“The Guard and Patrol Corps, both, are taking to it well already,” said Junius, as he closed the infirmary door behind them, affording their conference some privacy. “That was a good move, yesterday, sir. The Guard veterans are all ready to lead, at least at the squad-level. And the corps officers are all ready to follow a chain of command that can at least pretend to know what it's doing.”

  “I have to agree, sir,” said Lycera. “Anyone in the Guard is more than capable of stepping up for something like this.”

  Tanhkmet nodded, as he fell seated onto the edge of an open cot.

  Some part of him thought he should be grateful that at least something seemed to be going well.

  But another part of him wanted to let his head fall into his hands, there in the darkness of the quiet infirmary. Without the audience of the rank-and-file for whom to continue pretending confidence and strength, his body screamed at him to let down the rest of the facade.

  But he still couldn’t, he knew. Still, he had the audience of his lieutenants.

  “I’d say that we have a pretty capable little force here, now,” continued Junius. “Lean but fairly veteran, at least on average. And it’ll grow larger as more squads arrive from the east. Maybe it's still too soon to judge the situation, but I’d wager there’ll be a lot we can do with what we’ll have.”

  “Yeah.”

  Junius was fishing for some more encouraging, enthusiastic agreement, Tanhkmet knew. For any sign he wasn’t truly as despondent as his lieutenants worried he might be.

  But Tanhkmet couldn’t muster even that much, even just for show.

  The truth was, Junius was right to worry. And Tanhkmet couldn’t bear to give him false hope.

  “How many more have arrived, by the way, Lycera?” asked Junius.

  “Two whole, one partial squad. But, I should say, sir…”

  Tanhkmet took a deep breath. He knew that tone.

  “The half-squad, that arrived just a few hours ago… I’ve been doing the debriefs, for all the Patrol Corps that have come in. And, well, that half-squad definitely had something to report. They came from Hilomnos, sir,” she explained.

  “Gods,” muttered Junius.

  “Their precinct was assigned to one of the more landward quarters of the city, near the library. But with the princess booking the library for the day, they were reassigned to the western heights, while her Imperial Guard contingent took over immediate Library security. But on their way back from that alternate route… they found the Guard company surrounded, defending the library from strange fighters in white uniforms, wielding rifles and vis. Their patrol was decimated in the ensuing firefight, trying to aid the Guard… and by time they regrouped at their station, they say all Hilomnos seemed overrun. They fled west out of the city when night fell…”

  Lycera swallowed.

  “...at which point, even far beyond the city walls… they could see the library engulfed in flames, behind them.”

  “Oh.” Junius’ hand shot to his mouth.

  Tanhkmet stared at the floor.

  Even as he’d already feared as much, hearing it confirmed still hurt all the worse.

  “The library would make a good redoubt,” said Junius. “They must have retreated there, but then…”

  “...I’m… afraid that seems… very possible,” said Lycera.

  There was a terrible silence between the three of them.

  “...The survivors of that squad… their birds were all run ragged, when they arrived here. And their boots, worn straight through. They knew the importance of what they’d seen.” Lycera shook her head. “And besides themselves, they hadn’t heard of any other Patrol Corps survivors from Hilomnos… nor of any of the Guard.”

  The Guard would’ve fought to the last to defend their charge, Tanhkmet knew.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  So it was all but certain: Princess Aurelia was dead.

  The imperial line was extinguished.

  An enemy had attacked Setet, bringing devastation beyond his wildest nightmares. An enemy commanding a heretofore unknown power of arms, by air, land and sea. An enemy that had achieved victory before Tanhkmet had even realized the war had begun.

  “There’s… one other thing, sir,” said Lycera. “While you were recovering in the infirmary, Junius and I were trying to determine if there was any way to better understand what was happening. We tried to interview the sybil child, in case his kidnapping was connected to the catastrophe, somehow.”

  “And?”

  “He claimed that no one kidnapped him,” said Lycera. “Rather, that he escaped, from the Augury facilities in Atum-Ra, somehow, with the help of some of the other sybil children kept there.”

  Lycera shared a look with Junius.

