Routine is the plague of emperors.
I sat upon my throne, a jagged slab carved from black meteoric stone. A mountain of bureaucratic reports awaited my gaze. I stared at them with lethal boredom.
Dozens of holographic panels floated around me. Every single one bore Veronica's strict seal. Numbers. Statistics. Exhaustive calculations regarding gold extraction rates. Logistical schematics detailing the conversion of planetary hospitals into power reactors.
*If I read one more line regarding the armaments budget, I will annihilate this entire planet just to get some peace.*
I raised a single finger. I crushed the holograms with a lazy flick. They shattered like burnt glass, dissolving into the freezing air of the throne room.
I stood. The Imperial cloak spilled down my back, a living shadow swallowing the ambient light. The silence infecting the palace felt heavy. Suffocating. Nauseating.
I decided to conduct an unannounced inspection of my wives' quarters. I needed a reminder. A reason why I kept these lunatics alive. I needed to see chaos.
I headed for the western sector first. Roxy's domain.
I did not wait for the guards to pull the heavy double doors. I didn't need to. The reinforced steel had been violently ripped from its hinges. The slabs were wedged deep into the opposite marble wall like a knife buried in butter.
I stepped inside.
The pristine aristocratic marble Veronica had installed just last week was entirely pulverized. The gold-threaded silk carpets lay shredded into pathetic ribbons.
Roxy had transformed the sprawling royal suite into a filthy, hollowed-out fighting pit. Craters and shattered boulders littered the floor.
She stood in the center. Drenched in sweat. Panting like a rabid beast.
She launched herself into the air, driving a brutal punch into a colossal dummy forged from scrapped Planet Orion gunships. The sickening crunch of her bare knuckles colliding with dense aviation metal shattered the air.
She froze the second she sensed my presence. She spun around. Her crimson eyes flared with a feral, almost childlike excitement—a look completely at odds with her bloodthirsty nature.
"Bout time you showed up!" she yelled.
She sprinted toward me. Her heavy, thundering footsteps shook the floorboards. Behind her, the massive metal dummy crumpled into a flattened heap like a crushed tin can.
She stopped right in front of me. She grinned, radiating pure, arrogant confidence, and planted both hands on her hips. A thin streak of blood painted a scratch on her cheek. Her knuckles were entirely skinned raw.
"Look at that!" She pointed a bloodied finger at the smoldering wreckage. "Just broke my own record! Smashed fifty military-grade hull plates back-to-back without using a single drop of Axiom. Just raw muscle and grit. You catch that last hook?"
I stared at her in absolute silence. She waited for my validation with the burning eagerness of a fresh recruit standing before her supreme commander. The glaring contradiction between her terrifying brutality and her desperate need for my attention was... amusing.
I slowly raised my hand. She didn't flinch. I pressed my thumb against her cheek, wiping away the mixture of blood and dirt smeared across her skin.
"Your stance was flawed on the final strike," I delivered the critique with a dead, emotionless tone. "Your elbow dropped by two inches. If that scrap had been a live target with any kinetic recoil, it would have severed your arm at the shoulder before you could even retract your fist."
Her confident grin vanished. A fierce blush crept up her neck from my touch. She instantly snarled, baring her teeth to mask the overwhelming embarrassment.
"I was taking it easy! It's just a pile of stupid junk anyway!" she barked, violently throwing a punch at the empty air. "Next time I ain't holding back! I'll shatter a hundred plates with my damn eyes closed!"
"Do not collapse the load-bearing walls."
I turned my back to her. I walked away, leaving her to punch the flattened metal in a fit of absurd, childish rage. I could hear her actively adjusting the angle of her elbow, exactly as I commanded.
I navigated the sprawling corridors toward the eastern wing. Layla's territory.
I crossed the threshold. A crushing wave of heavy, suffocating air immediately hit my lungs. It carried the exquisitely fragrant—and intensely lethal—scent of boiling tea.
A creeping purple fog saturated the room. The toxic mist slowly dissolved the wooden frames of the paintings hanging along the walls.
