I couldn’t deny that I was finding the situation extremely fun. I needed to recognize that the actions of the Elder Council had been right, and had allowed me to act once I needed to. Still, I had to admit I was bending the rules on how to apply my role as a mediator.
I heard voices coming from the other side of the door and I took a moment to survey my surroundings, it had been so easy to break into the place that I was starting to feel like it was a trap.
“Everything ok?” Melchizedek asked.
“Everything ok. Ready for your family reunion?”
“As ready as I can be.”
I opened the door to the room and several angry faces turned my way, of course their anger quickly morphed to surprise and then to fear once they realized it wasn’t one of their subordinates interrupting their meeting.
“What’s the meaning of this?” asked one of the people in the room, the one that looked to be in charge, as he got up, out of his seat.
“We are here just to talk,” I said, as I used my powers to force him back into his seat, and also making sure that no one else could move. “I know you have a little problem that you can’t find a solution to.”
“What did you do Melchizedek? This is all your fault and you are just making it worse.”
“I’m trying to fix the crimes you committed,” Melchizedek answered. “After all this time you are starting to believe your own lies. You are not better than others, you are not blessed by the Goddess and certainly don’t speak for her, you speak only for yourselves.”
“You have no right to talk to us like that, not after turning your back to your own family,” said a woman that was sitting next to the man that had first spoken.
“I turned my back to my family? You were the ones who lied to me my whole life. I grew up living and following all your teachings, until I realized it was all lies. You even tried to sell the woman I love as if she was a lowly criminal, when she is nobler and sincerer than any of you.”
“It’s true that we all have made mistakes,” another of the priests said, “but we have always acted with the best of intentions.”
“I’m very sorry, but I can’t believe you, father, I used to believe blindly in everything you said, but not anymore. You see me just as a tool to use, one more weapon to use in your search for power. You know my abilities and what I’m capable of, that’s the only reason you came up with the crazy story that I had been chosen by the Goddess to allow me to come back, but without having to recognize me as one of you. My powers allow me to see where your greed and selfishness is taking you. You blame me for doing what I did, but I was just trying to do the right thing.”
“What’s going on here, have already happened many times, is a story that repeats itself over and over,” I told them, but I could tell they weren’t paying attention to my words, I wasn’t someone they were willing to listen to or respect. “Just a few years ago, in the Dominion, I took care of the leaders, for the good of their people, once they stopped doing their jobs and got more worried about their power than their people, they lost the right to rule, but since they weren’t willing to let their power go, I had to get rid of them. In the world before ours, this was a story that came up many times, the people turning against their rulers. Royalty being murdered by their subjects, entire dynasties being lost because of people searching for retribution from their pain and suffering.”
“Is that a threat? Are you going to kill us?” asked the woman in charge.
“I’m trying to explain what will happen if you don’t let go. Your own people will take care of you. They will get to you and cut you to pieces. The few that are still loyal to you will not be able to protect you from all the people who wants to take you down. You are not only acting against your people, you are destroying those you should be protecting, you are acting against yourselves, your action will take you down.”
“What Kaiserin is saying is true, what’s happening cannot be avoided. People followed you blindly for a long time, and they would keep following if you hadn’t been so greedy, but you crossed a line. You blame me for making people turn against you, but it was going to happen sooner or later, my actions were in the hope that I could help minimize the damage. At the end things didn’t go according to plan and the situation got out of control, but you have to believe me when I say that everything could be much worse. And they will be is you don’t stop. The only way you can save yourselves is by giving them the freedom they are asking for.
“People need us, without us they won’t know how to act, what to do, they will be adrift. They need us to tell them what to do and how to act.”
“I think it will be better if we could show you what we are talking about, show you what you could be facing if you don’t change your way of acting and thinking,” I said, looking at Melchizedek and waiting for his opinion.
“Can you do it? I would like to do this in a way no one gets hurt.”
“No one will get hurt, as long as they don’t resist,” I said. There were many ways I could do that, I could use a simple illusion to show them the futures Melchizedek was talking about, or get into their minds and push them into the vision. Either option was possible, and going into their minds would make the whole situation more real, but an illusion was less invasive and would allow them all to experience the situation together.
We heard steps outside the room, and someone trying to open the door, but I had already made sure they wouldn’t be able to open it.
“The reinforcers arrived,” Melchizedek said.
“They won’t be able to get in, no matter how well trained they are, none of them represents a problem for me. And if they don’t want anyone to get hurt,” I told the priests, “they will be sent back to whatever place they come from. I don’t want to use force, but if you force me to, then I will have no choice but to do something I don’t really want to.”
“We are not afraid of you,” one of them said.
“You should,” I said, using my powers to increase the force I was using to keep them in place until I knew it had to be uncomfortable, if not painful, for them. “Send your guards back to their posts and give us a few minutes of your time, once we show you what we need you to see, we will go. Whatever happens after that, will depend on how you react to the information we have for you.”
“You are invading our home, we let you tell us how to act,” the leader of the group started, but before he could continue I put a little more force over him, making sure he wouldn’t have enough air to keep talking.
“As I said, it will be better for you if you stay silent and listen. If you don’t do it on your own free will, I have no problem forcing you to listen,” again, we heard noises coming from the door, they were still trying to break in, “and I will, after taking care of your guards, if you insist on having them face me.”
“If you let me get up,” a woman I was almost sure was Melchizedek’s mother said, “I can send whomever is on the other side of the door away,” Melchizedek made a sign that let me think I could trust her, so I let her get up.
Just as she said, the woman just exchanged a few words with the people at the door, and then went back. It was clear the rest of the people in the room wasn’t happy with her, but there was nothing they could do about it.
