Damn those filthy avian savages. How did they break into my Fangs?

He knew it was the Queen’s fault, but how?

And damn the soldiers. Lowborn scum, not fit to be called “cyran.”

How does a flock of half-starved, untrained street fowl get past a whole cohort of heavily armed guards? Traitors and fools, all.

And most of all, damn that Vorpei for giving him the worst Fangs in her fleet. No matter how long he let them soak in the sunlight, they were always thirsty for more. What was the point of an airship that couldn’t stay in the air?

It was almost like she’d set him up. Like she wanted him to fail so she could swoop in and claim his prize.

Which means that once again, I am the only one capable of completing this simple task.

Must I do everything myself?

Well, it is my destiny.

How fitting that he and he alone must be the catalyst and the decider.

High Magistrate Floratian Locutus Secaius put his hands on the tower’s parapet, feeling the stone’s chill seep into his scales. He inhaled the wind, the fumes of burning timbers, and the smell of the Highcity’s flowering gardens. Of these three, the fumes smelled the sweetest.

Distant shrieks and shouts echoed, and gunshots crackled far below, and the whole Cauldron was filling up with black clouds.

And better news besides: a few of his best Fang pilots managed to lift off before being hijacked and were now chasing after the other Fangs. The Cauldron was a roiling storm of lancing light and smoke and fire.

The ships swooped erratically at each other, some of them bouncing off the cliff walls or smashing into the city blocks, shooting beams of pure energy at each other. They sliced open clouds of smoke and brickwork buildings just as easily.

It was easy to tell his pilots from the savages, because his pilots actually knew how to fly in formation. Hard to tell who was winning, though, given how fast and wild they flew around the city.

What an unholy mess.

Secaius could only imagine the legal and bureaucratic nightmare this might become back on Cyre once he was finished here. The Cauldron was technically a subjugate of the Empire, which meant it held certain rights. Everything here was cyran property, partially owned by the nobles and, to a lesser extent, the citizens of Cyre.

That was the main reason he hesitated to unleash the weapon.

Oh, and not to mention the loss of life. Xenos and cyrans alike, though most of them dullscales. So much collateral.

No doubt the Veneratian would vote to make him pay recompense out of his own pockets. All those cyran families who would lose their sons and daughters, merely because Secaius alone had the gall to do what must be done.

Well, such paltry matters would be beneath him soon. All he had to do was draw the human out.

Secaius stood with his hands behind his back, looking out over the parapet. A ring of his centurion guards lined the perimeter of this highest floor, a wall of armor and muscle. Most of them were true cyrans, though a few were dullscales from the provinces who had somehow distinguished themselves in the eyes of the Empire.

Per the Magistrate’s command, the centurions erected twin stakes on the parapet. They tied the Queen and that black-feathered servant of hers to the wood, out in the open for all to see.

For him to see.

Secaius thought about torturing the black bird. Flaying the skin off of him and forcing the Queen to watch. But why? A queen would never care about a servant, and this one was half-dead already. No thrill at all.

All he could do was wait and watch.

Look at all those soldiers down there. Some good cyran blood down there too. Officers and the like. A heavy price, but he was willing to pay it. This was, after all, the beginning.

His beginning.

If you want something, you must reach out and take it.

Secaius glanced up at the sky. The Exonerator, in all its glory, was floating high above the city. That grand, gleaming vessel cast a long, leaf-shaped shadow over the Cauldron. At the center of the leaf, the open ring.

Beneath the shadow of the Exonerator, everything looked the same: the flames, the burned-out ruins, the gardens and city blocks, everything.

One final doubt gnawed at the corner of his mind: What if it kills the human too?

Secaius flexed his fingers, the soft, unnatural padding of the gloves snug around his fingers. He could feel stiffer traces of metal woven throughout this alien fabric.

Elegant. Perfect.

Truly a divine device, one that could only be wielded by a deity. And after generations of use, the gloves were still immaculate.

If such a delicate relic can endure the ages, Secaius thought, then a true god should be able to survive this.

Besides, there was no time for doubt. His own pilots were losing, after all, and those savage birds had a knack for flying, didn’t they?

Secaius turned to his messenger, a young, scrawny scribe who was overeager to please. Son of a noble, some great house back on Cyre. Secaius couldn’t be bothered to remember which one.

“Scribe.”

The messenger snapped a bow. He pulled a hand across his crest fins nervously. “At your service, Magistrate.”

“Take the fastest rig you can find and go to the Exonerator. Tell them to adjust their altitude. I want it high enough to cover the whole city but low enough that it won’t shine on this tower. Am I clear?”

“The Lantern?”

“Of course I mean the Lantern!” Secaius snapped. “If it so much as touches the top of this tower, it will be on your head. Do I make myself understood? I want them to feel it, not us.”

“But Magistrate. If you turn on the Lantern . . . our people are still down there.”

Secaius held one finger up in the air. Not activating the gloves, just silencing the scribe. “Is there something wrong with your ears? Should I find a scribe who can listen?”

The scribe’s eyes flicked to the parapets of the tower. It was a long way down to the city.

“The Lantern, Magistrate.” He bowed. “I will tell them.” And he trotted to the edge of the parapet where one of several rigs was moored, its deck bobbing gently in the wind.

The rig pulled away and began its slow journey up to the Exonerator.

Out over the city, one Fang was being hunted by two others. The lone Fang pulled up in a sharp angle and let its momentum carry it out of the Cauldron as it fired down on the other Fangs, that beam of light gouging deep, black lines into the city.

