The first vote was to decide if they should let the observers stay, and it was a long and complicated process, setting the bar for how complicated the rest of the negotiations were going to be. Some of the leaders were content to wait and listen as the others were engaged in heated arguments. Some were worried people would start to migrate. Not only the people from the Dominion worried that people from the clans or the Light would start moving to the Dominion, but the clans were worried that people from the Dominion would go to their territories and try to change the way they thought or acted, and people from the Light recognized how vulnerable they were and worried that some people would decide to take advantage.
At the end it all boiled down to lack of trust. The three powers barely knew each other and there wasn’t enough trust between them. While some were eager to start relationships, more than one was ready to find a way to take advantage of the others while others worried about being the ones being taken advantage of.
“You have a clear advantage over us,” Molpadia was saying. “While we lost most of our history before the Great War, you still remember. When you say you want things to go back to what they used to be, it’s hard for us to understand what you mean, since we don’t share the same stories, we can’t know for sure that things were better before.”
“Besides, if it was so perfect before, how come we ended up fighting the Great War? It’s clear something went wrong,” Spike added. “Instead of trying to get things to be like they used to be, why don’t see into the future? Start new?”
“We look into the past to learn from it so we can correct our mistakes,” Melchizedek said. “It’s true we can’t do things the same way, but we can take what happened in the past and improve on it.”
“When we created the Dominion it was thinking of that,” William said. “After World War I, the nations created an institution that was supposed to stop another war, but just a few years later the World War II started. The countries learned from their mistake and created the United Nations, among other institutions created to stop that kind of war from happening again. Many people think that their lack of a real army was one of the reasons they were unable to stop the war, so when we created the Dominion we gave it their own army, but we all know what happened with my sister. I guess even you have heard the story?” William asked the clans and the Light.
“Both my aunt and my sister told me a little about what happened to the Dominion, what I can’t understand is, if your government already failed you once, why go back to the same method? Why tempt fate?” Pompeyo asked.
“Queen Sofia tried to warn us what was going to happen, and we have set some rules to avoid it from happening again. We also have to admit that what we are doing here is another way in which we will try to stop it from happening again. These alliances that we are building are a way for us to keep ourselves in check and stop our government from losing control again,” Yu explained.
“What we have been thinking about, is building some kind of international tribunal, an institution capable of stepping in when there’s trouble, to act even if there is no one asking for help yet,” Melchizedek said. “But we need a law, a set of rules in which we all agree that sets the tone and defines what can be done and what not. Which crimes we can’t let go and which are to be managed by each country. We need to work with the details, and I’m sure we won’t all agree about them, but we will need the majority to decide what path to follow.”
“What have you seen?” Luzian asked, she was the only one representing the Light’s clergy. “I know you have an idea of what to do. The Seers have always been a source of wisdom and comfort for the rest of us.”
“It’s not my place to say it,” Melchizedek answered.
“We need people capable of understanding the different points of view of the people in this new institution,” Luzian said, “someones who not only understands, but respect the different points of view and is able to reach the best solution for everyone. We need someone capable of understanding the consequences of their decisions, and capable of acting accordingly.”
“I think there is a person that is perfect for the position, if you are willing to consider her,” Spike said. “Her actions while she was with us prove that she is capable of doing all of that and more.”
“When Kaiseirn arrived to the Amazon’s territory, she was looking for sanctuary, but she ended up being our salvation. She not only helped us with the war we were fighting, but her actions helped prevent a future war with the Empire, and what could have ended killing thousand of people.”
“Besides her actions and teachings were the foundations in which we build the alliance that now unite all the Free Clans,” Spike said.
“You all give that woman too much credit,” Felinae interrupted. “You are so blinded by her that you don’t realize she is using you all. I know her, and I was a victim of her ambition. She not only destroyed my people, but she captured me and then gave me to our enemies as payment for an alliance that would secure her position in her clan. You all are falling into her game without realizing that all she is doing is looking after herself.”
“As Seers, our job is mostly difficult. For Kaiserin, it wasn’t easy to give you to Rex. While she was visiting me, I had a vision of you, next to Rex, and I shared that vision with her, we both knew it was important for the future for you two to be together. Your choices were to die with your clan, whose ending was inevitable, or to join a new clan. One path led to certain death, the other at least gave you a chance at a future,” Melchizedek explained.
“I don’t care about your stories. Neither you, nor Kaiserin can understand what I suffered at Rex’s hands, she just didn’t care what happened to me. She had no idea what giving me to him would do to me. They just used me to get more power and to destroy my own clan.”
