Chapter One
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Years came and went and the reconstructed Queen was once again cast into what had come to be both her grave and her womb. Her atoms were cherry-picked from the black hole by technological sorcery just as efficiently as Lord Elrath had told Nerovosa some twenty years ago. The atoms were collected, stored and the body was reassembled with surgical precision in a few short years. Some changes, however, needed to be made to this model for the Queen Mother always takes the form of those whom she is “born” to. Up until now, her visage remained as it was on the day of her death, a Vanischi, enemy of the Kailyua family and, by extension, its subjects. The Queen cannot be physically manipulated in any way. Not directly, at least. Prosthetic pieces are inserted under the skin in the appropriate places as her body is reassembled. It will not work afterwards as she is indestructible. She is therefore manufactured in separate pieces and carefully assembled. As for her skin and eyes, dyes loaded with infinitesimal machines are programmed and applied where they are needed. The machines routinely shed their expired casings, replace them, and eat the old casings to refuel themselves. All of this is not only painless, but it happens without the Queen’s knowledge. The new false Queen was born.
This is one reason that the sinister plan has been kept a secret, even from their royal subjects. The sight of a Vanischi in the palace would surely bring about discord among the people. So it had been decided from the start to create a mock palace and courtyard and the like and set it in a small nested dimension created within the actual palace where only immediate members the royal family had access. This technology used to create this nested dimension was built upon the same used to harvest the Queen’s atoms from the black hole. It exists and yet it doesn’t. A person could walk through this false palace and never even realize it. The only inkling anyone would have of its existence would be a strange and all too brief vision like a subconscious recollection of a dream that they don’t even remember having, and then it’s gone. In the nested dimension is not only a palace but subjects to fill its false walls and to worship the false ruler within. The people chosen were carefully selected based on their level of devotion to the king. They hold him up to a status bordering on godlike and they would never dream of disobeying him. They were given secret identities and lives to carry out, all the while gathering third party information regarding the Queen and her effect on the non-secret staff that reside within the dimension: their families. No one ever leaves the dimension except for members of the royal family, as they alone hold the key. All within who know of their existence have pledged their lives to their beloved king. They would betray their families before they would even consider betraying their king. This has been the way of the secret palace for hundreds of years. A power reservoir separate from that of the kingdom is dedicated solely to the false palace. It is fed solar serpents on an unwavering schedule. This keeps everything running like clockwork. This allowed them to gather all of the data needed to ensure that the Queen will perform exactly as they demand.
Now, the royal family is ready to put the final steps of the plan into effect to rule over the universe for hundreds of years. This would be plenty of time for them to ease the entire universe to accepting them as a universal power over the next seven generations. After the seven years are up, the point of no return would be crossed and it will be too late for anyone to do anything to stop them ruling over everyone until the end of time. Nobody will be able to stand against the Kailyua when they are too busy kneeling before them.
On the matter of cloning, it is impossible to clone the Queen Mother as Elrath said, but cloning is quite commonplace. Thanks to cloning, food shortages are a thing of the past. The only people who go hungry are those under the unforgiving rule of wicked tyrants who bully their people into servitude by using food as a means of bribery. So why not clone the grand and illustrious Unequalled King Yzexius Kailyua? Nobody would dare ask such a question because it is considered a great disgrace and insult to resurrect a fallen king, especially by the same means used to mass produce the livestock that populates the plates and bellies of commoners. A king of the Kailyua Family exists precisely as long as he is intended to and never with work left undone.
That’s what the inhabitants under the rule of the Kailyua Empire have been taught over the past thousand years. The truth is that King Yzexius Kailyua did not sacrifice his life killing the Queen. The legend that has been passed on down through the generations was that King Yzexius kidnapped and killed the Queen by banishing her into the black hole at the center of the galaxy during her seventh generation of life. This is true. As the story goes, the Great Ancient Ones, unseen powers that maintain the laws that hold all existence together, feared the King who killed the Queen Mother and thus broke their own law of unbiased neutrality to avenge the Queen. This part, as much as the Kailyuans want to believe, is false, though the war king was killed out of vengeance along with all aboard his ship. The Great Ancient Ones are not to blame for his death. The Great Ancient Ones remain neutral to the plights and prosperity of the universe; they simply guard and police all laws of physics. There is, however, a powerful bond between the Queen Mother and the beasts of the universe that recognize their Queen. The blood of the king resides on the invisible tendrils of a supernatural entity of behemoth proportions that lives in and travels between black holes, using them as food ports. Being supernatural and not physical matter, they are not affected by the mighty pull of a black hole. They draw in their victims and sup upon their intangibles, what some may call personalities or even souls. Early explorers, with simple understandings of the universe, who discovered black holes thought that invisible beasts similar to the great sea monsters of ancient sailor lore must be responsible for such a phenomenon. This was long before black holes were understood as collapsed stars with an inescapable gravitational force. Still, those early explorers were partially right. There are, in fact, monsters living in some black holes, though they aren’t the cause of them. They only call them home, but even these beasts bow before the sovereignty of the Queen Mother. Not one atom belonging to King Yzexius has ever been found over the past 1000 years.
