She'd come through the gap between the void and the Endless Continent rather than travelling openly, a reasonable precaution for a Supreme Goddess entering unfamiliar territory. What she hadn't accounted for was a Space-Time Supreme God at the other end.
The surrounding space simply ceased to exist. No warning, no buildup and the dimensional pocket she'd been moving through was destroyed in an instant. Here she was, standing in open air, a hundred thousand kilometers from the Imperial Capital, exactly as exposed as if she'd walked up to the front gate.
She recovered her composure quickly, because she was Aurelyss and composure was what she did. Still, the shock underneath it was genuine. This Emperor was an actual Supreme God who has mastered the Space-Time Law. Not someone who had picked up a fragment of the Law of Space or developed a time-adjacent ability. This was a complete integration of both, two of the rarest laws in the universe merged into one.
She'd never encountered it in practice, only heard the category described. It stood at the same tier as the Law of Fate that Svetlana commanded. There were fewer than ten Gods in the entire Endless Continent who'd mastered even the Law of Time alone.
The Space-Time Law, she believed that it was just a legend that didn't actually exist. Moreover, his rank, at the late-stage of Supreme God Tier, matched hers exactly.
She stood in the open sky above the Great Aetherium's territory and genuinely considered leaving. It wasn't cowardice. She was the Elf Empress, the ruler of the strongest native Empire on the Endless Continent, comparable in strength to Elunara herself.
She wasn't frightened easily, but a Supreme God who had mastered the Space-Time Law could reverse Space-Time at will. If she fled, he could simply drag her back, across any distance, as many times as necessary.
Against most Supreme Gods she had options. Against this one, her options depended entirely on his goodwill. Then she felt his gaze cross the distance between them and land on her. There was no hostility in it, something closer to welcome.
She thought about what it would look like to turn around and fly home after coming this far, decided it would look exactly like what it was, and descended towards the capital.
…
The Imperial Palace's hall had a long table. Haru was already seated when she arrived, which she noted, it meant he'd known her identity from the moment he shattered her dimensional pocket, which meant her entry had been observed before she'd even realized she was being watched.
She'd seen him before, briefly, during the recent Divine Battle. She'd been watching from a distance then, not the other way around. Now she was the one walking into his hall.
Aurelyss was striking in the way that Ancient Elven Bloodlines sometimes produced. A lilac gold-trimmed dress, skin fair enough to pass for jade in certain light, the kind of bearing that didn't require effort because it had been there since birth.
She moved to the seat across from him with the ease of someone accustomed to being the most powerful person in any room, recalibrating privately to the possibility that this was one of the exceptions.
"Your Majesty the Empress came from a long way." He said, with a smile that didn't carry an ounce of apology for the rough welcome, "I hope you'll forgive any discourtesy."
"The fault was mine." She said, "I shouldn't have approached your territory like that."
They were both being polite and both knew it. He'd detected her regardless of the method. The pleasantries took thirty seconds and then both of them moved on.
"I have to admit." She said, "The display just now was something I wasn't prepared for."
"If I'd known it was Your Majesty, I would have been more careful."
She appreciated the form of the apology without believing its substance and said so with her expression. He caught it and his smile widened slightly.
…
She laid out her three purposes directly.
First: An offensive and defensive alliance between the Elf Empire and the Aetherium Empire.
Second: A large artifact purchase, she'd heard he had hundreds of thousands to sell.
Third: A request that he stand down from the planned war against the Light Empire.
He agreed to the first two immediately. The third he declined, and she'd expected it. She made her case anyway.
The war would cost countless lives of strong supernaturals, most likely even Gods, and those losses would weaken the Endless Continent's capacity to resist the Burning Legion. The seven native empires in the central area could mobilize against the Castle Forces the moment the Laws' constraints dissolve, and most of the Castle Faction outside the Great Aetherium were still too weak to absorb that pressure.
"That's the price of joining a war between two empires."
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