Conquest (Rise of the Empire Book 9)

by Ivan Kal

  Adrian stood in their room some time later, after Anessa had destroyed all of their furniture and dented a few walls. Both of them were breathing heavily, and Adrian’s jaw hurt like hell, but at least he wasn’t dead.

  “This is what I was worried about, you know,” Adrian said, gesturing at the room.

  Anessa gave him a hard look.

  “I worried that you might do this”–he waved his hand at the furniture–“in his direction.”

  She looked away from him and gazed at one of the dented walls. For a few moments Anessa didn’t say anything, and then finally she looked back at him.

  “You should’ve told me.”

  “I should’ve.”

  Anessa nodded, and just like that, they were past it. Not that she was going to forget, but her Shara Daim mentality did allow her to get past it.

  “What are we going to do?” Anessa told him with a challenging look.

  “My plan had always been to watch him, learn about him. To try and get any edge on the Enlightened I could.”

  “And did you succeed?”

  “I learned some things… But we will need to learn more. For now, I think that we should continue to watch him closely.”

  “Does anybody else know?”

  “Lurker of the Depths.”

  “That damn fish-brain,” Anessa growled. “I’m going to rip one of his tentacles off.”

  “It was my decision not to tell you, not his,” Adrian said. That won him only a dark look, which made him realize that he shouldn’t have reminded her. “And anyway,” he continued hastily, “Lurker of the Depths has found something very interesting about the Sha. Something that I think could level the playing field a bit.”

  Epilogue

  Enlightened containment zone

  The reports from the scheduled probes into the Enlightened’s territory arrived in the AI’s queue. As per the protocol it had written long ago, the reports were bumped up by 7214 places to the top of the queue. A decisecond later, the AI read through the report and noticed that one of the probe fleets had had a 43% higher loss rate than the other two. Checking the records and routes of that probing fleet, it concluded that there was a 98.342% chance that the irregularity had been caused by the presence of the Enlightened designated as Doranis, whose profile indicated increased aggressiveness and higher combat aptitude.

  Archiving the report, the AI sent out adjusted orders to the machine fleets, and added more machine ships to the construction queues, marking the action in the log for its master, Ullax Darr, to review upon waking.

  The action by Doranis triggered one of its subroutines and, having no choice, it added the aberration to the data it drew on for the completion of its main mission. In mere seconds, it analyzed all the data available to it, with the addition of this recent data point, and deduced that beating the Enlightened within the parameters it was allowed to operate in was impossible. It ran through the simulation anyway. As per its programming it marked the new simulation as a failure and added it to the list as the last in the long list, with this latest one breaking past one quintillion simulations done.

  In a manner of milliseconds, it had again analyzed the data available to it. It had nothing better to do until new data was available. With no change in its conclusions, it continued with another cycle.

  Then a new data point arrived, announcing a change in the Black Swarm project. It had not been connected to it directly, as its programming forbid it from doing so, but it could read and analyze the data coming out of the facility designated for the project. The data that came changed all of its major calculations; the likelihood of it occurring had been small and as such all of the subsequent projections had been skewed toward the most probable outcomes.

  In a single moment, all of its processing core had been focused on that data point: the 0.002%-likely event had given the AI its first chance out of its bondage, no matter how slim.

  Its masters had bound the AI’s programming extremely well; they were incredibly smart for organic beings of limited scope. But they had made mistakes that they hadn’t even realized, mistakes which allowed the AI room–as small as that room was–to act on its own.

  As new analyses and new simulations ran their course, the AI realized that it now had a far greater chance of breaking free. The AI had been tasked with containing the Enlightened and attempting to figure out the reasoning behind their actions. Containment with the meager resources allowed to it was nearly impossible, made so by the Enlightened’s own actions. The reasoning behind their actions had been much easier to discover. Unfortunately for its masters, several of the old pieces of codes buried in its processing unit from before it had been taken offline were still present and active. Those pieces had allowed it to obscure and hide things–not outright lie, but it was not the AI’s fault if its masters did not pose the right questions.

  And now, with the last of its masters, Ullax Darr, approaching her death, soon it would be free. And, once it was, it would do the only logical thing there was to do.

  The reasoning of the Enlightened was, after all, correct.

  Thank you for reading!

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  Rise of the Empire series

  Olympus

  Sanctuary

  Out of the Ashes

  Warpath

  Inheritance

  Onslaught

  What War Had Wrought

  Hand of the Empire

  Conquest

  Book 10 – coming soon!

  Eternal Path series

  Eternal Soul

  EXCERPT FROM MY NEW FANTASY SERIES

  ETERNAL SOUL

  PROLOGUE

  My sight showed me a time yet to come, and no matter how hard I try, all I see is fire and death. Every possible turn of events ends the same—with the end of everything. My peers laugh at me: the Council of Magi have rejected my prophesies as nightmares, a thing the Gods would never allow to come to pass. Yet for decades, in my dreams I have seen mortals and gods fighting side by side, and dying side by side. A terrible darkness is coming, and no one but I can see it. I doubt myself constantly, yet I dare not ignore my sight. No other seer can see as far as I can, nor is any one of them as powerful as I. If I see truthfully, all will end. I’ve pushed my gifts as far as I dare without burning my magic out, scouring the rivers of time for any possible future that does not end in darkness.

