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You are Noel Tiberius di Hazaran, formerly a single-digit warrior, now the warrior-queen of your ancestral homeland. At the moment, you know something very important – something you suspect that the man standing before you knows as well.

“I doubt it came here on our account,” you conclude of the asarakam, the ‘dragon-kin’, you and your cohort just defeated. “It came here for you. And the fact that it knew to come here may mean that the rest of its kind know that you’re here.”

General Waverly, the man currently in command of the last major holdouts of Organization loyalists on your home continent, considers your perspective.

“And what can you offer us to remedy this… situation?”

“That depends,” you reply, crossing your arms as you delve deeper into a thorny, rather unpleasant conversation. “There’s still the issue of Lavinia.”

“Lavinia?” he repeats.

“The island off the coast of the region we call Aquitan,” you clarify. “You’ve been using the northern portion of the island as a staging area for years. I want you off of it.”

“You’re talking about more than simply a major military and research post,” the general insists with a frown. “That facility is among the few we still maintain on this side of the world.”

“This is not your side of the world,” you counter, “and you have no entitlement to any of it. Could you sleep soundly in your own home with my blade laid across your throat?”

“I suppose not,” the general admits, clearly thinking things over behind dark eyes. “But were we to ask you to abandon one-fifth of your nation’s territory, would you simply acquiesce?”

“Probably not,” you reply, “so it’s a good thing we’re not asking you to do that, isn’t it?”

“I see your reputation for difficulty is well-earned.”

“Again,” you growl, finding yourself increasingly short on patience, “this is not your land, but ours. Why would you expect that a queen would be anything less than ‘difficult’ in its defense?”

General Waverly pauses to think again, which is something of a good sign in your mind. Too many times you run into an officer who got to his position my making decisive moves, not necessarily well-informed or even fundamentally smart ones.

“I’ll rephrase,” the general eventually continues. “I understand that your ‘difficulty’ arises from your desire to protect your people, your nation, and even the world as you have always defined it.”
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