2026 Monthly Story Challenge #9: Dragonslumber (Part Two: Awaken)

2026 Monthly Story Challenge #9

Dragonslumber Part 2 (Wordcount 33,575)

By Jayde Holmes

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Lacaan The Seventh

For years, Maake saw Lacaan and Omtaan dream of playing and working together. She never saw when those dreams changed from reflections of their lived reality to their deepest desires. The relationship between the two brothers had soured as they grew, and by the time Sereg died they hated each other.

As children they had discussed how they would run the empire just as their mothers had. They both claimed they’d do anything for the empire, and had made it a competition to see who could imagine the most terrible things they’d do for it. What little Maake knew of these boasts she approved of, though she wondered if things would have been different had they talked more about what the ‘good of the empire’ meant rather than what depraved things they were willing to do to for it.

Her concern was that there was one thing neither boy was willing to do for the empire.

Neither of them was willing to be a sleeping emperor.

She saw in their dreams how much the process of dragonslumber disgusted them, and how deeply averse to becoming like her they were. When she caught them having such dreams she tried to make the dream happier, but her influence backfired. They resented her. They didn’t want a mother who would interfere with their minds yet not even wake up to talk to them.

This shared aversion to dragonslumber bonded them as children, but as the topic of which office they would inherit got more serious, it drove a wedge between them.

One day while the two were tailblade training, Lacaan suggested the obvious answer. Ilzig would be the sleeping empress and they could work out between themselves who got the throne and who got Illasa. In response Omtaan had attacked him so violently their combat instructor had had to pry him off.

Little Ilzig loved her sleeping Ma Ma’a, and would often lay down in a pile of gold next to Maake and say she was going to be a ‘dream empress’ just like her. When Maake could speak to the children, Ilzig was the only one able to keep up with her descriptions of the empire’s dreams.

It was also obvious to everyone that Ilzig did not, and probably would never have the mental capacity to understand the full implications off falling into dragonslumber. Furthermore, attempts to explain the transformation process had frightened her so badly she had spent of entire evenings chirping. Omtaan had nightmares of his sister being tied down to a burning bed of gold whilst screaming. Of her being lost in a dream world long after all the people she loved had died not being able to understand where they’d gone.

He’d thought Lacaan had shared his fares. Both boys had done their best to teach Ilzig about the court system and about Illasa, and they were confident that as long as she had good help, she would make a good Lord of Illasa one day. Her character was good and she had a knack for economics and logistics.

Lacaan did love his sister and had the same fears as Omtaan, but as adulthood approached, he became more practical. He knew that Ilzig’s mind would be well suited to dragon dreaming, and forcing her into that role was something he was willing to do for the good of the empire.

Their fight had left Lacaan with a massive scar running down his neck which almost diminished his good looks. It also left a rift between the two that they could never overcome. From that day on, Omtaan would insist that Lacaan was too cruel to hold the Morel Reigns of the Empire. That the only way he could make things right would be to study at the Temple of Chan for a decade, give Ilzig the Reigns of Illasa, and then join his own mother in dragonslumber. Meanwhile Lacaan would always insist that Omtaan was a selfish coward who’d be unable to make tough decisions for the good of the empire.

Omtaan did not attend Lacaan’s coronation.

His absence was noted by many people in the empire, including soldiers who had fought under Sereg, and the Representative of Shhi Trullos, whose people had built a relationship with Sereg and felt no connection to Maake, so why was Maake’s son the one taking Sereg’s throne? Maake’s dreams were flooded with accusations that she had betrayed her sister by putting her own son on the active throne.

From her sick-bed, Ilzig had insisted the coronation be delayed until Maake was ready to choose the next active emperor. Perhaps if she and Kyon had not been so ill at the time, they would have gotten their delay and been able to rouse Maake from her grief. Instead, Lord Satil pushed through Lacaan’s coronation, and Maake tried to escape deeper into her own mind.

Except in her mind, she was a little child again, trying to shield Sereg from all the terrible people who’d hurt them for a slither of power. And she couldn’t protect Sereg. Sereg was gone, and had suffered so much horror. Horrors that Maake hadn’t stopped. That she’d encouraged. Maake kept imagining a slightly older Sereg in Illasa, chirping because there was no way to stop the advance of evil, power-hungry monsters. Nothing they could do would ever be enough to fix the empire, because they’d already failed. Lacaan and Omtaan were fighting, and she could see the hopeless way it would turn out.

So Lacaan became emperor. That mede Gra-ma Ilzig’s continued insistence that the coronation was illegitimate treason. Many of Lacaan’s new, Satil-provided inner circle called for Ilzig’s execution, but Lacaan loved his grandmother enough to give her chances to accept his rule.

“Laca, you know this isn’t the way your mothers planned the succession to go” Ilzig said at one of their meetings in the empty Council chamber, looking up at the stoney throne her grandson sat on, flanked by Lord Satil and Maarigee.

“They also didn’t plan for one of them to die young and the other to get trapped in dragonslumber” Lacaan said. “Grandmother, we must admit that things aren’t going to work the way the twin empresses envisioned. Now will you please allow me to salvage this whole dual thrones mess?”

Ilzig would not allow him to entertain any notion of the dual thrones or Sereg and Maake’s procedures being a mess. Therefore, Lord Satil had ordered her execution. Lacaan, who never ended up being Satil’s puppet, amended that to house arrest. Ilzig would spend the next six years in a comfortable office in one of the many high towers of the palace.

Today her tower is called Ilzig’s Tower, and the outside is decorated with the tapestry she wove while imprisoned. Every year on her birthday, thousands of sheets of paper are thrown out of the tower windows in honour of how she continued to thwart Lord Satil’s and Emperor Lacaan’s plans through her letter writing campaigns.

Omtaan and Kyon did not take this well. As Maake’s representative Kyon still had a lot of influence on the Council. Especially since the only words anyone was able to coax from sleeping Maake after Ilzig’s arrest were “They took Ma. They took Ma”, which he argued meant the empress did not approve of the arrest. He was obviously correct, but with Satil’s help Lacaan declared that Empress Maake was in a period of mourning, and that nothing she said while asleep should be taken as an order. He then offered Kyon and Omtaan a choice between exile to Illasa, a tower with a view of Ilzig’s, or the opportunity to shut up and let him rule.

Omtaan took his little sister and went back to Illasa. Kyon, with Omtaan’s blessing, stayed in the palace and pledged obedience to Lacaan. He would go on to leave the public eye for the next six years, spending his time between Ilzig and Maake. He started sleeping in the dragon chamber next to Maake, and even when she didn’t speak for months at a time, he would carry on one-sided conversations with her or read her books.

 He left the palace twice during this time. Once near the end of Maake’s convalescence, when he returned to Illasa to be with his own mother as she fell ill, and once near the start, when he joined Lacaan and Maarigee on their wedding procession through the city.

The wedding between Emperor Lacaan and Maarigee of Lower Dii’antaa came early in Lacaan’s reign and was one of the most extravagant events to have ever been held on the plateau. They were married in the Pantheon, then went on a two-week procession through the city, all the way down the plateau to the sprawling undercity of Lower Dii’antaa.

After the wedding, pamphlets began to circulate. A newly invented printing press in Lower Dii’antaa had been given an intricate metal plate that could replicate a crude imitation of Sereg’s figure in the infamous ‘Whores of the Empire’ painting. As the scandalous papers spread, so did a discussion that would have been unthinkable while Sereg and Maake ruled.

“Isn’t it strange that Sereg only ever laid eggs after leaving the palace?” People whispered.

“Very strange. Only two eggs, and they were both laid as soon as she went off to war” the whispers continued.

“Empress Maake and Regent Ilzig each only laid one egg. Obviously, there are fertility issues in that family.”

“It’s so strange. Her only eggs laid whilst she was gone.”

“Have you ever seen Prince Omtaan and Princess Ilzig? They look nothing like Lord Kyon.”

“They don’t look that much like the empresses either.”

“Did anyone ever actually see Empress Sereg lay an egg?”

“Supposedly, she laid them alone.”

“I don’t think they are Lord Kyon’s children. We know how strange the royal family are in sexual matters.”

“I don’t even think they’re Empress Sereg’s. Look at them. They aren’t born to rule. Not like Emperor Lacaan.”

Whilst the soldiers and the Ini Shallians tended to favour Omtaan, the nobility, especially near Dii’antaa, was more amiable to Lacaan. When the rumours about Omtaan and Ilzig’s illegitimacy began to spread, Lacaan also got the churches on his side. If Omtaan hadn’t pushed his own claim, it’s likely that Lacaan Seven would have been accepted eventually and gone on to have a peaceful reign.

But Omtaan could not abide Lacaan on the throne for the same reasons we see Lacaan Seven as a villain today. Lacaan tried to pressure his mentally disabled sister into the dragonslumber, he imprisoned his grandmother, usurped and then exiled his brother, married into a family that his aunt/second mother had hated, and took advantage of his mother’s grief-fueled depression to not only take the throne, but to make policy changes that Maake would never approve of. Pettiest of all, not only did he not go to Newea to collect Sereg’s ashes, but he also barred Omtaan and Ilzig from doing so with the terms of Omtaan’s exile.

In Omtaan’s opinion, Lacaan’s character was not suitable for the Morel Reigns. Despite all his villainous actions though, Lacaan Seven was a competent ruler during his short reign. He improved relations with Nessa, despite the growing xenophobia of the empire. He rebuilt Ini Shalli, boosting the economy in the process, and established new trade routes with the Breakaway Kingdoms on the South Coast. He also appeased the democratic sentiment that the creation of a Representative of Shhi Trullos had created without upsetting the nobility by creating ‘commoner-governed’ provinces out of areas previously overseen by Satil’s enemies.

  In hindsight, Lacaan Seven made two mistakes. First, he sent Omtaan to Illasa instead of exiling him from the empire. Illasa was still close enough to the heart of the empire for Omtaan’s presence to be felt. It was also a vital trading post, giving Omtaan access to money and communication lines with the entire empire. Most importantly, proximity to the Lasa jungle gave Omtaan access to the stimulants that hundreds of veterans of Sereg’s conquest were still addicted to. Omtaan wasted no time shipping his wares to any potential ally he could find.

Lacaan’s second mistake came six years into his reign, after the first birthday of his second child, Prince Maaken. He was asked by a Council Lord which one of his children was most likely to join Maake in the dragonchamber, baby Maaken or firstborn Princess Sereg. Lacaan snapped back “neither” so viciously that he felt the need to make a proclamation the next day, explaining his views on the dragonslumber.

“Years ago, I insisted my sister Ilzig should become a sleeping empress for the empire’s sake” he announced to the Council. “Omtaan attacked me for saying that. Since then, I have had a lot of reasons to disagree with my brother. However, he was right to attack me for what I wanted to do with Ilzig. It would have been wrong to put her into dragonslumber. Not because of Ilzig’s mental oddities, but because dragonslumber itself is wrong.”

The Council, which had been chuckling at Lacaan’s understatement about Omtaan, fell silent.

“The dragonslumber is an archaic, barbaric practice that we don’t need in modern Chaane. My mother has been silent for six years, and the empire is prospering, what more proof can we need it it is unnecessary? The reason the two empresses created the split thrones was fear of succession conflicts, but my beloved mother’s presence as sleeping empress has been the cause of our current succession conflict. If not for the insistence on waiting for her to awaken and confirm me, Omtaan and his supporters would not have had the opportunity to undermine my appointment. We would have had a smooth transition of power if not for the split thrones.

I am not willing to usurp my mother, despite the way her depression is seeping into our dreams, and even the dreams of the Breakaway Kingdoms. We’ll mourn Empress Sereg, my beloved aunt, for as long as my beloved mother grieves. However, when Empress Maake leaves her post, neither me nor my successors will appoint a new sleeping emperor. None of my children, grandchildren or however-many great-grandchildren that I beget will suffer the unnecessary indignity of turning into a dragon. Maake Second will be the last sleeping emperor, and there will be only one Chaanean throne after she passes. That is a royal decree, and will not be debated!”

Maake woke up shortly afterwards, though it is uncertain if Lacaan’s decree was the reason. It could have been the nightmares she was having of Omtaan’s growing army in Illasa, or the nightmares her isolated mother was having, or concerns that little Ilzig was dreaming of the charming but simple son of one of her lesser lords.

Or maybe, it was Kyon who woke her. By then he’d spent years by her side begging her to wake up. He’d bought both of Lacaan’s children into the chamber to meet their Gra-ma Ma’a, Despite Lacaan and Maarigee disapproving. He’d spent hours resharing his memories of their childhood with her. Often, he’d spend hours buried in her golden pile with his face against her scales.

He spent so long by her side that the gold had began to burn him. His beautiful feathers had fallen out prematurely and his body bloated in anticipation of the dragon transformation. Though of course, he fled the chamber before such a change could take hold.

“I’d love to stay here with you” he’d always say to Maake whenever he felt the burn on his scales or the tug of the dreamspire on his dozing mind “but the children still need me.”

He was thigh deep in gold crying on Maake’s back the day she woke up. He’d told her about Lacaan’s declaration, then tried to lighten the mood with a story of something cute little Sereg had done to her little brother, but he couldn’t even finish this simple tale. Instead, he chirped for nearly an hour and recited the names of all the people they were missing.

“The children shouldn’t be growing up alone. They’ll have a cousin in Illasa soon. They should know Omtaan and Pa’loth and Ilzig. And your parents. And Sere. Sere should have got to meet them. It’s not fair Ma’a. I just want her back. I want her back dammit I want you both back. I miss you Ma’a.”

“I miss you too” Maake muttered.

“Ma’a? You can hear me?”

“I miss you. I miss… Sere. Want you, want you both here.”

“Ma’a” Kyon chirped as she raised her heavy head and got her first look at him in over a decade. It still didn’t seem to her that long ago that she was sitting on the throne with him and Sereg, basking in the adoration of their people. But he’d grown old since then. He had no feathers, yellowed canine teeth snagging around a worn snout, and a noticeable slump in his neck.

He was middle aged now, and worn down more than what his years could account for.

She knew he’d be dead in just a few awakenings. Dead just like her sister and stepfather.

“Kyon” She chirped “Kyon, Sere is dead. She’s gone.”

“I know Ma’a. I know.”

“How are we going to go on?”

“We just have to” Kyon said. “The children need us. The empire needs us. And, and we need each other. I need… I need you back. I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’m sorry Kyon. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

They held on to each other. Maake wanted Kyon to fall into dragonslumber with her, so that she couldn’t lose him too.

But she knew he wouldn’t do it.

And she couldn’t grieve with him forever. She’d heard what had been happening around her in the palace, and in her dreams she had seen the chaos brewing as the rift between Lacaan and Omtaan grew. Maake knew it was time to pick up the Morel Reigns again, and steer the empire out of danger, no matter what the cost might be.

Omtaan The First

Maake had experienced the dreams of her subjects during her depressive episode, and so she knew that a civil war was imminent. She had experienced thousands of dreams from Sereg’s loyal allies in the army, who for six years had seen a usurper on their beloved empress’s throne. She also saw dreams tainted by the rumours that Omtaan and Ilzig were illegitimate; both those were Sereg was deceptive about where her eggs had come from, and those were Sereg had conceived them with some secret lover.

It is possible that the way the rumours about Omtaan impacted Sereg’s image had more to do with Maake’s response than any of Lacaan’s actions as emperor. As soon as she and Kyon finished catching up, it is said she told him that Lacaan and ‘that scheming daughter of Twile’ would have to go.

Kyon tried to be a voice of reason, pointing out that Lacaan was doing a good job of running the empire alone and that Maarigee was actually Twile’s great-granddaughter, and was well loved by the people. He pitched a plan to Maake that would see the two of them formally adopt Omtaan and Ilzig so that the rumours of their illegitimacy would become irrelevant, then appoint Omtaan as Maake’s waking representative.

Maake would not hear of it.

“You can’t adopt your own children Kyon” she said. “That would be admitting that the rumours about Sereg are plausible. And I will not adopt them because there is no need. They are Sereg’s children and they have a rightful claim to her throne. We shouldn’t have to reassure the people that Sereg was an honest woman just because Lacaan made an incestuous marriage with a bitch determined to besmirch her competition. We will not adopt our own children and fuel her lies.”

“Lacaan and Maarigee are half-first cousins thrice removed” Kyon countered. “Just like us. And she’s not as bad as Twile.”

“I believe we are four times removed” Maake said. “Besides this is all a moot point. Even if we could get Omtaan un-exiled and quash these horrible rumours, there is no way the two of them would ever work together in the palace.”

“They love each other” Kyon insisted “I’m sure of it. And they both want the best for the empire.”

“You haven’t seen the hate between the two of them, and between their supporters. I know this is unbearable for you Kyon. It took me way too long to see it. But one of them has to go.”

“You can’t –“

“Exile Kyon! One of them needs to be exiled. And not to Illasa. I think we can trust Umlai to host one of them.”

“I suppose it is easier for you to talk about losing one of them” Kyon said. “It wouldn’t make any difference to you.”

“Trust me Kyon, I’ll live with the guilt a lot longer than you will.”

Maake ordered a royal council, even though her mind about the succession was made up. Lacaan tried to countermand the order, but the Council of Lords obeyed the more senior empress’s demands. After that loss, Lacaan refused to meet with his mother until the meeting.

Omtaan and Ilzig were summoned from Illasa and arrived two weeks later with their retainers, a personal army a thousand warriors strong, and Omtaan’s wife and daughter, Pa’loth and another baby girl named Sereg. Despite the effectiveness of Lacaan’s propaganda there was massive fanfare for the return of Omtaan and Ilzig. Crowds gathered in the street, waving banners with Illasan heraldry to show their support.

At some point Lacaan’s loyalists began heckling the ‘bastards’ and ‘fake royals’. By the time the procession from Illasa made it to the palace a riot had broken out. It took three days to put out the fires and the pantheon was vandalised.

Omtaan’s wife was Pa’loth Lairi, the daughter of the long-term Representative of Shhi Trullos, Danth Lairi. Omtaan had always been more interested in the emerging scientific practices of the day and believed that the growing inter-relatedness of the noble families was a factor in the physical, mental, and morel un-healthiness of the empire’s elites. As soon as Lacaan had announced his engagement to Maarigee, Omtaan had sworn he would not marry any decedents of Maarigee Five. This had excluded most of the Chaanean nobility, and for a couple of years he had courted the daughters of merchants, clergy and judges.

As the situation with Lacaan escalated, he began to become more ambitious with his matchmaking. He sent messages to the Breakaway Kingdoms and even wrote to King Umlai asking about influential noblewomen who were not descended from Sama.

This message was received with great suspicion by Umlai, since according to Nessan astrology the kingdom was soon to enter a feminine age. Barring any accidents or illness, Umlai would abdicate to his daughter when the age change came. He saw Omtaan’s message as a clumsy attempt to gain intelligence on his daughter’s rivals and it took two years of reassurances and gifts from Lacaan to convince him that Chaane had no intentions to interfere with the Nessan succession.

Just before his exile Omtaan had begun negotiating with Representative Danth. As a result, Pa’loth and Omtaan were engaged before they ever met. This arrangement gave Danth Lairi’s people, the Uthna, power over the other Exile groups in the city, and it gave Omtaan support throughout the Ini Shalli.

It also lost Omtaan support with many factions of the Chaanean nobility, who in this post-Tsvalai and post-conquest climate would not abide a foreign consort. Despite Pa’loth publicly supporting the Chaane pantheon, there was doubt amongst the religious leaders that she had truly abandoned Uthna beliefs. It has been noted by historians that the pantheon’s acceptance of the rumours of Omtaan’s illegitimacy came after Pa’loth moved to Illasa.

Pa’loth entered Dii’antaa as Omtaan’s greatest liability. Her first action once she entered the palace, before even meeting her own father, was to take her newborn baby Sereg to the dragonchamber to meet Maake. She bowed towards Maake before holding the baby to her and said that she had heard a lot of great things about her.

