God of Trash

It didn’t take long for the Empress’s ship to close the distance, no matter how far away it looked when Rhys first spotted it. He had enough time to absorb the blood out of his clothes—it was trash, now that it was outside his body, so fair game for absorption—but that was about it. The black ship approached the stadium, looming overhead.

He’d seen large mage ships. Huge ones, even. But this one dwarfed all of them. It moved toward the stadium with a ponderous inevitability, so large that several stadiums could fit within it. He realized, as it loomed, that the ship had once been white; bits of white still showed, under the black. It was scorched, scorched from the heat of battle and the furious weight of the ship’s own preponderous weaponry. Scars marred its hull and gaped its sails, but it floated on anyways, displaying those wounds as the proud marks of a battle well fought.

It bore no carving at its front. Instead, a lone figure stood at the very tip of its bow, dressed in pristine white as a contrast to her ravaged ship. Long black hair flowed in the wind, and a small white beret with a small gold badge perched atop her head in lieu of a crown. A sword glittered at her hip, bright as a star plucked from the heavens, its scabbard black as night. Without anyone telling him, without needing to be told, Rhys looked at her and knew: this was the Empress. This was the woman who would conquer the world.

Men and women in crisp white uniforms lined up along the rails. They manned the guns and stood in lines across the deck of the ship. Perfect, not a single hair or crease out of place. With a shock, Rhys realized that every single one of them, male and female alike, had the same bone-white hair, like Laurent’s; the men’s hair all cropped short, the women’s hair tied back into a strict bun; and he was sure, were he to loose those buns, that their hair would all reach the exact same length.

These weren’t humans. They were soldiers, molded to the Empress’ will, made in the same mold and copy-pasted to her desires. Their future, their past, their hopes and dreams, their skills and tier, they were all according to the Empress’ will, all for the Empire, all for the Empress’ mad dream. Objects. Items.

Replaceable.

Despite himself, Rhys felt a pang in his heart for Laurent, that he believed in this Empire earnestly, even with this empty future ahead of him. Laurent was a human being. He had hopes and dreams. He could even foolishly fall in love. These people, these objects, they no longer had any of that. Rhys didn’t know why, he didn’t know how, but looking at them, at their empty eyes and blank faces, he knew: all that had been stolen from them, and replaced with the Empress and the Empress alone. Her dreams were their dreams. Her will was their will. She was the heart, and they were but the limbs.

It was efficient. Deadly so. But tragic, so, so tragic, to see so many people, so many human beings, reduced to nothing but toy soldiers for a conqueress to wield on the field of battle.

Once more, Rhys’s heart hardened. He stared down the soldiers, saddened to see them, yet determined to oppose them. He would fight to the last to ensure the Empress never took this land, his land, to ensure she could never do this to his friends, to Bast, to Ev, hell, even to Mouse, Sable, Tarais, Anabel and—and Laurent, even if Laurent was dedicated to the cause and blind to the future that awaited him. If trashing himself meant he had a chance to stop the Empress, he would.

But as the ship lowered, and the Empress grew closer, he knew: that was nothing but a mad dream. Emanations rippled out from her body like waves on the ocean. Her aura was the most powerful aura he’d ever sensed, even including when he’d been taken in before the Sword Saint and the other leaders of the region. He could do nothing against the Empress. Hell, he wasn’t sure anyone in this region could do anything against the Empress. The Empress was absolute. She was untouchable, unassailable—