Path of the Berserker

As the images spawned within Lunalah’s mind’s eye, her hand moved as if by itself, transcribing the runic symbols onto parchment with swift and hurried brush strokes. The Voice sang to her now more than spoke.

Instructing her.

Guiding her.

A cosmic melody of want and desire. A cacophony of tribulation and destruction promised.

This world would end.

All would end.

But not before her vengeance.

Not before the Iron Bull tasted humiliation and defeat by her hand.

Princess…

He would grovel before her.

Beg her for forgiveness.

For her love.

Princess Lunalah?

Once she surpassed him, once she had the power to crush him as easily as a mortal—

“Princess!”

Her mind paused, vexed at the intrusion—a mortal voice and one she did not heed without disdain.

“What is it?” Lunalah said curtly, her vision returning to the mortal world. “You disturb my meditation.”

She was within her semi-reconstructed throne room, an amphitheater the size of an arena. She had dictated the specifications precisely; matching inch for inch the temple that dwelled within the Inner World of her mind’s eye.

Behind her, her new throne was under construction, a towering edifice of jade and gold. Before it lay an altar that she was now seated at. A table made of ivory and red bloodstone. Lunalah glanced over her shoulder to see the High Magistrate, Yi Xhi Yen, kowtowing before her.

“What is it, High Magistrate?”

“The next assembly has arrived for trial, princess,” she said, a tremble in her voice. “Are you prepared to hear them?”

“How many?”

“Fifty-two, your majesty.”

A paltry number, but it would do for now.

Lunalah looked down at the altar and the scattered parchments strewn across its deep red surface. The symbols she had inscribed upon them seemed alien to her, as if she were seeing them for the first time. And perhaps she was—with her mortal eyes at least. It was a triangle, inverted and in the center was a runic symbol from some ancient language she did not know, yet somehow she understood its meaning…sacrifice.

“Gather them and give them each one of these,” Lunalah said, pointing to the parchments.

Yi Xhi Yen studied one of them curiously. “Your majesty?”

“It is a new royal seal,” Lunalah said. “One I have developed for our state.”

The High Magistrate studied it some more. “A new state?”

“We are without a planet, are we not? What then shall we be defined by? The empire has rejected us, abandoned us in favor of some native upstart. Thus, I must give my people a new identity. A new symbol to define them. This symbol shall be known as the Eye of Lunalah.”

“I see.”

“High Magistrate, I wish you to prepare a new edict for me to pass into law. All citizens shall be required to wear this symbol of loyalty to me, their ruler and goddess.”

“Goddess…?” Yi Xhi Yen raised a brow, but quickly bowed her head in obedience. “It shall be done your majesty.”

“Good, now bring in the accused.”

As Yi Xhi Yen departed, Lunalah cycled her Qi. It was far more potent now. Thicker. Rich with life essence and energy beyond her own. As she channeled her meridians, her form changed and the room shrank around her. Her body grew into its true form, her robes transforming into celestial silk and the six blood red crystals emerging behind her in a flash of light.

Lunalah sat upon her unfinished throne, just a stool to her now, yet still it was enough to convey power and authority over mortals. As Yi Xhi Yen returned, several Imperial Guards and Enforcers joined her. Pressed in between them were the accused.

There were men a women both, of all ages, but again nothing notable about them.

A blessing and curse, she thought.

A blessing because they were insignificant and expendable, but their value was low.

Still a soul was a soul, no matter how unrefined and poor.

As the Enforcers lined the people up, the High Magistrate pressed the parchments into their hands. They looked at them oddly with mixtures of confusion and fear upon their faces. Some reacted with something more. Abject terror, as if they could understand the symbol as well as she could, even without knowing.

“I now call this trial to order,” the High Magistrate said. “You each stand accused of delinquency in paying your debt to the throne. Under the new edict, this is now a capital offense punishable by death.”

A disconcerting collection of gasps and shouts arose.

