of the invasion, his army was routed by Tsvalai’s firearms just like all the armies of Chaane. Unlike the other generals though, he made it a priority to seize his own firearms and spent two years raiding Tsvali’s supplies and sending spies into Nessa to build his arsenal.

His absence from the battlefield, along with his birth station made him seem non-threatening to the Council of Lords, even after he armed his soldiers and drove Tsvalai out of Inner Chaane.

After every victory, Omtaan credited Sereg the Fourth and Maake the Second for inspiring him. He was a faithful man, who believed the gods placed their champion on the Chaane throne. When he watched the twins hatch on the throne, he was convinced he had seen a miracle, and his devotion to them was unshakable.

The Council realised that Omtaan could be a threat only when they received word he had sacked Newea. By then it was too late. Not long after victory at Newea, Omtaan marched up the Dii’antaa plateau with the largest personal army the empire had, the numbers bolstered by thousands of civilians of all scale and feather colours the empire boasted cheering his name. He entered the palace courtyard on one of Tsvalai’s own pigbeasts, with his most trusted soldiers carrying a cage containing the bruised body of the invader. Tsvalai’s crest-feathers had been plucked and re-tarred onto his belly, and when the twins saw him like that, he didn’t seem so scary.

Beside Omtaan, his new wife rode Tsvalai’s other pigbeast, carrying her new hand cannon.

Ilzig, former conjugal of Lacaan the Sixth, Regent in Exile, Master of Firearms, and wife of Omtaan the Saviour, returned to her daughters.

How to Fix An Empire

From the return of Ilzig until the day of their majority, the twin empresses enjoyed the most tranquil period of their lives. Tsvalai was executed, Nessa was regrouping, and Omtaan and Ilzig were untouchable. They stripped titles from all the lords suspected of being complicit in Ilzig’s exile, redistributing lands to lesser lords whose loyalty they trusted. They also restructured the Council of Lords, making it closer to a modern government with admission being based on the productivity of the lord’s holdings rather than what favours the lord was owed by the throne.

Ilzig and Omtaan did an excellent job running the empire as co-regents, despite having no royal blood. They ruled so well, that people began to question whether the empire even needed an empress. It was not the first time republican sentiment had grown in Chaane, and certainly not the first time a monarchy had been abolished in the world, but it was an exceptionally large movement for its time.

If not for Ilzig and Omtaan’s devotion to the twins, it is possible that the monarchy could have ended then. It would be Ilzig and Omtaan who we view as our founding heroes, with Sereg Four and Maake Two probably becoming supporting characters as beloved as Ilzig and Omtaan are in our actual history.

Omtaan’s devotion to the twins started out as religious devotion. His first act as regent was to summon the Pontex and the High Priestess of Chan, God of Law and Order, to perform a multiday blessing of the twins. He also took on the role of martial arts trainer for them as soon as his coup was settled, training them in the blade whilst a Nessan-Chaanean cannoneer instructed them on all matters related to gunpowder and cannons.

In time though, he transcended his role as regent and teacher, becoming a loving stepfather to the young girls. The artist Palaani’s first job upon being released from prison for supporting Tsvalai was to paint a massive piece for Ilzig’s private rooms depicting this strange royal family.

In the painting, Ilzig and her newly re-instated co-mothers sew colourful heat-rocks into clothes for the young girls in a sunlit drawing room overlooking the palace fountain. Ilzig, her expression doting, looks to the centre of the room. There Omtaan, still mostly in his plate armour and battle-feathers – except for the helmet that he’d put on a giggling Sereg’s head – sits on the floor with the two empresses, joining them as they play with their dolls. Palaani captures the general’s joy as he picks up a doll covered in beads and puppets it towards the doll in Maake’s hand.

As the empire stabilized around the new regents, it became safe for the family to travel. The first time the twins left the Dii’antaa Plateau was to accompany Kyon and his regent back to Illasa, a trip that turned into their first ever holiday.

Illasa Keep is three days slitherbeast ride from Dii’antaa Plateau for a courier, through flat grassland that rushes towards the Gathered Plateaus and the strange jungle that grows in the cracks between them. It is hard to judge how long the journey would have taken for the royal family. The keep is a thin, white stone building on a hill in a merchant town where yellowgrass plains bleed into the lush jungle. Illasa is a shortening of Pyo-Il-lasa, meaning grass mixed with trees. For centuries, the lords of Illasa had overseen the travelling produce of the two terrains. The yams and animal meats familiar to the girls went deeper into the Illasa Jungle, whilst strange medicines and large insects came out. At their first lunch in the keep they were served giant pondbugs so fresh that Sereg would never eat imported ones again.

Whilst the adults took care of Illasa’s affairs, Kyon and the twins played in the palace garden. The keep was mostly surrounded by yellowgrass, but jungle trees were purposefully grown and pruned in the north garden, and amongst them lived a herd of phalanxbugs so large that the children could ride them around.

One day they rode their bugs to a lookout point on the east side of the castle that overlooked the Illasa marketplace. It was full of activity, with caravans leaving the city in every direction. Maake spied a performance of some sort taking place in one of the squares, and Sereg declared that they’d have to find a way to convince Omtaan to part with his periscope.

The twins debated what type of performance it was and the best way to investigate, but Kyon stayed silent. Eventually the twins noticed his melancholy and questioned him. They questioned him gently, for they were all sensitive to the signs of trauma by now, and after some fumbling to put his feelings into words, Kyon admitted he was thinking of the last time he’d seen the marketplace.

“It was just after my sisters died” he said. “They were down there, meeting some guild-heads. Apparently the Forsi came in with firelances and torched the entire Great-Square. You can see where they’ve rebuilt over there –“ he pointed out the largest town square, or at least the small sliver of its edge that wasn’t obscured by the trees. There were large ornate buildings in their view topped with gold, but on closer inspection they could see a few statues that were melted out of shape. “- and it looks almost like it used to. But not quite. You can’t see it from here, but the town hall is completely different.”

“Stupid evil Forsi” Maake said. “They’re as bad as the Nessans.”

“But Maths Master Rroni is Forsi” Sereg said. “Remember Maake? Besides, Omtaan said the Forsi don’t usually train with firelances so…”

Sereg trailed off under Maake’s glare as she realised what she had been about to imply about Kyon’s beloved regent.

“It doesn’t matter” Kyon said. “If there were good Nessans that helped Regent Omtaan get hand cannons, then there are good Forsi too. Just like not all Chaaneans are good. You saw a lot of bad ones in the palace. And because of those bad Chaaneans and Forsi people down there got all hurt and scared. I came up here the day before I left, and it was so different. Not just the burnt buildings, but the people were different too. They must have been staying home, because I hardly saw anyone, except a few scared people. I could tell they were scared from all the way up here. And there were dead bugs everywhere, and even a dead slitherbeast and I think I even saw a, a…”

He couldn’t say what he thought he’d seen, but instead let the girls comfort him as he chirped. They stayed silent for a while, until Kyon thanked the girls for fixing his home.

“But we haven’t done anything yet” Sereg said.

“You’re the empresses” Kyon said. “And you’re good empresses, so you make people want to do good things.”

“Like how we inspired Omtaan to beat Tsvalai” Maake said.

“But that’s Omtaan fixing things” Sereg said. “Him and Ma are the ones making the empire good again. We still need to do something.”

“High Priestess Ilaan said Chan gives royals the Moral Reigns of their land” Maake said, “and that just their character can change the way things are.”

“Then why couldn’t we make all the lords who tried to get rid of Ma be nice when we were younger?” Sereg asked.

“Maybe because kids don’t have much character stuff” Kyon said. “When my family died, I didn’t care think much about how Illasa ran. Not until I was older. Maybe kids need to learn to be good before they can inspire the empire. I guess that’s why they usually pick the oldest to be a successor, so the new emperor or lord has good character right away.”

“That makes sense” Maake said.

“But then why does so much bad stuff happen even when it’s a new adult who becomes emperor?” Sereg said. “Even with our father, Princess Sama got sent away to Nessa, and that caused the war with Tsvalai. Father was an adult with lots of goodness when he became emperor, so why were people still bad?”

The three remained silent for an uncomfortably long time. They’d all learnt enough about their father’s history to entertain the idea that Sama, the oldest active child and named heir of Maarigee Five, might have been the one endowed with Chan’s Moral Reigns instead of Lacaan Six. If any of them followed that thought to the conclusion that Tsvalai might have been right to invade Chaane, they never uttered such a toxic idea out loud.

“Maybe…” Kyon said “Maybe no-one has the Reigns when an emperor dies. Maybe Chan doesn’t bestow them until a good emperor is on the throne. Or until a bad emperor takes them.”

