CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

“Listen, you can’t tell anyone outside this room what I’m about to share, understand?”

I nodded at Shani’s serious words, but she shook her head.

“I mean it, Ray. Anyone. I’ll explain why but you have to promise me. Outside this room, no one is safe.”

“Ok Shani.” I sat down in front of where she huddled, doing my best to keep calm despite how angry seeing her like this made me. “I promise.”

She took a deep, steadying breath and straightened a little.

“Ok. My family— and others— have kept this secret for a long time. People who are too open with it tend to vanish under mysterious circumstances and come back… changed, if they come back at all. I always thought it was too big for me to ever be involved but… what you told me changes things. For everything to make sense, you need to know the history between my family and Amunai— the origin of the man who would become the Tyrant.”

“Amunai was born a prince to the old merchant kingdoms of the east.” Shani began, the cadence of her voice steadying as she told a carefully-remembered story. “Their capital was the ancient Achoran city of Nar’Azon— a nexus of the ward-ways that brought them immeasurable wealth. Its many connections to the rest of the world made it a hub of new ideas and innovations unlike anything seen since the Achorai disappeared. The birth of this new prince was celebrated with a week of feasting as the kingdoms welcomed their new beloved son. My family even has records of the gifts we brought as just one part of a lavish parade of ridiculous waste.”

“So your family is from the same place as this guy?” I asked curiously.

“Yes, at the time he would have been a distant cousin but… that was over a dozen generations ago. A lot can change in two thousand years.” She answered, shifting uncomfortably.

Hmm… something about that math seems off. That’s like a new generation every hundred and sixty years— do all mages just live longer here? At least I assume her family were mages… I wonder how that works.

Keeping my observations quiet, I let Shani continue her story.

“Anyway, he grew up surrounded by opulence and the very best that his family could get him— the best tutors in every subject, the most powerful enchantments. The wealth of the richest kingdom on Haven was funneled into one man to make him the best he could be, and Amunai excelled. Every record we have— even accounting for all the sycophantic flattery— portrays him as a genius no matter what he turned his hand to. His popularity among the people grew with every year, and an aura of expectation surrounded him; that when he became king, he would usher in a new golden age. But one day the young prince found himself at the very edge of the warded zone, the city having long grown beyond its protections, and what he saw there would alter the trajectory of the world.”

Shani looked at me seriously.

“The Calamity of the Sanguine Sky appeared that day. Rising like a moon of blood above the lingering light of the setting sun, it shed a torrent of foul, red luminance on Nar’Azon. Black whispers clawed through the air like grasping talons, clutching feverishly at anything unprotected. Everything living outside the ward that couldn’t get to shelter in time withered, blood pouring from their bodies and into the sky in a horrific parody of reversed rain. Tens of thousands died in moments while the blessed prince looked on… and could do nothing. Watching the desolation occurring in front of him, something broke.”

I could understand that. It would be like watching a nuke go off on a city through an invincible window

“Sounds horrifying,” I said quietly.

Shani shrugged with a helpless look.

“Calamities always are. Though the Sanguine Sky is one of the worst. It… comes back. Nobody knows why or how to stop it, just to stay out of the light and cover your ears if you want to live.”

Yep. That’s horrifying. Why does this planet suck so— ah.

“The Void,” I murmured to myself.

Shani’s head jerked up sharply, and I quickly continued.

“The core, the heart-ward I told you about? It’s all to contain the Void but even blocked it still attracts monsters. It would have been even worse with the breach…” I trailed off as Shani’s face grew increasingly pale. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” She shook her head. “I’m not a wallflower that needs to hide from the truth. It’s just… a lot. We all know the world has had plenty of close calls since the fall, but it’s still tough to hear about."

Oversharing Ray. Remember the oversharing.

"After that day," Shani resumed. "He became obsessed with the Calamities. Abandoning all other pursuits, he bent every resource available to him— a kingdom's fortune— to the subject. Having grown up among the world's most powerful men, he concluded that the problem was not with the strongest but that the average person was far too weak. With this 'realization', he set about trying to 'fix' his citizens."

"Ah. Nothing like when the government decides the people are the problem." I said with a wince.

"Exactly. At first, it was all voluntary— prosthetics for the injured, low-cost enchanted gear for mass production, all things that made him increasingly popular with the lower classes. But as the years passed his obsession only grew, and his desire to experiment rapidly outgrew the tolerances of the average person.

Their resistance baffled him at first. He wrote many letters to the Mysterium complaining about the 'plebian, superstitious masses' and lamented that if they could just understand how he only wanted what was best for them. I've read some of those letters, and it's so strange now— in light of what he's become— how… earnest he was. He honestly wanted to improve his subjects' lives and just went too far."

Shani shrank in on herself, and I couldn't help scooting closer to take her hand. It was kinda weird how strongly she was reacting to basically a history lesson, but I figured there was probably a reason for that coming up.