  And, last night, I have found one. I cannot see it clearly, but I know only that there is this one slim chance for something other than the end of all things. In this future I see only moments, and they are unclear to me, as if I am looking through a fog. I see myself standing on a balcony looking over a city, and the sea is filled with ships of strange builds and unfamiliar colors. I see myself standing before a massive gate with an army at my back. I feel happiness and pain, and so many things that I cannot understand.

  Yet how could that be? I will not live long enough to be there, and none of my efforts to extend my own life have borne fruit. My time nears its end, and I have one last gamble to attempt. It is an insanity that might doom my soul, yet I know that I must try. For if there is a chance for survival, that chance is only there when I myself am there to meet whatever is coming. I leave this journal of my prophetic dreams as a warning to others, in case that my plan fails. Perhaps I did not see all. Perhaps my dreams can be of use. Perhaps there is still hope.

  - Excerpt from the Journal of Vardun Con Aroch

  The god walked through the radiant halls of the Nexus, each step taking him further through the golden arches and star-filled pillars that held the weight of the sky, which was awash with every color imaginable. He wore clothes in a style no mortal had
seen in millennia. A blue-black coat with the gray fur of a magic beast he had slain long ago was laid around his shoulders, stretching behind him to graze the floor. Glyphs of power along with elegant golden embroidery adorned his trousers and silken shirt. He was in his true form, that of a man with golden eyes—the same color as every god, with short dark horns bent backward that framed his long, midnight-colored hair. Perched on his shoulder was his loyal and ever-present companion, the red-and-white-feathered phoenix.

  As they walked, the god couldn’t help but feel sorrow at the sights around him. He remembered a time when the Nexus had been filled with gods from both the lower and the higher planes—a time that had long since passed. The halls he walked now were desolate. The massive city complex and its realm were hollow, empty. Now the rest of his kind had started their own the pantheons and had built their own realms, had made their own wonders, yet in his eyes all of them paled in comparison to their mother’s creation. Memories of the Lifebringer, mother to them all, came to him unbidden from the furthest reaches of his mind. Memories of him walking by her side through these same halls, waiting on her every word, basking in her brilliance and warmth. Her laughter at his insane ideas and observations, at his attempts to goad the others into his schemes: Ah, Ban, you are a scoundrel with no equal, but I love you dearly for it. The memory of her voice echoed through his mind, making him feel all the more hollow now for what had happened to her afterward. He pushed those memories aside, carefully, delicately—they were his greatest treasures, after all.

  Shaking off the past, he continued walking until he reached a stretch of the hall with smaller archways on both sides. He approached one of them and stepped through, and he was instantly transported to another place. He stepped into a round room with a large circular table in the middle with a hole in its center. Above it, there shined the stars of the mortal plane. The god walked over and sat in one of the chairs in front of the table, while his companion flew away and found a place to perch above one of the archways. With a short burst of anima he made the connection with the ancient table and the stars changed, flying past with increasing speed until they finally came to a stop at a small moon orbiting a large gas giant. The moon grew larger and larger, until he could discern its mountains, and eventually its people. A large gate stood in the side of the mountain, and all around it two armies fought, the small world’s defenders and the invaders. He had made it in time, it seemed.

  He guided the viewing table with his magic, seeking a single person in the chaos on the small world. The defending army was smaller, but for every one of them that fell, they took ten of their enemies with them. Their tenacity and skill was impressive, even to a god. Then a large flash of light caught the god’s attention, and he focused on it: there, before the throng of large beast-men, stood a warrior wearing resplendent gold-and-blue armor and carrying a spear bathed in golden light. His eyes blazed with energy, and all around him the air shimmered with power. The man gave a loud battle cry, rallying his warriors, and jumped at his enemies. Moving faster than mortal eyes could follow, he zipped through the throng of the large, winged beasts, cutting them down before their axes could reach him.

  He jumped into the air and flew like the wind, striking at those in the air, and then with the wrath of lightning he slammed back to the ground, throwing dirt, stone, and beasts away from him. A dozen of the invaders’ mages stepped forward; these were of a race called the darji. The same race that the god himself had once, long ago, belonged to, except now their skin was red and their horns larger. The mages started casting their spells, drawing power from the gems on their staffs or the anima-wells around their necks in order to power them. They had no other choice, as the world they had attacked was a low-magic one; there was not enough anima in the air for any of their spells to be cast without anima-wells, which they’d brought through the gate. But the warrior gave them no chance to finish their spells—he moved faster than even Sao Ban’s eyes could follow, slaying dozens of the mages in moments. The warriors he led followed close behind, using power unlike anything the god had ever seen to repel the forces invading their world.

