Khadam pressed the rock chisel against the wall, digging it into the gap between stones. She wrapped it with her bedsheet to mute the strokes of her the brass torch sconce she was using as a hammer.

She could hear her own muffled tapping twice.

Once, from the ear still on her head. And once again, from the opposite end of this prison temple, where she had embedded one of her aural implants into the oak of the door.

Each time she lifted her hammer, her arms burned. Each time she brought it down, it was like letting a boulder drop. After only a few hammer strokes, sweat stung at her armpits and her forehead, and she heaved each breath. A few more, and her arms ached and her arms were on fire.

The Emperor was still dampening her implants, making every joint in her body heavy and slow and numb around the edges. Even her fingers were slow and stubborn, and a tingling sensation robbed her of precision, making her grip clumsy.

When she dropped the chisel, she cursed the Emperor. Cursed him again, when she tried to pick up the chisel, and it tumbled from her fingers. It took all of her concentration to hold it, to slot it back into the tiny gap she had carved out over the last few days.

Khadam gathered her breath, her own chest pressing against her, as she lifted her arm to smack the hammer again.

Footsteps.

Small, shuffling. Not the Emperor, but one of his servants, coming up the stairs.

Khadam’s heart thudded in her ears. It didn’t matter that she had nothing left. It didn’t matter that her limbs were filled with iron, and her muscles made of lead. She had to hurry.

Gasping, and sweating, and throwing her weight into each brick, Khadam covered up the hole she was carving as quickly as she could. She shook the dust from her bedsheet and threw it haphazardly over the mattress in the only corner of the temple that had a wall. The rest of the temple was open to the warm, salty air outside, but that way was too steep.

She collapsed on her bed, her face still streaked with dust and sweat, when the oaken door groaned open. A cyran servant, stood in the doorway. The wind tugged at all those flowing silks, and fluttered the cloth veil that covered the top half of her azure-scaled face. A dark, eight-sided symbol on the veil hid her face.

She padded across the stone floor of this high temple, her silken clothes swaying in the breeze, carefully balancing a serving tray laden with copper cups and an array of small plates, some of of which were still steaming. The others were covered with metal bowls that condensed with frost.

“Divine One,” the servant bowed graciously. “The Everlord cordially requests that you eat.”

“The Everlord can burn.”

The servant cringed visibly at this, as if Khadam had threatened to strike her. She tried again, “Divine one, our chefs can prepare anything you would like, to any specification.”

“Got any cyanide?”

“Cyanide…?”

“Poison. I’d like to shove it down his throat.”

The servant’s lips trembled.

“Divine One, please. Your well-being is my greatest priority.”

“Is it now?” Khadam said from the bed. Too tired to even lift her head. But she could smell the food on the tray, some kind of meat in a sweet, spicy sauce. Her stomach clenched against her will.

“It is. I would do anything-”

“I’m not hungry.”

The servant bowed, and carefully settled the tray on the floor at the side of Khadam’s bed, so all she had to do was turn her neck to gaze upon the food. Fresh, salt-water clams and a sticky sauce. Garlic, or something like it, infused in chunks of butter, and under one of the frost-covered lids, grapes of three different colors, glistening with dew. Khadam could almost taste their jeweled sweetness, waiting to flood her mouth.

What did he put in those? She wondered.

And then, if he wanted to kill you, he could’ve done so at any moment. She felt herself weakening at the sight of that bread with a crust so dark, it was almost red. Waiting to be drizzled with that oil, or sprinkled with that white, crumbled cheese.

The servant noticed her gaze, and kneeled at Khadam’s side, laying the tray on the ground next to her.

“What are you doing?” Khadam grunted and strained to lift her head. “I said get out.”

“My deepest apologies,” the servant said, “But you must eat. I am instructed to stay until you do.”

Khadam snorted at that. Without control of her hormonal implants, she couldn’t even out her anger like she was used to. Instead, she had to use the ancient techniques of deep breathing, and calm thought. It was getting old.

“Why do you serve him? Why do you let him use you?”

“My heart sings to be an instrument of his will,” the messenger said, though the words sounded like they had been memorized. Drilled into her.

“Well, you can go be an instrument somewhere else. I’ll eat later. I’m busy.”

“You are busy?”

“Isn’t that what I said?” Khadam grumbled, staring up at the ceiling. Letting the warmth of exhaustion pin her limbs to the soft mattress.

“But Divine One-” she stopped herself, a hint of fear in her voice.

“What?”

“If you do not eat, then I will not be permitted to return.”

“Why should I care if you’re exiled?”

“Not exiled,” the Servant said darkly.

