They brought an army over the Wailing Fang Mountain Range.

Two flagship Aerostatics taken from two legions anchoring a full task force that transited these jagged peaks—crossing horizon to horizon, sharp contrails marking their paths across an empty, cloudless sky like a painter's brush of white.

Above the countryside of Sanji, following the streams of the Hwangju River Head that cut through the Northern States of Tianci, shadowed by the dim city lights of Seoryang, Myeongsan—they are watched from below.

Maneuvering past the holy gunline and through the wind channels of the central plains—the long dead corpses of ancient ones feel them pass above.

It's their carrion alloy, refined in clean-room labs, that are now a broken promise made in the eons long ago.

I'm sorry. Speaks those shattered minds in the world below to the rabid spirits above, caged within their cores of electromagnetics; screaming anguish in their immortal death throes. I'm so sorry.

The Imperium is here.

They built this place: a barren pasture of reinforced concrete raised from an old farmer's field of ungrown maize, poured a decade prior as a staging ground for their arrival in a war of unthinkable scales. Bringing their troops of ceramic, their weapons of death, and their warfare that bent their silence to kill—they came to desecrate this land beyond theirs by spilling the blood of the axial invaders and poisoning the earth with the lead of their bullets.

And they're here to desecrate it once more.

In this place, miles from the outskirts of Landfall, Prince Zai Tianci watches as these monsters descend upon his homeland for one more heresy.

The Imperium brought the twins.

Two aerostatics like a pair of executioner blades, almost a thousand feet long from stern to bow.

A battleship that hovers over this place as if strung up by wires from an unseen theatre batten. Its hull bristling with those turreted, tri-mounted artillery guns upon its armored decks that swing like a soldier on sentry duty, scanning these skies for its own kin to hunt and destroy.

Because they made it with jealousy.

Every rivet on its armor, every wire that twists its way through its bulkheads was made with the knotted heart of an envious soul: that the very thought of another power could rule these skies as the Imperium has is unthinkable.

It's the first sin of their Goddess' seven:

Envy.

But the Soldiers and Commanders from the dozens of Ensolian Nations here upon this airfield only look up at her sister as it comes in for its landing approach.

A bloated whale carcass the size of a city block, three hundred meters of ceramic steel and machinery extending uncountable landing legs as the roar of its turbine engines blast hot exhaust across those gathered at the foot of a heretical god.

Twelve thousand metric tons of lift. A voice informs Zai Tianci from some military briefing. They could've saved you. One single transit across the Fang, with its stomach laden with grain, could've saved a hundred thousand starving souls.

And they kept this instrument of salvation as your people died by the millions.

Power to bring empire across the sky, to fill its belly with the life saving bites of bread or death beneath the bullet of a gun. Whatever they decide to fill their tables, whenever they want too.

It's Gluttony.

The letters written in that Ensolian script of theirs dwarf even the armored vehicles currently sitting on the ground, painted on that pale gray hull with silver-doped paint.

Crown Prince Zai Tianci stumbles a few steps back, watching as what feels like a mountain collapses onto him from above.

But yet the creature next to him doesn't even flinch. Standing beneath that parasol of hers that flutters in the disrupted air, she simply scrunches her nose as she smells burnt molasses wafting from those massive engines of the Gluttony.

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"They must be using a sugarcane blend this year." Sophia Elise grimly narrows her eyes. "You know how you can tell?"

Zai barely has a moment to breathe, blinking as he tries not to fall back. "I-I'm not certain."

"You can smell how sweet the burns are." She continues. "Sugarcane's the sweetest precursor to use as fuel, ya know?"

He doesn't have much of an answer to that rhetorical question, but he still focuses his gaze on her and not on this monster coming to land two hundred meters away from them. "I-I suppose so."

A thought process within Sophia's Committee slaps its forehead. Nice work on trying to flirt with your husband with fuel sourcing. Let's try again but talk about refining up the octane numbers, that'll totally make him strip his pants for you.

