146 – Perpetual Overwork
He’d nervously chewed his cigar for so long it had gone out, so he just tossed it aside and pulled open one of his desk drawers, retrieving from within it a cigar wrapped in an additional outer layer of blood-red seals. Biting off the end and spitting it into the trash, the tip of it glimmered with emerald-green droplets. In a bid to perhaps reinforce his own ego or maintain appearances to the lavish empty office that spread out all around him, the governor used his abilities in Aethermancy for a glorified parlor trick - a snap of the fingers to produce a flickering, blue flame above his fingertips.
Even the brief breath of Fog he had to take to fuel this technique almost made him break into a coughing fit, whilst only weeks ago he was in good enough health to set his personal sabre alight with such a blaze that even an Inquisitor’s Aquilla Calibur, so named for the design of its crossguard - had no hope of replicating it. The governor took a drag of his cigar, feeling the reassuring warmth and vitality of pure Viriditas in Fog form fill his body, washing away the stress aches that wracked his every waking moment.
Resolved to get work done despite his subpar health condition, Crovacus cleaned up his desk as best as he could, retrieving one of his journals and his personal fountain pen. He began to pour his thoughts onto the paper, with the intentions of refining the manuscript into a more usable form when he was in a better state. It would be the seedling for a letter that would cement his allegiance to his post and the people he ruled first and foremost, even if it placed him in opposition with the very government that allowed him to obtain this post.
I volunteered for the position of acting governor in the Sovereign City-state of Willowdale under the presumption that I would face staunch opposition by Ikesian nationalists. I assumed that my work would be stifled whenever I tried to do something to even inconvenience the natives, that they would drag me in the street and kill me for so much as trying to temporarily raise taxes to fund repair efforts. I see now that my predictions were not only wrong, but the exact opposite of reality. Never before have I had my life threatened or my work stifled more than during my tenure as governor here, but it wasn’t by Ikesians - it was by my own countrymen, those who spat insults like race-traitor at me for trying to make Willowdale a nicer place for everyone, because it would benefit the “Abominable Snowmen”, as some of them refer to you all.
It was almost funny. Inheritor of a noble line, successful businessman, trained fencer, Crovacus Estoras knew himself to be the perfect noble, he knew he had every right to act out within the rather loose boundaries that his privileged position in society allowed him. And yet, he didn’t want to amass power. He just wanted to secure the prosperity and continued growth of those under his protection - whether that be his own son, or the people of Willowdale.
Furthermore, while I fully expected Willowdale to come under attack from malicious actors, I did not expect our own supposed allies to be the perpetrators. The structural sabotage of the outer walls, the road banditry, even the incident that destroyed City Hall - each time, the perpetrators were identified not only as Pateirian nationals, but as Pateirian soldiers. Those that we managed to capture all exhibited the mutagenic side effects of excessive “Blood of God” combat elixir consumption, but it was how they reacted to interrogation that betrayed their allegiance. An absolute refusal to cooperate, open hostility, accusations of being on the side of the “Snow Devils” despite the facts that the war has been officially over for months and that Willowdale was not directly involved in the conflict. Both the captives refused to provide any information beyond their undying allegiance to the Divine Emperor, even in the face of, as they described it, “deserved exile”.
At this very moment, four of the few people who are qualified for the job are making their way through a dungeon, one that has been co-opted by Pateirian terrorists into a base of operations. Not only that, but one of our essentech specialists has intercepted aether wave communications that strongly suggest these terrorists have direct ties to the higher echelons of Pateirian government. It is because of these facts that I have come to a conclusion.
I, Crovacus Estoras, Acting Governor for the Sovereign City-state of Willowdale, believe that Grekuria stood on the wrong side of the war, and that the Pateirian Empire is the primary threat not only to Ikesia, but to the entire civilized world as we know it.
Crovacus felt the stress taking its toll, he could feel himself wasting away, and not even his daily consumption of Vitamax could stop it. No, the governor needed something more than pure Viriditas, if he were to weather this inhuman workload for as long as he needed to. Despite its nigh-miraculous effects from a layman’s point of view, Viriditas alone had reached the limits of its effectiveness for him - the formula within his special cigarillo contained the highest reasonable concentration of Viriditas before it became dangerous for a mostly normal human. Any higher a concentration would place him at risk of severe liver damage or sudden-onset tumor growth.
His options were either stress avoidance and bed rest, which absolutely wasn’t an option, or… Something more potent. A more complex, more dangerous concoction, one that he wasn’t sure anyone in Willowdale could produce. That was why he had dispatched one of his hired investigators specifically to seek such an individual out, why he...
He felt himself being dragged from the depth of inward thought when a very particular pattern of knocks sounded through his office door, and Crovacus instinctively composed himself before calling out, “Come in!”