“From Omtaan?” Maake asked.

“No, Your Highness” Pa’loth had said. “From your sister, Empress Sereg. I met her when I was younger. She said me and my sister reminded her of her childhood with you.”

The two of them spent hours talking about Sereg. Meanwhile the baby named after her curled up to sleep next to Lacaan and Maarigee’s new egg, which Kyon had placed on the old cushion beside the gold pile.

 Lacaan would later accuse Pa’loth of lying about her connection to Sereg to manipulate Maake. However, Sereg’s own letters and journals show that she spent considerable time living with Danth Lairi and his daughters. Maake had also found Pa’loth’s accounts of Sereg to be in character. We cannot say that Pa’loth did not use her connection with Empress Sereg to gain Maake’s favour, but it is unlikely she lied.

In the years since the Civil War, both Maarigee and Pa’loth would be blamed for the fighting. Both are often portrayed as manipulative, power-hungry women that turned their husbands against each other for their own gain. Today, it is impossible for us to accurately judge the character of either of these women. Both sides slandered the opposing consorts, until it became impossible to tell which stories were true. Maake’s biases regarding the two also shapes our view of them. Especially of Maarigee.

Due to the unreliable nature of our history, it is important that we remember that Omtaan gave Lacaan the scar on his neck before either one of them had ever met their wives. That is a fact.

A few days after the Illasan royals arrived, Lacaan, Omtaan, and young Ilzig were summoned to the dragonchamber for the royal succession council. Also in attendance was Kyon, the High Lord of the Council Sentaan the Pontex, General Helaga, a scribe to take minuets, and a number of other council lords sufficient to meet the witness quota for a royal appointments. Maarigee and Pa’loth were said to be lingering near the entrance to the chamber, despite officially being barred from the proceedings.

“Where is my mother?” Maake said as soon as Lacaan sat down on his cushion before her. It was the first thing she had said to her son upon waking, and she said it before the rest of the assembly had gotten settled.

“She’s alive” Lacaan said. “Despite committing treason.”

“I’ve been told she insisted the throne of the active emperor remain vacant until I was able to affirm the succession” Maake said. “Is it treason to follow the orders of the emperor of Chaane now?”

“You wouldn’t wake up” Lacaan said. “Should we have remained leaderless in such a delicate political situation?”

“No, you are right. I should have been awake” Maake said. “I failed the empire six years ago by allowing grief to consume me. I must atone for that, and I start doing so now. But first, I order the release of my mother Ilzig. For the second time, since Lord Kyon conveyed my sleeping order to that effect many years ago. I also ask High Lord Sentaan why he has allowed my previous order to that effect to be overruled by a mere prince?”

A lengthy debate followed about the legitimacy of Lacaan’s coronation. A legal expert was called in, and eventually Maake had to concede that there had been no legal action that her children and the Council could have taken that wouldn’t have left the empire functionally leaderless.

“Fine, no punishment shall be given for the premature coronation of Prince Lacaan, since it was the result of circumstances unplanned by the legislation my beloved sister and I wrote up. But from this moment onwards, Lacaan Seven is no longer active emperor. We shall now proceed with a proper succession appointment.”

“A forced abdication requires a unanimous vote in the Council of Lords” Lacaan said. “That was the concession Maarigee Five made when she created the council.”

“Or, it requires a royal decree by the other emperor” Maake said. “That was a potential circumstance we did foresee when we created the twin thrones.”

“A royal decree by the other emperor and a majority vote by the Council of Lords” Lacaan said.

“True” Maake said. “That is why I convened a special meeting of the Council to take place whilst we are meeting here. Don’t worry Lord Sentaan, Representative Danth is acting as Highest whilst you are absent.”

Outrage broke out in the dragonchamber. Sentaan cursed Maake for undermining the Council. Kyon was shocked and pleaded with Maake to stop the meeting. Lacaan looked around at the gathered witnesses, and his crest fell as he realised they were all lords loyal to him. Maarigee and Pa’loth began physically fighting in the hallway and had to be separated by Maake’s chamberguards. The Pontex wailed about the influence of primitive superstitions on the holder of the Morel Reigns, and even Ilzig declared that the council meeting was unfair.

Omtaan is said to have hung his head and kept his eyes on the ground. He remained silent until a messenger came to the chamber to announce that the Council had by a slim margin voted in favour of removing Lacaan from the throne. It is said that Omtaan’s feathers withered in shame when it was done.

The underhanded method of Lacaan’s removal would forever poison the rest of Omtaan’s reign. Maake and Omtaan would both insist that as holder of the Morel Reigns, it was Maake’s duty to act against the Council her grandmother had built. The controversy caused arguments about how best to protect the council from royal interference for years to come. Eventually, the people would come to believe that the nobles would always follow the royal family and that more democratic processes were needed.

The meeting continued with the dynamic of the room changed. Lacaan was no longer emperor, and therefore no-one objected as Maake asked the gathering who they believed should be Sereg Four’s successor.

Lacaan’s loyalists had their testimony dismissed on the grounds that they were citing the actions of an emperor who had been removed from power. The Pontex was dragged out of the room for mentioning what Maake called ‘vile, untrue rumours about my sister’. Kyon repeated his proposal for Lacaan to take the throne and Omtaan to be Maake’s representative, but as Maake had predicted, both men refused.

It didn’t take long for Maake to issue her verdict.

“For falsely imprisoning Ilzig, as well as the unjust besmirching of Prince Omtaan, Princess Ilzig, and Empress Sereg, I sentence Prince Lacaan to exile” Maake said. “He and his wife have five months to leave the Empire of Chaane, or their lives will be forfeit. In his place, I appoint Omtaan as successor to Empress Sereg’s throne, and Princess Ilzig shall be my successor.”

“No!” shouted all three siblings. Omtaan and Lacaan stood together as Maake ignored them and continued on, making demands about when Ilzig would begin preparations for her slumber. Ilzig clutched her pillow harder and began to sway.

“Ma Maake, this is wrong” Omtaan said. “Ilzig cannot be forced to become a sleeping empress.”

“It will be fine” Maake said. “Ilzig, I have seen your dreams. I know that you will be happier in a dreamworld.”

“No” Ilzig said.

“It will be easier for you than running Illasa.”

“I like running Illasa” Ilzig said, getting up and standing with her brothers.

“And she’s good at it” Omtaan insisted. “Ma Maake, you can’t take her from Illasa.”

“No” agreed Lacaan. “And we can’t have an unwilling empress.”

“Ilzig just doesn’t understand –“

“I understand” Ilzig said. “I understand that if I do a dragon sleep, then everyone else will grow up around me and I’ll stay the same. If Akyen and I have an egg, and it turns into a baby, I’ll be sleeping like you were when I was growing up. I don’t want to be a sleeping mother.”

“You want to raise children?” Maake asked.

“Ma’a, please” Kyon said, getting between the dragon empress and their children. “Please stop. Please just let our children be happy. Ilzig is a great lord for Illasa and can start a family, and now that Lacaan and Omtaan are both here and can talk about things, we can work out the proper succession.”

“Our children are the royal family Kyon” Maake said. “They were born to rule. That comes with privileges and power, yes, but it also comes with a great burden. If that is too much for them then they are free to leave the royal family.”

“Alright, I will” Ilzig said. “Omtaan, Pa, will you still be my friends please? And Lacaan, would you want to be my friend again too if I say I don’t want to be your sister anymore?”

“Ilzig that’s not…” Kyon started “I’ll explain how abdication works after this meeting. Then if you still want to do it, we can.”

“You’d talk her into giving up her position?” Maake said.

“I’d make sure she understands her options” Kyon said.

“I see” Maake said. “Omtaan, are you responsible for making your sister ‘understand her options’ regarding the dragonslumber too?”

“Yes Ma Maake” Omtaan said. “And I’m sure if you actually knew Ilzig the way we all do, you’d agree I did the right thing.”

A gasp was uttered and the room went silent save for an angry growl coming from Maake.

“Ma’a?” Kyon said, turning back to his dearest friend. “Everything you and Sere have ever done, was to make sure stuff like this didn’t happen anymore. What is the point of anything she did if you’re just going to rip our family apart anyway?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You told Lacaan his life would be forfeit if he didn’t follow your orders. You’re trying to bully Ilzig into giving up everyone she loves, and now what? Are you going to punish Omtaan for looking out for his sister? The way you and Sere looked out for each other when other powerful lords were out fucking around with the legal system to get their way?”

“I am the legal system” Maake said “and you are bringing up personal issues in a meeting of state.”

“Then let’s adjourn and talk about our personal issues” Kyon said. “You’ve stripped Lacaan of his throne, you can free your mother any time you want, and we’re all here. We can all talk off the record, without wasting any of our esteemed guest’s time.”

“Fine” Maake said, looking around at the uncomfortable officials gathered in her dragonchamber. “In twenty-four hours, we will hold another meeting. If in that time, Ilzig still wishes to abdicate, then I expect you two boys to come to an understanding. One of you on Sereg’s throne, and one of you will join me in the dragonchamber. I will abide by any agreement the two of you make provided both thrones are secured. If you do not come to such an understanding, then my initial decree will stand, where it does not regard Ilzig. Omtaan will take the active throne, and Lacaan and his family will be exiled.”

“You’d put him on the throne?” Lacaan said. “Omtaan the Rebel? Omtaan the Drug-Pusher? He’s been building up a personal army and destabilising the empire for six years!”

“And you imprisoned my mother!” Maake said. “Your power-grabbing is deplorable. Actually, now I think of it, your children should not be punished for the actions of their parents. You and that wife of yours have twenty-four hours to either make a deal with Omtaan or leave the plateau. Your children will stay here.”

“THIS MEETING IS ADJURNED!” Kyon shouted as outrage filled the room. After a brief, confused pause, the witness Lords and High Lord Sentaan made for the door, before the empress could over-rule the person who technically had the power to speak on her behalf. The Pontex and General Helaga followed slowly and the scribe began to pack up her pens, but Lacaan called out to the general.

“General Helaga” Lacaan said. “Would you really side with Omtaan over me? Even after all the damage he has done to our army?”

General Helaga tried to look at Lacaan but could not meet his eyes. Instead, he made a bow to Maake, then kept his eyes locked onto a small dent on the floor as he spoke.

“The only side is Empress Maake’s” Helaga said. “I am sorry, Prince Lacaan, but my loyalty is to the throne.”

Helaga turned to leave, and after looking to Maake’s stoney face, the scribe packed up and left too.

“Ma Ma’a” Omtaan started.

“You three should leave too” Kyon said. “I need to talk with your mother. Ilzig, I’ll meet you in your room after to talk about abdication.”

The three children left and went their separate ways. Maake started to say something to Kyon, but he snarled as he turned back to her.

“Maake that was monstrous” He was heard saying before Maake’s attendants closed the door. “How can you threaten to take those children away from their parents?”

“They’ll be better off –“

“No. NO! Maake, this is the kind of stuff that people were trying to do with us when we were younger. You are becoming that kind of person. What’s happened to you?”

“Kyon, it is so hard to steer a whole empire.”

“You must know these orders aren’t right.”

“Sereg had to do stuff she knew wasn’t right, for the good of the empire. And Kyon, I went and screwed it up by staying asleep for six years. I let too much time go by and now everything Sereg fought for is in danger. If I can’t oversee a peaceful transition of power, then what did Sereg die for?”

“Are you doing this just so Omtaan doesn’t start a war?”

“I’m doing this because Lacaan has become the type of power-obsessed petty tyrant that we wanted to get rid of. And he’ll make sure there is no sleeping emperor after me. Maybe he’ll try and get rid of me. Then everything will go back to the way it was. We can’t let that happen.”

“He’s our son Ma’a.”

“And I should have been awake for him more. Especially after Sere left. I’ve failed our children, but I will not fail the empire, and I will not fail Sere again.”

Kyon slumped over Maake’s neck and chirped for some time. From here we have no further account of his actions that night. It can be assumed he went to see his daughter, since she did follow through with her threat to abdicate. All we know for sure is that he was not in the dragonchamber later that night when Lacaan’s soldiers broke in.

The soldiers were after Lacaan and Maarigee’s egg, but their mission never had any chance of success. A sleeping empress like Maake was limited in how long she could avoid dragonslumber, but in the weeks on end she could stay awake, she was awake in every sense of the word. This succession crisis was Maake’s longest awakening on record, and during the month she was awake she was continually awake and working. The invaders had chosen their best opportunity to attempt their theft, breaking through a window whilst Maake was having a night feeding with only attendants around. They were still spotted instantly and overpowered by chamber guards.

Even though the egg could not be retrieved, Lacaan, Maarigee, and their other two children escaped the plateau that night. There are many theories on what happened between the royal meeting and Lacaan’s flight, but very little confirmed information. The most interesting account of the night is that of the elder Ilzig. After being freed and reunited with her daughter (a meeting that we have no accounts of, save that the empress was extremely emotional) Ilzig returned to her prison tower to finish some letters. She claims she saw Omtaan and Lacaan sitting together in a courtyard at sunset. The two brothers spoke for some time and embraced before parting. Ilzig assumed this was a sign the two had reached a deal and wrote to her allies about the coming peace. She said that they held each other for a long time, clinging desperately together.

The next day when she learnt the truth, she was crushed. She plucked her head-feathers out just as she’d done when Omtaan had died, and again upon Sereg’s death. It is said that this time, they ever grew back.

Omtaan the First took the throne later that week. He did not deny the meeting with Lacaan, nor that his own soldiers had been ordered to aid in the flight of the former emperor. However, at the time he would not elaborate further on what happened, or what if anything he discussed with his brother.

Whatever common ground the two held on that night was not enough to reconcile them. Omtaan One spent the first year of his reign purging the city of Lacaan’s allies in the army, nobility, and churches. The artist who had created the printing plate showing Empress Sereg as a whore was publicly whipped then imprisoned in the same cell Palaani had been. This did not stop the rumours of Omtaan’s illegitimacy, even though Maake had not inflamed them by adopting him.

When Lacaan was spotted a year later in the holy city of Chan’tani (still very much within the empire’s borders) Omtaan led an army to the city with orders to kill his brother on sight.

Maake had stayed awake for the first month of Omtaan’s reign, before involuntarily falling back asleep lacking confidence that she had prepared him properly. She awoke not long before Omtaan’s campaign though and advised him. It is unknown if she agreed to call for Lacaan’s death.

She had timed this waking not just because dreams of Lacaan as a righteous emperor had become too common amongst the people and clergy of Chan’tani, but because she wanted to witness the hatching of Lacaan’s egg. The hatchling was a healthy boy and Maake named him Satil, after the first Chaanean emperor to enter dragonslumber.

Civil War

               There was no trace of Lacaan’s forces in Chan’tani when Omtaan’s army reached the city. Omtaan was able to confirm that Lacaan himself had been in the city negotiating with leaders of the various churches only after threatening the local priests.

               Whilst Omtaan was away Maake was inundated with complaints from councillors and priests about Omtaan’s actions. The Pontex was furious that the birthplace of the ancestral dragon was under threat. She sought an audience with Maake in the dragonchamber, and by the end of it the two were reported to be screaming at each other. Ilzig was said to be in disbelief that Maake, who had so calmly negotiated her unconventional relationship with the previous Pontex, had fallen afoul of the pantheon.

               With Ilzig’s help, Maake was able to reconcile with the Pontex. She sent a letter to Omtaan before going back to sleep urging him not to take any punitive action against any of the churches or guilds in the city. By this point in his reign Omtaan had spent over a year navigating a council full of lords who harboured sympathy towards Lacaan and Maarigee, and was aware of how precarious his position was. He left Chan’tani without taking any action. Not even when Lord Lacaan of Chan’tani told him he looked nothing like the twin empresses.

               A year after his return from Chan’tani, Omtaan and Pa’loth presented their new egg to the people of Dii’antaa. They hosted an unusual number of events for their egg, including parades through the city where their daughter Sereg and the egg were presented to adoring crowds.

               It was obvious to many that Omtaan was hoping to upstage Lacaan’s wedding, which almost a decade later was still mentioned by the people of the city as one of the greatest shows they had ever seen. It was less obvious how well it was working. Sereg was an adorable child, and when the public saw her with her great-grandmother Ilzig, Maake noticed an increase in positive dreams about the royal family.

However, Sereg had very blue scales, and when she appeared accompanied by her parents, the commoners were likely to dream of Exiles invading the capital, or Chan and Faate punishing the empire for taking the throne and the Reigns away from the royal family.

               Following Maake’s advice, Omtaan and Pa’loth allowed Ilzig and young Sereg to be the public faces of the royal family. There were still older folks in the city who remembered how well Ilzig had ruled as regent, and stories about Ilzig and old Omtaan were retold once again in the streets.

               Maake was concerned that reminding the people how well Ilzig had ruled would rekindle questions about the necessity of royal blood. She found though that such thoughts made the question of Omtaan’s legitimacy less important to the common people, so she encouraged all the dreams she found that followed this line of thought.

               The egg hatched into a girl named Chaane. It was seen as unusual bordering on heresy to name a child after the ancestral dragon at the time. The announcement was made by town criers throughout the empire, along with an explanation that Consort Pa’loth had chosen the name to give thanks to the ‘great, gracious empire’ that had ‘saved’ her and her people from Nessa.

               Despite some protests by the church, the news was well received by the public. Nessans were still seen as villains throughout most of the empire, and Maake found that when her subjects did dream about the royal family, they now saw it as a good thing that they’d welcomed someone the Nessans had tossed aside.

The people were quite fond of the two princesses, and artists around the empire made portraits of them based on descriptions that had travelled from Dii’antaa. Unfortunately, most of these Chaanean artists had never seen an Exile person before, so some of the portraits from this time included inaccuracies and exaggerations that would go on to influence derogatory depictions of Exiles. Others, such as those of Lacaan of Kyanni, made the princesses look so strange and beautiful that his work would go on to influence the way fae creatures from the mythical Sunlands would be depicted.

Chaane’s birth tipped the public’s opinion in Omtaan’s favour, but Lacaan still retained plenty of allies. For three years he stayed in the empire as a fugitive, being spotted in cities throughout the empire but vanishing before Omtaan’s forces arrived. To this day there is no clear account of his actions, and no-one knows where Maarigee or the children stayed during this time.

Wherever Maarigee was, she kept busy. Like Ilzig the elder, she spent hours each day writing letters to the lords, merchants and priests of the empire. She spilled her heart out about the pain of having her son held hostage in the palace, and despite the popularity of the young princesses, people did continue to support Lacaan and Maarigee.

At the end of these fugitive years, Lacaan, Maarigee, and a repentant General Helaga arrived with a ragtag army in the Ini Shalli. They marched to Shhi Ovna, the fortified city on a diamond mine that had once been Empress Sereg and the elder Omtaan’s base.

They easily took the city and imprisoned the Chaanean lord, who had been a veteran of Sereg’s conquest deeply loyal to Omtaan. In her place, Lacaan appointed a leader from amongst the town’s Jatho workers. He allowed her a seat on his newly formed ‘Council and Court in Exile’ and gave her people rights to a large share of the diamonds mined from the city.

The Jathno were enemies of Pa’loth’s Uthna peopl, and their empowerment shattered the fragile peace that Sereg had created for the region. Not only had Lacaan strengthened an enemy of the Uthna people and the groups aligned with them, but from his position at Shhi Ovna he cut Pa’loth and her father Representative Danth off from Shhi Trullos. Feeling abandoned by the Lairi family, the people of Shhi Trullos turned on the clan, destroying their houses and insisting on electing a new representative.

The chaos at the start of the Ini Shalli Campaign of the Civil War required Maake to awaken often. She and Omtaan planned an effective military and propaganda counterattack, and Maake was kept so busy that even Kyon barely had a chance to speak to her.

Towards the end of her gruelling awakenings, Maake made time for a notable meeting that was not related to the war effort at all. A young Forsi woman named Marrone requested an audience with the empress, claiming she was the new apprentice of the Forsi Dragon. Maake’s secretary insisted the empress was busy, but when Maake heard the next Forsi dragon was looking for advice she met her immediately.  