"He started experimenting in secret next. First with monsters, testing the most inhumane of his theories, but quickly proceeding on to condemned criminals. The things he did were… horrific. His obsession taking him down darker and darker paths. Forced surgeries, monstrous grafting, it was bad. Word of the experiments eventually reached the court, and the conclusion was reached by a few cold-hearted individuals that the prince's obsession could not be allowed to cause a national scandal. So… they arranged an accident. Several beasts 'broke free' of containment in his lab, and Amunai was mauled to death. A state funeral was held, and everyone mourned their fallen prince. In a better world, that would have been the end of the story. Except two weeks later the kingdom was shocked to find him returned from the grave, only he had left something behind. Gone was the beloved prince of Nar’Azon; here was Amunai, the Deathless.

His experiments continued, only this time he didn’t bother with pretexts. The people’s reluctance was no longer an obstacle to his designs, and his benevolence was replaced by contempt for those he viewed as too stupid to share his vision. Every act of resistance to his agenda became an attack against his desire to save the world from Calamity. His paranoia grew exponentially after the failed assassination until there was only one will that could be trusted in his mind— his own.

We don’t know when he first created and began using the slave implants, just that one day he emerged from the palace at the head of a small army. The palace servants, the guards, and even some of his own family were all there standing as rank and file. His experiments had wiped their minds clean and transformed them into soulless drones, accepting his grafts and implanted weaponry to become powerful warriors chained solely to his will. He marched on the courts, snatching up everyone he could get his hands on to grow his army. It was the start of a decades-long civil war that ended with Amunai enthroned as Emperor— and the only man with free will in the entirety of his empire. My family fled his conquest via the ward-ways to this continent, and we’ve been here ever since."

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“That’s horrible, but what makes you think he could be an Awakened like me?” I kept my tone soft, trying not to sound harsh with my skepticism. “There’s a lot of ways someone with power could have gotten around the appearance of dying.”

“Three times, Ray. That’s how many times they killed him over the war. He’s tried to keep the exact count buried so it adds to his ‘mystique’, but the Zariah family— and a few other survivors— have kept every record they could. People with a vested interest in making damn sure the Tyrant was dead thought they’d succeeded, and every time he came back. It’s only because the Oraculum intervened that he hasn’t conquered Haven’s surface already!”

She pushed to her feet, pacing back and forth with agitation.

“The whole world is in a shadow war to keep him contained. My family built these—” Shani grabbed a wrench and hurled it at the ship’s core furiously, striking it with a resounding clang. “ —hateful things to fight him! But if he’s like you then… then what the hell is the point!?”

Reaching into one of her pockets, she angrily pulled out the glass slide of my soul— the hole burned in the slide's center perfectly marking the contained apocalyptic fire.

“Has he just been playing with everyone this whole time?? Has everything my family’s done for two thousand years been just a passing amusement for a bored immortal that could wipe us out at any moment? My papa is out there trying to fight him now, Ray. Does he even have a chance? Is there any way to beat someone like you at all??”

Shani looked at me with angry tears filling her golden eyes, and at that moment I wanted to smack myself.

I’d been selfish… again. I’d been so focused on feeling sorry for myself over getting dumped that it hadn’t even occurred to me how my story could have a ripple effect on her life. She was scared— justifiably— for her family because the idea of fighting another Awakened was terrifying even for me. I knew how much I’d grown since coming to Haven, I could barely imagine what I could do with a two-thousand-year head start. However, something about this was rubbing me the wrong way.

I didn’t have enough information from Shani’s story to really put the whole picture together, but I just didn’t see Amunai being another Awakened. The gods, the Emissaries, hell even the Void Leviathan had made it seem like I was the only one here now. I couldn’t imagine that someone as famous as this guy would just fly under the radar with his whole schtick being ‘the Deathless’. On top of that, there was Anathema. Given the increasing desperation on Shani’s face was an excellent time to start talking.

“I can’t say whether Amunai is awakened or not, but I’m almost positive he doesn’t have access to Anathema. It isn’t something that a regular person can control without an infinite fuel source. In order for me to keep my soul from being hollowed I’d been forced to eat a piece of corrupted eldritch flesh. Even that only lasted until the owner of said flesh took it back— and killed me in the process. If you don’t have a fuel source for Anathema, then you are the fuel. I had full access to it for less than a day and… there isn’t a whole lot of me left.”

Taking a deep breath, I confronted the horror of what I’d done to myself.

