OUR MOST CHERISHED SENATOR Alectar von Pasus:
May the light of the stars illuminate your every venture. I apologize for the crude medium of a discreet-sheet with my handwriting, but I dare not send you a transmission. You are likely receiving this note from my trusted messenger ten to twelve days from now. I implore you to crumple it to powder immediately after reading, and if need be, put this bearer to death to preserve these contents. He will not object to a death in service of our Living Cosmos.
I hate to impose upon you at this time of grieving for your beloved daughter, Elantra, but I must. I am the Vicar Primus now, but I sense I will not be for much longer. As the foremost Helionic at this imperial center, I am compelled to send you my desperate plea for assistance!
We of the faith are all alarmed by the last hour’s events here at the Chrysanthemum. The Senators von Pasus have always been ardent champions of the Living Cosmos. Now, it is your hour to show you are no exception! Our divine Cosmos requires your zeal and your strength. I will be displaced from my position soon, so I will not have the power to act myself.
I know you to be a great man, Senator. The day you denounced the late Senator von Impyrean for his heretical and unseemly interest in the sciences, I felt most astir with joy. You were instrumental in striking down blasphemers set on breaching the sacred mysteries of our divine Cosmos. An entire faction of the Senate sought to destroy the foundation of our empire in the name of the “sciences,” and they might have succeeded, but for your words in the Emperor Randevald’s ear, your steadiness driving his striking hand.
So I must ask you to be brave once more.
Like a two-headed viper, our enemies have reared a new pair of fangs to poison this galaxy once again. And I tremble to tell you who this new head is, though you must have guessed.
It is our young Emperor Tyrus von Domitrian.
You are aware that I have served as the Vicar Primus at the Chrysanthemum for over a century. I have been the voice of the Living Cosmos for those Grandiloquy who exercise power in this galactic court. I’ve ensured this center of our Empire remained untainted by those outdated faiths that should have been abandoned on old Earth. I am instrumental in maintaining the spiritual welfare of this court, and I am as much a fixture here as any of the Grandiloquy, so I speak with authority. Two Domitrian sovereigns have sought my counsel!
Young Tyrus, though, looks elsewhere. And I am not writing as an old man, peevish at being overlooked. I could accept being thrust aside if I knew the proper reasons lay behind it, but at the time of this writing, I know an unholy plot is afoot. I do not know what narrative will be propagated about the recent events, but I will tell you my truthful, firsthand account of the Emperor’s coronation.
The Emperor Tyrus smuggled Luminars—a particularly fractious, heathen sort of Excess (you know better than anyone!)—onto the Chrysanthemum. With their help, he ambushed his own grandmother, our beloved and faithful Grandeé Cygna. He united planet dwellers against his fellow Grandiloquy, but it was the least of his misdeeds.
You surely have seen his Convocation transmission. He speaks of a new era, of restoring the sciences so he might solve malignant space. This is ludicrous! But I know the dreadful influence putting such ideas in this young Emperor’s mind.
The creature he means to take as his wife.
It pains me to speak of this to you, to a father so new in his grief, but I must: Tyrus von Domitrian means to wed the Diabolic, Nemesis dan Impyrean, who murdered your daughter, Elantra.
You must think these vile words to be false. I wish they were!
Nemesis was intended to be the fire sacrifice at the new Emperor’s coronation. His grandmother, Cygna, demanded it, and Tyrus agreed to it. Instead the Emperor liberated the creature Nemesis and condemned the Grandeé Cygna in her place. Then—and I shudder to recount this—the Emperor killed his grandmother and expressed his intent to make this Diabolic his Empress.
An Empress!
You have not misread this. I can hardly fathom it.
A Diabolic, a subhuman, an abomination—to be our Empress!
The rumors always spoke of young Tyrus as a madman. Then, other rumors: he was feigning madness all along to escape the malice of his own family. Well, I fear he must be mad after all. He must be! We all know what Diabolics are!
These are not people. Nemesis dan Impyrean is not a person. She is a genetically engineered monster. She was only fashioned to appear human, yet she is not. Diabolics are stronger and faster and crueler than we are, merely for the protection of a master. We know this. Nemesis should have been killed the moment it became known she wasn’t Sidonia von Impyrean, her mistress, but rather an imposter posing as her.
And all the violence that followed . . . The death of your beloved Elantra, the murder of our Emperor, now this . . .
This cannot be tolerated. This cannot stand.
I was aghast. I refused to anoint the Emperor if he clung to this creature. If I lose my position—which seems likely—it is because I made a stand for you. The Emperor spoke to me with such insolence upon my refusal: he informed me that this was a new age and I was not necessary. I’ve advised the Domitrians the entirety of my life, and this bastard of some Excess speaks so to me! Then he embraced Nemesis and kissed her before all our appalled eyes.
I do not know how to stop this. I do not know how to act. So I beg for your help. The Emperor Tyrus von Domitrian means to wed Nemesis dan Impyrean. A “dan.” A subhuman. He is mad to entertain the idea.
I know his cousin Devineé has been afflicted with grievous damage to her mind, but she is also the single living Domitrian who can take Tyrus’s place. To you, Senator von Pasus, the foremost territory holder of this Empire, I plead for this: stand against this new Emperor. He must be made to see reason, or he must be replaced with an Emperor who does not spit in the face of the Living Cosmos. If he will not change course, and naturally, restore me to my position as Vicar Primus, then he must be replaced with a Domitrian who will.
And before you think I propose something daunting, I will tell you: Tyrus does not have my blessing. He does not have the blessing of the rest of the body of the faith. You, Senator, know the implications of this! Tyrus is a clever boy, but he was appointed Successor Primus by the last Emperor merely due to familial tensions; Randevald took no care to cultivate him, to teach him what a successor must know.
Tyrus von Domitrian is totally unaware of the weakness of his position.
Now is the time to strike.
—Fustian nan Domitrian, Vicar Primus