Runic Revelation (The Runic Series Book 2)
Page 47
The old man stared at the pathetic figure trapped in its crystalline tomb, even as it stared back at him. Every Void crystal had a body encased within, an undead mind in various states of awareness.
But this one, this one was different.
The old man ran his fingers down the smooth surface of the crystal, marveling not for the first time at how remarkably well preserved the body inside appeared. He stared at its head, noting the faint blurriness around it, a halo of imperfect crystal encircling it. There was perfection in that imperfection, he knew; for that faint blurriness was due to millions upon millions of microscopic metal wires, countless fibers extending from deep within the corpse's brain. These spread outward through the entirety of the crystalline tomb, connecting every single brain in every single Void crystal to that brain. And by extension, every Void crystal in the miles upon miles of Void channels that had led him here.
Millions of minds, all subjugated to this one being, an enormous nervous system of the greatest consciousness that had ever lived, the most powerful intellect ever constructed.
The old man sighed, turning away from the crystal and its entombed occupant. He closed his eyes then, picturing a man in black armor, a man he'd recognized earlier without realizing from where. Or more importantly, when.
Ampir.
The implications were paradigm-changing, of course. There was no doubt that the man protecting the second Empire was the same man who had abandoned the first.
He should have suspected the bodyguard earlier.
The old man chuckled, turning back to face the massive crystal in the center of the chamber, at its shriveled captive deep within.
“You haven't changed a bit, Ampir,” he murmured.
He placed his palm on the crystal's surface again, staring at the undead being within. Ampir had not aged at all, through some miracle of preservation. The body suspended before the old man had not been so lucky. It had nearly run out of time before achieving immortality, had decayed long past a normal mortal's ability to survive. But in a testament to its will, and its genius, it had survived.
And now there was no body it could not possess, no mind it could not subvert to its own use. Not with the power carried by the enormous Void crystal that surrounded it, a construction long ago steeped in legend. The crystal was the machine that the devout called God, a tool deserving of such worship.
But if there was ever a god, it was not the machine. It was the man within the machine.
The man within Xanos.