“But…” Maake started before tapering off. She knew enough about theology to know there was something backwards about the idea, but she didn’t have the education needed to argue against it. Even if she did, it felt so logical.

Sereg chirped, stopping any thought Maake had of mounting a counterargument.

“Sere?” she asked.

“I’ll be fine” Sereg said. “It’s just, if that’s true, then we can’t fix the empire.”

Kyon and Maake protested, but Sereg chirped again, then puffed out her crest-feathers and held up her long neck like she always did when trying to act strong.

“Even if we are the best empresses ever, we’ll die one day” Sereg said. “Then all the bad stuff will start up again.”

“We’ll raise good children who’ll make good emperors” Maake said.

“But what if the power makes them go crazy and they fight like Sama and Father?” Sereg said.

“Or how my father went crazy to become regent” Kyon said. “Everyone goes a bit crazy when it’s the throne. Maybe the best you can do is just reign for a long time and we’ll try and figure something out before it’s too late?”

“We could do that if we go into dragonslumber” Maake said. “Lacaan Three reigned a hundred and fifty years. If the three of us spend that long dreaming, maybe we’ll come up with a plan for the succession.”

“But we can’t be sleeping empresses” Sereg said. “It’s expensive to have a sleeping empress, and the war with Tsvalai was expensive, and Omtaan said his brother King Calanai is thinking of invading too. We’ll be at war with all of Nessa. We need to be warrior empresses to stop him.”

“We can’t risk dying young” Maake said. “Especially not before we lay eggs. Most of Father’s active children were born so long ago they died, and he has so many grandchildren who’ll fight each other if we die in battle.”

“It doesn’t matter if our successors mess up if we don’t fix the empire in the first place” Sereg said. “I don’t want to just inspire everyone; I want to go out and fix things. Besides, not all sleeping emperors live that long. Lacaan Three only did because the empire was super rich and could bury him in gold, and he had such good representatives that he barely woke up so he didn’t get older. He didn’t need to wake up because…”

“Because he had good people he could trust” Maake finished.

The girls looked at each other with mouths agape and crest feathers raised in excitement.

“We can do both!” they said together.

“I can fight Nessa and make the empire rich while you sleep” Sereg said.

“You can be my, my whatever that family that helped Lacaan Three for so long were” Maake said. “I can inspire people in their dreams, to make your job easier. Two empresses fix everything.”

“We could make it so there are always two” Sereg said. “I can raise my successor, and you can hold the Moral Reigns until you know they’re good, and then they can keep being active for you.”

“And me and my successors will live so long we can keep the empire stable” Maake said. “And when we do change the active emperor can hold the Reigns then.”

“We’ll make it so there can never be a time when there isn’t a good emperor on the throne ever again” Sereg said.

“That’s why Chan and Faate made sure twins hatched on the throne” Maake said.

“We were born to rule” the twins said.

“Chiiiirp” Kyon cried.

The twins stopped to stare at their friend, whose feathers were so flat that he looked even more miserable than he had when pointing out the square where his sisters had been murdered.

“No” he chirped. “You can’t.”

“But Kyon, we figured out how to fix the empire forever” Sereg said.

“What’s wrong with you?” Maake asked. “What can’t we do?”

“You can’t split it like that” Kyon said. “Dragon emperors are always asleep, and they don’t age, so one of you, one of you will watch the other get old and die.”

“Well of course” Sereg said. But Maake stayed silent as she truly grappled with the implications of their plan. With all the chaos of her early life, she had a better grasp on the idea that she’d die one day than most children did. Even growing old wasn’t too big a stretch for her. The idea that Sereg could get old and die whilst she sat by and watched wasn’t something she’d imagined though, and the longer she sat with the thought the more horrible it became.

“We wouldn’t even get to talk that much while you were alive” Maake said to her sister. “Because well, I’ll be sleeping. And I don’t think you can have normal conversations in dreams.”

“Oh, yeah” Sereg said. “You won’t be there for me anymore. Not while I’m awake. If I’m active, I’ll be doing things on my own.”

“See” Kyon said. “You’ll have to split up. You told me that was your biggest fear before your Ma returned.”

“Yeah” Sereg said.

“And what about me?” Kyon said. “I promised I’d stay with you both forever. But if I stay with the active empress, I’ll only get to talk to the sleeping empresses every few years, and then I’ll die and leave her alone! And if I married the sleeping empress and went into dragonslumber with her, I’d be leaving the active empress alone. And then she’d die! Please don’t make me choose. I love you both.”

The three of them considered that for a while, their crests deflated and small chirps coming from all three of them as they moved closer together and placed their foreheads together.

Sereg recovered first.

“Wait a second Kyon” she said. “You want to marry one of us? Ewww.”

“I’d just be marrying you as a friend” he said. “And I guess it’d probably be Maake doing the dragonslumber, so it’ll be her decision since the rules for marrying and having eggs are different for sleeping empresses.”

“Are you saying” Maake said. “That you want to marry an empress, but just as a friend?”

“Ohhhhh…. Did you want it to be more than that Ma’a?” Sereg asked.

“Shut up Sere!”

“Well, it shouldn’t ever come up again because you shouldn’t split up” Kyon said. “In fact, neither of you should go into dragonslumber because then I’d have to marry one of you to keep my promise.”

“We could just adopt you” Sereg said. “That’s what I always thought would happen if we did dragonslumber. You don’t have to make it weird Kyon.”

“I don’t want to be your kid” Kyon said. “That’s weirder than being a consort.”

“You only say that because you and Ma’a want to get married” Sereg said.

“I never said that!” Maake said.

The argument continued to devolve as the tension eased, but the twin’s brilliant, terrible idea hung around like a guillotine blade. As the years passed, and Sereg and Maake learnt more about what was needed to rule, and of the failings of their predecessors, their solution kept coming up in their plans.

Even as they realised how large the world was, and how much they wanted to explore it together, their plans kept coming back to the split thrones.

Even as they supported each other through the trials of adolescence, and realised how strong they were together, they couldn’t help thinking of a future separated.

Even as they both grew to love Kyon, they couldn’t think of anything better for the empire than forcing him to abandon one of them.

They didn’t tell Ilzig or Omtaan their plan. At least not directly. But their parents had to have seen it coming, as Sereg studied war whilst Maake focused on history and theology.

One the day of their majority, they were given a second coronation ceremony. Ilzig had insisted they deserved it, since they’d been in their egg for the first one.

After the ceremony they invited Kyon to sit on the throne with them despite the Pontex’s objections. They wanted to be together one last time.

Their declaration of split thrones with split roles was made the following day.

Maake’s Slumber

Maake was laid down on a bed of coins beneath the Dreamspire, in a dragon chamber emptied by the wars with Tsvalai and Ilzig’s purge. She felt silly at first, laying in her small pile of coins and gold bars and staring at the pearl above her. There were no physical changes for weeks, even though she wasn’t allowed to leave her bed at all. Attendants tended to her every need. Forcing her to eat larger servings of food than she’d ever managed before, helping her learn to use a modified bedpan while laying down, and cleaning her scales and feathers every day.

She wasn’t yet capable of entering the Dragonslumber, so she required company to keep the boredom at bay. Sereg was a common visitor, when she wasn’t busy running the empire. Kyon and her mother and Omtaan were also frequent visitors, along with High Priest Ilaan, Ilzig’s co-mothers, and the few other friends she and Sereg had made in their adolescence. After three weeks her scales started to sting, and the attendants limited her visitors, saying she was ready to connect with the Pearl of Chaane now, and the boredom would help.

There weren’t a lot of attendants in the Dragon Chamber. Tsvalai’s slaughter had killed dozens of them along with Lacaan Six and his family, and the Temple of Chan had expected both empresses to remain active and hadn’t trained more. Though a year before Maake and Sereg’s second coronation, an unexpected source of new attendants had been uncovered to boost these low numbers.

The Forsi were one of the most distrusted groups within the Chaane Empire, even though they were visually almost indistinguishable from Chaaneans. In ancient times, before written records began, it is said that the two had been one tribe. But when their dragon protector had declared herself an embodiment of Chan, God of Order, the Forsi had rejected her, and appointed their own dragon protector, Great For. They had taken For’s dragon crystal and made their own dreamspire, and refused to intermarry any reptilian descended from Chaane, so that the Pearl of Chaane would not connect to their descendant’s sleeping minds.

Of course, When Chaane became a true kingdom, its first sleeping emperor Satil One had not been able to abide a rival dragon in his territory. The Forsi dragon chamber was attacked, their dragon slain, but their pearl was saved by the chamber attendants. They carried it away and made a new dragon chamber in secret. The same patten repeated every time the Forsi dragon chamber was discovered, even at times were the Forsi’s lack of assimilation was otherwise tolerated.