Maake listened as Marrone explained her preperations for a forty year apprenticeship where she would lay besides the current Forsi Dragon until he ‘retired’. Maake couldn’t help but see herself in the young woman as she asked the same questions Maake had once asked and voiced the same fears.

“Tell me about your loved ones” Maake said.

“I don’t really have anyone” Marrone said. “I’m, well, to tell the truth the thought of ever getting married or having children repulses me. That’s why I’m volunteering to be the dragon; I’m not going to have anyone missing me.”

“Nonsense” Maake said. “Just because you have no interest in those types of relationships does not mean you have no important relationships. What about your parents? Siblings? Friends?”

Marrone explained that she was an orphan. Apparently, all Forsi Dragon candidates were orphans. She had been raised in a loving house by a friend of her mother’s. A woman who would have been a co-mother if circumstances had been different, but who instead raised her alone in cluster of Forsi cottages with other Forsi families who endured social exclusion together.

Marrone had a group of friends. Maake interrogated her and realised that Marrone was extremely close with these childhood friends, and that losing them would be as painful as losing Sereg and Kyon had been for Maake.

“Don’t think that just because you have no desire to fuck your friends that those relationships aren’t important” Maake said. “Think hard about whether you’re prepared to lose them. If you go ahead with the dragonslumber, spend as much time as you can with them before you sleep. Treasure it, because you’ll mourn them when you sleep.”

“But they’ll still be able to visit me” Marrone said. “The Dragon said I was allowed visitors, and that I can hear and talk to them in my sleep. You have a family and you still manage it.”

“It isn’t enough” Maake admitted. “And even with that, we don’t live on the same time scale as them. They’ll be dead and gone before you know it. I’ve come to believe that holding on so tightly to my loved ones was a mistake. It would have been easier to get all my grieving over and done with at the start of my sleep.”

“I’m so sorry” Marrone said. “I knew it would be lonely, but…”

“Yes” Maake said. “It’s not something you can prepare for.”

There was a short silence as they contemplated their lonely futures. Then Marrone shook her head.

“I thought our job was to bring our people together” Marrone said. “That’s what I’ve always been told the dragon is supposed to do. But how are we meant to do that if we’re so removed from everyone else? Can someone who doesn’t have any personal connections relate to their people?”

“That I cannot help you with” Maake said. “Your office may be for keeping your people together, but Chaanean unity is not my primary concern. I sleep because that is how I monitor and rule my empire. I don’t need to be able to relate to my subjects.”

They continued talking about Marrone’s fears. Once Marrone was out of questions, Maake decided to give the girl a warning.

“Your master told me that the blood connections to our pearls reach much further than expected” Maake explained. “We like to think of ourselves as distinct people. As Chaaneans, Forsi, Nessan or whatever. But in the hundreds of years since our dreamspires were created, our peoples have mixed together more than expected.”

“I know” Marrone said. “Master explained that our past is never truly erased, and over such a long time linages bleed together. Even if it’s only one drop of outsider blood, it’ll always be there.”

“Did he explain that this applies to your own people too, despite your efforts to avoid such corruption?”

“He did” Marrone said. “But I don’t think we should think of it as corruption. The prohibition on marrying outsiders was because we always faced persecution, and coming under the influence of the Chaane dreamspire could have destroyed us. Now that you and Master have made peace, I think the we can rethink that.”

“You’re still being persecuted” Maake said.

“Yes. But things are improving. Master was worried we might be massacred after people said we killed Empress Sereg. But it wasn’t that bad. We act like cousins now. It’s good.”

“Even if we are cousins” Maake said “your people are at risk of being assimilated by mine. I’ve seen the dreams of a surprising number of Forsi. When you are shunned, your unique culture and values give you strength. When you are accepted though, your artists and learned folks tend to look at their uniqueness and find it cringeworthy. If you reveal that there is no separation between us, your people might abandon your customs and marry into our linage on mass.”

“You seem worried about that” Marrone said with a bitter grin. “But isn’t that the point of an empire? To make us all Chaanean in the end?”

“Are you not going to resist?” Maake said.

“Of course I will” Marrone said. “But I’d rather guide any changes we go through, rather than have someone else change us, or try to stop changes that we need. My goal is to keep us Forsi, no matter what other changes we go through. I think that with us acting like cousins, rather than a naughty child and stern parents, that we can change safely.”

Maake wasn’t a fan of Marrone’s metaphor, but she admired the girl for going to her slumber with such a world-changing dream.

“I hope you have better luck creating your ideal world than I have” the empress said.

“But you’re only just starting your reign” Marrone said. “You have plenty of time to realise your dream.”

Maake thought of all the time that had already passed. Of all the people she’d lost. Of the children that she was going to lose, no matter how the war turned out. They’d grown old in a few more sleeps, and if all went well, she would outlive them.

She asked Marrone if she could send her grandson and heir Satil to learn from her when he was a bit older. Marrone looked uneasy when she was told just how young Satil was, but she agreed to foster him when the time came. Maake parted on good terms with Marrone, then went back to planning a war with her son.   

This war became a repeat of the previous one, where Maake used her dragon dreaming to gain intelligence for Omtaan. Like his mother, Omtaan left his family in the palace to spend years fighting in the Ini Shalli. A new royal egg arrived in the palace not long after his departure, that hatched into a prince named Kyon.

Omtaan stayed in the Ini Shalli for four years. After gaining enough control over the land to besiege Lacaan’s stronghold, he found the city being defended by Helaga, and locals saying that Lacaan had fled south with a second army. Omtaan left his generals and Uthna allies in charge of besieging Helaga whilst he gave chase to his brother through the south of the empire.

There were skirmishes between the two sides over the following half a year, but Lacaan didn’t settle down in any one spot. He met with every lord his army passed. Some harassed his forces, but most did not have the resources to attack him, for he’d raised a proper army in the Ini Shalli. Or possibly they did not have the will. Maake knew some of the southern lords were dreaming of being rewarded for helping reinstate Lacaan, but she’d learnt that she wasn’t that good at distinguishing between wishful thinking and real-life situations. Omtaan found other evidence of collusion, proving that Lacaan was winning allies on his march, but he only found overwhelming evidence on a handful of lords. Omtaan’s dreams grew more paranoid as he chased his brother.

Unlike Sereg’s conquest, Omtaan did not have to worry about rapid technological improvements. Many of the Nessan-Chaaneans who had worked so hard improving Sereg’s guns and cannons had been driven from the military, and Omtaan had spent too much money rewarding Sereg’s veterans to build up new military research corps.

Even though Lacaan was being aided by King Umlai for most of the war, the Nessans were not innovating either.

Despite what Calanlai and the Nessan lords had believed, getting rid of their discontent Blue populations had not bought stability. The Ini Shallian Nessans who’d been forcibly relocated had proved no happier than the Exiles at the relocation and were unwilling to assume the lower social stations that the Exiles had long been forced into. Umlai had guns to offer Lacaan, but he didn’t have much in the way of innovation, nor a reliable way to ship weapons through Uthna-controlled Shhi Trullos.

Once Maake realised that Lacaan and Umlai had a bond, she realised that he must be planning to capture a port city to receive weapons from Nessa. She directed Omtaan to lay an ambush at Loron, the largest and most heavily fortified Chaanean port city to the south. She waited for weeks for word of Omtaan and Lacaan meeting on the battlefield. For the final confrontation.

When she heard that Lacaan’s army had turned away from Loron and instead gone into the breakaway kingdom of Dii’intara, she rejoiced despite Lacaan having the opportunity to prolong the conflict from outside the empire.

The breakaway kingdoms were former provinces of the Chaanean empire that had broken away under the watch of weak emperors and were now independent. Perhaps during Sereg’s time they would have been able to invade Dii’intara and force their queen to hand over Lacaan, but Omtaan did not have the forces to go to war with Dii’intara whilst also dealing with Helaga in the Ini Shalli.

The war stalled for three more years. Lacaan and Helaga had enough support in the Ini Shalli that Omtaan’s besieging forces were constantly driven away. They were however able to secure a long, treacherous supply line that went south over the Trullos mountains and through the desolate Ini Shalli moors that connected Omtaan’s forces in the south of the empire with Shhi Trullos. It wasn’t a reliable route, but through it Omtaan and Pa’loth were able to get the one piece of new technology they had to their allies in Shhi Trullos.

Maarigee’s printing presses in Lower Dii’antaa had been a novelty before the war. It was amazing the way they could create hundreds of identical pamphlets, but their use was limited by how hard it was to create the printing plates. Traditional Chaanean writing had 1667 commonly used characters, and according to some estimates up to 3000 characters might have existed at the time, though many were only found in the breakaway kingdoms, or religious texts. It is believed that while the ‘Whores of the Empire’ pamphlets were being distributed during Lacaan’s reign, only two complete sets of Chaanean moveable type had ever been made. Today one is in the University of Chan’tani, and the other is believed lost.

The difficulty in creating, transporting, and using such a large collection of letters had limited the use of the printing press. When Pa’loth saw the machines at work though, she realised that using the twenty-nine letter Uthna phonetic alphabet would be more efficient. Given that the Uthna script was widely understood amongst the Exiles and that a system for writing Chaanean words with it had already developed, Pa’loth believed the technology could be used to spread Omtaan’s messages throughout the Ini Shalli.

The Exiles were at the time one of the most literate populations in the world. Their alphabets were easy to learn, with many of the letters being based on the mouth or tongue shapes used to make them. Calanlai and the Nessan lords had prioritized sending the troublesome educated Exiles over the labourers their farms and mines relied on, whilst most of the Nessan who’d stayed had been wealthy, educated citizens with too much to lose. When Pa’loth first sent messengers to the city to hand out pamphlets, most of the people they encountered could read those messages.

When Omtaan started supplying the city, the Lairi were able to regain their place in the city, and Pa’loth’s family got their own printing press and Uthna moveable type. It took a year and a half for Omtaan to get the presses to Shhi Trullos, but within five months of their arrival letters praising Omtaan, Pa’loth and Maake were being spread throughout the region. Likewise, the story of how Lacaan and imprisoned his own grandmother and the history of Helaga’s shifting loyalties were distributed to thousands.

Helaga found that he had less allies coming to his rescue when Omtaan’s generals set up a siege, and less food was being sent from the other Ini Shalli cities. Three years after Lacaan left him to defend Shhi Ovna, a force led by Omtaan himself assembled enough firepower to destroy the fortress walls. It was the last long siege of a fortified city, and Omtaan commissioned the artist Lacaan of Kyanni to paint Helaga’s body hanging from the ruined walls. The result is one of the most famous, and most disturbing, pieces of Chaanean visual art.

Even though he lost the city, Helaga had kept Omtaan busy long enough for Lacaan to receive multiple shipments of arms and mercenaries from Nessa, as well as a ship.

He had also been able to arrange a betrothal between his daughter Sereg and Umlai’s son Charak.

When Maake realised what all these strange marriage dreams she was experiencing meant, she woke up screaming. 

Being jerked out of dragonslumber was painful, and Maake spent hours begging for Kyon, who unfortunately was in Illasa at the time. Her mother made the journey to the dragonchamber though and spent the night comforting her. At around dawn Maake composed herself enough to explain the betrothal to Ilzig, who cried for ‘that poor baby girl’.

Maake had never admitted it to anyone, but the transition from having Lacaan’s little Sereg running around the dragonchamber to having Omtaan’s Sereg running around had been smooth and painless. She knew that it was terrible she was seeing her granddaughters as interchangeable, but she hadn’t known Lacaan’s Sereg at all, and whilst Omtaan’s Sereg at least could visit her, she barely knew her either.

“It’ll be alright” Ilzig said, trying to pull herself together. “By the time Sereg is old enough to be married, Lacaan’s war will be over. Remember what the generals said? That he’d need six years to build a force that can invade? Helaga was only able to keep Omtaan busy for three. Lacaan has one ship and a group of pirates. He can’t win.”

“He also has moles throughout the kingdom” Maake said, but she was playing devil’s advocate. She had access to the same strategic information Ilzig had, plus she had been monitoring the groups workings for Lacaan and the lords who were dreaming of him closely. She knew he had plenty of potential allies, but they would not openly betray her and Omtaan unless Lacaan secured enough power to invade. With Pa’loth’s allies cleaning up the Ini Shalli, Omtaan now had the power to stop Lacaan. He could better support the ships he’d already sent to blockade Dii’intara, defending the shipyards in Loron from Lacaan’s raiders.

He could also, if he squeezed the taxpayers a bit tighter and compelled more of Sereg’s veterans to step away from their well-earned retirement, just invade Dii’intara. Or threaten to invade if they didn’t hand over Lacaan. It was a small kingdom, led by a queen who was feuding with half the other breakaway kingdoms. If they chose to resist it would be bloody, but Chaane would win.

“Lacaan can’t win anymore” Maake said. “He only has one ship. The Dii’intarans will hand him over.”

“How are you feeling about that?”

“Umlai will be pissed” Maake said. “This betrothal puts pressure on us. The closer the wedding is when Lacaan falls, the more likely Umlai is to react, but he can’t do much. Not with so much unrest whilst they’re preparing for the age change, and especially not so soon after losing the Ini Shalli. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Nessa won’t attack again. Not unless Umlai is suddenly replaced by someone much stupider.”

“Are you alright Ma’a?” Ilzig asked. “Your son is doomed.”

Ilzig’s voice broke. Maake lifted an arm to try and comfort her fragile, aging mother. Even though he had locked her in a tower for years, she still loved Lacaan better than Maake did.

“If he’s smart” Maake said. “Then he’ll load his family onto that ship and sail far away.”

“I don’t think he’ll leave Satil” Ilzig said.

“They’re already thinking of Satil the same why they’re thinking of the babies they lost” Maake said.

“The what?” Ilzig asked.

“Without the cleanliness of the palace, they’ve lost a few eggs and babies” Maake said. “But they have five children with them now and I hope Lacaan runs away with them. If not though… If not, I’ll be alright.”

“You don’t know what it’s like losing a child” Ilzig said.

“I won’t go silent again.”

 “That isn’t my worry” Ilzig said. “I don’t want you to go through that Ma’a.”

“I was always going to have to go through it Ma” Maake said. “I’m not getting old like they are. But don’t cry, it’ll be worth it. Once this war is over Nessa won’t have any more cards to play against us, and Maarigee is the last of our power-grabbing relatives. Once this war is over, we’ll win everything. All those cruel people that tried to use us will be gone.”

“Gone or under control” Ilzig said with a bitter smile. “We’ve done so much to change the empire. This is the final bit. I just hate that it had to be against Lacaan.”

They had one more cry together, then Maake initiated a more hopeful conversation about Ilzig’s plans to teach Chaaneans the Uthna writing system. She’d been awake more often and was getting better at keeping track of people’s lives. Though sometimes she wondered if that was a good thing. Attachments now meant grief later, and her grief had caused all this fighting.

She noticed her mother struggling to stay awake and got an attendant to help her back to her room. Maake hated seeing how frail Ilzig was now, but she still returned to her dragonslumber happy.

There was a chance that Ilzig would live to see the end of this horrible civil war, and with it, the end of the nobles who had ripped her away from her daughters. Soon, Maake and Sereg’s dream of fixing the empire would be fulfilled, and Sereg could rest easy.

She believed that the next time she woke she would be reunited with her sister in a way. Omtaan was returning from Shhi Ovna, and he had decided to begin the royal procession needed to carry Sereg’s urn home when he got to Newea.

Ever since Omtaan had shared his plans to bring Empress Sereg home Maake had been filled with dread that history would repeat itself, and that disaster would strike Omtaan when he reached Newea. Once she was fully asleep, she strained to find people wishing harm on Omtaan or planning something dangerous in their dreams.

There were a lot of people dreaming about marrying him, but very few dreamt about hurting him. She was more disturbed by the amount of people dreaming about driving Blue Savages out of the palace. She thought most of the people in the capital at least had been won over by the young princesses.

A few days later Pa’loth was in her sewing room with her favourite co-mothers and her children. Sereg and Chaane sat next to her, the eldest daughter showing her sister how to work the loom. Meanwhile little Kyon jumped around the heat rocks that had been scattered through the room to alleviate the dreariness of the day.

The day was so wet and miserable that a lot of the rooms had their underfloor heating systems on, including Pa’loth’s sewing room.

The heating system utilized vents branching off from a fire room on the first floor of the palace to run under rooms on the second floor. It was relatively safe, though the vents only ran alongside the outside of the palace so fire fighters had a chance to put out any fires that caught. Whilst Dii’antaa planteau was in the tropics, it was high enough to occasionally get cold, so for hundreds of years the inhabitants of the palace had been enjoying the way these smoke-filled vents could make floorstones feel sun-baked.  

It’s unclear what went wrong that day. It is entirely possible that carelessness or just bad luck caused the floor of Pa’loth’s sewing room to catch fire. However, Sereg claims that they all smelt something strange before the disaster, and that she’d been so sleepy that at first she’d thought the growing flames were a dream.

She woke to a room full of smoke and fire. She heard her family screaming but she couldn’t see them. She found the window and jumped out, falling to the ground screaming. Guards rushed to her side and smothered her with their cloaks. She hadn’t even realised she was on fire.

               Pa’loth managed to stumble out the door of the sewing room, cradling her chocking son, but by the time Sereg had learnt that, little Kyon had died.

               The last thing Sereg remembered of the fire was a sickening cracking sound as her sister Chaane followed her out the window and landed headfirst beside her. 

The Empire is Not Fixed

               Maake resisted the urge to wake up when she learnt what happened. Instead, she focused on Omtaan, willing him to come home. Trying as hard as she could to tell him that something terrible had happened at the palace. If it was just Kyon’s death she would have given him the weeks of ignorance needed for the message to arrive. With Chaane still alive for now though she was determined to do everything she could to let him hold her one more time and say goodbye.

               Omtaan woke chirping the middle of the night in Newea stronghold. He’d been sleeping in the same room Tsvalai had occupied sixty years ago after making the final preparations to take his mother’s ashes home. He awoke feeling so much dread, and such a powerful urge to hurry home, that he knew instantly Maake was reaching out to him. He knew that Maake would not want him to abandon the royal procession for any reason, save for the worst disasters imaginable.

               Since the full moon lit up the roads, he decided to leave immediately. He saddled up his slitherbeast and rode off with a handful of his most trusted soldiers, leaving instructions for the rest of his army to and march towards Dii’antaa. He assumed of course that Lacaan must be behind the disaster he was being called home for.

               He rode so much he barely slept, and when he did sleep Maake was still calling him home. He kept rest stops as brief as possible. He rode on having shorter naps, swapping mounts, and leaving instructions with the local authorities to gather up combat-ready adults to join the army that would follow. By the time he met the courier from the palace he was delirious with exhaustion.

               It happened in a town called Orena. Witnesses say Omtaan insisted on hearing the courier’s message as soon as he saw him in the town square. When he found out his son was dead, he collapsed and screamed. He sat in the dirt chirping long enough that an old woman, a commoner, dared to come up to her emperor and place her hand on his back.

               Lacaan of Kyanni painted this scene, and it was at the time one of his most abstract works. Omtaan is barely recognizable as a reptilian, instead looking like an anguished green shape with a screaming mouth and huge, haunted eyes as smaller figures huddle around him. Flame circle around them, with the stylised faces of the prince and princesses hidden within them.

               The painter had not joined Omtaan in his mad run back to Dii’antaa. We have no idea where he was at the time, but we have no reason to believe he was at Orena.

               Omtaan’s companions eventually got him into the manor of the local noble, a least lord called Etwea. Etwea offered his own bed and transport to the true lord of the region the following day. Omtaan accepted the first offer, but after a drug-aided sleep he refused the former. The message hadn’t just told him that his son was dead, but also that his wife and daughters were severely injured, and that Chaane didn’t have long to live. As Maake had expected, Omtaan wasn’t willing to give up his last chance to see her.

