System Supervillain, Book 11 Epilogue

Epilogue – Elsewhere

(Imperial Palace, Gel-Nala)

Agzis, former High Priestess of the Kez Sisterhood, laughed. For twenty-five cycles, she had been under the thumb of that beastly Emperor. Forced to attend his needs, share his bed, bear his spawn. Her, and the rest of her sisters.

Throhi, Ancient Ones curse his name, and all his blood, had come to the Temple of the Old Gods on Gel-Neth, sister planet of Gel-Nala, and one of the Empire’s oldest colonies. There, the Sisterhood had maintained the beliefs in the Old Gods that had been passed down from the days before their species ever made it to space. They were once respected members of the Empire, a warrior priesthood devoted to maintaining the ideals that had made the Gel-Nak great. More importantly, they were a place where any Gel-Nak female could go, and serve with honor, without the sometimes restrictive nature of the Empire dictating their choices.

But times had changed, and belief had waned. And Throhi, the new Emperor, had wanted something to make him stand out from those who had come before. His eyes turned on the Sisterhood, and he attacked with the full force of a legion. And then he claimed all the surviving Sisters as his breeders, intending to get as many heirs as possible for the throne.

However, the Sisterhood did not forget, and they did not forgive. They did not have the power to change their fate while the Emperor lived, but that did not mean they accepted things. No, they waited, like the patient Rethik serpent, until they had a chance to break free, and claim their vengeance.

And that time was now. The Emperor had gone to Thraxl, to oversee the invasion there. And, to the surprise of all in the Empire, he had been slain, apparently by some being from these ‘humans’ that had the cheek to call himself a Rhuk!

She did not care if the man knew just what he was claiming to be. All she cared about was that the Emperor was dead. And, with his death, and the chaos it caused, the Sisterhood could finally strike, and have its revenge.

“M-mother, why?”

The dying whelp looked up at her, shock and betrayal in their face, as the blood flowed from their wounds. Unable to even offer the slightest resistance, thanks to the paralyzing poison that had been added to their evening meal. Her own son, eldest of the three she’d been forced to give that damnable Emperor. She had pretended to care for the boy for so long, just for this moment.

She looked down at the whelp with cold hate in her eyes. “Because Throhi is dead. And now, the entire bloodline will die with him. He already killed off his brothers and sisters, and their children, so that there could be no others with a blood claim to the throne. Now, we will finish the job, so that this Empire may fall, and the Gel-Nak can return to the old ways, before the Empire! Now, be a good hatchling and DIE!”

Her blade slit the whelp’s throat. And then she went to her second child, the only daughter. And then to her youngest son. Each tried to plead with her, but she was not their mother, and they were not her children. They were His children, and so they had to die.

When it was done, she changed into the robes of the Sisterhood. In the courtyard of the Imperial palace, all thirty of her surviving sisters were there, waiting, along with a shuttle that would take them to the ship. Twenty-five cycles of planning, just for this moment. The smuggling ship hidden in one of the craters of Thal-Gel, Gel-Nala’s moon, would see them away from this wretched world, and to safety. The Emperor might be dead, but the Empire was still far from defeated. And any would-be Emperor would see punishing the Kez Sisterhood for their actions against the Royal Bloodline as a major stepping stone to the throne.

So, they would hide. They did not have the power to withstand the entire Empire. However, without any royal heirs, and no convenient target to give one claimant or another legitimacy, the Empire would devolve into infighting. Perhaps even civil war. And, perhaps, the ‘Rhuk of Earth’ would come, and shatter what remained.

As the shuttle lifted off, she considered that. The message that had come through on the courier ship was… pointed. This Iceblade was trying to cause chaos in the Empire. The reason was obvious, of course. Enough chaos would cause any response to the Empire’s defeat on Earth to be delayed for cycles. Perhaps tens of cycles. Enough time for Earth to prepare, or perhaps to strike back.

The Leaders would not surrender their power willingly. They never did. The Workers and Slaves might rebel, and they might even succeed, in places, but the Leaders would extract every last drop of blood they could in their quest to stay in power. And there were enemies from outside the Empire, who would love to strike at wounded prey. But without the Emperor to unify them, the might of the Imperial Navy and Army would be squandered, unable to mount an effective defense.

No, the Empire was dead already. Even if the body did not yet comprehend it, the Empire was beyond the point of saving, at least in its current form. But, assuming that the Gel-Nak as a species were not wiped out, then the Sisterhood could try and unite those that remained in the aftermath, and restore them.

For the deepest secret of the Kez Sisterhood, which not even the Emperor had known, since he had never asked, was that, in the hidden refuge on the moon, where their ship was waiting, they had the original genetic code of the Gel-nak species, before it was ‘ordered’, and the Castes forced upon them. They had preserved the knowledge, so that, one day, when the Empire fell, they could restore the species to what they once were. But, in order to implement such a change, on a species-wide scale, they either needed more power than they could currently bring together, or they would have to find a System Administrator, and bend them to their cause.

They just had to find one, first.