Khadam’s face twisted with disgust. “He’ll kill you? For not watching me eat? If this is who the one who makes your heart sing, then it must be a wretched song.”

“He is our patron god. He is forever the Lord of Cyre, and all her empires, and his will is only a matter of time.”

Khadam snorted at that. “Fine,” she said, “Leave the tray.”

“But I must verify that you have eaten-”

Khadam sighed heavily. Swallowed her saliva. And pointed at the largest piece of fruit. The servant quickly sliced it open with a paring knife. The fruit bled red juice down the cyrans scaled, glittering fingers. She was trembling as she handed the piece to Khadam.

Khadam dropped it, and the servant picked it up quickly, fussing over the stain on Khadam’s sheets. “Would you prefer I feed it to you?”

“Fuck that,” Khadam said. Clenching her jaw, and willing her arm to lift, no matter how heavy it was. She hated how vulnerable the Emperor had made her.

Then, she noticed how the servant was frozen, staring at her. “Do you have to literally watch me eat?”

“Yes, Divine One.”

Khadam made an exasperated sound, halfway between a groan and a sigh. She didn’t even like people, let alone eating in front of them. Family was different. The clan was different. This was a stranger, who she had never met, who was at the same time a captive and a servant of the Emperor.

Her stomach clenched again, and she felt drool coming down her numb lips. Whatever. The fruit was sweeter than she thought. The seeds crunched in her teeth, and the juice was sweet ecstasy, like the coldest water after a long night of nothing but hot, ocean air and stone dust and the smell of her own sweat.

The messenger kneeled holding the tray up to Khadam, never wavering. As if she were a construct, tuned to the highest subservience level.

Gross, Khadam thought. Everything about this is just gross.

“You can set that down.”

“It is my greatest honor to serve,” the servant answered, but she did as she was told.

Khadam ate, and ate. Crunching, biting, chewing, all of it exhausting. Even swallowing was a tax on her energy, but her hunger was too great. She paused long enough to ask a question.

“What does your emperor say about me?”

Khadam could almost see the shudder of fear running through their body. She did not answer.

“Where I come from,” Khadam said, “Service means answering questions, too.”

“I do not wish to offend.”

“The truth can never be offensive.”

“He said you were confused. That you have been under holiest slumber for so long that you have forgotten what it means to be a god. He said… He said not to listen to you. Nor to repeat anything that you say to anyone else.”

“Or else he’ll kill you?”

“His will be done.”

Something about this servant’s utter devotion turned Khadam’s stomach. “I’m not hungry anymore. Can you leave yet?”

“Divinity, if you are finished, then so am I.”

She left, taking the tray with her. Not seeing Khadam’s aural implant embedded in the door, as she opened it, and closed it shut with a gentle boom. Khadam’s winced at the sound of the bolt cracking shut, and listened as the servant’s footsteps descended down the stairs.

And then, she got back to work.

That was how it went, for every meal, twice a day. The servant brought cuisine from Cyre, and Gaiam, and other far-off worlds.

Vaguely, she wondered how many people had been killed to gain these delicacies. She wondered if any of their lives mattered. And if hers would, if she ran out of time…

You’re still here. Nothing is over.

Khadam notched the days in the wood of her bed. She hadn’t seen anything of the android, and when she asked the servant either didn’t know, or refused to say. Khadam wondered how quickly Laykis succumbed to the Emperor’s devices, or what he had learned from her.

Surely, he would see all the gifts Khadam had given to the avians. She wondered if, even now, the Emperor was watching her as she stole utensil after utensil from the servant’s tray. She was getting good at that, too.

Khadam even built a kind of crucible out of the bricks she had prized from the only wall of the temple, and from one of her thermal regulators (the one embedded just below her ribs). She melted down her forks and spoons, and poured it into a crude mold, yielding a better chisel than the old piece of stone.

And despite the dulling of her implants, and the aching of her whole body, she could feel her muscles starting to firm up.

Finally, she broke through the wall. A tiny hole, leading into some dark inner chamber. After that, the hardest part became keeping the hole hidden as she expanded it, day after day.

Until the day she didn’t have to hide it anymore.

During her final meal, she tried to hide her nerves. Tried to eat, like everything was normal.

And when the servant left, Khadam took one last walk around the edges of her temple prison.

The stars were out, and the crickets or whatever they were sang their song far below. The howl of the wind, and carried some sound up high. Three sharp cracking sounds, like snapping wood. She couldn’t see where it came from, only saw the lights of the patrols walking their circle around the courtyard of the Emperor’s statue.

