Titanomachy
I take to the air once more, rising up above the surrounding buildings and surveying the devastation I have unleashed. The city is in flames, both natural and superhuman. All around me I can hear the clamouring echo of distant battles as the last Empire holdouts in the North End are wiped out, but the sounds are diminishing into the mundane noises of disaster; the crackle of flames, the rumble of collapsing buildings, the screams of the wounded and desperate.
It's far from victory, just the consolidation of territory. In the north, at least, the question of who controls the city has largely been settled. Now two cities will wage war upon each other to see whether Brockton Bay or Fólkvangr will triumph.
As I rise further, however, I see signs of consolidation in the south as well. The radio in my ear is relaying reports of the Empire's Chosen rallying together around the three garrisons that Oni Lee failed to destroy, forming a nexus of defence in the south-western part of the city. A line of fires separates their positions from the contested areas, where lighting raids by my forces have left streets in flames and whole blocks cut off by the lingering effects of Promethean explosives. For the moment, that firestorm is separating their military stronghold from Kaiser's Valhalla in the old Downtown financial district.
It's an advantageous position. Not the masterstroke I was hoping for, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. All I have to do is move enough people south to exploit that gap, trapping Kaiser beyond the reach of his army while I lead a spearpoint to tear down his tower.
My own people are moving, reorganising themselves from dozens of different flashpoints of resistance as they prepare to push south. Flicking through channels, I can hear my commanders organising their soldiers, leaving rearguards to watch over the last few enemy strongholds in the north while sending out scouts to mark a clear path south.
Far less organised, but far more majestic to see, is the crowd that's making its way down Lord Street like a human river, flowing around wrecked cars and shattered checkpoints. It's a vote of confidence, an act of blind faith, a sign that I've lit the torch and that others are following its light. It's thousands of people marching through the very heart of the city, brandishing whatever weapons they could find and only loosely guided by my guerillas.
I swoop down low over the crowd, exalting in the cheers that rise up as they recognise me and feel the touch of my aura. Not for the first time I wonder if I shouldn't have made my costume more visible, made my body as radiant as my powers. A golden leotard with a white starburst, perhaps, but black and gold has served me well in wartime and the war isn't over yet.
There will be time for such things. Soaring above my people, it's easy to picture fantastical flashes of the glory to come. Of my superhuman followers arrayed before me, cheering my name as I hold Kaiser's head aloft. Of the city rising up from this miserable state, becoming a glimmering beacon of civilisation that will stand tall and proud as a bastion against this new dark age. Of treating with Uppercrust as an equal, rather than a subordinate. Of his death and the great armies I'll muster to stake my claim on his Union, raising a starburst banner over new cities and bringing enlightenment to a world gone mad.
It's a recurring fantasy. It comes in my lowest moments and in the petty triumphs that have led me to this point. It comes in my sleep as I bed down in whatever bolthole I've found for the night. They're my dreams, but they didn't come from me.
To have power is to covet more. The effect it has on my mind can be blunt; it can flood me with vainglory whenever I use my power in a crowd, it can fill my head with shame whenever I choose the safer, subtler path. At their most extreme those impulses can drive a person into a berserker rage, like Fenrir and the Empire's pet pyromaniac.
But the greatest danger doesn't come from the obvious impulses. They're easy enough to recognise and, while it can be difficult – sometimes even painful – to fight against them, they can be resisted with conscious effort. The true danger comes packaged in the implicit, insidious lie of power itself.
Our powers come to us when we're at our lowest, carrying with them the false promise that they can save us. That, through them, we can make our dreams come true.
I imagine Uppercrust has a similar sort of dream, twisted through a different lens. His Americana empire speaks of a promise that he can restore the world that was, that he can preserve it forever under the snow-globe protection of shield bubbles. He's older than me; he remembers what that world was like. I dream of saving the world that
is.
I've almost reached the forefront of the procession, all of them still cheering up at me in ignorance of the melancholy track my mind has taken. The people up here are better armed, better organised. There are even some dump trucks moving forward at a snail's pace, with armour bolted to their sides and heavily-armed dockworkers packed together in the bed. One of them has a flag bolted to the cabin, flying my symbol, and others are being brandished aloft by the crowd.
Aegis is hovering over the vanguard; a statuesque man whose musculature is evident in his tightly-fitting bodysuit. The suit is black, to hide the bloodstains, but he's trimmed it with gold with my permission and wears my starburst on his shoulders. The moment he notices my aura, he looks back at me and flies off to the side of the procession, landing on a nearby rooftop. I drift down to join him.