               He rode out of Orena at dawn and kept up his breakneck pace until he reached Dii’antaa. He was escorted into the palace by the royal guard, and despite them begging he eat or sleep, his first stop was the room where Sereg and Chaane were resting, surrounded by their family. Kyon and younger Ilzig had already been summoned from Illasa and were huddled in a pile of cushions with the elder Ilzig. Former representative Danth stayed by Pa’loth’s side as she paced the room checking on her two daughters, keeping an eye on her burns.

               Pa’loth ran to Omtaan and hugged him as soon as he stumbled into the room. Omtaan and Pa’loth had a purely political marriage up to that point, unlike Lacaan and Maarigee or young Ilzig and Akyen with their famous romances. But theirs was a political marriage built on respect, and the two had always worked well together. Some say they fell in love on that day, though Maake doubts it. There were two other people in the room; a co-mother of Pa’loth’s who was a childhood friend of Omtaan’s and had a son who looked suspiciously like his daughters, and Danth’s secretary, who was supposed to have gone into hiding after rumours he was too close to Pa’loth began to emerge.

               Kyon was the next to embrace Omtaan. They didn’t say anything. They just held each other in silence. Then, with his father and his wife supporting him, Omtaan was led to Sereg’s bedside. Sereg was awake, though still groggy from the medicines. Her body was badly burnt, including on her face. She had broken both legs in the fall, and her right hip was shattered so badly the doctors doubted she would ever walk again. She spent a few minutes talking to her father, before urging him to go to Chaane, who was moaning in the bed on the other side of the room.

               Like her sister, Chaane had burns to most of her body and a ton of broken bones. Her neck was broken in two places, and as a result of her paralysis, her body was shutting down. She had had a few episodes where her lungs had frozen up, and the doctors knew that eventually she would be unable to restart her own breathing.

               She was more sedated than her sister, but she still recognized Omtaan and said ‘Pa’ as he touched his forehead to hers. Due to her injuries and her medication, she couldn’t say much more, but before she drifted off, she begged Omtaan to save her and slurred something that sounded like ‘I’m scared Pa’.

After meeting his family, paying respects to his son’s body, and getting some much-needed sleep, Omtaan made his way into the dragonchamber.

               Maake was awake now. She’d made sure to be awake for Omtaan, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.

               “I understand now why you went quiet for six years” Omtaan said. “You loved Ma Sere more than anything. More than us.”

               “Omtaan that’s – ”

               “It’s fine” Omtaan said. “You know, when my first egg with Pa’loth failed to hatch, I thought nothing would ever feel so bad. It was even worse than being betrayed by Lacaan. But this is unimaginable. It’s torture.”

               “I am so sorry Omtaan.”

               “Do you know who did it?” Omtaan asked. “Was Lacaan behind it?”

               “The news should reach Lacaan in a few days” Maake said. “Nothing in his dreams suggests he knows anything. If he does dream about the fire afterwards, I’ll be able to tell if he feels guilty.”

Omtaan sat on the floor looking deflated. “So no leads?”

“Plenty of motives” Maake said. “There are still lords who miss Lacaan’s rule, and they got much angrier when Uthna script started replacing the Chaanean characters.”

“That’s just in Ini Shalli.”

“It’s been spreading. Even Chaaneans are finding it easier to use.”

“Gra-Ma Ilzig has been teaching it in the city, hasn’t she?”

“Yes. Apparently, commoners have an easier time learning it, so it’s gotten popular. Just not with the nobility or the pantheon. Should we stop Ma from spreading it? Even if we do, your sister has been teaching it in Illasa.”

“I’ll figure that out later” Omtaan said. “I can’t imagine it making much difference, not if there are still Lacaan supporters in power. I thought we got rid of them all before my coronation. How many castles do we have to re-assign until we get a council that won’t try to destroy us?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same question since your mother and I reached our majority. And your grandmother had to change the whole council system to justify getting rid of all my cousins who wanted the throne. Maybe it never ends.”

“Maybe going back to seats based on royal appointment would work better” Omtaan said. “Be one way to get a council I trust.”

“If you do that, they’ll reinstate Lacaan by the end of the year” Maake said. “What better way to gain the emperor’s favour than giving him his throne? The patronage system wouldn’t be so bad now that they aren’t all related, but trust me, being able to consistently tell who will gain a seat makes it easier to manage them.”

“You’re right” Omtaan said. “But I should shake it up again. Lacaan’s commoner-governed provinces work well, I must admit. Maybe…”

His words trailed off and he started laughing. He laughed for almost an entire minute, before switching to chirps.

“Maybe you should rest more” Maake said.

“My son is dead” Omtaan said. “My son is dead, my daughters are crippled, and, and we’re talking about how to run the damn Council! We really don’t get to be people anymore, do we Ma? We’re always going to be emperors first, no matter what happens, aren’t we?”

“We are” Maake said. “Omtaan, I’m so sorry.”

“How’d you do it Ma Ma’a? How’d you bring yourself to abandon everyone? How do you cope?”

“Badly” Maake admitted. “But it’s what I need to do. Your mother and I knew that there had to be a reason why twins hatched on the throne. Having two thrones to control the transfer of power was the only way we could think of to stop one of these bastards getting hold of the Reigns. I still think it would have worked, if only I had done my part. If I had overseen the transfer of power, and if I hadn’t made dragonslumber so unappealing to you and Lacaan, then this whole war at least wouldn’t have happened.”

“I blamed you for not stepping up at the succession too” Omtaan said. “But now, now I know that you’re just a person, with a normal person’s weaknesses. Me and Lacaan though, we’re both selfish deep down. We just didn’t want to enter dragonslumber. Whatever his faults, if I had just gone along with your demands and entered the dragonslumber, we’d be at peace. I needed you to say Lacaan did this to my family, because otherwise the gods are punishing my selfishness, and I always hoped I wasn’t that bad. I’m so sorry.”

Silence fell on the dragonchamber as Omtaan bowed to Maake. She thought she was going to chirp, but her throat didn’t seem to make those sounds anymore.

“Sama just went along with it” Maake said.

“Who?” Omtaan asked.

“Sama. The one who was supposed to be Maarigee Five’s heir, but Lacaan Six took the throne instead.”

“Right. Tsvalai and Calanlai’s grandmother.”

“Yes. She accepted having her throne taken from her, but someone else set out to get justice in her name. If you had gone into dragonslumber unwillingly, and then sent that resentment into the dreams of everyone in the empire, then who knows who’d step up to make things right? I was a fool to try and force you. I’m sorry Omtaan.”

“Oh” Omtaan said. “I… thank you?”

“Besides, from a logistical standpoint, Satil will make a better heir just because of the greater age gap. I suppose I was worried you children would have the same fertility issues Sere and Ma Ilzig did, but waiting for a grandchild or great-grandchild would have been fine. I created that rift between you and Lacaan for nothing.”

“There were other problems between us” Omtaan said. “And Satil… oh Ma Ma’a, I promised Lacaan before I let him escape that if he couldn’t rescue the egg, I’d make sure his child didn’t take the dragonslumber.”

“You what?”

“And when we sent him off to the Forsi, I told him every bad thing about your dragonslumber I could think of. Every horror story from history. I poisoned him before he could learn from the Forsi.”

“Omtaan… no.”

“Yes. I thought we didn’t need a sleeping empress. I thought the whole thing was cruel. But after years of fighting, I see now that our empire is too big for one person alone to wrangle. We need the twin thrones, and I sabotaged that. Now I’m being punished. I’m so sorry Ma Ma’a.”

The silence stretched on for an uncomfortably long time.

“You’re still just a person too” Maake said. “We’ve both been given god-like responsibilities, but we’re still mortal, with mortal weaknesses. It’s alright Omtaan. You don’t need to apologise to me anymore.”

The silence continued, save for Omtaan’s chirps. Finally, he crawled towards Maake’s goldpile and bought his snout to hers.

“Is it bad, being asleep like this” he asked, staring right into her eyes. “If it was a choice between this and dying, what would you choose?”

Maake looked back into his eyes, realising where he was taking the conversation and dreading it.

“It isn’t that bad” Maake said. “It’s a different way to experience life, but it isn’t horrible.”

There was silence for a while longer. Omtaan got up, paced around the room, then, with his back turned said “I guess you’ll finally get that heir.”

“Omtaan, no.”

“What do you mean no? Have you ever been sick or hurt as a dragon?”

“They’d have to get through the transformation first” Maake said. “The gold burns, and they need be able to eat massive servings. It’ll be torture with their injuries, and do they even want it?”

“Chaane doesn’t want to die” Omtaan said. “She’s terrified. If there’s a way to keep her alive, what kind of father would I be if I didn’t give her a chance?”

“She could die in a lot of pain” Maake said.

“She’s already dying in a lot of pain” Omtaan said. “Why don’t you at least want to try? Lacaan Third was also twelve when he broke his neck and was put in dragonslumber. It gave him a life he couldn’t have had otherwise. Or do you think Chaane wouldn’t be a good empress?”

“She’d be a great empress” Maake said. “This is just the worse time. Look at the chamber, look at the gold pile. How much gold do you see Omtaan?”

“A fair amount” Omtaan said, gesturing to the coins and gold bars that surrounded Maake. That surrounded her, yet didn’t even reach Omtaan’s ankle-claws, leaving most of the circular pit empty.

“This war has been expensive Omtaan” Maake said. “Maybe we can get enough gold to put Sereg under, but for Chaane with her injuries, we’ll need to speed up the process. We’ll need to double the amount of gold in the chamber. If it had happened just a few years before…”

“The treasury still has gold” Omtaan said. “I’ve seen them packing chests full for the war pays. And we can strip the palace and temples in the short term.”

“The war isn’t over yet” Maake said. “And you’ll need more ships.”

“Damnnit Ma! Omtaan said, moving forward and kicking some coins. “She’s my daughter!”

“And you are the emperor!” Maake said. “Are you willing to drain the war chest and put your daughter through the pain of an uncertain transformation for such a small chance of success? Should Chaane’s chance come at the expense of everyone who will be caught up in this war if it drags on? And stop, don’t hiss at me. I’m not saying no, I’m just saying to actually think about it. I’ll stand by your decision.”

“Fine” Omtaan growled, kicking another pile of coins but then backing away and thinking.

“You have to do the best for the empire” Maake said. “Make sure what is best for your daughter is best for the empire. Go and think about it Omtaan.”

“I don’t need to go away to think” Omaan said. “I went to war with Lacaan because I believe his character isn’t morel enough for the throne. His conduct against his own family shows that he cannot be trusted with an empire. I know this sounds like an excuse, but if I let my daughter die like this to pay for a war against my brother, then am I any better?”

“I think that’s a valid point” Maake said. “But you must consider the way this will impact your subjects in the future.”

“I know it will have terrible consequences” Omtaan said. “But I hold the Morel Reigns, so my actions must meet a certain standard. There must be actions that are anathema for an emperor to do.”

“I understand” Maake said. “What about Sereg?”

“She’s not in as much immediate danger. I’ll do whatever it takes to help her enter dragonslumber if that’ll be a better life for her, but in her situation, I may have to prioritize the war. Do you think she’ll forgive me for that?”

“Do you forgive me for my decisions?” Maake asked.

Omtaan dodged the question and ended the meeting not long after. In the days following the empire’s treasury was drained to fill the dragonchamber. Regretful letters were sent to Omtaan’s generals in the field, warning that the pays for the army would be delayed and to prepare for desertions. He started stripping gold from the palaces and temples in the city. Even little Kyon’s funeral was a subdued, brief affair.   

Omtaan’s actions caused outrage amongst the nobility and clergy, but the common people cheered as they saw Omtaan’s guards removing golden statues from the royal gardens to save their beloved Princess Chaane.

They weren’t so happy in years to come when Omtaan raised taxes to make up the deficit he’d created.

Maake watched in horror as Chaane’s bed was carried into the dragonchamber and her burnt body placed onto the pillaged gold pile. Her body flopped like a doll as they moved her, and only pained moans let Maake know she was still alive. For the first few days after Chaane’s internment, Maake was sure the girl would die at any moment.

She stayed awake at first, watching over Chaane constantly. She soothed the girl when she whimpered, but tried to stay silent otherwise, and warned the family members who kept a constant vigil to do the same.

After two weeks, the doctors voiced their shock that Chaane was still alive. With that hint, Maake went back to sleep and felt Chaane reaching out to her through the dreamspire. They couldn’t talk to each other, but Maake was able to connect with her and send encouraging thoughts. Even though Chaane was still struggling to eat and grow, Maake was confident that the transformation would take hold, and a year later she finally allowed herself to accept the good news. Chaane became a presence in the dreamspire more solid than the rest of her subjects, and more reactive.

Chaane wasn’t stable enough to have an awakening for another five years, and her body remained rather small. But after that first year, she stopped dreaming constantly about the fire. She longed for Sereg, who declined the offer of dragonslumber, even after the doctors confirmed she would never walk properly.

Omtaan’s joy at the recovery of both his daughters was damped by Lacaan’s actions. He didn’t even have the grace to call a truce, the way Calanlai had after the elder Omtaan’s death. Once he heard that Omtaan was draining the empire’s war chest to save his daughter, he led his army out of Dii’intara and attacked Loron.

Even with Omtaan’s army in disarray, Lacaan did not hope to hold the city. He settled for destroying the walls and shipyards whilst his admiral stole three Chaanean ships.

Lacaan’s admiral was the infamous Jathno pirate Malathan, who had terrorised the Nessans for decades before being given the choice between execution or exile to Shi Trullos. He’d been recruited by Lacaan during his time in the Ini Shalli, saying that as long as Lacaan gave him a ship and got him back to the ocean, he’d fight for him.

Omtaan did re-secure Loron, but the raid had given Lacaan much needed resources. It also allowed him to convince Queen Maalee of Dii’intara that he would win the war, so Omtaan’s attempts to intimidate her into handing Lacaan over failed.

The war dragged on for another three years. Omtaan’s victory was less certain now, especially after his taxes and lack of services alienated the entire empire. But Lacaan’s lack of sympathy for Omtaan’s children had cemented him as a villain in the eyes of most Chaaneans. The six peaceful, prosperous years of his reign were forgotten, and now he was the wicked traitor prince who terrorized the coastal cities, stoked war in the Ini Shalli, and colluded with the Nessans.

The support within the empire’s nobility and clergy that Lacaan and Maarigee had spent so long cultivating slowly dried up. He may have been able to win back the common people as Omtaan’s economy failed, but by then Omtaan’s military forces had been rebuilt, and Lacaan’s defeat was once again inevitable.

Lacaan never gave up though. He saw Omtaan draining the empire’s economy to put his daughter in dragonslumber as a betrayal and swore that he would recapture the Morel Reigns from his weak, selfish brother.

   After his defeat, people would remember Lacaan much more favourably. One of the most famous plays created later in Omtaan’s reign would be The Banished Emperor, which retold the story of the war with Lacaan as the hero, trying to save the empire from greedy sleeping dragon emperors. Some of the lines given to Lacaan denouncing Maake were lifted directly from Tsvalai’s propaganda against Lacaan Six. Omtaan of course did his best to have the play banned, but to this day it remains one of the most famous plays from the this era and is still regularly performed and re-adapted.

Most of our perceptions about the people from the Civil War are shaped by The Banished Emperor. For example, Malathan is known to have been an unconventional fighter with a quick wit who pulled off many victories thought impossible. His flamboyant personality and reluctant friendship with the Nessan Admiral Tsunat is probably an invention of the play though.

However reliable sources suggest that Lacaan’s daughter Sereg’s depiction is fairly accurate. To avoid confusion, historians refer to her as Sereg Lacaanis. She was an exceptional slitherbeast rider, blade fighter and markswoman, who infiltrated a raiding party that destroyed one of Omtaan’s encampments in the border town of Haanata when she was only sixteen. Her skill on the water is probably exaggerated, but it is known that she did join Malathan on two few naval battles after her parents stopped preventing her from fighting.

Some said she was like the legendary Lacaan the First. Others compared her to Tsvalai if they thought that could get away with it. Lacaan gained allies in the later years of the war who believed him to be an unworthy villain, but who loved the idea of his daughter on throne. Maake experienced thousands of dreams of Sereg Lacaanis on a single throne, ruling the empire like a warrior empress of old.

Despite the hatred between Omtaan and Lacaan, Sereg Lacaanis wrote a letter to her cousins expressing sympathy for their injuries and the loss of their brother. Omtaan’s Sereg posted a civil reply, and an update once Chaane was stabilised in the dragonchamber. Any hope of peace between the cousins was lost after Chaane’s first awakening. After having endured the thousands of dreams of empress Sereg Lacaanis without any dragon dreaming training, Chaane woke up furious with the other girl. Her first action after shacking off her parents was to write a hateful letter to her cousin. Sereg Lacaanis’s reply threatened to hang both her, Omtaan’s Sereg and their newborn brother Akyen after her father retook his throne.

At the age of nineteen Sereg Lacaanis was given command of a cavalry unit during Lacaan’s third attempted capture of Loron. This Third Battle of Loron is considered the decisive moment in the Civil War. Whilst Omtaan’s generals at the time believed Lacaan’s defeat inevitable, military strategists today believe Lacaan could have gained the advantage if he’d captured Loron and held it until the ship containing Sereg’s fiancé and his thousand soldier wedding gift arrived. Food shortages from Omtaan’s heavy spending were starting to hit, and even the most anti-Nessan lords of the south were coming to believe that Sereg Lacaanis could keep Umlai’s son under control.

Some argue that even with the defeat at Loron, the war could have turned if Sereg had survived. She led her forces through the city, distributing ammunition to the infantry who fought street by street. In The Banished Emperor she is shot whilst carrying injured soldiers to safety. Whilst this story is more likely than the other popular rumour that she was shot whilst leading a charge against Loron Castle, there are no surviving witness accounts of Sereg Lacaanis’s death. It is likely that even Lacaan never knew how his daughter died.

Maake joined Lacaan in his nightmares after Sereg’s funeral. She tried to send her desire to hug him and cry with him even after everything, but she has no idea if he felt her offer of comfort, or if he even would have found it comforting.

Omtaan offered Lacaan a yearlong ceasefire to mourn his daughter. Lacaan accepted the offer but soon busied himself trying to save his alliances. Many Chaanean lords turned from him, and the ship carrying Umlai’s son and soldiers heard about Sereg’s death and turned back before reaching Dii’intara.

Lacaan wrote to Umlai, offering to instead marry his oldest son Maakan to Umlai’s second-born daughter Caluna.

With Nessa so close to entering its next phase of matrilineal primogeniture, the idea of tying Lacaan’s successor to the then second in line of the kingdom that they had been fighting with for decades seemed dangerous to Lacaan’s allies. Their anger over the proposal was in hindsight justified, as Caluna would end up taking the throne when her older sister died young and daughterless.

Umlai must have also considered the possibility of Caluna and Maakan both becoming reigning monarchs, and letters between him and his advisors debated what would happen to Nessa if such a situation occured.

Umlai did reply to Lacaan, offering to wed his eldest daughter and heir Tsvavon to Maakan. Most scholars who study the two rulers believe Umlai was being sarcastic, though this has not stopped speculation on the drastically different turn history would have taken if the marriage had gone ahead and united Nessa and Chaane.

Lacaan never got a chance to reply to Umlai’s letter. News of his new matchmaking attempts reached Queen Maalee. As well as being Lacaan’s protector, she was also the mother of the princess who Maakan was currently engaged to. Maalee arrested Lacaan and all his generals.

Maarigee and their other children were also arrested, but Maakan begged for their release. Maalee liked Maakan, so she acquiesced. The engagement between Maaken and Maalee’s daughter stayed intact, but Lacaan and his surviving forces were marched to Haanata and handed over to Omtaan’s forces. Omtaan’s forces did not know how the proper etiquette in regard to having their enemy handed to them during a truce, so they called for Omtaan to come in person.

On the same day Omtaan got the message, he set off with a small army, a judge, a scribe, a representative of the Pontex and enough representatives of the Council to sanction the execution of a royal.

