[Chapter Size: 2700 Words.]
Third Person POV
Nilfgaardian Empire.
...
...
While Madara, Cirilla, Aren, and Eira were in White Orchard, the Continent remained completely shaken by what had happened. The news had already spread across every front.
Immediately, several people contacted the Kingdom of Verden, Queen Meve, King Thorne, Temeria's general, and the other Northern Kingdoms, asking what had happened or reporting everything they had witnessed. Some of them also reported that they had encountered Madara Uchiha and Cirilla once again.
That information sent the northernmost kingdoms into turmoil.
Kaedwen was in complete despair. King Henselt broke into a cold sweat upon hearing the news of Madara Uchiha's return. The deaths of the two kings had left him utterly paranoid. Not even he had expected something of that magnitude to happen.
The families of Radovid and the King of Kovir were divided between fury and fear. They wanted revenge, but at the same time, they feared Madara Uchiha. They feared he would not stop until he had exterminated every last one of them.
Everyone knew that those two kings had openly opposed Madara Uchiha.
And when they died... they had paid the price for it. But while the entire North was in turmoil, the South was in complete despair.
Inside the Imperial Palace, Emhyr could not believe the words he was hearing.
The mages bringing news from the North trembled before him. They were all mages who had escaped the battlefield through portals as the destruction began. As soon as they returned, they gathered every piece of information they could after the Emperor ordered them to determine exactly what had happened.
"The entire army has been destroyed, Your Majesty."
"Are you telling me that my entire army was simply destroyed? From the moment they began the attack, you all fled. And when you returned... there wasn't a single survivor left?"
"No, Great Emperor."
"Stop calling me that!" Emhyr tried to remain calm, but it was impossible.
Not when his entire army had been destroyed. Now he was in serious trouble. As soon as that news reached the Imperial Court and the noble houses of the Empire, and then spread throughout the rest of the Empire, his authority would immediately be called into question.
Many would try to usurp his throne at that very moment. It had already happened the first time he lost an entire army, and he would not be able to deal with a second rebellion.
"There is no army left. The southern region has been completely annihilated. There is an enormous crater where the encampment during the war against Rivia and Lyria once stood... There is nothing left in that place."
"Where the army had been in southern Temeria, an entire forest has risen, similar to the events of years ago, and now there is only a poisonous substance lingering in the air. Although the flames reduced almost everything to ashes. In Verden, an entire mountain was hurled at the army. That... that could not have been the work of a human."
"And the army in Sodden was also completely destroyed. They say it was your daughter, Cirilla. She annihilated five thousand men with a single attack."
That final piece of information left Emhyr completely stunned. And it was possible to see the expressions of confusion clearly written across the faces of the mages standing before him.
After all... he had publicly declared that he had found Cirilla and was about to marry her to strengthen his rule over Cintra.
"No... This can't have happened..." he muttered quietly before looking at everyone present.
"You are not to release any information yet, understood? Otherwise, you will be beheaded. I want you to go to Toussaint. Find Princess Cirilla or her husband, Madara. I want to arrange a meeting with them."
That order surprised the mages even more than the news that Cirilla might be in Toussaint. The Emperor wanted to meet with the people who had destroyed his army?
The sorceress in Toussaint had already informed the Emperor of Ciri's arrival in Toussaint and wanted to make contact with her to find her. However, no one expected him to act so quickly.
Deep inside, Emhyr burned with rage. But what else could he do? He had to contain the damage.
Otherwise, his own head would end up severed by the very men who had sworn to serve him. The mages began leaving the hall, avoiding any contact with the nobles of the court. One by one, they opened portals and disappeared to carry out their orders.
Emhyr remained alone. He poured himself another glass of wine.
As he drank, his eyes settled on a painting before him.
It was a portrait of his daughter.
Cirilla wore an elegant dress, but she was making a slight grimace, clearly annoyed at having to pose for the painter. The artist, however, paid no mind to that detail and portrayed her exactly as she was.
She had returned... And she had a son. That was the latest report he had received from ____ last night. A three-year-old child, which made very little sense considering how long she had been gone. For that child to exist... he must have been conceived before the events at Aretuza... But the spies had said nothing about Ciri being pregnant during the meeting of the kings...
