Verônica Von Unicorn
"FATHER! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!"
My voice echoed through the suspended hall before I realized where I was.
I had run up. Ten minutes of interminable stairs from the room where Viego and the rookie had just challenged each other — ten minutes in which each step received all the rage I couldn't discharge down below. Rose fell behind in the first thirty seconds, shouting something about protocol that I pretended not to hear. My lungs burned. My legs complained. But none of that mattered — because somewhere below me, a blond idiot was about to destroy the most important piece of my plan, and the only man guilty of it sat ten floors above, probably smoking his damn cigar as though it were any given Sunday.
The elders' hall sat at the highest point of the castle — a half-moon room, all in tempered glass, curved over the main arena like a balcony perched atop the world. The floor was dark polished stone reflecting the light that entered through the panels, and the open ceiling let the artificial sun fall directly onto the eight chairs aligned in an arc before the panoramic window. Each chair was enormous — built for bodies that had been through the Oasis and returned larger — and spaced with the exact distance nobles demanded between themselves: close enough to converse, far enough that nobody invaded anyone's space.
Normally, the chairs were empty.
I had known that hall since I was a child. I came here with my father when he needed to converse with the other elders or to appreciate a good fight between the family's youths — there was always a potential to become something in the Oasis, someone who stood out enough to deserve attention. Most never came back. On a few rare occasions, someone hit the mark. A futile game, but one that entertained not only my father but everyone at his side. I sat on the floor while he stayed in the central chair, looking at the arena fifty meters below, observing the heads like little ants that didn't know they were being observed. The other seven chairs rarely filled up. The elders seldom came in full. In truth, some didn't even care enough to come.
My father was seated in the central chair — his, the one that was always his — with the relaxed posture of someone watching a theater play whose ending he already knows. Legs crossed. Elbow resting on the chair's arm. The cigar — another damn cigar — hanging between his fingers with the casualness of someone who isn't the least bit concerned about what his daughter had just been through.
Obviously, Viego knowing I was with a rookie of enormous potential wasn't something he should know. The meeting was private. Closed. Only someone who was with me would know of his presence — and the only person who had that information was the one now sitting comfortably in that chair, smoking as though the world weren't on fire.
"Daughter…" His voice came out meek. Dangerously meek. "Watch your language. Your uncles and aunts are here too."
The rage was such that I hadn't noticed.
I surveyed the surroundings — and what I saw made my irritation choke for a second.
All the chairs. Occupied. Eight figures seated in an arc before the panoramic window, the arena stretching below them like a stage seen from a divine box. On any other day, I would have been profoundly shocked by that fact — the elders of House Unicorn gathered in a single hall was something that hadn't happened in decades, perhaps ever. I had never seen it. That meant something large enough had forced each of them to leave their planets, their territories, their carefully isolated routines, and come here.
But the rage didn't give me room for shock.
"Sorry, uncles and aunts." I said through clenched teeth — and if it resembled an apology, the tone didn't help. "Could I have a moment with my father, please?"
A guffaw cut the request in half.
Deep. Slovenly. Coming from one of the chairs on the right, with the energy of someone who laughs not because something is funny, but because they think laughing makes them present in a conversation where nobody asked for their opinion. I recognized the voice before turning.
Uncle José.
He occupied the chair the way one occupies a throne one bought — sprawled, comfortable, with his belly pressing against the fine-fabric shirt that insisted on containing what had clearly already given up being contained. The face was broad, red at the cheeks, with the family's violet eyes almost disappearing between the folds of an expression that was permanently amused with itself. The hands — fat, with rings that shone whenever he gesticulated, and he gesticulated all the time — rested on the chair's arms as though they were extensions of the throne.
If that man didn't have my father at his side, he would never have been anyone in life.
Unfortunately, my father left all the family's management to that piece of shit while he adventured in the Oasis. And José, with the crawling competence of someone who knows how to manage money but doesn't know how to lead anything that doesn't have a dollar sign in front, cultivated influence across all the other planets under our command. At the time, the family gave him the most distant planet — the most insignificant, the most peripheral — just so he wouldn't be a nuisance. Unfortunately, his management was good enough for the planet to prosper, and with prosperity came influence, and with influence came power.
Father was the leader. Among everyone there, he was the strongest — by far, without comparison. But power was never alone the catalyst of power. Influence and money were. And if there was something that barrel-bellied man possessed, beyond the size of his waist, it was the two things that made him someone with power nearly as relevant as my father's.
Unfortunately, my father didn't realize that.
