Faith had been a distant concept for Helen of Tyros for a very long time. That was why she never saw any sense why her brother chose to die – in his words – for the greater good. Knowing that her best friend and last lover of her brother, Evelyn, was complicit to his death, had worsened her stance on the topic. Being the pragmatic person she is, she found it stupid to consider the placing belief in the unseen or uncertain, when other 'more sensible' choices could be made.
Until today that is….
When the Face of Space was giving her a harsh drill on the flaws of her plans using ambiguous questions and hypothetical scenarios, the answer to her current problem began to piece itself together. The full picture however remained unclear, not until she employed her own advice, meeting the leaders under her and consulting with them on what they observed about the opponent they were currently facing.
She not only saw the clear picture of the nature of the opponent they were trying to defeat as well as the clear path to defeat it, she also saw how everything that she suspected that her now deceased brother and her best friend Evelyn had done made so much sense.
When they had first been transported to this world, she had been lucky to have been spawned close to the site where her brother was also spawned. Thus, finding each other and teaming up was not so difficult.
Her brother, proved to be her saving grace….
Where her pragmatic yet inflexible mind failed to comprehend what had happened to them or how the nature of the world they found themselves in worked, her brother, who was considered a failure by the Andrew Royal Family of the Andrew Family in her previous world, having isolated from 'reasonable and civilized society' to pursue his train of reasoning and logic about how their previous reality truly functioned, was the first to catch up to the very principles of how this world worked.
Finding their first fragments and understanding what it was posed no issues to them given the help of her brother. Her brother had gotten a fragment that had to deal with the Ice element as well as another which he had kept hidden from her as at the time. The Fragment-Piece rather- which she had gotten had granted her the powers a real monarch should have, except that, she had no subject and had not claimed any territory.
The powers it promised she could wield though, when she gathered a sizable population and claimed territories, especially with starting her capital city, promised to scale to levels that, the central government of her previous world would never have allowed any one not under their direct control to own, with the rate of growth and development of her state, people and territory wise.
And since the other factors that may influence the powers made available to her were something she could easily work around when she achieved the two major factors, her brother and herself went on to carry out the objective of getting her incipient domain some subjects.
Thus, they began the task of bringing any Elt they could find in the dire embrace of wild nature under the unifying shadow of her incipient empire's domain. This meant that they had to go on long voyages through wild, uncharted lands and under the harsh green rays of the continent where they had originally spawned, all in search of Elts who had not yet made heads or tails of what had happened to them all, charting the lands while organizing the Elts she saw into a series of camps in the different terrain they found them.
They lucked out, discovering the position of many other fragments in the process, recording it so that when they formed the next camp, they would send those who they would later leave in charge of that camp to first come and claim the fragment, so they could have the martial power to defend their camps. These camps would, according to their plans, serve as the seed for settlements to grow around when she finally laid claim to a territory. They even went about defeating the wild creatures which they were sure would resist their influence in the area which she had marked out as her designated territory.
One of the fragments, which she thought to claim from her empire's repository was that of a living ship, spending all her points which they had earned through the founding effort into the acquisition.
Everything was going on well and smoothly until they met her best friend from their previous world-Evelyn. With the coming of Evelyn, and the subsequent declaration of love by her brother, everything took a drastic turn. Her brother which had been her closest support in her quest to build her kingdom suddenly withdrew, focusing on, in his words, growing his combat power. Her friend became evasive every and anytime she asked about why she thinks her brother suddenly changed his character and attitude towards her.
For a long while, she was on her own; making sure her network of camps were sustained and well cared for and that none of them were isolated. She all on her own filled the roll which her brother and herself had played before; keeping the camps connected so that they do not feel isolated, seeking stray Elts which, at that point was becoming more difficult as anyone who had survived until that point, either had enough power, intelligence, or will to safely remain on their own and would rather not be inducted into a group or were already so adapted to the wilds that even making contact proved difficult.
That and the fact that another part which they had not successfully brought under the umbrella of her budding empire on time had coalesced into multiple other, smaller scale factions.
