The royal command pavilion in the center of the Three Crowns Valley was built from cloth-of-gold and crimson silk.
Inside, thirty gold candelabras cast shimmering light across carved ivory thrones and gold-trimmed campaign chests.
Behind the ivory thrones, the three supreme monarchs of the continent sat in numbed, trembling silence.
Emperor Castellan the Fourth of the Holy Solar Empire sat slumped in his seat, his face covered in white lime dust, his right hand still bandaged where the shattered handle of the Great Solar Blade had bruised his palm.
Grand Warlord Vrax of the Krell Blood Empire gripped his knees, his fangs clicking together in suppressed nervous dread.
Shadow-Archon Malanthir hovered inches above his ebony chair, his dark robes threadbare and his spectral shadow reduced to a faint grey smudge.
The silk tent flap was pulled aside.
Giles Croft walked into the royal pavilion. He carried a heavy brass clipboard, a twenty-inch duplex slide rule. A thick stack of blue-lined thick parchment audit sheets.
