The Duke's laughter cut off as if his throat had been seized by an invisible hand. The
word "trash" echoed through the Great Hall, vibrating against the water-walls. The
Lords of the Trench stood up, their chairs screeching against the crystal floor, their
faces turning a deep, angry crimson.
"You dare?" the Duke hissed, his belly shaking with rage. "You little whelp! Do you
have any idea whose presence you stand in? I am the Duke of the Sapphire Coast,
and you are nothing but a nameless stray Jasmine found in the mud!"
Jee-shahn didn't flinch. He reached out, casually plucking a grape from a silver platter
on the table as he walked past the Duke. He popped it into his mouth, chewed slowly,and then looked at the High Priest, who was watching from the head of the table with
a sharp, unreadable expression.
"You asked for my lineage," Jee-shahn said, his voice quiet but carrying a weight that
seemed to press down on the very oxygen in the room. "And this loud, golden
beach-ball wants a name."
He turned back to the room, his azure eyes suddenly glowing with a faint, predatory
light that made the three brothers take a step back.
"The name is Jee-shahn," he stated clearly.
The silence that followed wasn't just quiet; it was a vacuum. The Duke's mouth hung
open. A Lord of the Trench dropped his wine goblet, the glass shattering against the
crystal floor with a sound like a scream.
"Jee-shahn?" the Duke whispered, his voice trembling. "As in... the Monster of the
South? The Emperor who reclaimed the Virellia Gilded Rose and sits upon the throne
of the flowered meadows?"
"The one who wed the Empress of the South, Faeloria," another Lord added, his face
turning pale. "And... and the rumors from the frozen wastes... the one who conquered
the Terragorn Empire? The husband of the North's Wolf-Queen, Empress Yui?"
The room erupted in a chaotic, terrified whisper. They looked at the small boy in the
oversized sea-silk robes. To the world, the Emperor Jee-shahn was a 7-foot titan of
destruction, a cosmic observer who had brought two of the world's most powerful
Empresses to their knees. The idea that this lazy, grape-eating kid was the same
person was a nightmare their brains refused to accept.
"It's a lie!" the tallest brother roared, though his hand was shaking on his sword hilt.
"The Emperor of the North and South is a giant! A god among men! You're just a brat
using a dead man's name to scare us!"
Jasmine stood frozen, her eyes darting between her "groom" and her terrified family.
She knew he was powerful, but she hadn't realized she had kidnapped a man who
already ruled half the known world—and had two Empresses waiting for him to come
home from his "vacation."
Jee-shahn let out a long, bored sigh. "See? This is why I didn't want to tell you. Now
the 'noise' is even louder." He looked at the Duke, a small, terrifyingly lazy smile
appearing on his lips. "If you think I'm a liar, why don't you come over here and try to
'clean' me? I've been looking for a reason to see what a Duke looks like when he's
flattened.