In the vast hall of Aztredon, Emperor Zeleron glided on the smooth black marble, his long silky hair trailing behind him like a river of silver light on the floor. His bare feet made no noise, and figures of female servants bowed around him, as he passed. Their bodies were covered in translucent red robes, leaving little for imagination.
Nothing could hide under his gaze. And all were humble before him. The corridors and halls passed him by in a blur as he arrived at a balcony looking down at the Emperor's throne room, topped with a transparent glass dome. The sky beyond it, a black expanse of glittering stars and the ever beautiful moon, the glass dome was not just an architectural marvel for its look, but also for its functions. It did not just let the celestial lights pass through it, but it amplified them. Dimming the sunlight when the sun reached the zenith of its Ascension, and magnifying the moon and starlight to glamorise the night.
A silver chain gilded towards him, with a hook at its end, controlled by a mechanical crane. Zeleron looked down from the balcony and found a pool placed at the centre of the hall. The floors and walls were full of painted murals of his image. Him in his divine forms, in glory and majesty like that of a God. All pointing their hands in one pose or another towards the elegant and grand throne at the other end.
A huge, hulking figure stepped forward and knelt beside Zeleron. The bald executioner wore nothing except his breeches. Covered in tattoos of chants and prayers to the Crone, the goddess of death.
He didn't say anything, waiting for his Emperor.
Zeleron brushed aside a strand of hair from his face, revealing silver-blue irises. A handsome face of a man who seemed to be in his early twenties. Like a statue carved from pale marble, he observed the hook.
"Ah, to feel again. To live again. To be– not the way we are, but what we used to be. Even though what we used to be was pathetic and pitiful." His quiet words ran through the hall like the rustling of leaves in the night, except it rattled the hearts of all who heard like thunder rattling glass windows.
"What do you think, Malice? Would you like to be what you used to be?" The emperor turned his snakelike eyes towards a figure in a suit of black armour, and a black glass-like metal visor hid his eyes. Black Horns protruded from his forehead, and miniature bat-like wings from the side of his head behind his ears; only the lower half of his face remained visible. Bright red lips that seemed to be painted with blood.
The man didn't cower in front of the Emperor as others might have. Indeed, it seemed like nothing to make him cower.
"I was nothing, your grace, I only exist as your servant, for there is no meaning in existence otherwise if I cannot serve you." His voice was hard like stone and sharp as blades.
"How dramatic of you." The Emperor shook his head in disappointment. He turned towards the executor. "Do you know why I insist on doing this even though I do not need to? I do not need to put myself in pain up there but I must. I must feel the pain of my children, if I want to understand them. Isn't that the duty of a father? Hmm?"
The Executioner didn't respond, so Zeleron just hmpf'd and turned towards the hook.
"Begin, do not deny me my bliss any longer my dear."
The Executioner stood up, bowed again and walked up to the hook and chains that rattled as he grabbed it. He pulled it towards the emperor.. and plunged the hook into the Emperor's chest.
Zeleron didn't scream; instead, he moaned as if in pleasure. He controlled his blood flow, not letting it drip out. The chain rattled, tightened and then pulled the emperor into the air. His long silver hair billowed like a flag as Zeleron hung from the ceiling by a hook. Slowly, he was brought to a height above the small pool placed at the centre of the great hall.
The emperor made no noise, just feeling the pleasure in the pain he felt. The life he felt he had held, had felt it slipping, slowly revealing itself in the form of pain.
Sounds of footsteps came, and children aged ten to fifteen walked in through one of the gates. Chains rattling, binding their feet and hands. Their eyes filled with terror, some cried, clinging to others, came poised to fight, some looked completely defeated, their eyes devoid of the shine they should've held.
Almost a hundred children, in unison they pulled back in shock. Looking up at the Emperor hanging by a hook.
Zeleron turned and smiled at them gently, making the children lose what little strength they had in their feet falling or stumbling to the ground.
"Oh, don't be startled, don't panic, my dears." Zeleron said in his soft voice, only making some of the children scream and pull away, trying to run away– towards the entrance. But the chains holding them didn't allow them their desperate wish.
Zeleron sighed, "Resisting will only make this worse for all of us." Long silver hairs rippled at the Emperor's words. Each strand coming alive as if possessing a will of its own, like snakes they coiled, tensed and shot out towards the kids.