One of Omtaan’s advisors had found the location of the current Forsi Dragon Chamber, and his inner circle was conflicted on what to do about it. They could not risk taking the matter to the Council of Lords for debate, least the Forsi learn they’d been discovered and relocate. Yet an attack seemed unwise. Unrest amongst the Forsi was currently low, as Tsvalai had proven a great common enemy for the two peoples. No-one wanted to stir up a conflict with the Forsi so close to the twin’s majority. Not with King Calanlai’s army growing at the rate it was.

Maake shocked her family and advisors by suggesting they make peace with the Forsi Dragon. She had not yet told anyone besides Sereg and Kyon she planned to be a sleeping empress, but she argued that if they wanted the methods of dragonslumber preserved, they needed more experts. She arranged to go to the Forsi Dragon and discuss peace terms.

During their historic meeting, she had asked to talk to the Dragon alone. She confessed that she was planning to sleep without her sister, and begged him for guidance.

The Forsi Dragon took pity on her and told her what to expect.

He warned her about the sting, and that staying on her bed of gold would become a battle. That she’d be desperate to get up, but she must not. If she did, then laying back down would be so much worse.

And so, the first night when she was in so much pain one of the inexperienced Chaane attendants offered to let her up, she’d snapped at the man and ordered him to tie her down.

The Dragon warned her that the first time she connected to her dreamspire, she would see the dreams of those she loved most if they were asleep. He also warned her that the sleeping mind would reveal truths about her loved ones that she would otherwise be blissfully unaware of.

And so, when she first slipped into a dragon nap and saw Kyon and Sereg dreaming of a life together, she knew it wasn’t her own nightmare and had called them traitors the next time they visited her.

It wasn’t even much of a surprise. She’d never been interested in sex or relationships like the two of them were, and she’d never grown out of the disgust she felt when the topic was brought up. Still, she loved Kyon, and the idea of being with him had an appeal that she’d never been able to articulate with anyone, not even Sereg. She’d been hoping that he would choose her, and that they would lay together in the Dragon Chamber for centuries, surrounded by their children.

The worst part was that Sereg and Kyon had not yet dared to share their dreams of a life together with each other. It was Maake’s anger that pushed the two of them to talk, and from there to announce their engagement. Despite the Forsi Dragon’s warning, she had let herself be caught out by the dream truths she’d seen, and her reaction had been catastrophic.

Finally, the Dragon had warned her that once the physical changes were complete, sexual intercourse became a lot more difficult. The size difference caused issues, and for a woman, there was a greater risk of her conjugal seed not being able to complete its journey.

And so, she apologised to Kyon and Sereg and invited Kyon to lay with her in her bed of gold. Not with the passion she’d always imagined for such a coupling, but instead with a matter of fact, textbook explanation of how her body would change and how her and Sereg needed to start laying eggs as soon as they could.

He obliged. Because he did love her, even if he’d chosen Sereg with both his heart and his mind. And because it was part of their plan. Tumbling in the coins proved to be as painful as Maake had anticipated, but Kyon’s body against hers made her feel warm and loved in a way that she knew she would have found worth it, if only she hadn’t ruined the courtship so badly.

Word of Maake and Kyon’s coupling got out and was received with the same disapproval as Sereg and Kyon’s engagement announcement.

Ilzig had worked hard to keep her daughters unaware of the various marriage proposals that she’d been offered since her return. She’d been aided in this by the same peculiarity of a string of sleeping emperors that had made the power struggle after Tsvalai’s slaughter so deadly; the fact that almost all the most powerful lords in the empire were closely related to Lacaan Six.

Despite the fertility troubles the Forsi Dragon had warned Maake about, the fact that sleeping emperors and their sleeping children lived so long meant they could create a large number of children over time if they had a conjugal visit every awakening. Lacaan Six and Maarigee Five had been particularly fertile.

Ilzig had always anticipated Kyon as a son-in-law because he was one of the most suitable matches for the empresses. He was a descendent of Maarigee Five, but through more generations than the twins, making him the right amount of genetically distant but politically powerful to be a suitable royal husband.

The problem was there were still plenty of people in the empire who’d like a shot at the throne despite Ilzig and Omtaan’s efforts, and Sereg had not gained approval from the Council of Lords before announcing her engagement. Even worse, there was still anti-monarchy sentiment, and one of the few things keeping it in check was the support the temples of all the gods and the United Pantheon gave to the empresses. Sereg choosing her husband seemingly out of lust, and word that that same husband-to-be had been heard fucking Maake, was enough to endanger that support.

Lord Twile of Lower Dii’antaa (no relation to the twin’s former, hated regent) was an elderly daughter of Lacaan Six and a patron of the Pantheon. She voiced concerns to the Pontex, as well as the High Priests of Chan and Lasta, goddess of fertility, that the improper relationship between the young empresses and Lord Kyon would corrupt the Moral Reigns, and lead the empire to debauchery and ruin.

It is also suspected that she was the one that commissioned the old artist Palaani and his young son to paint a controversial painting of Sereg, Maake and Kyon titled ‘Whores of the Empire’, but that was never proven.

She insisted her concerns had nothing to do with the way she’d been overlooked as empress after her father’s death, and certainly not with the way Ilzig had rejected a match between her grandson and one of the empresses.

Twile, Pontex Satil, as well as a handful of other powerful lords confronted Maake in the Dragonchamber. It is a common joke that if they had confronted Sereg instead, the pantheon would have turned against the empresses, and Twile and her grandchildren would have found their way to the throne instead.

Sereg hated Twile. She hated that Twile was never a sister to the girls and never gave them any support during their childhood. It is said that the first time Twile met the girls, when they were still children, she refused to even tell them about their father. Sereg would famously say of Twile; “if she wasn’t willing to press her claim when it meant dealing with Tsvalai, she should shut the fuck up now.”

Maake was much calm when the inquisition came to her. They found her curled up on her pile of coins, twice her original size and slipping in and out of sleep. When Pontex Satil said he had concerns about the relationship the twins had with Kyon, Maake nodded and said she understood, and that if the situation with her and Sereg were not so unusual, they would never have entered into such an unusual union.

“We’ve seen the chaos that can unfold when a sleeping emperor leaves hundreds of descendants” Maake explained. “With us splitting the crown, we saw there was a risk of a greater divide between our own children. We believe that having the same father for all our heirs will lower this risk. We are aiming for a small brood, with no distinction made between them.”

They had talked more about the logistics. About why Kyon had seemed the most trustworthy and stable choice for a joint consort, and about the timing of their union as well.

“I originally wanted to wait until I had fully transformed and Sereg and Kyon had married” Maake said “however, with the possibility of a war with Nessa growing, we decided it was important to get an heir as soon as possible. I called Kyon to the chamber as soon as I felt my dreams connecting with the dreamspire. I am glad I did, because we have secured our succession.”

Maaka uncurled her body, to reveal a newly laid egg pressed to her. Twile had become enraged at seeing the egg, insisting it be declared illegitimate. The Pontex silenced her. He was swayed by Maake’s reasoning and pointed out that despite the timing of her coupling being improper, if she followed through with her plan to only have conjugal meetings with Lord Kyon, she’d be one of the most chaste sleeping empresses ever.

The news of a royal egg was announced with joy by the Pontex. The people rejoiced, though Twile was said to be fuming. Sereg and Kyon took the egg with them on a royal procession through Dii’antaa, where the common people jostled against each other for a chance to see Maake’s egg on its bejewelled cushion, as if it didn’t look the same as every other egg.

Maake could not join the procession. Even if she wasn’t on the cusp of achieving the full dragonslumber, her leg muscles had already atrophied too much to support her increased bulk. Sereg and Kyon instead bough the egg back to the Dragon Chamber, rather than the nursery, and kept it on a bed of cushions and warm stones next to Maake’s pile of gold.

She constantly drifted off to sleep while looking at her egg. She couldn’t access an unhatched baby’s dreams with her emergent dragon dreaming, but she could feel that her subjects were dreaming about her hatchling, imagining what the heir would be like.

There was so much excitement about both the hatchling on the way and the upcoming royal wedding. People were dreaming of the parties they would host in honour of both occasions. Lovers were dreaming of proposing as the Pantheon bells range for Sereg and Kyon. They also dreamt of Maake and Sereg watching over them, fighting off Nessans, and a not insignificant number of young men dreamt of being Kyon. Or at least a version of Kyon that got to engage in elaborate sexual acts with both empresses simultaneously.

If she had not been warned otherwise by the Forsi Dragon, she would have thought the people obsessed with her and her family. He had explained though that the dragon dreaming was not omniscience, and that the more a dream involved her or something important to her, then more likely she was to see it.

