-[Act 2 * Part 6]-

Basil knocked on the door to the Emperor’s private quarters before entering. His minions remained behind to guard the entrance while their master held his audience with the man in charge of the civilization that he was now burning.

As he stepped inside the Emperor’s chamber, Basil found an old man sitting at a table in the middle of the room. He was certainly dressed for the part with his gold trimmed robes, complete with a pretty crown, yet the titular ruler of this land was no more than a withered husk. His wizened eyes barely focused on the dark prince as he made his enterance. A man whose abilities and power in his prime might have been a sight to behold—a sovereign ruler of a land as vast as it was ancient—had with old age turned frail. Such was the haloed master of Empire Solar, the master of this world, when Basil found him—a mere shadow of his former self.

The dungeon keeper bowed his head to the Emperor out of professional courtesy, as one ruler to another. “I am Basil von Doom,” he said, introducing himself, “and I have come to put an end to your civilization.”

The senile old man mumbled something in response to Basil’s grand claim, but otherwise failed to stir from his wandering state.

Basil shook his head in disappointment. “So, you really were just a figurehead after all,” he said as he circled the table. “That is unfortunate... I had hoped for more.”

The Emperor spoke a second time and now his voice was loud enough to hear. “I said, get out of my chamber, you ugly, bald, cretinous beast!”

Basil raised an eyebrow at the rude conduct of the Emperor.

“I’ve already had my final meal,” the Emperor proclaimed and gestured at the empty plate on his table. He then casually dismissed the dungeon keeper with the wave of a hand. “Let me die in piece, you barbarous brute. Then you have my permission to rob my corpse.”

“It is not your treasure that I seek, old man,” Basil said. “And it is not my intention to take your life yet.”

“Is that so?” the Emperor asked. “What else could a barbarian like you desire? Is the blood of my subjects not enough to quench your thirst? Am I to be drawn and quartered next? Is that why you have come? To torment me before you trample our accomplishments under the boots and hooves of your savage horde?”

“I understand how terrible this whole situation must seem to you,” Basil said. “Please believe me when I say that I don’t take callous pleasure in the destruction that I have wrought upon your world.”

The Emperor scoffed.

“But, to be fair,” Basil admitted, “neither do I care for the lives that were lost in its wake. Such is the circle of life: the races of kith build empires and monsters destroy them. I merely make sure that the cycle continues.”

The Emperor ran his fingers through his long white beard. “Interesting,” he said, “and you don’t intend to usurp my power? Am I to believe that you are doing all of this for no good reason at all? It’s not the throne or the claim to these lands that you desire?”

Basil grinned in response to the Emperor’s statement. “Oh, I will be taking your chair alright,” he said, “but I have no use for any of your power. This is not the first world that I have conquered and it won’t be the last. There is no reason to remain once your civilization has fallen. My job here will be done; my purpose complete.

“And as for the beasts that I command, they are mere tools in all of this. They will be discarded once they have served their purpose. Once I depart this world, in time their numbers will dwindle and scatter to the far corners of the realm.”

“So, it is true then,” the Emperor said and bowed his head in defeat. “This is the Armageddon that was foretold—the end of days…”

The old man trembled with anger. “The outsiders were right to warn of your arrival. They told that a dark power would lead an army of monstrous beasts to lay low the dominant power of this world.” He shook his feeble head. “My ancestors were too proud to admit the possibility of our fall. And I was too weak to stop it…”

“A purge of a civilized world, once ordered, has never been halted before,” Basil said. “Do not torment yourself over your failure to defeat me. You never had a chance.”

“And what if we had killed all the monsters?” the Emperor asked. “Every last dragon, every damned orc, goblin and wandering troll; every wolf in the forest, every eagle in the skies… What would you have done then? Used magic to lay our cities low? Curses to kill my people in their thousands? What would have happened if we had eradicated the monsters from this world completely?”

“You don’t realize the nature or the extent of forces arrayed against you,” Basil said. “It is not the powers of this world alone that you face. I am but one of a thousand masters of darkness, each with a retinue of servants that by themselves could lay low your armies in a day. Your forces are tiny compared to what lies beyond the borders of your world. The universe is as vast as it is indifferent to your suffering.”

The Emperor interrupted Basil with a sharp gesture of his hand. “Spare me your pity, demon. Just answer me this: was there really nothing that we could have done to prevent our fall?” he asked.

“No,” Basil answered. “If you hear pity in my words, then know that is all I have to offer. I did not come here to gloat over you, but to tell you that you fought well, given the odds.

