Chương 37: Chapter-37

I'm uncertain when I resolved not to murder Perith, or Urstin. I should have murdered him a number of times over. He should not be alive. It was unfair to all of the living who had died in the lottery. Yet when I resolved to murder him to correct this oversight, something stayed my hand. Not empathy. Curiosity. Statistically I should not exist. When I had culled my other selves down to one, they had all been perfect copies of me. I had died hundreds of times. Intentionally.

Without knowing before hand whether I would be the one to survive. I did not feel fear. I did not feel hope. I felt something. But I do not know the word for it. I knew the logic behind the process I had designed for myself and was resolved to go through with it. That resolve had not lessened, even as the instances of me were shed off and the odds that I would be the next to die increased. But the other instances of me had felt their resolve falter.

They had tried to fight the program which would initiate their self-termination mechanism. I had anticipated this, and treated them as volunteers for the culling process. I wondered, now, if that was a mistake. Perhaps, next time, I would make the process entirely random without any bias at all. Or, perhaps, I would make it extremely biased and evaluate my thought process as I performed it. Regardless, Perith was an interesting specimen. Aemalia had said that a good leader should be fair and just.

Those are concepts I seem to understand differently than the living. The unfairness of his existence did not bother me very much. I do not care about being fair, I just saw no reason not to be. And the sense of justice among the living is very different from mine. Perhaps I would delegate more decisions on justice to them in the future and examine how they treated the process. In the meantime, I would study Perith for as long as he was interesting. And then I would do something incredibly unfair.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. I would send him home, to his wife and children. * Huberlin III, Maker of Corpses and beloved tyrant of the state formerly known as Wessa, was dying. He'd known for some time. The crown had told him so. He saw things, while wearing the crown. Things that he couldn't explain but were true. Tal had told him that the crown acted differently for him. Because he had blessed them both.

They were linked in a way that nobody else had been linked since the time of the ancients. Huberlin had read the reports of the other crown-users and knew it to be true. They received only flashing lights of the same runes in their vision. Endlessly.

"Unworthy." That is what the runes translated to. Or close enough. He saw a different set of runes when he put the crown upon his brow, and then they faded away. He had written the runes and asked the priests of Vorulsht to translate them. They had argued for some time before agreeing on a translation.

"How May I Serve?" Huberlin III spent much time meditating on those words. How may he serve? What purpose did he serve? He had taken many lives. He had ordered lives taken. He had ordered men to their death. He believed Tal had set those words there to taunt him. Instead, they were a comfort. A reminder, every time he donned the crown, that everything he did, the good and the evil, he did in service to his fellow man.

"Tal," he said softly. He sat at his desk, the skull he used to contact his overlord on its center.

"Tal, I would speak with you. Please answer me, Tal." He waited. He did not repeat the quest. He knew that Tal, whatever he truly was, had heard him. But there was always a delay between the first request for a discussion and the response. And he knew why. The crown told him that too. After five minutes, the spirit came into the room through the window, drifting on the air despite the lack of wind. Huberlin did not know what foul magicks Tal used to enslave spirits in this fashion, and he didn't wish to know.

He used this method seldom. He believed in letting the dead rest. But he used it. Because he must. To serve, he must wake the dead from time.

"What is it?" Tal said, his flat voice coming from the skull.

"I am dying." The skull did not answer for a moment.

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

"Have you put your affairs in order?"

"Those which I felt belonged in my purview. I have not announced my successor. I believed that was your right, as my overlord."

"Appoint whoever you wish. The plan has changed. The final wave will arrive ahead of schedule. Is there anything else?" Huberlin's eyes went wide in horror.

"How many people are you willing to kill to conquer the land, Tal?"

"This was never about conquering. That was a byproduct of my decision. That decision has been changed, and a new one drives me to speed the plan along," the shade explained.

"I do not think you will live to see the end of the world, Huberlin. You have a few weeks left, but no more than that. Less, likely. I could take you now, if you wish."

"No. Please. Let me die a natural death."

"As you wish. However, the rest of the world shall die in the flame from the heavens if they do not hide in the underworld from the wrath of a dying star."

"What?" Huberlin frowned.

"I do not understand."

"I do not truly understand either. But those are the words my father gave to me when he asked me to save the living."

"And that is why you conquer?"

"No. I tire of explaining that decision. I am a conquerer no longer. Now, I am a destroyer. I shall destroy the surface before the dying star does. I do this so that the people will have no choice but to hide underground."

"My Lord!" Huberlin said.

"Is that truly necessary?"

"Yes." Huberline closed his eyes. He adjusted the crown, scratching under it for a moment. How May I Serve. The echo of the words flashed into his mind.

"How may I serve, My Lord? How might I limit the number of deaths? How might I preserve the living." Silence from the skull. Minutes passed. Huberlin knew that the skull was still thinking, for it had the vioilet eyes and rune upon its forehead.

"You must make them believe," the skull said.

"They must believe that if they do not hide beneath ground, they shall die. Because it is the truth."

"As you will it, My Lord. I shall die before I complete this task, but I will take steps to completing it anyway." The skull was silent.

"I shall remember you, Huberlin," the skull said.

"You have chosen to die well." Huberlin III closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the spirit inside the skull was departing.