The retreating soldiers regrouped, but they dared not attack the monster even when it was showing its back to them. The blasts of the chariots didn’t seem to register with the monster at all.
Every time the monster’s claw struck the gigatherion, there were sparks. Yuma looked back at the Grim King. His gaze was on the battle before him. “Are you afraid I shall win? Do not fret. This is the end of my strength. Even if I’m lucky enough to win now, they will soon bring two. And if I bring down two, they will bring three. To defeat the Empire, I must myself raise an empire, and that is not something I can do.”
Apollyon, still on its back, grabbed at the monster’s wings and ripped them off. They were like paper in its grasp. The monstergave no sign of pain, but the Grim King grimaced as if a part of his body had been torn away.
“Thirty more years—no, had I just ten more…”
Apollyon let go of the torn wings and grabbed the torso of the monster. The gigatherion’s body turned a bright red, and a ray of light pierced through the monster’s chest into the sky.
40
EMERE
Emere grabbed the broken stick of a Zero Legion standard, then broke off a bit more at the end to fashion a quarterstaff. He used it as a crutch to chase after Ludvik. Ludvik himself also seemed injured from Loran’s explosive landing in the middle of the fort—Emere could easily track Ludvik by his bloody footsteps. Emere turned around the corner of the fort, and spotted a small door swinging on its hinges in the battlements. He slipped inside.
The door led into a dark corridor, and the deeper he got, the more muffled the sounds of battle became. He listened for the sound of footsteps, squelching with blood, ahead. His own steps were turning wet, the many wounds from his recent torture still bleeding. A realization dawned on him that he would go down this corridor, but never come back through it in life.
What a long and winding path he had taken to his imminentdeath. Was it good that it would end this way? If he died here and now, he would have truly accomplished nothing. His sister would not know of his death, nor would the people of Kamori. At best, he would be a footnote in some dusty volume of Imperial history.
He wondered if Loran might weep for him. Rakel definitely would. This was reassuring.
A light, at the end of the tunnel.
“Ludvik!” he shouted.
Ludvik, lantern in his left hand, turned. Blood soaked his face, his mustache drenched in red. He made no answer but grabbed the hilt of the sword on his side. Emere held up his staff, grabbing one end of it with his left hand and two palms’ length down with his right. Suddenly, Ludvik charged, drawing his sword and pointing it at Emere.
Emere flicked his quarterstaff in a circle to deflect Ludvik’s sword tip. The sword, slippery from Ludvik’s own blood, fell out of his hands. Emere then slammed the staff against Ludvik’s head, but he was too weakened, which gave Ludvik his chance to grab the end of the staff. Ludvik roared like a tiger, charging along the length of the staff. The two became entangled and rolled over each other as they fell to the floor of the dark corridor, the lantern smashing against the stone before it went out.
Emere came to. The floor was wet with someone’s blood. Emere didn’t see Ludvik—just the tracks of a body that had dragged itself away. He didn’t know how much time had passed. Emere followed the tracks with his eyes. They led to an open iron door that was at once familiar—beyond it was a red wasteland with a violet sky.
Emere felt for his staff on the floor, slowly got up, and limped through the door. The invisible weight of the wasteland grew heavy on him again, but now he knew. This weight, he had carried it for his whole life.
Ludvik, perhaps dead, lay still in the middle of the empty wasteland. Then his body jerked once, and from beneath him a pool of blood expanded. Emere collapsed on the ground, exhausted. He coughed. The taste of fresh blood filled his mouth, and he wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
“You have done well, Prince Emere.”
A voice now familiar to him. When he looked up, he wasn’t in the wasteland anymore, but in a wide street lined on both sides with wooden buildings, each with awnings of stiff leather. The sky above the road was blue, where white clouds floated—and the Power generators that made up the Circuit of Destiny, cocooned in their bandages, looked down at Emere.
On his left was a beautiful tower, strikingly tall for a wooden structure, its eaves adorned with many colorful wind chimes. There were no people. He turned his eyes back to the street, and found Loran—the Circuit of Destiny—standing there.
“How are you in the Zero Legion fortress? Or am I dreaming again?” Perhaps this was his death vision, Emere thought.
“We are everywhere. We are here through the Power generators Kzara and Vorik, who give Power to this legion’s machines. We are the Circuit, but all the other generators are kin to us. They sing for us, and do what we ask.”
The last time they met, Emere recalled, the Circuit had told him that Power generators whispered to it. Did the Circuit ofDestiny have control over all the generators? Emere shuddered, then drew a long breath.
“And what exactly have I done well?”
“You have met your destiny. Now it is the time to choose.”
“But wasn’t all of this engendered by you?”
“No.” Loran shook her head. “The Empire wished to create a machine that could predict the future, and so we are made of the bodies of sorcerers from around the world.”
Emere, leaning on his staff, got up from the ground.
“But they did not know that in here”—she placed her hand on her heart—“something would accumulate every time a new body was added to the Circuit, every time we looked into the past or present to predict the future. A sorrow, an obsession, growing bigger and bigger without someone to name those feelings, those…”
