The Martial Unity

“The Emperor of Water is surrendering power.”

The voice of a woman hung in the air. She wore a baggy, cloak-like Martial attire dyed blood-red, the same color as her eyes and her air, her pale skin illuminated by faint torches, rather than any kind of modern lighting technology. A wild, excited smile emerged on her face as she studied a report on the wild ambitions of the Emperor and the path of privatization that he had chosen to get there.

“To think that we would get our opportunity in such a straightforward manner,” she turned towards an adolescent boy with a pointed gaze. “Perhaps you’ll be able to come out of the shadows now, Sarloun.”

Across the room was a boy of sixteen years of age. His eyes and hair, again, were as red as blood, while his expression was inscrutable.

Blood Lord Mariel could sense the intensity of the emotions within him, however. She could sense the profoundly intense desire that had been bottled up within the boy, an intense determination and drive that they had cultivated within him from a very young age.

“The Age of Blood Supremacy…” he opened his mouth, speaking softly, yet intensely. “…will begin in the stars.”

His blood-red eyes grew bloodshot, making them even redder. He clenched his fists with a tremendous force, causing the air to ripple with shockwaves. “…We have been denied our true place in the hierarchy of humanity for too long.”

His tone grew even more intense.

“The Emperor of Water has subjugated the Panama Continent with his reign, preventing us from taking our rightful throne at the head of Gaian Civilization.”

Every word he spoke was laced with anger. The kind of righteous anger that one might have if they truly believed that they had been wronged and done an injustice. Sarloun was one of the millions of blood children that the Blood Cult had harvested from the ova of the Blood Goddess, the only reproductively compatible Martial Squire with her evolved DNA. The original agreement between the Blood Cult and the Kandrian Empire that Rui had brokered long ago as a Martial Master was that the Kandrian Empire got to control half of the eggs while the Blood Cult got the other half.

And over time, that agreement had been respected by Rui even though he grew astronomically more powerful. He never forced the cult to give up its half of hemosapien children, allowing them to do with them whatever it was they wanted.

And naturally, unlike the more balanced societal and civilizational integration approach that the Emperor of Harmony and later the Emperor of Water had opted for, the Blood Cult had taken an entirely different approach. It had radicalized and brainwashed them to believe in blood supremacy. That hemosapiens were superior to homo martialus and even the other species of Gaian Civilization. That they were at the very height of the ladder of superiority among the genetic ancestors of ancient homo sapien.

Of course, Blood Lord Mariel rejected that framing. As far as the wily woman was concerned, they were merely educating the children on the ‘truth.’ It was simply an objective fact that blood children were biologically superior to homo martialus.

They were more intelligent, on average, they were physically stronger, they had a superior path (or so they believed), and they were the future, as far as they were concerned.

The Blood Cult reviled the strategy of genetic integration between the Blood Path and the Martial Path as heretic, although it never had the courage to be the architect of that plan, the Emperor of Water. Rui’s more ambitious plans of making the Blood Path just one form of a new Realm within the Martial Path were even more disgusting to them.

“The Blood Path will not be reduced into mere fodder for the Martial Path,” Sarloun growled, clenching his fists at the very idea. “We will subsume the Martial Path in our Blood, and turn it into fodder for our power!”

Blood Lord Mariel smiled at the adolescent boy getting riled up. They had systematically endowed him with the ‘truth’ from a very young age. For him and his siblings within the Blood Cult, the supremacy of hemosapiens was simply a given. They had grown up in a cult where normal humans were inferior to hemosapien children, and to them it was as obviously true as basic arithmetic. However, what they hadn’t anticipated was how astronomically powerful the Dawnbringer would grow. They hadn’t anticipated that the death of the Emperor of Harmony, which they had previously seen as an advantage, would lead to something even more suffocating; the Void Order imposed by the personal might of the Emperor of Water.

The Blood Cult had been forced to hide its blood supremacy from the world as much as it could. Of course, they had no doubt that the Kandrian Empire and the Emperor of Water were unaware of their actions, but to their surprise, the Emperor of Water never engaged in any tyrannical behavior after establishing the Void Order despite his overwhelming Martial and political power.

He simply remained silent and focused on his agenda of modernizing the Panama Continent, strengthening its Martial World with breakthroughs, and spreading prosperity among the people. He focused on his Regime of Water, dubbed the Age of Prosperity within the Panama Continent.

If Blood Lord Mariel was being honest, she had thought that they would never obtain the opportunity to spread blood supremacy.

Until today.

Until she read the report about the Emperor of Water’s intentions to privatize the expansion of Gaian Civilization. To allow private and state actors to venture into their own interstellar colonial enterprises and spread across the Local Bubble in the Orion Star Strand. A plan that would guarantee tremendous amounts of sovereignty and independence to colonial states. The reports suggested that the Emperor of Water didn’t even have any intention of enforcing his Void Order regime in the stars, which was exactly what they needed.

“We will spread blood supremacy in the stars, and then slowly infect the rest of human civilization.” Her blood-red eyes lit up. “We will use the Emperor’s naivete of trying to integrate hemosapien DNA into homo martialus, and then hijack the hybrids into our ideology of blood supremacy. It will only be a matter of time before we seize power in Panamic and eventually Gaian Civilization.”

BZZZT

She checked her commpad as it began buzzing.

Her eyebrow rose as she read the message.

[Urgent Conference Invitation from Prime Minister James of the Britannian Empire]

An invitation that included all Sage-level powerhouses of the Panama Continent.

Excluding the Kandrian Empire.

A smile emerged on her face.

“Interesting.”