Gate: Thus the Reich Empire Fought There, Revised

Chapter 8: Zorzal el Caesar

"Why have the gods forsaken me?" Emperor Zorzal groaned.

The golden laurel reef sat atop his light blonde hair for less than a week, and yet it weighed down on him like a boulder. How had his father endured its burden for so long? The bickering of several dozen different voices shouting over each other around him. With a deep breath, Zorzal opened his eyes once more and took in the vast white chamber around him.

He sat atop a furnished throne with the Imperial standard behind him, flanked by a squad of Praetorian guards. Beneath him sat rows of middle-aged to elderly men in rich white togas and colorful robes draped around them. The various members of the Imperial Senate cried out until their words became nothing but noise to Zorzal.

"We must raise more legions at once and drive them back through the gate!"

"Are you mad? We must make them our vassals and incorporate their might into the empire through a political alliance!"

"How can you talk about them when orcs are prowling on the borders of my region!"

A small part of him wished he could send all of the senators into the fields as farmhands so they might be of some use to him and the people. Just then, a warm hand with a wedding ring on it took his and held it firm. Zorzal turned to the throne beside him and saw her. A young woman with fair skin, bright rose eyes, and long snow-white hair comforted him with her presence. A yellow dress complimented her beautiful figure but did not conceal the pair of white rabbit ears sticking from her head, marking her as a demi-human.

"Want me to slit their throats?" She whispered into his ear and earned a chuckle from the Emperor.

"Perhaps, but now, when you're holding Claudia."

Zorzal reached down and stroked the soft cheek of a baby girl who lay fast asleep, wrapped in a blanket in the Empress's arms. Hints of light blonde hair grew from her head, matching Zorzal's, and she breathed peacefully into his hand. Watching her made the Emperor forget about his troubles.

"She's beautiful, just like her mother."

Zorzal kissed the woman's cheek, but she puffed up her cheeks and muttered. "Yeah, but can't one of our kids be demi-human like me?" She grumbled and stroked her daughter's heads as if wishing a pair of bunny ears were there.

"Afraid that's not how it works, Tyuule."

"Humph, well, we're going to keep having kids until I have one that takes more after me."

"Your terms are acceptable." Zorzal chuckled.

More shouts from the senators made Claudia stir, and the baby started to cry. Tyuule held her closer and gently rocked the baby while trying to assure her she was ok and not to cry. A fire lit inside Zorzal. Unable to contain it, he stood up and bore down upon the senators with his fiery red eyes. Zorzal towered over the politicians and his own guards. He stood six foot three inches, an unnatural height for his people, with broad shoulders to match.

"Enough, my daughter is trying to sleep." Despite only reaching twenty-eight years of age, Zorzal's voice boomed with authority over the older men who went as silent as a crypt before him. "Good, now that we are in order, we can handle this crisis like civilized men. Senator Cassius, you may continue."

"Thank you, your majesty." A gray-haired man with a pot belly protruding from his toga stood up and cleared his throat.

"We should approach further conflict with these invaders cautiously. If the survivors of Alnus Hill are to be believed, they possess strange magic and technology of a quality we cannot match in our current position-"