Lord Biralei, Great Mage and Senator of the Trust of Raxolas, sent out his mind as a signal to his allies. His shoes clicked against marble tiles as he walked by rich tapestries framing painted wooden doors, but his focus was elsewhere. The wealth of the summer palace, where they’d been trapped for the past two years, meant nothing to him now. He touched the minds of his wife, his brothers, and his cousins, feeling the tense pacing of their thoughts.

  Is the family out? he asked. Is everything ready?

  Their replies came pouring through.

  Through his wife’s eyes he saw all the young and vulnerable of the family packed out on boats in the center of the World Lake. There was the gentle rock and slap of water, the sound of muttered prayer and a baby beginning to cry. The summer capital was merely a speck of light in the distance.

  His eldest cousin saw troops gathered at the edges of the city, looking out from the safe darkness of the trees toward the lights of civilization, and hearing only the quiet rustling of disciplined men waiting for battle. Through him Lord Biralei felt the weight of a revolver at the hip and a mage staff in the hand.

  His youngest brother felt the hum of a blimp’s engine as it drew closer to the city. From above, the crown jewel of Raxolas was a patchwork of sparkling light as night swallowed the bombed out portions of dead city. What had started as a simple peasant revolt had led to ruin, even for the capital. At this point it was more dark than light. Only the palace, Little Raxolas, sat untouched. Golden lights sparkled up the walls to cast a shimmering reflection in the World Lake’s bay. Below the walls, globes of light floated through winding gardens and greenhouses, spraying gentle cascades of water as they went. Golden decorations shone and leaves rustled, a pristine display of wealth and power.

  His own Mages walked the quiet halls of Little Raxolas, their staffs humming with unspent magic. They, too, traced these golden halls without seeing the splendor. The familiar palace was made echoing and frightful by the dark and the knowledge of what they were about to do.

  Fear, hope, guilt, desperation, love, and dread ran through them all. Swallowed down bile and trembling hands. Determination.

  Everything was in place.

  He arrived at the end of the hall. Huge doors inlaid with magical runes stood here, at the heart of Little Raxolas. Spells that had been maintained for hundreds of years ran through them, magic worked into the doors like water working grooves into stone. Lord Biralei took a deep breath and set a hand against the door, feeling the magic working at him. It was trying to sense his intentions.

  He set his magic on his own mind, pushing it into the shape the door’s magic looked for. No ill-intent, no desire to harm the ancient Emperor of the Trust of Raxolas, and no desire to harm the Imperial Trust. For a Great Mage studied in mental magic, his mind was more familiar to him than his own hands, and he crafted it into what the door’s wards desired.

  He stepped inside and the magic hummed around him, but let him be. The room was luscious and coated in dust. Faded imperial reds, purples, and golds layered the thick rug and thicker window drapes. A tapestry depicting the mythical solar storm that Raxolas supposedly harnessed hung above the bed. Some said it would come again in around a century, to give the Empire the power to rebuild itself and conquer the world.

  The bed itself was surrounded by runes, stones of power, and strings carrying power wrapped around the Emperor’s old, tattooed flesh. Lord Biralei stepped over to the Emperor with nothing but gentle care in his heart.

  Then his mind-crafting spell fizzled out and disgust overtook him.

  The magic connected the Emperor to the palace like a spider in a web. An undead spider. His eyes were open but unseeing, his flesh white and graying slightly: the rotting corpse at the center of the Empire. After 500 years of active ruling, the Emperor had not died but aged himself out of functioning. He hadn’t spoken a word in 300 years and yet whatever strange magic still flowed through him kept up the wards of the palace all this time. Essentially long dead, the Emperor Raxolas still held the world in his strings.

  Maybe the Emperor would be revived by the solar storm or magical equinox or whatever it was that gave him the power to build the Empire and live for hundreds of years, but Lord Biralei was done waiting for it. His family was dying now in this war.

  Lord Biralei unsheathed the knife at his hip and raised it. He made the motion swift, but deep, into the Emperor’s throat.

  Nothing happened.

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  Blood didn’t even pour from the wound. The body just deflated like cloth on a mannequin. Lord Biralei stepped back, a shiver running through him. The sight was disgusting. He felt his next oldest brother, only a year younger than him, reach out a mind-message for him.