“Many dragons, both Forsi and Chaanean, have made the mistake of thinking the few dreams about them represented all the dreams of their people” he had warned her. “Megalomania is a common result, and it is always a disaster for both the dragon and their people. You must go looking further than the dreams that come easy. You must make the effort to see the entire dimension of your people.”

She had at the start of her transformation thought herself prepared to follow the Forsi Dragon’s advice. She now found that it was the hardest thing she had ever done. As visits from Kyon, Sereg, and her parents became blurred by the fog of sleepiness, she found dreams of her loved ones by the people in the palace a miracle. As she came to terms with the reality that she would not be awake for Kyon and Sereg’s wedding, she found herself drawn to the dreams of others imagining themselves at the event.

As she reached out her arm, which had doubled in length, towards her egg nestled next to her, she found that she was too weak to hold the position long enough to touch it. She drifted further into her developing dragonslumber and found refuge in the sleeping mind of a common woman, who dreamt she was picking up the royal egg and showing it to her friends.

As her skull expanded and her head ached with the strain of her growing brain, she pushed herself to find more trivial dreams. She was determined to use her expanding dream powers to stop herself from that dreaded fall into megalomania.

She flew through dreams of regular people, both nobility and commoner, the fully Chaane and those with only the slightest drop of the Pearl’s Lineage in their blood. She bounded through scenes of farmwork, blacksmithing, military drills, hand-cannon research, and so many different views of family life. She walked behind a young mother watching her two young children run up an impossibly large hill. She ears dropped into imagined conversations between lovers.

She got to experience, even if through the nonsense of dreams, the regular, everyday occurrences that would never again be for her.

She also shared the dreams of Nessans within the Chaane empire, some of whom didn’t even believe that they had Chaane blood. She noticed a disturbing pattern. There were many dreams about certain Nessan generals, and as the weeks went by these generals began to take on a consistent appearance in her Nessan subject’s dreams. As if they had seen the generals in the flesh.

At one of her feeding times, she stirred awake just enough to call for Kyon and Sereg. They rushed in the room, asking how she was. She delivered the warning that Nessa was moving in the outer provinces. She stayed awake long enough to share their excitement that she’d already mastered the dragonslumber enough to protect the kingdom. Then the mood soured as Sereg decided that the wedding would have to be moved forward so she’d be ready for war.

Despite being rushed, the wedding was beautiful. Maake didn’t see it in person, but she floated through hundreds of dreams about it. She spent much time in Kyon and Sereg’s sleeping minds as they relieved it, then flew through the decorated streets as the wedding procession passed by countless other dreams.

The honeymoon was barely over when the official declaration of war from king Calanlai arrived. Sereg announced that she would join Omtaan on the battlefield, where she could oversee the war effort and meet her subjects in the outer provinces.

She delayed just long enough to join Kyon and Maake in the dragon chamber for the hatching of the egg.

It was a boy. A healthy male hatchling who already had a yellow feather just like the ones in Kyon’s crest clinging to his head. Kyon and Sereg took turns holding the boy and nuzzling him with their snouts.

Maake was semi awake. She was laying on her side with her aching head buried in the gold and glassy eyes staring at the hatchling and new parents. Sereg held the hatchling to her, and she brushed her snout against his egg-tooth.

“What do you want to name him?” Sereg asked.

Maake wanted to name him after Omtaan, but in her stupor, she said “name him after Pa”, and after some debate, Sereg and Kyon dubbed the boy Lacaan.

Sereg had never misunderstood her so badly before. They’d talked about naming their children after Ilzig and Omtaan before so it seemed insane that Sereg would take her at her word in that situation.

Maybe she and Sereg were no longer as close as they were.

Sereg left for the outer provinces the next day, and Kyon bought baby Lacaan to the dragon chamber every day and held him against Maake’s body. Maake barely stirred during these visits, but she spent most of her time seeking out her son’s fragmented baby dreams and trying to project her love to him through them.

A few months later, a message came from the front saying that Sereg had arrived. With the message came an ornate litter, with Sereg’s new egg inside it.

Maake learnt about the new egg through Kyon’s dream. The attendants insisted she couldn’t be fully awakened yet, as she was starting to fall into her full, continuous dragonslumber.

She was aware of Kyon bringing the new egg into her dragon chamber. She saw him through half-closed eyes, holding the egg out to her face while wearing a sling that held baby Lacaan against his keel. Or maybe she only saw them later, in her own dream. The Forsi dragon had told her that things that happened around her would be replayed later in her mind, though it was always hard to know when she was dreaming, since there was little to distinguish her own dreams from those she accessed through the dreamspire. She was starting to lose track of all these different versions of reality she was experiencing.

She was on her belly when Kyon came in with Lacaan and the egg. A position that she and her attendants knew she would stay in for the rest of her life. She’d grown so much in the last year that the top of her back was now level with Kyon’s shoulders. She was aware of how unrecognizable she was.

Her skull had finished reforming around her new brain, rendering her face unrecognizable. Her snout had elongated, and her mouth kept gaping open as if waiting for the next feeding. She was aware of her insides churning as her digestive system got better at retaining and converting everything she ate into energy stores. To her humiliation, the process was not complete yet, but her golden nest needed to be cleaned less often. Once completed, all the excess food she ate and gold she absorbed would start being pressed into a pearl, as long as she remained fed and healthy.

Her body was so warm that Kyon and Lacaan could barely touch her now. Still, Kyon tried to keep his hand on her back for as long as he could.

After talking to her for a while (or maybe he was telling Lacaan about her) he went next to her greatly expanded gold pile, where a recreation of Lacaan’s nest had been created without her noticing. He placed the egg with her, turned to her, and said that all the children would always be all their children. She knew those words had to be real.

Lacaan was chirping and squirming, so Kyon took him out of the sling and held him against Maake’s face.

He was growing so well. His egg tooth had fallen off, and he had more of Kyon’s yellow feathers growing on his head. She thought she saw a few orange ones like hers and Sereg’s along the edge of his skull. He’d have a striking crest when he grew up. His green scales shone and his teeth and ankle claws were starting to grow. Her son was perfect.

Her mouth opened automatically, as it always did when the attendants bought food to her face. She tried to eat her son, but fortunately Kyon pulled him out of her jaws in time.

Aware of the horror she had almost committed, Maake started to will herself awake. Kyon watched as she stirred, at least as well as he could with his face pressed reassuringly against their screaming baby. She managed to stop the awakening and pull her mind back into the depths before it was too late. She chastised herself; if she delayed the dragonslumber now, when she was so close to perfecting the state, when Sereg needed whatever intelligence she could gather, if she ruined it now then what had even been the point of all these sacrifices?

Once Lacaan was calm enough, Kyon looked to her and said some reassuring words. Then he took a last look at the new egg on the nest, as if assuring himself it was sufficiently far away, then left.

Maake heard chirps coming from his retreating form that were too loud and too deep to be coming from little Lacaan.

As he left, Maake let her mind pull away from her monstrous body and remembered that final warning of the Forsi Dragon. A warning that she’d dismissed as too obvious to need stating. As something she was prepared for.

“There is a reason we Forsi Dragons remain celibate” he had told her. “Once you fall into the dragonslumber, you will never have a normal relationship with anyone again. What they say about being able to communicate in dreams? It doesn’t work like they say. You can’t have a dream conversation with your loved ones. You can only pull at their emotions, and even that only after decades of practice. What you have with your sister, your mother, your friends? None of that comes with you when you fall asleep. Even if they take dragonslumber next to you, you won’t be able to interact like you once did. And even when you do speak to them during your wakings, your reality will be so different that you can never relate to them again. To be a dragon is to be entirely alone. More alone than you can possibly imagine.”

With Kyon and Lacaan gone, Maake chose to drift deeper into her slumber, all alone, and she searched her subjects for dreams that could help the empire.

Sereg’s Conquest

King Calanlai of Nessa declared he was coming into Chaane territory to reclaim both his scattered people and the lands his younger brother Tsvalai had apparently claimed in his name. He denied his supposed claim to the Chaane throne, even though it was stronger than Tsvalai’s had been. According to Calanlai, his invasion was purely about Nessan unification.

The mixed Nessan Chaaneans whose dreams Maake invaded had a mixed view of Calanlai. Some saw him as an invader, some as a liberator. An uncomfortable amount dreamt of Sama’s heir being awarded the Morel Reigns of the empire and rejoiced at the thought of a yellow-scaled emperor who advanced their interests.

Despite what the locals thought, Sereg and Omtaan drove out Calanlai’s generals easily and made it home for the hatching of Sereg’s egg. She had a son, and this time the hatchling was successfully named Omtaan.

There came a period of four years where Sereg, Kyon, Ilzig and Omtaan enjoyed a peaceful life in the palace with the two boys. Lacaan and little Omtaan were soon running around and playing in the palace halls, whilst Sereg and Kyon spent as much time as they could wrestle away from royal duties chasing after them along with the grandparents and co-mothers.