Or pretended not to, which was worse.
"My God, brother!" José let out between guffaws, his belly shaking as though it had a life of its own. "I see someone didn't like my son's intrusion!" He leaned forward, his eyes disappearing even further between the cheeks. "Tell me, girl — what do you want butting into the adults' conversation?"
Girl.
I was the leader of the most important military operation in the recent history of House Unicorn, and he called me girl.
"Uncle José." My voice came out sharp — controlled, but sharp, the kind that cuts without needing to shout. "Your son invaded my private meeting with a potential soldier for my team. I don't find it polite on his part to try to steal what I saw first." I let the pause weigh before continuing. "Especially at this crucial moment of enormous danger. I know perhaps you don't understand the gravity of what's happening — after all, not everyone has the luck of being far from this quadrant."
José's smile wavered for a fraction of a second.
"HAHAHAHA!" My father laughed — and the sound of his laughter in the middle of that tension made me want to rip the cigar from his mouth and shove it in the first place I could find. "Daughter, sorry about what happened, it's just that I ended up mentioning the rookie to your uncle and I thought his suggestion was excellent. I mean, the boy has enormous potential." He took a long drag, the smoke rising in spirals that seemed as carefree as he was. "You know well that your cousin commands the invasion team. What he needs most is power to manage to breach the enemy lines."
He had a point.
I hated when he had a point.
"But Father, how am I going to prove my worth if all the potentials end up in Viego's hands?" My voice rose half a tone without asking my permission. "It almost seems like you don't want me to enter the battle."
I saw my father's face turn to the window.
The arena sat fifty meters below — and down there, heads moved in a commotion I knew was Viego dragging Leonidas to some place that would have blood. My father wasn't looking at them. He was looking through them, at something farther, deeper, something I couldn't reach and that he refused to share.
"Niece…"
José's voice cut the silence with the delicacy of a circular saw.
"Your father is merely protecting you. My son is a born warrior who made his name in the Oasis." The presumptuous smile widened — the smile of someone who knows they're pushing a knife in and makes sure it looks like a hug. "You have the economic influence while he handles the military part. It's natural that someone with such combat potential be alongside my son. Why don't we keep it this way?"
There it was.
The play.
He was using the fact that my father was overprotective to steal the laurels of the invasion. My idea — months of planning, of calculations, of sleepless nights over maps and holograms — would be used as bait to showcase his son's capability. José wanted Viego to lead the invasion I designed. Wanted the credit. Wanted the universe to look and see a member of his house, his planet, his blood, suffocating the enemy — and for nobody to remember that the strategy had come from the head of a girl he didn't take seriously.
"Hurggg."
The huff came out before I could hold it — loud, irritated, without any of the filters a leader should maintain before a hall full of elders. The confused eyes of my uncle gave me a satisfaction I knew I shouldn't feel.
"I don't think you know what you've done." I said, and my voice found the tone I had wanted since I entered that hall — cold, factual, without emotion. The tone that made people stop laughing. "The rookie challenged your son."
José's face died.
Not slowly — all at once. As though someone had turned off the light behind his face. The belly stopped shaking. The hands stopped gesticulating. And I saw, for the first time since that man had sat in that hall, something real on his face: concern.
Of course he didn't plan this. The idea was simple — send Viego to take the new soldier, show dominance, establish territory. But José didn't know Leonidas. Didn't know what I knew. And if he knew what his own son was like, he should have suspected something like this would happen.
In the end, José was still stupid with simple things. The only thing I gave that walking belly credit for was that he knew how to make money. Everything else was mediocre.
"What do you mean?" The voice came not from José, but from the woman beside him — who until then had merely observed through the window with a thin binocular resting on her eyes, following what happened in the arena with the silent attention of someone who watched more than she showed. "Your rookie did what?"
Aunt Carmen lowered the binocular. Her face didn't have the husband's panic — it had something more controlled, sharper. The concern of someone who knew her own son well enough to know he was capable of transforming any situation into disaster, and who had already watched it happen too many times to be surprised.
"That's right, Aunt Carmen." I said, and I didn't make an effort to hide the satisfaction — because I wasn't a good enough person to hide satisfaction when I saw that smile die. "If your son kills the rookie, all we managed was to lose someone who had enormous potential."
Finally, the hall fell silent.
Finally, my uncle's presumptuous smile was gone. He looked at his wife. His wife looked at the arena. And nobody laughed.
I should have savored the moment. Should have felt the victory, however small.
But it was my father who ruined everything.
"HAHAHAHA!"
