They had been warned.
By the broken husk of a man who crawled before an Emperor and claimed he had once been a king. A figure that stood, still as stone, before the most opulent seat in a gaudy hall with his expression carved in his face. His eyes dark, his thoughts unfathomable, masking the turmoil hidden beneath.
He begged them to accept Her. Pleaded, even demanded, that they bow before rumour and fairytale.
He told them he offered them mercy. The words “kindness” and “mercy” spluttered through cracked and emaciated lips. Over and over like they were all he knew. He broke all laws, looked a mortal god in the eye, and told them he was their future.
He had been laughed from the room.
For this mortal god, this bold Emperor, was so secure in his place. And no slouch. He had united nations under his tyranny. Seen statues rise to mark his deeds, and sparkling cities grow in the honour of his name. The nobility of the galaxy sought his favour, and clamoured to offer him their daughters. He took many wives.
Didn't this foolish vagabond know he was witnessing the birth of a glorious Golden Empire after half a decade of war?
The world was his.. and beyond! His ships spoke to other worlds, traversing space to bring new wealth to his heel, new technology, new comforts. Ruarik III, named for a conquerer of Old, was lord of all.
What use were ancient legends in such an age?
But, the legend was already there.
And first, she stole his power.
That instant his laughter doomed all he made. All he had built and was so proud of, all his might and machinations. It all died the moment he rejected her offer. The death throes would last decades.
The familiarity of screams marked her ascension. The room erupted with terror and awe while the most powerful men in the galaxy scattered like insects before her body. And it grew rapidly to fill the space. Great muscles and tendons braced, bunched, swelled, and the painted, plated ceiling buckled and rose, its remains pouring from her shoulders like a shroud, unveiling her to her latest victim.
The shape of her limbs were marked with the first incidental deaths. Bright crimson outlines where those too slow to flee had burst their lifeblood and stained the floor, spiderwebbing through rich carvings and soiling the mortal god’s deeds.
Only her envoy was still. He never flinched when her palm came for him. His usefulness expended, her hand struck the floor and burst him and surrounding nobility alike. Leaving mirrored sheens of scarlet on floor and skin. The mark of his failure.
Then she moved, and her next act was to slaughter all who remained. The guards, the nobility, servants, slaves, the old, the young, kind and cruel alike. All painted the room with their bodies.
Leaving only the Emperor, who shrank back before her dripping finger, and cringed at her command.
“You will watch. And learn.”
He would.
He saw her stride, immense and unconquerable, through towers that bowed and swayed and fell like grass before her. The sweep of her foot sent curving glitter scattering through the mightiest of civilisations. Her shadow the harbinger of death before the sole came down and wiped out all those who beheld it. She smeared his cities over her body, kissed, danced and devoured. Made love to millions and crushed them for her pleasure.
The media outlets filled with the wails of the dying. Their terror flooding the airwaves and spreading the news of her arrival across the latest globe to suffer her tread.
There was resistance. In response, her fingers tore through his mighty fleets, reducing vessels to the ore from which they were honed. His weapons falling like the kiss of a summer breeze on her skin. The ground cracked and charred under the onslaught of them and her in kind, pulverising the planet’s surface.
The sky burned. The air turned foul. Famine and sickness spread. The people of Raurik stared annihilation in the face.
And their mortal god sat in his desecrated hall and watched them die.
Second. She took his people.
The elite threw down their arms and begged for the slaughter to stop. They surrendered, offered all they had, their service and lives. And she accepted them. Every one. Then she massacred them anyway. Others were made to work, felling forests, mining, stripping their own world of all it had only to leave it unused. Until they dropped
The unfortunate received her personal ire.
Arabeth, the First Lady, was the first personal death. She was always so stalwart. Stoic and bold. Now but a shadow. Her limbs already ashen and skeletal, as though her living body were already rotting. Her dull eyes hung limp in dark sockets, desperate. She lay prone where the colossal figure had dropped her with a painful crunch. Her breath rattling in her chest, a ribcage heaving as it revealed sickly yellow and blue of bruises.
Raurik III, God and Emperor, General, Overlord and Quivering Mess, huddled in the throne room that had become his jail cell, retching at the vile sight of his favourite wife butchered so. He cowered like a worm from the shadow that swept across his prison.
From above descended the fingertip. Already stained with dried blood. Her nail dirty with it, carrying the metallic odour of death. Arabeth had no strength left to screech. But her mouth opened in a gurgling cry, knotted fingers scratching at the fleshy pillar pinning her. Her ribcage buckled.
