“So let me get this straight, you have been completely unaware that part of your government has been experimenting on other races in the neutral territories for the last hundred years?”
If the High General was angry, he wasn’t showing it. Aesop, the Prime Minister of the Cassids, was sweating. He was due to meet several other leaders soon, all of them probably much angrier than General Elkay. In hindsight, maybe Aesop should have picked a safer meeting location, as the penthouse of this Cassid skyscraper in Portalia City was rather high up and he wasn’t certain how thick the glass was. He had bodyguards, but that wasn’t the point.
“I… I have only been in power for nine of those one hundred years…” Aesop really didn’t have much of a defence. There were were things he should have known, but there were also things the Prime Minister didn’t need to know. “This was… well it was defence information. External Defence Strategies that I never required to know. I have Ministers for that very reason, to do all these things so I can worry about greater things…”
General Elkay rolled his eyes. “That is your excuse? You are claiming ignorance?”
“You were unaware of things as well when General Photeianos was in charge!” Aesop countered. “There were horrible things the former High General did that you were blissfully unaware of!”
“And when I discovered these things, I worked to solve them…” The General wasn’t having any of this. “Are you going to work towards solving these issues? It will be rather difficult to do so, now you have lost the trust of many other races. Is there anyone your government has not experimented on?”
Aesop sighed. “I know this looks bad…”
“LOOKS BAD?” A tentacle-haired Thanatian stormed in, a Vrekan trailing behind her. “YOU HAVE BEEN EXPERIMENTING ON MY KIN!”
“Please clam down, Queen Kindyna…” the Vrekan exclaimed. “We can not use more violence here, lest we fail our own sense of justice! Oh, hello Elkay.”
“Hello, King Ver…” the High General sighed as he pulled the Thanatian to one side. “Aesop, please, can you give us a moment?”
Feeling the huge wave of anger and hatred that was emanating from the furious Thanatian, Aesop did as he was told, stepping out of the room and back to his bodyguards.
“I am going to fucking murder that fucking-”
“Please, Queen Kindyna…” Ver gently put his hand on her shoulder. “I know you want to kill him. I understand. We all do. But then we would be as bad as he is.”
“Right now, if we killed that cunt and threw him off the top of this building, we would still not be as bad as that fucking Cassid!” Kindyna shouted. “Do you have any idea how many missing Thanatians there are?”
“But…” Ver hesitated. “But aren’t you Thanatians… you know… uh… Well you eat each other?”
Kindyna glared at the Vrekan King, but luckily the High General brought them back to the topic on hand.
“Lady Kindyna, King Ver has a very valid point. We cannot take a tooth for a tooth. If you want your revenge, it must go through legal means!” the General explained. “We need to investigate what is going on, work out how we are going to solve this problem and decide, together, what the Cassids must do to regain our trust.”
“What if they don’t want to…” Ver asked. “We have a lot of dead, a lot of missing. From what I have seen so far, you Rethans are nowhere near as affected as the Thanatians. And goodness knows how many Banikans have disappeared because of this…”
“That is why we need to not act rash…” General Elkay whispered. He didn’t want the Cassid Prime Minister overhearing them and acting rash as well. “We do not want to declare war here.”
“We already ARE at war!” Kindyna growled as she stormed out. “The Cassids have declared war on us all!”