Impaling them through their chest and into their spirits. The children barely had time to understand what was happening, panic replacing the blood in their veins, madness taking them over. Screaming through their throats and reason abandoned, they tried tearing their own limbs off in hopes of escaping the chains as prey caught in a trap.
"Futile.." said the Emperor.
The screams went silent, all the young eyes looked up at their Emperor, and at that moment their god.
"Come, my dear, you do not die today, you become immortal."
The silver hair strands pulled the children in the air, like the Emperor. The children hovered in the air like dolls, swaying like pendulums. And at last Zeleron allowed his blood to run free, like a rush of water held at the dam, liberated, they flowed above Zeleron's skin to the hair strands and then into the children hanging at the end of them. As soon as the red blood touched their tortured skin it got absorbed into their bodies and then into their spirit.
The children's bodies started to melt like wax and all that remained at the end of the hair strands was their spirit.
They fell into the pool at the centre. They wriggled like worms lazily. Some tried to crawl away, but stopped as the Emperor chuckled, looking down at them.
The hook lowered the Emperor beside the pool and Zeleron pulled the hook free. His feet touched the red, waxy blood. But it parted as Zeleron spared it his attention.
He pulled one of the worms up with his hands and inspected it. It wriggled in his hands lazily as a dog asking to be pet by its master. The wound on Zeleron's chest knit back together, the blood flowing back into it.
Zeleron nodded as he caressed his children. "Excellent–" his words were cut short as his head snapped upwards, towards the glass dome and beyond it. His eyes squinting in fury and disdain as one of the stars in the starlit night sky suddenly shimmered.
Malice felt his master's anticipation and hunched in a threatening posture, but to what he couldn't know until it was too late.
The star in the sky fell like a beam of light, shattering the glass dome as it crashed into the throne room, shattering the walls and sending Malice skidding back. The floor trembled, but it didn't collapse as it should have. The walls that should've exploded outwards, instead they stood frozen in the air as if time had stopped or space refused to allow them passage. Then they returned to their place as if someone had rewound time. And in a few moments, the throne room was back the way it was, the glass dome intact, and the Emperor stood where he was, his face scowling at the figure that materialised from the light.
There stood a man in obsidian armour, studded with red ruby patterns on his chest in the pattern of scales and stars, with a billowing, blood-red cloak. Night–black skin and blood red eyes. Flowing red hair like liquid fire. His eyes bore down on Zeleron with a wrath to shred mountains with just a glare.
The Emperor met it with a beastial, primordial hunger of his own. His seemingly ever-expansive silver hair creates a shroud of frenzied aura around him.
The space around them was distorting as if they were in a glass, held between realms.
Malice knew who the dark skinned man was at a glance. So he held himself back, ready to dash into and between them to shield his master. But he knew he would die if he made any move, for the figures standing before his Emperor was perhaps the only man who could claim to be his greater.
Zeleron was the first to break the silence, baring his fangs. Grey mist puffed out as the Emperor spoke. "Armedion. Lost your manners have you?"
Armedion, the Eldren Lord replied calmly, "Zeleron, child. Lost your ways, have you?"
Zeleron smiled, "A god has no way. Only desires, and all his subjects are at the mercy of his desires."
Armedion chuckled, "A celestial for a few centuries and you think yourself a god already? A mortal mind really weathers and rusts the longer it persists. Especially a mind as corrupted as yours."
The Emperor snorted, and his posture relaxed, and he stood lankly, "I am quite willing to forgive you for your rude intrusion and destruction of my nest. Insult me too if you must, for the Spirits know that is all you are capable of, even with the immense power you hold you are nothing but a glorified gatekeeper. So say your piece and begone from my presence. You're ruining a rather pleasant night."
"Do not play the game of ignorance with me, fool. I know what you seek, so I'm here to warn you for the last time. Venture too deep into the Gardens, and you'll get bitten by snakes hiding in the deep reaches. Shredded by the thorns or poisoned by the same sweet fruits you so desire. For you mortals never see as far as you think you do." The words were a rumble, reverberating like the promise of thunder.
