"Tell Ming Xuan to brace himself. I expect you all to help him to the best of your ability."

  Like a spark in a powder keg, these imperial words ignited the nobility's ambitions. Their hidden messages and nuances couldn't be more obvious to those versed in the doctrine of political sciences.

  The Second Prince Er Long put the most common interpretation into words. "There is no doubt father is making this a trial for Ming Xuan." He roared with ughter. "Very well! Then as a loving brother, allow me to help him to the best of my ability." He picked up a bell, a pure gold creation, and rang it. "Summon my men. It is time for us to add some spice into Ming Xuan's trial."

  Er Long stood as men in bck flowed through every opening of his darkened garden, gathering like shadowy tombstones in a graveyard. Two of those bck-cd men approached him with an intricately carved blue armor, shimmering like a meticulously fashioned azure sapphire. He felt the familiar weight of his armor settle upon him and enjoyed the rhythm of its snapping csps. With a face so savage none of his men dared to look at it, he turned to address his fellow butchers with a wide grin, his pupils fully visible with excitement.

  "My men, my weapons!" he bellowed. "It is time to paint the ground red with the blood of insurgents!" Er Long basked in his men's cheers, yet felt a crack of reticence. "That is a little bit quiet. Do you perhaps harbor doubts about my half-sister?"

  "No sir!" The men responded with murderous discipline.

  "Rex," Er Long ordained with experienced ease. "I am certain all of you have no hesitation to kill Nuan, but killing my sister will likely sit wrong with you when it is clear that she had been framed."

  The men said nothing. They wisely killed their suspicion or shock at their lord's awareness to avoid his displeasure.

  "Do you wonder why I decided to hand her away without a fight, even knowing she is innocent?" he continued. "It is because she is weak!"

  He stomped his foot upon the ground, addressing his men with double the octave and triple the fervor; his body released such fanatical bloodlust it repelled the illusion of peace and thickened the air like bloody cream.

  "She dared to get captured and exposed a vulnerability for that bsted bastard Yi Tong to exploit!" his fanatical cry rang out. "She risked the safety of us all in the eyes of my father. Shouldn't she take responsibility?"

  "Yes sir!" the men in bck obediently followed.

  "And now she has the nerve to run away, protesting the right to live with her weakness!" Er Long roared, letting out a cry which boiled the sky in blood. "She has wronged us all, my blood, my flesh! Never mind Ming Xuan, we shall enact vengeance!"

  "For Vengeance!"

  ---

  While his younger brother desired to sail upon the river of blood, Yi Tong sat in his underground study.

  Light shone dimly in this room of wooden shelves filled with books and scrolls. The scent of cedar permeated the obsessively ordered space, offering its owner crity as the mahogany tiles threatened to fall below him. Shadows seemed to corrode the room's edges, locked in eternal combat against the glimmer of hope.

  "What is father thinking?" the First Prince muttered; the privacy far from the court allowed him to shed his armor of vigince. "This is not the time to set the court on fire." He massaged his aching forehead. "I do agree Ming Xuan is the best among us, but why put more burden upon his shoulders, father? You want him to kill our sister with his own hands, while we obstruct him the best we can."

  He gnced up to the shadowy ceiling. "Truly this damn nation is built upon the blood of kin. Are we all merely tools for you to sharpen, o’ my heartless forebear?"

  A round knock was heard.

  "Come in," he ordered, knowing the official waited with unpleasant news.

  The fat official with a goatee bumbled into the room, bowing and scurrying with a wily rat's scheming in his eyes. "Milord—"

  "I know your friends in the Bckwing wanted Nuan Yulong," Yi Tong barked. "And I allowed you to have my sister in exchange for temporary non-interference with the lives of our common citizens." He looked at the man with suspicion. "This does not make us friends or vassals, you swine."

  "I understood, Prince Yi," the traitorous official bowed. "How cold-blooded of you to sacrifice your sister for peace. But I doubt this offer will stick with her escape."

  The prince sneered at the official. "I also know that, but tell me what you're hiding. Why do you want to kill Nuan after pining for her all this time?"