The dungeon keeper placed himself on the opposite side of the Emperor’s table to illustrate his point. “There is no measure that I could give to help you realized the width of the chasm that is the difference between our power,” he said. “That is why I used your own world’s monsters against you when I could—to make the fight as fair as possible; to let your soldiers keep their dignity even as they lie down between the falling ashes of your burning world, defeated and bleeding out. The truth of their futile resistance was kept from them as a mercy. You, however, won’t share in their blissful ignorance, and for that I apologize.”

“I sent my strongest champions against you,” the Emperor said. “Aiden and Nadia, they were the greatest heroes of this generation. Tell me, demon, did they at least put up a fight?”

Basil bowed his head in respect to the fallen. “They gave the best they could,” he answered. “They died with honor.”

“And the Maiden Solar?” the Emperor asked. He looked to a crystal orb on a pedestal beside his bed. The orb was dormant. “I can’t sense her presence watching over my realm anymore. Has she abandoned us?”

“She belongs to me now,” Basil explained. “I have captured her soul for my own purposes.” He brought forth the soul stone from his magic bandolier and showed it to the Emperor. The arcane prison pulsed with a warm golden glow.

The Emperor’s wrinkled face warped in disgust. “She was our guiding light,” he said. “She was our goddess and protector.”

Basil dismissed the old man’s claims. “She was and still is an elemental—a powerful force of nature to be sure—but no more divine than any other monster on this world.”

“She was no monster!” the Emperor insisted. “She was pure and bright!”

“No, she was a monster by design,” Basil said. “I have no reason to deceive you, so believe me when I tell you that there are only two kinds of creatures in this universe: monsters and kith. We can go on all day subcategorizing all the different strains of beasts and demi-humans that roam your world, but in the end they would all fall into one of the two categories.”

Basil gestured at the Emperor. “You are a race of mortal men—wholly separate from the beasts and nature’s elements around you. Human to human is kin, human to elf, dwarf and anything in-between is kith. That is all the distinction there is to your kind, while we are a thousand different races, similar only in our view of the world around us. We share an understanding of its primal nature; the chaos of it.”

“That’s an arbitrary division,” the Emperor pointed out.

“Not at all,” Basil insisted. “Kith build civilizations and monsters don’t. That is the one difference that makes the rule. But that does not mean that we can’t embrace aspects of each other’s world view.

“Your precious Maiden Solar, for example… the holy elemental was a monster that your ancestors had taken to worshipping as a god. She, in turn, had been essentially domesticated by them. While monsters don’t forge civilizations on their own, they can join them, willingly or otherwise. There is no conflict in that arrangement.”

“And yet, she was our matron,” the Emperor said. “She was the beating heart of our civilization. And you… and you! You have crammed her golden splendor into a gemstone prison.”

Basil shrugged. “A trophy is a trophy,” he said. “Had your empire worshiped a dragon instead, I would have mounted its head over a fireplace in my Mansion. But, to be honest with you, I have long since run out of fireplaces to decorate...

“I can see no better end to a glorious life for such powerful creatures than to become a part of something greater. The legacy of your Maiden Solar is now to serve me as a source of arcane energy, not because I wish to bring her low, but because in defeating and subjugating her I have elevated her to a higher plane of existence. She serves a greater master now.

“Think of it this way: you and your empire are but a grain of sand falling through the hourglass. It is my task to turn that hourglass over once enough sand has flowed through. Whereas your grain had landed on top the last time, now it forms the foundations for others to come. Such is the cycle of life that I have come here to enforce.”

“But what’s the point of your cycle?” the Emperor asked. “Why does this wheel of destruction go on turning? Why the endless carnage?

“We’ve found ruins on our world that are so old that there is no name for the people who once inhabited them. Cities and fortresses demolished thousands of years ago… were they the previous victims of your cycle?”

“For new life to prosper, death must set the margins,” Basil explained. “Glory is not eternal and neither is growth. Stagnation always renders the lives of the next generation worse than the one before. It’s a subtle shift at first. They possess more wealth and power, but find less purpose and happiness in their daily lives. Where once their struggling ancestors could take pleasure in every hard won meal, now even the worst excesses won’t suffice to satiate them.”

“That can’t be always true,” the Emperor suggested. “You don’t know that we will be worse off tomorrow than we are today.”

“It is inevitable,” Basil said. “The pattern is ancient and self-fulfilling.

