EPILOGUE

When the Everlord of the Empire slept, his dreams lasted decades.

Sometimes, whole centuries passed while he slumbered.

When he awoke, invariably he would find that his plan—the only plan that mattered—had developed a little further.

After awakening and fitting himself back into that body, he would rise from his inner chamber and go forth to meet his budding Empire. Governors, magistrates, high nobles, and other ranking cyrans. All of them, new to him. Mere children who saw themselves as influential people.

He listened to their details. Asked a few questions. And made sure that the grand strokes were still in motion. This could take days, or weeks, or a few short years. Nothing was ever perfect, least of all the craft of shaping an entire civilization.

Once he was certain that the plan was headed in the right direction, the Everlord of the Empire would return to slumber. To conserve that which must be conserved. To remain hidden from the threat beyond.

From the first dawn of Cyre and on through the centuries, this was how the Emperor ruled.

Each time he awoke, he would find that all the old politicians and all the old nobles had become so much dust. Replaced by the next generations, or the ones after that. This species of xeno churned out a rather healthy rate of bright, ambitious minds. Every single one of them had grand designs, dreams of how they might lead Cyre into the future.

But with such short, careless lives, what could any of them know about the future?

Still, he cherished them, because he had found in the cyrans so much more than he ever expected. They were not as dull-minded, as animalistic, as so many of the other children were. They were voracious, hungry to grow. A trait he was all too happy to encourage.

Unfortunately, they could be overzealous.

Today, the Emperor was waking up. A sacrosanct occasion.

And when he awoke, he always woke up alone. This was the law. No attendants, no helping hands. This was key to preserving the clarity of his thoughts.

It began with a jolt that felt so much like death as to be indistinguishable from it. The Emperor should know.

There was light, but the moment the light appeared, it began to slip out of his grasp. He could see his own consciousness, a figure hanging in the darkness. Distant and elusive, like trying to touch the stars with your bare hands.

All the while, a whole ocean of nothing waited below.

But he was the Emperor. Made from his own image. Polished to perfection. And by the sheer strength of his will, he always found a way to reach out and grab the light.

And when he caught hold of consciousness, he refused to let go. He wrapped his entire being around it, fusing to it. All that nothing became pain as white as the light on the surface of a star. Tearing, burning, trying to atomize him.

He held on.

A hiss from above.

The Emperor’s chamber vented out one gas and replaced it with another. Only then could he see his body, resting there, perfectly preserved. Waiting for him. Bronze skin, glowing with fresh artificial rejuvenation. Veins made elegant rivers over bulging muscles, all grown to perfection.

This was the hardest part. The most dangerous part. If he let go, if he so much as relaxed his concentration for even a moment, it would all be over. His mind would dissolve out of existence.

Metal arms descended from the ceiling of the chamber, carrying the Emperor’s mask down to that enormous body. The body of a god.

The body’s head was mostly hollow skull, starting at the nose and going up the scalp. At the back of the skull, a reinforced spinal column glistened with augmentations that jutted out of bone and metal.

The mask slotted into the head and spine, and they sealed together with another hiss.

There was always that moment where the Emperor worried it wouldn’t work. But, just like it always did, the body began to jerk and flail and spasm against the restraints that held it in place. A soft, spongy piece of material that had been inserted into the body’s mouth prevented it from biting off its own tongue.

This was his moment. While all that energy was coursing through the body, shocking the blood back into motion, the Emperor went in.

And became man made flesh.

This was his skin, lacquered with sweat. These were his muscles, creating that beautiful dance between push and pull in a thousand places over his body. There was his armor, digging comfortably into the flesh of his shoulders and his waist.

And that was the beat of his heart, pumping for the first time in fifty-three years.

Fifty-three?

That was decades ahead of schedule.

Why have I been awakened?

The Emperor concentrated. He summoned a view of the Scar in the sky.

There it was. A hairline fracture of white against all that blue.

Was it in flux? It was always so hard to tell. Were those new cracks, or had it merely shifted?

He compared it against his memories and centuries of data from the imperial astraticians. Sighed with relief.

The Scar was little changed from his most recent awakening. By his estimation, he still had several more millennia before the change would come.

Then why did they disturb my slumber?

The Emperor ran through his list of priorities, sifting through the messages and the volumes of records that were relevant to his most immediate plans.

Had something happened to his world runners? Had they found something?

No. It seemed the runners had only discovered a few new planets by way of the gate. That was promising. One of these new planets even had sapient life. Very promising. Hopefully it wasn’t another subintelligence, like Secutia or Myonos.

