Fansilia erupted into screams and shouting as its citizens looked up to find a shower of broken wreckage raining down across the mighty capital, tearing into skyscrapers and buildings alike, glass and steel raining down onto streets that had never once known this kind of violence. Among the scattered fragments of what had once been Central Command, the Tartarusios broke through the stratosphere in plain view, hull ablaze, visible to the naked eye from every corner of the city. Its engines flared back to life mid-descent, and the left side of its hull slowly split open even as it kept falling at tremendous speed. The hangar doors opened wide, clearing the way for its newest orbitons to finally launch. Three streaks of light tore free from the ship without any pause in its descent — one red, one purple, one white — each one peeling off in a different direction, all of them driving straight down toward the surface of Fansilia.
Youri stood frozen on the execution platform, eyes locked on the Tartarusios and the three lights bleeding away from it. Guards seized him almost immediately, hauling him back and away from the platform's edge. His gaze caught on Dalton, still standing exactly where he'd been mid-speech — and though the man said nothing, his face said everything that needed saying. He wore the look of a man watching a god descend, confusion stretched so wide it had stopped meaning anything.
To Dalton, and to every able-bodied Terrian citizen watching, the sight unfolding above them was simply unbelievable — the kind of nightmare that jolts a person awake in a cold sweat years later, still tasting like it just happened. Since the moment any of them had drawn their first breath, one thing had always been guaranteed among all the uncertainties that came with living: the safety of their own life, right up until death eventually came knocking on its own terms, in its own time. Watching their planet come under open attack shattered that guarantee so completely that no matter how clearly they could see it happening, some part of them simply refused to believe it. That refusal lasted right up until the debris actually reached the ground — flattening buildings, tearing up roads, killing thousands in the span of minutes. People stood frozen over the bodies of neighbors and strangers alike, dead or bleeding in the street.
"This isn't real," one citizen murmured, stumbling forward through the debris field.
"Why is this happening?" another cried out, collapsed on the ground, hands pressed uselessly against his own wounds.
Women and children screamed and sobbed over loved ones crushed or killed where they stood. For the first time since its founding, Fansilia had been struck — and not by a rival empire or hostile faction, but by a single crew of renegades. The Tartarusios had come for revenge, and not only its own — it had come on behalf of every corner of the known universe that had ever suffered the same fate Fansilia was suffering now.
At the Royal Palace, Emperor Johan stared out at the burning sky, disbelief and confusion twisting his features as he rose from the throne and crossed to the balcony railing. He gripped it hard enough that his hand shook and turned toward the royal knights stationed beside him.
"What in the hell is going on?"
A massive explosion answered him before anyone else could, and he spun toward it in time to see a piece of Central Command's wreckage collide directly with a skyscraper. In that same instant, the Tartarusios swept into view. Johan's eyes went wide as he stared at it, and understanding settled into him without a shred of doubt: Terria was under attack, and by no one else but the very crew he himself had ridden out to hunt.
He rounded on his guards. "Assemble the war room. I want every general present, no exceptions, and get the Royal Knights deployed against that ship immediately." His expression curdled into pure hatred. "That ship will be brought down to the ground of the empire's very heart, by whatever means necessary. And if it manages to escape regardless — every head responsible for letting that happen rolls right along with it."
"But, sire," one of the guards said, "how are we meant to deploy orbitons over the sacred continent of Carcas?"
Johan turned toward him slowly and closed the distance between them without a word, each step deliberate, unhurried, somehow worse for the lack of urgency in it. He seized the guard by the throat and lifted him clean off his feet, staring straight into his eyes. "You think I'm going to let the capital burn over some outdated rule my predecessors happened to write down? A soldier who thinks a law like that is worth more than this city deserves no leniency at all." His grip tightened as the guard's face reddened, hands clawing uselessly at Johan's forearm, gasping for air that wouldn't come. "A soldier who thinks like that," Johan said quietly, almost gently, "deserves nothing less than death."
He let go, and the guard's body dropped lifeless to the floor. The second guard bolted for the door to relay the order — but Johan stopped him before he reached it.
"Wait." He swept his hair back with one hand, exhaling slowly, composing himself with visible effort. "One more thing. Bring me the traitor. I intend to paint him in the blood of the very friends who dared show their faces in my presence today." His voice dropped colder still, quieter than anything he'd said yet. "See that he isn't touched — not a single scratch. I want him whole. I'm going to carve my royal decree across every inch of his corpse myself and put it on display for every Terrian citizen in the universe to see, so that no one who looks upon it ever forgets what happened here."