"Victoria," he says, greeting me with a warm and familiar smile. "It's been a while since I used that name."
"It felt right," I respond. "I may not be Victoria Dallon anymore, but I was given that name for a reason."
"Well, if it's all the same to you I think I'm going to stick with Aegis."
I can't say I blame him. Most superhumans take new names and forget their old ones, a trend that began when the Elite won their war against the old government. It represents becoming something more than human, but I think it's also an acknowledgement that we can never go back to the people we were before. Whatever trajectory our lives may have taken, however our personalities may have formed, both have been irrevocably altered.
Even under the effects of my aura, Aegis' attention drifts back to the crowd below. In many ways, he is a better person than I am. A more moral person, certainly. In addition to his flight, his body is in the peak of human physical condition. His true power – the aspect of it that defines his personality – is that he is capable of regenerating from almost any non-mortal wound. In my service he has taken bullets, walked through flames, lost an arm and held its bloody wreckage in place until it reconnected with his shoulder.
To have a power like that is to be driven to make yourself a shield. He is a true hero in the classical sense; the only person in this city who lives up to the values of the old comic book icons whose aesthetic has come to define this age of superhumans. Aegis is a hero, but he's not a leader. Instead, he believes in me, fights for me. He even asked to wear my colours. I think his power has driven him to find someone he can defend unto death.
"How many have we lost so far?" I ask. I know he'll know.
"Eight of us," he answers, before moving his arm in a gesture that takes in the mass of people below. "Nobody knows how many of them."
He sounds almost angry.
"We don't even know how many people are fighting for us," I say, trying to soothe his conscience. "The city's rising up. It's impossible to keep track in the chaos, but we'll find a way to count the cost."
I need Aegis as much as I need any of my most trusted advisors. He's a good commander, but I need him for more than that. I need his moral line, his genuine heroism. If I am to build a better city I need at least one person by my side who can keep me grounded, who cares about human life on an individual level rather than seeing only the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. I need him because my mind bristles at the thought of conceding to his morality, rather than imposing my own.
"We have to do this," he says, turning away from the crowd. "I wish we could just storm the tower and kill Kaiser, without any of this… this war. But we can't break an ideology by killing its spokesman. It's just…" He places a hand on my shoulder, grounding me as he meets my gaze with a fierce intensity in his eyes.
"We have to make it work, Victoria. Nobody else can protect them, nobody else can keep the city safe or help make it better. Nobody else even cares. They just bought Kaiser's products and never thought about the factories that made them."
"With great power comes great responsibility?" I ask, giving him a teasing smile.
"No. Power comes on its own. Responsibility is our choice."
The look in his eyes is so serious, so intense, that it almost shames me. I move to the edge of the roof again, standing on the precipice without any fear as I look –
really look – down upon the massed ranks of my followers.
It's been so long since I was like them that it's hard to remember who that person was. It's harder to remember that there was a time before all of this when they would have looked to their own for leadership; trusting in systems of government that had developed and evolved over centuries, rather than flocking to the banner of whichever superhuman tyrant they hope will give them a better life.
They've put their trust in me, but what other choice did they have? What are they beyond the victims of their circumstances, swept up in a war between gods that's slowly burning their world to cinders?
A light glitters far above my head, as ice-cold fear holds me in place. Distantly, I can hear Aegis shout a warning, can see the crowd below me still looking up at me in awe.
They're looking the wrong way.
Purity's shot lands near the rear of the procession, an incandescent double-helix beam of light that smashes through a building by the side of the road, detonating the structure with enough force to shatter the walls like shrapnel. The rearmost crowd is battered by brick fragments, the road behind them blocked by the heap of rubble. When the beam dissipates into lingering motes of light, I freeze as a second beam hits the building across the street from me.
I feel a hand on my shoulder before Aegis shoves me back, positioning himself between me and the torrent of shrapnel. I watch his body judder beneath the blows, his bones snapping and head whipping back as something catches him in the skull. One fragment passes below his arm, catching me on my side and shattering my shield, but he catches the rest before finally taking a half-step back and collapsing.
He lies on the roof below me, his body battered and broken, but I know I can't stop to see if he survived. He wouldn't want me to, not when my people are in danger. Not when Purity could already be lining up a shot that would wipe out the people she's just trapped.
