Emperor

by Isaac Hooke

  “Yes,” he said. “Don’t you cry, my dearest.” He stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead. “Don’t cry. You’re safe now.”

  She cuddled against him, and closed her eyes.

  Soon, her breathing deepened, and he knew she was asleep.

  Malem closed his eyes and tried his darnedest to sleep as well, but rest did not come easy that night.

  Finally, after a few hours, he finally fell into a troubled sleep.

  Malem arose early to prepare the writ for King Agantas. When it was finished, he rolled up the large parchment into a tube, and made his way up to the parapets that surrounded the keep. Nemertes yet lounged on the northwestern side of those parapets, under guard by several half dragons, some of which had assumed full dragon form.

  “Well, well, well,” Nemertes said, lifting her head groggily. “You’ve come to supply my breakfast? Oh wait, you are my breakfast.”

  “Funny,” Malem said.

  “We’ve fed her three sheep and two cows already this morning,” one of the half dragon guards said. “And she still complains.”

  Malem nodded. “And she ate a full herd of mountain goats, and a pack of wolves last night.”

  Nemertes shrugged those dragon shoulders. “I have a fast metabolism.”

  “Fast metabolism?” Malem asked. “What’s this?” He walked up to her leg, and kicked the huge slab of fat that was hanging down. It jiggled.

  “Hey, it’s called fat storage,” Nemertes said. “We dragons have to store up for the lean times. Some seasons, meals abound on the plains and mountains below. Others, there’s nothing to eat for miles around.”

  Malem glanced at the half dragon guard.

  The man shrugged. “Your pet is right, at that. Every few decades, there are lean years, and—”

  Nemertes reared her head. “Did you just call me his pet?”

  The man stepped back in alarm. The Silvers and Chromiums standing guard nearby tensed, their ears pricking straight up.

  Malem stepped in front of Nemertes to diffuse the situation. “Relax, big girl. He’s just a dumb Metal. Doesn’t know any better.”

  “Fucking dumb, that’s for sure,” Nemertes said. “Metals taste so good in human form. Can I have him? Pretty please?”

  “Sure,” Malem said, stepping aside.

  Nemertes stared at him in shock, and then her expression twisted into one of malignant pleasure as she eyed the guard, who was backing away in surprise.

  She reared her head, but before she could strike, Malem stepped in front of her once more, raised a finger, and said, loudly: “If—”

  Nemertes paused, her eyes narrowing.

  “If,” Malem continued. “You agree that henceforth, you will refer to me as master and king.”

  Nemertes stared at him incredulously, and then erupted in a raucous laugh.

  “Ah, but you tease me, Breaker,” Nemertes said. She sighed, turning her head away, and resting it on her forepaw. “Master and king.” She giggled softly. “Moron, more like it.”

  Xaxia came onto the parapet and joined him.

  “I saw what happened,” Xaxia said. “I thought the Defiler had returned for a second, when I heard you giving her permission to eat the fellow.”

  Malem nodded. “The Defiler is still inside of me.”

  “We have a Defiler in all of us,” Xaxia agreed. “That we can suppress this malevolent entity is the only reason we can live together without killing each other. There would be no civilization if we couldn’t.”

  “Probably not,” Malem agreed. He turned his attention to the blue dragon. “Nemertes, I’m going to need your signature on a writ.”

  “What kind of a writ” Nemertes asked, not bothering to raise her head from her paw.

  “One authorizing the Metals to inspect the weapons of my army in the Midweald,” Malem said. “And confiscate any they recognize.”

  “The oraks aren’t going to like that,” Nemertes said. “Nor will the night elves. Or the dwarves for that matter. Or the Eldritch. Hell, none of your troops are going to like it.”

  “I know,” Malem said. “Which is why I’m going to ask your dragons to keep the peace.”

  “Pfft,” Nemertes said. “So that we become hated in your stead? Why do the dragons always have to do your dirty work?”

