Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Who Do You Call

"But I, I killed you."

Ex emperor Celex gave him a smile, a human smile, "Yes and you did a very good job at that, one of my better fights, though I do have a few notes."

All around him, his honor guard, and his subjects stood in gaping awe clearly disbelieving. Lord Avex might have accused the strange human of lying, but looking at the man's eyes.... There was no way it wasn't him. The eyes, and the pattern in the man's hair were just too familiar. His voice was different, of course, much deeper than it had ever been, but there was something in the way he spoke that was alarmingly familiar.

Not to mention that when speaking Celzex, he spoke flawlessly, which should have been outside the realm of possibility for a human. Humans can speak Celzex of course, but they can't do it convincingly most of the time. They tend to have a very distinct accent that makes it difficult to understand.

Lord Avex found himself standing there in confused awe, not entirely sure what to do with himself, he became suddenly aware of all his separate appendages and how they attached to his body, and that just turned into awkward shuffling as he tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. At any other point he might have worried about appearing weak in front of his subjects. An Emperor was supposed to take things in stride, to behave a certain way. He should have at least challenged the interloper or established some ground rules to start off with.

But he did none of those things.

And no one seemed to notice when he didn't.

They were all just as shocked as he was.

The human looked around at them with an expression of mild amusement, "Perhaps I should slip into something less distracting." His honor guard took a step back in confused shock as the man's face began to warp. Lord Avex watched in open mouthed awe as the human began to shrink and the hair on his head began to sprout. It was both mesmerizing and horrifying to watch as his upper arms retracted back into his body.

He continued to shrink, his ears migrating upward on his head, his nose widening and flattening out, the eyes growing larger.

Until...

Lord Avex was fact to face with a ghost back from the dead.

Lord Celex stood before him, and it was only then that Avex realized how aged his father had been when he finally passed. The Celzex that stood before him was in the prime of his life, at his peak physicality just like Avex was now. The fur on his body was bright and vibrant, his ears were perked and held high.

But still, he had the same hungry expression in his eyes that he had always had.

His honor guard took another step back.

No one was sure what to do.

They had never had an emperor come back from the dead before. So what was the protocol?

And sure they feared Avex, they respected him, but Emperor Celzex had had a reputation. He had annihilated a planet to bring the entirety of his species together under one banner, he had fought his way from the very bottom to the very top with only his skill in combat.

He was a legend, no he was a raw force of nature.

And here the two of them stood face to face, in a standoff that could turn violent at any moment.

And lord Avex knew he would lose. He was well aware of the Maker's power, their ability to harness energy. What he was looking at was not a construct, but simply a Maker anima pretending to be a construct. If he had wanted to Lord Celex could have returned to his human form and booted lord Avex across the room with relative impunity.