“Order!” Yi Xhi Yen shouted. “The courts have appointed a barrister in your general defense. Master Qin Lo, you may proceed.”

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A young man approached the throne, a thick bead of sweat on his brow. “T-thank you, Madam High Magistrate. I, begin my defense with…ah.” He fumbled with some papers. “The present law for delinquency is of ah…n-notable—”

“What foolishness is this?” someone shouted from the crowd. “I know this boy. He is but a junior barrister! We need our own representation! Individually!”

“Silence,” Yi Xhi Yen shouted. “If you had money to hire your own barristers, you would likely not be in this situation in the first place. Junior Barrister Qin Lo is more than equipped to handle your defense. Hurry up with it, Qin Lo! How do your clients plead?”

“Um…they plead guilty your honor, but beg for the mercy of her majesty.”

The same man from before began shouting again. “You stupid dope! Tell her why! Tell her what we told you!”

Qin Lo looked down at his papers again, shuffling through them hurriedly.

Lunalah smirked, slightly amused by the chaos and uncertainty riling up the accused. She still didn’t understand why such things were still necessary. They were no longer a part of the Empire. It was her will which ruled these people now. The High Magistrate had insisted a trial was necessary, but her patience with such trivialities was starting to wear thin.

“Your honor, the accused are all merchants and vendors from the excursion industry. Since leaving Terra they have not had a means of livelihood for close to a year. They are destitute and are in need of aid, not punishment. We seek the court’s mercy and that of the Princess.”

Yi Xhi Yen nodded. “A sound argument, Qin Lo. The court will accept the plea as the evidence of unpaid debt is a matter of public record. However, I also accept the appeal for mercy and the grounds upon which they are launched.” The High Magistrate then turned about to look up at Lunalah. “Princess Luna—”

“Goddess,” Lunalah corrected. “I shall be referred to my proper title of Goddess while in this form.”

“Ah, yes… Goddess Lunalah,” Yi Xi Yen said slowly. “The accused have accepted their guilt but plead for mercy. Under the circumstances I would find it just to allow a stay of sentencing until we at least find a new purchase for them to reestablish their trade.”

Lunalah squinted. “What did you say?”

Yi Xi Yen swallowed visibly. “I am merely stating a precept of law, your majesty. The accused have begged for mercy, which I have upheld as a lawful act. It is still up to your majesty to either grant or not grant such grace.”

“Oh,” Lunalah said with a short laugh. “I had feared I would need to find myself a new High Magistrate. Very well then. I hear their plea and reject it. They shall be executed in accordance with the law.”

Someone cried out with a wail.

Another tried to run but was battered across the head by one of the Enforcers.

“Please, have mercy!” a woman cried out, falling to her knees. “We have done no wrong. Princess, you were stripped of your world and so were we. We wish to serve but have nothing now. We are victims the same as you, dear Princess. Please!”

A sudden tension gripped Lunalah’s chest, tightening like a vice.

The woman’s words rang true.

She was indeed a victim.

But how dare this woman equate herself to her!

Lunalah stood abruptly from her throne, shaking the amphitheater with the power of her voice. “You think yourself equal to a god? You grovel as the worm you are, mortal! But I have arisen above my fate. I grovel before no one!!” She raised her hand, summoning her Qi. “[Heaven’s Divine Judgement]!”

“No Princess, ple—!”

The woman’s words were cut short as a massive celestial hammer fell from the air, crushing her and the other mortals around her. The wet sound of snapping bone drowned out their screams of terror, causing a rush of Qi that filled her Dantian.

It streamed from somewhere else.

Somewhere from beyond the stars.

From the Voice.

It had accepted her sacrifice, rewarding her with new power of her own.

She reveled in it, cultivating the new strength and sensed the pull of the moon grow stronger. “So be my destiny fulfilled.”

Lunalah barely noticed the deathly quiet that filled the space as she retook her seat. The slack-jawed masks of horror that everyone wore as they looked to one another in shock. She could see the fear she caused in each of them, from the Enforcers to the High Magistrate herself and reveled in it.