  “Because they are the most powerful,” Malem said.

  Nemertes pursed her dragonly lips. “I suppose they are. I’m not sure whether you were purposely using flattery to manipulate me, or stating a fact.”

  “Maybe a little of both,” Malem said. He laid the large scroll he had brought on the ground, and unrolled it. “Xaxia, help me hold down the edges.”

  Xaxia stood on the far side while Malem unrolled the remainder.

  “Big enough writ for you?” Xaxia asked. “The writing is like in a tiny corner.”

  “I needed to leave room for Nemertes to sign,” Malem replied.

  When he had finished opening the scroll, he stood on the opposite side to hold the edges down.

  He glanced up at the blue dragon. “Sign this.”

  Nemertes sighed, then pushed up her torso. She lifted a forelimb to her mouth and tore into the muscle with her sharp teeth. She held the gaping wound over the scroll, and allowed a large drop of dragon blood to ooze onto the parchment. It formed a red globule the size of a human head.

  Nemertes lowered the appendage and brought her other forelimb forward; she pressed her paw into the blood, forming a taloned handprint.

  “Signed with a drop of blood,” Xaxia said. “How… retro. But aren’t you going to read it first?”

  “Nope,” Nemertes replied.

  “How long do I have to stand here?” Xaxia asked after a time.

  “Until the blood dries,” he told her.

  After a few minutes, Malem drew Balethorn and, intending to test the consistency of the blood, brought the tip to its perimeter. Before touching, a part of his mind told him this might be a bad idea, that he might awaken the hunger inside the blade. But he scolded himself: I am the master.

  As soon as the sword touched the blood, Balethorn screamed.

  Malem was overcome with the urge to kill Nemertes. Still standing on the parchment, he turned toward the blue dragon and lifted his arm over his head to throw the blade. But before he could bring the weapon forward, he slammed down hard with the vice of his will.

  You will stop!

  The sword didn’t respond. Instead, it fought him all the harder.

  Nemertes cocked her head. “You want to kill me, little human?”

  She grinned, and slid her neck in front of Malem so that she was within striking distance of the blade. “Go ahead.”

  “Damn it, Nemertes!” Malem said. “Do you have a death wish?”

  His hand moved downward of its own accord. It shook the entire time, as he fought it all the way.

  “Not particularly,” the dragon said. “I just enjoy watching you struggle with the sword.”

  Malem frantically drew stamina from the dragon and his Broken companions, hoping it would give him the strength to resist. But apparently the sword had been setting aside some of the stamina it had been stealing from his enemies in all the past battles, and it was using that reserve now to resist him with everything it had. If Malem gave in, not only would he lose Nemertes, his most powerful ally in this world, but there was a good chance he would fall under the complete control of the sword.

  The Defiler would return, or worse.

  He hadn’t realized just how dangerous this blade really was.

  He continued drawing stamina from his companions, but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t resist. Even if he drained his companions to near death, he doubted it would help, given the vast reserves he sensed the sword holding back.

  Thinking of the collar that Wendolin had bound him with, and how he had escaped from it, he searched the periphery of his mental space, looking for any foreign energy bundles. There were none… only the half monsters he had Broken. And Neme
rtes herself.

  His sword edged forward, continuing toward that exposed neck, but then abruptly jerked upward, giving Malem a different direction to resist. Slowly, his arm raised the blade, as if getting ready to chop down upon the dragon’s neck.

  Malem continued the frantic search in his mind. The presence had to be here somewhere—it was the only way the sword would be able to control him. But he could not find it.

  That made some sense, given that he had never sensed an energy bundle all the times he had drawn Balethorn. Though admittedly, he had other things to worry about in those instances, like enemies that had wanted to kill him.

  There. He felt something… foreign. Something that didn’t quite belong. The faintest of energies, just along the borders of his mind. The energy wasn’t actually inside his mind, but abutting next to it: that would explain why it was so difficult to detect. It didn’t belong to any creature he had ever Broken before, though the signature was vaguely reminiscent of the alien presence he had felt while wearing the collar.

