Sovereign

"The Lieplatz Provisional Council falls apart! After significant attempts at democratic reforms were pursued by the Council's Grand Reform Coalition', the situation came to a head after the Grand Reform Coalition deemed the universal banning of magic 'a violation of human rights'. A previously unknown character, General Richstoff, and what appears to be his clique took control after another coup against the LPC, turning the revolutionary government into another military junta. Questions are now rising about the divisions in the global male rights movement. The once monolithic movement is becoming clearly divided between two factions."

- Geopol News

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Kingdom of Lieplatz

Duchy of Moldheim

City of Rumpaltz

The streets of the City of Rumpaltz were painfully silent today. Once again, the Military Junta instituted another sequence of "sweeping" crackdowns on the city's inhabitants.

For two days, the Lieplatzan Revolutionary Army raided each and every establishment in the city to rid it all of the wands and other arcane tools that existed inside. At this point, the civilian populace could only watch as their new government turned more and more paranoid of counter-revolutionary sentiments.

"Have we found then?"

"Not yet."

Marie Wittfield found herself now in the northern neighborhood of Orland. The cold winter seeped through the streets that night, yet she could not feel less in place.

The game was on. The OIA and the Lieplatzan Secret Police were collaborating to eliminate the secret counter-revolutionary plot budding in the Duchy of Moldheim, which bordered the Free Confederation of Westlauren down south (and thus Orland).

Thus, it was her, and the Royal Investigation Unit's time to blunt this attempt of the Putschists to dismember their potential allies in the north. After all, with the second coup in Lieplatz, which deposed the original democratic revolutionary government created after the abdication of Queen Wesley Von Reintz, she and the RIU expected that Lieplatz would soon join the Provisional Government's war in the south.

Strange. Normally, the OIA would go guns blazing in these raids. I wonder why they haven't started it yet.

She was starting to love fighting the OIA. With the RIU becoming Her Majesty's de-facto intelligence agency, Marie was determined to completely dismantle and replace the traitorous OIA in their role of defending Orland and the Royal Family in the dark.

She felt like she was playing a game of cards with Director Alfonso Bluch himself. Each day, the RIU and the OIA’s operatives battled each other for information, assets, and in this case, skirmishes for important new factions.

The last time, the two skirmished covertly to secure the Lieplatzan Royal Family. Naturally, the RIU and the remnants of the Lieplatzan Royal Guard won, but the OIA came close. Unfortunately, their lack of magic was a death sentence, and their operatives had to abort the assault after significant casualties.

It was the truth of almost every dance that she and her operatives had with the OIA. Even with the usual information disadvantage that the RIU suffered, no OIA operative had the capability to duel them in the dark. When a fight broke out, it would almost always take down a platoon or two of the OIA’s special strike forces.

And especially for the OIA’s lone operators. Once she found them and tracked them, they would rarely last long, except when she wanted them to last long enough to be useful.

But they’re evolving in their tactics. Learning from each of our engagements. All this violence is a pity, but it’s hard to deny how exciting it is. Oh, I should truly refrain from joining these field operations at times. I’m starting to sound like some bloodthirsty maniac.

She looked down at her hooded operative, Dame Jane Kurfurst. She was from the Royal Guard too, until she joined the RIU in a personal quest to “hunt for the Queen's killers”. Unfortunately for her, and unfortunately for Marie, this was their quest for now. But, one day, she vowed. They’d find who exactly ordered the death of their previous Queen.

“I see. Director, may I?”

“Please, show it to me.”

The two swept through the rooftops of Reiplatz, hidden by the darkness and their magic. They almost flew as they hopped from rooftops to rooftops, keeping tabs on their surroundings. Marie herself kept her halo as shrouded as possible, so as to not reveal themselves.

The two stopped on the rooftop of a bookstore that overlooked a checkpoint of the Junta. Down below, armed troops gathered in a silent business, mingling amongst themselves in the silent night, while the rest ran patrols or checked the occasional vehicle that passed through the checkpoint.

“Our informants told us that they would pass through here,” Jane whispered to Marie.

“How reliable are they?”

“Defectors from the Lieplatzan Army. They believe that the Orlish General took away their ‘righteous revolution’ from them. Their infighting is amusing, but it is something we can easily use.”

General Paul Richstoff wasn’t a Lieplatzan. He was Orlish. The Lieplatzan people were practically the same blood as the Orlish people. The only difference was that Lieplatz wasn’t subjugated a thousand years ago by the Lorathian Imperium, which was why the common Orlish names were a mix of Lorathian first names, and Lieplatzan last names.

It didn’t surprise Marie. Of course, these people wouldn’t be that loyal to some foreign-born who hijacked their revolution. Unlike the Provisional Government down south, the Lieplatz Provisional Council actually believed in some semblance of democracy. In fact, half of the council were women, even though it was the Lieplatzan Military and the Lieplatzan Liberty Front, which was the equivalent of the ORP in Lieplatz, that deposed the previous Queen.

Of course, she still found the idea of men deposing a rightful monarch mandated by the Goddess herself as distasteful. But at the very least, the Lieplatz Provisional Council steered Lieplatz to something decently palatable.

Until General Paul Richstoff couped them last week.