Whilst Omtaan was travelling, Malathan escaped, set fire to the Haanata fortress, and somehow managed to single-handedly free Lacaan and most of their company. Some of Lacaan’s soldiers ran, but Lacaan had heard that Omtaan was almost at Haanata, and saw he had one more chance.

He gave a speech explaining that he knew it was not a winnable fight, but that he could not continue living if ‘Omtaan the Unworthy’ remained on his stolen throne stealing from the Chaanean people. He yelled at the sky, asking Chan to allow the rightful wielder of the Morel Reigns to prevail in battle, and most of his small company joined him in laying an ambush for Omtaan. Even Malathan decided to stay with Lacaan at the end.

The battle of Haanata was a massacre. Lacaan stood no chance and Omtaan’s properly armed, armoured and well feed army suffered no losses. Lacaan most likely was shot down while charging with his men, but in The Banished Emperor he gets into a tailblade duel with Omtaan. Once defeated, Lacaan is pinned to the ground and then he and Omtaan both give their final speeches before Omtaan shoots Lacaan point-blank in the head, as if he had a more modern handgun instead of a blunderbuss.

When news of Lacaan’s defeat spread to Dii’antaa, a familiar depression crept into the dreams of the Chaanean people. Maake avoided the complete shut-down that she had suffered after her sister’s death, but she didn’t wake up for almost a year afterwards. She did however mutter instructions and advice to Chaane, who was able to wake up and help her father manage the aftermath of Lacaan’s defeat.

Maake refuses to talk about her reaction to Lacaan’s death, but it is clear she had become somewhat numbed to losing loved ones by this point. Yet it is hard to imagine how alone Maake must have felt, grieving the loss of her son when the two people most likely to understand her pain, her mother and her consort, were both already dead.

Ilzig Kyonnis

Maake wasn’t completely alone. Omtaan, Chaane and their family were there, but only Omtaan had known Lacaan, and he, like the rest of the family, was too relieved to share in her grief.

Omtaan’s sister Ilzig visited the palace not long after Lacaan’s death, along with her husband Akyen and son, an intelligent, handsome youth named Kyalaan. She was an affectionate mother but had found the egg laying process so repulsive she had not had any more children.

Ilzig came to visit Maake and Chaane alone, and she just sat with Maake and cried for hours. Ilzig had not spoken since hearing about Lacaan’s death, and it took a few days for her to talk to Maake, but Maake was grateful for her presence.

The Younger Ilzig is a minor character in this royalty-focused story, but it has been argued that she had a greater influence on our nation than either of her brothers.

Before the fire that injured Sereg and Chaane, the Elder Ilzig had begun teaching the common people how to read the Uthna script that Pa’loth had adapted for writing Chaanean. Her efforts were effective, but this project had been controversial. Many of the nobles, clergy, and scholars were offended by the replacement of the traditional Chaanean writing system, despite the opportunities it had for teaching commoners to read and for making use of the printing press.

Whilst Omtaan was convinced that the fire was divine judgement, Ilzig had believed it was a deliberate act by some wicked, powerful, rich figure who didn’t like seeing the empire changed by people believed to be beneath them.

For years the royal family had been working to remove such people from power or at least minimise their power. Whether or not such a person was behind the fire, it was obvious that such people were still finding their way into positions of power no matter how tightly Omtaan and Maake gripped the Morel Reigns.

Ilzig wound back her education efforts out of fear for the safety of the princesses and Pa’loth. Maake believes that backing down from a chance to help the people of the empire sapped Ilzig of her vitality, for her health declined rapidly not long after.

Roughly a year after the fire, Ilzig fell whilst getting out of bed. She broke her hip, got a nasty infection, and died not long after. Once she felt her time coming, she ordered her servants to carry her to the dragonchamber and spent her last day with her surviving daughter.

There was a small funeral service held in the chamber, before Ilzig was taken to a funeral pyre in the palace gardens, where it is believed almost twenty thousand people from all over the empire had gathered to pay their respects. Her ashes were split across three urns. One went to her hometown near Lower Dii’antaa, one stayed with the school she had established in Dii’antaa, and the other stayed with Maake in the dragonchamber, with instructions to reunite her with Omtaan’s ashes in the city they had met after Maake’s passing.

Even though Ilzig had given up on teaching the Uthna alphabet in Dii’antaa, she had not given up on teaching the new writing system to her granddaughter. The younger Ilzig had never been able to remember more than ten written characters, but the Uthna script seemed simpler.

Unfortunately for the Younger Ilzig, the new writing system still had a lot of confusing parts. She never learnt to read it, but she saw the alphabet as ‘much easier’ than the traditional Chaanean characters and made her tutors teach the alphabet to Kyalaan and his friends.

Within a few years, she followed her grandmother’s lead and opened a school in Illasa that taught commoners to read Uthna script. She imported printing presses into the city and local publishers began translating classical Chaanean epics into printed books. Some of the merchants trading in the city saw the potential value of these books and added them to their wares. Despite the Elder Ilzig discontinuing lessons on the Uthna alphabet in her Dii’antaa school, this new form of literacy was carried through the dozens of trade routes that ran through Illasa and spread throughout the empire.

She made other changes that became popular. She had a team of advisors and relatives helping her rule, so when she met former representative Danth and learnt about the large, diverse council that oversaw Shhi Trullos, that system had appealed to her. She also learnt about the democratic systems used by the various tribes in the Lasa jungle and decided that since it had worked for them for so long, she’d give it a go in her domain. She wanted to order her lesser lords to hold elections, but Kyon and her advisors warned her that she might face rebellion if she did so. Instead, she decided to lead by example and was elected Representative of Illasa five years in a row.

She was devastated the first time she lost an election, but she’d lost to a local magistrate who she trusted. She had a manor built next to the keep for her family, and converted the keep into a public government building. She turned her attention to finding ways she could better her province with only her titles, influence and wealth. She used her knowledge of the empire’s trade routes and her skill in inventory management to establish a courier service that at first supplied Omtaan’s soldiers with donated food and ammunition, but which later became used to provide aid to the commoners caught up in the war.

With her husband’s help, she also hosted fundraisers for her new aid system in the keep and on other properties she owned, starting a tradition of charity that other lords sought to copy.

Most notably, she converted her largest property outside the city of Illasa, the sprawling, neglected winery Manor Serora, into a university.

Serora university was controversial for many reasons. Firstly, it taught in the Uthna script. Secondly, it was not sanctioned by Chan or Saarae, the goddess of wisdom, so the Pontex declared it a place of heretical teachings. The only proper university, she insisted, was the Holy University of Chan’tani. Third, Ilzig staffed the university with scholars from all over the known world, including Nessa.

The first year of the university there were hardly any students. However, as the royal children reached adulthood, first Kyalaan, then Sereg and finally Satil all enrolled. Sereg’s attendance caused many lords to send their almost-grown children to the university in hopes of forming a connection with the future empress, despite the Pontex’s disapproval.

Whilst her brothers fought, Ilzig spent that twenty-year span changing the empire without the power of a throne. She demonstrated a new role for the nobility, empowered her people to take on responsibility for their province, and spread a new way of thinking thanks to her university and her endorsement of the Uthna alphabet.

As she worked with the community, she began to understand the injustices that had been done to the local Lasa people over the centuries. She’d always been taught they were a reclusive people who happily traded the medicines of the jungle with the rest of the empire. She’d never known they barely got anything for their miracle potions, or that they weren’t allowed to freely leave the jungle. She gave a formal apology to the Lasa people on behalf of the Lords of Illasa, and convinced the new Representative of Illasa to lift restrictions on their movement, starting the long process of reconciliation.

She was also one of the first nobles to take on a family name. The custom had existed for centuries along the trade routes of Illasa, but second names were not yet common in the wider empire. The Atchiff tribe of Lasa had a matronymic naming system, and Ilzig had thought it very practical. However, instead of naming herself after her mother, she chose the family name Kyonnis after her father, who supported her in all these projects.

Kyon quit as Maake’s representative, handing the torch to the daughter of a trusted childhood friend. At first he divided his time evenly between Dii’antaa and Illasa, but as time went by, he spent longer in Illasa.

Some say he did it for Ilzig. Others say he just couldn’t stand watching his sons fighting. There is also a strong possibility he had a falling out with Omtaan or Maake. Maake refuses to confirm this. She doesn’t say much about Kyon’s death at all.

She spent a year barely responsive after his death. Chaane and the new representative kept Maake’s silence secret, though the whole empire was plagued by nightmares. It was common for people throughout the empire to wake up chirping after Kyon died.

We know that Kyon died in Illasa following a suspected stroke. After he was first struck down, he tried to return to Dii’antaa. Preparations were made for him to be transported to the palace, but his health was so fragile they kept being pushed back, until, as Maake said in one of her rare comments on his passing, “…his dreams of me failed to materialize, and I realised how much of my reality in the dragon dreaming was built by him.”

Maake’s reality had shrunk before of course. First after her step-father Omtaan’s death, though the loss of Sereg had happened not long after that and wrecked her dreams. With the deaths of the people she loved, she lost some of the person she used to be before her slumber.

When Lacaan died, she grieved of course. She had loved him. Ever since she laid his egg alone in the dragonchamber and held him to her body, rejoicing in the brief time when he was hers and hers alone. She had loved him so much. She’d spent decades longing for just a glimpse of him in the vast dreamworld she was stuck in, hoping to see just a tiny bit more of him.

But she had not known him.

His loss didn’t reshape her dream-reality, and she hated herself because of that.

And yet, it was a relief. She was sick of losing people she loved.

She also had to keep being an empress, and if she was struck down with grief after Omtaan’s death, what disasters would happen then?

She realised it would be better for the empire, and easier on her heart, if she knew him as little as she’d known Lacaan.

After two years of helping Omtaan rebuild, Maake told him she was going to sleep, and not to wake her unless it was an emergency.

In the final twenty-four years of the reign of Omtaan the First, empress Maake the Second only woke up five times.

The Morel Reigns

Sixteen years after Lacaan’s death, the Forsi dragon requested an audience.

               It was such a strange, unbelievable request that she had to wake up and grant it. Once awake, an ancient man with a strange walk and stretchmarks all over his body shuffled into her dragonchamber. She couldn’t remember the Forsi dragon’s face, but his scales were covered in veins of melted gold.

               “How are you here?” Maake asked.

               “Did my apprentice not tell you I was retiring?” the former dragon said.

               “I assumed that was a euphemism” Maake said. “How did you turn back into a reptilian? You’ve been asleep almost over a hundred years. Your pearl should have ripped you to pieces as you shrunk.”

               “Wait” Forsi said “Your people have forgotten how to undo the transformation?”

               “Forgotten?” Maake said, before remembering some of the legendary tales of the earliest emperors. “Are you saying the story about Maarigee First ending her dragonslumber to fight off the Nessans was true?”

               “I am afraid I don’t know the exact story. I’m sure some Chaanean emperors did end their slumber, but I cannot imagine one successfully fighting a war afterwards. It takes a huge toll on the body, and for those near my age, it’s rare to live long after the final awakening.”

               “We can turn back?” Chaane muttered in her sleep.

               “Wasn’t there an emperor not too long ago who attempted to reverse the transformation?” Forsi asked after Maake gave Chaane a vague answer.

               “Lacaan Five went crazy and tried to crawl out of the dragonchamber” Maake explained. “He’d barely been in there long enough to form a pearl, but he was only out of his gold pile ten minutes before his innards weakened enough for it to burn him from the inside. His grandfather; who became my great-grandfather Akyen Three, had to step up to the throne and make a new heir afterwards. It wasn’t a proper attempt to awaken because no-one doing so would be possible. How did your pearl not kill you?”

“We have a method for destroying the pearl within a sleeping dragon” Forsi said. “You truly have lost this art?”

“It seems we have” Maake said. “Will you get your people to teach it to us?

She regretted the question instantly. Voicing it made her wonder how differently things could have been if she’d known this before everyone she’d ever loved had died.

Would she have given up on being a sleeping emperor when the children were born? Would they have been more willing to slumber if they’d known the process was reversable? Or would they have hated her more if she’d had the option to wake up permanently?

She imagined being able to visit Kyon on his deathbed, and she hated the former Forsi Dragon.

“Of course we can” Forsi said. “I’m sure some of your attendants might have already learnt this art. I’ll make sure more training is done.”

“Why did you come here?” Maake asked. “To gloat about being a reptilian again?”

“My dear child, I wouldn’t do something so cruel” he said. “I came because I am completely alone in the world, and you are one of the few people who could possibly understand what I’m going through. And also, I’ve been seeing some of the dreams of you and your son. I’m worried for you both.”

“And I’ve seen some of your dreams too over the years” Maake said with a grin. “Despite all that effort, seemed we’re both connected to both spires.”

“It is quite the irony” Forsi said. “And yet I like that it ended up so. Our peoples have kept our own distinctiveness, and yet we are still connected. I hope that going forward we are better able to embrace our connection.”

“That’d be a huge change for your people.”

“Eh” he said with a shrug. “The whole world is changing very fast. And Marrone is doing a good job looking after our people as we change with it.”

 “It would be a much bleaker world without the Forsi in it” Maake said.

“Oh, I can’t see us going anywhere” he said. “Change yes, but we’ll keep on surviving. What about your people? Both the Chaaneans and your whole empire?”

That gave Maake pause. Of course, not everyone in the Chaanean Empire was Chaanean. It had been something she’d tried to make other people understand ever since she found the dreams of the Nessan-Chaaneans. But the way he had spoken, as if planning for the future of just the Chaaneans was insufficient, made her uncomfortable.

“Do you think we’ll have a problem with all these changes?” Maake asked.

“As I said, I’m worried about your dreams” Forsi said. “Your son seems to feel the empire is pointless.”

“I know what dreams you’re talking about” Maake said. “I think it’s more accurate to say Omtaan feels defeating Lacaan was pointless. He understands that a large, safe, stable empire is the best way to provide the people with safety and resources. But keeping a scoundrel off the throne hasn’t helped as much as we all thought it would.”

“That is possible” Forsi said. “But you should talk to him about it. To make sure.”

“If it was not for all the aid you’ve given me, I would not stand to be spoken down to in such a manner” Maake said.

“I am sorry, Your Highness” Forsi said. “Forgive me, I thought I was talking to my peer. I see now that there will always be a divide between the ruler and the ruled.”

If she hadn’t been so unfairly angry at him for not telling her the transformation was reversable, maybe she would have realised what her pettiness was costing her. Instead, she ended the interview abruptly and didn’t realise what she had lost until she heard about the dragon’s death the following year. She was asleep at the time and did not wake up.

As she slept she saw that the dragon had been right to worry about Omtaan. The war had been devastating, with most cities along the south coast destroyed and food shortages throughout the empire. Even as Omtaan worked to fix these issues, he found his people turning on each other, blaming different groups for the troubles.

And somehow, the nobles seemed to be getting richer despite the chaos.

He was quick to imprison or exile nobles he could prove were exploiting commoners, yet he always seemed to be surrounded by opportunists. His crackdowns created hostility in the Council, and soon he couldn’t leave Dii’antaa for fear that something else would happen to his family. As the years of his reign dragged on, he became a melancholic, paranoid, and hopeless emperor.   

By the final years of Omtaan’s reign, the empire was once again facing violence. The slow spread of literacy and democratic ideals were giving the commoners ideas of fighting against the exploitive nobles. Since meeting with the Forsi Dragon, Maake had been using her dragon dreaming to encourage equality between the different ethnic groups in the empire, continuing efforts started by Ilzig, Pa’loth, and thousands of others. The nobles found it hard to redirect the anger of the commoners towards Nessans or Blue Exiles as they had before. Though there was a spike in anti-Lasan sentiment after Ilzig lifted their travel restrictions, with Lasan merchants frequently chased out of towns.

Instead, the greedy nobles reminded the people that all the death and destruction they had suffered had been caused by a stupid argument between two brothers.

To combat the anti-monarchy sentiment Omtaan reshuffled the Council of Lords in ways that appeased the commoners. The result was that by the end of his reign the Council of Lords had been replaced by the Chaane Parliament and it had three separate houses; the House of Representatives for elected commers, the House of the Military that was made up of generals and admirals, and the House of Lords which debated legislation that came from both houses. Whilst the House of Lords still had the most power, they had to negotiate an agreement between all three branches of parliament or gain an emperor’s approval to pass legislation.

As a result, Omtaan was hated by both the nobility who thought he was stripping them of their power, and the by the commoners who thought he was doing too little to improve their station and using the military to keep them in line.

He had the peace his mother had fought so long for and tools for running the empire she could have never dreamt of, yet he despaired of ever being able make the empire better. As Maake felt the dreams of revolution bubbling and did her best to sooth them, she noticed that Omtaan was losing his desire to resist the coming revolt.

Four years after meeting he Forsi Dragon, Maake decided that it was time to wake up and have that talk to Omtaan.

“They hate us out there” he said once he got comfortable next to Chaane. Like Kyon, he seemed to have grown old faster than he should have. He moved awkwardly and struggled to sit on the cushion without hurting his back.

“I don’t need the attendants or Olinaane to pass on what you two say while you’re sleeping to know that. I can’t even blame them for it. So many died in the Ini Shalli, and half the towns along the coast are still in ruins. And were still paying it all off. Sometimes, people ask me what all the fighting was for, and I can’t even tell them.”

“But we have peace now” Maake said. “I’m sorry you’re the one who has to rebuild.”

“I thought Ma Sere had won” Omtaan said.

“She did. But I threw it away.”

“I don’t think it’s your fault” Omtaan said. “Even if you had been awake and everything had gone smoothly with the succession, there would have been trouble in the Ini Shalli. Pa’loth explained all the different feuds and how well some people had been doing back in Nessa. And of course I’ve seen the way people treat her here. There would have been another conflict in the Ini Shalli. And Umlai probably wasn’t going to let all that territory go so easily. Lacaan just made it all about us.”

“I’ve been seeing dreams about Pa’loth.” Maake said. “And your children’s dreams. I don’t understand how they still suffer such mistreatment even though so many people like them.”

“People love Pa’loth” Omtaan said. “They think she’s a good, well trained Blue Savage who made beautiful children. But they don’t see her as a person. And they don’t want someone blue on the throne any more than they wanted Lacaan’s daughter to have a Nessan husband. She thinks the fire was on purpose. A way to get rid of the foreigners and force me to remarry a Chaanean. I’m not sure anymore, but we had five eggs after the fire, and only Maake and Akyen hatched. I know you’re suspicious too.”

“Suspicious, but I cannot get enough evidence from just dreams” Maake said.

“I haven’t found any evidence either” Omtaan said. “The worst thing is, if I hadn’t married Pa’loth, would I have known this was a problem? I know you and Ma Sere had an issue with people not seeing Nessans or Chaanean-Nessans as people during the Conquest. And you only realised it was a problem because you found a way to see their dreams.”

“If you’d lived this long, I think you would have embraced your non-Chaanean subjects” Maake said. “There are poems and stories and artworks by all sorts of people circulating through the empire now. It’s changing the people more than my dragon dreaming or any of our proclamations. It’s letting them see non-Chaaneans as people just like them.”

“Even you Ma Ma’a” Omtaan said. “Even just now, you said ‘the people’ when you meant ‘Green Chaaneans.’”

“Maybe I am stuck in older ways of thinking” Maake said. “But I know we are connected in ways unimaginable. I’ve even started getting dreams from children in the Ini Shalli. I bet by the time Chaane takes my throne the Exiles will be regulars in her dreamworld.”

“So, it all comes back to that damn pearl” Omtaan said, glaring up at the dreamspire. “Everything we do is to protect and grow the Lineage of Chaane, but if we just found an older pearl to shove in there then bam, the whole empire would be part of the Lineage.”

“But then what makes us different to any other kingdom out there?” Maake said. “I’ve seen how much it means to the Forsi to have their own distinct identity. What happens if we lose ours?”