Layla sat upon a black velvet sofa with flawless, terrifying elegance. She wore a pristine gown woven by the finest tailors on Planet Orion. She elegantly tilted a kettle, pouring a boiling, violent purple liquid into an engraved ceramic teacup.
She stirred the concoction with a solid silver spoon. The metal bubbled and gradually melted, dissolving into liquid silver droplets the moment it touched the brew.
"My Lord..." she murmured. Her voice dripped with aristocratic honey.
She raised her elegant gaze to meet mine. She offered the warm, tender smile of a devoted wife. A smile laced with absolute malice.
"I took the liberty of brewing your favorite tea. I can only imagine how terribly Veronica's reports must fray your nerves."
I took the seat directly across from her. I reached out and grasped the ceramic teacup. The porcelain physically rattled from the violent chemical reaction of the poison inside.
I took a long sip. A single drop of this brew could liquefy a mammoth's internal organs in three seconds flat.
*My Axiom of Submission rejects death. Any chemical or biological agent attempting to assault my physical form is instantly subjugated and dismantled before it can even breach a single cell.*
I swallowed the burning sludge. I calmly placed the teacup back onto the glass table. The surface beneath the cup immediately hissed and began to corrode.
"There is an overly pronounced bitterness to the aftertaste," I delivered the verdict with chilling indifference. I locked onto her wide, expectant eyes. "Did you substitute the sugar with astral cyanide again, Layla?"
Layla puffed her cheeks in sudden, childish frustration. Her mask of terrifying elegance slipped entirely. She slammed her delicate fist against the velvet armrest.
"You are utterly impossible!" she complained, crossing her slender arms over her chest. "I balanced the sulfuric acid with the black arachnid extract to absolute perfection! I exponentially magnified the toxicity to breach the heaviest armory plating! How is your throat not a puddle? Why hasn't your stomach detonated? It is infuriatingly disappointing!"
"Refine your chemistry. Perhaps by the next century, you might actually force me to cough."
I stood up to leave. She sat there, biting her lower lip in genuine, bitter frustration.
As I turned my back, she aggressively dumped the rest of the poisoned kettle into a rare decorative plant resting in the corner. The flora instantly withered. It collapsed into black ash and completely dissolved into the air in a fraction of a second.
I left her toxic suite behind. I headed for Camille.
Stepping into Camille's domain felt like plunging into a hallucinatory fever dream. The Gallery of White Shrouds bled directly from her consciousness into physical reality.
Gravity vanished entirely in some corners. In others, it doubled, crushing down with invisible weight. Colors swam through the air like solid smoke.
Camille sprinted toward me barefoot. She wore a loose white gown. Strange, luminescent pigments and streaks of dried blood stained her hands and face.
"My beloved Lord! Look what I created for you tonight!"
She dragged me by the hand toward the center of the hall. She presented a massive, surreal mural. It literally pulsated.
Living tissue, polished white bone, and glowing flower petals fused together. The gruesome materials formed my face. They perfectly captured my features at the exact moment I raised my hand to unleash the Axiom of Submission upon billions of Planet Orion's citizens.
"It captures your absolute majesty," Camille whispered.
Her voice sounded distant. Her eyes turned dreamy as she tenderly stroked the horrifying sculpture.
"Blended with the screams of the Orions. Woven with their shattered souls. Are tragedies not infinitely more beautiful when framed in gold and blood?"
She waited for my verdict. She stared with the burning obsession of an unhinged artist desperate for The Emperor's validation.
I analyzed the artistic nightmare resting in her hands. The composition was flawless. Sickening. Genuinely impressive.
"The lower jawline requires more severity. More cruelty," I stated with absolute seriousness, pointing toward the bottom-left corner. "Still... utilizing real vocal cords to render the shading around the eyes was a brilliant touch. It adds authentic depth."
Camille gasped in pure euphoria. She laughed—a high, delicate sound—and spun in circles like a schoolgirl winning a prize. She snatched up her gruesome tools. She immediately dove back into modifying the flesh canvas with redoubled mania, completely detaching from reality.