  “He’d gone back to his hometown, that hamlet where we found him, to warn the villagers to flee. He told us… he told us his gifts had warned him long in advance, that there was some danger to Atum-Ra. Multiple oracle-children in the capital’s Augury had seen visions of some coming danger, apparently. And he said they’d tried to tell their caretakers at the Augury… but they didn’t listen.”

  Once more, it was clear to Tanhkmet that his lieutenants hoped that would prompt some sort of response, from him. That he would at least offer an experienced guess about what that all might mean, if not hard answers.

  But Tanhkmet knew then he couldn’t grant them what they wished.

  What little he knew of those terrible truths, he could never tell. Junius and Lycera might never recover, psychologically, if they knew what he did.

  And so he could only answer them with an expression of careful neutrality. As if he had nothing to say.

  “Maybe it’s just nonsense,” Lycera added quickly. “Perhaps he’s just a child, and didn’t know what he was saying, but–”

  “It didn’t seem that way to me,” said Junius. “I got the feeling that he knew what he meant. And meant every word.”

  “Yeah… I got the same feeling. And the rest of his story adds up. So maybe there was some terrible, terrible error. But maybe… well, I mean, is it possible… we could be dealing with… treason? Traitors, saboteurs, in our ranks? Perhaps even among those in the Augury?”

  “I… don’t know,” Tanhkmet said at last. “We still know almost nothing about our enemy. It's… worth considering. It’ll be wise to be very cautious about who we trust, either way.”

  Both officers were clearly dumbfounded by his mutedness. But they would just have to accept it. Telling them what he knew of the truth could be only worse for their psyches.

  “...Give me some time alone, now,” said Tanhkmet. “And I’ll think of our next steps.”

  The two officers saluted, but then shared another subtle look with one another as they started for the hall.

  “You two have performed exceptionally, through all this, I should say,” he added, before they’d quite gone. “Thank you. Both of you.”

  But Tanhkmet grimaced, once truly alone once more.

  Even as little as he’d said would give them false hope, he realized.

  If the enemy’s victory had been truly so swift and complete, then there could be no other ‘next steps’ down any path, but one:

  Capitulation.

  Even if their new and unknown enemy were to vanish the next morning, like a bad dream — even if the gods saw fit to grant such a fantastic miracle — with the imperial line all still dead, Setet would be primed for a civil war between the succession’s next nearest claimants.

  He’d tried to tell his caretakers at the Augury… but they didn’t listen.

  He’d been privy to enough of the wrong cabinet debates to have a decent guess about what the child might’ve meant.

  So perhaps the whole of Setet was already past rotten, if his worst suspicions about that were true. The Atum-Ra catastrophe, and that strange new enemy, thus being only the final finishing blows, to crush what had been already hollowed out from within by decadence and betrayal.

  With the imperial family gone, with Atum-Ra gone, facing an enemy that could erase whole cities at once, and with only so broken a nation that could even remain to be salvaged: he could imagine no other course ahead, but capitulation.

  If there was any hope to avoid a destruction still yet more devastating, they would have no choice but to surrender. To whatever alien enemy they then faced.

  They didn’t listen.

  Ruin had come to Setet.

  Alone, in the darkness of the infirmary, he couldn’t help but wonder if at least some of them might not deserve it.

  * * *

  At last, Kera spied movement trickling overtop the mottled rocks ahead. Camouflaged Patrol Corps lookouts, from the coded tells she’d trained to recognize. Familiar uniforms soon descended from the outcropping, of two corps rangers riding out to intercept her before she’d crossed the distance.

  “Officer!”

  But Kera did not halt for them. She only whipped Horus’ reins harder, shooting straight past. Every second might count, as Virgil faded in her lap on the saddle.

  Whirling their fresher birds around, the two patrol officers soon caught back up alongside her.

  “Gods, he looks bad,” said the lead ranger — as even his briefest appraisal of Virgil’s condition instantly thwarted any potential indignation inflamed by Kera’s brusqueness. “Follow me. I’ll clear the way straight to the infirmary.”

  "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

  Multiple attributions