So I kick off the rooftop, rising up above the panicked mass of wounded humanity below me, where the dump trucks are already straining to push back the rubble while others scramble to drag the wounded out of their path. I soar up into the lingering motes of light left behind by her blast, allowing the pinprick stars to illuminate my body as I rise like Icarus towards the sun.
Purity is just close enough for me to make out the blinding silhouette of her body, looking down on the devastation as she decides where to send her next blast. It gives me the split-second warning I need as she notices me and whips her arm around.
I fall into a dive, accelerating as I swoop down over the rooftops away from the procession. The beam hits behind me, casting a monochrome white glow over the city as it jerks with the motion of her hand. I stay up as long as I dare, drawing the beam away from my people at eighty miles an hour, before I drop down below the level of the buildings and reduce my speed to manoeuvre through the streets like canyons.
I know she'll follow me. She won't be able to resist such a tempting target.
The brief moment of respite is just long enough for true terror to sink in. Out of all the superhumans in the city, Purity might be the most dangerous. Her raw destructive power has always been Kaiser's nuclear option. She's killed hundreds of my followers, but those aren't the deaths that sting the most.
She was there when the New Wave fell. I watched her hunt Crystal through the old financial district, their battle illuminating the glass-fronted towers with red and white flashes as Purity's dense beams battled against my cousin's thinner lasers. I didn't see her die, but when a white star rose over the tallest towers I knew that she'd fallen.
If Laserdream couldn't kill her, how can I? Laserdream could fight her on an equal footing, with firepower and her own shields to protect her from harm. For all that I love to fly, my powers drive me to fight my enemies face to face; to feel flesh tear and bones break beneath every blow. I'm a brawler, Purity is flying artillery.
She leverages that advantage the same way she always does when she loses sight of her target in an area she doesn't care about; beams fall all around me as she levels whole buildings in the hopes that she'll catch me in the shrapnel, casting a wide net to try and cut me off. When the path of destruction veers away from me I risk skimming over the rooftop and onto the next block, only for the conflagration to return in full force.
Baiting her like this is an infinitely more dangerous prospect than it was with Fenrir. Purity still has control of her mind, however odious that mind might be. She can't be dragged into the same rote patterns, but she does have some inhibitions that I can exploit.
I fly south, aiming for the gap between Captain's Hill and the coast, where fighting is still ongoing between the Empire and my forces holding the rearmost point of my spearhead along Lord Street. Even from the faint glimpses I get skimming over the rooftops, I can see that the fighting is fierce, with buildings firing on each other as both sides dig into whatever cover they can find while a mix of artillery fires down from the hill above. It's hard to tell who's controlling the guns; they seem to be hitting both sides equally.
I jerk left through the courtyard of a wealthy apartment complex, bringing myself away from Lord Street and up towards Archer's Bridge, which crosses the river that separates north from south at its widest point, just before the coast. More to the point, this is an area that the Empire has managed to hold; the streets below are a jumbled mix of Chosen enforcers, soldiers driven up from the south and haphazard Medhall security officers, all moving against the current of panicked refugees.
Purity's mercilessness doesn't extend to her own people – or, rather, to the people she acknowledges
are people. She can't bombard whole city blocks when she might well have shared drinks with the people in them, so she has to drop down and close in for the kill. It's no less dangerous; she's faster than I am, but I've had two years to get used to low-level manoeuvring. I can smash through windows and out the other side without fear – so long as the building has enough space for my shield to reset – while she has no protection whatsoever. Her only defence is overwhelming offence.
The masses of people scatter in terror at the sight of me, dashing for truck-mounted machine guns or simply running to either side of the street. I savour their fear, letting it drive me on towards the twin metal towers supporting Archer's Bridge. The roadway was hit by one of my bombs – planted a week ago by a maintenance crew inspecting metal fatigue – but it's only knocked out half the lanes. Kaiser's soldiers have been driving over what's left, past a gaping chasm of twisted metal.
I lead Purity through the girders beneath the bridge, then twist around the roadway in a corkscrewing pattern before finally making it to the other side, where the oldest part of the city sits in relative opulence before meeting the coast at the Boardwalk – where the Empire's high society likes to sun themselves in a pretence of old-world luxury.
Beyond the Boardwalk lies the looming spires of Downtown; an abandoned temple-district to a dead financial system where tens of thousands of people were once employed in moving around spectacular wealth that didn't actually exist. Some of the towers have been colonised by Medhall and the Empire's bureaucracy, but most remain abandoned. More to the point, the artificial forest is tall enough that I can hide from Purity without being constrained to the ground. All I have to do is guess where she is, which is trivial enough when her glowing body is reflected off every skyscraper window.
