The Emperor’s Old Hat I

Youssef remembered the Old World poorly. It was a rotting, bloated carcass. Decadent and corrupt politicians ruled false democracies, and the people lived horrid lives as wage-slaves under their corporate overlords. There was no freedom, not truly.

He hated that world.

But he no longer lived in that world. He had been chosen to come to a New World. One lush and untouched, just waiting for the right hands to mold it. A world which didn’t know the stench of politicians or the rot of pollution. A world that was young, and alive, and free.

True, the god who brought them here had said they had been chosen by random chance. But what was chance but another word for fate?

But even in this untouched world, the stench of the Old World followed him. The other thousands of chosen didn’t understand the gift they had been granted, not really. They slaughtered each other in pointless wars, over some stupid concept of ‘ascension.’

Pheh. Like he cared about that. Why ascend to godhood, when he was already immortal? What worth was there in abandoning all he would create in this world for such a nebulous concept?

But they were not him. Their minds were clouded with greed. Just like the politicians and CEOs of the Old World. Just like the people who destroyed the Old World.

And that. That could not stand.

So he built up his army. He developed new technologies far beyond what the primitive people of this world understood. He drilled soldiers and trained marksmen. And then, once he was prepared, he marched to war.

First it was one. Then two, and three. Then half a dozen so-called ‘God-Kings’ had fallen to his might. Those corrupt and greedy tyrants were swept away by his Truth.

It was only the first step. The world would be his, one day. It would take years, or perhaps even centuries, but time was on his side—it was on all their sides. He was just the only one who understood that.

But that didn’t mean everyone in this New World was corrupt. When that Wandering King ‘Jamal’ arrived in his capital, he had meant to kill him. But the man did not put on the egotistical airs of the corrupt and conceited. Instead he spoke happily with his citizens, dancing and smiling with them like they were one of his own. No, like he was one of their own.

So, when the time came to speak with him, he spared him. A King, one that he might one day have to kill. But a worthy one. A King who, if he does not fall to vice, might be worthy of standing by his side at the end.

Heh. What pointless imaginings. Jamal was a King without a Kingdom. He wouldn’t last long enough for that to matter, anyway. Youssef would probably never see the man again.

But that was fine. As he said, he had time. There were more Kings in this world. If even only one in a thousand were worthy rulers, well—that just meant he’d have to bring those other nine with him when they reached the end.

But that was a worry for another day.

Right now, his New World was unstable. His burgeoning Empire held back by its technological and sociological inadequacy. Held back by old ideas and irrelevant concepts.

But times were changing. City after city had fallen to his will. His Empire swelled, and his people prospered.

The Old World was a dystopia, nobody could deny that. But this world…

This world he would forge into a new Utopia.

--

The Miserable Misadventures of Yui Blackwoods II

Some people said that if life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Which is a load of fucking bullshit!

Life never gave Yui lemons! It never gave her jack! In fact, it would be safe to say life had never given anyone lemons!

Life sucked. Life sucked lemons. Because it refused to give them to anyone else.

“Yui? Are you all right?” Uma—the woman who had saved her from death the previous year—asked softly, knocking on the door to her hut. “You can’t stay in there forever, you know.”

“Yes, I can!” she moaned. “I’m never going to see the light of day again. I’ll stay here until I die, and my body will rot and nourish the soil, being more useful in death than it ever was in life.”

“You’re being dramatic! Ami doesn’t care, you know! She won’t stop being friends with you just because of that!”

Yui let out an unintelligible groan.

“Alright, fine!” Uma huffed. “If that’s how you’re going to be, then this calls for desperate measures!”

The sounds of footsteps pattering away told Yui that she’d won this round. Now if only she could go back in time, then she’d really be getting somewhere!

Oh wait, she did do that. That’s how she ended up in this situation to begin with.

“Fuck my life~” she groaned, shoving her face into her pillow. The feathered monstrosity wasn’t at all comfortable, but it was useful for situations like this.

Laying in bed like a useless lump for a bit longer, she finally got bored and rolled over. Once, twice, and then grunting as she fell out of the bedroll. Flopped on the floor, she contemplated her life choices for a bit. Well, actually, she contemplated contemplating her life choices. In reality, she was just procrastinating.

“Up, up!” she groaned to herself. “Up, Blackwoods! Get your gay ass up! You’ve got work to do!”

And indeed she did. And as much as she’d love to just lounge in bed all day doing nothing, in a world without technology it ended up getting boring quickly.

Which led her to project number one, books.

Over the past couple months, she’d slowly refined her ability to carve words into rock and stone. She’d also branched out into wood, but it tended to get ruined after a couple weeks, so she stuck to rock. She’d been trying to make paper, but no luck so far.

Anyway. Project. Yes.

With nothing better to do, Yui had been spending the past year since arriving in this village transcribing stories she knew onto stone. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

So far she’d completed two, that being an abridged version of the first Hunger Games book (at least as well as she could remember it, a good chunk of the plot was either skipped or made up) and the passages she remembered from the Tao Te Ching, which she’s sure would have made her grandmother tear up if she knew. Oh, and a bunch of poems she’d used for practice. Right now she was working on the Lord of the Rings, but that was slow, slow going.

But she’d gotten bored of sulking and with nothing better to do, she grabbed her chisel and one of the stone tablets piled in her room and got to work.

At least for a little bit.

“Yui!” Ami called, knocking on the door. The girl in question jumped, bared dodging messing up the tablet and ruining the past week’s work. “Yui! I came to talk to you!”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t!” Yui called back, dragging over a chair to brace against the door. “I plan to die alone in here.”