I left her to her madness and ascended to the upper floor. Celine's wing.
Here, the atmosphere shifted completely. The suite was dead silent. Warm as a womb.
The scent of damp soil, morning dew, and blooming wildflowers flooded the space, a direct byproduct of her Resonance. The aura of absolute peace radiating through the room was violently powerful. It could force the galaxy's most hardened butchers to their knees, weeping in pure remorse.
I stepped inside. My gaze swept over the colossal royal bed, draped in pristine white silk. Empty.
I checked the glass-paneled balcony. Empty.
I tilted my head back, scanning the vaulted ceiling.
Celine was trapped in a deep, profound slumber. She lay curled in a fetal position, resting in physically impossible equilibrium atop the massive crystal chandelier suspended from the ceiling.
How did she ascend there in her sleep? Why didn't she plummet to shatter her bones on the marble floor below? Nobody knew. Her absolute harmony with the environment forced physical impossibilities into natural laws.
I exhaled slowly. I walked over and positioned myself directly beneath the chandelier.
I extended a single hand upward.
Axiom of Submission.
I effortlessly overwrote the localized laws of gravity strictly around her physical form. She began to descend. She floated downward through the air, slow and weightless as a cloud.
She drifted directly into my arms. She weighed practically nothing. Her eyes remained shut. She simply nuzzled her face deeper against my armored chest, her breathing perfectly steady.
I carried her to the bed. I laid her gently against the plush cotton pillows and pulled the heavy silk sheets up over her shoulders.
I turned to leave. I was ready to conclude this absurd inspection.
Then, I felt a faint tug. Her delicate fingers tightly gripped the edge of my Imperial cloak—fabric woven from pure, crystallized Aether.
"Five more minutes... don't annihilate the planet just yet... I'm exhausted..." she mumbled in her sleep. Her grip tightened on the dark fabric.
I attempted to gently pull the cloak free. She whimpered softly, her brows furrowing in sleepy agitation.
I froze for a fraction of a second. I stared down at her in absolute silence.
If the high generals of Planet Orion or The Xyroth witnessed me in this state, they would instantly self-terminate from the sheer psychological shock. The Emperor. The man who incinerated entire galaxies. Currently immobilized by a sleeping girl incapable of snapping a dead twig.
I did not utter a single word. I simply dragged my index finger through the air.
Axiom of Boundary.
I cleanly severed the fabric of the Imperial cloak—a material immune to orbital bombardments. I detached the strip clutched in her hand with absolute silence. I left the scrap with her so she could sleep undisturbed, then turned and walked away.
I almost reached the exit. Then, my eyes caught a sudden, erratic movement in the darkest corner of the suite.
Nixia.
The glowing green feline. The Primordial Entity. The sole survivor of The Forgotten Race.
She was not sleeping. She displayed zero traits of a spoiled, domestic pet. She stood completely rigid, her claws gouged deep into the solid stone floor.
Her eyes burned with a terrifying, cosmic glare. It was the violent radiation of pure Anomaly—an energy built to explicitly shatter the laws of the universe.
She stared straight through the colossal glass windows. She glared into the abyssal void of deep space. Her gaze locked onto the farthest reaches of the Andromeda galaxy.
She growled.
It was not a feline hiss. It was a low, subsonic vibration. It carried an eldritch weight that actually disrupted my physical equilibrium for a fraction of a second. It echoed inside my skull like a tectonic fracture. A direct warning of apocalyptic destruction.
*She senses them.*
All traces of boredom and relaxation instantly evaporated from my face. Absolute, unadulterated arrogance replaced it. My lips parted into a cold, dark, wildly savage grin.
The true, terrifying smile of The Emperor.
The vanguard of The Xyroth finally approached our cosmic borders. The ancient jailers had arrived to reclaim their monster.
This pathetic era of peace was about to end. The comfortable, nauseating calm would die. It was finally time to slaughter The Xyroth.