Naked Empire

The man's breath came in short sharp gasps as the sharpened stake penetrated up through his insides. He went still in Nicholas's powerful arms, fearing to move, fearing to believe what was happening to him, fearing to know it was true… trying to deny to himself that it could be true.

Nicholas straightened to his full height before the man. The man's back was as straight and stiff as a board as he sat impaled on the sharpened stake. His eyebrows pushed his sweat-beaded brow up in furrows as he writhed in slow agony, his legs trying to touch the ground that was too far away.

Into that confusion of sensation, Nicholas reached out with his mind, at the same time clawing his hands before the man with the effort as he slid his own being, his own spirit, into the core of this living creature, slid into this man's open mind, into the cavernous cracks between his abrupt and disconnected thoughts, there to feel his agony and fright. There to take control. Once he had slipped his own mind in there with this man, seeped through his consciousness, Nicholas drew his essence out and into himself.

With a staggering fusion of destructive and creative power dealt by those women that day, Nicholas had been born into a new being, part him, and yet more. He had become what no man had ever been before-what others wished to make of him, what others wished him to be.

What had been unleashed in him by those Sisters all linked in their ability to harness powers they could never have touched alone and should never have invoked together, they instilled in him. They engendered in him powers few could ever have imagined: the power to slide into another living person's thoughts, and withdraw their spirit.

He drew his closed fists back toward his own abdomen with the effort of drawing with him the spirit of this man on the cusp of life and death, drew onward the marrow of this man's soul. Nicholas felt the slick heat of this other spirit slide into his, the hot rush of sensation at feeling himself filled with another spirit.

Nicholas left the body there, impaled on the first stake, as he rushed to the windows, his head spinning with the first intoxicating wave of excitement at the journey only now just begun, at what was to come, at what power he would control.

He opened his mouth wide again in a yawn that was not a yawn, but a call carrying more than just his silent voice.

His eyes swam with wavering images. He gasped in the first scent of the forests out beyond, where his intent had been cast.

He rushed back and seized a woman. She begged as she wept, begged to be spared as he bore her to her stake.

"But this is nothing," he told her. "Nothing compared to what I have endured. Oh, you cannot imagine what I have endured."

He had been staked naked to the ground, in the center of a circle of those smug women. He had been nothing to them. He had not been a man, a wizard. He had been nothing but the raw material, the flesh and blood innervated by the gift, that they needed for what they wanted, that they used in yet another of their trials, all to be twisted by their tinkering at creation.

He had the ability, so duty required he sacrifice it.

Nicholas had been the first to live through their tests, not because they took care-not because they cared-but because they had learned what didn't work, and so avoided their past errors.

"Scream, my dear. Scream all you want. It will help you no more than it helped me."

"Why!" she screamed. "Why!"

"Oh, but I must, if I am to have your spirit to soar on the wings of my distant friends. You will go on a glorious journey, you and I."

"Please!" she wailed. "Dear Creator, no!"

"Oh, yes, dear Creator," he mocked. "Come and save her-like you came and saved me."

Her wailing did her no good. His hadn't either. She had no idea how immeasurably worse his agony had been than hers would be. Unlike her, he had been condemned to live.

"Hate to live, live to hate," he murmured in a comforting whisper. "You will have the glory and the reward that is death."

He drove her down onto the stake. He reckoned her not far enough onto the stake, and shoved her down another six inches, until he judged it deep enough within her, deep enough to produce the necessary pain and terror, but not deep enough to lance anything inside that would kill her right off. She thrashed, trying desperately, hands helpless behind her back, to somehow remove herself.

He was only dimly aware of her cries, her worthless words. She thought they might somehow make a difference.

Pain was his goal. Their complaints of it only confirmed that he was achieving his goal.

Nicholas stood before the woman, hands clawed, as he slid his own spirit through her sundered thoughts and into the core of her being. With mental strength far superior to his physical strength, he pulled her back.

He gasped as he felt her spirit slide into his.