They looked so small from up here. He wondered how long it would take for the Exonerator to destroy them all. Would they melt first? Or would their delicate internal machinery simply stop working? As far as he knew, nobody had ever done this before. Not in the thousand years since the Emperor gave Cyre these gifts.

The Midcity was on fire, and Lowtown looked like a black pit. It’s always been a pit, he sneered. If anything, he was beautifying the worst part of this city.

Secaius ventured to lean over the parapet. A dizzying wind rushed up at him, but he held firm. He wanted to see them. He wanted to look at them one last time. Thousands of them, still pouring out of their homes. The filth draining from his city.

Too slow, he thought. Much, much too slow.

The distant flash of a mirror signal from the rig. It was halfway to the Exonerator. They were slow boats, much slower than the Fangs, but awfully convenient in the Cauldron where the avians were so obsessed with building tall.

A basket was attached to a huge, air-filled envelope. The scribe was in the basket, one hand on the controls, the other holding a handle on the underside of the envelope for support. The rig floated up toward the Exonerator, too small for the Fangs to notice. Secaius lost track of it somewhere against that vast underbelly.

Secaius strolled around the top of the parapet, his feet outlining the gray, metal disc that marked the pylon that held up this grand tower. Human-made, that. Secaius had wasted many a coin on scholars, priests, and even a Historian to guess what it was for.

He ambled over to the stakes, where his prisoners were tied and facing out over the city.

They’d beaten the black-feathered servant, but gods. The Queen. Looking at her almost made Secaius sick.

Most of her feathers had been plucked, including the ones that could never grow back on their own. Underneath all that plumage, they really were hideous creatures. Her flesh was lacerated and covered in sores from the countless rope burns and lashings and other torturer’s work.

Despite all this, she still held her cracked beak high. He loved that about her.

“Your Majesty,” Secaius said, “it would seem this is our last chance to help each other.”

Nothing. As if he were not there at all.

Secaius frowned. “Your actions have forced my hand. I want to offer you one last choice. Tell me where he is, and I can undo everything.”

Still nothing from the Queen. It was the black-feathered servant who spoke.

“She doesn’t know.”

Secaius whipped his clawed hand out toward the servant. Felt the resistance in his fingers as gravity itself clamped around the servant.

Secaius had to raise his voice over the screeches. “I wasn’t speaking to you, bird.”

He could even hear the stake’s timbers creaking under the strain of all that pressure.

“Unless you know something about the human?”

But the servant collapsed, his screeching cut short as he passed out.

Pathetic. Nothing at all like his Queen. For the thousandth time, Secaius wondered: Why did her kind permit the others to live at all?

There was a sound, imperceptible at first over the rushing of the wind, but Secaius thought he could hear it, anyway. A gasp thrilled through him.

It was starting.

He crooked one gloved finger at the Queen, at the air under her chin. Even as the gloves forced her to turn, she fought back, the muscles in her neck straining. And that crack in her beak—he could only imagine the pain. And for what?

In the end, she gasped and slumped, and her face moved easily in his invisible grasp.

“Will you talk, my Queen?” Secaius said, unable to contain his smile. “To tell you the truth, I hope you won’t. I’ve always wanted to see this.”

He gestured up at the Exonerator, which was now humming. The Exonerator lowered its bulk over the middle of the city, drifting down like some deep-sea leviathan made of metal. It stopped when it was only slightly higher than the tallest tower, hanging suspended over the crowds below.

A haze of condensation gathered around the hull, sparkling and gray.

“Ah!” Secaius clapped his hands together, letting her head drop. “It’s beginning.”

Secaius could see the open ring in the center of the Exonerator. Inside that ring, the air began to shimmer and warp, as if he were seeing it through sheets of perfect glass.

Eight pinpricks drew themselves into the center of the ring. When they touched, a taut string of light, whiter than white, appeared. It hung all the way down to the cobblestone streets of the city.

And then, the string seemed to open up. Growing wide, moving faster than the eye could see. Expanding that too-bright light over the rooftops and gardens and streets and alleys, painting all the buildings in a heavenly glow.

The crowds scattered. Some took to the air. Too slow. Others ran back toward their homes. And if he strained his ears, Secaius thought he could hear the screams beneath the rising, crackling hum of the Exonerator’s Lantern ring.

The centurion guards closest to Secaius shuffled uncomfortably. More than a few of them refused to look down, their faces tight with worry. Perhaps they were thinking about their fellow soldiers who were still down there.

Why should they care? Won’t feel much of anything up here.

Secaius was not one to waste an opportunity to teach. He pulled back his shoulders and announced in the same clear voice that had won him so much approval in the Veneratian, “Look, you imperials, and ask yourself. What better death could a true cyran ask for? Our kin may die, but they do so for the glory of the Empire.”

A good speech, short and impactful, he thought.

But up here, the wind swallowed his voice. And only the centurions nearest him thumped their chests and dutifully echoed his call: For the glory of the Empire.

Down in the city, the plants showed the first signs of the heat. They began to wilt in the light, crumpling their leaves, snapping and shedding their huge fronds. The air itself wavered over the streets as dew became vapor. Even the sound of the wind seemed to change.

The human would come soon. Or he would not. It almost didn’t matter now. Secaius couldn’t stop smiling.

There was a rasp behind him. The Queen was trying to speak. But Secaius ignored her. He already knew what she would say. Stop this. Please. And so on.

One more voice among the many.

When this was over, when the Exonerator had incinerated every last living xeno in the Cauldron, then he would deal with her. The Queen would watch all her people die. Only then would he kill her.

He inhaled deeply and let his head fall back, taking in the sweet, burning scent. Lifted his hands up in exaltation and basked in the glory of this utter destruction.

Of his power.

So this is what it’s like to be a god.