[753 / 42 / 1]
Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">December 31, 1925</span>
<span class="mu-i">Donom Dei, Vitelia</span>
In the capital, the Holy City, in the grandest square of the heart of the city where statues of long dead emperors stood watch over the streets that converged here, the people of the nation flocked to see what many had whispered would be their hero. To listen, perhaps not even, to merely behold. People were still struggling to squeeze their way forth, though the man of the hour had already risen atop a grand platform.
The man who stood at the podium was no noble, no representative of the throne, but the people of the city gathered as though they had been summoned nevertheless. A swarthy, dark Sea Vitelian, so broad and tall he looked like a triumphal monument rather than a normal man, stood tall before leaning over the lectern, a microphone able to carry his voice to all, where in old times the crowd might lose the words over the vastness of the throng.
This man was Giovanno Leone, a veteran of the war against the Grossreich, a famous warrior who had won hundreds of battles fighting alongside the elite Arditi in the frontline without suffering any disfiguring wounds, a man of uniform and no shortage of medals. Instead of wearing such, however, he wore the colors and cloth of a common city fellow and no constables were close to protect him, rather, kept out at the edges where they nervously waited for a riot from this provocateur. More than a few in the high places of power had clamored for his arrest, but on top of being so physically imposing that few policemen dared to confront him with the threat of capture, others had shielded his ascent, seeing a rising star that they might use the light of for their own ambitions.
Leone was aware of both of them, and intended to satisfy neither. As far as he was concerned, the Kingdom of Vitelia would not endure beyond its final monarch, and what was born afterwards would finally surpass the First Empire, as it had yearned to do since that glorious time had come to a calamitous end.
The audience was vast enough that silence was impossible to call for. That didn’t bother Leone. He knew that, once he spoke, all would quiet themselves. No one else had come here to be heard, not in these times. <span class="mu-i">I am here, friends. Bonetto. Cesare. Too many others to mention. I am here because of you.</span>
<span class="mu-i">Donom Dei, Vitelia</span>
In the capital, the Holy City, in the grandest square of the heart of the city where statues of long dead emperors stood watch over the streets that converged here, the people of the nation flocked to see what many had whispered would be their hero. To listen, perhaps not even, to merely behold. People were still struggling to squeeze their way forth, though the man of the hour had already risen atop a grand platform.
The man who stood at the podium was no noble, no representative of the throne, but the people of the city gathered as though they had been summoned nevertheless. A swarthy, dark Sea Vitelian, so broad and tall he looked like a triumphal monument rather than a normal man, stood tall before leaning over the lectern, a microphone able to carry his voice to all, where in old times the crowd might lose the words over the vastness of the throng.
This man was Giovanno Leone, a veteran of the war against the Grossreich, a famous warrior who had won hundreds of battles fighting alongside the elite Arditi in the frontline without suffering any disfiguring wounds, a man of uniform and no shortage of medals. Instead of wearing such, however, he wore the colors and cloth of a common city fellow and no constables were close to protect him, rather, kept out at the edges where they nervously waited for a riot from this provocateur. More than a few in the high places of power had clamored for his arrest, but on top of being so physically imposing that few policemen dared to confront him with the threat of capture, others had shielded his ascent, seeing a rising star that they might use the light of for their own ambitions.
Leone was aware of both of them, and intended to satisfy neither. As far as he was concerned, the Kingdom of Vitelia would not endure beyond its final monarch, and what was born afterwards would finally surpass the First Empire, as it had yearned to do since that glorious time had come to a calamitous end.
The audience was vast enough that silence was impossible to call for. That didn’t bother Leone. He knew that, once he spoke, all would quiet themselves. No one else had come here to be heard, not in these times. <span class="mu-i">I am here, friends. Bonetto. Cesare. Too many others to mention. I am here because of you.</span>
