[Lauchenoiria]

Zargothrax was in chaos. While Hashemi had his own men strewn throughout the country’s institutions, who were well aware of the meaning of “Contingency Three”, the vast majority of the military, police, Royal Guard and other organisations were not quite on board. Hashemi-loyal commanders detained and/or shot those loyal to the Royal Family; while royalist commanders detained and/or shot those loyal to Hashemi.

The beginnings of civil war spread like this across the nation’s security forces, but currently leaving the general civilian population untouched. Zargothrax’s neo-feudal system had some benefits here, in that none of the nobility knew how to turn the situation to their advantage just yet, and therefore they all bed down in their own lands with their own vassals, protective and defensive.

Much to Jared Hashemi’s consternation, the majority of the Royal Family had escaped. When his forces went to detain Shapur, they were set upon by a horde of murderous cats. Four men were killed by the claw, and somehow all the cats escaped unscathed, and in their wake lay an empty chamber; Shapur nowhere to be seen.

The younger pair of princes, Jahangir and Amir, had been on the other side of the country with a military detachment; having been sent to investigate an alleged “horde of demons” that their father had seen in a vision. The young “General” and the “Royal Wizard” had been sent to either banish the demons with magic or the sword. The commander of said detachment was a royalist, and therefore the princes were safe.

Mina and Navid had been gone by the time his forces reached the attic. There had been no sign of them leaving the palace, and yet a hunt of every corner produced neither the princess nor the elderly legally-dead king. Their whereabouts became as unknown as those of young Princess Leila, or those of Prince Golshan, who vanished in the commotion.

The only royal that Hashemi managed to capture was the eldest son of Shapur, Prince Bahman. The 23-year-old had been found studying archaic Thraxian laws with earplugs in and his phone turned off, oblivious to the chaos that had broken out around him. He was quickly delivered to the palace dungeons, screaming bloody murder about Hashemi and his supporters.

“Why!?” he asked when Hashemi came to visit him in the dungeon.

“I believed you and your father would be useful puppets,” Hashemi replied calmly. “But you are much too interested; and your father is much too insane. Neither of you were open to influence, so I had to resort to more direct measures. I even started a whole cult to control your father, and all he did was make his own spinoff religion. Honestly, controlling royalty is much too difficult. A country is easier.”

Before Bahman could even parse what Hashemi had told him, the advisor had left him to his confinement once again.