I can see the moment she realises how vulnerable her position is. She slows, coming to a halt as she takes in the reflections around her. This has to be familiar to her; I'm sure Crystal led her here to take advantage of the same weakness. I know exactly how she'll respond.
Purity starts to rise, picking up speed as she hugs the steel-clad side of Valhalla. It's still hidden beneath the shield, but continual use has started to burn out the projectors, which have decayed in the absence of Uppercrust's careful ministrations. It won't take too much firepower to knock them out, but that's a problem for others to deal with. I can't afford to lose focus on my quarry.
I abandon subtlety just as Purity passes the height of the building I'm hiding behind, soaring upwards with my left arm outstretched and grim fury written on my face. This is the moment where I surrender to my instincts; where I lean on my mind's urge to fight in order to overcome the terror that would otherwise grip me like a vice.
Kaiser may still sit on his throne, but
this is the clash between gods that will decide the fate in the city; two stars rising above its highest pinnacles to duel for the lives of those below. Two atoms hurled together in an act of titanic destruction.
It takes Purity half a second to spot me; I'm closer than she was expecting and doing something stupid. She raises both her hands, readying a shot that will knock me out of the sky. Exactly what I want her to do.
The beam envelops me in light so intense it burns almost white even through my closed eyes, but my shield still holds. She's firing everything she has at me, the beam no doubt spilling past and burning into the city below, but I maintain my trajectory using the blinding light beyond my closed eyelids as a guide.
My shield remains inviolate, in spite of the destructive force pressing down on it. It's hard to deny that powers have a will, not when it's seeped into my very mind, but few people seem to understand that same will gave shape to our powers and decided their limitations. It has to, for me to withstand this blast for so long while being threatened by a thug with a machine gun. It influences my mind to ensure I'll use my powers, then influences the powers to force to work around the limits it set.
If only I knew why.
The exultant joy of combat flees from my mind as the beam abruptly shuts off, taking my shield with it. For the first time in months my power is completely quiet, abandoning its parasitic hold on its host in recognition of the incoming defeat. Purity knows how my powers works; she knows that while I'll always be able to fly, my strength is tied to my shield. As I blink away spots I see her glowing silhouette hovering ten feet away from me, her hand raised in triumph at her victory.
She's defeated my power, but she hasn't defeated me. I thrust out my left hand to strike her down, but the fingers of my right are wrapped around the grip of my pistol.
She realises her mistake the moment the gun leaves its holster, but there's a fraction of a second when she's too shocked to react. She's been fighting on instinct, trusting her strength in a battle of power against power, but those powers aren't wholly hers.
They wouldn't pit us against each other like this if they understood us, wouldn't twist our minds and limit what we can do. They want to know how we think, how we act, how we
fight.
I squeeze the trigger before the barrel has even cleared her feet, letting the recoil of automatic fire carry the gun upwards as I unload the magazine into her glowing silhouette. For a moment, it seems to have no effect. Then, I'm plunged into darkness as her radiance winks out.
By the time my eyes have adjusted to the lack of light, all I can see in the flickering blue light of Valhalla's shield is the rapidly dwindling form of a woman in her early thirties, dressed in a plain white bodysuit that's staining with pooling red blood. Then she's fallen too far for me to see anything at all.
Breathing heavily, I bring my hand up to my earpiece, but I can't quite manage to give voice to the words. Instead, Witness' voice comes through, rendered barely audible by distance or maybe just the din of my own pounding heart.
"We saw that, Victoria. We all saw that."
This is the highest I've been in years. My breaths feel shallow, my head light. I feel as if I could reach up and touch the clouds above, while the city and the grand tragedy unfolding on its streets are spread out so far below me that I can take in the full scale of my war at a glance.
I bled that city for two years, raised an army ten thousand strong and drove it to make war on itself. All for the sake of revenge; all to right the injustice that was done to me two years ago. For those deaths, thousands more have died. For those deaths, I have killed a queen. Now all that's left is to kill the king and place myself upon his throne.
I was fortunate that Kaiser's rule was so tyrannical that I could tell my soldiers that I was fighting for them, that by carrying my banner they were standing against all the injustices they had suffered. In truth, I would have waged this war against Kaiser even if he were the most benevolent overlord in the world.
