ted to a raised platform to the side. There were two cushions across from a low table, a pot of what smelled like tea steaming and two cups. “You have earned that much at least. I thought you would die on the field in that blast.”

Ella had thought so too, but she was here now. Zaidu walked over to the sitting area and checked the cushion for traps, he poured tea into both cups and drank a sip from both, and then he waited. Ella noticing the Emperor wincing when Zaidu stepped onto the platform, but nothing happened.

The Emperor made his way over to the platform and removed his shoes before stepping onto it. He was adorned in long robes which covered his feet. Ella approached from the other side, her eyes glowing, looking for something magical. All she saw was the glowing crown which had a tether to the one that she wore, and the scepter with its crystalline blade - the one that matched both her irises and the Emperor’s eyes.

She removed the ballistic face mask. And strapped it to her side before unlacing her combat boots and stepping out of them. The mask itself was still its dark gray, but after the last battle had jagged vertical stripes in the same crystalline color. Her magic had imbued it somehow, it was now connected to her in a way not too dissimilar to the crown.

She felt like she should give it a name.

“I can’t say that I am pleased to see you alive,” the Emperor said. He winced as he knelt on his cushion, and gingerly took a sip of the tea.

She sat down across from him in a formal Asian kneeling position. Carefully, she placed her swordstaff — a copy of the Emperor’s scepter — on her right side. She was happy to skip pleasantries. “I promised you that you could live. Abdicate. I will let you leave here and ask the Aqrabuamelu for a day’s forbearance for seeking their justice. I cannot ask them for more than that.”

The Emperors eyes glittered in malice, “To be brought low by a human. Of all things. I might take your day of peace, but I will not promise anything further.”

“I would not expect you too. Power is too hard to give up.”

The Emperor regarded her, “But nonetheless, before we try and kill one another, there are things you must know should you succeed me.”

“What do you mean?”

“One must rule one’s self before one can rule others. It means suborning your own desires to the needs of the moment.”

“I’d argue that being a ruler is subordinating oneself to the greater good. To being a servant of the People.”

“Modern concepts. Monarchy is created divinity, is it not?” The Emperor paused to take another sip, “I rule by my right of taking and holding power, I shape the world to my liking, I become a small deity and seek to turn myself into a larger one.”

“The act of changing the world is not apotheosis,” Ella said. Succumbing to this discussion. “It is an act anyone can do if they are in the right place at the right time. To think it reflects on anything but a confluence of circumstance is where it becomes hubris.”

The Emperor laughed, “Hubris? It is humility. I rule until displaced. I will win or fail and I accept both eventualities. I am forced to by reality.”

Ella poured some tea for the Emperor and then herself.

“So… is this a game of threats? Or do you have something more you need to tell me? I already know the locks on the Hidden Kingdoms will fail once you die. So spare your breath if that is the threat.”

The Emperor regarded her. Her crown now had three tines, tines that were now missing from his crown which had four left. Her clothes were shimmering between the torn and blood-stained tactical gear she had walked in with and a strange cross between Elizabethan royal wear and a traditional Indian sari. The Dagger of Veils sat quiescent at her side, quiescent.

“Should you defeat me, you will rule as you see fit. I will hardly be in a position to object. But there are many enemies in the Thousand Kingdoms. And not every hidden world was a kingdom. Some were jails for beings I barely subdued and could not kill. And sitting above us all, there are the Ascendants who play with our lives, mocking us, pushing us down. You act as their agent, which is why you have been stuffed to bursting with their magic. Magic that will kill you.”

Ella could not help but remember the strange bear and the tooth. Her crystal eyes, her nails that were now entirely crystalline on both hands and feet. She was already scared to see what an MRI would show inside of her body.

The Emperor continued, “I slaughtered Oberon and his Queens, and still the Ascendants would not accept defeat. The dragons, the rest, you are surrounded with enemies and do not even know it. And behind all that, there may still be more.” He looked troubled that he did not know what else there might be.