Men, coups after coups. Is this their style now? Their way of achieving change and rights? Violence against the establishment using the Armed Forces that our Kingdoms entrusted to them?

Traitors, that was all she could say. If they wanted reforms, she believed they must have asked for it peacefully. Certainly, women would never withhold such things from them. Of course, while they had technically done that for centuries, times changed. The willingness of the UOP for reforms showed that. Amelie showed that.

And Marie knew that most of her peers believed, or somewhat agreed on giving men rights. There was no necessity for any of this. To plunge the world into senseless violence after the previous one.

And the worst part about all of this is that you men are the ones suffering the most.

“So they want to purge the supply caches?” Marie asked, and Jane nodded.

“Indeed. Without the secret supply caches, Queen Wesley’s forces wouldn’t be able to launch their first attacks. So they wanted those things gone. Immediately.”

“So their target isn’t the Duchess? It’s the supplies?”

“Both.”

“I see…”

How devious. She expected that they merely wanted to assassinate the Duchess of Moldheim, who was secretly the main organizer of the counter-revolutionary forces in Moldheim. Purging of supply caches meant that they weren’t just purging supplies for the counter-revolution however. They were purging the city’s supplies of every arcane wares.

And to add to that, they were also purging specialized libraries and bookstores that held spellbooks. Even for the civilian market.

But, she didn’t have the capacity to stop that. The current curfew and the extensive military patrols showed clearly that only a full army could stop the crackdowns on magic in this city. But, she could stop their plans to kill the Duchess. And their plans to remove the supplies that the Royalist rebels needed.

A convoy stopped in front of the checkpoint. It was a bunch of unmarked armored vehicles, flanked by Lieplatzan HMLVs. The soldiers below stopped the convoy, and Marie watched as an officer talked to someone in the lead vehicle. With a nod, he gave them the gesture to proceed.

“We need to move.” She declared as the two disappeared from the rooftop.

Down below, an OIA agent in one of the unmarked vehicles stared in her previous direction. His black glasses hid the expression in his eyes, but his tired sigh clearly showed that he saw them.

+++

“They’re here.”

“I know.”

“We expected it.”

“Of course, the Queen’s demonesses would follow us everywhere.”

Agent Fifteen, better known as “Pen” calmly puffed a smoke at the open side windows of their SUV. Beside him, his subordinate, Agent Twelve, or “Paper” shook his head disappointedly. It seemed like the scattered reports were true. The Demoness of Wittfield was here.

In the deep secret facilities of the OIA, her name would be mentioned time and time again in hushed discussions of angered officers and agents. Many cursed her for foiling plot after plot, operation after operation, and other activities conducted by the OIA. Her enigmatic unit had also wreaked havoc on the multitudes of OIA cells and task forces that operated in Royalist territory, leading to casualties mounting in the high hundreds.

But while the OIA suffered blow after blow, her Unit didn’t have the massive manpower and infrastructure that the OIA boasted. Each time she eliminated a cell or stopped an operation, three more cells would appear somewhere, and at least five other operations would be launched.

She might stop an assassination here, or a raid here, or a sabotage here, but if they were launching these missions all across Orland beyond the dozens a day, she wouldn’t be able to fight them all off.

But “Pen” scoffed at it.

Quantity over quality. Regardless of their downplaying, she is playing us like fools. Director Bluch was right. She might not stop everything, but she will stop the most critical operations. She must be stopped.

And this was one of those. This operation was beyond important. The Provisional Government was already tempting General Richstoff to join them in their “war against the matriarchy” in Orland. Lieplatz would supply another massive frontline on the border for the Provisional Government, which would divert countless Royalist forces off the frontlines should they join, which would be extremely crucial.

More importantly, were Moldheim’s eastern seaports, which the Orlish Navy, as part of the Ivory Alliance Defense Treaty, originally used as naval bases before the coup against Queen Wesley. Right now, the Provisional Government was mostly landlocked, unless they captured Halia or Rebenslof, which was beyond a difficult task. So far, the ONS Matriarch and the Provisional Government’s naval fleets operated with whatever supplies they had, or whatever they could scrounge up from their raids in the North Allas Ocean.

Which was why they needed Lieplatz. And that won’t happen if a civil war broke out in the country. Much less if it happened in the extremely strategic Duchy of Moldheim. But that was why they would cut the head of the snake today before she bites.

One raid. One counter-revolution stopped.

Just as Director Alfonso Bluch described.

“Well, that’s why we prepared contingencies for this,” Pen said to his partner.

“Our boys are going to get screwed again.”

“Casualties would happen. Remember the words of the President.”

“It is inevitable.”

“Indeed.”

He looked back up at the towering apartments of the streets that their convoys passed. For a while, it was eerily silent, until they passed through what appeared to be a school. It was an all-girls school, and there were troops outside the gates, which were opened widely. Inside the entrance itself were multiple trucks of the Lieplatz military, parked on the side.

He didn’t need to look further to know that they were being raided. And that the school’s arcane items and assets were being confiscated.

To him, somehow, it was a beautiful sight.

They’re getting what they deserve.

“But can we counter her?” His partner asked again.

“We will find out if our contingency plans work.”

“If it doesn’t?”

“It must, or else, the Demoness won’t let us see the sun tomorrow.”