“Ma Ma’a, you must know how stupid that sounds” Omtaan said. “You said the reason no previous emperor could get into the dreams of the Nessans was because the Nessans didn’t think of themselves as Chaanean, and that blocked them off. And what about the breakaway kingdoms? They’re Chaaneans of our Linage who are just as distant as the Nessans. You mentioned that even Lacaan’s children are hard for you to find. We can be our own people without the Lineage. But by making the Lineage so recent, we’re cutting out people who otherwise would be Chaanean. Like Pa’loth and Danth.”

“You make a good point” Maake said. “But we don’t have an older pearl, and without the dragon dreaming, we wouldn’t be able to hold such a large empire together.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t try?” Omtaan said. “Maybe we should let more kingdoms break away. Maybe, maybe the reason we’ve never been able to fix the empire’s issues is because the empire itself is the problem.”

“And you think a bunch of squabbling kingdoms would be better?” Maake asked. “We have enough turmoil when it’s just Nessa, the breakaways and the Koum Isle Kingdom at our boarders.”

“And the Confederacy of the Point” Omtaan said.

“Who are five city states on an isolated peninsula who can’t stop fighting” Maake said. “We’d become just like them if the empire fell. And that’s not even mentioning how badly everyone’s quality of life will be if we aren’t sharing all the resources like we are now.”

“But are we really sharing?” Omtaan said. “Sometimes it seems like us Green Chaaneans just go to places, declare the people there lesser, and use that as an excuse to take what we want. Even Ma Sere. Even when she meant well, she ended up kicking a lot of people out of their homes and forcing them to live in new places so the empire could get more iron and diamonds.”

“It was not that simple” Maake said. “What would you do instead, if our empire is so bad?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know how to fix any of this.”

“We’ll… we’ll work it out” Chaane muttered. “Sereg, me… we’ll fix it. Sereg, Sereg dreams of fixing the empire. Of doing… of doing things different.”

Omtaan beamed at his sleeping daughter, who was now twice his size and covered in melted scales and scars.

“You will my dearest” Omtaan said, pressing his hand against Chaane’s side.

“So many… so many new ideas” Chaane said, her head moving slightly as she spoke, but not as much as Maake’s did. The transformation had been a great feat of healing, but she was still paralysed. She couldn’t even turn her head.

“Chaane is right” Maake said. “There are new ideas, and there is a new generation of our family willing to work on the problem. Our job now is to hold the Reigns steady until it’s time to pass them on.”

“You’re right” Omtaan said. “But also, we should talk about that now, while you’re awake. I’ve been thinking about my succession.”

“You’re too young to be thinking about that.”

“I’m over twenty years older than Ma Sere was when she died. We need to talk about it now.”

“Very well” Maake said. “Is Sereg thinking about getting married soon?”

“She says there isn’t much point” Omtaan said. “The doctors say that with her injuries, it’s unlikely she’ll ever be able to lay an egg. I suspect she might not even like men.”

“So, it’ll be little Maake?” Maake said, saying nothing about Omtaan’s suspicions. “She should be due to lay her first egg any day now, right?”

“Maybe” Omtaan said. “But she doesn’t have a strong enough interest in the people of the empire. She didn’t do well in school or during her military training.”

“Your sister wasn’t gifted in those areas either” Maake reminded him “Yet I see her influence in the people’s dreams more than anyone’s. You aren’t considering Akyen are you?”

“He’s not even an adult yet and he’s constantly drunk” Omtaan said. “And Ilzig is very interested in the people of the empire, even now while she has that damned cancer. Ma Ma’a, Sereg is the best choice for empress.”

“I can already tell you that more people are dreaming of Satil on the throne than ever before” Maake said. “And he is a university-educated navy officer who thinks of the common people. Since you talked him out of joining me in the dragonchamber, it would only be fair for you to consider him for the succession if your own children are lacking.”

“My children are not lacking” Omtaan said “Sereg could be the greatest empress we’ve ever had.”

“If they let her reign” Maake said. “A crippled woman with blue scales and no husband? We’re losing control of the lords Omtaan. Do you think they’ll accept Sereg?”

“Yes” Chaane said. “Sereg, has support. At the university. In Shhi Trullos. Many…many love her newspaper column. Her galas. Sereg… supported. Sereg… more popular… than you two. Not blamed, for the war. Like me.”

“You’re getting dreams of people who love Sereg because you love her dear” Maake said. “And you had nothing to do with the war. Now Omtaan, Sereg won’t work as an empress. Satil would be the only choice that won’t cause problems.”

“That’s not true” Omtaan said. “You know, your right; we are losing control of the lords. But that means the only way left to steer the empire with our Morel Reigns is through our example. What example will we be setting if we disinherit the firstborn daughter of the emperor, who is known to be intelligent and just, just because she is different. Is it morel to tell our subjects that a half-Exile doesn’t belong on the throne? Or that a crippled women who can’t lay eggs isn’t good enough?”

Maake nodded as she thought about his words. Chaane overestimated how much support Sereg had, but besides the Chaanean supremacists, no-one was strongly against her. That would change if she took the throne of course. The whole monarchy was despised after all. But the people who hated the throne probably had no preference for who sat on it.

“You’re right” Maake said. “The people are informed enough these days that they’ll see we’re denying the throne to a capable empress because of what she is. We cannot condone that. But what to do about Satil?”

“Thank you” Omtaan said. “As for Satil, he’s the third child of a deposed emperor and I have other children.”

“Satil… supports Sereg” Chaane said. “They are… they are friends.”

“I hope you’re right darling” Omtaan said. “I’m naming Sereg my heir. Will you support that, Ma Ma’a?”

“I will. Though I will require her to have an heir picked out when the time comes.”

“Thank you.”

They ironed out some small details for Omtaan’s succession announcement, and then he asked how long she planned to stay awake. Maake had used a small uprising in Outer Chaane as her excuse for this awakening, but she decided to be honest with Omtaan now. She told him that she had wanted to speak to him for a while, and she had chosen now to do so because she could tell by the dreams coming from Illasa that Ilzig Kyonnis didn’t have much time left.

“I’ve been trying to not get too close” Maake admitted “I don’t want to shut down again. But I want to send a letter to her. And if she dies whilst I’m awake, then I’d like to grieve with you.”

Her prediction was accurate. Ilzig Kyonnis succumbed to cancer a week later. Maake grieved with Omtaan and his family, then fell asleep after the memorial. She’d known Ilzig even less than Lacaan, but when she went back to sleep, she found the whole empire grieving with her. She was glad she’d had a chance to say goodbye.

She did not get the chance to do so for Omtaan.

four years after naming Sereg his successor he died in his sleep. The doctors suspected a heart attack, but Maake and Chaane had both been getting dark dreams from him, and Pa’loth found an empty bottle by his bed.

Chaane woke first, screaming into the dragonchamber so loud the guards rushed in.

“Was it real?” Chaane asked “Gra-Ma, is he dead?”

“I’m afraid so my dear” Maake said. “I’m sorry. You should stay awake until your mother and siblings see you. But cry if you want. It’s alright. And if you need to spend a few years sleeping, that’s alright. I’ll take care of this next part.”

Maake understood Chaane’s urge to cry herself back to sleep. She felt it herself, despite the distance she had tried to put between herself and Omtaan.

Kyon and Sereg’s children were both dead. She remembered back to that day long ago when she and Sereg had been crowned for the second time and made Kyon join them on the throne.

She’d thought she knew what she was getting herself into. She thought she was prepared for all this loss.

The succession meeting materialised around her whilst she was still numb and Chaane was still crying. High Lord Masaan of Lower Dii’antaa walked in followed by the heads of the House of the Military and the House of Representatives. There was also a scribe, the Pontex, and a small group of ministers from all three houses of parliament; enough to bear witness.

Then Pa’loth entered with her two younger children, Maake and Akyen. Little Maake’s husband hung back in the doorway holding a new baby named Omtaan. Pa’loth and her children went straight to Chaane, wading through her gold pile and hugging her, heedless of the stares from the ministers. Maake saw High Lord Masaan open his mouth, but she hissed at him and he stayed silent.

Then Sereg entered the room, walking on her cane, and supported by a man her age with a striking crest.

Maake made a sound between a hiss and a chirp. It was Lacaan!

Then they got closer and she recognised Satil. She hadn’t seen him since she sent him to the Forsi Dragon and Marrone. He had resented her for that and had never come back to visit.

“Satil?” Empress Maake said. “Did Lord Masaan invite you here?”

“Actually, I did” Sereg said.

Lord Masaan and the witnesses looked at Sereg as if suspecting a trick.

“Very well” Maake continued. “Sereg, you were named heir by Omtaan the First. However, since you are unmarried and childless, I cannot allow you to take the throne without a named heir. Have you chosen someone?”

“Yes” Sereg said. “I have chosen my cousin, Satil. Or his son Akyen if he is too advanced in age upon my death or abdication.”

Maake looked around the room to see if the rest of the assembly was as shocked as her. She’d been expecting Sereg to appoint Little Maake’s eldest. Only Satil, Pa’loth, and her other children were unfazed.

The meeting didn’t last much longer. Little Maake and Akyen didn’t press their claims, and those opposed to Sereg couldn’t complain when she’d promised their preferred emperor would ascend after her. They obviously thought they could wait out this fragile, almost middle-aged woman.

Maake thought she’d be relieved that she wouldn’t have to deal with racist lords for the rest of her life, but she hated that Sereg had needed a green heir to be peacefully accepted.

Besides, Satil didn’t like her. If Omtaan’s family left the palace, she’d have no-one left in the waking world.

 She approved Sereg’s succession with Satil as heir.

There was no valid reason not to.

For Chaane

Sereg Five ruled for thirteen years. In that time she made more Royal Declarations than Omtaan One, Lacaan Seven and Maake Two combined. Despite this, there were no calls for overthrowing her from the common people. She was a tyrant, but her orders were what they wanted. She took power from the nobility and gave money to the people. Many of her decrees about equality were controversial, but the nobility was not able to muster a strong enough Chaanean supremacist movement to stop her.

Maake was certain the nobility would overthrow Sereg. She was bombarded with dreams of Dii’antaa being stormed and a new dynasty taking the throne. Chaane stayed awake as much as she could, begging Sereg to back down from her reforms.

After two years, Maake realised that the nobles couldn’t gather an army big enough for a coup. Confused, Maake opened herself to the dreams of the footsoldiers and the farmers and the shopkeepers and street urchins of the empire. She’d always felt their dreams, often made an effort to feel them, believing they showed the true nature of the empire. Yet as she pulled at their dreams, the way she’d pulled at Calanlai’s reluctant dreams, she realised that there were so many more of these simple dreams than she’d ever imagined.

She wondered if dreams of power, or of opulent living conditions like her own were simply more relatable and therefore accessible to her than the struggle of the commoners. Was this another blindspot in the dragon dreaming she’d been unaware of?

As Maake studied the dreams of the commoners, she noticed conflicting desires. They wanted more power over the quality of their lives; a sentiment that Maake admired. Yet they didn’t necessarily want to guide the Morel Reigns with their own hands. They were happy to leave all responsibility for the ethical consequences of their lives to whichever charismatic authority figure could promise them the best lives, whether that be a lord, a commander, or Sereg and Maake.

Maake admired the balancing act Sereg accomplished. The way she made improvements to the lives of her most disadvantaged subjects, without scaring those who saw any change to their comfortable lives as a threat. She knew Sereg was disappointed with things she couldn’t achieve; such as adding an ethnicity quota to both houses and banning certain political parties.

 Her attempts to force towns to host the Lasan merchants also proved legally unenforceable, but she used her wealth to fund charities and private individuals who worked to accommodate and protect them. Her example led many other nobles to donate to such charities. Somehow, Sereg made racial acceptance fashionable.  

There were two times during Sereg’s reign where she came close to losing her support. The first was when she replaced the House of the Military with a House of Experts. A group of scholars, clergy, advisors, and some military strategists whose job was to create legislation and assess proposals from the other two houses. The Lord of War was furious at losing so much power, but Satil managed to reassure him.

Her more dangerous move was abolishing the House of Lords.

Lords all over the empire rallied their supporters and twisted the story until the commoners under their domain were convinced the ban was oppressing them. Sereg spent two years putting down rebellions, but the House of Representatives continued to grow, and the first Prime Minister, Lacaan Omtinis, stepped into Lord Masaan’s role.

Masaan himself was one of Sereg’s fiercest opponents, but she offered him a seat in the House of Experts before he could raise an army against her. A few seats were set aside on the House of Experts for nobles, who Sereg called experts on Chaanean history and traditions.

Maake knew she hated giving such boons to her opponents, but she never complained publicly. Sereg found relief by stripping nobles who continued to oppose her of their titles and properties.

Seven years into Sereg’s reign, Maake realised that she and Satil were planning something. They had Chaane in on the plan too, talking to her in Uthnan in the Dragonchamber during her awakenings.

She got the truth out of Chaane first.

The three of them were planning to end not just the twin thrones, but possibly the whole monarchy.

Chaane explained that Sereg’s plan was to restructure the empire so it could run without an emperor, and that Satil or his son Akyen would abolish the active throne and abdicate.

After seeing how the empire operated without an active emperor, Chaane would decide whether to maintain the sleeping throne when she came to power.

Maake called Satil and Sereg to her chamber to interrogate them. Kyalaan insisted on coming too, and Maake was reminded of the young, rebellious students they had once been.

“Pa said the most important thing an emperor can do is show the people how to behave” Sereg said. “But just by existing, we are showing the people that this level of power and privilege is just. And people can hatch deserving it. Now we have entitled people feeling they deserve what we have, and why shouldn’t they reach for a throne? What’s wrong with absolute power if the gods give it out to us?”

“Because the gods did give it to us” Maake said. “And now that we’ve repaired the relationship with the Pontex, hopefully we can have a society where everyone better understands their place, and there is no more of this power-grabbing.”

“There has never been a time when people haven’t been grasping for power” Kyalaan said. “It’s something in our nature. Everyone has aspirations, but we need a system that stops people turning to evil means to achieve those aspirations.”

“That is what the empresses are for” Maake said.

“Then why haven’t you been able to do it?” Satil said. “And not just you, but Gra-Ma Sereg, and Uncle Omtaan and my Pa, and eight-hundred years of emperors. Gra-Ma, this doesn’t work.”

“And you think getting rid of royalty and nobility will?” Maake asked. “Have you seen the way merchants and diplomats scheme?”

“That’s why I’m trying to set up the Parliament with so many checks and balances” Sereg said. “We need a system that can punish such behaviour. A system that keeps working for the benefit of the empire even if bad people gain power within it. Sitting in Parliament shouldn’t be a path to power or riches the same way taking control of a noble family is.”

“And you think you’ve created a system that can keep reptilian flaws in check?” Maake said.

“The only way to know is to experiment” Sereg said. “We need to let it run without an empress interfering.”

“I think it’ll work Gra-Ma” Chaane said. “You’ve seen the people’s dreams haven’t you? So many people want what we want, and now they have more knowledge about how to govern and are more aware of the issues their fellow subjects face. I want to try this.”

“Do you think they’ll let you stay here if you don’t become empress?” Maake said.

“I hope by then, I’ll be fulfilled enough with my life that it wouldn’t matter” Chaane said. “I think I will be. I’ve seen so many wonderous things in the dragon dreaming.”

Maake closed her eyes and thought about the proposal. She knew they had a point. Nothing she had done in a hundred years had eliminated the evils of the empire. Some of them seemed embedded into the empire just as Omtaan had feared”

“I’m willing to try this experiment” Maake said. “But I want to see this Parliament run with an emperor for at least forty years first.”

“I’ll talk to Akyen about that” Satil said. “I don’t want either of us to die so young, but best to be prepared.”

“And I don’t want you and Akyen to abdicate” Maake said. “You are just vacating the throne for the duration of the experiment, but you will continue to name heirs who I will approve. If this fails, I don’t want there to be a war in another hundred years over who takes back the throne.”

The grandchildren agreed, but the plan went astray just a few years later.

Sereg fell from her carriage during a parade for Maake’s hundredth year on the throne. She survived the fall, but she landed on her bad hip and spent the next two years bedridden before dying.

Once again, Maake endured the grief, the numbness, and the regret that she hadn’t known this Sereg better. The difference was that this time she had to comfort Chaane, who was hit worse by losing Sereg than she had been by Omtaan and Pa’loth’s deaths. Satil, Maake, Kyalaan and Omtaan’s surviving children organised an elaborate funeral for Sereg that rivalled Maake’s jubilee.

People travelled from all over the empire. Thousands of Blue Exiles made the journey from Ini Shalli even though they had no hope of arriving in time for the funeral pyre. Sereg’s younger siblings delayed the scattering of her ashes until most of the travelling caravans had made it up the plateau.

Chaane was greatly disturbed by the burning of Sereg’s body. She couldn’t stand the thought of her burning again, even though she knew it was the fastest way to dissipate her worldly remains, freeing her to go to the afterlife. Afterwards she would search the empire’s dreams for other ways to dissipate a body. She told Maake and Satil that she wanted her body thrown into the ocean. Even if it would take a long time for her body to break down, she would eventually be eaten or dissolved, and she’d never have to worry about flames again.

Maake and Satil reminded her it was pointless to tell them since she was going to outlive them both. She insisted they make sure her wishes were made known.

Sereg’s funeral would be the last extravagant royal event for a long time. Satil Seven was crowned with no opposition and kept his coronation simple. He lived to be eighty-six, with a reign more than long enough to fulfil Maake’s condition that the Parliament be running for at least forty years before the experiment begun. However, he never got around to enacting the empty throne period.

By the time Maake’s trial period ended, the royal family was once again beloved. Satil announced the plan to the Parliament, but he had already allowed royal decrees to be outlawed, so when they voted against letting him step down there wasn’t anything he could do.

He focused on his ceremonial duties whilst Chaane tried to influence the population to vote for the vacant throne period. Maake wasn’t sure if such influence undermined their efforts to further democracy, but she was happy with Satil’s new focus. The two of them made plans for a royal procession to finally bring Sereg Four’s ashes home. Maake spent a year planning the event, wanting everything to be perfect for her sister’s homecoming.

When the plans were once again forced to go on hold, she wasn’t even surprised.

The Nessan explorer Ulantai Tsilock returned from a voyage to find the Mythical Nessan Homeland across the ocean with news that he had indeed found a continent full of yellow-scaled reptillians. He had made contact with officials from the Ssanatham Empire, which appeared to be just as large as Chaane and home to clockwork and steam-powered wonders.

Normally, no-one in Chaane would have taken such a claim seriously. There were always Nessan explorers claiming to have found the Homeland. This wasn’t even the first such claim Tsilock had made. However this time was Tsilock’s ship was accompanied by a ship made of steel that trailed smoke behind it and was staffed by yellow reptillians that didn’t speak any known languages.

The ship had been an experimental upscaling of smaller vessels that travelled throughout the Ssanatham Empire. The Ssanatham had believed crossing the ocean impossible due to the sea monsters, but when they saw it had been done by a wooden sailship they had started work on building a larger fleet.

The steam steel ship had not been a complete success. Tsilock had needed to tow it into the Nessan Royal Port, but it was still impressive enough that the new Queen of Nessa, Caluna’s daughter Massalai, had come in person to see it.

Satil decided that he could test the vacant throne plan and establish ties with the seemingly more advanced Ssanathams by travelling across the ocean to meet their Emperess himself. Something that Nessa, with only a single throne, could never risk doing.

Satil and his son Akyen travelled to the other side of the world, leaving the empire and its new Parliament in Maake’s hands for sixteen years. She found that the Parliament did indeed run without him, though she woke up more often to take part in ceremonial duties or approve complicated legislation.

Maybe young Sereg was right about the empire not needing two emperors, but Maake was worried about what would happen when she died. Could Parliament hold the Morel Reigns when a sleeping emperor died? Sereg and Satil knew they were likely to be gone by the time Maake died, so it didn’t matter as much for them. But ever since her hundredth birthday, Maake had been wondering how long she had left.

