The dregs of Torth civilization still wanted to enslave people. So they probably deserved this.

TORTH! Thomas thought, making his thoughts bold and public. I AM ON YOUR SIDE!

Torth throughout the remnants of the galactic empire tuned into his massive mind like moths attracted to moonlight, like flowers opening to the sun.

 Why is the Conqueror clamoring for attention?

  Has He come to gloat?

   Or will He beg for Us to join Him, as usual?

    Bah!

     Go away, Conqueror!

      None of Us are stupid enough to kneel before Your minions!

       We are TRUE TORTH!

Thomas smiled joylessly. His biological father had been a true Torth, fanatically loyal to the galactic empire. The Somehow Nexus had sacrificed his own life in an attempt to assassinate his biological son. What a misguided tragedy. All of these fanatics were victims, he privately thought.

He hid that opinion beneath mundane calculations.

I AM WILLING TO FORGIVE YOUR TERRORIST ATTACKS AND MURDERS OF MY PEOPLE, Thomas told the death cultists, while he secretly analyzed and deconstructed individual minds. He privately categorized each one. He figured out who to target. BUT I NEED YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION. I WILL ONLY COMMUNICATE THIS ONCE.

Intense interest needled Thomas. He surreptitiously collated each pinhead of a mind, filing them into categories which he kept hidden. He paid more attention to his orbiters than he ever had before.

 ??????????????????????????????????

More and more Torth piled into his mind. Part of Thomas marveled at their individuality. There was beauty in the patterns of the masses. They mimicked the invisible-yet-elegant mathematics that comprised the material universe. YOU WILL NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE, he warned the fractal crowds, analyzing individuals while they poked their neighbors or awakened their sleeping comrades.

He waited until their collective curiosity boiled at a feverish pitch. Then he stoked it higher.

SOME OF YOU HAVE A POWER TO BRAINWASH, he let them know. I (AND I ALONE) KNOW WHICH ONES AMONG YOU HOLD THAT INCREDIBLE POWER.

Stunned disbelief.

 ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? !

The Necrocosm stuttered. Death cultists all but tripped over each other’s minds in their eagerness to orbit the Conqueror and learn what secrets he was about to reveal.

One lone voice protested.

She would have been lost amidst the waves of eager anticipation, except that her mind was enormous enough to rival that of the Conqueror. The sheer weight of her thoughts tugged at his millions of orbiters, dividing their attention.

REJECT HIM, the Death Architect warned. SHUT YOUR MINDS TO HIM. HE SEEKS TO DESTROY (ME) US.

The Conqueror rejected her accusation. I AM HERE TO HEAL THE DIVIDE BETWEEN ALL TORTH. He mentally opened imaginary arms that were large enough to engulf millions of wayward souls. WHY NOT TAKE A VOTE, LIKE CIVILIZED PEOPLE? DO YOU COLLECTIVELY WISH TO LET A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL DECIDE WHAT IS BEST FOR ALL?

The Majority swirled. Voting seemed like a peacetime luxury. But they remembered peace. They did yearn for harmonious decision-making. That was how things ought to be.

WHO WISHES TO LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR DORMANT MENTAL POWERS? Thomas wondered, barely aware as Ariock and his other heroic friends took hold of him. COME. YOU MAY ALL TAKE A LESSON FROM ME.

NO! the Death Architect roared. REJECT HIM! YOU MUST REJECT HIM!

But she offered no alternative lure. She gave no explanation.

Some of the death cultists were curious enough to inspect the Conqueror’s mood. They discovered honesty. Mind readers could not lie to each other in the Necrocosm.

I WILL NOT KEEP YOU IN THE DARK. Thomas welcomed all seekers of knowledge. Unlike the Death Architect, he wished to inform them of what they were capable of. I WILL SHARE. I WELCOME ALL.

Some of the most diehard death cultists felt torn.

