The Emperor's edict shook the Empire like a hammer blow: The marriage will go forward when both come of age at eighteen years old. Three years. Three years for the nobles of the Empire to hone their daggers and seek revenge. Three years for Sharath Virayan Darsha to prepare.
He bowed as the decree was read out, all eyes in the chamber searing into his back. To the nobles, it was a sign of submission. To the Emperor, it was a sign of obedience. To the Princess, it was a sign of reassurance.
But in his soul, it was none of these things. It was a promise.
Three years. He would not squander a breath of it.
When he came back to the Darsha estate, the twins' laughter welcomed him at the gates. They were five years old now, naughty whirlwinds of energy, racing between guards with sticks imagined as swords. But whenever he looked at their little hands, he recalled them in a kidnapper's clasp. Whenever he looked at their smile, he recalled how near he had come to losing them for ever.
That wound did not heal. It hardened.
So that very night, Sharath locked himself in his laboratory and began sketching. Not weapons, not airships, not perfumes. Something subtler, more insidious.
"Trackers," he whispered to the empty room. "If they're ever taken again, I'll know where. I'll know when. And the bastards will never escape me."
Finally indulging your paranoia? 🐧NeuroBoop chuckled within his mind. Took you long enough. I was afraid you liked paperwork a little too much.
"Shut up," he growled, writing faster. "This isn't paranoia. This is insurance."
Mm-hm. Insurance that happens to include blanketing the whole Darsha territory in magical spy-nets and runic microphones? Completely normal behavior. Completely healthy coping mechanism. Ten out of ten.
Sharath brushed aside the sarcasm. He had too much work creating the future out of parchment.
It took him three years. Three years of sleeplessness, of sweat, of secrets.
The first of the trackers were small shards of magical crystal, no bigger than a fingernail, inscribed with patterns of runes that glowed dimly when powered. He implanted them in jewelry, in belts, in the hilts of guard swords. Each Darsha trooper on patrol carried one, although none of them realized it. The twins sported "protective blessing" bracelets, their mother mistakenly thinking it was mere warding magic. In reality, those bracelets could inform Sharath their precise location to within a finger's breadth.
From monitors, he moved to eyes. Owls, pigeons, even stray cats were equipped with micro-runes that sent flickers of vision back to a concealed receiver. Villagers ridiculed the sudden surge in welcoming strays, never suspecting they were part of an information network that charted the estate block by block, alleyway by alleyway.
And then the map.
It was not parchment. It was not stone. It was a growing, living projection in his lab: a three-dimensional lattice that glowed and changed with each patrol report, each tracker ping, each avian line of sight. Darsha territory, breathing and alive beneath his dominance.
"Behold!" he cried one evening, arms wide to the glowing projection.
Behold, 🐧NeuroBoop read deadpan. Sharath Virayan Darsha, age fifteen, creator of Big Brother. Your mother would be proud, indeed.
"Quiet."
And then just what? Micro-runes on chamber pots? Spying on bakery ovens? Or perhaps tracking sheep to make sure that no one is covertly smuggling mutton into enemy lands?
Sharath pinched the bridge of his nose. "I am not putting runes on chamber pots."
.not yet, at least.
Naturally, secrecy was paramount.
The nobles, still pouting over the Emperor's ruling, eyed him with hawk eyes. They anticipated din, firecrackers, another invention to rock the markets. But the heir of Darsha seemed tame. Too tame.
They watched for months, then years, and saw nothing but accounts of his "regular estate management." He went to family dinners. He went to the markets. He read. He demurely turned down invitations to capital banquets. To the world, Sharath Virayan Darsha lay in hibernation.
Only in the shade was the truth revealed.
The installations were a misdirection art.
First, proper Darsha. The guards believed they were "upgrading patrol markers" when Sharath got them to install rune-pillars into street corners. The villagers believed their wells were being "blessed" while actually detection circles were inscribed into the stone. A new "lighting system" in the warehouses? Rather, proximity wards connected to the central lattice.
Even the census was a tool. Everybody already had an identification card. When they came in for renewals, Sharath slipped tracer runes into the cards themselves in secret, so each villager became a living marker on his map.
🐧NeuroBoop applauded slowly inside his skull. Well done, Supreme Dictator. Your citizens live now in the world's most cuddly surveillance state. And they haven't even noticed. Not yet.
"They won't," Sharath grumbled. "Because this isn't control. This is protection."
Oh yes, of course. That's what all paranoid rulers say before things start going wrong. Completely different this time.
"Boop—"
Yes, Glorious Leader?
"…I hate you."
Love you too, sugarplum.
And then there was the incursion into a second territory — the borderlands of Darsha, a violent province infested with bandits.
Sharath went there as "charitable aid," leaving food and soap and even a couple of washing machines behind. The locals were grateful and unaware, and they welcomed his engineers. Rune-pillars appeared at crossroads within weeks. "Healing stations" were also used as listening posts. Even the new barns were covertly warded for detection.
Bit by bit, the net radiated outward. For the bandits, it appeared their fortune had turned sour — every ambush that was found, every hideout smoked out. For the locals, a miracle. For Sharath, the clenching of his invisible fist.
"Two territories secured," he breathed one evening, gazing at the lighted map in his laboratory. "The rest will follow."
And so the Surveillance Saga begins. Soon to be available in paranoid dictatorships near you.
"Shut up."
But lying was tiring. With each rune carved, each pillar erected, he had to maintain a tally of who knew what, which lies were told, which cover stories employed.
And then there was the paperwork. Gods above, the paperwork.
When he returned to his own estate at the end of the third year of work, his desk was awash in parchment. Fortresses of ledgers stood stacked high, barricades of petitions threatening to topple.
He collapsed into his chair and scowled at the sea of documents. Some required nothing more than his seal. Some required full rewrites. All of it, all of it, suffocated him.
🐧NeuroBoop buzzed happily. Ah yes, the real final boss. Not wolves. Not assassins. Bureaucracy.
"Enough of this," Sharath snarled, turning the pages of yet another merchant agreement. "There must be a better method."
And then it came to him. A thought so abrupt it dropped his quill suspended in mid-air. His eyes went wide, lips curling into a slow smile.
🐧NeuroBoop groaned. Oh no. I know that look. That's your 'I'm about to shatter the world again' look. For the love of sanity, please—
But Sharath was already chuckling to himself, scrawling wildly over an empty sheet of parchment.
The documents on the ground whipped about in the draft, as if announcing a tempest.
The nobles believed that he had fallen silent. The Emperor believed that he was waiting for the time. The world believed that he was sleeping.
They were mistaken.
He was just beginning.