Maake saw it all through their dreams.

The boys both visited her in the chamber, and she was able to mutter replies to questions as they spoke to her, but her eyes stayed closed and most of her mind was in the dreamspire, always on the lookout for problems in the empire. So far, she’d directed Sereg and Kyon to fix three local famines whose severity had been underestimated by the Council. Her insight into the outer provinces had also revealed that anti-Chaane sentiment had increased after Sereg’s victory, leading Sereg to deploy more soldier to the area despite the quiet from Calanlai.

With her mind now fully in the dragonslumber, she couldn’t have much of a conversation with the boys. For them it was a frustrating exercise, like trying to fish for information from a co-mother who talked in her sleep. But Maake promised them that she would have a waking when the next egg hatched, and they could all meet properly.

To her annoyance, the next egg from Sereg and Kyon was slow to come, despite the speed with which Lacaan and little Omtaan had arrived and the amount of time Sereg and Kyon committed to the task.

Maake suspected Kyon’s stress was to blame. He was Sereg’s consort, Maake’s waking representative, head of the domestic quarters where the boys were being raised, and still Lord of Illasa, even though his secretary Halachaan managed affairs back home. She spent as much time in his dreams as possible, trying to urge him to relax while asleep. In the face of the pressure to produce the third heir, who would ensure a successor to all three of their seats, her meagre dream-influence powers proved insufficient.

She had some success inspiring the smiths who were making the hand cannons for the army though. Blacksmiths and engineers often dreamt about the work, and any mechanism that looked promising to her, she focused the dreamer’s attention on, making them more likely to remember it when they awoke.

With her inspiration, hand cannon technology leapt forward. The prototype of a smaller, easier to aim and easier to reload device dubbed a ‘gun’ soon emerged.

Maake rejoiced that she had found a way to protect her empire. She developed a hope, that was echoed through thousands of dreams, that if Chaane could gain an overwhelming advantage over Nessa and the other kingdoms at its borders, then it could never be invaded again. Then she and Sereg would be free to guide the empire towards peace without interference.

She also believed that despite what Calanlai said about his motives, his descent from Maarigee Five made his actions seem more legitimate, and that eliminating all of Sama’s grandchildren would stop the invasions. She tried to seek out his dreams, and sometimes found him, but he never seemed to dream of anything important. She sought out Nessans with Chaanean blood, a task made harder by how little thought they gave to her and their connection to her. She found Nessans whose dreams revealed they hated Calanlai and his family, then blurted out their names as part of a ‘list of potential Nessan allies’ that Kyon and the chamber attendants kept.

She felt she was doing such a vital job protecting the empire in the dragonslumber, that when Sereg came to her and begged her to wake up, she refused.

“Ma’a, please” Sereg said. “I miss you so much. Please wake up.”

“Awaken… for next egg” Maaka said between snores. “No need… no need… for awaken. You… you got it… under…control.”

“But I don’t!” Sereg said. “Your dreams, my spies, and the reports from our ambassador at Nessa Capi suggest Calanlai is getting ready to invade again. We’re thinking the best defence will be to strike first. If we can overwhelm them and capture a lot of territory before they’re ready, Calanlai might give up on conquering the outer territories. We’d be safe. But I keep thinking, if we do that, then I’ll be just as bad as Tsvalai. I’ll be burning villages, destroying fortresses, and sending refugees into their capital. Ma’a… is that moral?”

“Protect…our…people”.

“We need to talk about this. With your full waking mind. There’s no way you can be fully considering it while asleep. And I can barely understand half the things you say like this. You need to wake up. We can’t figure out how we’re meant to be steering the empire like this.”

“Important…work. My dreams… too important. Need to… need to end the invasions. Stop Calanlai… at any cost.”

“Well, if you don’t think we need to talk about this, don’t you at least want to wake up and be part of our family? If we invade Nessa, then we’ll have to secure territory all the way to the Trullo Mountains. It’ll be too costly for Calanlai to attack over the mountains, but we need to take every Nessan fortress between the Trullos and the Outer Chaane River to stop him launching a counter-invasion.”

“Good. Good plan.”

“That’ll take years Maake!” Sereg said. “To take every fortress between the Outer River and the Trullos? It’ll take decades, and without me or Omtaan there, there’s no way we’ll be able to keep up morale. I’ll be gone for years this time. I need you to wake up so we can have some time as a family before I go. Your dragonslumber is stable, you can spend some time with us before I go!”

Maake’s dragonslumber was stable, and she did want to wake up before Sereg left. But she also didn’t want Sereg to leave. She’d been in the horrific dreams Sereg had been suffering since her first taste of the battlefield, and she knew that if she could think about the personal, waking world reality of the planned invasion with her waking mind, she would beg Sereg to call it off. They’d be too cowardly to find the invasion moral, and so they’d leave the initiative to Calanlai.

Besides, Maake had been slipping into Calanlai’s dreams more easily lately. She needed to be asleep in case he made a big decision.

“Sacrifice anything… to make a better empire” Maake said. “We must… do anything. For the better future. A safe empire. No awaken. No awaken. Not now. Need… Calanlai’s dreams. Understand. Sere… understand.”

“I understand” Sereg said. “But sometimes I really hate you Ma’a. What is the point of being empresses if this is our future?”

“Future of… the people… important. Ours… not.”

And so Sereg and Omtaan went off to invade Nessa before Maake’s first awakening, and Maake regretted her decision for the rest of her life.

Of course, it is impossible to know how much history would have been changed if Maake had made this ‘unnecessary’ awakening before Sereg set out on her conquest. It is debateable whether there would have been not only a conquest, but a lot of the other troubles that came later. It is also probable that we would not be the nation we are today, if not for this mistake of Maake’s. We cannot know for sure.

Ironically, Sereg laid her second egg en-route to the Outer River. It was sent back to the palace, along with a note by Sereg, vowing to return once she’d established a secure foothold in Nessa so she could meet her child.

Sereg would keep her vow. She returned five years later, after capturing the fortified city of Shhi Ovna, which offered views of the distant Trullos Mountains.

In the meantime, Maake had been roused to awaken by an issue in the courts that seems trivial in hindsight, but at the time would have seemed a potential disaster.

Lord Twile had introduced legislation to the Council of Lords that would have stripped Kyon of his position as Maake’s waking representative and instead make the post one appointed by the Council. Along with other administrative amendments that would give the Council power over the succession. Maake quickly put a stop to Twile’s political interference but was unable to oust Twile from her seat.

During that awakening, Kyon had introduced the children to her. Little Lacaan and Omtaan, as well as baby Ilzig, who stumbled towards Maake and almost got buried in her gold pile.

The boys had seemed less sure of Maake, despite having grown up around her. They had approached her cautiously, Omtaan hiding behind Lacaan.

“Hello boys” she had said. “You would never have seen me like this before. But I know you both very well. I saw your dream the other night Lacaan, where you were riding a slitherbeast on the palace roofs. Do you remember a golden bird flying with you? That was me.”

Lacaan had just looked confused, so she moved on to Omtaan.

“I know you’ve been having nightmares lately” she said. “All those dreams about Calanlai invading the palace that kept waking you up are terrible. I’ve been trying to make them go away for you.”

Omtaan thought for a while. She hoped she hadn’t embarrassed him in front of his older brother.

“You did used to get nightmares when you were little” Lacaan said. “I remember you used to wake me up screaming thinking Ma Sere was getting kidnapped by King Calanlai.”

“But that was years ago” Omtaan said. “I had a few other nightmares when Ma Sere left, but I’m good now.”

“Oh, I guess time is a lot slower for me now” Maake said. “What have you two been up to this year?”

“Gra-Ma has been teaching me Tak-ta” Lacaan said.

“But we spend too much time playing” Omtaan said. “We’ve been studying more for when we become emperors.”

“You don’t play too much” Kyon said. “You two have plenty of time to play, and you’ll get to ride phalanxbugs when we go to Illasa.”

“You’re going to Illasa?” Maake asked.

“Yes” Kyon said. “Now that Twile is in her place, I think we’ve earned a family holiday. A break from the palace will do the children good. Now Lacaan, tell Ma-Ma’a about our Tak-ta tournament.”

At Kyon’s insistence, the boys had both told Maake about their games and friends, and Maake had tried to enjoy bonding with her children. She tried not to let her unease at the discrepancy between the boys she’d peeked in her dreams and the boys before her show.

Ilzig was easier to show affection to. The tiny girl hadn’t been waiting for Maake to awaken, didn’t have any awkward questions, and didn’t tell her stories that reminded her about a half-remembered life she used to have.

As much as she’d been looking forward to meeting the children, she had been relieved when they left. She ordered all her attendants out after them, so she was alone with Kyon.