“You are wrong about that, if someone knows what you had to go through, that’s Kaiserin. You may be just a couple of years younger, but by the time she gave you to the Predators, she had already experienced more than most people, she had already gone through harder tests than you faced. You think she didn’t care about you? It wasn’t easy for her to leave you in Rex’s hands, and she even threatened to take you back if Rex kept mistreating you,” Melchizedek replied.
“My wife is a complicated woman. She has never claimed to be a selfless person, she herself recognized she has flaws. What is true is that she always tries to go for the best scenario, one in which everyone wins, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be willing to sacrifice others to achieve her goals. When she left the Empire and went looking for heaven with the Amazons, she did it for selfish reasons, but once she was there and knew how the situation was, she decided to stay and fight in a war that wasn’t hers, and she saved the Amazons. She also did it for the Empire and what could have happened if the Amazons had lost. Still, after all that, she could have just walked away, but she stayed longer to make sure she could set the seeds of what it’s the Free Clans Alliance.”
“We are aware and recognize all that Kaiserin did for us,” Spike cut in, “I know that without her help I would be dead, and I also know that without her teachings, our people would probably be dead, or at least in a situation that is much more unstable and dangerous than our current one.”
“Kaiserin is always worried about people’s wellbeing, and she takes as hers the people she lives with. Just as she took the Amazon’s fight as her own when she was living with them, once she arrived at Mzansi she took our fight as hers. It was a hard and long journey, and once we realized we couldn’t save Mzansi from becoming part of the Dominion, she focused her efforts on turning the Dominion to what it used to be. Maybe not everyone liked her methods, but Kaiserin did her best trying to minimize the damage and maximize the benefits.”
“From what I have learned from my mother, knowing the future doesn’t mean you have control over it. She saw the Dominion’s crisis coming, and did her very best to prevent what was going to happen, but at the end she was powerless to stop it. For years she had to stay at my sister’s side and witness all the crimes she committed. But she knew that sooner or later Kaiserin would arrive, and that together they would be able to save our people from the nightmare we were living. From what we have seen, being a Seer doesn’t make you infallible, but it helps them search for the best way of doing things,” William said.
“I think it’s clear what we must do,” Luzian said. “The Seers have been carrying the difficult task of guiding us for years. Even if we don’t always understand their actions, the results they have given us are clear. The Goddess herself gave us a powerful weapon that we should not let go to waste: the power of the Seers. We have one from the Light, one from the Darkness and one from the Domain. I think they are the right people to guide this tribunal or whatever institution we want to set in place.”
“I guess that when you said we have one from each of the powers you meant Melchizedek, Kaiserin and Sofia. But there is a problem with that,” Stone said, “first of all, Melchizedek is one of the leaders of the Light, so he can’t take on another position of power. Kaiserin is part of the Dominion, so to pretend she can represent the Darkness, or the clans, however you want to call them, is not accurate, and since Queen Sofia has already rejected other positions of power, there is nothing to assure us that she will agree to occupy this new position. We also know that Kaiserin has ties to many groups, in the clans and the Dominion, so we can’t guarantee she will be impartial on this.
“Those are valid points,” William said, “but Luzian’s proposal makes sense. Maybe you haven’t noticed, because you don’t have as much practice dealing with Seers, as some of us do, but from Melchizedek’s words, I think this is exactly what he was thinking of, isn’t it?”
“There are certain points in time that are hard to see, but between what I have been able to glimpse, the chance of a scenario like the one you described is very high. I would be willing to quit my current position to be part of this new institution you propose. I can’t speak for Sofia or Kaiserin, but if this is the direction the Goddess wants us to take, I’m sure both of them will accept.”
More voices joined the discussion. While others thought the proposal was the perfect and the solution to their problems, others insisted that it was crazy to trust their future on those people.
The conversations started to change, they started to discuss the possible structure of this new organization and what locks could be put into place to stop them from abusing their power. How could they trust the Seers were telling the truth? If they were truly looking at some distant future, how could they believe that what they were saying was the truth and that their decisions were truly for the greater good? So much power in few hands was dangerous, and they all agreed that they needed strict and specific rules created especially from stop possible abuses of power. They thought that it would be better to have more people, not only the three Seers as Luzian had proposed, they would put other people there, representing all the powers in a proportional matter so they could act as helpers and supervisors of the Seers.
Kimball knew it was a good idea and that Kaiserin was going to accept. No matter how much she insisted she wanted a quiet life, he knew that she couldn’t stop from getting involved if she had a vision telling her that someone needed her help. The new position would give her the tools she needed to act in case she saw something in her visions, but also to have a more quiet and relaxed life.
At the end of the day, there were still a lot of things to discuss, but at least they had the idea to build their future around. They still had to talk to Kaiserin and Sofia, and wait for Melchizedek to define his situation, but the future was getting closer, and the end of the road was in sight.
Kaiserin Novel 