Chapter 134: The Empress’s Hypocrisy
Unfortunately for Freya, the disgust came back almost at once. She hadn’t even had time to savor BunnyGirl’s little trick before it was rising again, heavier than before. So rather than risk breaking down in front of everyone, she simply vanished from their sight and went to sit at a spot on her platform where those below could no longer see her, while they talked among themselves.
Below, the discussions therefore started up again with renewed vigor, and no one looked up toward the top of the hall anymore.
Up above, sheltered by the fog, the black silhouette drew its knees in and wrapped its arms around itself, tighter and tighter, as if to hold back something that threatened to spill over.
Then, little by little, she began to scratch.
First her forearms, with the tips of her nails, slowly, almost absently. Yet her fingers met nothing. There was no skin under her nails, no flesh, only shadow that closed right back behind them, smooth and whole, without keeping the slightest trace of their passage.
And despite it all, the itch was there.
She could feel it moving. Something was squirming where her skin should have been, sliding where her veins should have been, slowly crawling up to her shoulders and then back down to her fingertips. It was the disgust, and it was devouring her from the inside, mouthful by mouthful, in a body that didn’t even exist. She had already felt it at the Dungeon Overlords’ Summit, but never like this.
So she scratched harder, then faster. Her nails passed through the shadow of her arms, her neck and her sides, again and again, without ever finding anything to tear away. Each time, the silhouette closed behind them as if nothing had happened, and each time, the itch came back stronger and deeper, always out of reach.
Nothing. There’s nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing...
Her fingers eventually clenched and plunged into her own chest up to the knuckles. She dug through the shadow in search of whatever was squirming underneath, for a long time, relentlessly, but her hands came out empty. Curled up in the dark, the silhouette rocked gently back and forth, and only its two yellow eyes stayed wide open, unmoving, fixed on nothing.
Because all this time, the voices had never gone quiet.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
They all spoke at once, overlapping and answering each other, so much so that Freya could feel herself giving in a little more with every second, to the sensation and to the voices alike.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.
Then, in the midst of that din, she heard that the discussions and murmurs below had died down. They were waiting for her.
So she exhaled.
Kill. Kill, kill, kill.
She exhaled again, and again, until her hands finally stopped digging through the shadow of her arms. Only then did she rise, in full view of everyone.
All this time, she had also been thinking about what to say to save face, and above all about why the assembly had been postponed. She couldn’t justify it for fear that it would leak, so she hadn’t found a way out.
Yet now that she stood before them once more, all of that seemed ridiculous to her.
After all, these lesser beings were driven by nothing but avarice, and beings like that were easily manipulated. All the more so since, at this very moment, she happened to have the perfect skill for it.
So she spoke again.
"Like me, they will have responsibilities, and later on they will be the most influential among us, after me."
She drew a breath, for her whole body was shuddering with pain.
"But most importantly, each of them will receive 0.2% of the faction’s mana every day. There are three hundred and fifty-eight of us. I’ll let you do the math."
Kill.
The hall erupted at once. Exclamations burst from every tier, everyone stunned by the size of the advantage, but she raised her hand to continue before they could get carried away.
KILL!
"Just know that there will be a fifth general."
She had discovered it while checking the menu: the limit wasn’t four generals, but five. That was surely what explained the 0.2%, since it made a neat one percent once multiplied by five.
And this time, the hall didn’t just erupt. It changed.
Freya watched it happen from above, little by little. Gazes hardened, hands tightened on the railings. People turned toward the four generals, then toward their neighbors, then back toward the top of the hall, and in every pair of eyes the same gleam lit up. The murmurs were no longer really murmurs, but calculations, figures and whispered names. Because already, they were weighing who could become the fifth, and who would have to be pushed aside to get there.
Word of Greed was doing its work, and it amplified everything.
And so, seeing it, something inside Freya gave way all at once.
She watched them, and she couldn’t stop watching them. Tossing them a single crumb had been enough to set them fighting over it already. Her eyes went from their hands to their rings, then from their rings to their hungry gazes, and the more she saw them drool, the more the disgust rose in her, again and again, without ever stopping.
KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL.
The itching then reached its peak. It no longer itched; it burned. She could feel the things beneath the shadow of her body biting, tearing and burrowing, and she felt that if she looked down, she would see them rippling beneath the shadow of her arms, where there was nothing at all.
And yet she smiled.
She smiled broadly, warmly, and when she spoke again her voice had never been so gentle, so composed, so polite.
"I’m counting on all of you. Truly."
Liar.
"Every one of you has a chance."
Liar. Liar. You want to kill them. You want to kill them all.
"I am proud of this faction."
The words flowed from her without a single hitch, perfectly measured, while inside everything screamed, writhed and laughed all at once. Because she was laughing, in fact. Somewhere deep inside her, something was laughing softly.
Then, all at once, the itch changed.
It didn’t disappear, but it turned warm. A slow, sweet warmth rose from where the things squirmed beneath her shadow and spread through her chest, her arms, all the way to her fingertips, and her smile widened even further, on its own, without her deciding it. The disgust was still there, whole, and yet it was now blending with something else, soft and intoxicating, something that felt like pleasure.
She liked watching them size each other up, count and silently hate one another. She liked the disgust they stirred in her, and she liked even more what she was doing to them.
Little by little, her thoughts began to slip, coming loose from one another and scattering in every direction, until she could no longer hold on to a single one. She wanted to kill them and to keep them, she hated them and craved them, and both at once seemed perfectly logical. Something was wrong. She didn’t understand what, but some part of her, somewhere beneath the ecstasy, felt it clearly enough to refuse to stay a second longer.
So she straightened, and her voice fell over the hall, sharp and cold, cutting off every murmur.
"I am ending this assembly."
Below, every head snapped up at once, startled, but she didn’t give them time to react.
"Cancel the subspace."
[ ASSEMBLY TERMINATED BY THE FACTION LEADER. ]
[ CLOSING SUBSPACE. RETURNING PARTICIPANTS. ]
~~
When she returned to her body, the disgust was still there, lurking somewhere deep inside her. Yet this time something else came with it, a soft, enveloping warmth she had almost forgotten.
She slowly opened her eyes and found her body lying in the grass, held in the arms of her two servants. La?a and Na?a were clutching her with all their strength, and both of them were sobbing, their faces buried against her shoulders, so much so that she could feel their tears soaking through the fabric of her clothes.
They held her so tightly that she could no longer see their hands, nor anything else that, only moments earlier, would have made her shudder. And her mind, the very mind that had forced itself to face the vivid, violent disgust her own faction stirred in her, for the sake of her design, let itself be partly swept up in this moment, to the point of hardly thinking of anything else.
Because after all the suffering of the subspace, being here, in this place and at this exact moment, felt like a deliverance, for her body as much as for her mind.
So even though half her thoughts were already turning to what came next, to everything she still had to do and improve, the other half allowed itself a short break. She raised her arms, perhaps out of habit, perhaps simply because she wanted to, and drew the two girls against her.
They both started at the same moment.
"Fre... Freya?" Na?a breathed, lifting her head, her eyes red and her face soaked.
Then she understood, and her face crumpled all at once.
"Freya... I was so scared... so scared..."
She started crying all over again, holding her mistress’s body tight against her as if afraid someone would take it from her. Beside her, La?a had half sat up, and her small fists began to pound softly against Freya’s chest, without the slightest strength.
"Don’t ever do that again!" she sobbed between blows. "Never again, do you hear me? Never again! We thought... we thought you were..."
She didn’t finish her sentence. Her fists stopped on Freya’s chest and gripped the fabric, then she let her forehead fall against her and cried without trying to hold back anymore.
Freya said nothing.
She simply lay there in the grass, the two girls held tight against her, feeling their tears, their sobs and the warmth of their bodies. For a moment, just one, she thought of nothing else.
And during that brief instant, without anyone noticing, not even her, her eyes wavered. The gold that filled them clouded over and gave way, for the span of a single heartbeat, to the violet they had once been.
Then the gold returned, as silently as it had left.