“They’re not like I was expecting” Maake said. “The years seem to blur together for me.”

“The boys are struggling” Kyon said. “Sometimes I wonder if we really are making a better empire for them.”

“We’ve still got long way to go” Maake said. “I’m glad you’re their father. You’re doing a good job. I don’t like the idea of them leaving the palace right now. I don’t like the idea of you and Sereg both being gone either.”

“Maake they –“

“I know” Maake said. “I’ve been in your dreams, I know you need a break. And I remember how much our first visit to Illasa helped us heal. Take them. Give them a chance to be normal children for a while.”

With the tension between them eased, they had been able to talk freely, though they both found it hard to relate to each other. Their realities were too different. They came together at the end of the meeting. It was mechanically more awkward then their first mating but emotionally felt more natural.

No egg resulted from her time with Kyon, and no other issue serious enough to require her to awaken happened for many, many years. Despite the calm in the palace, Kyon insisted she wake up when Sereg visited after capturing Shhi Ovna. He threatened to quit and take the children to Illasa permanently and appoint Twile his replacement liaison if she didn’t wake up to meet her sister.

Maake believed she would have woken up without his threats, but she had to admit she was afraid to see her sister. She had struggled to relate to Kyon and the children, and she was terrified to see how her years of sleeping, and Sereg’s years of fighting, would have changed them both.

A table was bought into the dragon chamber, and they ate as a family for the first time. The twins, their husband, their children, and Ilzig and Omtaan. The boys pestered Sereg and Omtaan for stories of their adventure, but the two were reluctant to speak of the current campaign.

Maake wasn’t surprised. Both sides had giant cannons that had never been used before, and Calanlai was throwing everything he had at holding onto the mineral rich Ini Shalli region that Sereg was marching through. She had seen people blown to clouds of blood in thousands of dreams, including Sereg and Omtaan’s.

Ilzig shifted the conversation to more domestic affairs and the mood lightened. Big Omtaan laughed at the stories Lacaan and little Omtaan told of their tailblade training, and Little Ilzig had recently gone exploring near the fountain with her favourite doll and one of her co-mothers, a tale her father and grandparents found fascinating.

Maake found she could no longer remember what it felt like to play with dolls or swing blades. At one point she tried to recount some interesting dreams she had seen, but there were not adequate words to describe the transitioning of scenes within dreams, and the phrases she used to describe actions left her family confused.

At the other end of the table, Sereg stayed silent. She looked as lost as Maake felt. After dinner (which was a joke considering Maake’s appetite. She’d been served the same plated meals as everyone else, but the attendants had replaced her plate every five minutes), she and Sereg were left alone to catch up.

“What have you been doing lately?” Sereg asked.

“Sleeping” Maake said.

“Right, of course. That dream with the flying slitherbeast you mentioned at dinner sounded interesting.”

They tried to talk about dreams some more, but Maake noticed Sereg’s eyes glazing over as she tried to explain things. She changed the topic by asking about capturing Shhi Ovna. Sereg started telling a story about riding into the city after the walls had been blasted away, but stopped when she noticed the disapproval on Maake’s face as she described the starving civilians that had been packed into the city.

“They don’t want to stay and help us operate the cities we’ve captured” Sereg said. “They just keep running to the next fortress. But Shhi Trullos is the safest place for them and it’s too long a journey. Most of the civilians are staying, and it’s causing problems. Holding Shhi Ovna is going to be a struggle. Some of our generals suggest we enslave the population and put them to work.”

This caused a heated argument amongst the sisters. Slavery had a strange history in Chaane. Active emperors, who wanted easy ways to solve issues related to labour shortages and hostile conquered populations often became pro-slavery. Meanwhile sleeping emperors, who endured the dreams of people impacted by this violation were usually against the practice. Maake, who had been drifting through the terrified dreams of the inhabitants of Shhi Ovna before this awakening, continued to be against Sereg’s idea.

“How are you seeing the dreams of the people in Shhi Ovna?” Sereg said. “They’re all Nessans.”

“But the Pearl of Chaane is over eight-hundred years old” Maake explained. “And in that time, there have been Chaaneans who have gone past the Outer River and intermarried. All it takes is one Chaanean trader to have left an egg in a Nessan city hundreds of years ago, and today thousands of people in that city have a connection to our dreamspire, even if they are completely yellow.”

“So, sleeping emperors can enter the dreams of non-Chaaneans?”

“That is how I have been able to gather so much intelligence on Nessa.”

“Of course. How come no-one has ever mentioned it before?”

“I’m not sure it’s something other sleeping emperors knew about” Maake said. “You see, while the Linage of the Pearl causes a connection even to people who are so different to us, it is not blood alone that makes someone a Chaanean. I have an easier time accessing dreams that are more relevant to me. Dreams about us and our family come easily. Dreams that are familiar come easy. Dreams from people who know they are connected to me are also easier to access. If someone doesn’t know they have a connection to me. Or worse, if they hate the idea of a Chaanean empress in their head, then their dreams will not naturally come to me. I must search for them, and I must search hard. If the Forsi Dragon hadn’t explained how interconnected we all are, then I would never have even thought to do that.”

“That is amazing” Sereg said.

“I know” Maake said. “I couldn’t believe it when the Dragon told me, but seeing how far the Pearl’s connection reaches is amazing.”

“Yes, that too. I was thinking about the tactical advantage. We better keep it a secret.”

“Yes, I suppose” Maake said. “But not the implications. I know from the dreams of many of your soldiers that they are losing the ability to see Nessans as people like themselves. And the stories they tell their family and friends impact the way they look on the Nessan Chaaneans who are helping us win this war. Our obligation as holders of the Morel Reigns requires us to stop that. If revealing the connection that binds us all ensures Nessan personhood isn’t forgotten, we must reveal it.”

“Our obligation as holders of the Morel Reigns also requires us to perform actions that are immoral in service of a greater good” Sereg said. “Stopping Nessan invasions once and for all is necessary for the safety of our people. The people who want to be connected to the dreamspire. Their future must be given more consideration than that of outsiders who just happen to have forgotten Chaanean blood. Calanlai is responsible for the Nessans. Not us.”

“And if Calanlai is approaching his responsibility towards those people the same way we would, then enslaving such a large population would force him to send armies over the Trullos to free them. That will not ensure the safety of our people.”

“You agreed with me that taking all Nessan territory up to the Trullos was a good idea” Sereg said. “You agreed that all this bloodshed was necessary.”

“Yes, I did” Maake said. “And it is necessary. But we must not let it corrupt us. Our character will determine the fate of the empire. Taking territory for protection is one thing, but if we slaughter or enslave the innocent people we find there, then our character is compromised. We could lose control of the Morel Reigns.”

“Well how would you get the captured people to maintain the cities without turning on us? Or do we force our own people into Ini Shalli despite the fighting?”

Maake didn’t have an answer for Sereg. But the two of them did talk about it more. The issue was also bought up to the generals and the Council of Lords. By the time Sereg and Omtaan got back to Shhi Ovna, a plan had been formed. They sent a message to King Calanlai offering a people swap. Nessans who remained loyal to Calanlai would be safely escorted over the Trullos Mountains in exchange for the ‘green peoples’ of Nessa.

Calanlai mostly refused. He had no intention of letting Chaanean soldiers near the Trullos, and pulling his own citizens away from their homes was admitting defeat. However, there were a lot of citizens he did want back. Nobles and rich families and scientists. Over the next few years of the conflict, he would organise limited people-swaps. His chosen Nessan VIPs were swapped for farmers and labourers from green-scaled ethnic groups that had lived beyond the Trullos since before the ancestors of the Nessa had washed up from across the ocean.

In the meantime, Nessan commoners fled between settlements as the Chaanean armies under Sereg and Omtaan’s command swept up this former Nessan territory. Chaane had better guns now, and stimulants from the Lasa Jungle were being farmed in large qualities and shipped to the army, enabling them to march between settlements faster than the Nessans expected. The Nessan’s put up brutal resistance, but Calanlai hadn’t had time to replenish his army from his failed invasion, and reinforcements had difficulty crossing the Trullos.

The Chaanean army was also helped by the natural resources of Ini Shalli, which meant ‘Iron Lands’ in Nessan. Nearly every fortress guarded some sort of natural resource, usually iron or coal, but also a decent amount of silver. Shhi Ovna was famous for its diamond mines. Ini Shalli had been enriching Nessa for centuries, but without the Trullos between the mines and the capital, Chaane was able to distribute these resources much more efficiently. Their only limitation was the labour needed to extract these resources. Despite Maake’s objections, enslaved Nessan were used to meet this need.

