BOOOM!

  The concussive roar of the jet engine's afterburners violently butchered the silence of Carta International Airport. The seismic vibration ripped through the rain-slicked asphalt, punching a hole in the freezing air trapped beneath the suffocating storm clouds, and hurled the black iron bird back into the turbulent sky.

  Barely an hour had elapsed since his boots had touched the tarmac, yet William found himself once again pinned against the supple leather of his seat by crushing G-forces as the aircraft executed a steep, aggressive ascent.

  In the cockpit, the pilot was still sweating cold blood.

  Moments ago, William’s abrupt, entirely deranged directive had nearly caused the decorated aviator to choke on his own saliva. Rather than requisitioning a transfer chopper to Ironseat, as dictated by standard royal protocol, William had casually tossed two cans of iced coffee into the co-pilot's lap and issued a singular, lunatic command:

  "Top off the reserves. We are flying West. To the Goldenpalm Desert. Coordinates: Greatpillow, the Behemoth Fortress of Rams Ghandarvya."

  William stared out the reinforced viewport. The imposing silhouette of the Kal Kalagh tower and the chaotic sprawl of the capital, Crownbelt, were being rapidly swallowed by the fog, fading to insignificance behind the aircraft's wings.

  He cracked the seal on one of the coffees he had violently procured from the vending machine—krak!—and downed a heavy swig of the bitter, freezing black liquid.

  A crooked, mocking smile carved itself onto his face.

  "A rather excessive rationale, wouldn't you say?" he mused inwardly, scoffing at the manufactured, heroic rhetoric he had just concocted within his own skull. "A Crown Prince must stand at the vanguard of his realm when the tempest of the enemy breaks upon its shores."

  William gave a short, derisive snort. It sounded agonizingly noble, as if he were some pristine, holy paladin ripped from the pages of a children's fable.

  Yet, beneath his thick armor of cynicism, the strategic logic was unassailable. He had just hawked spit into the face of the Salomos President and openly invited the entire globe to total war upon the floor of the UN assembly. If that international coalition possessed the spine to actually mobilize their military armadas in retaliation for his "madness," then the very first territory to suffer the hammer blow on the western frontier would be the endless dunes commanded by House Ghandarvya.

  "I am the architect of the chaos at the UN," William murmured softly, his gaze drilling westward. "Therefore, it is I who shall stand there when the first artillery shell is fired."

  However, beneath this abrupt resurgence of martial duty, lurked a secondary, infinitely darker motive that allowed a low chuckle to slip past his lips.

  "Hehehe..."

  William visualized the absolute anarchy currently gripping the heart of the capital.

  There, deep within the belly of Ironseat, amidst the stifling grandeur of the Ivory Bone Hall, thousands of political elites, spineless ministers, and sycophantic nobles had undoubtedly congregated. They were surely awaiting his arrival with bated breath, actively preparing to audit him, demanding rationalizations, or perhaps violently petitioning the King to strip him of his titles for single-handedly annihilating Carta's diplomatic standing.

  And standing dead center within that mob of vultures would be Theodore Rhegalia.

  William could vividly picture that ancient visage, suffocated by wrinkles and reeking of frankincense. Theodore had unquestionably drafted a lengthy, venomous diatribe designed to corner him. The ancient serpent had meticulously constructed the perfect theatrical stage within the Ivory Bone Hall to publicly humiliate William before King George.

  You must be drowning in disappointment, you Ancient Fossil, William thought, his eyes glinting with a vicious, triumphant light.

  Theodore was likely glaring at the heavy double doors of the Hall, desperately waiting for them to open. When the intelligence network finally relayed that the Prince’s jet had violently banked toward the western border instead of returning to the palace, Theodore would undoubtedly suffer an apoplectic fit, cursing him to the deepest hells.

  "He will likely preach to the assembled aristocracy that I am a craven coward. That I fled in abject terror, lacking the spine to manifest and answer for my transgressions before the King after detonating the geopolitical landscape," William spoke directly to his own phantom reflection in the glass.

  His smile distended, baring his teeth in a lethal, predatory sneer.

  "Let the old dog bark. Let them all wallow in the delusion that I am hiding."

  William leaned back into the leather, thoroughly intoxicating himself on the sensation of absolute control. He was not running. He was willingly marching straight into the muzzle of the cannon. If Theodore wished to play his tedious games of political chess within the insulated safety of the palace walls, so be it. William infinitely preferred to play a game of steel roulette on the bleeding edge of the vanguard.

  "Brace yourself, Rams Ghandarvya," William whispered to the sprawling blanket of clouds carrying his jet toward the badlands. "Your deranged Prince is en route to collect on your fealty."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  William swirled the coffee can in his hand, feeling the icy liquid slosh heavily against the aluminum. His gaze pierced the thick glass of the viewport, staring out over the sprawling carpet of white clouds that was slowly beginning to thin, giving way to visions of the endless, golden ocean of sand that awaited him at the western terminus.

  "I am eager to behold it..." he murmured softly, that crooked, knowing smile returning to his exhausted features. "I genuinely wish to witness exactly how unfathomable, bottomless wealth is transmuted into bleeding-edge combat artillery."

  House Ghandarvya was the walking vault of the Kingdom of Carta. The sovereign monopolists of 'white gold,' possessing a treasury that violently defied all economic logic. While the UN coalition nations—the so-called United Nations Forces—were frantically mobilizing their war machines to pulverize the western border, William found himself profoundly amused, speculating on what breed of apocalyptic defense grid had been erected at Greatpillow.

  "Will Rams have the foresight to coat every single armor-piercing round in spun sugar?" William chuckled quietly to himself within the sound-dampened cabin. "Perhaps it will render the projectiles infinitely sharper and more delightfully sticky as they shred through the vaunted steel plating of the Western coalition? Hahaha..."

