Opulence wasn't something the Empress of Mars was unfamiliar with, and yet it seemed as though the Emperor of Jupiter was determined to stretch the definition of opulence as much as he was ready to stretch the fabric of space to his whims.
The far wall of the room, behind the tallest seat at the dining table, was backed by a large window.
Obviously, they were deep within the station-moon and looking past the walls ought to have shown them bare stone, but instead the window showed a spectacular view of Jupiter, currently framed in the dead centre of the rounded glass portal.
The outer walls were lined by regular columns of worked silver, each one as wide as the average man's arm span, and between these were glass panels looking into a grand aquarium.
Fish, all of them shades of blue from the almost-white to deep-ocean blues that were almost black, swam about in peaceful little schools or darted around the coral beds at the bottom of the aquarium.
The floor was black marble. The ceiling, the bare, unsmoothed stone of the moon they were buried within.
It was all a bit much, in Ivil's opinion.
She leaned back in her own seat. It had been smaller, by a smidge, than the quasi-throne at the far end of the table. And it was blue. Silver and blue, with plush cushions of a deep navy velvet.
Those weren't her colours, however, and so she now sat upon a seat of obsidian and gold... with tasteful Mars-orange cushions.
Her... friends who were girls, were all sitting in the plain seats that lined the sides of the table. Aurora to her right, Twenty-Six and Pixie to her left. Not that their placement meant anything. Obviously. Sonic Spectre silently departed with the butler, to do... maid things, she supposed.
At the moment the only thing they'd been served was silverware. She thought it was nice enough. There were little sapphires embedded into the base of each knife and fork, to match the blue-and-silver theme of the room.
It was the little details that really made things stand out, Ivil found. She could... perhaps take some notes.
"He's certainly taking his time," she muttered, mostly to fill the silence and because she knew he could hear her.
"It's fine," Aurora replied. "Did we have a concrete timetable for this dinner party?"
"Dinner parties have time tables?" Twenty-Six asked. She was currently sitting on her hands. Ivil suspected that she was afraid to touch anything, which was... fair. The current table setting--not the table itself, merely the silverware, candelabras, and place settings--were worth more than ten Held Togethers.
Pixie, next to Twenty-Six, seemed rather comfortable, though she was sweating a little in her uniform. Ivil frowned and lowered the temperature by a degree while Aurora and Twenty-Six debated the value of timeliness with regards to social gatherings.
There was a loud, unnecessarily dramatic squeal as the door to one side of the room opened, and in marched the Emperor of Jupiter's puppet, along with a pair of unfamiliar women.
Aurora stood, which prompted the others to scramble to do the same, though Ivil decided to remain inclined in her seat. She didn't stand for the likes of him.
The man was what Ivil had seen previously. A thing of flesh and blood and bone that might have passed for a normal human being to anyone else. He had a beard and platinum-blonde hair now, and was wearing a well-fitted but comfortable suit.
"Hello, hello," he said cheerfully, his arms sweeping wide. "Forgive me the wait, my dearest Eleanor wanted to pretty herself up."
One of the two women with him rolled her eyes.
She was a little older, perhaps in her early to mid fifties. A little plump, and she only came up to the Emperor's shoulder, but her brown eyes were sharp even as she shook her head. The woman was in a nice but uncomplicated evening gown, but what struck Ivil most was her lack of any cores.
That woman was a pure human, without a single core, though... Ivil could sense that lacking cores didn't mean she lived outside of the effect of them. She seemed healthy, more so than was normal for a plain old human. Not something that the average person would notice, or be able to notice, but Ivil could see it all the same. This Eleanor had been healed by biological manipulation cores several times.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
"Hello, everyone," she said. "Forgive me. My dearest husband insisted on making you stew in place for a while. If it was up to him we'd only be having dinner this time next week, just to see how long he can avoid having to sit down."
The Emperor chuckled, and whatever offence he could have taken... he didn't.
"I'm Eleanor," she said. "I'm afraid that my husband isn't the greatest at introductions. You must be miss Sterlingworth, of Phobos?"
"A pleasure, ma'am," Aurora replied with a slight curtsy. "I've heard much about you. You're one of the founders of some of the greatest philanthropic organizations in the system."
"Oh, that's just pish-posh stuff. I got lucky, and it wouldn't be kind of me not to spread that around a little," Eleanor said. "Oh, I'm afraid that I'm not as familiar with you, young miss." The last was directed to Twenty-Six.