I wonder, now my victory is near, if I've been honest with myself as well. Did I wage this war for the sake of my lost family, or would I have always clawed my way to power? Can I even blame that power, or was this ambition within me all along?
"Bring down this shield," I order, and watch as a city leaps to obey.
Rockets arc up from the North End, carrying Promethean warheads chosen for their raw destructive force and detonating against the shield in explosive voids of nothingness that send fractures of null-space up and down its length as if the blue energy field was made of glass.
Conventional rockets soon follow; some warheads have sat in my warehouses for weeks, while others have been taken from Kaiser's forces today. On Captain's Hill, captured guns fire their own inaccurate volleys that land in and among the half-abandoned landscape of skeletal skyscrapers, sending the ant-like figures in the streets below scattering for cover.
At this height, I can't tell if they're Kaiser's soldiers or my own.
As my own shield flickers back into life, I drift down until I'm level with the upper floors of Valhalla, with only its shield and a thin layer of steel separating me from the very heart of Kaiser's dominion. I hover there imperiously, my arms crossed and my face twisted in disdain, as the shield starts to fail under the pressure of the bombardment, its absorbed energy burning through the projectors lining the side of the tower.
When the shield fails, it's almost anticlimactic. It simply burns out like an old film reel, with blotchy patches of open space spreading out until no trace of blue energy remains. When the next rocket slams into the side of the tower and blows off a section of metal sheets, I give the order to cease the bombardment and move in.
I roll my shoulders, stretching my arms and psyching myself up for one last push, before hurling myself towards the steel monolith at eighty miles an hour, aiming for the distortion in the metal where I know there used to be a window before I tried to assassinate Kaiser with a sniper in one of the abandoned towers.
I don't feel the steel cladding shattering beneath my elbow, only the sudden rush of air through the hole I created as my eyes adjust to yet another sudden change in light. Kaiser's hall is well lit, without any way to tell that he created it by knocking through several floors of executive office space. The ceiling is supported by great metal buttresses that resemble nothing more than the ribs of some ancient titan, while the floor and walls are imported stone laced with runic metal tracework.
My war has intruded upon his perfect order. Computers have been dragged into the hall, with maps of the city and banks of radio equipment cluttering the expansive space. Cables have been run across the floor, up the pillars and some are even dangling down from holes drilled through the ceiling. It pleases me to know that I've forced Kaiser to cannibalise even his grandest spaces to fight the war I forced on him.
The people – the ones who weren't caught in the shrapnel of my entrance – gape up at me in horror as they feel the full force of my unrestrained aura. Some of them belong to the Medhall corporation, their office attire impeccable in spite of the war raging below and the fact that they're manning signals equipment rather than desktop computers. Others are Chosen soldiers in black uniforms, or corporate security in grey. All of them are my enemies, but none of them are worth my attention.
A dais rises over the far end of the hall; a flat-topped pyramid of black marble with an ornate metal throne at its pinnacle. That throne is nothing more than an extension of its occupant; a shifting seat of metal struts spilling out from the stone beneath him. It's a reflection of his mood, its structure bristling into porcupine spikes at the intrusion.
Kaiser himself is leaning forward in his seat, but I can tell from his posture that a moment ago he was slumped back in despair, his legs splayed and his head resting in his hand. His armour is ornate; a knightly suit of full plate carved with runic symbols, with a helm topped by a crown of blades. Even across the full length of the hall, I can feel the weight of hatred emanating from the helmet's eye slit.
There's something else, too. Something in the set of his shoulders, in how his limbs are still half limp. It bleeds into his movements as he rises, absorbing his throne and layering its metal over the top of his armour, forming layers upon layers of defence that give him an extra two feet in height while a tower shield grows out of his left forearm and a greatsword as long as I am tall springs from his right hand.
He's afraid. No wonder he's stayed up here while his city burns.
Drinking down his weakness like a fine wine, I flare my aura and watch as the silence breaks and the humans below me scatter like rats from a sinking ship, while Kaiser takes a half step back before his fear drives him to fight rather than flee.
He leaps off the dais, his armoured legs flexing as he lands on the marble floor. Twisted spears of metal spring out of the walls, the floor, the metal ribcage supporting the ceiling as he tries to turn the whole room into a great maw. I fly straight towards him, my left arm reaching for my belt as I bring up my right to swat aside a steel spike blocking my path.
With a flick of my thumb, I pull the pin from Promethea's grenade and hurl it at the tyrant.
