‘He’s late. I hope he hasn’t run into trouble,’ Machaon thought.

Unfolding part of his domain, he blocked the gentle breeze disturbing the pond’s surface, forcing the water to still. Using the clear liquid as a mirror, he examined his face, noticing a few undue creases on his forehead, along with a couple stray strands of blond hair that had somehow escaped from his ponytail.

He forced himself to calm down, combing his hair into shape with his fingers, before tying it again. Despite being thousands of years old, Machaon barely appeared middle-aged, thanks to his grade. His dishevelled looks wouldn’t matter during the unimportant meeting he was about to have with his subordinate, but he couldn’t afford to get in the habit of showing his worries on his expression, or people might start suspecting things they shouldn’t.

Shaking his head, he strolled along the cobblestone path to kill the time until the Blue arrived.

The sprawling garden unfolded like a living tapestry, stretching for a few kilometres in every direction. Fragrant beds of lilies and tulips spilled over in splashes of colour, while ancient oaks and silver-barked birches rose like sentinels among the winding paths. Ivy clung stubbornly to carved stone arches, and moss softened the edges of marble benches where no one ever sat. Even the air carried a faint scent of blooming jasmine and damp earth, making the place feel more like a secluded paradise than a mere retreat.

More impressive still was the fact that this garden didn’t belong to House Asclepius as a whole, but rather to Machaon himself. He’d first created it about two hundred years ago, and had taken it upon himself to maintain every step of his property. He regularly pruned hedges until their lines were razor-straight, shaped cypresses into towering spires, scattered seeds into rich soil, and kept grass trimmed so evenly it resembled a velvet carpet. Blossoms were deadheaded before they could wither, and fallen leaves were swept away before they had a chance to decay. He even fed the fish in the pond personally.

People thought it was just another of his many hobbies – a way to pass the time when bored.

And… well… them thinking that was the whole point.

The truth was, Machaon despised this place. Despite how easy it was for him to force entire sections of the garden into shape with a single wave of his domain, the very idea of wasting even a minute of his day or a drop of his willpower to manicure a bunch of plants sickened him to no end. This was the kind of grunt work reserved for low-born commoners, not the leader of a Great House!

He’d grown tired decades ago of the exotic perfumes his occasional guests so generously praised. As for the incessant buzzing of the myriad bugs that had made his private kingdom their home – it only gave him the urge to burn the whole place down.

But he knew all of this was necessary.

He needed a place to himself. Somewhere no mortal on Remior would dare set foot without his explicit permission. A little corner far away from his family’s assets, and an excuse to spend entire afternoons here undisturbed. That was one of the reasons he’d chosen a location surrounded by a dense forest, full of Orange and Yellow beasts.

That alone wasn’t enough to stop everyone – obviously. Greens could still trek through the forest easily enough, and Blues could just fly over it, ignoring it entirely. That said, mages at such high grades were typically nobles who knew better than to get on Machaon’s bad side.

Even the dumb animals had instincts sharp enough to stay outside a White’s territory, though they did an amazing job keeping nosy or ignorant low-borns from approaching. As a bonus, Machaon enjoyed having an endless supply of Orange and Yellow cores readily available for his project.

‘Such a pity they’re no longer potent enough...’

Machaon noticed something on the horizon, flying towards him. A person, wearing House Asclepius’s colours – the very subordinate he’d been expecting. The Blue was sitting cross-legged atop a stone sphere, almost as large as a small hut. A few palm-sized holes pierced the top of the construct, to allow the creature inside it to breathe.

Machaon didn’t bother asking the man why he was late. He didn’t care, nor would the Blue even remember their conversation afterwards. The earth mage leapt off the construct, landing in front of him as softly as he could. He was probably afraid that Machaon would be angry if he damaged the cobblestone path or stepped on the grass. Everyone thought that, since that was the impression Machaon had intentionally given them over the years.

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In reality, he couldn’t care less, but he needed them all to believe that he did. That it was the garden itself that was important to him – not what he had hidden inside it.

The Blue lowered the construct, though he didn’t dare place it on the ground. He peeled off a few patches of stone near the middle, showing Machaon the sedated creature. It was some kind of armoured bear, about as large as an elephant. It looked alive and healthy, sleeping soundly as a Green core thrummed rhythmically in its sternum.

