[Season 12] Hearts and Minds

“Everything is in place.”

She had been dreading to hear these words. Half hoping for a delay, half expecting something to have gone wrong, the last preparations having taken a considerable amount of money and influence to be spent, with plenty of room for error. She nervously fingers the silver brooch on her lapel with her thumb, cold and smooth, and just a hint of an edge. The staircase down to the cathedral yawns darkly before her like an open maw.
But sometimes, you have to gamble. Sometimes, you have to roll that hard six.

She takes a deep breath, steadies her nerves, forces her hand to release the brooch, turns and wills her voice to sound level, ready, utterly in command.
“Tell me.”

“The gates are closed; Loyal, committed soldiers are manning the gatehouses. We have blocked or disabled every teleportation circle, so no one will pop up to interrupt the ritual unannounced; Even threw up that anti-magic field you suggested, to prevent other unwelcome guests; Ballistae on every bastion covering the skies; Thunderhoof’s Behooved boys are patrolling the streets; Jarvenol is in full lockdown. The rest is up to you now…”

She breathes out. Feeling the weight of responsibility sitting heavy on her shoulders. All up to her now…

“I still don't like it. All the effort we put into this. And we don't fully understand it. Like, not at all! How can we be sure it will work?”

“We don’t. But it has worked before, hasn't it? We all saw it. The charged ley lines on the ground. That portal opening. It will work. This is the place where it all began, and I have made the adjustments to suit our purpose. I am as sure as I can be…”

“That's a hell of a gamble. Think of all the weapons that money from Kundar could have bought us. The bribes we could have paid. Hell, we might have taken the senate by storm the old fashioned way!”

She hisses, anger rising, boiling up hot and familiar, a wave of certainty come to wash away her doubts.
“No! No more bloodshed! If we have to kill everyone who disagrees with us, what even is the point? To rule over a country of ashes? Don't you understand? I want to save these people!”

She steadies herself, tries to put on her earnest face. Tries to convince, when her instincts scream to strike this fool down. But every tool has its use and its proper time.
“This way is better. Don't you remember what we are fighting for? Why I brought you in from the cold? When you were running after the trial, from the law, for your life? We will free our people. From foreign interference, from doubt, from regret and the shame of our history, real or imagined. We will bring our families back together. Rebuild, after all this misguided division. As glorious as it was before the war…”, she takes a ragged breath, looks her unlikely ally in her eyes, willing her, willing herself to believe.
“...and we will make K’ul Goran great again. Are you with me? To do it my way? Just this one last time?”

“Hearts and minds, Antonia. That is how we win this. Once and for all.”