Most, however, checked in with others, eager to hold a vote the way they used to, back when the Torth Empire had been mighty and wholly united. They did not appreciate how secretive the Death Architect was. She ordered people around like a tyrant, never offering rewards. That wasn’t the Torth way.

The Conqueror might be a dangerous tyrant, but at least he embodied something of the old Torth spirit. He wanted to share.

HE WILL SHARE POISON! the Death Architect insisted. I KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR ALL OF YOU. WORSHIP ME OR YOU WILL BE ENSLAVED!

Thomas let her rant. Her passion was only a pale imitation of true emotions. She was faking her concern, and everyone knew it.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Her nonstop tranquility used to be attractive, back when the Megacosm had sought stability. But the masses were burned out on her brand of stability. They wanted a leader who truly cared about them.

I CARE ABOUT EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU, Thomas assured them.

It was nothing but the truth. He was able to acknowledge the personal and unique merits of every influential Torth within his audience, and they truly appreciated that much individual attention. They felt gratified.

The Death Architect did not groom individuals for leadership, the way the Servants of All used to do. The Death Architect never offered promotions or rewards. She did not shower her upper ranks with trust.

LET ME SHOW YOU THE SECRET. Thomas urged each high rank to rally their favorite orbiters, who rallied still more.

They came to him in droves. They swarmed him, eagerly attentive, knowing that he never lied.

IT’S A TRAP! the Death Architect warned.

But her warning failed to grab attention the way a blared alarm, or a mental scream, would have done. Only a few Torth heeded her and dropped out of the Necrocosm.

The rest rushed into orbit around the mind of the Conqueror.

You are a brainwasher. So are you. Thomas began to point them out.

Their comrades and neighbors stiffened, wary of anyone who held nefarious personal power. They checked their blaster gloves, just in case they might have to shoot in self-defense. They had not quite expected the Conqueror to point out actual brainwashers. They had just wanted some generalized instructions.

And you (and you) andyouandyouanyoayuyuyuyuyuyuyuyu. Thomas sped up the identifications.

Meanwhile, in the corporeal world, he squeezed the hands of his friends.

This was how sharing ought to be. Not casual, but intimate. His friends held him…

…And gave him more power than he could imagine.

There was a difference between absorbed experiences and firsthand experiences. Now Thomas felt the difference between knowing Ariock’s strength and having Ariock’s strength. Waves of power charged him up until he trembled. Tears leaked from his glowing hot eyes. For the first time in his life, he knew with utter certainty that he had not been born to ascend to godhood. This was too much power.

The last remnants of the boy he used to be vaporized. Innocence and vulnerability fell away. He was all-knowing. All-seeing. All-powerful. Almighty.

Garrett’s sudden wariness seemed utterly insignificant.

Thomas directed a surge of power into the orbiters he had secretly chosen as his ideal vessels. He no longer had to hold their attention, because he had become undeniable. He was truth itself. He gripped their minds and powered right past their reservations and straight into their cores.

MINE.

He inhabited a fractal of Torth. He seized a thousand minds at once.

MY VASSALS.

He pressed his will upon their minds and forced them to absorb his expertise on brainwashing. LEARN. And so they did. Within an instant, they learned how to invade other minds, how to drill into their core, how to gently massage other people’s moods and emotions until they were receptive to unthinkable ideas. They learned how to pressure others with a subtle trickle of power.

Now for the mass twist.

SPREAD SURRENDER.

His chosen vassals became extensions of his will. They were so overwhelmed with their new knowledge and power and duty, they had no room to examine it. Unable to fight his power of suggestion, they immediately reached out and made power-induced suggestions to their neighbors and comrades.

 Surrender to the Conqueror.

  Kneel.

   Submit.

That message rippled and spread throughout the Necrocosm, leaping from the vessels to their orbiters, from the epicenter to the outer reaches.

The Conqueror seized another fractal, another thousand minds, and did it again, all within a microsecond, too fast for the Majority of death cultists to register what was happening. And again.

