“And brought me back,” headstrong Achilles answered, hot words, quick, “and while I still draw breath and feel the touch of suns, I’ll follow my own will, not yours, or what you guess of Fate’s. I agree I’m here for a reason, as you are, but if you’re too broken to raise your voice and try to turn things toward a future you desire, I’m not. I say the ancients who died to lay the first foundations of this world deserve some say in what their works become. The living of this age are too accustomed to forgetting the dead, but we won’t sit silent anymore, not while I’m here to speak and act. And in the name of the dead, who spent our lives and labors to give humanity what it has now, I say we will not choose a future built by someone who would betray and destroy such a father, such an Emperor, and such an Empire.” The words boomed as the hero spoke them, rumbling like battle’s distant thunder, and startled a flock of birds whose sharp silhouettes rose in a cloud behind him, schooling in their panic like so many flying blades.

“Then we must make sure Jehovah does not betray me.” MASON stepped between us. “We must make sure they change their mind.”

“How?”

“By being perfect in this war,” the Emperor announced. “By achieving every goal. By crushing our enemies, supporting our allies, protecting our people, enforcing our justice, guarding our patrimony, and achieving our will. Jehovah wants to be powerful, efficacious, just. We will prove we are precisely that.”

Achilles breaker of battle lines frowned across at me. “War is not that easy, nor that kind.”

“I am aware that many kings and many empires have made such boasts and failed, but I am not any empire. I am the Empire, the dream of empires, constant since the first time a heart wished to call the space between horizon and horizon ‘mine.’ And you, Achilles, are the Soldier. Fight with me. We are both human and imperfect, so we will not achieve everything, but together we will come much closer than anyone else ever has or ever could. We will prove to Jehovah that this Empire is something they want to preserve—not just to preserve, but to become. Then they will join us, and let themself be reshaped by the ideals you and I share, and together we will make a future you will be proud to live in.”