Master of None: A Wings of Fire fanfiction

42.

The Emperor

I watch closely, as Epiphany stares down her grandmother. I've been replaying the vision I sent her, studying her reaction closely. She really believes it, to my delight: after our conversation, I wasn't sure she would fall for my ruse.

I heard her and Gaze just got together, after all that tortured flirting. In the end, it's just another advantage they've delivered me.

I have Dreamsinger in my clutches. If I can get Epiphany to come over next, I'll control the whole organization.

It's perfect. Because what Dreamsinger suggests, Brightmind will do. But only Epiphany can influence Gaze.

Maybe I'm just trying to get one over on my old enemy. But I can't help it: her lover is too easy to play. So filled up with fears and anxieties and guilt, she'll bend to anybody's will.

You'd think all those years of living it rough would have taught her to be more skeptical.

But then, as I watch Gaze and Epiphany, staring out their window and talking, I feel the visions hit me again. The more days pass, the more bright and frenetic they become to me, so frantic and desperate I can hardly breathe through the weight of them.

The world, fracturing down blinding white veins of pure, unbridled power.

The sky, burning. The trees, bent and broken like toothpicks from the force of the cyclone. The ocean, rising in a tidal wave–

It hits me like a migraine. It makes me feel weak.

Don't think about it.

Just keep going.

I don't know why, suddenly, I'm taken by the thought of my grandmother. Why, after all this time, does she follow me around like an unwanted spectre?

I stare at the images playing out against the wall of my bedroom. In Scorpion Den, they're rebuilding. They'll never succeed—the damage is too great. The scars of my war will sing through it for at least another century.

Except there's not going to be another century.

Because the world is ending.

I close my eyes, wishing for sleep for half a second. I don't want to think about it. Don't want to understand why the visions make me wince.

You are not a killer, my grandmother says.

I've never wanted to tear apart the world for no reason. But the apocalypse is coming, and I can't stop it.

Even after I've come all this way, shed all this blood, there is still one thing in this world that I cannot control.

I am just like every other wretched, lazy, useless dragon on this rotten continent. And I can't stand it.

***

Deep down in the belly of the palace, I'm keeping my army.

They all stand in formation, their eyes distant and glazed over. I stare at them, briefly thinking of the dragons they used to be.

They were going to win this war for me.

I was so sure that they didn't have a single flaw. That they would raze the desert, then the swamps, then the rainforest, in no time at all. I didn't plan for Shadowhunter and her little rebellion to gain so much power in the minds of the SandWings. I could have stomped them out if I hadn't underestimated them so thoroughly.