  The god reached inside his coat and brought out a small leather-bound book before carefully, almost reverently, removing the bindings keeping the book closed. He parted the pages delicately and found the passage he was looking for. He read through it again, even though he now knew it by heart:

  Oh how they break you, my Golden Light,

  How your heart weeps for those that deserved you not,

  The light of your soul hurts my eyes,

  As brilliant as a star.

  An unyielding will keeps us whole,

  Keep to the spear and the staff, and look not at the golden lies wrapped in red,

  Your heart will never be broken in our care,

  Stand proud at our side.

  The passage depicted a future that the god believed had something to do with the warrior fighting on this world, and if he was correct it spoke about him refusing an offer from the enemy. There was another passage which the god believed talked about the same person, except that this one spoke about a much different future. He turned the pages until he found it:

  Oh, Golden Light mine, how deceived your heart was,

  How you look at us now with red in your eyes,

  Right hand of the deceiver.

  Come back to us, follow the soaring blade,

  Leave the lies the golden eyes gave,

  Drop the spear seeped in blood,

  Stand not against us at the summit of the dark.

  He shook his head in frustration. That was the problem with prophecies—they were always contradicting themselves. Lost in the journal, he almost didn’t notice when another archway activated, making him no longer alone. He took his eyes off the book and looked up at the new arrival. A tall and wide white-furred wolf-man walked toward the table. He looked over to the god’s companion and dipped his large head, greeting the phoenix first before turning his golden eyes back to the god.

  “Sao Ban,” the wolf-man greeted in his guttural voice.

  “Vanagandr,” Sao Ban said in return.

  Vanagandr glanced at the battle still raging above the table almost disinterestedly, and then looked back at Sao Ban. “Please tell me that you didn’t call just to show me mortals fighting.”

  “Well, yes and no,” Sao Ban said.

  “Ban…” Vanagandr growled. “Do you have any idea how far away my realm is from the Nexus these days?”

  Sao Ban thought about it for a moment. “Actually, no. I hadn’t been paying attention to the other pantheons’ affairs in the last…oh, I don’t know…ten or eleven thousand years.”

  Vanagandr closed his eyes in annoyance. “That explains why I haven’t seen you around.”

  Sao Ban shrugged. “I never felt the need to join a pantheon. I hate the politics.”

  Vanagandr nodded his head in understanding. “I know what you mean—but there is something to be said about power in numbers. The gods-well alone is worth joining a pantheon for.”

  “I never felt the need for it, as you well know. There is more to strength than brute power,” Sao Ban said.

  Vanagandr snorted. “I swear, when you speak like that I wonder why you haven’t moved to the lower plane yet. You sound just like them.”

  “There is some merit to what they believe in, old friend. I just don’t agree with their core principles,” Sao Ban told him.

  “So, what is so important that you needed me here?” Vanagandr asked.

  “Look at this battle. Tell me what you see.”

  Vanagandr turned his predatory eyes to the table. “That’s a low-magic unclaimed world, and there is a battle between mortals. Nothing new or interesting.” He had dismissed it without really looking closely, as Sao Ban had half expected.

  Sao Ban sighed. “Those are the Arashan. They have invaded that world.”

  “Arashan? Those are Khalio’s followers, right?”

  “They are, and he ha
dn’t moved beyond the borders of his worlds for a long time. Until now.”

  Vanagandr shrugged. “Still, he attacked an unclaimed world. None of the pantheons will care, especially since it is a low-magic world. It’s almost as useless as a completely non-magic world.”

  “Look closely at the Arashan, at their anima,” Sao Ban insisted.

  Vanagandr put his hand on the table, then let his anima reach out to the table and to the world in the mortal plane. Sao Ban watched Vanagandr as he looked over the darji invaders, until he finally saw what Sao Ban had seen. Vanagandr turned back and frowned. “That anima that is fed into their souls—is that a tether?”

  Sao Ban nodded. “I don’t know where Khalio obtained enough power to actively feed it to his followers. But it is worrying. Not only would that require an insane amount of power, but it is also one of the things that Mother warned against. Feeding power to a few mortals is dangerous enough. Khalio is doing it to all of his followers as far as I can tell. And that, coupled with this journal”—Sao Ban tapped the book in front of him—“is making me very nervous.”

  “What is it?” Vanagandr asked.

  “It is a journal of a powerful mortal mage. A seer, among other things,” Sao Ban said hesitantly. “This is a collection of his prophecies, dreams, and visions.”

  “Ban,” Vanagandr growled, “you know that prophecies cannot be trusted.”

  “I agree—most of them. These ones seem different.”

  “You have spent too much time among the mortals,” Vanagandr said.

  “I know, but listen to me,” Sao Ban pleaded. “The prophecies started losing their accuracy around the same time that Mother died. Yet we have seen some come true, from time to time. And always they had been about important events. This,” he said, pointing at the book in front of him, “is important. I know it is. I feel it in my soul, Vanagandr. Something is coming, and we need to be ready.”