Two days later, outside the palace's main gate.
Two royal guards in gilded plate armor barred the way.
The eyes beneath their visors were utterly impassive, as though they were two stone statues.
One extended a gauntleted hand, palm up, without a word.
Veylin obligingly unbuckled the sword at his waist. Hundreds of weapons of every kind already lay piled on the wooden rack.
"And the rest." The guard's voice emerged through his visor's grille.
Veylin paused, then removed his magical accessories.
"That will do. Please enter."
The bronze gates slowly opened to the creaking of a turning winch, revealing a deep, dim passage.
Behind him, the gates slammed shut, cutting off the midday sunlight.
The passage was broad and empty, its floor paved with red-cored obsidian from the Volcanic Archipelago. A halberd-bearing guard stood every ten paces.
Their breathing was faint and their heartbeats slow. Clearly, they had taken some kind of Alchemical Potion that suppressed their metabolism, allowing them to remain utterly silent through hours of standing guard.
Veylin walked on alone.
His footsteps echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling, monotonous, lonely, amplified without end.
Veylin knew this was an ancient method of psychological pressure-making those seeking an audience gradually feel the building's grandeur and solemnity during the long walk, until they felt as insignificant as ants.
After roughly ten minutes, a towering wooden door appeared ahead. Reliefs carved into it depicted generations of imperial emperors conquering lands in every direction. The twisted faces and severed limbs looked particularly grotesque in the dim firelight.
"The lord of the Haiti Duchy's wild offshore islands and Graysea Marsh-White Tower Count, Veylin Klein, seeks an audience!"
The court official drew out the final syllable, stressing "wild islands" and "marsh" to deliberately humiliate this lord from one of the Empire's minor subject states.