“Yui!”

“I’m sorry, but Yui isn’t here right now! Please leave a message after the beep. Beep!”

“Yui! Look, I…” she sighed. “I don’t… look. I’m sorry that I don’t feel that way about you. But I still like you! As a friend! So please, as my friend, don’t just lock yourself in your home every day! I miss talking to you, and so do papa and mama and everyone else! So, please? Just come out?”

Yui grimaced, placing some unused stone tablets on the chair just in case. “We both know only your family cares about me, Ami. I doubt I’ve spoken more than three words to anyone else in this village.”

“That doesn’t mean any of us are okay with you hiding away in your room every day!”

“Maybe not,” she countered dubiously, “but this is my decision. And I decided that I’m going to stay in my bed for the next century!”

“I know you’re embarrassed, Yui, but you’ve got to come out one of these days! You’ll need to eat eventually!”

“Actually, I don’t need food or water, so I actually can stay in here forever.”

“Gah!” Ami finally gave up, the sounds of her stomping away echoing from the other side of the door. “Fine! Rot away in there for all that I care!”

Yui, having successfully locked herself in her room, moaned piteously, flopping face down onto her bed.

“I fucking suck,” she whimpered to herself. “There’s nobody in this world worse than me. I should just lay down and die forever. Oh wait, I can’t! Thanks God-Thing that gave me immortality. Real happy about that one! Now I can remember this day for the next thousand years! Why can’t I just wallow in despair for a few days before dying of starvation like a normal person!?”

No god answered, probably because they too felt she was too pathetic to reply to. She didn’t blame them, since she felt pretty pathetic right now.

She glanced at the unfished tablets by her bedside, before huffing and turning away. She didn’t feel like writing anymore today.

As she rolled over in her bed, her head knocked against a bump in her pillow. With a grimace, she reached under before pulling out her soul, the spherical crystal ball she’d hidden under her pillow. It was, as always, cold and clammy to the touch, and glowed a faint light blue.

It would have been beautiful if it weren’t so damn creepy.

Sighing, she squeezed her eyes shut, curling around her soul like it was another person. ‘Because at the end of the day, the only person who’d ever share a bed with me is me.’

And with that depressing thought out of the way, Yui fell asleep.

--

Coasting Through Life I

“I want ten people garrisoning the walls, right now!” Enzo the Sea-King shouted to his soldiers. “You three! I want you scouting the walls—North, South, West, each of you take a direction and make sure none of his soldiers escaped! The five of you watch the docks, make sure nobody tries anything with the boats. And the rest of you, spread out throughout the city! Take out or capture any soldiers, and keep tabs on any dissenters! I want to get back home by morning!”

“Yes, My King!” came the thunderous shouts of nearly a hundred soldiers. Despite himself, Enzo couldn’t help but smile. He’d trained these people well.

“My King,” General Aziz, the only one he’d brought to this city stepped up to him. “Is there anything else you need of me?”

“Not today,” he shook his head, turning to walk back to the docks. He’d be sleeping in a boat tonight, since even after all this time he still didn’t feel comfortable staying in the home of someone he’d just killed. “I need you organizing things here. Rebuild the fortifications, corral the men, general stuff like that. And hey, do a good enough job of that, and there may be a reward in your future for you.”

The man’s eyes shined with restrained greed. “Yes, My King!” he saluted, before turning to bark orders at the soldiers spreading through the city like a virus.

The Sea King just turned away, rolling his eyes. The only reason he’d brought Aziz along was to appoint him steward of this city once he left. Making it a reward for good service just made him more loyal (and gave him a valid reason to revoke it if he preformed poorly). As it was, Enzo could have conquered this city by himself easily. He was getting to a point where the sheer scale of his army could crush most of his weaker neighbors with ease, though at the same time he was getting backed further and further into a corner by powerful alliances.

Over the past year he’d made contact with three separate alliances. One to the north, one to the south, and one to the west. And while he was confident in his chances with a war with any one of them, he knew that the second he got distracted with one war he’d be attacked on two other fronts by the others.

His own modus operandi in war was to sail along the coast, before hitting his enemy with a surprise naval invasion, pouring hundreds of soldiers into their city before they were prepared to defend. But as he expanded further, he ran out of coastal city to invade, nullifying his greatest strength. For him, an inland city was more of a threat than a coastal one by a large margin, and so he’d been trying to avoid coming into conflict with them as much as possible.

Was it scummy? Yeah, some might call it honorless to only attack people he was sure he could beat. But this was war, with real lives on the line (including his own!) and he hadn’t made it this far by playing fair.

Of course, the issue with that was that his neighbors had gotten wise to that, and so the aforementioned alliances that had cropped up allied with inland cities, forcing him to turn away to look for easier targets. But now, having run out of easy prey, he was being forced to turn against his stronger neighbors. Stronger neighbors who hated his guts and would take any opportunity to remove the threat he posed from play.

Then there were the internal issues, like internal dissidents and the fact he could only trust maybe half of his population to fight on his side, but as he expanded and grew his powerbase those problems became exponentially less troublesome. At least for right now. It would probably come back to bite him in the ass later, but he couldn’t worry about ‘what-ifs’ at this point.

It was a balancing act, swinging constantly between ‘too aggressive’ and ‘too passive,’ straddling the line of implosion and explosion. A step too far out of line either way would end him, but staying on the line was the most difficult thing in the world. But that was just something he’d have to get used to if he wanted to survive this death game.

Because in the end? There was only one truth to what was going on here. The strong survived, the weak died, and the smart thrived. And Enzo? Enzo planned to win this whole damn thing.