The once-blue sky of Terria was now buried beneath ash and smoke. The shockwave of Larsen's sun had done far more than destroy the nodes. Even though the explosion had erupted thousands of meters up in the sky, its force had reached all the way down to the surface, flattening most of the buildings beneath the point of impact and leaving a massive crater in the mighty continent of Carcas, just east of the capital, Fansilia.
In the war room, Johan and his generals stared at the feed in front of them, swallowed by shock and disbelief. The Empire's mighty catacombs, the defense everyone had believed impossible to destroy, now hung across the orbit as a field of drifting debris, nothing left of them but remnants of their former glory. Mikhail slumped into his chair, shaken to his core, watching the footage replay on the screen again and again.
"How is this possible?" he murmured. "Those units… they're on par with the gods!"
"Compose yourself, Mikhail," Charles said sharply. "This is no time to lose our heads. We need to assess the damage and come up with a counterattack."
At that moment the doors of the war room hissed open, and Leonora walked in, holding her left shoulder with her right hand. Dust still clung to her uniform.
"Leonora!" David snapped, half rising from his seat.
"I'm alright," she answered quickly. "What's going on out there?"
Gandel pointed at the feed. "See for yourself."
Leonora stood in silence as the replays ran in front of her: the Tartarusios breaking through the nodes, the arrival of the Tarstenia, and the explosion that had shaken the whole capital. Then she turned to Johan, and what she saw unsettled her more than any of it. He was pale. The expression he always wore had changed completely. There was no darkness left in it, and no anger either. There was only panic, raw enough that the day's events had crushed straight through his facade and dragged his true face out into the light. It was the face of a desperate man, a man who had clung all his life to ideals that had only ever held up against far weaker enemies, and who had only just realized it.
"Your Highness," Leonora asked carefully, "are you alright?"
Johan turned toward her, and something snapped in his eyes. "You! Where were you until now?" he shouted. "Do my orders mean nothing to you? Or are you just a traitor working with them?"
Leonora froze, stunned by the accusation. "I'm offended that you would think so, Your Highness," she said, steadying her voice. "I was at Central. By the time the news reached me, it was already too late."
Johan rose from his throne and slammed both hands down on the table. "Then tell me, Leonora — why should I believe you? All of this happened because of that man. The man I should have killed long ago. The man you begged me to spare for just a little while. The man you swore you no longer had any feelings for." His voice rose with every sentence. "Tell me, was all of this your plan? Wasn't that the whole point? Buying time until they arrived?"
Before she could answer, the doors of the war room hissed open once again. This time they opened for none other than Alan himself. His footsteps echoed across the room as he walked up beside Leonora and laid a hand on her right shoulder.
"My Emperor," he said, "I think you should believe what General Leonora is telling you. I don't believe she has it in her to betray the Empire." He walked on past her toward the throne, and added lightly, almost to himself, "At the very least, not yet."
Johan looked at him as he reached his side. "And you? Where were you all this time?"
"Forgive me, my Emperor," Alan said, bowing his head. "Of all the days I could have fallen ill, it had to be today. I was lying sick in bed — until the commotion started, that is. I knew then that my condition mattered far less than the crisis we're facing now."
At that moment Artemas took shape to Johan's left, its body of blue light flowing into form beside the throne. "Your Highness," it said, "I have managed to recover and activate an old laser-field dome that has lain dormant around the capital. For now, we are safe from attacks from orbit. But I do not believe it will hold for long."
Johan dropped heavily back into his throne. "So what do we do now?" he asked, looking up at the projection.
"Given the current situation," Artemas said, "only one option remains, and it was the first one. I will deploy the three remaining God Units. However, since we are still at a numerical disadvantage, I suggest we deploy them over the capital and go on the offensive."
"What is that thing?" Leonora asked, staring at the projection as it drifted up to hover over the table.
"I see there are new faces present," Artemas said, turning toward her. "Allow me to introduce myself once more. I am Artemas, guardian of Terria."
Alan looked up at the glowing figure and smiled. "Well, Artemas, I like your plan. But I think I have a better idea." He folded his hands behind his back. "Instead of waiting for them to attack, why don't we give them a reason to show themselves? This way we kill two birds with one stone. We use the prisoner as bait to lure them in, and once they take the bait, we deal with the prisoner and the Tartarusios at the same time." His smile widened slightly. "It would be a fitting end, after all. They came here to die, because that is the rule of this universe. No one comes to Terria and lives to tell the tale."
"And how do you expect to execute the prisoner with the capital in this condition?" Leonora protested. "You'd be doing them a favor by turning Fansilia into a battlefield! Isn't the destruction out there enough? Or do you want to wipe the capital off the map?"
Johan rose from his throne once more, and his gaze settled on Leonora again. This time his voice was cold, and the panic had gone out of it.
"Well, Leonora," he said, "after all of this, I still have my doubts about you. But there is one way you can redeem yourself." He leaned forward over the table. "You will go out there and execute that criminal yourself, with your own hands."