His laughter filled the hall like a domestic thunderclap — and I felt every muscle in my body lock with irritation.
"Father?"
"Sorry, it's just that…" He took the cigar from his mouth, the smoke escaping between his teeth while the smile settled on his face with the permanence of someone who didn't intend to leave anytime soon. "I thought this would happen sooner or later. But I'm surprised it happened before lunch."
"How can you be calm about this, Father?!" My voice cracked between the question and the shout. "He's going to kill him!"
I knew Leonidas was extraordinary. But that was inside the Oasis — where the creatures he had conquered were his power. Yokai Queen. Griffins. Owl-bear. They were the pieces that made him what he was. Without them, in a hand-to-hand fight, outside the Oasis, without summons, without the system, without anything beyond muscles against muscles — he would never beat Viego.
My cousin had always been known for being horrible at management. His territory in the Oasis was a joke: nearly five years and the castle had barely reached level three, and that only happened thanks to a heavy investment from my uncle. He ignored constructions, ignored strategy, ignored everything that didn't involve punching something. But what he had ignored in the kingdom, he invested entirely in his own body. Nectar stones. Obsessive training. Personal evolution pushed to an extreme that most Lords considered suicidal.
To me, honestly, there was nobody capable of beating Viego in a one-on-one fight. Nobody human.
However, my father seemed to know something. And that generated confusion not only in me, but in everyone there — each chair occupied, each elder with eyes glued to the patriarch trying to extract information from a face that had decided the information was exclusive.
"Nicolai."
The voice came from another chair. Low. Serene. With the authority of someone who doesn't need volume to be heard — because when she spoke, the entire hall stopped breathing.
Mother.
Seated in the chair to my father's left — the only one that didn't face the arena, but was slightly turned toward the center, as though the spectacle she watched wasn't down below, but in here. The deep violet eyes, darker than any other member of the family, looked at my father with the tranquility of someone who knows exactly what that old man is plotting — and honestly, if there was anyone in the universe who knew, it was her.
The posture was motionless. Upright. With an elegance that wasn't rehearsed because it didn't need to be — it was the kind that comes from within, from a place no stylist reaches and no money buys. The face had the singular beauty that age hadn't taken and that the Oasis had only accentuated. And the presence — her presence was something that made even my father seem smaller when she decided to speak.
"Do you really think that boy has the capacity to beat Viego?"
The question came out perfect. Without doubt in the voice. Without concern. With the calm of someone who already knows the answer and is asking the question only so the others hear the answer out loud — while my father gently merely nodded.
"Mother… what's happening?"
The deep violet eyes descended upon me. And without wanting, without choosing, without any rational part of my mind participating in the decision, I found myself lowering my head. It was always like that. I could confront José. Could shout at my father. Could lead a military operation against Infernals without blinking.
But before my mother, I was a girl who lowered her eyes.
"Daughter…" Her voice softened — and when it softened, I knew something was coming that would leave me without an answer. "Trust your father. And let's enjoy the view." A minimal pause, calibrated, that I recognized as the prelude to something that would make me want to vanish. "After all, I have a few foals that would love to ally themselves with a strong companion." The corner of her mouth rose — a smile that was simultaneously gentle and absolutely devastating. "Who knows, if he's as handsome as your sister says… perhaps I can arrange him for you."
The entire hall went silent.
My father stopped looking at the arena to observe Mother. José stopped breathing. Carmen lowered the binocular that was already on its way back up again. Each chair, each elder, each body in that room contracted at the same time, as though an invisible wave had passed and reminded everyone of a truth that existed before them and that would exist after: when Mother spoke, the world listened.
Of course.
We are only what we are because of her.
My father was the strongest. José was the richest. The elders had their planets, their armies, their influences. But all of that existed because, decades ago, a woman who now sat in that chair, with the serenity of someone who didn't even seem to care about what happened down below, had accomplished something that no other human in history had ever accomplished.
The Unicorn Stable.
The unique construction blueprint. The rarest known. The item that transformed a family of lower nobles into a noble house that dominated planets. That gave each member, each generation, access to creatures no other human lineage could summon. That made our surname — not tradition, not money.
Her.
And now she was suggesting to arrange foals for the rookie as though she were offering a dowry — and the prize was my hand.
My face burned.
But when I looked at the arena down below — where two figures, one blond and one white-haired, were positioning themselves across from each other under the gaze of hundreds of youths who had stopped training to watch — I swallowed everything I wanted to say and did the only thing I could do.
I sat down.
And watched.