The Imperial Council meeting was usually an environment where Elara thrived. It was a space composed entirely of numbers, supply chains, and absolute authority.
Today, however, the machine was glitching.
Elara sat at the head of the long obsidian table, her posture perfectly vertical, her hands resting flat on the dark stone. Down the table, the Minister of Agriculture was droning on about the projected wheat yields from the newly restructured Southern farms.
"...and if we factor in the Prince Consort's debt-forgiveness protocol, we anticipate a surplus of twelve thousand bushels by early autumn..."
Elara's eyes were fixed on the Minister, but her auditory processors were struggling to parse the data.
.