No-one knew how long a dragon could live, though there were three factors confirmed to influence lifespan. First was the age of the dragon when they fell into dragonslumber. Whilst the oldest recorder dragons in the empire had all transformed as children, Maake’s transformation at twenty was young enough to grant longevity. The supply of gold and food was also a known factor, with Forsi dragons having been severely affected by their ability to keep fed and surrounded throughout their history. Despite some lean years at the start of her reign and during the Civil War, Maake had always been well supplied.

The third factor was the amount of time the dragon spent awake. The more time spent asleep, the longer death was delayed. She’d had her attendants comb through the historical records to get a sense of how often previous sleeping emperors had woken up. They couldn’t know the exact number of awakenings for any individual emperor, save the ones who’d had short reigns such as poor Lacaan Five, but Maake was probably sleeping more than most.

There were also theories that the number of dragons in the dragonchamber could impact life expectancy, but the conclusions were unclear. Lifespans were shorter during periods with many dragons, but that could be attributed to having to share gold and food. The Forsi had never had more than two dragons at a time, but they claimed dragons tended to show less signs of aging when they had company.

Maake did not think she’d live to be two-hundred, but Chaane could. She’d still be around in a hundred years to take Maake’s throne and Sereg had already forced the empire to accept a Blue empress. Maybe the grandchildren were right not to focus on successions too much. If there was only one throne, and it changed so rarely, then maybe this new parliament could ensure power was transferred peacefully. And with power so much more diffused, she could see less ways for an unsuitable emperor to wreak havoc.

Maake slept well whilst Satil was away, confident that the grandchildren were building the world her and Sereg had dreamt of. All she had to do was continue to be of good royal character, then wait and see how things were when it was time to hand the Reigns to Chaane.

Maake’s dreams were interrupted by the stench of smoke and burning meat, and the screams of her attendants.

Someone told her to awaken, that it was an emergency. She opened her eyes and saw black smoke seeping through the thinnest spots of Chaane’s burnt scales, immune to the efforts of the attendants to extinguish them.

It made no sense. Chaane had been dreaming of eating shaved ice just then and was still asleep. Even now, over the screams, Maake could hear her complaining about being cold.

The attendants smothered the flames and someone coaxed Chaane awake. She smelt the smoke and screamed.

“Cover her nose” Maake ordered. “Cover her nose with a rag soaked in Loth flower oil. Her mother grew a garden of them in the East Garden. And someone send for Kyalaan!”

Once the scent was drowned out and Chaane was assured her cousin was on his way, she allowed the head attendant to examine her. Other attendants stood in front of her with fans so she wouldn’t see the black smoke that was still coming from her body.

The head attendant struggled to keep her composure as she delivered her prognosis. The dragon transformation had stabilised Chaane, but it had not completely cured her of her paralysis or the effects of it; including her ability to regulate her body temperature. An issue made worse by the weakness of her skin, that in many places had completely lost its covering of scales.

After almost sixty years of dragonslumber, her pearl had coalesced and was growing rapidly. Her damaged body was unable to transfer the heat from the pearl into the surrounding gold, and so instead it was cooking her from the inside.

“Can you cure it?” Maake begged “Send a messenger to the Forsi; get one of their experts here!”

The Forsi dragon attendant arrived the day after Kyalaan, after Chaane and Maake had been dealing with the fire for three days. Maake had been awake the whole time, but Chaane was so cold she occasionally dipped back into her slumber, causing panicked dreams throughout the empire.

Maake had never been more aware of the melted gold clinging to her body and cursed herself for not noticing that the same was not happening to Chaane.

The Forsi attendant confirmed Maakes fears. There was no way to save Chaane.

“What about if you remove the pearl?” Maake asked. “Take it out and let her turn back into a reptilian like the old Forsi dragon?”

“We can destroy the pearl” the attendant said “but I see no way she would survive the transformation. Her original injuries combined with the damage her pearl is doing will cause a painful death as her body shrinks. If the fire keeps going though, the way the heat is escaping her body is making her so cold that her body will go completely numb and she’ll soon drift off into a dreamless sleep. Your subjects will have horrific nightmares, but it’ll won’t hurt as much.”

“My body has been numb since the fire” Chaane said. “Could you delay it?”

“How long?”

“Long enough to hold the Reigns when Gra-Ma dies. Sereg needs me to see how her parliament work out.”

“She wouldn’t want you to suffer like this” Kyalaan said, patting Sereg’s head. “You aren’t immune from physical pain.”

“We can maybe give you a month” the attendant said. “But the fire will get worse.”

“Then I want you to destroy the pearl.”

“In your condition, that’ll be a horrible way to die.”

“But I won’t die in a fire” Chaane said. “I don’t care if I can’t feel the heat, or if the alternative hurts more, I can’t burn to death. Not again.”

Maake wanted to protest. After how much Omtaan had sacrificed to spare his daughter a painful death, she wanted to insist Chaane go to sleep and let the cold take her.

But she had seen Chaane’s nightmares about the fire. There wouldn’t ask Chaane to spend her final moments burning.

The attendants started the process immediately. Chaane screamed and Maake thanked every god in both the Chaanean and Nessan pantheons that neither Omtaan, Pa’loth or little Sereg had lived to see this abomination. She cursed herself, hating that even as empress, she still had to face situations where there was no just course of action.

Once the pearl was removed Chaane got two days fire free before she died. Both Maake and Kyalaan stayed awake the entire time, though Kyalaan was barely responsive at the end. He held his cousin’s head, rocking her gently and mumbling words that had long ago become incoherent.

“Gra-Ma” Chaane said. “You’ll make sure Sereg’s dream comes true, right? Promise me.”

Maake’s thoughts went to her own sister, who had dreamt of a better world over a hundred years ago. Who had left her children and gone to war because she had a dream of… of what exactly? The details were lost to her now. The newer Sereg had come up with a completely different plan, and had done something more complex, but even she had no idea what her democratic world would look like. Neither had really known what they were fighting for, just that they were going to create something better.

“I promise” Maake said as her granddaughter died. “I’ll make Sere’s dream come true. Go to sleep Chaane. The boat will take you to your family tomorrow.”

The Dictator 

Satil returned to Chaane four years later with a ship full of blueprints for new machines and a shattered dream. He found Maake at the end of a long awakening going over applications from her many great-great grandchildren for positions in the dragonchamber.

Actual paper applications from people who were technically her family but who she barely knew. Most of the applications had been hastily translated into traditional Chaanean characters because the great-grandchildren didn’t even use the same written language as her anymore. Satil’s granddaughter Nemaane was one such applicant, as well as three different grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Omtaan’s through his youngest children. There was also a prince of Dii’antaa, Maaken’s grandson.

Maake had felt alone decades ago, but comparing these stranger’s names reminded her that she’d had Chaane. She’d watched her grow up, even if it was from a distance. The thought of these strangers laying down beside her made her sick.

The churches taught that the dead prayed for their living relatives, made houses for them, and eagerly awaited them in the afterlife. But they could not normally see what went on in the land of the living. Not unless something called them back.

Maake wondered if Lacaan or Omtaan could be called back by their progeny begging Maake for a place in the dragonchamber.

She often found herself knocking the pile of applications away, or snorting so hard the page she was reading flew across the room. These children wouldn’t be begging for dragonslumber if they actually knew her or her family. They were so distant that they’d forgotten the trauma her sleep had inflicted on her children. The wound hadn’t healed. Her family had just frayed around it and branched off into different families.

They didn’t even refer to her as Gra-Ma in their letters. She really was just the empress now.

When Satil visited she tried to smile for him, but instead she ended up sighing so much she blew away the application forms and her notes.

Satil turned his dead eyes towards the spot where Chaane had once laid.

“Did they warn you?” Maake said.

“They did” Satil said. “But they didn’t need to. I got the nightmares when it happened. The whole crew did. And she saw what it did to us.”

“I’m so sorry” Maake said. “I know she was special to you.”

“We needed her” Satil said, collapsing on a cushion in front of her. “We needed Chaane to inherit. Gra-Ma, Sereg’s plan won’t work. I’ve seen what democracy leads to. We need your twin thrones.”

“Her” Maake said. “The woman from your nightmares. The Ssanatham empress I assume?”

“She’s not an empress” Satil said. “They used to have an empire a bit like Nessa, where they change between kings and queens based on the stars. But they killed off their royal family. She’s the president, and they elected her. And they keep electing her. And she does not care about the people at all. They die in the factories, they starve, they’re made to worship her and that’s just the Ssanatham people. We have issues with our different ethnicities, but their caste system is evil.”

“Normally when I see dreams like that it’s an exaggeration” Maake said. “But it is that bad?”

“It is” Satil said. “She’s a tyrant. And they chose her. They worship her and blame everything she does to them on each other. Sereg Kyalaan and I thought if we limited the power of the royals and gave the people more control of the empire, that we’d prevent people like that from getting power. But it’s inevitable. The people want one powerful person to take the Reigns for them. They’ll set up another dictator if we loosen our grip. At least with your twin thrones, we can make sure righteous people wield them.”

“We’ve had twin thrones for over a hundred years now” Maake said. “And the results have been mixed.”

“It’s better than things in Ssanatham.”

“Well, I don’t see how I’m going to find an heir for myself or judge your heirs. I’m too disconnected to make those judgements. All these applicants seem the same to me.”

“Applications?” Satil asked. “For dragonslumber? From my grandchildren?”

“Read them yourself.”

Satil flicked through the stack of papers with a mix of confusion and disdain. Eventually he sighed and waved Nemaane’s form.

“Nemaane has done theological study before” Satil said. “Before she went into medicine. She’s a good person, and I can make sure she’s prepared to be an empress.”

“You’re fine with your granddaughter taking dragonslumber?”

“Of course. If that’s what she wants, I’ll support her.”

“You refused to do it yourself.”

“Uncle Omtaan talked me out of it. I’m glad he did; I’m happy with the life I’ve lived. But I always wonder how different things would have been if I hadn’t been so desperate to please him. I’m not taking that chance away from Namaane.”

“I see” Maake said, remembering the royal declaration Lacaan made just before she woke up and ruined his life. “Doesn’t she have a hatchling now?”

“Yes, but she has chosen an excellent co-mother. It shouldn’t be a problem. Besides, she’s already extremely busy, so it won’t be too different.”

“A busy parent is nothing like a parent in a different reality” Maake said.

Satil continued trying to sell Maake on the idea of Nemaane as a successor, even though it soon became apparent that thanks to his absence, he knew her as well as Maake.

She told Satil she was going to sleep on the matter, then went to sleep for seven years.

In that time the empire was transformed by Satil’s voyage. The Ini Shalli’s coal became as valuable as its diamonds as power plants and engines were assembled throughout the empire. Electric lights in glass bulbs were hung up around the dragonchamber, making what glimpses Maake got of the real world even harder to distinguish from her dreamworld.

Satil kept coming back, asking who she wanted to join her in the dragonchamber. Eventually she relented and invited two of Omtaan’s grandchildren, named Omtaan and Palota, to be her heirs. Satil kept asking about Nemaane, but every time he did Maake recited the date Lacaan declared none of his descendants would ever go into dragonslumber. When Satil finally realised what she was referencing he stormed into the dragonchamber, kicked down a pile of coins, and called her a petty old hag.

“And you think” Maake said while sleeping “you think… you think I’m good. A good empress. Me. Petty, and old. Too old.”

 She went on unable to make her point until Satil left. He never asked her about Nemaane again, though from what Maake saw of her dreams, she doubted Nemaane truly wanted a place in the chamber anymore. She seemed fulfilled with her family and her academic work.

After seven years of industrial progress Ssanatham ships sailed into Loron and opened fire unprovoked on the city, starting the War Across the Ocean.

The War Across the Ocean lasted nine years, and united Chaane, Nessa, and the Koum Isle Kingdom together for the first time in history. It was a fight for survival as all the nations of the continent turned their newly discovered industries to use against the more technologically advanced invaders.

It is one of the most important periods in our history. Many claim it forged our modern identity and changed our views on war, deterring even the proudest imperialist from the notion that might equalled right.

But Maake was not the hero of this fight. Her dreamspire did not reach across the ocean, so her dragon dreaming was no use for gathering intelligence. It had also ceased to be as useful in keeping the palace up to date with events on the frontline, since trains had been built between Loron and Dii’antaa, as well as between Dii’antaa into the Ini Shalli to Shhi Trullos, meaning accurate messages could travel much faster.

She helped by sending dreams of inspiration and reassurance to her people, as well as whoever she could reach amongst her allies. She woke up frequently and gave speeches of encouragement and met with the industrialists to reward their contributions to the war effort.

By the time the war broke out, Satil’s age had caught up with him. He had many physical issues, and his mental capabilities rapidly declined after the invasion began. He did write to the Queen of Nessa and the King of The Koum Isles requesting an alliance. Though by then both kingdoms had already been attacked by Ssanatham forces, and the official alliance was organised by the parliaments of all three nations.

Queen Massalai of Nessa and Imperator Slanza of Koum travelled to Dii’antaa after the Ssanatham captured Dii’intara. They, along with Satil and Maake signed the Continental Defence Pact in the dragonchamber.

The occasion was recorded by Lacaan Kyonnis, a grandchild of Kyalaan’s and a pioneer in the new art of photography. His photograph of the signing is the first time a Chaanean or a Nessan monarch was ever photographed. Even though Satil was draped in elaborate body-wraps and jewels, the photograph makes it clear how unwell he was at the time.

Despite his ill health, the Parliament responded to the invasion effectively. Even when Maake was asleep. Maake, Akyen, and the Prime Minister decided early on that revealing Satil was deteriorating would cause more trouble than letting him go about his duties in his limited capacity. In the times when Satil was lucid, he agreed with this decision. In his clearest moments he wrote hypothetical speeches in response to any scenario he could imagine, so that they could be re-worked and delivered throughout the empire as needed.

The royal family’s biggest challenge during the early years of the war was maintain their image of control. Not for their own sake, but because Maake knew the empire’s subjects still believed they needed the guidance of the royal family to get through this horrific war.

They held the royal succession meeting in secret three years after the war began, discussing not just who would succeed Satil, but how and when the change should occur. Akyen admitted that he did not feel he had the energy to be emperor anymore, and that in these times a young emperor would be more reassuring for the people. Since his only child, Prince Kyon, had recently died fighting in Dii’intara, the heirs of Satil’s younger children were questioned.

There was only one who proved young enough, able enough, and willing enough to take on the role.

Nemaane.

She accepted her appointment solemnly, and Akyen promised to prepare her as best he could.

With the succession sorted, Satil summoned his doctor and presented the woman with a small vial of poison. He asked her if she was willing to do everything in her power to make sure he died at a time that would not be too damaging to the morale of the empire. She cited her oath to heal, but gave up halfway and took the bottle, promising to make sure Satil’s death served the empire.

The doctor managed to prolong Satil’s life three years, letting him die after the first successful sinking of a Ssanatham supply fleet caused the war to enter its first stalemate.

The war raged for four more years under the reign of Nemaane the Second. Whilst she was more active than Satil had been, she found herself doing many of the same things as Maake. She inspired the people and organised charity for those injured or displaced by the war. The main difference was that instead of using dragon dreaming to reach the empire’s subjects, Namaane travelled across the empire to meet with soldiers and give speeches.

An empress was still needed to approve most of Parliament’s decisions, but Maake found that neither she nor Namaane ever had reason to reject the decisions Prime Minister Pema Paalis presented them with. Maake met frequently with Paalis throughout the war and got the strong impression that even though she had no royal blood, she was gripping the Morel Reigns of the empire just as tightly as her and Nemaane.

As she dreamt, she encountered thousands of people throughout the empire pulling the Reigns as much as they could, all in the same direction. The politicians and the experts that made decisions for the empire. The military leaders who decided what attacks needed to be made, and who would risk their lives carrying them out. The mostly Nessan-Chaanean or Blue Exile captains cut off from the empire on missions to the enemy homeworld. The nurses and doctors triaging unimaginable casualties along the border of Dii’intara. The Lasan scientists deciding if the side effects of new stimulants they were developing negated the benefit they provided. Administrators of farms and factories deciding how much they could push their workers for the sake of the war effort.

Everyone wanted to keep the empire safe from an evil, power-hungry tyrant. Everyone was working towards the dream she and her sister Sereg had given so much for, and thanks to the efforts of Omtaan’s daughter Sereg, they had the power to make it a reality.

The Continental Alliance was never able to conduct a land invasion of Ssanatham. However, the ships that made it there were found Ssanatham dissidents to aid, and they made sailing across the ocean much more deadly for the Ssanatham navy. Despite the technological advantage the Ssanatham had, they could only sustain the war for nine years before the admirals admitted defeat.

The President never admitted defeat. She ordered large swaths of the population enslaved to build a fleet large enough for a second invasion, but with the military now willing to side with the resistance and the Alliance, she was overthrown. The hatred of her that the people had been hiding for decades bubbled up and her decapitated body was hung in the square in front of her presidential palace. She was so hated that the Ssanatham people conducted an ‘erasure’ ceremony called slumina, which ends in a promise to never again say that erased person’s name or make any visual depiction of them. Whilst our country is not bound by this promise, many people within the Alliance have also adopted the habit of not using her name.

The President’s head was presented to Admiral Tsilock of Nessa by Alissan Sy Thanch, former resistance leader and the interim president of Ssanatham. Surrender and reparations were negotiated, though by the time any approval from the Alliance leaders made it back to Ssanatham the country had been torn apart by civil war. It would also take a further five years before the Commander of the Invasion Forces in Dii’intara accepted that his president had been overthrown and that his nation had surrendered.

With no new attacks coming across the ocean, the Alliance was able to contain the invaders in Dii’intara. Wartime production was slowed down, and the people of the Chaane Empire began to settle into their new normal.

Maake and Nemaane found Parliament was just as effective in peacetime as it had been during the war. Like the rest of the nobility, the empresses had to find new ways to be relevant. As Maake compared Nemaane’s duties to those that Sereg and Omtaan had endured, she became certain that the observations Sereg, Satil and Kyalaan had made almost fifty years ago were correct. The best thing an empress could do for the empire was provide a morel example to follow, and they did not need two to do that.

She summoned Nemaane into the dragonchamber and told her all about the original plan Sereg Five had made to vacate the active throne. Nemaane took the news better than Maake expected. She had been a wealthy but simple medical researcher before unexpectedly inheriting the throne and had found herself uncomfortable with the massive increase in her wealth and quality of life. She was plagued with nightmares of being undeserving of her elevation.

Besides, the plan was not new to her.

“It’s the reason I applied to be one of your heirs” Nemaane admitted. “I knew if we were only going to have a sleeping empress, then it should be someone who wants to help people, and who understands the people. When beloved Chaane died, I thought I might be a good fit. I studied medicine because I wanted to help people, and I’ve always wished to know the people more. Not like now. Without the dragon dreaming, it’s like I’ve been placed apart from everyone else.”

From the gold pile to Maake’s left, Omtaan’s sleeping grandson and namesake snorted. Despite spending the whole war sleeping beside them, she hadn’t been able to bond with Palota and this new Omtaan. It still hurt too much to have people other than Chaane by her side, and she couldn’t get past that resentment.

Whilst Nemaane did approve of the vacated throne idea, she also shared Satil’s fears that the people would inevitably elect a tyrant. She was also aware that it could fall to her to oversee Maake’s succession. Maake had almost equalled Lacaan Three’s record of a hundred-and-fifty years on the throne. Hatching on the throne had given her a headstart, but she was now rather long-lived even for a dragon, and it showed in the lines of her hide.  

The discussion ended up shelved until after the Ssanatham holdouts were finally defeated in Dii’intara. By that time envoys from the new nations that had grown out of the ruined dictatorship were making their way across the ocean. It seemed that the other continent was healing,though there were still a lot of Ssanatham left in Chaane. Some were soldiers who had defected or been captured. Others were refugees who had fled the collapse of Ssanatham. They did not seem wanted back in their homeland, and many were afraid to return.