The legions were still marching ever outward. Thrass et Yunum was still a pit of tar, though it seemed one of the Venerate had grown suddenly interested in it over the last week. A cyran warlord called Vorpei.

There was an opportunity there, to make a change. Or a push through Thrass to Sen’s world.

Or both.

He had been waiting a long, long time for that one to come to fruition. Scraping the edge of the knife ever closer. Waiting for the right time to cut Thrass et Yunum open.

The Emperor scanned the intelligence archives too, racing through all the records of his spies, his traders, the new books his academics wrote on Sen’s children.

Nothing to explain why he had been awoken so soon.

Thus, at last, the Emperor, sitting in his chamber, opened his sight. As per the law, he expected to find himself alone.

He was not.

The face on the other side of the Emperor’s chamber was worried. Eyes wide, fingers clutching her silken robes, face flushed a deep violet. Terrified, because this meager priest knew that just by being here, she was violating his direct orders.

How intensely disappointing. He had not been awake an hour, and already they were breaking his rules.

“Who are you?” the Emperor said.

The cyran priest bowed deeply and stayed there. “I’m sorry, Emperor. I know—”

“Who are you?” he repeated. His voice, as heavy as a hammer, made her flinch back.

“I am your devoted priest, Everlord. I bear dire news from the Veneratian.”

“You know my rule?”

“This could not wait.”

Brave, he thought. She knew the punishment, and still she came to deliver her words.

A pity, what he would have to do to her.

“Then deliver your message, priest.”

“My lord, there’s been a discovery. On Gaiam, one of your new planets. They’ve—” She swallowed hard, as if she could hardly believe the words coming out of her own mouth. “They’ve found a human. A living human.”

The Emperor stared at her. Watching her face. Searching for a hint of deceit and finding none.

“What is your name, young priest?”

“Magrius.”

“Do you have any family, Magrius? Any children?”

“No children, Emperor. My mother is passed, but I have brothers and sisters, and a father who still works in the changing houses.”

“Magrius,” he said again. Savoring her name. Burning it into his memory. “You have honored me, and so you deserve honor. I wish to compensate your family.”

“Emperor?” she said, almost breathless. “I am only a messenger. I have done nothing to earn your honor.” She bowed so deep he could see the shining, coral-colored scales on the back of her neck.

Somehow, her zeal only made it worse.

The politicians had used her as a sacrifice. They knew what the Emperor had to do to someone who broke his law. How devious these people had become over the last millennia. From such humble beginnings, to this.

To cull a priest so devout was a shame. A burdensome shame.

“Come here, brave Magrius,” the Emperor said. “Come, and receive my blessing.”

There was a hitch in her throat. A small gasp. She swallowed it down, and though her whole body trembled, she stepped forward. Such faith.

She is truly admirable among her kind.

The Emperor lay one massive hand on her forehead as gently as he could. He brushed his other hand lightly against her ear, impulsing his smallest servants into action. Tens of thousands of nanites slipped off his finger and flew into her skull through her ear canal. They drilled through the vessels and other fleshy barriers and injected themselves into her brain.

If there were any other way . . .

But of course, there wasn’t. When it came to ruling an Empire across the centuries, drift was the ever-present threat. And if he ever allowed his own rules to be broken, everything would fall to pieces.

“Lift, and be lifted,” the Emperor’s voice rumbled as his smallest servants did their work. “Look and be seen. Rejoice, for your Emperor knows your name, Magrius.”

Before he finished uttering the blessing, her mind was gone. She would not die. No, that would be a true waste. Instead, he would send her forth to become a living reminder, a mindless being entirely incapable of caring for herself. Never to speak. Never to think again.

See her and know. This is what happens when you defy your lord. Your Emperor.

Her family would lose a daughter, a sister, but the Emperor would make sure they were given healthy compensation. He could do that, at least.

And brave Magrius herself might even become something of an icon. Half saint, half martyr. Touched by the Emperor himself.

Still. It hurt to see this.

The Emperor led her gently to the wall, where she slumped. Her mouth fell open, and her eyes stared at nothing.

But he refused to think of this as an ill omen.

Instead, when his nanites were finished, the Emperor turned his thoughts to her message.

It made his stomach flutter. The skin under his gilded mask stretched for the first time in decades—centuries, even—as he allowed himself a smile.

Finally, he thought.

Another human.

THE END of BOOK #1