Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Annihilation

"You will not break me."

"Won't I?'

Kazna stood on a smooth black surface, cool black liquid lapped at her toes, and beneath that.... Stone maybe? Or volcanic glass. The room around her was neither cold nor warm, and in all directions there was nothing but black. Only the scene before her was lit, or something similar. There was no light, no source of light, and she couldn't really see.

It was more like she could sense, and her brain interpreted that as seeing.

And right now she was sensing, or sensing, a man kneeling in the blackness. He knelt with both knees on the floor, back and neck bent as if he was being pressed down under a great weight. Every inch of his body trembled with strain, but he kept his kneeling position.

She stepped forward crouching down to look the man in the eye.

He lifted his head slowly, and when he did, his true, inhuman nature shone through. The eyes weren't human.

She laughed, "I like this shape you have taken, dear emperor. Does it make you feel strong? it help you pretend you aren't as powerless as you truly are?"

The man looked up at her and his eyes flashed: they were an odd color, a shade no human eyes had ever been, pink around the irises fading to orange and then to yellow around the pupils, and without a word he spit at her, causing her to flinch back.

The man cackled, "Yes, it does all of that and more."

She clenched her fist.

"You will not break me." Emperor Celex repeated, lifting his chin in defiance.

Kazna paused to stare at hm. Here inside the void, with no physical body of his own, and powered by his anima, Lord Celex had found himself able to take shape into new forms, it was a mostly pointless exercise, but this particular ability caused them no end of trouble.

He had taken this particular shape not long after they had collected his anima, and the shape reflected his mental preparation for them.

Humans.

The hardest creatures to break.

The shape that the emperor had taken was that if an older man approaching his fifties. He was tall, and well built with wide shoulders and a slim waist. His skin was a dark olive, and weathered by deep lines that creased the forehead. From what she knew of humans it was a handsome face, with neatly styled hair and a closely trimmed beard and mustache, which he had opted to keep in the bright colors he had been in life, a choice that clashed only a little with the rest of his appearance.

He looked the way a general or a king should, no longer bound inside the small fuzzy shape of his construct. He was a strong will, and now he had a body to match it. Their attempts to break him were proving annoyingly fruitless.

But no matter, they still had time.

"I would take issue with your behavior, but today I have more important matters to attend. I think you might like to watch."

Lord Celex raised an eyebrow, an expression he seemed to have become annoyingly fond of, "Perhaps I would rather stay here and take a nap. I find your machinations boring and stupid."

"As articulate as ever." She sighed

"Ill show you articulate, you cock goblin, shi-"

Kazna snapped her fingers and his form dissolved, compressing suddenly into a small ball of light which pulsed and hummed angrily as she approached.

The anima DID shine chasing back the shadows in the strange space, and giving her a strange sense of vertigo as the illusion of a room was broken, and she found herself standing, or floating, in a waste of nothingness.