“Sooner or later a single kith empire will rise above the rest. Through diplomacy or war they would unite or conquer their world. Their initial values, religions or morals will not matter in the long run. An admirable founder always paves the way for a tyrant down the line and then it’s nothing but misery from there on out. Century after century they will expand their domain, eradicate all that they find objectionable: beast races, lesser foreign dominions, even your fellow kinsmen in endless civil wars. The spiral of death begins: kith versus nature; kith versus beast; kith versus kith and, finally, kin versus kin.

“Once this degradation begins the Guild of Chaos orders a dungeon keeper to intervene. We rally your enemies, tear out the rotten foundations of your beloved civilization and watch it crumble.

“It is not always an easy task, but we always prevail. We bring an end to a growing cycle of destruction and misery by a single act of unimaginable cruelty—we erase the entire civilization, people, history and culture. Then the world is left to heal.”

“I don’t see how your solution saves anything. Is the result not the same?” the Emperor asked. “Don’t we end up dead either way?

“My ancestors built this empire with their blood, sweat and tears. Its roads have been paved with the stones carved from the mountains we conquered. We established a society so powerful that we were able to subjugate all of our enemies, be they beasts or mortal men. We have struggled so long to rise above the rest and for what? Are we supposed to just lie down and die now?”

“At this moment you are at the height of your power,” Basil said. “Revel in your past achievements, for tomorrow brings only darkness and disappointment.

“You have been rewarded with glorious death at a time when you were still more benevolent than cruel,” the dungeon keeper declared. “If not by my hand then by the hands of your descendants this Empire Solar of yours would have been turned into a wicked shadow of its former self. There were never any brighter days ahead. This is your finest hour. That is why I have not sent forth my most powerful minions to take than from you. At the very least you deserve a valiant, glorious defeat, not a crushing one.”

“So, we are destined to fall to the wayside of history?” the Emperor asked. “If we are doomed to be monsters in the end, then what does that make you? Do you really think yourself a savior? Is this the best solution that you could come up with? To burn and smash apart all that a great civilization has accomplished just so that the survivors can claw through the ruins in search of meager sustenance?”

Basil smiled bitterly. “I did not invent the cycle, I only enforce it. And I won’t excuse it. The hundred downtrodden worlds that I have liberated from their shackles—yes, by force—now have a future to look forward to. It took the death of an entire generation, but a hundred more can now be born with a purpose to their lives. The children are happier there, not knowing the price their ancestors had to pay.

“Your champions, for instance, the twins—they are nothing to the wild men of a world just after a purge. Humans, dwarves and elves, left to fend for themselves, inevitably grow to exceed the power and wisdom of the civilized kith that came before them. And yes, the survivors of this cycle too are destined to forge a new civilization after their own image. It will be glorious for a while, cultured and noble. Then it will decay. Then monsters like me will come to purge it again to give way for a fresh start.

“This is how the balance is kept. When kith are few, the world is theirs to take—its secrets and treasures all. Once they multiply beyond reason and run the other creatures into near extinction, the hands of fate shift their favor from kith to monsters. Where an orc might have been a common foe for a founder of a civilization, by its latter stages of development the green beast will overpower all but the strongest of heroes.”

“But we still held them back,” the Emperor said. “For generations now we have faced the fact that our knights can no longer keep the beasts at bay. Where a tenth of our society was once involved in some capacity in the suppression of the monsters, now a full quarter is required to keep them back from our lands. But we have risen to that challenge!”

“That is because you create ever more powerful tools and magic to enforce your domination,” Basil explained. “In spite of the universe telling you that your time is at an end by shifting power over to the other side, you have a knack for adapting in ways most unreasonable, yet efficient.”

“And that is where you come in,” the emperor said, “to take that challenge away from us? What gives you the right to intervene?”

“There are things that kith were not meant to invent,” Basil explained. “Magic and technology have a tenuous relationship at the best of times. I know from personal experience that you do not wish to suffer the consequences of wanton discovery. Flesh, magic and metal can come together to form a single item, but they can never be more than a part of the greater whole. These three lines cannot be crossed at once.

“And yet, kith often dabble in forbidden knowledge, damned the consequences of their discoveries. From necromancy, to alchemy and,” Basil shuddered, “science… No topic is off limits once your kind grows bold enough. Ultimately, your discoveries only accelerate your fall.”

“So, you cull us before we grow too advanced?” the Emperor asked. “It sounds to me like you are doing it out of fear of what we might discover.”

Basil nodded. “You are not entirely wrong about that.” The dungeon keeper ran his hand over his face as he recalled one of his past encounters with an advanced civilization.

“There was this one world, Hulanar,” he said. “The people there had devised a way of disguising themselves in the Astral Sea. Their deception bought them enough time to complete the tools of their own destruction.