That statement is to this day highly controversial. Many point to examples of cities were the mine workers continued their previous work voluntarily while being paid in Shhi Ovna diamonds and insist that there were no enslaved Nessans. However, we have two accounts of Sereg herself coming across mines where she was appalled by the conditions. She is said to have executed the mine operators and offered the workers sacks of diamonds and safe passage to any city under Chaanean control.

Apologists will also claim that if there was forced labour amongst Nessan citizens, it was only criminals, who toiled alongside other criminals sent to Ini Shalli from across the empire. This argument deserves an entire essay in response, that points out the easy ways a non-Chaanean could be branded a criminal during that period, but we do not have time for that now. We must simply point out that despite Sereg and Maake holding the Morel Reigns, unthinkable horrors were still committed against the Ini Shalli people, who today exist as our countrymen.

Whilst the slavery is disputed, the massacres cannot be.

As the years dragged on and Sereg got closer to the Trullos, her forces became more hardened, more stimulant reliant, and the Nessans of Ini Shalli had less places to run. Settlements that had no infrastructure that could benefit the Chaanean army, or that appeared too costly to hold were utterly destroyed. Often, the civilians who cowered within these settlements were killed as well. The death toll is unknown, but it is estimated that in the eighth year of Sereg’s conquest, 50,000 Ini Shallians were killed.

Maake insists that these massacres were against Sereg’s orders. That Sereg continued to demand every settlement be either occupied or the civilians driven off before the buildings were torched. Maybe those were Sereg’s standing orders, but the war had dragged on so long that most of the soldiers wanted to get it over and done with at any cost. Some sources suggest that even Sereg and Omtaan had reached this level of fatigue-caused apathy.

Despite Maake’s claims, no generals that ordered civilian massacres were ever punished by Sereg.

Whether or not Sereg sanctioned the massacres, she did use them to her advantage. She reached Shhi Trullo, the massive walled city that stretched around the base of two of the largest mountains in the range, nine years into her campaign. Her army torched all the settlements around the metropolis and picked the surrounding farms bare.

It was well known that a large path through the two city mountains connected Shhi Trullos with the rest of the Nessa Kingdom. For the first year of the siege, Sereg allowed it to stay open with the hope that the thousands of refugees she had driven into the city would use it to escape. Once she learned it was being used to supply the city with fresh soldiers and ammunition, she ordered it closed. As her army suffered through winter, she sent scouts into the mountains with explosives, and as the mountains began to thaw, they succeeded in causing enough landslides to completely block the pass.

Then she authorized a diplomatic envoy that carried a wagon full of skulls through the mountain pass, as well as keystones from important buildings from the cities where the people the wagon of skulls had once been had lived. Along with these grisly remains she sent a letter addressed to King Calanlai, urging him to reconsider her people swap proposal before Shhi Trullo looked like the wagon.

She did not have to wait long for a response. Calanlai himself had been on the other side the Trullos, leading a massive army. He received the message, sent scouts over the mountain to survey Sereg’s army, then weighed the cost of the unlimited resources of Ini Shalli against the 300,000 lives in Shhi Trullo.

It was not an easy calculation. His generals were eager to fight, and his thousands of soldiers were enraged by the stories of Chaanean brutality that had made it through the mountain passes. Winter was just ending, meaning the Trullos passes were at their most permissive, and Sereg’s besieging camp was being flooded by meltwater. His cannoneers had dragged three massive cannons high up into the mountains and had a not too impossible plan to transport them to the Shhi Trullos defenders.

Palaani the Younger was also at camp, having fled to Nessa after that business with his father’s ‘Whores of the Empire’ painting. He was making dozens of sketches of Calanlai and his army in anticipation of his successful defence of Shhi Trullos.

Calanlai must have also known of the knives being held to his back if he chose to retreat. Maake had been successful in making Calanlai and other descendants of Sama unpopular in the Nessan court, and many of those same nobles and merchants he had saved years earlier were demanding their Ini Shalli lands back. He had a shot at victory and knew there would be a great cost if he didn’t try to stop Sereg.

Still, he sat down with the army accountants and suppliers and his Chaanean spies, calculating what it would take for him to defend Shhi Trullos long term vs the cost for Sereg of another siege.

Just before the deadline for his surrender, a spy turned up with news from the Chaanean camp. General Omtaan had come down with a deadly sickness, possibly from the insects that were breeding in massive numbers thanks to the meltwater, or the way the poor sanitation conditions of Sereg’s camp were exasperated by the flood. Lasan medicines had kept Sereg’s army healthy until now, but there was a limit to what they could do. Sereg was said to be inconsolable and the camp in disarray.

Calanlai’s generals began readying for an attack. Some suspected a trap, but most voices screamed for action.

Instead, Calanlai sent a convoy over the mountains with medical supplies and his condolences, offering a temporary truce while she tended to her stepfather, who Calanlai described as ‘Nessa’s Most Worthy Adversary.’

Sereg accepted the truce. The reports of sickness in Sereg’s camp had been exaggerated and news of Omtaan’s illness leaked to goad Calanlai into attacking before the ground got too marshy, but Omtaan was deathly ill, and he died not long after Sereg accepted the truce.

Both sides held a funeral for Omtaan, though Calanlai is said to have spent most of the ritual reading his supply ledgers. At the end of the Nessan service, the whole army lit bonfires and started singing war songs. It is said that their voices echoed through the mountains, and the people of Shhi Trullo and Sereg’s camp heard them. Every Nessan waiting in those mountains believed that with their Most Worthy Adversary dead, they were invincible.

Every Nessan except King Calanlai.

Once the truce period was up, Calanlai snuck through the pass in the dead of night with only his most trusted followers and Palaani the Younger, with his sketchbook. Calanlai suspected that if he announced his intention to surrender the Ini Shalli to Sereg, he would be executed by his own generals.

Despite the danger to himself and his family, he chose the 300,000 people of Shhi Trullos over the riches of Ini Shalli.

Palaani the Younger spent years painting scenes from Calanlai’s Surrender, which are to this day considered his greatest works. He painted a wall-sized masterpiece of Sereg and Calanlai at a negotiating table working out the terms of the ceasefire and logistics of the people-swap deal. In the background the mountains, walls of Shhi Trullos, the Chaanean war camp and Omtaan’s still-burning funeral pyre were painted in detail.

His two most celebrated pieces from this collection were two smaller paintings both titled ‘The Cost of War’. One was of Calanlai slumped over his ledger while the generals celebrated, truly looking his age as he read the numbers. The other painting showed Sereg riding triumphantly into Shhi Trullos on a majestic slitherbeast. Her head was held high and her crest puffed out, but Palaani the Younger had captured the utter despair on her face perfectly.

Sereg spent another two years at Shhi Trullos overseeing the hand-over of the region. The logistics also required Maake to have more frequent awakenings, and the two did exchange letters during this period. Maake has refused to talk about this time, as it appears the loss of Omtaan so far from home was a trigger for her long depressive episode. The letter Sereg wrote to Maake after her negotiations with Calanlai does survive, and provides insight into the impact of the war on the twins. The following passages are considered particularly relevant;

“In all my years fighting Calanlai, I was not prepared to face such a wise old man. I could see the great cost he was forced to pay by ceding the Ini Shalli, but his concern for the people of the region was genuine, and by not risking them he has shown better mastery of his Morel Reigns than I have over the course of this war. I can only hope that with our borders secure, we are able to grow into leaders of Calanlai’s calibre.

Calanlai tells me that he plans to abdicate the throne to one of his grandsons, a man named Ulmai who he assures me is of honourable character and of a pedigree that he hopes will pacify his political opponents. He hopes for the chance to enjoy his final years in peace as a great-grandfather free of political responsibility.

Despite the risk he faces, I find myself jealous of Calanlai. Over the years, I feel I have forgotten how to be a person. I no longer know what it is to be a mother, daughter, wife, sister or even friend. My life has for so long been that of a warrior empress, that it is hard to imagine returning to normal. Even when dear Omtaan passed, I am ashamed to say that my first thoughts were of how his loss would affect the war, rather than my own sorrow.

I dread returning to the children, especially to little Ilzig, who is a stranger to me. I have missed too many years of their lives and cannot bear the thought that Lacaan and Omtaan are now almost adults. Worse, I have been neglectful in writing to Kyon. At first, it was to spare him accounts of the horrors I faced, but I cannot deny that I soon became terrified that our years apart would render him unrecognizable to me.

I understand now dearest Ma’a why you were so reluctant to awaken. I am sorry that you have had to spend so long watching us drift further away as the years pass by.

I will return once I am confident we have secured the city and that the replacement population from Nessa won’t immediately hand it back to Calanlai. I prey that when I return, we can rejoice in the peace I have won, and I can regain my personhood and my family.

Perhaps, in a few years, if the peace holds, we can re-assess our own model of ruling, and even you can be returned to me.”