He couldn't turn away. He saw the blood burst forth, the bones splintering like wood to pierce her sallow flesh. He heard the vile crunch and pop as that fingertip drove down. Extinguishing her life.
He screamed where she couldn't, her blood bursting out to pepper his own dirty skin and streak the grubby marble floor. He even dared to reach for the lifeless lover, before a flick of the finger from this monsterous woman sent him cowering back into his filthy corner.
“This is kindness.” She had said, her voice throbbing through the walls and rippling through the blood soaked stone floor beneath him. Her finger smearing a grim circle in pulsing guts. “This is mercy.”
And it was.
Third. She crushed his legacy.
His throne room was no longer opulent. But rotted and dank. He huddled and crawled, flinching at sounds from outside. His eyes were wide and haunted. For she liked to keep close. Close enough for the mortal god to hear the cries of those stragglers she prised from hiding and crushed to amuse him. She smiled as she proudly displayed their writhing forms, letting him see the horror in their faces. She silently dared him to speak. Beg her to spare them. He never did. And her hand closed until the blood dripped and seeped.
The room stank. Filled with filth of days, weeks, months. He didn't know how long. A room filled with hate and bitterness. He hated her like no other. Yet, alone for ages even her voice became a mercy, forcing him, in stubbornness or loyalty, to hold like grim death to the memories of all she had done. The cries that still filled his nightmares and waking dreams.
In one end of the room lay twisted bones. Picked clean of their flesh. Many of them were pitifully small. For she had rooted them out, every last one, like a damn unholy dog on their scent. No walls could resist her. No bunker deep enough that she couldn't prise them from their burrows, and pour them into his personal palace of Hell.
There had been a wall. Transparent like glass and strong. So he couldn't touch them or offer comfort. He couldn't dress their wounds. Instead, he was made to watch as they cried from hunger. Clutching his head to block out the sound of them sobbing through the nights. Holding each other and calling betrayal at a father helpless to save them. Weeks of crying. Until, one by one, they fell quiet.
And then came the stink. They grew bloated and vile, leaking foul liquids that emitted odour that clung to his clothes and drapes. The flies came. Buzzing and hissing and swarming. There was no rest.
In the end there were only bones. And silence.
And Her.
Fourth. She claimed his mind.
Light, for any other, meant hope, but he sought comfort in the darkness. When he couldn't see the young bones smile in death at him, mocking his cowardice in remaining. Clinging to this life.
Light brought her. Her smile, her probing fingers that loved and caressed the same limbs that next time would break between them. Sometimes she spat insults down at him, others she apologised for all this death. Like it wasn't her fault.
He believed every word. He knew all of it was a lie.
He spat back, begged her to let his bones rest amongst the rest, then fled from the looming agony of the finger that could do it. Coward.
In the end he told her about his children. His wives. His history. She asked him. She shared his joy in the dark, she cried great tears at the tragedy of their loss. She imparted him her own stories. People she had known and loved.. or killed. Opened her black heart to one who had nothing left but her.
The silence became loathsome. Her tears filled his prison. She was a victim too, see. A victim of her own cruelty. Pity her, love her, hate her. But can't you see she is kind?
Fifth….
An age and an age and tender fingers plucked him from his cell. The warmth of living skin breathing life into his aching body. They drew him up for the first time into a new world. A chill, dead desert where nothing remained of his cities or people. She had razed it all.
Or maybe, maybe none if it had ever been. A dream that faded in the sunlight. Now she, his tormentor, liberated him from prison and showed proudly her thoroughness. Not even graves marred the landscape.
Her breath fell upon him. And he felt the warmth flush the ache from his body. That voice. The only thing that existed. And after all she took.. she asked one more thing..
The children of some other world had become unruly. Or attracted her. Or angered her. It mattered not. The story changed as though even she never knew why she wanted them. But he knew what was required. Raurik III, God, Emperor. Envoy. Sane or mad she owned him.
They, too, would be offered a choice.
Her lips curled in a smile, her voice whispered into the wind of a dead world.
“For you, my King, are their future.”
Her smile grew, her fingers scoring the earth below in anticipation. Her lips moved, closer. Closer. Dominating the horizon. Her voice so soft her breath barely lifted his hair.
A flash of some faded memory rose from the depths of his mind. He saw a figure crawl before the foot of a throne, pleading for the rich and arrogant to hear a warning.
“Show them mercy. Show them kindness…”