Ella looked at the Emperor. He sat at ease in his cushion. His featureless dark onyx colored face burned on one side, and crystalline gem eyes with no hint of iris or pupil. He had once had a full crown and now, Ella could feel her crown and his and how they were entangled together in a tug of war. The same manifestation of some deeper wellspring of power.

His scepter was laid to the side of him, a carved long haft with a straight sword blade on one end. She remembered when he had stabbed her with it and glanced at the wall in the throne room where there was still a gouge there.

He followed his glance and gave a rich laugh. “I never thought you would have done so well to be here again. The years I slept have made humans truly formidable, and I have been forced to reassess them. You are a shining example of your species.”

A threat, is what he actually meant. Ella could read it. He was a paranoid king of a strange magical world, and she was his end.

“It is that ruthlessness which makes you worthy. In another time, you might have served me.” The Emperor looked past her into a vision of what might have been.

Ella riposted, “In another time, you might have been worth serving. Venal ambition and hunger for power hardly create loyalty.”

“Harnessing aligned interests is the essence of ruling…”

Suddenly, faster than she had seen anyone including Zaidu move, he grabbed the scepter and was thrusting it at her. She barely avoided it, rolling to her right side off the cushion, grabbing her own copied swordstaff as she rolled and coming to her feet off the platform.

She was staggerd back, pushed by a lash of wind, and she flared her eyes and forced herself to block the downward slash of the Emperor. There was a loud metal screaming noise and when she looked at her blade, six inches had been sheared off.

She quickly pivoted to the side and brought the staff end in a low sleep that made the Emperor back up and gave her a moment to glance at Zaidu and Kothin. They were engaged with a crowd of orc soldiers, Zaidu mostly having to defend Kothin. There was a shimmering in the air between them, and Ella thought they wouldn’t be able to reach her anyway.

She kept moving, keeping her distance. She couldn’t block as the scepter was entirely capable of cutting through her weapon. But it was difficult as the Emperor moved quite fluidly, even if he had the occasional hesitancy on the side he had been burnt on.

She waited for the right moment which came when the Emperor executed another thrust, she pulled the Dagger of Veils from the sheath and deflected the sword to the side and grabbed the Emperor’s hand on the half to pull him off balance.

His robes suddenly flew up and wrapped around her head, infused with his will, and she lost her view of the Emperor for a moment. When she pulled them loose, he was swinging on a diagonal at her and it was almost too late. She swung her left arm up reflexively, the one that held the dagger and watched as the scepter’s blade cleanly sliceed through her forearm, severing it and blood began gushing from the wound.

Ella fell backwards into another roll, retreating as the Emperor pressed his advantage. Suddenly the pain hit from her arm and she screamed. Blood was flowing copiously and Ella could not think until she heard a sharp yell from Zaidu.

She literally took off sprinting from the Emperor, weaving in case he threw something at her back and took the moment to begin channeling magic to her arm. The bleeding stopped and then slowed as she focused on clotting factors, pushing them past their natural capabilities. Then it was severing the sensation of pain by calming the nerves.

She rounded one of the pillars that lined the hall and stopped for a second. The Emperor was five yards behind her and she reversed direction and went back out the way she had come to throw him off.

Now it was focusing on healing the rest, she flared her eyes strongly and she could see the bone in the stump of her forearm as it became shinier and started looking crystalline, skin began to grow over it quickly and soon the wound was stopped.

There was no time, the Emperor had ceased chasing her, and was now casting something using strange words that she could not recognize and drawing with the scepter on the ground in glowing lines. It was not the quick magic he had used before, but something ritualistic.

She ran right at him and tackled him in the midriff, pushing him out of the glowing circle which began to dissipate. She could hear him expel breath when she hit him, but quickly came back to her feet to press the advantage when she saw she was back near where she started. She scooped up the Dagger, leaving her severed arm and hand laying there in a puddle of blood and turned around just in time to deflect a horizontal slash with the dagger.

The Emperor was a skilled combatant, and they began to circle. Ella kept circling to his left, making him use his injured side. She felt feint and tried not to think of her missing arm.

He released a hand to release what looked like a ray of black at her which barely missed and then followed up with another thrust of the scepterw which she blocked with the dagger again. She needed to close the gap.