Her power was growing stronger—this new form of cultivation proving a wonderful success. Branding them with the Eye of Lunalah had made her cultivation of the Cosmic Qi assured. And now all she needed were more delinquent subjects to stand trial for their sins against her.

“High Magistrate I shall look forward to the next set of trials.” Lunalah closed her eyes and prepared to meditate. To commune with the Voice and learn new Insights. “Ensure my new edict is passed swiftly. All must bear the Eye of Lunalah, else be branded a traitor to my throne.”

* * *

Divine Emperor Yin Yee studied the images through the distortion of time.

He watched the fall of the realm come again and again.

Quicker now.

Almost as if accelerating by some means.

“Emperor, leave it alone.”

“Yes, come join us now.”

The honeyed words came from the two blue-skinned nymphs that lay naked in his bed. He’d already pleasured them thrice now, and after that they had grown bored and pleasured each other. But their distraction was wearing thin on him. He had summoned the spirits from the lower heavens for just that purpose—a distraction—expending a small measure of his immense celestial Qi to breach the barriers between realms.

He almost regretted it now, for as pleasant a distraction as they had been, their insatiableness was an irritation now. He should have perhaps sought a different means of distraction, like being reborn within one of the countless Inner Worlds hung from the boughs of the great Spirit Tree. Once he had done so purposefully without memories, living a peaceful and mundane life as a mortal fisherman in a realm bound by countless oceans. It was a refreshing way to spend a few decades—even his sudden death from drowning, an invigorating way to reawake within the celestial realm. He still mused at how relieved he had been to find he was still Yin Yee and not some nameless mortal in an insignificant world.

But a good distraction it had been.

Simply sitting here was less so.

The sacred gardens of the celestial palace sprawled all around him, his bed chamber tucked nearly within a giant rose which bloomed at its center. He could spend eons here in its tranquility, and had, in better times. Or like in earlier years, venture himself to the lower heavens where he would frolic with the common immortals and low born celestial natives alike, spending decades with hundreds of celestial beauties like the two now in his bed.

But now his thoughts were all but consumed by this vision.

This collapse of the great mechanism he had put in place.

How?

After so many eons of carefully balancing the scales of both fate and time, something else was now taking place.

Something new.

The cataclysm was advancing. Coming quicker with each casting of the vision.

What once took centuries was now occurring in mere decades and soon just years.

“Emperor, come lay with—”

“[Silence]!” he shouted.

At the command, the shrieking death cries of the two nymphs sounded behind him. He didn’t even look back at them. He didn’t need to. As native celestial spirits, their slender bodies quickly evaporated into divine essence, dissipating into the realm itself, but not before he cultivated of it, reabsorbing some of the Celestial Qi he had expended to summon them.

It was just as well that they should pay some toll for the privilege of visiting the higher heavens to service him. Especially as they had failed in their duty to distract him for very long. The visions of the future were like an unending dream. A foretold nightmare to come.

And now getting worse.

Within his celestial mind’s eye he could see the entire mortal realm, in but glimpses from this distance. He would need to traverse there himself to see what truly lay at hand. But the coffers of his soul were still not yet full enough to make the journey.

As he looked within his Dantian and the energies that filled it, he waited for the trickle of souls that spilled from the mortal realm and into his own. He viewed it in the form of a broken hourglass, set above a pair of scales.

The souls fell as grains of sand, splitting in midair between the two scales in perfect balance. But even now he could see them shifting.

More falling to one side than the other.

One grain at a time.

And then he sensed it.

The slight tug as yet another grain fell into the void of the accursed Outer Gods rather than within his own soul. Ever so slightly, nigh imperceptibly, the scale moved. Bit by bit. Grain by grain. And then…when finally it had tipped enough, he knew the inevitable would take place.

And the horrid vision of destruction he had seen for the realm, would finally come true.