The Emperor laughed, he laughed loud and free, tears leaking from his eyes, and Zeleron wiped at them, smiling like a child. "And what will you do if I don't stop? Eh, Eldren? Your threats don't cower me for I see you for the toothless beast you are. Your chains bind you, so you put the same chains around others. But I refuse to be chained, I will not remain in the cages your mother placed upon us."
There was another silence, energy crackling between the two Celestials as they locked gazes, in the end Armedion just chuckled, "I should make you bleed, bleed until you learn to fear pain again. But I will not.." His eyes moved away from the emperor, Zeleron followed his gaze towards the red worms he had created a few moments ago, wriggling in the pool.
Armedion regarded them with pity that he didn't show, "You think you are the first tyrant to have abused their lessers? Men like you have massacred, raped, ravaged, burned and destroyed everything that didn't agree with them, didn't comply with them, didn't submit to them. But once in a while their tyranny touches that one person that it shouldn't have. That one wrong person that even the gods avoid, but the mortals drunk on power stumbles upon them. And guess what? They find a knife in their guts, lie bleeding their life out."
Armedion turned and stepped into the spirit realm. Vanishing from sight and leaving only silence behind. His threat hanging in the air like a promise.
"What an insufferable man he is." Zeleron chuckled, as he sat on his glass throne. Malice knelt, "I'm sorry–"
"Oh don't bother Malice, you couldn't have done anything to that man, and we both know it." Zeleron said, waving his hand as if to dispel a foul stench.
In response Malice could only bury his head deeper. Before Zeleron could say any anything more he heard footsteps coming from the corridors and one of the Vault keepers came running but was stopped by the guards, Zeleron waved him in and the Keeper ran in and prostrated himself on the floor. The blood and gore from the sacrifices before had moved to the edge of the hall swirling and flowing as the Emperor played with their form, like how a bored man twirling coins with his fingers absentmindedly.
"Speak..."
"T-there was a break–in in the Vaults, we're still looking for the one who broke in–"
"What did they take?" Zeleron cocked his eyebrows and cut the Vault keeper mid sentence.
"The Spiritbane."
Zeleron frowned at that.
••••••••
Armedion stood at the top of the obsidian spires that surround the Jewel capital of the Velarkian Empire: Silvrena. Around thirty of these obilesk spires surrounded the city in a circle, each rising more than nine hundred hundred meters high.
Twisting spikes that seemed to have been cast down by gods to destroy the land, impaled in the ground. And the city was built between them.
It should've given off an oppressive feeling to the people living surrounded by them, a constant reminder of powers, far greater than them, and that one day, they might turn their ire towards them.
But instead this was one of the most prosperous cities he has seen in this era. Of Course not everyone was happy here, it was just so… mundane and peaceful.
Armedion sighed, gazing at night sky, stars shining as they peered down at the mortals and Immortals alike. Indifferent to them all, but guiding them all at the same time. His pondering came to a halt as a figure in a black leather Armor appeared behind him, bowing as he held out something wrapped in black cloth.
Armedion turned and nodded to the man, "You've done great Derneth, any losses?"
The man pulled back his hood, he had bone white skin, but the same blood red eyes, and dull flame orange hair tied in a bun. "None, my lord." he replied, in a youthful jovial voice.
Armedion took the object offered to him and pulled the cloth aside. In his hand rested a crystal orb the size of his skull, and a red-black formless mass churned and swirled inside it. The air warped around the globe and the Guardian slumbering inside his spirit jolted awake, the space crackled and rippled around him as the Guardians' spiritual hackles went up. It was the kind of response one had towards its existential threat.
Armedion tossed the Globe towards Derneth. "It's genuine." He said mentally trying to calm the Guardian.
Derneth caught the globe and asked, "My lord, what is this thing? It feels deeply wrong as if.. What do you need it for?"
Armedion replied as the winds tousled his hair, "No we don't need it Derneth. But I suppose The Sinwrath must've had his reasons."
"The Sin..?" Derneth asked, confused.
"Pay it no mind, your reward for today's work will be paid in due time." Armedion said sparing one last look at the Aztredon. "A reckoning always comes for your kind child. Nobody is beyond punishment for the crimes they have committed, not a peasant, not a king, not an emperor, not me, not even the Gods."
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