“Thank you, mother,” Melchizedek said, confirming what I suspected. “Now, what I want is to show you the future I’m trying to avoid. Kaiserin, can you show them the vision I’m talking about?”
“I’m afraid that without their cooperation it would be very hard to get them to see inside your mind, so we will have to go for a simple illusion.”
“Whatever you think is better and whatever you can do with your powers is fine,” Melchizedek said.
I knew that none of the people there was open to what we were saying, but that wouldn’t change a thing. Melchizedek had already shared his visions with me, showing me what had convinced him to start planning a rebellion. I did my best to show them the visions, it was as if they were watching a movie. Most of them didn’t look interested, and were, in fact, doing their best not to look at what I was showing them, but a few were paying attention, even trying to understand what they were seeing. As with all authoritarian governments, the Kingdom of Light had reached a point of no return, where people couldn’t stand their situation any longer and were reaching for a change. As it usually happened in that kind of situations, the people’s anger would have terrible consequences for the people in charge. If Melchizedek had let the situation explode without trying to control it, most of the members of the Royal Family would be already dead.
One by one I showed them the different scenarios Melchizedek had seen, some were worse than others. Some of them were scared, others were so prideful that were refusing to see what was in front of them. Some of them felt they were untouchable and nothing we could do or say was going to change their minds.
“That’s an interesting story, but I don’t believe any of that is true,” the leader said. “How could we believe a Dark One and a traitor? All of that could be simple lies created to take away from us the power that is rightfully ours.”
“I have no problem if you believe or not what I showed you, that’s the truth and you will have to face it. If you refuse to listen to us, all that means is that sooner or later all of you will lose, not only the territories under your control, but also your lives.”
“I have a problem with that,” Melchizedek said, “I never meant for there to be so much bloodshed, all I have done was in order to avoid it. It’s not that I believe they don’t deserve to be punished for what they have done, but the punishment people want to give them is too severe. What I want is to find a situation where everyone can win. As soon as they accept that they are no longer in control, and that they need to start listening to their people, and give up their power, we can start working on making a better future for everyone.”
“I really doubt they will listen, but at least we gave them a lot to think about. We will give you time to discuss this among yourselves, I just ask for you to consider Melchizedek’s words and what I showed you. Your world is changing, and sooner or later you will have to accept that. All you can change is how involved you want to be in the process and if you want to be alive by the end of it.”
I used my powers to find a way that would take us out of that place, without running into the enemy, it wasn’t easy, many people was ready to try and stop us, but I had an advantage over them. After a while we were again around our own people, and on our way to a safe place. Using our own transportation helped a lot for that. I wasn’t sure what was really allowed and how much I was crossing the line, but as long as I had my resources, I was going to use them.
“That didn’t go as I expected,” Melchizedek said after a while, “I really thought we were going to get somewhere.”
“I don’t know your family, but I think that went well. There’s just so much we can expect, people is rarely willing to let go of their power, especially with families like yours that had been in power for so many generations.”
“I know I was expecting too much, but that’s all I can do right now. This territory is too large, and the fighting is getting out of control. The reunion where Camil talked to the leaders took a lot of effort to plan, and I really doubt I can convince them to gather again any time soon.”
“In that case, we will have to make some house calls to speak to everyone. If they really care about their people, then they will do what’s best for them, and if not, we can look for someone who does. One of the main problems with this place is that the Kingdom of Light has a very extensive territory. From what I have heard from people in the Dominion, this place was divided into several countries before the Great War.”
“From what Camil have told me, it also used to have a bigger population. We have an extensive territory, a lot bigger than the Empire even, but our population is actually lower.”
“Which can change once the Dominion sends medical help. I think that the best option is to divide the territory into smaller countries once again. It’s crazy to think that a central government can take care of all the needs in the territory. It worked because even if they were all under the control of a single group, the area was divided, something similar to what we have in the Empire, but with a less obvious division. But now that they can’t agree in a single vision of the future, it will be very hard to agree on a central government. What they can do is to divide the territory into smaller areas, and once that’s settled, find some kind of institution that oversees them and their relationships. It’s hard to believe that the Light Ones, the people that were considered the most peaceful out of all the different nations that inhabit the world, are the ones facing the bigger battles right now.”
“A person only can stand so much abuse before blowing up,” Melchizedek said, then stayed quiet for a while, I felt peace surround me and realized that Melchizedek was finding back his center. “I can talk to some groups, with the ones I have been working with the longest, and call for another meeting. Maybe we can go over the options we have and start working on them. Maybe if we reach an agreement with them first it will be easier to convince the others.”
“I don’t think the others will appreciate being out of the conversation. But I get what you mean, we can start with that. What we need right now is to work on how you talk to them, the key to dealing with people like them is to make it look like everything is their idea. Show them the facts, the options, and work with them to make them reach the conclusion you are looking for.”
I had been involved with many rebel groups during the years I had been working on freeing the Dominion, and I had managed for all of us to reach a common ground, but it was easier with them, because they already had an idea of what they wanted, all the people from the Light knew is that they didn’t want to be under the ruling of the same people, they wanted freedom, the option to make their own decision, but they couldn’t agree on how to get organized or what to do with their freedom. Even worse, some people still believed in their ruler’s holiness, they didn’t want to have anything to do with the rebellions, and even if those people were working for their sake, they were working against them, instead of helping them. It was more the people who wanted a change, otherwise the rebellions would have died already, but the situation was already hard, and even worse because of people like them.
Melchizedek had a hard job ahead of him, but I wasn’t going to let him alone, even if they weren’t my people, I couldn’t help but wanting to help. I had never had problems with death or doing what had to be done, but I never liked the idea of sacrificing lives without a reason, and I knew that for someone like Melchizedek, knowing his people was dying was so much harder to accept.
Kaiserin Novel 