Claud Pyre Septis was a mystery to the court.
A man utterly unknown yet suddenly indispensable. His position, though never officially named, was made permanent so long as Her Majesty deemed him necessary. And what exactly he was… no one knew. No one but the Queen and Armont Halfnum, her shadowy steward of secrets.
What the nobles did know was that Claud Pyre Septis was a meddler. His opinions were always contrary, often inflammatory, and never kept to himself. The Queen—uncharacteristically—did nothing to silence him. She seemed to invite his opposition.
To the traditionalist nobility, Septis was an aberration. They had long conducted their affairs hand in hand with the Church, secure in the old order where theology and bloodlines governed all. Politics was sacred, insular. Outsiders had no place. But Septis was the exception.
With him came the Wiley Institute—a sprawling research and development body founded on radical principles. The Institute established patent offices, published provocative research, and produced standardized educational materials that swept across the kingdom, challenging centuries of doctrine.
With Septis came challenges—to the Church, to the sacred bloodline, to every principle upon which the nobility had built their power. He sat in on council meetings, dissecting policies like cadavers. He scrutinized every claim, demanded evidence, and, most offensively, fact-checked royal decrees in real time.
To many of the nobles, Septis was an insult. A walking blasphemy. A mockery of tradition as old as the throne itself.
But the truth, whispered only in guarded corners, was far more dire.
Dr. Septis was a card better left unplayed.
Her Majesty had summoned his being—not from foreign lands or lost bloodlines—but from something broken, something beyond repair. And now he was growing like a cancer, even in ways she could no longer control. Since his arrival, his scientific achievements alone had elevated him to a position more dangerous than any of the Traitorous Eight.
Septis, for all his brilliance, was fundamentally broken. A man devoid of moral compass. His discoveries were not tempered by ethics, and often made at terrible human cost. His first major achievement—the disproof of Victor's critical race theory, which had for generations given a thin veil of legitimacy to scientific racism—was accomplished through grotesque means. Septis had forcibly crossbred humans of different races, using hundreds of test subjects. Many did not survive. Those who did were left… altered.
And his second great legacy was even more troubling: the Cult of Science.
Once the public learned of him, hysteria followed. A strange fervor gripped the masses. Those who embraced his cold rationalism did so to the point of zealotry. They mutilated their own bodies in symbolic rejection of pleasure and sentiment. They renounced art, faith, and family in pursuit of "pure knowledge." These followers, known as the Sorceri, were scientists in the loosest and most terrifying sense—experimenting without restriction, pursuing truth without care for consequence.
The Queen, cornered by her own creation, gave the only concession the court would accept: she declared that Septis would take these zealots as lab technicians, subsuming them into the Wiley Institute. By extension, they became servants of the Crown.
But everyone knew the truth. They served him.