  "What do you mean?" The official shivered at the sharpness in those irises.

  "Don't py dumb, traitor," Yi Tong said. "You used your contacts in the court to arrange Nuan's disposal, even wrestling my arm into mediating on your side. I wondered why you would do that, until I realized my father would want to talk to her." He smiled sinisterly. "Nuan knew, no, more like discovered something; and you are afraid what she knew will spread. You are so afraid of her knowledge that you'd cut your losses on her."

  The official writhed with anger. "Enough, my prince," he jeered, unsmiling. "I hope you understand the bance is at stake. Most of all, if Mandrake were to discover your double dealing, you might as well join Nuan on the run."

  The official left, leaving the eldest prince seated in his room.

  He closed his eyes in stress. The God-Emperor and Bckwing; for peace to continue, these two monsters needed to be banced on a tightrope. But the man holding this delicate circus act together was fraying at the seams.

  "Sorry, Ming Xuan," he apologized to his brother. "But I can't let you kill Nuan." Yi Tong banged the back of his head against the wall in exasperation. "Not at least until I know what she knew to put them so on edge."

  ---

  In a tent situated in the middle of the desert, Ming Xuan's forehead dripped with sweat, wetting his bck hair beneath his deep cquered armor. He read the message detailing the direct quote from his father with a pale face, then looked up to meet his little sister's eyes. “How did father know?”

  Across from him, Shuguang sat in gorgeous robes of red and white, her royal obsidian hair styled to match her brother's. Her crimson eyes lowered back to the missive, lips pressed tight with barely managed panic.

  "He is warning you to prove yourself and openly inviting those wolves to take their shots at you," the matured little sister sank into the condemned seat, feet tapping the floor in a mental hypnosis. "Older brother, are we changing our pn?"

  "Nuan is obviously innocent," Ming Xuan said. "Why would father try to interfere with us when we're trying to clear her name?"

  Shuguang snorted, gncing at the desert pins blocking the capital. "Perhaps he knew about our backup pns to help her escape."

  "But that knowledge is only known to the two of us," the elder whispered to his full-blood sibling.

  "Brother, our father is one of the most powerful beings in existence," Shuguang reminded him, fingers fidgeting as her heart pounded. "Him having a way to know our methods is not the problem. The real issue is that he took offense to us trying to go around his authority." The Dragon Scion sank her face into her palm. "This is a warning for us. There is no way out unless we kill Nuan ourselves."

  Ming tried to find alternatives. "We can bring her to father…"

  "Not through that court, brother," replied the woman, who looked into the perfect replication of her crimson eyes and broke. "There is no doubt he is handing us an ultimatum."

  Shuguang Yulong rose up and marched around the fppy tent, no longer able to contain her righteous fury. "That bastard of a man never cared about us as children," her voice rasped with resentment. "We are simply tools to die for him."

  "Shuguang, you shouldn't talk like that about father," Ming tried to pcate her, standing up and stopping her tracks; their crimson eyes met.

  Whereupon Ming Xuan's little sister cried, unable to imagine that pair of brotherly lights vanishing forever.

  "You're still defending that bastard? Look how many victories you have won for him! How loyally you serve! But the moment you try to do the right thing out of his purview, he sentences you like a faulty tool!"

  Ming listened to his teary sibling and rose up to hug her. "Little Lychee," he called her by the old pet name: a recollection from the past long gone. "I am not going to disappear."

  The little sister sank into his embrace, recalling the day her mother disappeared from her bed one night, and the demonic coldness of the dragon she called father. "Brother," she sank to her knees as if begging, with tears flowing down her jade white cheek. "I don't want you to disappear too, so please—"

  "I will capture Nuan, sis," Ming Xuan patted. "Don't worry. I won't leave you alone."

  ---

  Far in the distance, the Lord of Union meditated in his van and felt a stinging headache.

  Ciel looked to the open sky with one compint to the Void:

  "Why do I have a feeling I'm about to suffer in your stead yet again, you miscommunicating buffoon?"