As for looking for fragments to further empower her camps or even forming new camps, both were totally halted as she only inducted any Elt she found doing badly in the wilds into existing camps and only marked fragments she came across by coincidence for retrieval without actively seeking them out. She also made sure that no camp was overstretched with people.
But there was little she could do on her own.
While her brother had lent his hands towards her empire building project, he had been in charge of the martial aspects of their endeavor; subduing threats that appeared within the range of her camps or in the general range of the area she had decided to plant the first parts of her empire.
Thus, when one of the smaller factions on that continent decided to embrace a radical expansionist policy, she was left reeling in when they struck three of her camps killing many and taking others as slaves while sending a message to the rest of her camps as well as other factions that had not been attacked by them yet to either surrender or face a more worse off fate, she was left reeling at first.
Her initial plans was to select her initial empire's site to cover the whole of the continent they were on after she might have brought at least a majority of the area under her control, either directly or indirectly. However, even twenty percent of the continent were not in her control and an expansionist faction was already planning to what she already had from her and also nip her planned empire in the bud.
Her potential subjects were already deserting her camps one by one to surrender themselves to the enemy in other to escape the fate of being enslaved. And she could not blame them though, as, even six months after the initial attack, while the expansionist faction was being held back by a coalition of other smaller factions, she, who headed the largest had not co-ordinated any military response or even support the coalition of smaller factions which were gradually, but surely losing ground against the expansionist faction day by day.
Even within her camps, the thought of rebellion was already springing up as many camp leaders were already claiming camps for themselves and preparing fortifications against possible attacks.
At one point, the thought of just claiming the little territory she still had so she can have access to the power of her empire so she could use to deal with the threats to her existing camps crossed her mind, but she dismissed it as she wanted a solid starting point.
That as well as the fact that the power she would have access to once she realized her empire scaled with the number of 'her people'- and not just in words- and the stretch of her empire.
So who could say that with the little territory she had, the power she would have available to her after realizing her empire would be worse off than that wielded by the expansionist faction. After all, from the information she had available to her due to her empire's interface, the empire she was given authority over had covered entire galaxies at it height, making its ruler to stand, though not at the top of the multiverse-as she had come to understand to exist- in terms of power, but high enough on the multi-versal power structure to not be taken for granted or written off.
But when, one of her camp brazenly attacked her and spitefully chased her away when she went for their periodic welfare check, after having being bought out by the very person she placed as the leader of the camp, something broke, no, snapped, inside her.
She swallowed her pride, and asked her brother- the very person who had placed her in her current predicament and who was becoming more and more of a stranger to her- for help.
Her brother, to her surprise, told her that he would not just quell the rebellion in her camp but also totally exterminate the expansionist faction, rescue her people who were enslaved by it and all the factions on the continent under her control as long as she agrees to leave with him on her ship on a mission to another island continent, with her best friend who had been avoiding her all the while tagging along.
In her desperation, she had agreed to his terms, without even calling him out on what she thought was empty boasting. After all, she did not want to make a joking remark that would offend her brother who was turning into more and more of a stranger day by day.
True, to his words and even more, her brother, in a display of overwhelming might, single-handedly exterminated the expansionist faction in three hours, freeing her people who had been enslaved in the process, while- without her permission- exterminating those who had deserted her camp.
When the news reached her camps as well as the coalition of factions, fear spread. The camp leaders who had taken over her camps, took their lives with their associates tagging along.
When, her brother got to the doorsteps of the coalition factions, one by one, they all offered their loyalty.
What she had always desired-claim over the whole continent- had laid in the hands of her brother all along with him doing nothing to help her achieve it.
Even worse, when she wanted to lay claim to the whole continent, her brother just looked at her and said:
'I advise you not to do what you are currently thinking about.'
She went on with it still, but behind her brother's back. After all, what right did he have, being the person who had stood between her and the plans they had initially built together and who was currently going about with his pet project with her unfaithful best friend turned girlfriend of his, to tell her what to do.
But in truth, she had gone on with her defiance for one reason- she had never ever known her brother as a ruthless person, and thus, she was preparing contingencies in response to how strange her brother and her best friend were turning into day by day.
Then the time came to fulfill her promise.
They- her best friend, her brother, and her, that is- had a very long night locked in her intense argument.....