Five days.
Five days in Tianci.
Sophia Elise the Eighth wakes up on her floor bed in a cold sweat.
Bloodshot eyes wide open, a body shaking uncontrollably. Her mind swirls in blank darkness, her heart pounding her ears like the rhythmic march of soldiers to a drumbeat. Everything blurry as her vision tries to focus on the swirling, swimming colors that seemed to pulsate across the beautifully carved ceiling of plaster.
Voices calling to her in some great aether, yet so distant she couldn’t make out their words or intentions. A drone growing louder, louder; not stopping, a mind screaming at her dulled senses for… something.
She gags, bile in her throat.
The young woman shoots up from her mess of sheets and discarded clothing, strands of long, clumped hair falling to cover her face. Doubling over, coughing; choking on her own spittle. Sophia Elise is sickened by the act, and even more so as the room begins to spin clockwise at an uncontrollable rate.
Stumbling, in her bed clothes, out of her room and to the bathroom steps away. Hands fumbling for door handles, bare feet onto the tile floor; arms grasping the bowl of the toilet, her stomach mercilessly dry heaving into the basin.
As one the sitting thought processes, awoken far earlier than their allotted shifts, all complain to the engineering crews. An emergency alert, this early?! What’s wrong this time…
Through the mirror Sophia could see how terrible she looked.
Hair matted together in an unbrushed oily mess, eyes bloodshot from almost ten minutes of heaving forth nothing but spittle and stomach acid -- a body still shaking as she now grips the basin of the sink.
The light coming from the window hitting her pale skin blinds her, a headache only getting worse as she tries to focus on the blurriness of what was supposed to be her face.
Oh, there’s something wrong alright. One of the thought processes checks the reports arriving from across the bodily systems. Oh goodness this isn’t good…
Maybe food will fix this, a husband’s cooking is the cure all. Sophia thinks to herself as she barely manages to stumble back to her room, tossing through the various instruments of clothing (both used and unused) to put together some strange chimera of the reichland city-girl look.
Oh well.
The Impericutta was surprisingly absent from her door this morning, its ceramic armored presence elsewhere as Sophia stumbles through the Western Wing like an afternoon drunk. With each step forward she seemed to be getting further and further from the huge oak doors, and with each extra blink the room seemed to be slowly tilting clockwise like some poor carnival ride. A shocking surprise as her hands finally, after what felt like hours of travel, catch a doorknob.
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She must’ve looked much worse than she felt, as when she finally strode into the living room literally the entire house’s occupants stopped to stare at her like conspirators caught in the act.
Woah I’m up early. Sophia notes to herself, the huge grandfather clock on the wall reading out a balmy 6:96am.
In three days Sophia has only emerged from her den for the hours surrounding lunch and dinner; leaving herself to literally rot away thirty hours of her life in this mansion without doing anything other than rummaging through her own luggage and exploring the cavernous dressers filled with clothing.
Boredom was, inevitably, starting to eat at her mind but even worse was her body’s sickness that had been growing ever so subtly until its full blown symptoms now.
“...Good morning.” The Guardswoman breaks the now ongoing minute long silence, pausing to add a formal title. “Your Highness…?”
Somehow her tone felt more condescending than anything, but Sophia could care less.
Wait, you could care less? Her internal monologue pauses slightly at the lack of reaction from the main body of consciousness.
Sophia needed to sit down somewhere, and that somewhere needed to be now. A graceful body desperately stumbles towards one of the living room’s lavishly padded sofas, a hand outstretched before she very ungraciously slams onto what was a wonderfully designed sitting seat of reflective silk and soft cotton.
The Guardswoman’s voice sounds like a million miles away, a visually observed note pointed towards Sophia’s husband. “Looks like the *wife’s* looking a little pale this morning… ”
I don’t like this. One of the thoughts ominously sweats. The last time we had these readouts…
The harsh, inhuman voice of the Impericutta legionary reaches out, the ceramic armored demon almost at point blank to the young woman who was now very much so lying down on the article of furniture. “Is everything in working order?”
Yes… Sophia tries to vocalize the lie, but instead it comes out with a much weaker voice. “I’m not certain…”
Gears turn behind the Legionary’s faceplate, before the Guardswoman is behind it in an instant with a glass of clear fluid. “Hey, feed her some water… Zai’s order.”
Oh Zai, that husband of yours. The thought process wags towards Sophia. How could you act this way in front of your own husband? So shameful, not demure.
Sophia doesn’t even react to that realization, instead just groaning slightly as the Legionary hands her the glass of warm water.
And as her parched lips meet the surface of the glass she could tell that it wasn’t refreshing in the slightest, but it was hydrating enough that Sophia could now make some barely sentient thought from the realm of nervous impulse and barely alive body.
Oh what’s happening to me now?
How as she turned her head towards the room and tried to understand the faces of the two guardians staring at her their expressions simply began to swirl (the Impericutta’s faceplate was not helping this at all), and how as she tried to raise herself from her lounging position her body weakly refused.
Code Ten Emergency. The thought processes all conclude from the readouts.
Sophia Elise the Eighth was dying.
