Twitches tracked this brutal mien. Random ripples beneath the mottled skin, a migration of expressions attempting to escape the remote imperial mask.
One could understand, upon looking at Rhulad on his throne, the lie of simplicity that power whispered in the beholder’s ear. The seductive voice urging pleasurable and satisfying reduction, from life’s confusion to death’s clarity. This, murmured power, is how I am revealed. Stepping naked through all the disguises. I am threat and if threat does not suffice, then I act. Like a reaper’s scythe.
The lie of simplicity. Rhulad still believed it. In that he was no different from every other ruler, through every age, in every place where people gathered to fashion a common, the weal of community with its necessity for organization and division. Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things-once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.
And the Errant was tired of it. All of it.
Mael once said there was no answer. For any of this. He said it was the way of things and always would be, and the only redemption that could be found was that all power, no matter how vast, how centralized, no matter how dominant, will destroy itself in the end. What entertained then was witnessing all those expressions of surprise on the faces of the wielders.
This seemed a far too bitter reward, as far as the Errant was concerned. I have naught of Mael’s capacity for cold, depthless regard. Nor his legendary patience. Nor, for that matter, his temper.
No Elder God was blind to the folly of those who would reign in the many worlds. Assuming it was able to think at all, of course, and for some that was in no way a certain thing. Anomander Rake saw it clearly enough, and so he turned away from its vastness, instead choosing to concentrate on specific, minor conflicts. And he denied his worshippers, a crime so profound to them that they simply rejected it out of hand. Osserc, on the other hand, voiced his own refusal-of the hopeless truth-and so tried again and again and failed every time. For Osserc, Anomander Rake’s very existence became an unconscionable insult.
Draconus-ah, now he was no fool. He would have wearied of his tyranny-had he lived long enough. I still wonder if he did not in fact welcome his annihilation. To die beneath the sword made by his own hands, to see his most cherished daughter standing to one side, witness, wilfully blind to his need… Draconus, how could you not despair of all you once dreamed?
And then there was Kilmandaros. Now she liked the notion of… simplicity. The solid righteousness of her fist was good enough for her. But then, see where it took her!
And what of K’rul? Why, he was-
‘Stop!’ Rhulad shrieked, visibly jolting on the throne, the upper half of his body suddenly leaning forward, the eyes black with sudden threat. ‘What did you just say?’
The Chancellor frowned, then licked his withered lips. ‘Emperor, I was recounting the costs of disposing the corpses from the trench-pens-’
‘Corpses, yes.’ Rhulad’s hand twitched where it folded over the throne’s ornate arm. He stared fixedly at Triban Gnol, then, with a strange smile, he asked, ‘What corpses?’