  We are in place, he told Lord Biralei. He was leading the mage force that would move within the palace itself, joined by bombings and troops hiding in the city. We need to keep the element of surprise. I don’t know how long it will be until the Palace Guards notice us.

  There were many powerful magical constructs who protected the palace, all driven by the magic of Emperor Raxolas. Many of the threads connecting the Emperor’s body to the outside world undoubtedly led to those protective constructs. The Emperor had to truly die for any of this to work, or they would fail and the world would continue to bleed out for the dreams of this dead husk.

  Just wait, he thought to his brother. I have almost done it.

  Lord Biralei stabbed, again and again. The flesh was unyielding, sticking and pulling at his knife. And with every cut, nothing happened. There was no blood, no screaming, no reaction, simply more deflating flesh. Lord Biralei panted and watched for more, for something, his knife held so tight that his knuckles were as white as the body before him.

  He raised his knife and brought it down with as much force as he could: “Die, already!”

  Nothing happened. He tried to pull his knife out, but it was stuck fast. He let go and staggered back, staring.

  Finally, Lord Biralei straightened. He took a deep breath in and out. He leaned forward, reaching out with his own hand. His hand, tanned and tattooed with symbols that helped him shape the magic that flowed through his fingertips, was a stark contrast to the Emperor’s white skin and barely visible Mage marks. Lord Birlaei felt the connection as skin touched skin.

  The corpse Emperor’s skin was papery soft and dry. Channeling magic through the rune tattoos on his hands was second nature for a mental Great Mage; Lord Biralei was in the mind of Emperor Raxolas as soon as his fingers met skin.

  The mind underneath seemed empty at the first brush of magic, but Lord Biralei pushed deeper. He had honed his magic over decades to see the nuances of the human mind, to find the depths of the soul. He could see not only what people hid from him, but what they hid from themselves, what they would not have admitted under torture. He could see the truths people found so self-evident that they never bothered to actually think them. He searched the Emperor’s mind.

  It was like walking through darkness, but something was there. He knew it. It was like trying to find a river on a dark night, and only being able to see reflections of moonlight against black waters. Pressing in deeper, Lord Biralei traced the usual suspects. The streams of hope, fear, guilt, and love were empty, but there was a trickle of something in the ancient Emperor’s dreams and ambitions. He traced the water to its source and ran into magic.

  Lord Biralei was familiar with the connection deep inside every soul to something beyond, to a place of potential and imagination, the opening that ran wide in Mages and small in the ordinary person. The Emperor Raxolas’s connection was like a soul torn in half, bisected down the middle to accommodate a flow of magic like Lord Biralei had never seen before. He could not touch it with his own mind, for fear of being subsumed.

  He disconnected with a gasp. He was breathing heavily, not from the use of magic but his own terror. He had to kill the Emperor. This plan only worked if he could, and his whole family would be tortured, executed one by one, if he failed. He wished they could run, but it was far too late.

  Lord Biralei put a hand over his racing heart and took deep breaths. He pushed for calm serenity as he had many times in decades of training and practice. He focused on the feel of the thick carpet beneath his feet, his silk robes against his skin, the musty smell of the air. He was here, present in himself, and that meant that he could do something.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the dead Emperor, thinking through the situation. He studied the corpse in front of him and the mind he’d walked through, considering it from every angle, until he figured out what he was looking for.

  Brother? Lord Biralei heard his brother think to him, fear and dread lacing the words. Has everything gone as planned?

  Lord Biralei sent a single word, a single feeling of being on the brink of success or failure, back in reply: Almost.

  After years of civil war against the technological revolution, the aristocratic Mage family of Biralei had made an alliance with the new insurgency against their own old order. One way or another, this war had to end for the country to survive, and the Biraleis were ready to jump to the winning side.

  He reached out for the Emperor again. Now that he knew the mind, he could find what he was looking for easily: the trickle of ambition and dreams. The trickles that let the soul continue to exist to channel the magic. Lord Biralei ran his magic down that barest remnant of life and drained it away. The once-great Raxolus’s mind was so weak, it was a simple task for a mind mage to wipe it out.

  It took only moments for the mind to begin to crumble, the grand portal to the magic closing. Lord Biralei pulled his hand away from a pile of dust. The threads around the room collapsed; the smell of musty old death filled the place.

  He opened his mind to all of his trusted compatriots:

  The Emperor is dead. Go!