Sorrow washes over the galaxy as the now King Nerovosa of the Kailyua Empire makes the grand announcement to all the universe that the new Queen has been discovered on his planet and that she has been graciously accepted by the royal family. Hearts sank so deep that a tremor of despair surged throughout the systems. Everybody knows that the Great Ancient Ones send the Queen to completely random systems and planets, but everyone hoped and prayed that she would never find her way into the throne room of the Kailyua. The broadcasted image of the regal woman beside the young King Nerovosa was more than most could take. They lamented at the thought of the dark age of anguish that was sure to come, not only during their lives, but the lives of their children’s children’s lives for many, many generations to come.
The Great Ancient Ones, though nonbiased and generally impartial, have made note of this transgression. While this despicable scheme technically operates within their laws, they refuse to accept this perverse misuse of the Queen who is the bridge between all life, not its segregator. It would, however, be a violation of their laws to intervene. Still, they are responsible for the distribution of the Queen upon her birth.
The Kailyua System is very unique as all six of its planets exist on a single orbit, each equidistant from the other. The ring system is very large in order to accommodate enough space for each planet to exist independently and without having a significant effect on the gravity of its neighboring globes. Should someone observe the bodies of this system via a powerful enough telescope or through a viewport if they are traveling within the system, one planet would stand out in contrast to the other five. The capital planet of the Kailyua family is quite impressive as it stands as the pinnacle of modern civilization and technology, but it pales in comparison to the planet directly opposite from it, the Kailyua’s original home world.
While the Kailyuan race was still only a few thousand years old, they prospered and flourished. As their civilization grew, so did their technological advancements. They realized all too late that they were destroying their planet and that it didn’t have long to survive so they launched many teams on expeditions to colonize the other five planets in their system to the societal and luxurious standards that they had become accustomed to. All other planets were designated for different resources and functions with families, scientists and servicemen assigned to each to ensure that the same mistake is never repeated. They then led a massive exodus to them all, but not before they drained the planet of every last resource possible. It was devoid of life of any sort. A blanket of thick, noxious smog enveloped it. The ground was barren and its waters turned into a poison of an unnatural color. The planet was labeled “infertile and inhospitable”. The royal Kailyua family claimed the planet directly opposite from their dead world as their new home. This way they never have to see it again as it will be blocked by the mighty red giant in the center of their ring system.
The Great Ancient Ones, in all of their faultless wisdom, decided that this dead rock would be the perfect birthplace for the new true Queen.
Ten years have passed since the announcement of the Queen’s arrival to the Kailyuan throne. Times are just as good as ever for the Kailyuan Empire. People walk with their heads held high and a twinkle in their amber eyes. The parades may have stopped years ago but people still find reasons to celebrate. Life is good. The prosperity has begun to spread beyond the empire’s illustrious system and has even found its way into the needier worlds. The empire has had many enemies over several thousands of years. People can’t be won over if they’re dead. It was time for them to change their foreign policy which was, until fairly recently, “kneel before the Kailyuan Empire or die”. Despair that once gripped the universe slowly begins to dissipate as their fears seem more and more like shadows than monsters. The impossible seemed to be blossoming before everyone’s eyes. Has the once blood-thirsty Kailyuan Empire really turned over a new leaf? The more that folks thought about it, the more it seemed true.
It has been over a century since a war has been carried out under the banner of the Kailyua. Any wars the Kailyua have been involved in were instigated by other tyrants seeking power by attacking the powerful empire when they refused to join their cause. Furthermore, the kings of recent past have established themselves as diplomats rather than war mongers. The Kailyuan Empire is still very much a dictatorship, but the actions of these seemingly rehabilitated kings reflect a nature akin to that of a parent. All power remains in the hands of kings who make decisions and expect the citizens to follow them without question. These decisions seem to be for the greater good of the people and, by certain extent, the betterment of other government powers. Democracy, after all, leads to different interpretations of laws by citizens and government officials, each interpreting in the manner that immediately benefits them personally, regardless of what the laws’ original intentions are.
In suit with the recent, more “civilized” kings before him, King Nerovosa has proven himself to be a strong leader and a man of the people. He has taken a queen, Denae, and they have a daughter, Dinella, who is now four years old. He has shown particularly impressive leadership when leaning on the authority of the Sovereign Queen, Mother Allurena (the aesthetic moniker given by the Kailyuan royal family). King Nerovosa vowed during the Queen Mother’s inauguration to not make the same mistakes as others and assured the universe that the Queen is a symbol of hope, not a weapon to be used against one’s enemies. He of course neglected to admit that the mistake he will not make is to use the Queen as blatantly and carelessly as the Vanischi did. He also kept hidden that the symbol of hope is that of inevitable galactic conquest by the Kailyuan and that the Queen isn’t a weapon but a tool that can be used to manipulate the masses. Those, however, are silly little details that nobody but the royal family should worry about for the time being.