Broken Horizons – Epilogue, Ch 5

Azma

Azma wanted to conquer the world but the paperwork she had to do before hand was just interminable.

“I thought you’d be at Penswell’s reception?” Byron said as he set a fresh pot of [Gnomish Sweet Bean Coffee] onto the table to the side of where Azma’s documents were arrayed.

“I was there, briefly” Azma said without looking up from the [Royal Directive] she was forging.

“Was it as big as they expected it to be?” Byron asked. “One of the new adventuring teams was in here earlier and said it was going to fill up an entire city.”

“Oh, it was far bigger than that,” Azma said. “The only reason the entire kingdom isn’t going to be a ruined wasteland is that the [Adventurers] mostly brought their own food and drink. And they’ll be leaving via teleportation rather than destroying what infrastructure remains intact after several days of drunken revelry.”

“I suppose business with be slow for a while then given that it’s a quarter of the planet away,” Byron said. “And I suppose I should leave you to your planning, no?”

Azma looked up from her forgery, placing it into the “review later” pile. Without a staff to delegate such tasks to, she’d fallen back on the old systems she’d developed to support editing her own work.

“This isn’t planning,” she said. “It’s execution.”

Byron went very still and visibly refrained from scanning the room for an impending attack.

“If I may ask a foolish question,” he said, “whose?”

Azma’s smile came as something of a surprise. It wasn’t cruel and self satisfied. It almost didn’t look like hers at all.

“Not that sort of execution,” she said. “Take a seat if you’d care to hear an explanation, I could use a sounding board.”

Byron took a half step back, Azma’s smile doing nothing whatsoever to reassure him, before letting his shoulders slump by the barest fraction of an inch and sitting down in the chair Azma directed him towards.

“I am at your disposal then,” Byron said, fully aware of the unfortunate implications of his words.

“You seem to have turned over a new leaf,” Azma said, gesturing to the waiter’s apron Byron wore.

“I had thought that too,” Byron said. “But I wonder if this isn’t my first leaf so to speak.”

“You’re not quite who you were?” Azma asked, peering at some quality that might have been hiding behind Byron’s eyes.

“That’s exactly it. I recall who I was, but I’m not sure if I’m really him any longer. I feel as though I am something new inside my skin.” Byron said, squirming as he tried to find the words to express what had to seem like the ravings of someone quite thoroughly mad.

“As do I,” Azma said. “And as we should.”

“And why is that?” Byron asked.

“Because we are no longer bound as we once were,” Azma said. “Leaving aside the Consortium’s loyalty bindings, which I am sure we both circumvented long ago, we are no longer enmeshed in the broader bindings of the Consortium. The web of politics, and power hierarchies, and artificially scarce resources. This is truly a new world, rather than merely an untapped production center or market to exploit.”

“We are creatures of our circumstances then?” Byron asked.

“All creatures are shaped by their circumstances, and shape those circumstances in turn.” Azma’s gaze wasn’t harsh, but she was still looking for something. 

Despite how historically consistent it was for people to meet unfortunate ends when they attracted Azma’s attention, especially when they had maybe, possibly, tried to kill her, Byron didn’t feel a sense of mortal peril as he sat across from her.

“I suppose my circumstances now are rather changed from what they were,” Byron said.

“And yet, that doesn’t cover the whole of the difference, does it?” Azma asked, leaning slightly in.

“It would be a relief if it did, in a sense. I don’t think I would feel I had become so much of a mystery to myself if what had changed was merely a response to wearing an apron instead of a tailored suit.”

“Tell me, is the mystery one you are running from, or will you embrace it?” Azma asked.

Byron’s gaze turned inward.

After a long, slow breath, he looked up to meet her question directly.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m here to stand still for a while. It feels like if I run from this, I’ll accomplish nothing more than stumbling into the strange depths that await me, and if I try to embrace them, they’ll vanish like shadows before a candle flame leaving me nothing more than the empty shell I probably am.”

“Curious,” Azma said, the ends of her lips concealing a smile that could have been kind or might have cut like a knife.

“That is not your experience I would imagine,” Byron said. “You had the sense to avoid being hollowed out by an all devouring nothingness.”

Azma chuckled at that.

“You know, I had planned several entertainingly dire fates for you. It seemed important that I make a rather spectacular example of you and each of your individual patsies, with a clear distinction in the gradations of how utterly unbearable each of your torments would be.”

“So simple murder was off the table then, I presume?”

“Murder is never simple,” Azma said. “Often however it is unproductive, uninspired, and unoriginal. But yours? Oh, I had many plans where your murder was the one where I at last let myself make a truly bold statement. One that even the Senior Executive Council would understand was something they needed to be truly worried about.”

“That sounds potentially counterproductive,” Byron said. “The Senior Executives don’t tend to shown much tolerance towards the things which can even theoretically threaten them. Presenting a clear and present danger would have united solidly them against you.”

“I know. I had other plans where your suffering would have been played before a more limited audience, but the moving against the Senior Council? It wasn’t a wise play but it was becoming terribly tempting.”