OH shut up we have something so much bigger to worry about! Another thought quickly reorients this entire room, pointing towards the massive warning. Those twins are here! When was the last time those two took a trip together without father forcing them too?

Dozens of imperial ground crew from the advance team, wearing those dirtied gray fatigues, move like ants as those landing legs meet the concrete. Mooring ropes tossed overboard, grabbed and tied into ground anchors, throwing hand signals at each other with parade precision.

You know what the worst part is. A part of Sophia begins to think. Those reply letters we haphazardly wrote to those two have most definitely not even been shipped back to them. As far as they know, we didn't even reply.

Doing a great job as a younger sister, aren't we?

And, if there was one person in the Imperium who was actively finding an excuse to strangle Sophia Elise the Eighth, it'd probably be one of those two.

Hydraulics groan as pumps slowly open massive cargo doors at the vessel's bow, the interior of that monster folding open like the toothless maw of some beast of yore.

Sophia remembers those propaganda broadcasts, how military reporters would claim the Gluttony could airlift an entire legion within its vast cargo holds. That this vessel, if stuffed bulkhead to bulkhead, could bring a war's worth of armored vehicles, legionaries, and enough food, fuel, and bullets to keep them fighting for months.

Maybe they weren't just glazing this thing back then. Goddess that's a lot of stuff. Sophia realizes as she tries to count even the armored vehicles currently strapped into the unloading deck.

The Impericutta descend first.

Two reinforced squads, eighteen ceramic demons in their bone white armor and heavy weapons marching down this open ramp in a loose formation. Fanning out upon this open, empty space like mercury spilled on glass, those faceless helmets scanning for any threats against the two figures now shadowed by the lights flooding from within the Gluttony.

"Oh Goddess…" Sophia begins to fidget. "Why did they have to come down here for this…"

Zai blinks, quickly glancing away to stare at Sophia. "Is the annual Continental Defense Exercise not an Imperial led initiative?"

"I mean, yeah. But those two didn't need to come all the way down here for C.O.D.E.X.…"

But they do.

Because they came to see you.

To make sure Sophia Elise the Eighth remains untouched in this court of blades, that she's safe amongst the blood and murder of Tianci.

We wonder if mother sent them here. Sophia's brain begins to yawn. She couldn't have known about our court disasters already… right?

Naomi Elise the First actually for once wears the fatigues of a cavalry commander instead of her usual full-dress uniform. Semi-formal, in the sense that the First Legion colors of soft grassland green were the primary palette instead of the usual moldy camouflage patterned fatigues of their legionaries.

At least she doesn't look like a toy soldier anymore…

Only one campaign bar of silver nested with blue aquamarine and ruby squares sits upon her right breast—her usual line of medals instead traded for the symbology of the First Legion's recent anti-insurgency expedition out across the Adranic Ocean.

And those smug light brown amber eyes, beneath what was a slightly longer than short bobble of blonde hair, stare directly at her younger sister with a scowl.

Naomi looks pissed… A thought process begins to analyze. Probably because how humid and hot it's…

Another thought interrupts harshly, pointing out towards this girl's sole brother as he descends alongside the oldest sibling. Oh my Goddess, did we actually expect him to be wearing anything different???

Natan Elise still wears the suit. White cream undershirt layered under the silver gray shirt-jacket, that man's style unchanged for practically every single formal event since his coming of age seven years ago.

Thin, just a few inches taller than Naomi, but holding enough resemblance with that slightly unkept blonde hair, and piercing light brown amber eyes that any person could easily make a relational assumption.

A smile… that soft expression hiding something more nefarious, a grudge or some sort of criminal implication behind every step he takes onto the airfield.

And they both march towards their hosts in this new, foreign nation.

They come to be greeted by a Crown Prince, and a Princess Consort.

I hope Natan doesn't break my ribs with a hug… Sophia dreads, pausing for just a moment. And also let's hope Naomi doesn't stab us for not writing back in a timely fashion…

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