There were only two more days left, Lin knew, as he looked at Ehajdon, sitting on his throne.

Only today, and tomorrow, Mai has left to decide, until Ehajdon has told her that he would consider her no final, and kill her. And Ehajdon did not break promises.

Lin mingled amongst the courtiers in the throne room, speaking to them lightly, about nothing in particular.

When he had been an adjunct, before he had met Ehajdon, before he had been promoted to general, Lin would have done anything to be where he was now.

Now, he was the Emperor’s right hand man. Now, he was the first that Ehajdon called upon when he had a problem.

But Lin’s titles did not rest easily upon him. For he was jaded.

When Lin had been an adjunct he had truly believed that Ehajdon was as perfect as he pretended to be. But now he knew the truth. It was an act. There was a man sitting on that throne below the Min, a mortal man, with thoughts and fears, just like all of his servants.

Lin gazed upon that throne with jaded eyes.

And then, and odd thing happened.

In truth, odd was not the right word for it. Terrifying was the right word for it. Horrifying was the right word for it.

Except Lin knew that dark hands reached far, and he had been prepared for another catastrophe ever since he had clawed his way from the failed Battle at the White Walls, on his hands and knees.

What had actually happened?

Simple.

The crowd had exploded.

That was an elegant way of putting it, Lin knew, but at the moment, his mind was more apt to create poetry than truly be able to respond to the situation at hand.

In truth, a large man in a brown cloak had shoved that cloak off, revealed himself to be a golem, and began to rampage, even as one, no, two, Lin noted, of the people in the room drew knives, revealing themselves to be Makini agents, and added to the chaos.

Lin flew into motion, all action, all duty. He drew his sword with a swift stroke, and headed in the direction of the closer of the two Makini agents.

Lin completely avoided the golem. He knew not how to stop it.

As the golem rampaged, it seemed few of the Minsu courtiers present had a clue how to defend themselves. Drunk on Ehajdon’s hopes, they knew not what to do when real danger threatened. And so they ran.

Only the bodyguards of Ehajdon, and the Emperor himself, besides Lin, seemed to even have a conscious thought of resisting. Ehajdon drew his legendary steel sword, Moonbringer, the sword that had been passed down from Minsu heir to Minsu heir for generations, and it fit perfectly in his hand.

Ehajdon’s guards leveled their pikes, and steadily walked to the center of the room, even as the frightened others fled, slowly beginning to leave only the Makini combatants within the ring of guards.

But even as things started to look brighter for the Minsu, things became horrible again. For the golem reached up, up, with a metal hand, and, with an awkward blow, that seemed to reach to high up, for the angle, sent the Min crashing down.

The Min, the great shining blue gemstone that had been the soul of the Minsu for generations, came crashing down.

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It shattered into a thousand pieces upon the floor, beneath the golem’s feet.

And as it did so, it truly exploded.

The Min shown bright, brighter even than the sun, for a fraction of an instant, and then, Lin found himself desperately trying to evade flying slivers.

He, along with all the guards, along with Ehajdon, was forced to ignore his objective of ending the Makini present, and instead found himself cowering for his life.

Lin ducked to the ground. And as he did so, he decided he should have come up with a better metaphor for how the golem had suddenly revealed itself. The Makini must have rigged some sort of magic about the throne room, for now, the ground exploded.

The ground really exploded.

Lin flew backwards, propelled into the air by flying rubble, and, once in the air, he found his body suddenly pierced by the razor shards of the Min, no longer with glow, and now only dark, and sharp, and deadly.

Lin collapsed on his back onto the ground, and found that a moment later, his torso was covered with rubble.

As Lin gasped for breath with ragged lungs, he noticed that he recognized a limp body next to his.

The body was of Savel, and, as the body was pierced through the middle with a shard of the Min, and hung on the floor limply.

So much for his reward, a satirical part of Lin’s mind thought.

As Lin’s eyes gazed about the world, upside down, from his vantage, pinned by chunks of rocky throne room floor, he saw the Makini.

They stood in the center of the throne room, untouched by the horror they had caused.

Protective bubbles of flowing green magic slowly faded from around the two agents’ frames, and between them, the golem stood, hulking, as always.

“Phase one is a success,” said one, in an ugly female voice.

“Yes,” said the other, in a low growl. “Let us move on.”

And then the three, man, woman, and construct, turned, and headed in a direction quite near Lin.

As the female agent passed by Lin, she flashed into his eyes a dark, deep glance of her own.

And as she continued on, Lin realized something. She didn’t care if he was dead or not. She didn’t care if his wounds were survivable, or mortal. He was no threat to her, and as thus, she would not waste any time on him.

The three stopped by a different body on the ground, this one not pierced by anything. Lin could only see the body from an awkward, twisted angle, but he saw it was quite near the wreckage of what had once been the throne, and looked to be alive. Glancing between the legs of the Makini agents, from his vantage point, that was all he could see.

But then, the ugly female voice made it quite clear who that body was.

“Open your eyes, Ehajdon,” she said. “We know you’re awake. We timed the blast just so.”

For a moment, for a fraction of a moment, Lin hastened to hope that the man on the ground was not Ehajdon after all, and somehow, the Makini had gotten it wrong.

But Ehajdon’s voice responded, and that hope broke, faltered, and fled.

“It seems you have me at a disadvantage,” he said, ever the diplomat, ever pretending to be in control of the situation, when he quite obviously had not a shred of power left.

“Indeed,” said the guttural male. He picked up an object from the ground. Moonbringer, Ehajdon’s ancestral sword.

And then the man did a blasphemous thing, indeed. He held that sword to Ehajdon’s throat, as Ehajdon lay prone, on the ground.

“We have a question for you,” said the female. “One you will answer, or else, you will die.”

“We will spare you if you give us the answer,” said the man. “On our souls, we swear this. But you must answer the question, else we kill you.”

“What is the question?” asked Ehajdon.

The female answered, in a roundabout way. “We know that you magically locked the door to Maiako’s cell, so that it can be opened only by one who whispers a code. We intend to take Maiako with us, when we leave, and so, we need the words of that code. That is our question.”

Lin knew Ehajdon would never answer that question. Even on the ground, broken and prone, with the tip of his own sword pointed at his throat, he would never betray the Minsu last hope like that.

And then, Ehajdon spoke. “Return Catharsis,” he said. “Return Catharsis. That’s the code.”

Lin couldn’t believe it. He had come to know that Ehajdon wasn’t the perfect person he claimed to be, but now, starkly, Lin learned the truth.

Ehajdon was just a man, a man who had tried to cling to honor, honor he had never been worthy of. Ehajdon had not been willing to die on his professed morals, on his professed code.

Ehajdon was a fraud. A broken man, who had pretended to be an emperor, something he had just proved not to be.

All this, Lin starkly realized, as the truth set in.

The Makini agent dropped Moonbringer to the floor beside Ehajdon with a clatter, discarding it like an item no longer necessary. Which, it was.

Then the two agents, and the golem, slowly, as if they had all the time in the world, strode out of the ruined throne room, leaving a fallen Ehajdon in their wake.

Lin heard Minsu reinforcements rush into the room, only now, after the Makini were gone, and take haste to help their liege, and the other survivors.

However, even as soldiers helped to uncover Lin’s body, even as he came to the realization that he was not going to die today, he came upon a bigger truth.

With Mai gone, and Ehajdon only a man, we have lost this war.