She focused a bit and set a tripwire to his left, just behind him, to try and force him into it, but the Emperor contemptuously snorted and the weave of magic unravelled almost instantly. These sorts of fast effects, not grounded in science, were more within his paradigm of magic than hers.

There was no effect of science she could bring to bear, so she tried something new. She amplified his movements randomly. He would take a step and when he pushed off, she would add or reduce the force slightly. She kept it focused on his feet while still setting up tripwires to keep him distracted.

It was exhausting doing that and parrying and trying to counterattack periodically.

And finally it was the opportunity she waited for, another horizontal slash of the blade and she gave the blade a shove from behind, using magic to accelerate and overpower his movements to get him to swing wide.

She stepped to his outside, within the range of the scepter, her remaining right arm holding the dagger, and kicked down with her right foot into the Emperor’s knee, forcing it to bend before she wrapped her hand around the Emperor’s neck and held the dagger to it, ready to strike.

She could feel the urge to cut it, to drink the blood that would pour from it, her power increasing more and more. Her mask was on her face, when had that happened? It made her feel strong and vicious.

Instead she managed, through gritted teeth, “Throw down, Ekerri, it is over.”

She heard rather than saw the scepter clatter to the ground.

“Now the crown. Abd icate.” This fit with what she knew, he would give her the crown and be relatively powerless, his domain broken.

There was sudden movement behind her and she looked to see Kothin, grabbing the scepter. His calm demeanor broken, his face was, for the first time alive, if anything he looked demented.

“Ekerri, did you really think I would not wait for this moment? My mate dead and you really thought that I would forget?”

Kothin was stepping forward the blade end of the scepter pointed right at Ekerri’s side.

“No! Don’t!” Ella couldn’t move without releasing the Emperor and she watched as the blade thrust forward. She shoved the Emperor back, the scepter’s blade skittering across the Emperor’s ribs. Kothin was screaming as crystal white energy was consuming his hands, but he went for another attack.

Ella kicked the haft and Kothin lost his grip. She quickly leapt forward to get her blade back onto the Emperor’s neck who had been retreating backwards.

Zaidu, released from the hood the Emperor had on him came in hard and tackled Kothin to the ground. When Zaidu completed his roll back to his feet. Kothin was crumpled on the ground and had a knife embedded in a killing thrust from under his ribs upwards.

And because she was distracted, she wasn’t prepared when she felt something pull at her hand holding the dagger. She could feel something grabbing her hand and pushing it forward. Before she could bring her strength to bear she watched as it sliced across Ekerris neck.

The air shimmered in front of her, and a strange tall creature with three eyes and folded wings appeared in front of her. She heard a hiss in a new language, one that her crown translated for her, “It’s done. Now my Queen and people are free.”

Ella looked down to her hand which still held the dagger. One that was covered in the Emperor’s blood as he died in front of her. Her other hand dangled loosely, blood pouring from it, some of her fingers didn’t move.

The copious purplish red blood from his neck poured out, and then as she watched, it began to rise and in droplets. It rushed towards her in a torrent.

No, it rushed into the dagger, and the Dagger began to glow orange. The swirling blood continued to drain from the Emperor, Ella watched as it emerged from the wound, from his nose and mouth, from his eyes, and even his pores.

Zaidu didn’t hesitate and was wrapping a tourniquet around her arm to staunch the bleeding. He said something to her but she was feeling feint and out of focus and couldn’t hear him.

Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light and Ella cried out and everything went dark for a moment.

When her vision recovered, she was on the ground. The dagger was in her hand, but it was no longer was a seething black hole in the shape of a dagger, it pulsed between orange and purple-red in her magical sight.

The tall creature was gone. One of the invisible assassins had followed them here, perhaps the same one from before.

Ella looked at the dagger and awkwardly flipped it around with her remaining hand and was about to sheathe it when it pulsed once more and she heard a voice come from it.

“Empress of the Thousand Kingdoms,” it said, amused. In the voice of the Emperor.

A full coronet settled on her head.