one immortal man.
He could have it.
But he kept watching the crown and thinking.
What would a real Emperor do?
He had once looked down on the Emperor for using a Heart of Nakothi to maintain his life. Now, he was afraid he knew the answer to his question.
He turned back to Kelarac. “Where are we right now?”
“This is a projection of your consciousness into an artificial space. It’s not a technique you’re capable of understanding. Think of it as a dream.”
“And why don’t I have a body? When I’ve visited you before, I felt like I had been transported there.”
The Great Elder tilted his head. “As I said, these concepts are beyond you. If you demand a simple explanation: your connection to your body is too tenuous. You are close to death, so I brought only your consciousness.”
Calder lifted his hand. He could feel it now.
With great concentration, he materialized his hand. He could barely see it, as though it wavered in and out of existing, but he reached to one side and managed to carefully lift Kelarac’s goblet.
“So what does this mean?”
Kelarac laughed and spread his hands. “That your will is tenacious enough to establish yourself in a dream. If you wish, I can educate you on the physics of conceptual existence, but you don’t have the time.”
A wet, meaty squelch came from behind Calder.
He had heard nothing from the vision outside the window until now. This time, he turned around and saw that the sound had come from the Consultants pulling the plate away from his body. They tore a chunk of flesh with it, but now they were all celebrating, taking away the Emperor’s armor piece by piece.
Shera herself picked up a quicklamp and shattered it on the side of Calder’s bed. She tossed most of the luminous fluid over his body. Someone nearby lit a match, handing it to her.
She held it poised over Calder’s body, ready to burn him. The tiny flame sent shadows dancing over her face in a hideous mask.
A primal fear shot through Calder. He almost felt like he could feel the fire about to consume him.
If he accepted Kelarac’s offer, this would stop.
“To be the Emperor is to carry the Empire.” Sadesthenes.
Calder deliberately turned his back on the image.
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
The Soul Collector watched him, unreadable.
Calder ticked off points on his fingers. “First, why would the Head of the Consultant’s Guild personally help remove my armor? Second, why would she start a fire right there in the operating room? If I’m about to die, they would take my body elsewhere. Third…”
He held up the three fingers. They were more visible now.
“If I’m dying, why do I feel stronger now?”
If he hadn’t met with Ozriel and experienced what it was actually like to converse using only his consciousness, he might not have noticed.
If he hadn’t met with Kelarac three times before this, he wouldn’t have known that anything was any different than usual.
But he suspected that his connection to his body was growing clearer by the second.
Maybe he actually was dying, and in a moment he would regret this decision. But that brought him to his last point.
“And finally…what kind of king lets someone else rule his own body?”
Kelarac stared at him. The rivets in his blindfold reflected fire.
Suddenly the stench of the slaughterhouse, which Calder had almost forgotten about, returned in force. As though he’d been prevented from seeing them before, he saw flaws in the room: a bleeding tear in the couch, a length of intestine dangling from the ceiling, blood splattered over the carpet.
The Great Elder flashed him a smile.
It was too wide to fit on a human face.
“The deal I offered was real, you know. You could have had it.” His voice was quiet, but his lips didn’t move. The sound came from all around Calder…and it slowly got louder and louder. “With your will joined to mine, you could have had all your wishes come true. And I, too, would have gotten what I wanted. Now…”
In the middle of the sentence, his voice suddenly shook the entire room, quaking Calder’s mind and soul as though the words rattled Calder’s skull from the inside.
“I STILL GET WHAT I WANT. I WILL PULL IT FROM THE ASHES OF YOUR SHATTERED WORLD. AND YOU WILL SUFFER UNTIL THE STARS BURN OUT.”
Kelarac’s shadow stretched out behind him, squirming with a thousand unseen shapes, eyes blinking open on the walls and ceiling.
Fear choked Calder, gripping him from every angle, pressing him