Could they have hidden it? After all, although Madara seemed to have gone into hiding for months after the events in Skellige, he still left traces and witnesses from time to time. But Ciri had suddenly vanished for several moons... Perhaps seven moons without a single appearance... That meant... she had been pregnant during that time.
Either way, Emhyr was in a terrible situation.
He needed to speak with his daughter immediately. He had to fix everything before it was too late. If he could bring her to his side and make her assume her place as the Empire's rightful heir... perhaps he could still change the course of his failure, even if the Empire would still hate the fact that it had lost more than fifty thousand soldiers.
"She annihilated five thousand men..." he murmured, staring at the wine before taking another sip.
"Five thousand men... What kind of power is that? How can my daughter be so powerful? If that's true..." Countless questions filled his mind.
But then he remembered her blood, the prophecy... So it had to be her, or her son. That boy... Could it be him? But from what he understood, Ciri's power alone was enough to conquer the world, and her husband was just the same...
Those two possessed the power to shape the course of the entire world... and they had a child...
Was it his fault that things had reached this point?
He remembered perfectly the days when he was still consolidating his rule within the Nilfgaardian Empire, relying on Vilgefortz's assistance.
Back then, rumors had begun to emerge from Cintra. They spoke of a boy around Cirilla's age who had entered the palace and had been taken in by Queen Calanthe herself.
At the time, Emhyr paid little attention to it. Even though his spies reported that the boy possessed unusual abilities, he simply dismissed it.
Then more rumors followed. They claimed that the child was capable of fighting Cintra's own commander of the guard despite being only six years old.
Emhyr merely scoffed at the report. He would never believe that a child who should still have been nursing at his mother's breast could stand against a grown warrior.
But the reports kept coming. His spies informed him that the boy, still only six years old, had uncovered a scheme within Cintra involving a mage who kidnapped children to conduct experiments through the city's gangs, using those children as power cores for golems.
Every gang in the capital was dismantled during that same period. And according to the reports... the child confronted the mage himself.
And won.
Things were becoming absurd. The boy was granted a noble title and given a residence in the capital.
There was another incident that was barely made public. Even so, a few rumors reached Nilfgaard. They claimed that the boy had faced a Witcher from the School of the Viper who had been hired to assassinate him... and killed him.
That was somewhat ironic. Whenever Emhyr hired the School of the Cat, it was because he needed humans eliminated. He had also attempted to hire the School of the Viper, but they had refused. Yet somehow, one of their Witchers had accepted a contract to kill a boy in Cintra...
Could that boy still be called just a child at that point? Another report arrived shortly afterward. Once again, the boy had emerged victorious.
Later came the war in the east against Sodden.
That damned former king believed he could marry his son to Emhyr's daughter, who was a political asset far more valuable than he could ever imagine. Emhyr had wanted to kill that king immediately for daring to use his daughter for something as insignificant as trying to unite Sodden and Cintra.
Regardless, that war was fought, but Sodden was completely crushed by Cintra in a surprise attack from the rear. They said that the boy himself, Madara, had devised the strategy and led the troops. How old had he been back then? Eight? Nine?
When Emhyr received that report, he could hardly believe it. Shortly afterward, the boy was elevated to the title of Duke, receiving control over an enormous territory.
One of the noble families accused of treason for its involvement in the Sodden conspiracy lost its duchy, and the boy assumed control of the territory afterward. Nilfgaard's spies reported that he governed the region remarkably well. Far better than any ten-year-old boy should have been capable of.
At that point, Emhyr could no longer ignore him. Nor could he do much about him.
He asked Vilgefortz for more information. The mage also showed interest in the boy but had few answers. He only said that the boy belonged to an ancient bloodline with a power unlike anything a mage could possess, one that had long been considered extinct, and that somehow it had reappeared in this era.
Emhyr had also always heard that the boy held tremendous influence over Cirilla. The girl stayed by his side all the time, almost like a dog following its master.
That deeply disturbed the Emperor. Whoever that boy was, it was obvious that he possessed power far beyond what someone his age should have. Not even grown men were able to stand against him.
In any case, by that time, the army was finally ready to march north.
Cintra would be the first target in the conquest of the Northern Kingdoms. Several strategies had been devised to avoid mistakes.