Besides the vacated throne proposal, Nemaane used her right to submit legislation to Parliament only once apart, on behalf of the Ssanatham. She proposed that they be granted asylum and land within the empire, on the condition that they assist a new research program that she was establishing in Serora University to study the rise of dictators in democracies.

Once that was approved, Nemaane revealed the vacated throne idea. It was a little different to the proposal Satil had made. Under Nemaane’s model, her and her descendants would become Maake’s waking representatives until either Maake’s death, or the end of a fifty-year period of non-interference by the royals. After this time, a council would be held between the representative, the Prime Minister, and the empress to discuss how the empire would proceed.

If Maake died before the end of that time, the current representative would temporarily assume the role of active emperor and oversee the appointment of the new sleeping emperor.

It was a controversial plan, and it took two years of debate before Parliament voted to allow the so called ‘Experimental Republic’ to proceed. It took a bit longer for the high priest of Chan to agree, but the Pontex intervened, and the two developed a new ritual to allow an emperor to symbolically set aside their power.      

On the hundredth anniversary of Lacaan Seven being stripped of his throne, his great -granddaughter set aside her royal vestments on the throne at the head of the Parliament, bowed to the Prime Minister, and walked to the dragonchamber.

Maake made a speech later that day, urging the people of the empire to continue in their struggle for a just world, and promised that she would be there if they needed her.

Then she went to sleep for fifty years.

Maake’s Awakening     

  During Maake’s final sleep the world changed around her. In her dragonchamber, Palota decided that her chances of one day being empress were not worth missing the changes to the world and her family. After twenty years sleeping, she reversed the transformation and spent her remaining life travelling on the ever-growing train network. She was replaced by more of Omtaan’s descendants, but some of them would also change their minds, creating a whirlwind of dragons around the empress.

Only Omtaan the third stayed. He was constantly visited by his growing family, and he always woke up to talk to them. As the years went by she longed to wake up herself and get to know Omtaan and his family better, but she stayed asleep.

The Prime Ministers came and went as well, and eventually even Nemaane was replaced by her daughter Ilzig. Maake felt surrounded by strangers.

She sank deeper into her dream world, experiencing the trains and radios and electric wonders of the empire through the dreams of her subjects. The palace around her changed too. More electric lights in the dragonchamber. Swivelling electric fans to cool her and the other dragons on hot days, and that horrible steam heating system was replaced by an electrical system.

She barely noticed it as her perception drifted outwards, looking for signs of trouble in the empire.

She noticed weapons were becoming more advanced, but after proving they could work together and seeing the horrors such technology caused, the three main powers of the continent remained peaceful. There were still battles amongst and sometimes against smaller kingdoms, but Maake’s dreams were mostly peaceful.

There was still a pervasive sense of Green Chaanean superiority, even as the dreamspire’s influence extended to more people. She could access the dreams of Blue Exiles and Nessan Chaaneans throughout the Ini Shalli now. If she strained hard, sometimes she experienced the dreams of children over in Ssanatham.

Her empire was made up of so many different people, yet the dreams outsiders had of it were of a homogenous green people. Active oppression was not as bad as it had been after Sereg’s conquest, but she still knew it wasn’t right. The contributions of non-Chaaneans during the War Across the Ocean were being purposely forgotten, and every few years someone in power tried to get people worked up over one group within the empire. Maake got better at projecting her idea of acceptance into her subject’s dreams, making it harder for such fearmongering to take hold.

There were other concerns. A few Prime Ministers did start resembling the Ssanatham President, though they were identified and removed from power quickly by the Parliament. Once, an industrialist gained enough wealth to bribe ministers and experts, and his rise to power went unnoticed until most of the parliament was compromised and all of the newspapers were under his control.

Maake almost awoke when she realised what happened. But protestors gathered outside the palace, led by tyranny researchers from the Serora University. It took a decade to repair the damage, but anti-monopoly laws and a Parliamentary oversight committee were established, and the industrialist imprisoned.

The researchers never found a cure for tyranny, but they identified ways that people with wealth and power were able to manipulate commoners into voting for policies that made it easier for exploitation to occur. Some ministers tried to silence the researchers, whilst others were bold enough to blatantly follow their advice. Fortunately, these tyranny-building tactics were taught in all the public schools, and there was always opposition to such people in both the Parliament and amongst the citizens.

After thirty years, Maake accepted that she was not needed to run the empire. Not unless her dragon dreaming was playing a much bigger role in keeping her people aware of corruption than she realised.

But if her abilities were that influential, what would happen if her successor misused them? She tried to imagine the President of Ssanatham controlling her citizen’s dreams. Would they have even been able to revolt if she had that power? She didn’t think any of the other dragons who had joined her would purposely use the dragon dreaming for evil, but they were all people who had given up their friends and family to sleep in beds of gold and have a chance at the throne. She didn’t trust any of them to not succumb to the spiralling addiction for more wealth and power that seemed to come with the initial acquisition of wealth and power.

Was the contribution of a sleeping emperor worth the possible misuse of this power?

She dove into the people’s dreams, looking for ways her example had led them.

She could see she was an inspiration for many. As her people dealt with loss and death, they looked to her and told themselves that empress Maake had eventually pulled through and that they could to. When they considered their own comfort or the good of the community, they thought about what she had sacrificed to keep the empire stable and chose their communities. They thought about all the changes she had lived through and encouraged whenever the world started seeming strange to them, and they compared their elected leaders to her distant, benevolent rule.

They also remembered the way she had neglected her family to sift through dreams and expected their employees and co-workers to also put their jobs above their families.

They remembered the way she had cast out her only son for his misconduct and felt no guilt disowning their own children for transgressions as minor as loving the wrong person, worshipping the wrong gods, or not properly conforming to their birth sex.

Even more recently they remembered her refusal to let descendants of Lacaan Seven enter dragonslumber due to an old royal decree, and felt justified clinging to other outdated rules even if they were demonstrably unfair.

Most importantly, they learnt from childhood that her authority, and wealth, and even her morality, was due to being born to rule. Nothing she had done had given her the throne. She was the pinnacle of their society because of who her father was. Because of her bloodline. Her ancestry. Her descent from the leader of one ancient plains tribe almost a thousand years ago.

Those were apparently the things that made someone worthy of leadership. No matter what contributions those descended from other tribes made, or how capable those from unremarkable bloodlines proved themselves, those ideas would not go away. Not even her own words against seeing non-Chaaneans as lesser, or the actions she and her family had taken to make a more equitable empire, could argue against the example of inbuilt superiority her life provided.

The other dragons in the dragonchamber slowly decided to wake up. They could see what type of nation Maake was dreaming of, and what she’d have to do to make it a reality.

She wished she could reach out to Marrone, but the Forsi segregation had been effective enough that she had no blood connection to Maake’s dreamspire. Maake remembered that she must have long-forgotten Forsi ancestry, since the dragon had seen her and Omtaan’s dreams. She tried to open her mind to the Forsi pearl but felt like an invader. The closest she got before backing off was a mental presence that reminded her of Marrone and the Forsi Dragon, that assured her there was a community out there that had a shared struggle and shared dreams.

With the way Chaanean history had gone these past thousand years, she couldn’t see her dreamspire ever functioning like Marrone’s. The descendants of Chaane did not need the pearl to make a shared dream. They had already shaped the rest of the world into a place that accepted them.

By the time the fifty-year Experimental Republic ended, Maake knew exactly how she was going to pass on the Morel Reigns. The final day of the experiment saw Maake alone in the dragonchamber, sleeping in two hundred years of accumulated treasure. She woke up and waited as Nemaane’s daughter led the current Prime Minister and Pontex into the chamber. A photographer circled around them, taking pictures of the party as they entered.

Behind the three were a group of ministers and experts from the Parliament, as well as some leaders of indigenous groups like the Lasa dressed in traditional garb. A man with a Dictaphone and a notepad, the modern-day scribe Maake assumed, crept in and set up a station off to the side.

As Maake’s attendants set the gathered party up on cushions before Maake, she looked at the crowd gathered at the door. She saw dozens of camera flashes and notepads. Reporters. How quickly would word of her decision travel?

It was all so new, yet all so familiar to her.

Nemaane’s Ilzig bowed before her. She was an elderly woman who Maake had met a few times before her final slumber, back when she was just a little girl. There was no resemblance between this woman and Maake’s mother or niece. She found herself a little sad that the name Ilzig would probably never be associated with an empress, despite Ilzig technically being active empress for this meeting.

This Ilzig Akyennis woman waded through Maake’s gold and crouched down beside her head.

“It’s nice to see you again Your Majesty” Ilzig said.

“You know you don’t need to call me that anymore” Maake whispered. “Thank you for all you’ve done over the years my child. You did a good job looking after me and your cousins.”

Ilzig leaned in closer and grinned as she spoke.

“My kids say I’m a huge waste of taxpayer money” she said. “I’ve been following the directions you’ve given in your sleep, but your sleeptalk isn’t as coherent as it used to be. I think I know what you are announcing, and if I’m right, you have my support.”

“You are right” Maake confirmed. “But don’t forget; you are technically an active empress now. Make sure those kids of yours show you some respect.”

Ilzig suppressed a laugh as she returned to the edge of the gold pile and started the meeting. There were a few formalities and introductions that had to be taken care of, but Maake did not have long to wait until it was her turn to speak. She tried to lift her head up to its full height, but either due to fifty years of stiffness or a hundred-and-ninety-eight years of aging, she could only raise herself to eye level with the sitting assembly.

“I have spent nearly two-hundred years dreaming of a better world” Maake said. “My beloved sister Sereg and I believed it fell on us alone to reign in reptilian greed and cruelty. Yet from my slumber, I have seen my dream being shared by people throughout the empire. And I have seen the great efforts made throughout the centuries to make it a reality.

“Today, after centuries of dreaming, I see that you, my beloved people, have all the tools you need to make our better world. Our fairer, kinder world. Your technology has shrunk the distance between you and made it easier to communicate with one another. The mass education effort has resulted in a people better able to understand the complex consequences that result from their actions, and we have removed restrictions based on race or religion that make able to hear a larger variety of voices, with their ideas on moving us forward and repairing the mistakes of the past.”

She heard a hiss in the assembly before her and the voices of the reporters in the doorways grew louder.

“Of course we have made mistakes in the past” Maake said, deviating from the script she had imagined before waking up. “I have made mistakes in the past. My beloved sister and I may have hatched on the throne due to the inscrutable will of Faate, but we were given no god-like powers. This dragon body of mine has not eliminated the reptilian weaknesses I share with you all. Though it has taken the reptilian strengths from me. I gave up the ability to join my people in the shared pursuit of community and family building. I, like the corrupt nobles before me, am too removed from the common people to ever truly rule in your name.”

She paused for a bit, surprised that her audience seemed so surprised. Had they not gotten these sentiments in their dreams? She thought about what she had just said then veered her speech back on track.

 “I am the head of an empire that was made to extract resources and redistribute them as it saw fit. After over a century in this role, and after seeing the struggles our neighbours face as the method of this redistribution is challenged, I have concluded that we have come as far as we can with this redistribution being managed by a small group of elites out of touch with the wider community.

“There is only one thing holding you back from the kinder world we have been dreaming of, and that is me. Me and the empire.”

“QUIET!” Ilzig shouted as the crowds on the floor and in the doorway suddenly had to interrogate each other, loudly asking if Maake was saying what they thought she was.

“Thank you” Maake said. “This pearl above me kept a small tribe of grassland reptilians together. But then they became something else. A large kingdom, then a greedy empire, and now, now we have a chance to be something new. A great republic that cannot be burdened with a pearl that now acts to exclude our citizens. After watching your republic experiment for fifty years, I am confident that you can make something better. That is why as soon as I have introduced legislation to formalize your temporary executive chamber into a full house of parliament, I will abdicate from my throne, on behalf of myself and all my descendants.”

“As current active emperor, I support this decision” Ilzig said.

The room erupted. Maake strained to raise her head so she could intimidate the room, but then she realised they were cheering. At least three notebooks were dropped in the doorway as reporters applauded or hugged each other. The scribe was covering his snout so that his chirps of happiness didn’t get recorded on the Dictaphone. There were a few looks of shock on some of the ministers seated before her, but for the most part they were overjoyed. Ilzig looked back at her with a smile, and for a second, Maake thought she saw a slight resemblance to Sere.

“One more thing” Maake said once the room calmed down. “You should rename. We are one united nation sharing a common dream, but we are made of many people from all over the world. Not just green Chaaneans.”

After the meeting, Maake and Ilzig worked with the Prime Minister and scholars from Serora University to draft the Republic Bill. When it was submitted seven months later, Prime Minister Zanaan Satilis submitted a second bill alongside it, which would give the individual provinces of the empire and territories belonging to indigenous groups the option to vote for their own independence or a self-governing role within the new nation.

Both bills passed, and the Federation of Maake was established.

Maake did not approve of the new name, but she was no longer empress Maake Two and had no power to overrule it.

Independence votes were held over the following year. Most provinces voted to stay within the Federation. Lasa stayed, though it became a self-governing territory. Ini Shalli stayed, but Shhi Trullos, which was now one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world, became an independent city-state nation.

Maake requested de-transformation. As our new nation formed, she went through the painful process of having her pearl destroyed and letting her body reform. There were concerns that she might be too old to survive the process, yet she pulled through, determined to see this new world she had dreamt into being.

After the map of the Federation was finalised, Maake Akyennis walked out of the dragonchamber. She carried her mother’s urn as Ilzig helped her up the stairs of the pit. She was ancient, stooped over, featherless, with twisted joints and a cloudy eye. Her neck and chest were covered in gold, and veins of it crept between her dull scales.

Once at the door, she took one last look at the room she had slept in for the past one hundred-and-eighty years. Then she left. Out into a hallway that she was either unfamiliar with or had forgotten. off to see the world as it truly was now that she was finally awake.

She met the new Queen of Nessa, who is also called Caluna, in the palace gardens. Nessa had also become a democracy, but they had found a place for the royal family as a symbolic head of state who upheld their religious traditions and provided a connection to the past.

Maake hugged Caluna and called her cousin, then took her to Tsvalai’s unmarked grave. As a young girl, she’d marked the spot where the monster who terrified her had been laid. Now she helped Caluna arrange the repatriation of a boy who’d set out to correct a perceived injustice.

She visited every province and autonomous zone within the new Federation, marvelling at the power of these new trains and automobiles every time she used one. She clasped hands, butted heads or bowed as each leader she met preferred. When she arrived in places scared by the actions of the empire, she apologised on behalf of the old empire.

She met Marrone in the Forsi dragon chamber, though she won’t say what they talked about. Just that it was nice to talk in person with her peer.

The biggest leg through her journey was through the Ini Shalli, where she retraced her sister’s path. She visited memorials in Shhi Ovna and other cities where massacres had occurred and bowed as low as she could to the old pyre sites. She made it all the way to Shhi Trullos, where she met their new president and congratulated her on the city’s independence.

At Shhi Trullos she got to experience a cinema, which played a short, silent movie about Sereg and Calanlai called The Cost of War. It is not incredibly accurate, but Maake had extremely animated reactions to all the special effects. Especially the cannon fire. She described it as one of the most amazing things she had ever seen, then asked to go to Representative Danth’s old house, where she is said to have just sat in silence for hours.

She returned through the Ini Shalli, then through Outer Chaane, and finally, she made it to Newea.

There had been talk about bringing Sereg home for many years now, but there was opposition from the people of Newea. A shrine had been built around Sereg and Omtaan’s ashes, which brought pilgrims and tourists from around the world. When Maake showed up with hundreds of supporters though, the mayor relented and let her take her sister and stepfather away.

She left a few personal items of Sereg’s that had been hidden in her treasure pile, as well as Omtaan’s now ancient helmet. It wasn’t really the same, but Queen Caluna later sent some of Tsvalai’s ashes to the town, saving its tourism industry.

At the end of her journey Maake came to Illasa. The Kyonnis family hosted her in the manor next to the keep that Ilzig and Akyen had built, and Maake became quite fond of her many times great-grandson, Lord Pareg Kyonnis.

The manor has a garden full of jungle plants and phalanxbugs large enough for children to ride on. A path leads through the ancient trees to a clearing on the edge of a hill that overlooks the city of Illasa. At the edge of this lookout, on the spot where almost two centuries ago three children plotted their future, sits a shrine to Consort Kyon. It is a simple stone arch, constantly being decorated with flowers, vines, and letters from his descendants. Under it sits a brick-lined planter box filled with the soil from Dii’antaa and the cities from the Ini Shalli where Sereg had stayed. Melted gold coins peek up through the soil, and Kyon’s empty urn is perched on the rim of the box.

Maake came to this shrine on her first day in Illasa, carrying Sereg’s urn. She’d already scattered Omtaan’s and Ilzig’s ashes during her tour, though even now she chooses to keep the location and circumstances under which they met a secret. Lord Pareg accompanied her to the shrine and left her to be with her beloved. He watched her for a while, as she talked softly to Kyon’s urn. She then opened Sereg’s urn and poured everything that remained of her sister onto the memory field Kyon had made for the afterlife. Pareg left her alone then despite her age. He would take her back to the shrine again every day for the rest of her life.

Maake Akyennis lived a quiet final year in Illasa. She visited the edge of the jungle and Serora University, but she never strayed too far. She explored the keep, where Kyon had grown up and then spent his final years. She frequently went on walks through town with Pareg and was often visited by the twenty-minute empress Ilzig, as well as old gold covered Omtaan.

He had been the first of Emperor Omtaan’s grandchildren to join her in the dragonchamber and the last to leave. Now that the two could talk in the waking world, and properly grieve Chaane together, the barrier that had stood between them whilst sleeping was shattered. Maake finally got to meet his family, and she confessed that if she had been able to connect with him in the dragonchamber, maybe she would have given him the Reigns.    

She met me during a visit to the local public school that her daughter Ilzig had established and honoured me with her time.

I’m a student with hopes of getting into the Serora Anti-Tyranny program. My name is Ilswia Lynais. A Lasan name, from my mother Lyna. I’m proud to be Lasan, but that is not my whole story. My father is a green Dii’intara, whose parents fled the kingdom as refugees during the Ssanatham occupation. They travelled the ancient trade roads and were taken in by my mother’s clan.

Before fleeing Dii’intara, they had enjoyed a privileged life due to my grandmother being the daughter of Lacaan and Maarigee’s youngest daughter, Olaane. Olaane had been a toddler when Lacaan died. She stayed with Maaken after he married Princess Maalee and grew up to be a respected judge.

Maake knew little about Lacaan’s life in Dii’intara or his younger children. She was eager to hear every story I had ever heard about them. My parents and I were invited frequently to Kyonnis Manor to talk about Lacaan, Maaken, and Olaane. When she found out that I had been writing my own history of her reign to submit with my Serora application, she was happy to return the favour and be interviewed by me.

My connection to Chaanean royalty was never an important part of my identity. I am, as I said before, proud to be Lasan. But getting the chance to hear my great-great-great grandmother tell her life story has been lifechanging. I will always treasure the time I spent with Gra-Ma Ma’a, and hope that between our fallible memories, I have reproduced her experiences here faithfully.

Maake lived to see both her two-hundredth birthday, and the thousandth anniversary of the creation of the dreamspire. She died not long after that, peacefully in bed at Kyonnis Manor, surrounded by the people she had bonded with in her final year. I am honoured that I got to be one of them.

I later joined that group as we stood watch over her funeral pyre, and again as we took her urn down that jungle-lined path to Kyon and Sereg’s shrine.

I stood back chirping as Ilzig, Omtaan and Pareg nuzzled the urn in turn. Then, with all three holding it, they scattered Maake’s ashes on the memory soil, reuniting her with the two people she had loved the most.

I watched as the wind carried the remains of Maake to the afterlife, where her family was waiting for her. She disappeared quicky; eager to go and tell them that she had seen their dream come true.

THE END