Shadow of the Conqueror

by Shad M Brooks

  Her words grew in passion as she continued, a stark contrast to her natural soft voice. “Just look at how much the revolution has benefited the Guilds and craftsmen. They’ve expanded their operations, making the wretched factories that we must work in like slaves. The Conqueror never would have allowed this—he would have protected his people. That should be his name: the Great Protector, not the Great Bastard. The Guild Masters have now formed their own Great Houses, where the true rulers of this nation come from. They’re all corrupt!” she hissed. “Light, they’ve essentially resurrected the old oppressive aristocracy!”

  Daylen could see her point with that one regarding the division of the rich and poor but it neglected the glaring differences between the aristocracy, the Dawn Empire and the modern day. These falls anyone could become rich and own land.

  “Is there a single senator that’s come from the factories or the tenements?” She continued, “No! The rich ensure that the rich are elected, who will serve their interests—and the rest of us, the majority of the nation, suffer in poverty.”

  Daylen had to suppress a snort. The rich ensured that the rich are elected? Was she actually paying attention to her words? The poor constituted the larger vote. The reason why the rich were in power was because the poor were electing them. Granted, there were more complex reasons behind this like access to education but it all ignored the fact that getting someone elected from the factories or tenements didn’t ensure they would represent the poor any more than assuming someone who was rich wouldn’t. She was making moral judgments upon people based on their social status rather than their individual actions, the same thing Daylen had done when he overthrew the aristocracy and executed them.

  Listening to Jena—her intelligence, her conviction, her passion—it was clear that she was more than a pretty face. True anger resonated in her voice and it simply took enhancing his scent to confirm that her conviction was real. On top of that, there was actually a measure of light within her. She honestly believed what she was saying was the right thing whilst at the very same time excusing mass murder. Oh, what foul and corrupt things humans could be. With such conviction, it would be easy for others to fall for this woman’s lies and half-truths.

  It infuriated Daylen, for no one knew better than he how evil the Dawn Empire had been. In fact it infuriated him so much that before he even realized it, he had hissed the words out through clenched teeth: “I am Dayless the Conqueror.”

  Jena looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

  “I am Dayless the Conqueror,” Daylen said with every bond channeling light to his voice. “I never fathered a child while in hiding; instead I found a way to make myself young again.” Daylen stood and Jena’s expression showed that she was now taking him far more seriously. “And let me tell you, Jena, you’re nothing but a deranged zealot. I despise everything you stand for. I didn’t lose my way while in hiding; it was there that I finally found myself again. I rediscovered the man who fought through the Fourth Night, the hero you say you love, and that man would have been horrified at everything I did as Emperor. He would have fought with all his power to destroy him!”

  Daylen glared at the woman, who was now staring at him in shock. “The problems in the current government don’t validate the Dawn Empire. Redistributing wealth is just another name for state-sanctioned theft. I stole everything from everybody—land, money, and resources—and then gave back just enough for the people to survive, hoarding the rest for my military and indulgence. I murdered anyone who opposed me, took away the people’s right to speak, the very freedom you flaunt on countless soap boxes through the city. I would have slaughtered any group who spoke against me to the level you speak against the current government, so as bad as you say things are, they’re a damn sight better than the Dawn Empire and aristocracy. You want a better life for the poor—good! But bringing back the failed and oppressive ideologies of the past is the most foolish thing you can do. The Dawn Empire is not the answer. You would be just as poor as you are now, but even more oppressed and miserable.”

  “The Conqueror would never say this!”

  “I AM THE CONQUEROR!” he seethed. “I need to be remembered as the tyrant I was.”

  “You were a hero!”

  “I was a despot.”

  “NO!” Jena screamed, rising to her feet. “You freed us from the aristocracy!”

  “And I also slaughtered their children. Nothing excuses that.”

  Jena’s eyes grew colder with each word. “You did what you had to do to ensure the safety of the empire. It was a just sacrifice.”

  Daylen stared at her. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “I would have done the same.”

  A clearer comprehension dawned in Daylen’s mind of who this Jena really was, and what she was capable of. “What are you planning?”

  “You think I’d tell you?”

  I need to try a different approach, Daylen though. “Like I really need to know,” Daylen said condescendingly as he turned away. “You’re a bunch of pathetic peasants. A mob of angry children pose a greater threat.”

  “You won’t be thinking that in a fall.”

  Daylen smiled. Belittling her had worked. Jena had just revealed that their plan was already in motion. Daylen suspected that Jena would never slip like this regularly but he had the benefit of a supernaturally enhanced voice.

  Daylen pretended to look worried as he spun toward the woman. “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s just say that this city will never be the same again.”

  “You don’t have the numbers.”

  “We don’t need numbers to punish our oppressors,” she spat. “And who knows—once the government is gone, there just might be room for the Dawn Empire to step in and bring order.” Jena suddenly looked confused as if surprised by what she had said. “Something’s wrong. My head… It’s fuzzy.”

  She was feeling the effect of Daylen’s voice.

