Of Kings and Killers (Elder Empire Sea #3) - WIll Wight Page 0,135

Kelarac and the end of the world had suspended all sorts of security protocols.

Some had wanted to take Shuffles, but the Horror bellowed at them until Calder convinced them he was harmless.

Sooner than he wanted, Calder stood once again in front of the Optasia.

The twisted mesh of silver bars and wires filled him with nausea. His memory of seeing Urg’naut was too fresh. When he tried to reach out and touch it, his fingertips rebelled.

In Reading, there was a much-debated concept called “significance.” It was more difficult to quantify than Intent, and many scholars believed they were related or subsets of the same thing, but significance was one of the primary factors in whether something could be Awakened or not.

If the object was significant to both the Reader and the owner of the object, Awakening would be much more likely to succeed.

Any Reader could try to Read an Imperial relic only to be overwhelmed by the Emperor’s Intent.

But Calder had been the owner of the Emperor’s crown.

He had been the second human being to sit on the throne of the Aurelian Empire.

So he placed the golden crown on his head, opening himself to the Emperor’s Intent. And instead of using the Optasia to magnify his Reading, he Read the Optasia itself.

The Emperor swallowed him in a vision…but it didn’t fight him for control, as it had before.

Instead, he felt the Emperor’s personality blow over him like a cool breeze. Confidence, grief, triumph, arrogance, and pure willpower moved over Calder in a powerful and familiar wave.

When it passed, the Emperor stood before him.

This was no accident. The Emperor had left such a clear, comprehensive Intent in this device in order to create an echo of his personality. A pure, unstained version of him that could bolster his will when Nakothi tried to corrupt him.

Calder had never heard of such a technique and wouldn’t have been able to identify it, but the Emperor knew, and therefore so did Calder. Their knowledge bled all over one another like two colors of spilled paint.

The Emperor, clothed in voluminous purple, looked him up and down. Calder got the impression that he was looking inside him too.

“So, child.” Absolute certainty billowed off the Emperor like waves of heat off a sand dune. “You thought you could do better than I did.”

“I was naïve,” Calder confessed. “And I was young. But I was right about one thing: you are as arrogant as I thought you were.”

The Emperor nodded as though conceding the point. “And what about you?”

Suddenly Calder could feel his own Intent as though from the outside. Arrogance threaded through him as surely as through the Emperor.

Calder stopped arguing and thought.

He had always considered himself motivated by a desire to make the Empire better.

But that wasn’t really it, was it?

It was much easier to see himself now, in a quiet space to do so. Especially when he could borrow the perspective of an outsider. It was like a mirror to the soul.

“Am I so similar to you?” Calder asked. “That’s…perhaps the worst thing I can imagine.”

From the outside, the Emperor’s Intent looked like a more mature, fleshed-out version of Calder’s. Like the Emperor was a living human being while Calder was just a skeleton.

“Really? You should be flattered.”

“I should have listened to my tutors. ‘The wisest king is the humblest servant of his people.’”

“Sadesthenes.” The Emperor gave a small, fond smile. “It’s been a long time since I used that name.”

A moment passed before Calder realized what he meant.

Another passed as he digested it.

But he couldn’t accept it. “…Sadesthenes was the self-educated son of a wine merchant!”

“A false persona lives or dies in the personal details.”

“He criticized you for years!”

“I have long been aware of my weaknesses. Alas, awareness of one’s flaws is not the same as overcoming them.”

Calder could feel the Emperor’s honesty. It shook him.

And it gave him an opening.

“Then let’s overcome them together,” Calder said.

Kelarac was gone, but at least Nakothi was still out there. Perhaps the others as well. Ozriel was poised to destroy the entire world.

If Calder was willing to give his life, how could he refuse to work with the Emperor?

The Emperor considered for a moment, and Calder could feel the man considering all possibilities. Even his echo was a force to be reckoned with, and Calder’s well-seasoned hatred was tempered by the realization of how powerful the man truly was.

Then he disappeared.

He had made the same choice.

Calder and the Emperor woke in the same body. As one, they sank

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