The Imperial Capital was not accustomed to fear. For centuries, the Everwinter Empire had rested on the absolute, visible, and hierarchical power of its armies and its mages. Yet, within forty-eight hours of Duke Alexander's frantic appeal, a chilling, almost superstitious dread had settled over the inner circles of power. Emperor Alaric had acted with rare swiftness, summoning the Imperial War Council—comprising his most seasoned generals—and the Grand Magisterium—the supreme authority on all magical doctrine—to an emergency session in the Obsidian Hall.
The room was a study in contrasts. On one side sat the generals, their faces etched with confusion over the military reports: General Marcus, chief tactician, holding the crumpled report describing the surrender of five hundred men to "fire-spitting iron boxes"; General Varrus, logistics master, aghast at the loss of the Western Duchy's primary iron supply. On the other side sat the Magisterium, clad in silver-threaded robes, their faces pale but rigidly controlled, their expertise challenged by the sheer novelty of the unknown threat.
Emperor Alaric, seated on the Ivory Throne, opened the meeting with an air of cold finality. "We have received the Duke's report, and confirmed its substance through independent magical scrying. Two enormous, metallic structures move through the air without visible magic or sails, and one hundred men destroyed a castle garrison in an hour, causing mass panic. We have been defeated not by force, but by mystery. Grand Magister Theron, you have studied the reports. What manner of elemental or forbidden magic are we facing?"
Grand Magister Theron, a powerful Elemental Master whose mastery of fire and earth was legendary, stood slowly. "Majesty, we have used our Scrying Mages to peer into the Valum territory. There is no large-scale nexus of shadow mana, nor are there any signs of ancient summoning. The truth is far more unsettling. The airships—the 'flying horrors'—generate intense, rhythmic vibrations and heat, and the 'iron boxes' produce a sound and volume of fire that surpasses the potential of even our master Fire Mages. The destruction is too chaotic and localized to be high sorcery, yet too consistent and rapid to be anything known."
General Marcus slammed his fist on the table. "Chaos and speed are irrelevant! It is magic! If it fires heat, send our best Ice Mages! If it flies, summon Wind Spirits to tear the ships from the sky! We cannot let this sorcerer-king consolidate his resource gains!"
Magister Theron shook his head, his tone one of weary authority. "General, that is precisely the danger. Standard magical counters are designed against predictable magical forms. This is not fire magic; it is merely heat and kinetic force, generated by means we cannot perceive. We suspect this 'Maximilian' has tapped into a form of forbidden alchemy, using elemental mana in a way that bypasses natural laws. The metal of the airships themselves, the speed of the gunfire—it's a disruption of the elemental balance. We must not meet it with conventional magic until we understand the formula." The Magister's words sparked a terrifying realization: their ultimate weapon, the Grand Magisterium, was useless until they could name the enemy.
The rest of the council meeting devolved into a frantic, fearful debate over how to counter a threat that defied their known world order. General Varrus highlighted the immediate strategic imperative. "Majesty, the iron mines are now lost. Valum has secured its supply chain, and if the reports of massive manufacturing are true, they will soon be producing weapons faster than we can forge armor. We must isolate the region. I propose a hard economic and military siege." General Marcus, still favoring a direct military response, countered, "A siege is futile! Their wall is one hundred and fifty meters of stone—no siege engine can touch it! And now, they have airships that can simply fly over our lines and drop supplies! This calls for a targeted strike, not a siege!"
Emperor Alaric cut through the debate, his final decision shaped by the Magisterium's fear of the unknown. He could not risk his standing armies on a full assault against an unpredictable force powered by 'forbidden alchemy.' "The Magisterium is correct. We will not fight an enemy we cannot define. A siege is insufficient, but a direct attack is foolish. We must fight this with what we know." Alaric looked at the Magisterium. "You will deploy your finest Scrying Mages and Inquisitors into the Western Duchy. Their sole task is to breach Valum's secrecy. Find the source of the forbidden power. Determine the chemical composition of the 'iron boxes' and the nature of the fuel that powers the airships. We must know the formula for this dark art before we commit the armies of the Empire." He then addressed his generals. "Until that knowledge is secured, we will implement the Grand Isolation Doctrine. General Varrus, you will establish a cordon: a massive ring of non-combatant, non-aggression military camps positioned fifty miles outside of Scofield's captured territory and Valum's main wall. No movement, no trade, no communication in or out of that zone will be permitted. We will not siege them; we will quarantine them." The strategy was one of containment and espionage, rooted in the belief that Max's power must rely on a scarce, mysterious resource or formula that could be captured or neutralized. The Emperor could not know that Max was not relying on scarcity, but on abundance—that beneath Scofield's fields lay the vast, easily exploitable reserves of crude oil.
As the meeting adjourned, Magister Theron spoke to a junior aide, a glimmer of deep concern in his eyes. "That young man... his power is not spiritual. It is too efficient. Too material. If he truly has found a way to bend the elements to such chaotic order, then we are not facing a sorcerer. We are facing a fundamental change in the world's natural order." The Empire was preparing to fight an enemy of magic and shadows, completely unaware that Max had just uncovered the ultimate energy source—petroleum—which would empower a revolution they could not even imagine.