“I’ll take it from here,” Machaon said, forcing a gentle smile onto his face. It was a stupid little thing, but he’d learned a long time ago that treating his pawns with apparent kindness motivated them to work harder.

The Blue nodded, shattering the stone prison and launching the fragments far away into the distance, taking great care to ensure they’d land outside the garden. As for the beast, it didn’t move a centimetre. It hovered about a metre off the ground, held up solely by Machaon’s domain. The bulky animal felt no heavier than a feather against his potent willpower. Even if it woke from its deep slumber, it wouldn’t be able to so much as twitch inside the invisible cage. Not that it would dare to go on a rampage under a White’s gaze.

The Blue flew away without saying a word. He paused for a moment when he was a few hundred metres away, shuddering mid-flight. This was the normal reaction when an Oblivious Agent activated their bloodline, erasing their memories. Though that wasn’t quite what had happened.

Machaon didn’t even trust his most loyal subordinates when it came to his secret project. That was why he’d used his own bloodline – a unique variant of the Oblivious Agents’ that nobody but him had ever been born with. It allowed him to erase someone else’s memories, as long as they were a couple of grades lower than him. It hadn’t been that useful during his youth, but it had proven quite handy after his promotion to Violet and, later, White.

His bloodline normally required physical contact to work but using it on his Oblivious Agents was an exception, as they were several times more susceptible than the average person. By resonating with their own bloodline, Machaon could erase their memories from afar, and he could even control what he purged with far greater precision. That was one of the many reasons his predecessor had selected him to succeed him as the next patriarch of House Asclepius, all those years ago.

Regaining his bearings, the Blue resumed his flight, not even daring to glance back at the parcel he’d just delivered. Everything was in accordance with Machaon’s instructions – the ones he’d chosen to leave intact in his subordinate’s mind, at least.

Strictly speaking, this part of his plan wasn’t nearly as sensitive as everything else. Powerful mages often liked to experiment with Green beasts, for one reason or another. Some used the creatures as sparring partners for themselves or their subordinates, while others might want to test a new spell on them.

Either way, it wasn’t a crime to buy a couple of beasts from House Ypnos every week – it was barely a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of creatures the Great House sent into the Thirsty Valley regularly. Even if Machaon had commissioned the animals openly, nobody would have thought much of it. Still, the less the rest of Remior knew about his project, the lower the odds of something going wrong.

‘Two centuries of this nonsense. And I’ve barely made any progress. I’ll have to keep this charade up for another twenty thousand years, at least.’

He sighed. Machaon had known from the start that this would be a mind-numbingly long and extremely risky endeavour. If that wasn’t troublesome enough, he also understood that a single Green beast every couple of days would grow insufficient in the near future, forcing him to purchase them more frequently, complicating matters further.

‘It doesn’t matter. It’ll all be worth it if I succeed.’

Everyone on Remior looked up to him and the other Whites. Of course they did, given how rare it was for even a Yellow-born to reach this level. But for Machaon, it had never been enough.

Did they honestly expect him to live the rest of his life as a mortal, stuck at his current grade for tens of thousands of years, forever blocked by an invisible ceiling he could never overcome? To writhe in his bed every night, lamenting the singular promotion separating him from the apex of the Colour realm, and from everything that lay beyond it?

What a joke.

Machaon had decided a long time ago that he’d attain divinity, no matter what. Even if he had to burn his House to the ground in the process. Even if he had to bring all of Remior to ruin. The peasants, the lower Houses, his fellow Whites who called him “friend”, and even those spoiled Green-borns lording their birthright over everyone…

They could all go fuck themselves.

Once he was certain he was alone, Machaon flew to the green labyrinth in the middle of the garden, the unconscious monstrosity hovering beside him. Sparing a sliver of willpower, he carefully lifted a huge square tile from a patch of unassuming hedge formations, complete with a carpet of grass and several metres of dirt and rocks.

Moving the suspended ground aside, he revealed a hidden entrance to a vast underground complex – one that stretched as far as the garden did. He entered it with the beast in tow, sealing the path behind him.