Calanthe was considered extremely dangerous, but also foolish and overly confident, making her easy to defeat with the right strategy.
And that boy had also come to be viewed as a threat. Although Emhyr would never say that out loud in front of his army.
At the time, he should have been thirteen... perhaps fourteen years old. Of course, the Emperor would never admit to his commanders that they needed to be cautious of a teenager who had only just come of age.
Even so, he kept that concern to himself. Despite everything he had heard, he still believed that the boy could never stand against an army of that magnitude.
Emhyr was already tired of simply watching from afar. The time had finally come to launch his invasion.
He had already heard the rumors that Calanthe was trying to marry her granddaughter to that boy, now a Duke. On top of that, the Queen had refused to hand over Cirilla when his envoys arrived in Cintra. It had been a diplomatic proposal—Cintra would not bleed, and Calanthe would live.
The only response they received... was cold steel pointed at them and expulsion from the kingdom. With no other choice, war came, but it did not unfold as Emhyr had imagined.
The boy proved to be far more powerful than he had expected. He did not destroy the army by himself and was forced to retreat, but he contributed decisively to the battle, raising Cintra's morale and burning nearly two thousand men with a spell that none of the mages recognized at the time.
Emhyr did everything he could to capture him when he attacked the capital of Cintra. But the boy escaped together with his daughter.
He immediately sent numerous spies after them, and not a single one succeeded.
He even dispatched an entire group of Witchers from the School of the Cat. Even so... every one of them was exterminated.
He killed more than a dozen Witchers... Not even Vilgefortz understood just how powerful that boy could become.
Then came the Battle of Sodden. Once again, they had underestimated what the boy was capable of. What they witnessed surpassed the power of any mortal.
One only had to look at what had happened. He had been unable to use that attack during the fall of Cintra. But he used it at Sodden.
After losing his army and seeing all of his objectives destroyed, he came under tremendous pressure. Every investment made into the army—resources, soldiers, the Empire's wealth, along with countless debts—had simply vanished because of that boy.
At that time, he had nearly lost his own head. Many people tried to overthrow him after that defeat. The damage inflicted upon Nilfgaard was irreparable. Even so, Emhyr managed to survive, eliminate the traitors, and rebuild a new army because part of the population still believed in him.
After that, he did not see Cirilla again for the next three or four years. Then the news arrived.
She had simply reappeared. She had married before everyone, with nobles from every Northern Kingdom serving as witnesses... That shattered his plans even further.
Vilgefortz had died as well. He had been Emhyr's greatest ally. At the same time, the North was holding meetings alongside his daughter and her husband.
At last, an opportunity arose during a gathering of mages. Although his memories of that period remained hazy, it seemed that someone had erased every memory related to those meetings in order to create a trap during the events at Aretuza.
Even so, he confirmed that a group of individuals intended to kill Madara. Emhyr gladly agreed to help them.
As long as, in the end, he could get his hands on Cirilla. However, the attack at Aretuza failed. Several of his mages were killed. And once again, Madara proved that he could overcome any trap prepared for them.
That was when Emhyr discovered that those people were actually elves from another world who were also trying to capture Cirilla.
It infuriated him. He had come dangerously close to being deceived and allowing them to take his daughter.
Later, he learned that this had been their objective all along through the information obtained from Yennefer of Vengerberg. At the same time, Cirilla and Madara disappeared after passing through a portal.
After that... silence... years without a single word about them... They were never seen again during the following three years.
Emhyr never managed to understand exactly what had happened. But one thing was certain. He believed that during that time he could conquer the North, that he could conquer the Continent with his power...
His dream seemed to be moving toward that goal. Until they returned.
And they did not return as they had been before. They were killing kings, destroying armies, and finally taking action. Emhyr needed to reach an agreement with them immediately to prevent what was about to happen.
He had to accept who Cirilla truly was. Even though he hated Madara Uchiha, he also knew that he was the most powerful man on the entire Continent—no, in the world.
Surely, with Cirilla at his side, their rule would be unshakable. No one would dare challenge either of them.
Handing the Continent over to them might be the best solution Emhyr had at that moment.
Author's Note: I don't think I've ever really explored Emhyr's thoughts about everything that has happened over the past few years, so I decided to dive a little deeper into that side of him.
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