  Daylen switched his bonds to strength and threw the desk aside like it was paper. He grabbed Jena by the shirt, enhancing his voice again. “How are you going to destroy the government?”

  “It’s too late.”

  “HOW!”

  Jena seemed to struggle with herself, her eyes wide and fixed as she fought against the pull of Daylen’s power. The thugs from outside burst in.

  “I’ll tell you nothing!” she said, snarling. “You’re not the Conqueror. You’re nothing,” she spat at Daylen. “LONG LIVE THE TRUE CONQUEROR! LONG LIVE THE DAWN EMPIRE!”

  Daylen screamed, switching his bonds to strength, and Jena’s head exploded from one empowered punch.

  Her lifeless body slumped to the floor, blood pooling everywhere as Daylen dealt with the thugs.

  The Dawnists in the adjoining rooms either attacked him or ran. The four that attacked didn’t last a second.

  Enhancing his speed and reflexes, Daylen ducked their sword strikes and lunged forward into the middle of the group and sliced them in half with Imperious’ enhanced edge in one broad full-circle slash.

  Daylen paused among the dead bodies for a brief moment, feeling sick at how easy it was for him to kill so many, but he quickly came to his senses and raced out of the building and across the street.

  Lyrah was standing next to the coach and obviously noticed his blood-soaked hand. “What under the Light?”

  “The Dawnists are planning to destroy the Senate within a fall’s time.”

  “Then we just have to move the senators to a safe place.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re planning something bigger, something that will change the city forever.”

  “What? How?”

  “I don’t know. They wouldn’t have kept any plans here. It’s too public, but I have the scent of their leader.”

  “Yes, good. They must have a secret meeting place.”

  “We’ll take the coach, it’s faster.”

  Lyrah ran to the driver’s cabin, threw open the do
or and said, “Out!”

  The driver stumbled out of the cabin as fast as he could.

  Lyrah climbed in and Daylen joined, saying, “I’m driving.”

  Daylen pulled open the underside of the control levers and quickly ripped out several safety regulators.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’re going to need speed.”

  “For all you know, you just crippled the ship!”

  “If I did, this should be impossible,” Daylen said, pulling the ship’s throttle and lift levers. The coach strained in protest as it launched into the air faster than it had ever been intended.

  Daylen worked the levers with absolute focus, weaving the coach through the streets, buildings, smaller islands, and other skyships.

  “You could have ripped the core from the coach!”

  “I know how far I can push these things.”

  “Where did you learn to fly like this?” Lyrah asked.

  “Let’s just say I have a fondness for skyships and leave it at that.”

  With a level-four bond to the scent, Daylen could do more than track Jena’s movements: he could sniff out her entire path for the past several falls, knowing each point she stopped. With Daylen’s profound familiarity with the city—he had built most of it after all—he could easily tell which location for the true headquarters of the Dawnists was most likely: an old abandoned factory in a run-down and unused part of the industrial sector.

  “What could they hope to achieve by destroying the Senate?” Lyrah asked as the skycoach flew at speed. “Doing so would never resurrect the Dawn Empire. They don’t have the support.”

  “It’s more revenge than a proper revolution,” Daylen said. “The Dawnists want to destroy their oppressors.”

  “So I’m guessing that their leader is dead?”

  “Yeah,” Daylen said flatly.

  “What did he do?”

  “She,” he corrected.

  “Their leader was a woman?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you killed her?”

  “Without a second thought.”

  “Why?”

  “Um, maybe the fact that she’s planning to destroy the government?”

  “I know, but we could have questioned her.”

  “That zealot wouldn’t have revealed anything. She was too dangerous to be left alive.”

  “Okay… I’ll trust you.”

  Daylen looked to Lyrah, incredulous.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You trust me?”

  “Just focus on flying.”

  Daylen smiled and did so, eventually guiding the coach into a slide landing right in front of the old factory.

  Jumping out of the coach, Daylen and Lyrah quickly found that this factory wasn’t nearly as abandoned as it appeared.

  Several armed men and women ran out and attacked them. Daylen drew his new sword and swung it into his left hand, summoning Imperious to duel wield and take out these idiots as fast as possible.

  He literally cut them into pieces.

  Lyrah was right next to him and her strength was incredible. Grabbing each person that charged her, man or woman, and throwing them into walls or one another like they were rattan balls.

  How can she become so strong with only three bonds? Daylen wondered once again.

  Seconds later, every Dawnist that had attacked them was dead.

  “You would be really good at rattan,” Daylen said.

  “It’s my favorite sport.”

  They ran into the building, Daylen enhancing his speed and noting that he was much, much faster than Lyrah. She was fast, of course, supernaturally so, but nothing close to the level-three bond Daylen had made, keeping his last bond on scent, which was enough to track things close by.

  Daylen continued to follow Jena’s trail, which led him through the factory rooms to the basement and a brick wall. Jena’s path led through it, which meant the wall must be movable. Daylen didn’t have time to look about for whatever mechanism moved the thing, so he enhanced his mass and strength, stepping back for a charge—but then Lyrah came running past and crashed through the wall as if it were paper.

