He glanced down to the first quadrant on his right, where all fifty Planetary Governors were located. Each Planetary Governor was in a massive room with a glass ceiling so that Prince Flario could look down from above and see exactly what they were up to. All fifty Planetary Governors were in etings, as they were for most of the day every day, managing their planets and executing Prince Flario's orders.
"Excellent." Prince Flario thought to himself. All fifty Planetary Governors were handpicked by him, chosen for their loyalty, competence and experience.
He shifted his attention to the next quadrant, where all his Army Commanders were located. All two thousand Mothership Commanders were there, seated in their own little command centers where they controlled their million-strong fleet with cutting edge technology which allowed them to project their avatars into the ships where they could walk around as though they were physically there.
There were no problems there. All two thousand commanders were busy managing their massive armies. Many of them were even doing missions.
He spun his captain seat a little and shifted his attention once more to the next quadrant, where every one dealing with this particular Galaxy Class Starship was located. It was running pretty smoothly too.
He checked the final quadrant, the most important quadrant of them all. His intelligence team. Everything that happened in the Universe Empire and even beyond flowed through this particular quadrant. It was to this quadrant Prince Flario spent most of his ti communicating.
After ensuring that everything was operating smoothly, Prince Flario reverted his attention to a particularly bright red coloured star-shape object that was nestled deep within the red section of the hologram. He lifted his cup once more for another sip as he pondered whether or not he should make a move on that particularly nasty sibling of his.
Prince Jolto. Third son of the Emperor's twenty-first wife. He was not the strongest adversary, and not the weakest either. He was right there in the middle of the pack. But he was certainly the nastiest. Prince Jolto specialized in slander, defamation, falsification, backstabs, sneak attacks, ambushes and all sorts of dirty, underhanded tactics and thods.
Prince Flario was recently blad for his own blood sibling, Princess Anastasia's disappearance. Military units bearing his unique signal, within his territory, were detected surrounding and opening fire at a military convoy suspected to contain Princess Anastasia.
Live footage of the attack was even available, and the entire Universe Empire watched in horror as the Princess's battlecruiser were fired upon, boarded and later bombed into smithereens.
Although Prince Flario was a cruel man, he doted on his little sister. He would never do such a thing, and those who knew him well, knew that for a fact too. That was why Prince Flario was so furious to the point that he even contemplated if he should launch a full scale attack on Jolto's territory.
But deep in his mind, he knew that was exactly what Jolto wanted him to do. He probably had a fantastic ambush set up.
Prince Flario sighed deeply. He had better focus on thinking how he could save his little sister. He needed a plan that did not involve charging into Jolto's territory.
Suddenly, a dot within an obscure corner of his territory began to blink red then gold rapidly.
Red/gold? Prince Flario frowned. Red/gold ant only one thing. Code Red. A suspected Universe-level threat had appeared, and according to protocol, three of the nearest Galaxy Class Starships were to investigate imdiately. Failure to do so would result in death, Prince or no Prince.
Prince Flario glanced at the star-shaped objects in the hologram. Three of the nearest Galaxy Class Starships, that would be himself, Princess Hilda's and… Prince Jolto's.
Prince Flario smiled. Luck was certainly on his side. Prince Jolto had to deliver himself into his territory or risk execution by the Emperor's main army. And once Prince Jolto got within striking distance of his Starship, he would finally understand what it ant to touch his bottomline.
He glanced at the blinking red/gold dot once more and his smile suddenly froze.
"Wait a minute. Isn't that… the place where Princess Anastasia was supposedly ambushed?!" Prince Flario muttered to himself, feeling a delicious sliver of excitent run down his spine. "If a Universe-level threat appeared there, wouldn't that an that the ambush failed?"
Prince Flario knew that if the ambush failed, then whichever Starship managed to arrive first would stand the most chance of capturing/rescuing Princess Anastasia.
"Set course to the Universe-level threat. Full speed ahead. All n, battle stations. Ready the Motherships. Dragon One and Dragon Two on Alert Five." Prince Flario said softly. His voice was so soft that it barely travelled a few ters from his body. However, his voice appeared in the minds of everyone on the bridge.
HUM!
A powerful hum sounded for a second as the Starship's engines and warp shields powered up. A bustle of activity also erupted from all over the Starship as people executed Prince Flario's orders.
SETTT!
The Starship's warp shields glowed red as it entered warp speed almost imdiately.
Arcanus 26 was a re ten days away by warp speed. Alexander's relatively peaceful days were about to end.
*-*-*-*-*
Aleyria sat cross legged quietly. Her eyes were closed, and her magical senses were studying the cage intently. She could sense the space magic easily as she had extrely high affinity with it. However, it was infused with a strange power, one that she had never encountered before.
It was an endlessly dark energy, filled to the brim with fearso power. She could feel the energy triggering feelings of anger, hate and even a wisp of desire to witness death and destruction.
"Could it be darkness? The power of evil?" Aleyria wondered to herself.
As she tried to sense the attributes of the energy, she realized that it had contaminated the space energy with so much darkness that she could no longer manipulate it at all.
"Corruption. It is definitely darkness." Aleyria decided.
Additionally, she could also sense that she was in so sort of a portable spatial dinsion. She could no longer sense the magic of Arcanus directly. She could faintly sense that she was still in touch with Arcanus, but it was like sensing the heat of a room from the outside through closed doors. It was there, yet it was also not there at all.
And sohow, she could also sense that the dinsion she was in was in constant movent.
"I guess I do not have a choice." Aleyria sighed deeply. She had wanted to avoid doing what she was about to do. But desperate tis called for desperate asures, and it was definitely a very desperate ti for her.
Aleyria focused on that darkness energy, allowing it to slowly fill her senses.
Kan-Dari was a once-in-a-millenia genius who was able to slowly learn and grow her affinities. Aleyria, however, was a much rarer type of genius, practically unseen in the long history of the world.
She could give birth to new affinities with new types of magic simply by being exposed to it. And with dedicated study of the elent, she would be able to grow her affinity with that elent.
She knew that her potential was practically unlimited, and that she needed to approach her growth as an Archmage carefully lest she beco a jack of all trades and a master of none.
For the longest ti, she had chosen to focus on space, ice and fire magic as she understood that spending ti and energy to learn and grow new affinities would only serve to weaken her overall power in the short term. And thus she had focused on her three affinities, and that strategy had allowed her to rapidly rise the ranks to be a White Archmage at a tender age of seventeen.
But now that she was in a critically desperate situation, she had chosen to study this new elent, and to quickly grow her affinity with it so that she could free herself, and if possible, increase her battle strength.
Once she was out, she would be faced with an impossibly difficult battle. Even with darkness energy, she could only hope to match the powers of one or two the enemy. With so many of them, there was no way that she would be able to defeat them.
Her only hope was that sohow, Alexander could finish his mission early and return back ho to rescue the citizens of Rin-Turah. And her.
But whatever happened, she knew that she could not sit still and rely wait to be rescued, especially when she actually had the ability to increase her power, even if it was just a tiny bit.
In the worst case scenario, if Alexander didn't co back in ti, she would make sure that she charged a butcher's toll to the enemy before she died.
And so, quietly, War Princess Aleyria gave birth to an affinity with what would be her strongest elent in the future - Darkness.
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