“Did any of those plans involve informing me of what was to come?” Byron asked.

“Oh yes. Most of them in fact. You needed to see your unmaking inexorably descending upon you. You needed to understand the agonies you were going to experience and the poetry behind each one. But then you went and out did me.” Azma shook her head, her eyes rolling skyward as though trying to peer through a thick cloud of disbelief.

“To be fair, being consumed wasn’t a torment that I inflicted on myself,” Byron said. “Not knowingly.”

“That’s the most perfect part,” Azma said. “Even across the endless barrier between worlds, your actions against me were turned back on you and you burned for them like no one else ever has. You were struck down for moving against me and I lifted not a finger to make it happen. I cannot improve on that. It’s a poem whose every syllable is exactly right.”

“So am I free of your malice then?”

“It is so tempting to deceive you and say ‘no’. So tempting to lie and tell you ‘yes’ as the first step in one of the longer and more glorious plans,” Azma said. “Or it should be.”

She breathed out a long, slow sigh, the excitement which had coiled in her like a spring unwinding into quiet serenity.

“As I said though, I am not who I was either.”

“If I may ask, why? You weren’t torn apart, or burned in nothingness. How did you wind up becoming diminished?”

“I’m not,” Azma said. “I didn’t lose who I was. I gained who I could be.”

“I’m not sure I follow that?” Byron asked.

“It was more than my circumstances who made me what I was,” Azma said. “I shaped my circumstances far more than they shaped me, but even as the master of my own destiny, I was still bound to a role, one I thought I had chosen for myself. My ambition, my cunning, my callousness? They were all weapons I’d forged and with them I intended to conquer all who stood before me. In the War of Life, I was going to be the victor.”

“And something changed that?”

“Yes. I won,” Azma said. “Victory, it turned out, was not in domination and mastery though. The War of Life can only be won by making peace. Peace is a fleeting and fragile thing of course, but it’s no less real for those traits. When the peace is broken, you simple make it anew. And make it better. Making peace isn’t an action that is achieved and then set aside, not anymore than waging war is. Each of them, war and peace, are active states, and failing in one can all too easily lead to the worst form of the other.”

“So you’ve given up on conquering the world then?”

“Oh, not at all,” Azma said. “That’s my gift to the newlywed couple.”

“You’re going to conquer the world for them? Does making peace involve playing kingmaker?”

Azma outright laughed at that.

“The very last thing in the world either of the brides would wish for is for me to seat them on a throne,” Azma said. “No, I am going to take over the world so that Penswell doesn’t have to, and so that Niminay can have a moment’s peace before any further catastrophes occur.”

“Forgive me saying this but won’t that required a tremendous amount of bloodshed?” Byron asked. 

Azma liked that his nerves had faded and he had relaxed a bit. It felt unkind to torment what might very well be a fledgling soul. Once that unkindness would have been of no consequence but she welcomed the turning of her heart which had changed her perspective on that.

“In this world, with everyone able to utilize the [Heart Fires], bloodshed holds a rather different status than in most others,” Azma said. “But, no, there will be no bloodshed in my conquest. The [Pax Deus] prevents any sort of armed conflict between nonconsenting sapients.”

“So you will conquer the world without armies?” Bryon seemed perplexed rather than incredulous, as though he was certain she could do as she said but unable to conceive of how.

“I had the largest army this world has ever seen,” Azma said. “My planning was unencumbered by concerns of the toll it would take on civilians or infrastructure. Well, partially unencumbered – I did want to claim as much of the value in the world as I could. Apart from personal greed though, my hands were untied. And yet, the [Risen Kingdoms] are not only unconquered, they are stronger by far then when I first attacked them. If I was evaluating this world for the Consortium, I would recommend interdicting all traffic to it and to the three closest systems as well. If the Consortium still existed that is.”

“You have a secret then. Some tool or strategy that will let you strike where you could not before?” Byron said.

“No. I have no unique tools, and no special resources. Those units who were loyal to me have all been freed and are busy building new lives for themselves here. I have no one and nothing to work with.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Grenslaw said, nodding at the seat to Azma’s right.

A warm, if tentative smile, broke out across Azma’s face as she replied with an agreeing nod.

“You have our support,” Ryschild said, sitting to Azma’s left.

“Till our dying breaths,” they both said in unison.

“That was impeccable timing,” Byron said. “Had you planned it?”

“We didn’t need to,” Grenslaw said.

“It comes naturally,” Ryschild said.

“Still impressive,” Byron said. “But it wouldn’t seem that three of you would be enough where your armies have already failed and peace is mandated.”

Azma glanced back and forth between Grenslaw and Ryschild, something like disbelief fading from her eyes.

“Oh, we will be far more than enough,” Azma said. “Our armies did not fail, you see. They achieved every goal I set before them. It was through their struggles and sacrifice that this world was remade, and this world offers what I have longed for from the deepest, truest reaches of my soul.”

“And that would be?”

“A challenge.”

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