  His laughter was a low, rolling vibration. A dry sound, yet harboring an astronomical level of anticipation. Amidst a global crisis actively arming itself to detonate, pitch-black humor was the singular remaining anchor to his sanity.

  He leaned his head back, his mind drifting across the continent. The mental portrait of Rams Ghandarvya’s face stamped itself vividly against the back of his eyelids.

  To the overwhelming majority of the aristocracy infesting the Ivory Bone Hall, to Theodore Rhegalia and the rigid, archaic ministers, Rams perpetually presented himself as a flamboyantly loud, endlessly lackadaisical, and marginally comical figure. A boisterous duke who draped himself in overly ostentatious silks, a man who seemingly cared more for the volatile fluctuations of commodity stocks and decadent, opium-soaked galas within his oasis than the tedious, gritty realities of military tactics.

  Carta’s elite uniformly regarded Rams as an incredibly fortunate 'cash cow'; a malleable, hedonistic, and fundamentally dim-witted pawn.

  But William possessed the unadulterated truth. He knew exactly what game the sovereign of the sands was playing.

  "Come now, Rams... show them the fangs," William whispered, his gaze sharpening to a lethal point as he visualized their impending reunion merely hours away. "It is painfully obvious you are neither easily manipulated nor remotely as idiotic as the facade you painstakingly project for the Dukes and the Carta elite."

  William meticulously archived the microscopic details that everyone else entirely missed when engaging with Rams. Behind the booming, crisp laughter and the endlessly flapping mouth, Rams’s brain operated as a ruthless supercomputer, continuously calculating the absolute profit-and-loss margins of every single soul drawing breath in his vicinity.

  "Those small, porcine eyes of yours, Rams..." William continued, his index finger rapping a metronomic beat against the armrest, perfectly synced with his heart rate. "...they always narrow into slits whenever you throw your head back in uproarious laughter. But dwelling just behind those narrow slits... I am the only man alive who recognizes the sheer, abyssal depth of the cunning and lethal intellect hiding there."

  Rams Ghandarvya was no mere spoiled sugar merchant. He was a lethally efficient apex predator who had brilliantly camouflaged himself as a court jester, actively encouraging his adversaries to deeply underestimate him until they realized, far too late, they had marched willingly into quicksand.

  And as the unified armies of the globe prepared to batter down Carta's western gates, William was ravenously anticipating the masterpiece of systematic butchery the tyrant of the sands was about to orchestrate.

  "Brew the coffee, Rams," William thought, his eyes flashing as he locked onto the western horizon. "Your Prince arrives to observe the theater."

  BAM!

  A violent jolt slammed into the aircraft’s fuselage, violently tearing William from his subconscious drift. His body was thrown aggressively forward before the reinforced harness snapped him back into the heavy leather seat.

  "No... let them burn to ash..." he mumbled hoarsely.

  His breaths came in ragged, hunting gasps. He was delirious, temporarily ensnared within the fragmented shrapnel of random nightmares—the shattering of the UN assembly hall windows, the echoing, manic laughter of Randa Washilawatt, and the suffocating stench of Theodore’s frankincense wrapping like a garrote around his throat.

  His lucidity returned in fractured waves, forcibly dragged back to reality by the deafening, guttural roar of the engine's thrust reversers fighting to decelerate the jet upon the tarmac. William blinked rapidly, his eyes feeling heavy, gritty, and raw. A cold sweat beaded across his forehead.

  A blinding, white-gold illumination aggressively pierced the narrow gaps of the cabin window shades. The oppressive, sullen gray overcast and the bone-chilling gales of Crownbelt had been entirely eradicated, usurped by a midday sun that mercilessly scorched the earth below.

  Ding-dong.

  A brief burst of static severed the ringing in William’s ears. The pilot's voice floated from the cabin intercom. The tone was exceedingly smooth and deeply deferential, yet it harbored an undeniable undercurrent of profound relief at having successfully delivered this deranged prince to the ground in one piece.

  "Your Highness," the pilot announced. "We have touched down at Greatpillow Airbase."

  William exhaled a long, heavy breath, dragging both palms roughly down his face in a violent attempt to scour the fog from his brain. He disengaged his harness with a sharp click.

  "Duke Ghandarvya awaits you on the tarmac, Your Highness," the pilot added.

  Upon hearing the name, the leaden exhaustion buried deep within William’s bones seemingly evaporated. The corners of his parched lips curled upward, reforging that razor-thin sneer. He rolled his stiff neck until it emitted a dull, satisfying crack, then leaned heavily toward the oval viewport beside him.

  The superheated atmosphere outside generated intense, rippling mirages, violently distorting the landscape, making the world appear as though it were submerged beneath boiling water.

  Looming behind that severe thermal distortion stood Greatpillow. A gargantuan desert fortress that resembled an ironclad, concrete mountain far more than any traditional castle. The heavy muzzles of anti-air artillery batteries protruded aggressively from its ramparts, utterly silent yet radiating lethal intent.

  However, William’s eyes did not seek the fortifications. His gaze locked onto the VIP tarmac, positioned directly beneath the aircraft's descending gangway.

  Anchored dead center amidst a phalanx of elite desert infantry—who stood as rigidly as fully armed, petrified statues—was a singular figure who stood out with aggressive, jarring contrast. A figure who demonstrated absolute apathy toward military protocol, and who seemingly treated the blistering desert furnace as his own exclusive, personal stage.

  The Sovereign of Sugar.

  The Overlord of the Goldenpalm Desert.

  A Duke of the West.

  Rams Ghandarvya.