The 4th Princess Just Wants to Rot!

How to have a Meltdown - 2


It was Emperor Lucien who had signed into existence the Imperium's Veterans Office.

That great-grand uncle of this very much overwhelmed Sophia Elise was, according to that very tired civics tutor that she had during her supposed high school years, had a career as a court psychologist before his ascension to Emperor of the entire Ensolian Imperium.

In what seemed like a far too common occurrence within their family, Lucien himself was quite content with spending his years as some no-named Elise before being dragged to the Silver Throne as the unwilling result of a succession crisis.

It was when the streets of the Imperium were filled with the skeletal, starving bodies of morphine addicted veterans from the Second Stygean War, when those legionaries had returned home after witnessing the meat grinder of trench warfare and the first application of widespread automatic machine guns.

He treated them, won this battle through studied legislation within the Ministry of War and sometimes even on the streets of Capital itself (that man did have a longing for his old job, and according to the family rumor mill he ended up returning to it after his abdication).

And some small part of Sophia tugs at that remembrance—towards that now dead family member long rotted away in his grave.

Do you think he'd be concerned about your… addiction to this?

Not at all. Sophia's on top of this box of twelve donuts, eyes widening as she processes each of those delicate pieces of fried, glazed dough.

No time for enjoyment, we're about to have a literal mental break. We need them inside us, now.

And so The Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium, Sophia Elise the Eighth herself, uses her graceful, delicate fingers to stack up twelve donuts in a towering monument to her own glory—before placing her palm above it all, and crushing it into a crumbled pile of fried dough and sugar.

The monster eats.

It's the river otter skinning a salmon alive, it's the great gaseous parent world of Unudo absorbing a wayward comet… and it's nothing the Crown Prince of the Tianci Dominion has ever seen before in his entire life.

Each bite by his politically married wife into this haphazard pastry layer cake feral and wild, crumbs flying in a spray of waste and desperation.

So much so that even Zai's remaining guardsmen, all three, stare with slack jawed awe and shock, so much that even that the Impericutta legionary, in all its inhuman armor and armaments, shifts in uncomfortable awkwardness.

But Zai Tianci doesn't break.

Every drop of blood in his veins burns like fire, five thousand years of his family's Dominion converging into this one single moment of forced composure against this cosmic atrocity of gastronomics.

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He does not stare, does not laugh or make any strange face towards this little creature in the corner of this dressing room.

The Crown Prince of the Tianci Dominion keeps an absolutely cold gaze, blinking when he needs to, breathing when he needs to, pondering with a little too much consideration to his life situation.

This is what the Imperium sent us.

This is your life now…

And as Sophia Elise takes these final bites of what was going to be an entire room's worth of donuts and licks (all) her fingers clean, she finally takes an actual deep breath into her diaphragm.

She feels a heart settle in her chest, hands no longer wildly shaking from overwhelming panic; and perhaps most importantly that head of hers actually settles into something cohesive enough to give her an idea.

We gotta play it cool? Don't even acknowledge that we just mainlined an entire dozen donuts within a minute.

"Zai, I apologize." Sophia Elise keeps that squatting position on the floor, her face to the dark corner of this place. "I hope that there will not be any political consequences from my breach in Dominion Court tradition."

The Crown Prince of the Tinaci Dominion doesn't even flinch, his response leveled and honest as he takes a small stride over to the corner. "There will be serious political consequences. For five thousand years nobody has defied the Lord of the Dominion and lived. You… you're the first person in our entire history to do such a thing… to even be alive to do such a thing. The fact that my father didn't just… have you removed erodes the fundamental belief in his power."

Zai touches his forehead for a moment, trying to find the right words in this question to her, trying to keep his shaking voice from betraying any more emotion. "Why did you not bow, Sophia? Why did you…"

"B-because I had a massive anxiety attack." She dumps this truth on top of him, only pausing to wipe the powdered sugar off her lip with the back of her hand. "I-I really did freeze up. So… y-eah."

At least she's honest about it.

At least she can tell him the truth, better than any courtier in this sprawling temple of faith and ruin.

Zai pulls back, sighing as he does so. "Ok. I… I need to think."

Sophia keeps squatting, keeps her gaze in the dark corner. "What happens now?"

"I don't know." He answers her. "Failure to give reverence to the Lord is punishable by execution, and the last time someone did such a thing decades ago my father had her beheaded right there. I… I don't know why he didn't…"

"Who was she?" Sophia asks with an almost innocent edge.

"Some southern rebel warlord, captured and brought to him for trial. It was before I was born, but I supposed that it's…"

"If your father harmed me, the Imperium would have come over the Wailing Fang." The Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium interrupts him with the politics, gives this crown prince the reality that he himself almost denies as it comes from her hidden lips. "Your father did not have me removed because he was afraid of what would occur if I was removed."

And on top of her words, Sophia adds onto a small personal defense. "A-also if he would have given me three more minutes I would've been able to prostrate. I do not understand why he was in such a hurry."

Zai leans closer to this corner, pulling himself down to a squatting position next to his politically married wife. "The reason doesn't matter anymore, Sophia. You didn't bow, and my father didn't have you either dragged out, or killed on the spot."

And to her, he gives the truth: the soft, kind, horrifying truth. "Fear has kept our Dominion together. And for the first time in our history, we fear something that is not within us, but something from the outside.

"That fear will destroy our Dominion."

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