It detonates on impact in a flash of brilliant light, leaving behind a golden statue of a suit of armour rearing back from an invisible threat, his sword arm pointing away from his enemy as he pivots his body and brings up his shield in a desperate attempt to block an attack.
I drift closer to the golden statue, peering past the slit in his helmet at the metal eyes beneath before rising up into the centre of the hall as Kaiser's constructs collapse into dust around me. I take a moment to survey the damage – the machines and ornate furniture speared through in Kaiser's last desperate attempt to kill me – before I switch on my headset.
"Kaiser is dead, at my hand!" I shout, speaking to my soldiers and Kaiser's staff alike. "This city is mine! My soldiers hold its streets, my allies have blockaded its borders! To my enemies, I have only this to say; surrender now and I may show mercy! Fight on, and you will suffer my wrath!"
I pause. I have to; there's a smile spreading across my face that cuts off any further speech. I drift down, idly using Kaiser's head as a stepping stone on the way, until I'm hovering in front of the largest cluster of officers.
"Deliver that message to your comrades. My soldiers will be here soon. Offer them no resistance, if you value your lives."
Struck dumb by terror, it's all they can do to stammer out a few vaguely affirmative syllables. Only when I weaken my aura slightly do they stand up and sprint to the few remaining terminals, shouting my warning across every channel they can access as if I might slaughter thousands for only a few seconds delay.
I pay them no mind, rising up again and drifting down the hall to the dais where Kaiser's throne once sat. Part of me regrets that his power didn't leave it behind for me to claim as my own, but I understand the symbolism behind his choice in seat.
Kaiser held power because he had
power. Only he could rule this city, so only he could sit on the city's throne. Even if he were killed, his killer would be left with nothing to claim. But I have power of my own.
Flight is as automatic as breathing to me. I don't have to think about it; don't have to strain myself to stay airborne. I am as comfortable in the air as I would be on any throne, but – like Kaiser's steel chair – no others can climb to my height.
So I hover six feet over the dais and look down the length of the hall, waiting for my court to arrive.
It doesn't take long; it seems that this tower, at least, has taken my warning seriously. The elevators at the side of the room start to open in succession, each carrying as many of my soldiers as can be crammed in there. They enter the hall in stunned silence, eyeing the cringing Empire remnants with suspicion as they drift towards the dais. One of my officers – one of Pariah's dockworkers with body armour worn over his oil-stained overalls – wrangles a few of his men and starts rounding up the Chosen and Medhall personnel, gathering them in a corner of the room.
More arrive, including the first of my superhumans. I'm not especially surprised to see that Witness is one of them, having rushed across the entire length of the city to claim her place as the first of my new courtiers. Nor am I surprised that she's scrounged up a helmet and a flack jacket for the trip; she not exactly a combatant, and it looks like her journey has frayed at her nerves.
Gradually, the space starts to fill as people gather beneath me; hundreds of hopeful faces enlightened by the warmth of my aura. My best soldiers are there, rubbing shoulders with others who've seemingly come in from off the streets, carried along by the tides of war. My superhumans stand out among the crowd with their costumes and their higher standard of equipment, but they're as enthralled by me as the rest of them. All of them waiting for my rule to begin.
I could still turn back. I could give the city to them; to the people who've fought so hard to free themselves from Kaiser's tyranny. I could re-establish long dead institutions, leaning on the skilled workers and administrators who've led my armies. My hold on my superhumans is strong enough that I might be able to keep them in line even without ruling the city, positioning ourselves as an order of warrior-knights supporting the only democratic government on the continent.
I could fail. I could overestimate my hold on the people beneath me. I could be overcome by the ambitions of superhumans like Witness, or any of the dozens of others who've thrown themselves in with my cause.
I could try anyway; I could become Aegis' knight and place him on the throne, trusting his moral line more than my own.
But in the end, I know I won't do any of that. I will deliver what I've promised. I will end the Empire's tyranny, liberate this city's people, rebuild all my war has broken and staff the city's government with people who understand the need to rule with the approval of the governed, even if you don't seek their consent.
I will keep my promise to my enemies; executing only those who're too dangerous to live – the superhumans, the zealots and the leadership – exiling as many as I can get away with without angering the warlords around me and inflicting upon the rest only a fraction of the oppression they forced on others. I may even offer some of the superhumans a chance to swear fealty; many of them were conscripted into the Empire as teens. They may yet be saved.
I will strip the steel from Valhalla, perhaps even mine the foundations and bring the whole tower down, but then I'll raise a hall of my own… and clad it in gold.
