Dragon Gods Reign

[City of Sarcena]

For Darganth, the next half an hour passed in a blur. Constantly thinking about how to adjust their plans for the day as he absentmindedly followed Jennia, Allaire, and Serania through the crowd, he soon found himself walking near the head of the crowd as they were led into the main meeting hall.

Just like the throne room which they had left through one of the side doors moments earlier, this part of the castle had also been expanded with the help of space magic. Though unlike the earlier hall, this one stood nearly completely empty, leaving room for the different groups or representatives to settle down with enough space between them, something they promptly did.

The exception to this were the emperors, who instead made their way to the only structure found in the room. Each walking up to one of the six pyramids that formed a circle, they and their guards walked up the steps on its slopes and ascended toward the platform at the top.

Torrak meanwhile stepped through the gap between two of these, coming to a stop at the center of all the emperors where he waited with his arms behind his back. Watching in silence as the emperors took a seat on their respective platforms, he raised an eyebrow when he saw the entire group of eight people follow Batoim but didn't object.

Soon the rustling of people taking their seats started to die down, giving way to a calm silence as even the whispering from the attendees stopped in anticipation.

Waiting a few more moments, Torrak finally started speaking.

“As today's chosen arbiter I welcome you here to this emperors meeting official start. And as every decade's holder of this position, I will be responsible for ensuring that this event will take its course in an orderly fashion and without incident.

Of course, I'm hopeful that I won't have to exercise the authority that comes with this responsibility, but seeing how many empty looks I'm getting it seems that my infamy has faded even more than I had assumed. So to those among you who feel addressed by this, do all of us a favor, take a look at the terrified faces I see among some of the older generations among you, and reconsider any stupid ideas you might be having.” He stated calmly.

After those words, he left a purposeful pause. Intending to let them sink in for a few seconds before continuing, Torrak's plans were interrupted when Neandra started to chuckle in amusement.

“As someone from one of these older generations who knows that old man quite well, I advise you to follow what he said. If he's here, Odylia is too, and last time we fought even I had trouble against both of them together.” Neandra said.

“Is that a compliment I hear? To think that after knowing each other for more millennia than most people in this room are old I still learn of new sides of yours.” Torrak said with a laugh

“Well, it's been a few centuries old friend.” Neandra said with a warm smile, “And it's not like you didn't change too, in the past you would've just unleashed your presence instead of bothering with these verbal appeals.”

This sentiment was one Torrak could only agree with. Toying with the thought for a moment and imagining the scene, he quickly shook off the idea again.

“Today I have a job to do so I can't do that. It's also why I have to cut this conversation short as I can already see some of your fellow emperors wanting to complain.” He said in an annoyed tone.

“Then do that job and tell Batoim to follow the limit of two guards for each emperor.” Arkuns growled angrily.

Sighing as his hopes of simply ignoring the matter were dashed, Torrak nodded halfheartedly and turned toward Batoim. Though to his relief, he didn't even need to say anything as the latter spoke up on his own.

“Or you could just treat it as the inconsequential thing matter it is so that we can get on to the actual agenda for today.” Batoim said.

“Inconsequential?” Arkuns asked angrily.

“Yes. The purpose of this limit is to ensure that no emperor's delegation can easily overpower another one but I can already do that on my own. So just accept that and stop complaining or I'll stop playing nice.” Batoim warned.

Believing his threats to be empty, Arkuns initially scoffed in response and leaned back with a confident smirk. However, as he did, he started noticing the reactions of his fellow emperors and became hesitant.

That Neandra and Venrie were showing their opposition to his actions through their expressions wasn't surprising, but having the dwarf emperor who almost never showed his opinion frown at his actions unsettled Arkuns.

Glancing even further to the side, he saw that even the beastmen emperor was hesitating despite knowing the same things that gave him the confidence to act as he did.

Already starting to reconsider his actions after noticing this, Arkuns's train of thought was interrupted when Batoim spoke again.

“Will you listen now? Because you should already have noticed that I have the three votes in favor and one abstaining necessary to just create new emperor seats for two of them. So is it worthwhile for you to force me to owe Oknar here the favor he'll undoubtedly want to abstain from such a vote but have me get two more votes in return.” Batoim said with the calmness of assured victory in his voice, motioning toward the dwarf emperor while doing so.

Surprised by his words, Arkuns quickly glanced to his left where Oknar sat. Noticing that the dwarf emperor had reacted to Batoim's words with an uncharacteristic smile, he grew nervous as he realized his mistake.

Instead of using his overwhelming strength to get his way, something he was prepared for, Batoim had just shown that he could also have success with diplomatic means.

“Finally realizing that you don't have any advantages?” He said, easily reading Arkuns's thoughts in his expression.

Already recognizing even before those words that his plan had failed and understanding that pushing further was futile, Arkuns relented.

“Ignore my complaint.” He reluctantly told Torrak.

As he spoke, a collective sigh of relief was heard from the representatives of the smaller factions. Even Torrak himself felt glad as though he wouldn't have needed to fear for his life if a fight had broken out, he wasn't too keen to learn what the backlash would be if he were to fail in the duty he was sworn to on that day.

As such he gladly used to opportunity to hurry along to the first point on the agenda, hoping that the tension would cool down somewhat before they reached the contentious topics of the day.

“Perfect. Now that this matter is cleared up we'll finally start with the first issue on which your judgment was requested.” Torrak announced.

In doing so, he succeeded in pushing the near calamity that they had just witnessed out of everyone's focus. In its place, murmurs spread throughout the large hall as the attendees started to discuss what they might expect.

Leisurely watching all of this from his seat next to Batoim, Darganth had remained in the background throughout the whole ordeal. Instead, he had closely watched not just Arkuns but also the beast emperor to confirm his suspicions.

And with the former arguing this daringly against Batoim, he all but confirmed that he, and probably Rezal too, at least knew something about whoever had derailed Darganth's original plans by messing with the arbiter selection.

As such, while Darganth was halfheartedly listening to the faction first called upon by Torrak to argue their issue, he was also adjusting his plans to the new circumstances. And with breaking the meeting's rules now off the table as he didn't want to put Torrak into a difficult position out of consideration for his friendship with Neandra, this proved harder than he would have liked.

Of course, he still had Irsyr and Batoim to rely on, both of whom they had deliberately not planned with originally, but he would prefer to keep it that way. Not only were they assurances against whoever the still unknown foe was, but Neandra wanted to take care of Arkuns and Rezal herself.

Occasionally he would temporarily pause thinking about the matter to watch the emperors vote after whoever had raised it finished presenting their issue. And surprisingly, these votes were more often than not either unanimously in favor or against as most were about matters in which none of them had a stake.

After all, if their subordinates or allies had a conflict with a faction outside of the Big Six they could simply bully it into getting their way. On the other hand, conflicts between the two emperors were instead discussed during the closed session of the meeting, leaving only disagreements between neutral factions, these mostly being the weaker species, for this setting.

As such, Darganth nearly missed it when Torrak announced the last discussion on the agenda. Only noticing it when Crelvic's name fell, he looked toward the central area just as the vampire lord rose out of the shadows and stepped onto it.

The same sentiment was mirrored by the emperors, with Crelvic being the first speaker to have the undivided attention of all of them as he started arguing for the creation of an emperor seat for the vampires.