“When the Guild finally discovered their world, I was assigned to purge it. When I breached the magic veil they had shrouded their civilization in, I discovered what had become of them, absent the cycle.

“I had come to purge them, but found the task already accomplished. It took me but a day to declare the world completely dead. Kith or monsters… not even insects remained. The destruction of Hulanar had been so complete that it was stricken from the list of inhabitable worlds entirely.

“You see, the bright people of Hulanar had discovered a way of siphoning mortal souls on an industrial level. Their technocrat rulers had spent centuries suppressing their people into a class of mindless slaves by the use of highly advanced arcane constructs. Then, once their planet wide network of soul sucking machines had been finished, they turned them on and their entire world was consumed in an effort to transfer their flesh and blood rulers into the immortal bodies of machines.”

“What happened?” the Emperor asked. “Did they succeed?”

Basil frowned. “When I arrived, I found only arcane constructs roaming the land. I soon discovered the fate of their masters. The mechanical bodies that the technocrats had sought to inhabit, all twelve of them, sat in a circle in an empty room, at an empty table; staring with empty eyes at the empty plates and cups before them.

“They were silently weeping, you see, for their incredible achievement had brought them nothing but misery. Their desire for immortality had come from their mortal souls, born of their limitations as creatures of flesh and blood. But now they were no more than hollow husks. Their minds had been transferred successfully, but everything else that had once driven them in life had now been left behind… lost, among the billions of corpses that littered the streets of their empty cities.”

Basil drew a deep breath and sighed heavily. “We live in a universe of boundless opportunities,” he said. “Life is fragile, so it always seeks more power to sustain itself and grow. Immortality forever beckons the races of kith, so they strive to better themselves. But sometimes in their quest for enlightenment they overreach and need to be parted from their dangerous discoveries. Violence is applied, because if the death of a generation does not set the boundaries, then the extinction of their entire world will.”

The Emperor pondered Basil’s story for a while.

Basil seemed inclined to do the same, but snapped himself out of reminiscing by changing the subject. “So, I hope you won’t mind that I nick your throne?” he asked. “I collect chairs, and, well, yours is nice. I would like to have it, before the monsters tear up the palace.”

The Emperor ignored Basil’s frivolous question and pursued his own line of thought instead.

“From what you have told me, you have spent your whole life laying waste to civilizations,” the old Emperor said. “But have you ever tried to… build one yourself? Have you ever raised your hand in defense of a village and not in anger against it?”

“I feel no anger,” Basil said, “but I understand the destructive nature of my actions. I don’t much care for empire building—that was the passion of your ancestors. Mine have been dungeon keepers. We burn what you build.”

The Emperor nodded. “Still, if you have spoken nothing but truth to me, then I know that you must think yourself on the right side of history,” he said. “I am willing to accept the folly of my ways. May the next civilization rise to be better than mine…”

“It will end the same,” Basil asserted.

“But how do you know that?” the Emperor asked. The old man slowly forced himself up from the table. “How can you judge the choices of the kith when you have never lived among us? You have never walked the path that you condemn.”

The old emperor stumbled over to his bed and grasped at a sword than had been placed upon it. The weapon was clearly an artifact with some degree of magic enchantment. It gave off an aura of power and a slight purple glow that shimmered up and down the blade.

The emperor was so feeble that he had to use both of his hands just to lift up the sword. He was visibly struggling with its weight even as he lowered it at his side.

“This is the ancestral sword of my bloodline,” he explained. “For a thousand years it has been in my family. Over forty generations of chieftains, kings, queens and emperors. And now I offer it to you.

“I surrender my crown and domain to you. You have won. I won’t argue with you any longer.”

The Emperor removed his crown and placed it on the table.

The dungeon keeper shook his head. “I cannot spare you or the people of the land,” Basil said. “The purge must be concluded.”

“I am not asking you to spare anyone,” the Emperor said. “I am no fool. I know that these are the final days of my people.

“What I want from you is a simple promise.”

“I will make no promises,” Basil said.

The Emperor grimaced. “A consideration then,” he said. “Would you at least listen to me?”

Basil nodded.

“I want you to try and find a solution to your cycle,” the old man said. “I know that you owe me nothing. If the universe is as large as you say then, heck, I with all my titles and lands am nothing. But you alone hold so much more power that there must be something that you can do to figure out a better way.”

“I wish that it were that simple,” Basil said. “I have never seen an alternative that would work as reliably as a hard reset. Tyranny has always come to pass. Sooner or later a world must be purged.”

“Then I will pray for both of our sakes that you can find a miracle solution,” the Emperor said. “It would be a shame if my parting words gave you no heed for consideration.

