Prince Specter of the Duskan Empire did not fear anyone.
But of course, when his mother, Empress Elvira was in the room, rules changed.
"You mean they escaped?" Elvira eyed him with a look of contempt. "Citizens escaped. What were you doing? Getting high on Crystallic blood?"
The room was silent.
"That wasn't rhetorical, idiots. Answer me!" Elvira demanded, pounding her fist on the table.
"Yes, Empress. Citizens escaped when we threw the gas bomb, and when we killed a few screaming brats who wouldn't shut up," Napoleon answered, rolling his eyes in disgust at the thought.
"What did I tell you about sealing the gates and not letting anyone escape?"
Napoleon, who was 4 years older than him, eyed him warily for a second.
"Well, the past is in the past. How many?" Elvira started raking her claw-like nails across the table, shredding it as she went.
"About 20," Specter forced out. "Mainly illiterate young adult drunks."
This caused Napoleon to snort.
"We did get the slums, after all. "
"But the rest of the empire is fully under our control. We have fully sealed the borders, no more people have escaped-" Napoleon did his best to make it up to his mother. She had high standards, and refused anything less than success.
"And that bitch of a princess?" Elvira questioned.
"Alive and well, Empress. As alive and well as a prisoner of war of the Duskan Empire can be," Specter answered, grimacing at the thought of Amore, a pathetic excuse for a ruler. She didn't even own proper armor. They knew that because he had personally ransacked her bedchambers. All he found were clothes, makeup, and a bunch of pictures of some guy who wasn't even that cute.
They all laughed at that, for they all knew how well their prisoners of war fared: the screams of prisoner’s getting the Thousand Cuts torture floated over from the next room over.
"Listen, my dear children, to the screams of our prisoners echoing down the halls. There's a reason we put the torture rooms next to the meeting rooms, and the bedrooms right above." Elvira beckoned Napoleon and Specter closer.
"Empress, what is the next phase of the plan?" Napoleon asked.
"Every attack we make is specific to the kingdom, every move, more specific to their rulers.” Elvira drew out two pictures: both of which were of the Crown Princesses of Equestria.
One had ivory skin and a head of shiny locks: pinks, blues and greens all blended into one. The other displayed long blue curls, and looked like she was painted by shades of night. They both shared the same teal eyes and beautiful smile.
“Celestia and Luna, the new rulers of Equestria. They’ll be crowned official rulers when Luna turns 21, in four years’ time. They’re young and vulnerable; ill-equipped to rule a kingdom. Equestria itself is on the brink of a rebellion: while people starve in poor villages, the rich in Canterlot keep building their nightclubs and spas. Nothing we haven’t seen before,” Elvira drawled, picking up Celestia’s picture, throwing it in midair and flinging a knife through it, which pinned the picture to the wall by Celestia’s neck.
“They know they’re no match for us. Now that we’ve sent them the letter-”
Elvira raised a finger to Specter’s lips. “Yes, but they’re so damn stupid. They’ll still fight to the end, try in vain to gather an army…” she laughed sharply, shaking her head. “How interesting naive little girls are in times of war.”
“But they simply don’t have the resources! They barely finished fighting the Great War a decade ago! Their kingdom is on the brink of collapse!” Napoleon argued. “To try anything is futile, they might as well be dooming themselves!”
Elvira silenced him with a knife to his throat, running her blade along the side of his face almost lovingly. “You mean well, my son. But that kingdom just keeps feeding themselves lies. Their whole society is built upon them. What happens when we unravel them?”
“Then society collapses from within. We would barely need to lift a finger!” Specter jumped in. Napoleon shot him a glare: everything was a competition between the two of them. A competition to win their mother’s praise.
“Good, good, my dear. For a speech is just as powerful as a sword. We can see how it goes, but I would prefer to speed things up a little, whilst we still can,” Elvira said, throwing her knife up into the air to catch.
“But then what was the point of capturing the Crystal Empire if we can just do everything without it?” Napoleon demanded.
Elvira turned towards him. “Napoleon, darling, are you stupid? The Empire has good resources we can use and trade. And by holding the Empire hostage, which Equestria, and all the other city-states within it rely heavily on, we already have more control over them. We can use it as a leverage against them.”
“Empress, I see. We can keep them on edge, make them fear us, so they’ll know not to cross us. We could even make a bargain with them,” Specter explained.
“Who knows, we may not even end up using it. Things do change, after all,” Elvira added. “But why do we keep it and display it like a trophy?”
“Because we can.”
“You see, Equestria isn’t our goal. It’s only one of our building blocks along the way. It has huge swaths of land and exotic resources we can’t get in Tenebrisia, let alone the rest of the Bellator Nations.”
The Bellator Nations were a series of Vampiric empires. Each main vampire family owned one empire. And they were at war. Permanently.
“Empress?” Specter asked nervously.
“Yes, Prince?” Elvira replied, twirling a knife through her hair.
“The refugees from the Crystal Empire surely must’ve reached Canterlot and told the princesses about the fact that we took over. Now, they must be sending troops or doing something. How has this interfered with our original plans?”
“It was barely a shift. The only difference would be that we have more time to gather resources and find out information. Talking about information, what did you get from Amore?” Elvira inquisited.
Specter’s vampire ability was mind-control. Elvira was very, very pleased with that and gave him a full smile the day he manifested. It was a greatly prized ability, ranked high in the list of abilities.
“About half the Empire is made up of slums and ghettos. They have huge gang problems there. The guards try to keep everything away from the rich sectors, but it’s not working. Amore’s Council secretly steals tax money for gambling, and, um….”
“Stop, stop!” Napoleon interrupted. “I’m sorry, it’s just so cliche, nothing we haven’t seen before.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.” Elvira crossed one leg over the other.
“Amore’s cheating on her husband-to-be,” Specter blurted out.
“Ha! I knew it! That dirty little-” Elvira cackled.
“With four other men!” Specter forced the rest of the sentence out.
“Yes! This gets better and better!” Napoleon whooped, throwing his spear into the ceiling.
“Perfect. Now imagine if we spread all of this all over the Crystal Empire. In graffiti. Or force Amore to admit it in front of everyone, along with all of her other dirty little secrets. We could start a rebellion with this information. A few citizens may actually start willingly working for us if we bribe them enough. Then we can gain access to some knowledge through them, which will make taking over even easier.” Elvira explained.
“And the princesses? What will they do? Why don’t we just-” Specter asked.
Elvira gently shoved the knife to his throat, tilting his chin up to look at her.
“Let’s just wait and see, shall we? Let’s just wait and see.”