  He reached inside of it, but it denied him. It was like trying to pass one’s hand through a closed door made of martensite steel.

  His sword arm continued to rise.

  “This… struggle… could be… your end!” he told Nemertes.

  “Then such is my doom,” Nemertes said.

  He pounded at that mental door in his head, struggling to get in. He formed a spear with is will, and stabbed it into the door. Still nothing. He tried different shapes: hammers, pickaxes. Nothing penetrated.

  His arm swung down to complete the mortal blow. In a fraction of a second, the neck of Nemertes would split open, and the creature would die.

  He tried one last shape. That of a dragon’s talons, and squeezed his will across the door. Those talons sunk in deep, crumpling the metal, and then he was through.

  The world fell away.

  10

  Malem floated in a land of blades and talons. The invisible pressure that kept people glued to the ground and pulled them over cliffs was completely absent here, and he hovered several yards above the terrain.

  Overhead, the sky looked like the underside of a huge metal sword, complete with a fuller groove running down its middle. That sword covered the entire firmament. There were no clouds, no sun, but a brightness like that of an overcast day illuminated the blade.

  Below, the landscape was covered in the bodies of dragons; they were wrapped in body-wide vises of crisscrossing swords, their lifeless limbs protruding, the talons curled in death. Sometimes those swords had pressed too tightly, and beheaded the dragon in question—heads lay next to the bodies, the mouths twisted into pained rictuses. Sometimes the dead dragons overlapped one another, forming mounds several bodies deep, with swords at each level to constrain them.

  Those blades and the dead they held continued into the distance around him, as far as the eye could see, to every horizon, forming macabre, rolling hills.

  He realized with a rising sense of nausea that these were all the dragons the sword had ever slain, since its creation.

  He wasn’t sure how he knew this.

  But he did.

  Balethorn fed on their very essences. That essence was what boosted his stamina, when the sword deigned to grant him endurance. When dragons were slain by the blade, their essences, or souls, came here, and the sword processed them, killing them truly, so that if there was an afterlife for dragons, they were prevented utterly from going to it.

  The ground below him shifted. The swords and bodies slid aside as a giant bear trap triggered. The edges were serrated—no, more than that: they were covered in the same crisscrossing swords that trapped the dragons. The deadly jaws of the clamp approached on either side, and in moments he would be impaled by them.

  He moved upward. Not by any physical action, but rather by thought: he willed himself higher.

  The dual sides of the trap snapped shut below him, clamping onto the empty air.

  The ground shifted further, and more dead bodies slid aside as the clamp shoved upward, part of something larger.

  Malem willed himself higher still, and backward, moving away as a terrible form emerged from the dead. It looked like a white skull of some kind. A long-beaked variant, reminding him of the cranium of a huge alligator. But as more of the creature emerged, he realized this was no gator.

  But rather a dragon made of bone and steel.

  It turned its toothy head toward him, and lunged.

  Once more Malem willed himself backward. He moved across the landscape, and that dragon darted after him, not even having to flap its wings to travel: like him, it moved via its mind.

  He detected the creature via his beast sense, and tried to wrap his mind around it, but his will evaporated.

  Those jaws snapped eagerly as the monster grew nearer, the iron swords that composed its teeth crashing against one another. Its wings finally began to flap, causing the bones to rattle against the steel scales that partially covered the creature. Perhaps it was an instinctive reaction, or perhaps the flapping aided its forward motion, but whatever the case, it was fast closing.

  A voice came in his head. It sounded raspy, like the stone on stone grating of a crypt door opening.

  So you are the Holder.

  Malem smiled grimly, and gazed into the vacant-eyed skull of his pursuer. And you must be Balethorn.

  My real name is Balu. I was the greatest black dragon in the world. Until Darowych, night elf and friend, betrayed me. The swordsmith bound me to this blade.