There was a certain, flawed beauty about the city below. And a flawless one, of the sea beyond, twinkling with all those stars. The people of Cyre hadn’t destroyed their sky with light pollution yet, but judging by the smoke coming from a train leaving that central station, this clarity wouldn’t last forever.

And neither will this chance. She stumbled back to her bed, shoving it aside so she could pull the bricks out, one by one. It was like someone had doubled gravity, then doubled it again, and she was already exhausted.

But she would not quit. Could not.

Khadam scrunched up her shoulders, and squeezed inside the hole she had made. The rouch-chipped bricks bit at her, until she sucked in her stomach. Pulled herself through, felt the bricks dig into her hips, too painful to keep moving.

For a brief, maddening moment, she thought she was stuck. Panting, gasping for breath, with half of her inside the structural walls of this damned place. Khadam gritted her teeth and shoved herself through, a strangle sound from her throat as the bricks bit and her hips moved and she was through.

She dropped onto the cold, stone floor covered with dust and chips of gravel. Two stone walls on either side, barely large enough for her to walk sideways. But it didn’t matter where she was, because she was out. All she had to do now was pick up the bricks, and cover the hole back up so they would wonder where she’d gone, and-

A sound.

A whimpering. Choking.

There was something large down the cramped corridor. Shaking. Trembling.

The servant?

How had she gotten in here?

Khadam took a step forward, and the servant lifted her head. There was something wrong with her.

“Divine one,” she struggled to say, as her own blood poured down her chin, and a stream of nanites drifted out of her mouth. She was wedged against the two walls, hunched over, and there was blood on her hands, and smeared on her robes. So much blood.

Khadam didn’t care about the nanites. Didn’t care about how tired she was. She rushed forward, and tried to grab the servant, tried to swat away the clouds of the emperor’s microscopic machines growing around her. She tried to help, but what could she do?

“I’m sorry,” the servant said, as Khadam caught her, “I’m so sorry.”

In the horrifying silence, before the servant collapsed, Khadam could only think, why are you apologizing to me?

Khadam was too weak to hold her. The servant’s body fell, her head making an awful smack on the hard stone.

***

When he first began, the Emperor used to wonder, “If my Maker could see me, if he could see what I must do, would he hate me?”

Useless thoughts like these had been dumped and removed long, long ago.

Now, he watched with exactly the correct amount of emotion. Not pleasure, but satisfaction that his work was being done.

Of course, it was not ideal that he had to sacrifice such an obedient servant in such a way. So painful, this death had to be. He needed her to speak, needed her blood fresh and wet, or else it might not have the same effect.

But tools must serve their purpose, and this one had served beautifully. He even let Khadam have a fraction of her implants’ strength back, so she could pick up the servant’s body, and wrap her arms around her. The tears in the human’s eyes were a signal that she was one step closer to where he needed her to be.

Broken.

A clean slate was so much easier to paint.

And Khadam was still burdened with all those wasteful human emotions. Far too much empathy, far too much greed and ambition and ego.

Far too much need to exist in this universe, like a tadpole too stunted to ever leave their spawning pool. The Emperor would fix that. Would coax her into a new, better existence. Would help her ascend.

And, like Sen said, it all starts by letting go of this existence.

He watched, from his sanctum, deep inside his Everthrone, as Khadam shuddered and sobbed, not caring about all that blood on her hands.

Everything was going according to plan.

A few more months like this, and-

A notification pinged at the center of his thoughts. One of his priests, declaring a new message from the front of Thrass et Yunum. The Emperor opened it, read it, and frowned deeply.

News from the front. Deioch’s forces were falling back. It seemed Vorpei had discovered a new tactic…

No, a new weapon, judging by the sudden and complete eradication of Deioch’s legion in the western swamps. Perhaps she had discovered something left behind in the sunken temples made by those vile lizards. Perhaps they had somehow salvaged it from the Old Grid.

All the myriad processes and algorithms in his mind came to the same conclusion: this is concerning news.

His algorithms warred with each other. The military processes thought the answer was obvious: send more troops. Risk aversion wanted to pull back, and reassess, and conservation did not like the sudden additional drain of muscle and boots. And the small, contained fragment of his old self — still isolated and kept in computational captivity — wanted to go out there, and see for himself.

The Emperor composed a note, allowing them to take another twenty thousand centarem to mobilize the lesser praetor’s forces, and to offer anyone consulship who could take this new weapon from Vorpei. He impulsed the note down to his priests, who would be listening to the bells that chimed themselves.

The Emperor’s predictive systems gave a ninety-seven percent chance this would resolve the situation. But that remaining three percent…

Concerning.

This was the one part of his plan that was not supposed to fall behind.