  Daylen followed, entering a large vaulted brick room with a primary central table and several desks facing the walls.

  No one was in this room, but there were many papers scattered on the tables, the most interesting of which lay on the center table.

  Lyrah and Daylen ran to it and leafed through the papers.

  There were hundreds of notations, equations, designs, and schematics.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Lyrah said.

  “They’re designs to repurpose the sunstone drives of skyships,” Daylen said.

  “You understand all this math?”

  “I know a thing or two about engineering,” Daylen said as he flipped through a large design pad, before stopping at a detailed drawing of a large chunk of rock. From the shrubbery at its top, it was clearly a floating island.

  “Oh, Light,” Daylen said with dread.

  “What?”

  “Those bastards!”

  “What is it?”

  “That’s why Blackheart was selling skyships to the Dawnists. They’ve been illegally buying ships and repurposing their drives to fit them to the core of this island,” Daylen said, pointing.

  “Is that even possible with an island that big?”

  “With enough directed and intense light, any hunk of darkstone will move.”

  “But I thought there were limits.”

  “Only under the square of its mass. If the core of this island is small enough and they have sufficient drives, they can do it. It’s how smaller sky islands are moved over the city. Dig through the rock, fix the drives, and if you’re committed enough you could turn a larger floating island into a moving mountain.” Daylen took a deep breath, staring at Lyrah. “They’re going to ram a five-hundred-meter-wide hunk of rock into Highdawn.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  I pressed on through my setbacks, hunting out the rebels while waging war, eventually defeating Zantium, Lee’on’ta, and Toulsen, with Lourane and Orden being the last nations that held out against my might.

  It was then that the Arch Order of Light finally declared war on the Dawn Empire, decreeing that I was a threat to the peoples of the world. This was unprecedented, for until then, the knights had never taken sides in disputes between nations.

  * * *

  The shield might be able to stop it.”

  “Highdawn’s shield was designed to stop annihilators, and that was hard enough. This thing is a hundred times their size, and thanks to the good old square-cube law, its momentum once in motion is going to be insane. The shield’s anchors are going to be pulverized to dust!”

  “If this thing gets through the shield it will completely destroy the upper islands,” Lyrah said in dread.

  “That’s where the wealthiest districts are. The Dawnists see the rich as their enemies as much as the Senate, and they don’t even care that so many poor will get killed too, the genocidal bastards. But now that we know their plan, we should have enough time to stop it. We just need to board the island, find the tunnels, and take out the drivers.”

  “Could it be that easy?”

  “If I had planned this, I would have collapsed the tunnels once the drivers were in place as well as made as many defenses as I could just in case.”

  “You think they’re that prepared?”

  “I do—Jena was a zealot, but shrewd. She’ll have made as many preparations as she could think of.”

  “Then we need to evacuate the city and get as much help as possible. I can do that from the Hold and gather the other knights. From there we can also alert the border patrols.”

  “You’ve said there are a few knights that can make a level-nine bond. Would any of them be powerful enough to just destroy the thing?”

  “Um… maybe. Archeron Peroven has a level-nine lightning bond and can call down a storm of de
struction, but that might not be enough to sunder the island. Anyway, he’s at the Arch Hold and won’t be able to get here in time.”

  “Peroven?” Daylen asked, recognizing the name. “Was he the one who destroyed the second fleet in the Empire War?”

  “Yes, but that isn’t important right now,” Lyrah replied impatiently.

  “Yeah,” he agreed quickly. “So are there any applications of our powers that could destroy the island?”

  “No. Neither of us are that type of Lightbinder.”

  “Cueseg, your companion, he can—he shot me with lightning.”

  “Cueseg can only make a level-three lightning bond, and like I said, I don’t think a massive bombardment of lightning would even destroy the island.”

  “All right, are there any Lightbinders like Cueseg…”

  “Worldbinders. You and I are Lifebinders. The others are Worldbinders.”

  “So we need a powerful enough Worldbinder.”

  “Yes, but even then they need to have specialized the right bond to be useful. The only type of bond that I can think could do it would be an earth bond. There’s a few knights with that type of specialization, but none close to us, and their bonds might not even be strong enough.”

  “That leaves us with no other choice but to assault the island and take out the drivers.”

  “It seems so.”

  “I’ll grab Ahrek and meet you at the Hold.”

  “Good idea, a Bringer will be useful,” Lyrah said, and they both ran from the room as fast as they could.

  Daylen watched Lyrah as she power jumped away. He took the coach and flew it to the Fallton.

  I just can’t escape my cursed legacy, Daylen thought to himself as he raced over the city skyline. These blackened Dawnists want to follow my horrible example and start another revolution so that the bloody cycle of history might continue. Why can’t they see that life here is so much better than the Empire? I won’t let another nation fall in my name. It’s appropriate, poetic even, that I’ll be the one to stop them.

  Daylen lurched the coach to a stop at the penthouse patio and ran in, sensing that Ahrek was back from his personal errands.