We do not have a copy of Maake’s reply. We do know however that Calanlai returned safely to Nessa and abdicated, and Maake was able to use her dream powers to subtly support Umlai. We have an eye-witness account of Calanlai’s return to his war camp after his surrender, and it appears that things almost went differently.

One of his aides writes that as they came up through the pass, they were greeted by Calanlai’s seven generals, all of whom kept their guns pointed in Calanlai’s direction. The defeated king smiled and walked towards the firing squad with open arms.

“Gentlemen, ladies… and Lord Jamon, I’m pleased to see you” Calanlai said. “Now, tell me… which one of you would like to be the first to have your blue savages captured and shipped off to the Chaaneans?”

The Ashes at Newea

Nessa had a sizable population of Chaaneans, most of which were settled in coastal cities and worked as valuable artisans. None of them went to Ini Shalli. Instead, Nessa continued to exile more of their green indigenous populations, and the descendants of island peoples the first Nessans had bought with them either during their mythical landfall or subsequent attempts to sail back across the Great Ocean.

These so-called ‘blue savages’ consisted of a varied range of peoples who had long held a grudge against Nessa and were constantly rebelling against the Nessan nobility. Despite their hatred of Nessa, they did not trust Chaane and were furious at being driven from their homes on Sereg’s orders.

Sereg spent a further two years at Shhi Trullos attempting to bring peace to the city and win the trust of the new residents. Both her and Maake agreed that dealing directly with a Chaanean empress was necessary to make the blue exiles agree to be Chaanean, but the ancient blood connection was only just reaching these populations, meaning Maake couldn’t influence or learn about these new people from their dreams.

Sereg though did an excellent job connecting with various leaders in these Exile communities just by meeting with them. She is said to have become fluent in two different Exile languages during her time at Shhi Trullos. However, the sheer number of different ethnic groups Calanlai had sent to the city and the centuries of turbulent history between them made appointing a functioning government difficult for Sereg.

She had originally wanted to appoint one of her top generals as Lord of Trullos, but the Exiles had rioted at the prospect of being ruled by another imperial power. Sereg then looked for Exile leaders who would be willing to rule beside her chosen general, but every candidate drew criticism from at least two other ethnic groups. And of course, there were still many influential Nessans who refused to leave the city and protested giving power to the so-called savages.

Fortunately, the Exiles, both Islander and Indigenous Nessan, proved to be nowhere near as savage as King Calanlai and his nobility had believed. Sereg was able to work with them to make a government that contained representatives from what turned out to be fifty-nine different ethnic groups, plus Nessan and Chaanean representatives.

This government peacefully elected a number of officials, including a Governor to manage the massive city, and a Representative to sit at the Council of Lords at Dii’antaa. The two were from rival Islander groups that had been fighting for centuries, but they ended working well together. Sereg’s general was put in charge of the city’s defences, and finally, Sereg was able to turn around and head home with her exhausted army. She set off with her exhausted but triumphant army, a peace treaty signed by Calanlai, the new Shhi Trullos Representative, and Omtaan’s ashes.

She was in sight of Tsvalai’s old capital of Newea when she died.

There are conspiracies over the fate of Empress Sereg Four. It is known she was crossing the Newea River when her slitherbeast got caught in a current and rolled over, crushing her. She was fished out of the water almost a kilometre downstream, and after some incomprehensible last words she died in the arms of her trusted aide Alikye.

The first rumour to spread was that she’d been killed by that old bogey-man, Forsi terrorists. That is false, at least in the sense that supposed eye-witness accounts of Forsi firelancers descending on the party and blasting Sereg off her slitherbeast has no basis in reality.

However, the reason the party was forced to cross the river was because Forsi rebels had destroyed the bridge in protest of an unfair movement tax the Lord of Newea had imposed on them, and Sereg had been wearing plate armour due to the threat of hostile Forsi in the area. Despite the denials of their involvement in Sereg’s death, the Forsi still faced reprisals, and Maake did not come to their defence.

Alikye would later publish a controversial memoir claiming that Sereg had been suicidal at the time of the accident. The empress had not received letters from Kyon in a while and was convinced she would return to find that he hated her. (At the time, Kyon was suffering from a long running-fever and had fallen behind on his correspondence. With the rest of the royal family preparing for Sereg’s return, no-one had thought to mention Kyon’s sickness to the empress. It is known that Kyon was actually overjoyed at the prospect of meeting Sereg again, and when Alikye’s memoir came out with its implications around Sereg’s death, he stayed locked in his rooms in Illasa for almost a year.)

Most historians avoid placing any blame for Sereg’s death, treating it as a tragic accident. Her funeral was held in Newea, and the urns of her and Omtaan were kept in the shrine of Chan to await collection from a member of the royal family, so they could be returned to Dii’antaa with a proper royal procession.

The reign of Sereg the Fourth lasted for forty-two years. A long reign for an active emperor.

She was only forty-one when she died.

During her reign, Sereg conquered a vast amount of land for the empire. More land than Maarigee Two and Satil Four did during their conquest, and about as much as the legendary Lacaan One did after settling the Dii’antaa Plataeu and using it as a base to conquer the yellow grasslands.

Unlike Maarigee Two and Satil Four though, Sereg’s decade long military campaign didn’t bankrupt the empire. With all the riches of the Ini Shalli flowing back to Chaane and Maake and Kyon keeping the Council and the economy in order, Chaane was stronger than ever after Sereg’s conquest.

That didn’t mean the long war hadn’t left scars. The most obvious were the vast number of displaced people in both Chaane and Nessa, and the influx of returned soldiers with stimulant issues. Less obvious though was the cultural impact.

The empresses had done an excellent job at using the Nessans as a common enemy to get the Council, army, and churches to stay aligned to their vision. But for a land that had been full of many different peoples even before Calanlai sent in the Exiles, such xenophobia was dangerous.

Chaane’s success had relied heavily upon its minority groups. The Nessan engineers sharing their gunpowder expertise, the medicines, drugs and preserved foods of the Lasans fuelling Sereg’s army, and the Forsi Dragon’s training of Maake’s dragon dream abilities, had all been vital to Sereg’s conquest, as well as the contributions of other groups not mentioned in this account.

For such an empire, the normalization of such hatred was a vicious form of self-mutilation.

Of course, these cracks are only visible in hindsight. At the time of Sereg’s death, her and Maake’s dream of making a better empire free of the cruelty they had seen growing up must have seemed within reach. Sereg left the empire with new riches, a secure border, two sons just reaching adulthood and her trusted sister there to hold the Reigns whilst her power was transferred.

They had designed a full-proof succession process. Maake was supposed to choose Sereg’s successor and stay awake to advise him as he got a hold on his Reigns.

Instead, Maake stayed asleep, and her depression seeped into the dreams of everyone connected to the Pearl of Chaane. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined Sereg would not come home. She’d thought she’d had longer to prepare for a world without her twin in it. Thought she had more time to get used to the idea as she saw Sereg age, but Sereg hadn’t even lost the shine of her feathers last time they’d met.

For six years, Maake could not be awakened, no matter what her family and her attendants did.

Lord Twile had died of old age by this time, but her son Satil was there to lead the Council of Lords whilst the royal family was paralysed by sorrow. He led a vote for Prince Lacaan to succeed Sereg as active emperor, since Lacaan was an adult, and Omtaan still a couple of months short of his majority.

Of course, it must also be noted that Lacaan was romantically involved with Satil’s grand-daughter Maarigee, a motive the Council undoubtedly saw, but they approved Lacaan’s appointment as co-emperor regardless.

After Lacaan’s coronation, he announced his engagement to Maarigee. His grandmother Ilzig tried to stop the engagement, but she was still suffering from the same fever that had struck down Kyon, and with her advanced age and the stress of losing her husband and daughter, she never did regain her strength.

We do not know what Maake thought of her son’s coronation and marriage. She did not wake up for either of these events, and in the years since she has refused to comment on anything that happened during this time.

Except for her Apology Speech twenty years later.

“In my despair, I dropped my hold on the Morel Reigns of the empire” she would say after the dust settled. “I allowed myself to step back and neglect my duties. I allowed my character to become corrupted, and therefore acted in a petty, stubborn manner that prevented me from fixing the problems with my family that everyone else could see. I didn’t lead my people when they needed me, when my children needed me. And therefore, it is on me and me alone, that the Civil War is to be blamed.”

To Be Continued.

Support Jayde Holmes

What&#039;s Everyone&#039;s Favourite Monthly Story from the first half of 2026?

2026 Monthly Story Challenge #8: Dragonslumber (Part One: Slumber)

2026 Monthly Story Challenge #7: Judgement

What's Everyone's Favourite Monthly Story from the first half of 2026?