Twenty-Six started to curtsy, seemed to realize that she didn't know how, bowed, then straightened in a hurry and finally extended a hand to shake... even though they were still several metres apart.
The awkwardness held for a moment before she just stomped forwards with her big old boots and shook the very amused Eleanor's hand. "Hi! I'm Twenty-Six, from Saturn. Uh. I've never heard of you, but it's nice to meet you? You too, mister Emperor, your highness sir?"
Ivil refrained from laughing. That would be rude.
"It's a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Twenty-Six," Eleanor said while the Emperor lingered a step behind her. "And you must be Miss..."
"Pixie, ma'am," Pixie replied. She gave the Emperor and Eleanor a salute, fist over chest in the Jovian style. "I'm more of a local than my, ah, friends here."
"A pleasure! You'll have to tell me what you think of life around Jupiter, then. I've been making some efforts to improve things, but it's sometimes slow going," Eleanor replied. Her eyes and attention skipped over to Ivil, but rather than push for an introduction, she turned to the other woman that had entered with them.
The familial resemblance was obvious. She was shorter than Eleanor by half a head, and far shorter than the Emperor himself, but that didn't make her a short woman by any means, merely closer to average. She had Eleanor's eyes and the Emperor's platinum-blonde hair, but her features were a little more gaunt. Carved and serious, and where Eleanor had kindness in her gaze this woman was all sharp.
"This is my eldest daughter, Cecilia," Eleanor said.
"Hello," Cecilia replied with a practiced bow. "I'm Cecilia of Jove, current president of the League of Free Moons."
Aurora's brows shot up. "I thought I recognized you," she replied. "Though you're not in your usual uniform. I... was not aware that you were linked to the Emperor."
"I gained my post through my own merits," Cecilia replied. "Though I cannot say that I didn't have an advantage or two along the way. Still, I keep my familial relations as private as I can, so as to not... complicate matters politically." Her gaze snapped from Aurora to Ivil. "But I suspect that the time where politics were relatively simple has passed."
"Ah yes," the Emperor said with a knowing grin. "The last to introduce herself."
Ivil sniffed indelicately. "Yes, yes. I am Ivil Antagonist, Empress of Mars and so on and so forth." She waved a hand dismissively. "You've heard of me."
"We have!" Eleanor said, obviously undaunted by Ivil's confidence. She could kind of see what the old man saw in her. "Well, come now, let's not all just stand about and look pretty. I bet you're famished. I certainly am. Dear, can you shorten the table? We'll look quite silly spread out like this."
"You're the one who wanted seating for fifty," he muttered good naturedly. A snap of his fingers later and the table shrank so that there wouldn't be as much room from one end to the other and several of the seats faded away to nothing, all displaced one dimension to the back. "Sit, sit, the butlers will bring the appetizers around soon, and in the meantime, we can have a friendly chat."
The Emperor pulled out a seat for his wife, the one to the right of his own, and his daughter took her own seat next to Pixie.
Ivil sat back and watched. Yes, this was almost exactly like a tense dinner party in one of her soaps, only with a few minor details changed. She could handle this.
***
If you like this story, you should check out my newest fic! No Strings Attached! It's a bit darker than my usual fare, a story inspired by Bloodborne and Elden Ring, taking place in a fantasy world recently ruled by great dragons who have all fallen victim to a mysterious plague!
LINK!
The dragons are dead. Their colossal forms, once the lifeblood of an empire, now rot in the wastelands of a cursed continent. The people they empowered—humans made unnaturally strong by dragonkind's gifts—have been driven to madness by their absence. The land festers, shrouded in mystery, death, and a creeping decay that no living being dares approach.
Magus Montgomery Maldrak is no stranger to impossible odds. Driven by curiosity and a desperate need to save his daughter lost on the decaying continent of Draya Calyrex, he crafts a solution that skirts the very edge of life and death: puppet-automatons animated by necromantic sorcery. Through their lifeless eyes, Maldrak will walk the ruins of a dead empire, searching for the truth behind the plague, the madness, and the dragons' fall. Yet some truths are meant to stay buried—and some lands are better left forgotten.
What to expect:
A post-apocalyptic world
Magic going wild
Puppets
Transhumanism
Cute puppet girls?
A boatload of Elden Ring and Bloodborne inspired stuff.
Daily updates until chapter 40, after that... we'll see!