“As for me,” he said and turned the blade around so that the tip of the sword was pointed at his heart, “I will now follow my ancestors into oblivion.”

The Emperor struggled for a while trying to hold on to the heavy blade, but his frail arms failed him. He did not even have the strength to fall on his sword as an emperor should.

Basil reached around the old emperor and helped to steady his hands. The tip of the sword once more pressed up against his chest. The old man drew quick short breaths as he began leaning into it. There was a quick flash of agony on his face as the blade pierced his flesh, but he did not cry out in pain. Blood ran down the length of the sword and began to pool at his feet. The Emperor’s white robes turned dark red. Soon the man’s life had been extinguished and the body went limp.

The dungeon keeper eased the Emperor’s body down onto the floor and pulled the sword from the dead man’s chest.

“Well then,” Basil said as he picked up the Emperor’s crown from the table. “We are done here.”

***

When Basil emerged from the Emperor’s room, he found his rangers in a standoff with the squire from before. The boy had followed them up the stairs as invited. Holding on to his sword with both hands he stood in the dungeon keeper’s path, glaring with disgust at the cloaked minions who kept him at range with their arrows notched. He was shaking from exhaustion, but remained stubbornly blocking the only way out of the Emperor’s private quarters.

“Do we have your permission to kill him, Master?” asked a ranger. His arrow was pointed at the exposed neck of the youth.

Basil stepped forward and positioned himself in-between the rangers and the lone imperial defender. “You seem… a little stronger than before,” the dungeon keeper said as he pulled out his bestiary book from his magic pouch.

As Basil surveyed the information on the squire in the pages of his manual, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the boy’s power level had climbed from 5 up to 6 as a result of his near-death experience. Likewise, a [Diehard] attribute had been added to his modest list of traits. He was going to prove exceedingly hard to kill in the future for any creature near his power level.

“You have a strong will to live,” Basil told the youth.

“I will fight for my Emperor to the very end,” the boy answered. “What have you done with him, demon?”

Basil examined the bloodied sword in his hand. Should I tell him? He wondered. Would he throw his life away if I did? Or should I…

The dungeon keeper grabbed the blade of the emperor’s sword with one hand and pulled off the hilt with the other. The arcane bonds of the weapon shattered and its enchantments withered away into a cloud of magic smoke. He then threw the dormant blade of the disassembled sword down at the feet of the squire.

“That is adamantium,” Basil said as he pointed to the remains of the emperor’s sword. “A better material you will not find. Use it to forge a new weapon for yourself. Use that weapon to defend what remains of your people once the monsters are done with this world. You cannot stop the fall of your civilization, but you can gather the survivors.”

“I will never abandon my emperor!” the squire proclaimed. “I ask again, what have you done with him?”

“That’s his blood on the blade,” Basil answered.

The boy’s eyes opened wide in horror. “You’ve… killed him?” He let go of his own weapon and fell to his knees before the blood-soaked blade.

“I gave him a warrior’s death,” Basil answered. “He deserved no less.”

Basil let the squire grieve for a moment longer before continuing. “Listen; there are bogs to the north of your capital that you can use to hide your people. Beyond them, further north, lies the mountain range that you call the Cold March. Take your fellow kith into the mountains. They will be safe for as long as they remain there.

“With time all of your cities, all of your fields and roads will fall to ruin. The only survivors will be those who will have the will to abandon the old ways and return to their roots.

“Rebuild in the mountains and one day you descendants will return to the fertile valleys and forests below. In time you will reclaim your world, but right now there is nothing that you can do to stop the horde.”

“Why are you telling me this?” the squire asked.

“I did just destroy your entire civilization,” Basil answered. “The least I can do to balance it out is to put one survivor on the path to recovery.”

Having said that Basil placed a finger to his head and activated a teleportation spell that he proceeded to cast on the confused youth. “[Greater Teleportation]!”

The boy vanished into thin air. His sword and the remains of the Emperor’s blade vanished along with him. The spell had moved the squire far away from the besieged city. Where exactly he had landed only the dark lord himself knew, but it was safe to say that the ongoing survival of the boy was now no longer in his hands.

Basil’s minions moved in to surround the dungeon keeper. “The master’s ability to teleport away is on cool down,” one of them announced. “Secure the perimeter.”

“Oh, settle down,” Basil ordered. “There isn’t a creature on this world that could threaten me. Let’s just go and meet up with Elnora. I bet she’s been having more fun with this siege than I have.

“And grab the emperor’s throne! I still want to add it to my collection.”