Endosymbiosis

57. Metastasis

First circle of the Empire
Power District

My steps took me to the Palace of the Power District, across the now cracked bridge.

I knew what the eyes that stared at me saw: a ghost, haunting where I stepped, the shadow of the one I once was and who I no longer knew where was hidden, frightened by everything we saw, wounded by everything we been through, destroyed by everything we've lost...

Gaxy was dead.

Sapiens was dead.

Doxy was dead.

And only the Empress remained.

The last time I stepped in front of the destroyed palace doors, followed by my army, the Aulics barred my way, as if they had foreseen my arrival - as if they could stop it - because there was simply nowhere else for me to go.

"Korrok was right..." A voice rose in the silence. Lupan. "You humans really are the worst." And maybe in another life I would have laughed with him... But not in this one anymore.

"You didn't see anything yet."

"What do you want here?!" One of the Aulics suddenly barked at me, to which I didn't bother to respond.

I jerked my head, telling my soldiers to step forward and get the Aulics out of the way so I could return to the main hall of the building. And Aulic's guards dared not approach even a step from my faithful army, more infinite than the horizon.

"You don't belong among the Aulics!" The one from before growled and I turned to him, sending to his body a slender look as if I was staring at him from the top of a pile of bones.

"The Aulics don't exist anymore." I hissed. "Just me."

And the new Empire.

I turned back to the path and followed it until my feet stopped at the doors to the destroyed hall, the rubble staring at me and I not wanting to delve into the remnants of the power we'd struggled so hard to have. I touched its wall and felt the silence... No secrets to whisper about the universe, no pulse to indicate it was alive...

Even the palace we had killed.

I heard the old Aulics mutter behind me, their curses always so hollow and meaningless until something hit me:

"A human? We can't let one of them ruin the Empire as they did their own world..."

So I raised my hand and blasted my toxin against the body of the Aulic who had dared to say that, knocking him back with lightning speed. He slammed into the wall so hard that his body crumbled in a shower of organs, painting the purity of the wall with a deadly red... Blood, mixed with the violet that dripped from my hands – the weapons I wielded.

I would have gotten the whole world out of the way if I had to.

At that moment the Aulics' guards plucked up courage and stepped forward to contain me, but I snapped my fingers... And all their heads rolled across the floor, decapitated with surgical precision as their bodies collapsed on the cold ground and my soldiers surrounded me like an impenetrable wall.

Silence fell like night over the remaining ones, their eyes flying from the wave of death to me, a pillar of bone at the center of it all.

"I thought humans had humanity..." One of the ancient Aulics shivered, collapsing on his knees to the ground as well as the others in reverence to me.

"It didn't get me anywhere."

When I looked back at the wreckage of the palace we had destroyed, - I and those who once fought by my side - I couldn't enter. So I ordered my soldiers to prepare the palace for me, turned my back and went to the pore in pieces at the center of everything, a path that no longer led anywhere.