Some distant part of himself, still in touch with the vessel that contained his mortal brain, noted warmth tricking towards his mouth. A nose bleed. Another distant part of him worried about an aneurysm or a stroke. He wielded the power of a god, but his body was too fragile, unused to so much power.

Torth combatants tried to run. They tried to escape. But telepathy gas filled the forums and the plazas and the space stations where they ruled. That had been set up beforehand, by secretly subversive slaves. The death cultists had been blissfully unaware of it—until now.

Anyone within the vicinity of a brainwasher could not outrun the message.

Rosy Ranks and Servants of All became unwilling battery packs. Brainwashing vassals mentally instructed them to come close, to link, to offer up their own raw strength.

They joined hands.

They boosted the signal.

YOU ARE CONQUERED. The Conqueror conveyed pure truth. He rode the crest of unimaginable power while peering through a million pairs of eyes and understanding a million alien souls. KNEEL.

His vassals knelt.

GIVE AWAY YOUR WEAPONS.

Torth raiders went from attack mode to willing surrender. Battles faltered on many thousands of planets. Death cultists bowed down, and aliens shot many of them before realizing that their enemies had dropped to their knees and stripped off their blaster gloves.

Monolithic space rigs spun out of control as their operators ceased to carry out precise orders.

A Torth dreadnought gave up, and was bombed into oblivion.

Neutron star stations shut down. The kneelers aboard those rigs no longer wanted to cause trouble for their new lord, the Conqueror.

Transports crashed. Some of the wrecks burst into flames.

Weptolyso’s soldiers were striking hard and fast everywhere. Squadrons accidentally assassinated Torth champions who had suddenly knelt and surrendered.

The Conqueror attempted to seize the hugely complex mind of the Death Architect, but she was wily. She dropped out of the dying Necrocosm in that millisecond, preserving her own free will.

So the Death Architect wasn’t around to see the final gasps of her empire. She did not experience Torth brainwashers altering the minds of their neighbors and their orbiters en masse. She did not see her carefully constructed machinery crash and burn.

She was not around when the final iteration of the Necrocosm collapsed into nothingness.

But the Conqueror experienced it.

Brainwashed converts dropped out of various mental audiences, aware that conspiracy—a mental language—was against the law of the civilization which they had just embraced. The few remaining surviving cultists dropped out as well, unwilling to risk being brainwashed. Veteran penitents knew better than to ascend. Not when any alien could use telepathy gas to see what they were learning or pondering.

The last echoes of thought faded away.

The Conqueror listened to an eerie, empty, echoing quietude more profound than any silence he had ever known.

Holographs displayed celebrations. A few isolated Torth continued to fight, but they looked confused and terrified, their access to knowledge cut off, their comrades missing. They gave up. They had to.

Soldiers collared them.

Alien civilians emerged, whooping in triumph. Soldiers jumped off hoverbikes and grabbed each other with the joy of unexpected victory. Mer nerctan populations swayed their bony heads in sync. Crowds of nussians leaped up and down, causing buildings to shake. Ummins shot streamers into the air, or set off their version of fireworks.

The Conqueror could not hear the celebrations. The hall was silent, the holographic displays lacking audio.

Tears streamed down his cheeks along with a trickle of blood from his nosebleed. He let go of his friends. He shoved them away.

The Necrocosm would never reemerge. The Megacosm was gone forever. The few defiant Torth who survived today were too few, and too fragile, to form the basis of a civilization. They could not mentally gather for as long as Thomas and trillions of penitents were listening. They were dregs. And they were done.

Superluminal transmissions would replace the purpose which the Megacosm had served. But Thomas’s satellite network was a poor substitute for the grandeur he had destroyed.

He had killed an immensity.

Not just people. Not just their individuated wisdom. He had killed their collective knowledge.

Thomas listened. He held his mind open for seconds that stretched like eons. He longed to hear someone else even as he dreaded it.

Nothing.

The vast stretches of space between stars were devoid of thoughts.

It was all deadness.