“Most of my life before Haven is a shattered, grey fog. I can’t remember my parents’ names or their faces. The broad strokes of life on Earth are there but it’s all disconnected from anything meaningful. I have my name and the scraps of a personality that survived, but that’s it. I have less than a year’s worth of coherent memories after one day of using Anathema. It took multiple gods working in concert to put a seal on me that's barely even paper thin, and I was happy to let them. And even with all that… I had help. If Amunai had access to Anathema all this time, he'd either be a hollow shell or a master of it. And a master of Anathema wouldn't need to bother with enslaving everyone to conquer the world."

Shani's face ran through a complex series of emotions as I spoke before settling on a mix of mild disbelief and… pity. Which I was immediately uncomfortable with.

"You're way too casual with a lot of this, Ray." She said with a shake of her head. "You can't even remember your family?"

I could feel myself bristling and had to suppress my instinctual defensive reaction to her sympathy. I didn't want to make this about myself right now, my issues could wait.

"Yeah, not much left up here," I said, rapping my knuckles on my temple with a nervous laugh that fell completely flat.

"I… I don't want to say I'm relieved after what you've been through, but it really does help, Ray. Just to know that it isn't impossible for us to win. Thank you." Shani said, sitting in front of me and covering one of my hands with hers.

"Yeah, no problem," I said hurriedly, eager to move on. "What was that earlier about the core? And uh, why did we have to come here to be safe?"

Shani winced at my deflection, tightening her grip on my hand for a second.

"Ah. Um, yeah. So those two are kind of related…" she hemmed with sudden nervousness.

I waited quietly while she gathered up the courage to speak again.

"After my family fled here, the shadow war against Amunai spread around the world. The Oraculum kept his greater ambitions in check— kind of hard to fight people who can predict your every move— but that didn't stop both sides from getting ever more creative in trying to kill each other. Unfortunately for basically everyone, Amunai figured out how to keep a person's memories mostly intact through the process of creating his drone slaves. The process isn't instantaneous— it takes a few weeks— but in the end, the original person is effectively dead and replaced with a loyal slave to the Tyrant's will. Suddenly you couldn't trust anyone you hadn't seen for a while. For a while, everything was in chaos. Everyone was scrambling to find a way to fight back, and my ancestors came up with the idea for this."

Standing up again, she walked over to the core.

"A fleet of warships to take back our homeland, powered by a core crafted to empower their wielder into practically an Archmage. The energy emitted would directly repulse the Tyrant's agents, preventing him from gaining control over the new weapons."

"How does an 'elemental core' do all that?" I asked curiously.

"It doesn't. Calling it an elemental core is technically correct, but only in the broadest sense.”

Biting her lip, she fidgeted in place for a minute.

“Well, I guess this secret is hardly worse than yours. There was only one element that could do what they wanted; Infernal. The harnessed power of the vengeful dead poured out in a cycle of eternal hatred until the object of their hate is destroyed. Each core is maybe two or three thousand people who died fighting against Amunai and dedicated their souls to killing him afterwards. They can sense his presence and react violently to it, even if he's only here through the proxy of his slaves. The core is strongest here at the heart, so even on the off chance that some of his techs got on board there's no way he could listen in here."

Well. That's not a recipe for horrifying levels of paranoia. Also explains the nasty feeling I get from this ship.

It was a metal as hell solution to the problem of a body-snatching enemy. Thousands of people sacrificed to form a condensed core of endless, psychotic hate and rage all directed at one man. I'd seen how strong the core made Shani during this trip, which left me with only one question.

"I take it that things didn't go as planned?" I asked.

She nodded tiredly.

"Another Calamity, the Silent Kingdoms. A thousand-kilometer death zone that effectively split the continent in half. People who go in just… disappear. The production facilities were all located within the zone and every attempt to recover them has failed. There were over a thousand of these ships scheduled for construction and less than a hundred were done before the Calamity— not enough to fight a war. My papa still swears the Tyrant was behind it somehow but… I don't know."

I nodded my agreement and just sat back to process it all. There was new sympathy in my mind for Shani after I'd dumped my life story on her, because this was a lot. It was difficult to process just how big all this was and try to figure out what the effects of knowing all this would be. The one thing that I felt most though, was anger.

Shani was scared, and that pissed me off. Yeah, my protective feelings might be a little misplaced (and probably unnecessary, given that Shani could easily barbeque me if we were anywhere near the ship) but seeing her like this made me want to hit something.

"I'm not sure exactly how, but the best bet would be the soul." Shani's eyes snapped over to me at my words. "If he's an Awakened… you'd have to go after his soul somehow. The Emissaries can do it, I think. One of them almost got mine with a spear."

"Ray, you don't—"

"Long as I'm here, we can work on it. We can practice my magic at the same time and maybe we can figure out something to help your dad." I interrupted.

She smiled gratefully, and I felt stupidly better from that.

"So… wanna take a look at that 'origin rune'?" I asked with a grin.

Her smile turned a touch predatory, and before I knew it I was being half dragged back to my room while Shani filled my ears with jargon I couldn't understand in the slightest.