  Closer those snapping jaws came. In a few moments, their blades would wrap entirely around Malem and impale him like the other dead below, and Balethorn, or Balu, would drink of his stamina, draining his essence until death.

  Malem willed the swords of the landscape below to rise. The blades broke away from the dead, and thrust into the air to impale the dragon. But the impacts didn’t slow the creature in the least—it was already dead. The giant blades simply lodged harmlessly between the ribcages.

  Malem tried to increase the speed at which he traveled, and he eked out a slightly faster pace, but the dragon was still closing.

  Why do you thirst for dragons? Malem asked, trying to distract the creature. If a night elf bound you, shouldn’t you hunger for night elves?

  I hate all elves, no matter the sub-species, Balu said. But they grant me no stamina. It is part of Darowych’s curse, laid upon the magic blade, that allows me to drink of the essence belonging only to others of my kind. It was his last irony.

  Those deadly blades had reached him.

  Malem darted to the left, and then the right, as the jaws snapped at him. Finally, he decided to surrender: he thrust forward, between the jaws, before they could close. He traveled into the cranium of the creature, and underneath the empty bones of its neck, where the gullet would have been, and into the opening at the top of its rib cage so that he was inside its chest cavity. He landed on the inner surface of the belly, where steel scales partially covered the exterior.

  The steel came alive, and swords thrust forth like spears. Malem leaped off the surface, and willed himself to the far side, to the bare ribs.

  But those ribs curved inward, trying to crush him. Malem slid away and dove past the crack between two ribs. He emerged outside the body and forced himself down, toward the bodies below.

  The dragon came about, and pursued.

  Malem willed more of those blades to break free underneath him, and sent them spiraling upward in a deadly maelstrom. The hail of blades struck the bone and metal dragon, and tore away one of its legs, and a wing.

  But the dragon continued toward him.

  Malem headed toward a section of ground that was covered in a particularly dense pile of bodies, where the swords jutted in circular profusion. He landed between an aisle formed by those piles, and ran on the squishy surface underneath—more dragons, long dead.

  The jaws of his pursuer thrust between the bodies above and into the aisle, snapping at him with those
steal blades.

  Smiling, Malem sprang the trap he had laid.

  The circle of swords rose, slamming into the dragon’s body, clamping shut. Balu could no longer move. Though the beast strove to wrench free, it could not.

  Malem turned around. He floated upward, until he hovered directly in front of the monster. It lunged at him, its jaws breaking free to snap at him, but Malem simply willed himself backward. At the same time, he summoned more swords to wrap around its neck.

  Release me, the dragon commanded.

  Malem grinned. Surrender, and I will.

  Never! It tried to break free once more, and a few of the swords that bound it fell away. Malem simply summoned more.

  This environment is mine! the dragon said. It obeys me! I am its master.

  It looked around, as if willing the swords to rise up around it and strike Malem, but nothing happened.

  Not today, Malem said. You forget, I am your Holder. And here, I am the master.

  He wasn’t entirely certain if his Holder status had granted him the advantage, or if it was because he was a Breaker backed by the power of a Balor. Whatever the case, he would use this advantage to the greatest possible extent.

  Curse Darowych forever! the dragon said.

  Oh, I’m sure he’s cursed, Malem told the dragon. But not as cursed as you. He narrowed his eyes. Now, surrender.

  He reached into the dragon’s mind and found that he could wrap his will around it. So, he had weakened it, then.

  He tried to squeeze, but the dragon struggled in his mental grasp; at the same time, it attempted to physically haul itself free. Malem had to send in more swords to impale it, while at the same time fighting against that mental wriggling.

  The dragon must have been digging into the dead body underneath it, because suddenly the monster sank, dropping from view.

  Malem hovered upward; the dragon was partially inside the collapsed chest cavity of the carcass.

  Malem sent in more swords from either side, impaling that chest cavity, and Balu within, further pinning the creature.

  Then he squeezed the vise of his will even tighter.