Jhanku lounged upon his throne in a vast hall with a tall ceiling that stretched higher than was necessary. Sometimes he would glance up at the vaulted ceiling and wonder why he’d decided to make this room so… big. He supposed he’d been trying to prove something.
Back then, he still had something to prove.
He was glancing up at that vaulted ceiling right now. Jhanku grinned and shook his head, wondering how hard a room like this would have been to heat before the System had come.
He released a sigh. He was one of very few Denizens in the inner sectors who remembered a time before the System. The System integrated his planet, Dostril—though back then it was simply called Rock—billions of years ago.
Jhanku been young, even for his people, back then. He’d only passed thirty summers on Rock. His horns hadn’t even come in yet. He wasn’t the leader of his tribe nor was he the tribe’s leader’s son. He was the son of the tribe’s Singer. While Singers had been well respected amongst his people, as they kept the stories of their history fresh in the tribe’s mind, that respect wasn’t something that was passed down to him.
Respect had to be earned on Rock, and he hadn’t done a damned thing to earn it.
But young as he’d been, thirty summers had been plenty old enough as far as the System had been concerned. The moment it had come down, he’d been given choices—the first choices he could ever remember having in his then short life.
Those choices led him to this very throne, in this very spot. It led him toward taking over Rock and renaming it something more respectful. It led him toward taking over other planets, always feeling like he had something to prove. He wasn’t merely a Singer’s Son. He was a conqueror.
The conqueror.
He would command respect.
Planet after planet, galaxy after galaxy, bent to his rule. And still, even after he’d gained so much ground, so much power, and finally so much respect, there was a little voice in the back of his mind telling him that it wasn’t enough.
That voice still lived inside him. Ten thousand sectors might be enough for some, but it certainly wasn’t enough for Jhanku. He had his sights set on far more—he had his sights set on taking over the domains of every other inner sector ruler, of using his vast armies to wash over their sectors and turn their people into loyal citizens of his empire.
But he would have been a fool to take action on such plans before he was ready. Jhanku, being a Singer’s Son, had known all the songs of his people. All the verse of their histories. He’d known of the folly of acting before thinking. Known of the folly of the unplanned.
And thus, he took the long view.
Jhanku blinked and pulled his gaze back down from the ceiling, having it instead fall on all the projections in front of him. His mind was separated into many thousands of parts. Even as he looked at the projections almost filled up his entire hall, he was in the middle of many conversations on thousands of different Communication Stone channels—how many, he wouldn’t know until he recombined all the different parts of his mind to assimilate that knowledge into the main part of his consciousness, something he didn’t do until the end of each day.
Some might say he didn’t need to juggle so many things all at once. He had qualified people to do such things. People who were good, people he trusted—some of the best minds in the entire universe were under his rule, and he’d snagged even more of those best minds from other rulers’ domains.
They flocked to him because he commanded the right kind of respect.
Even still, he’d always taken a very hands-on approach to leadership. He liked to be in on the details, where he could. Of course, when you’re the ruler of ten thousand galaxies it was impossible—even for someone as powerful as him—to watch over all of that.
So Jhanku had to delegate and prioritise.
Right now, his main consciousness was prioritising something that was very intriguing. Or rather, someone intriguing. A Denizen by the name of Xavier Collins who’d recently popped out of nowhere as a notable candidate in one of his many outreach programs. His outreach programs spanned almost the entirety of the integrated universe, as he was always on the lookout for new talent.
He was especially interested in the far reaches of the universe, where Denizens were only just becoming integrated into the System, or had only been integrated for a few hundred or a few thousand years. The Denizens who came from those sorts of places tended not to have ingrained ideas about how things should be—some of the best minds he possessed were those who’d been raised on non-integrated planets.
Many rulers out there didn’t think much of the newly integrated, but Jhanku and others like him, Denizens who’d been around just as long, knew that true power could come from anywhere.
This Xavier Collins, however, was nothing like anyone he’d ever encountered before. At first, Jhanku had theorised that he would have a very important role to play in the universe in perhaps as little as ten thousand years. His analysts had balked at such a prediction, sighting the fact that it was impossible for any Denizens to gain enough power in such a short period of time to impact events on any significant scale.
Still, Jhanku took steps to keep an eye on this Xavier Collins, until he realised his plan would need to change. The human-turned-dragonkin was becoming for more powerful than he’d expected far too fast. There were things he was doing, things he shouldn’t be capable of.
He needed to be extracted. Jhanku had sent his best agents on that side of the universe to deal with it, authorising the extraction of Xavier Collins’s mind. There was a part of him that mourned the loss of the type of monster the man could have become, but he had also come to realise that this Xavier Collins could never be someone who was controlled.
So it was no loss to him.
“The man’s mind cannot be extracted,” Arrack, an A Grade and one of Jhanku’s many great-great-grandsons, said through a recorded projection. “My memory mages explored every avenue, but there is something powerful protecting the man’s memories, something none of them understand.” Arrack ran a hand through his hair. He looked tired. Something that was hard to be as an A Grade. “I will keep trying. I will not fail you.”
A frown creased Jhanku’s forehead.
This wasn’t the first time he’d played this projection. He’d also watched the ten other ones Arrack had sent. They told a story he didn’t like. He was beginning to wonder if he should take a more… personal approach to this matter, though even that thought was a strange one. It had been many hundreds of thousands of years since he’d left his empire. There simply hadn’t been a need to—he had everything he needed to command and expand his domain right here.
He was expecting another projection to arrive soon. The methods Arrack was using weren’t ones he strictly approved of—torture wasn’t effective in most cases—but without the option of extracting the man’s memories, there were few left, and it was a little too late to gain the dragonkin’s trust.
But another projection didn’t arrive. Instead, something else did. Something he hadn’t expected.
His great-great-grandson’s soul.
Jhanku cared for his family very deeply, especially those he considered to be a part of his close family, for his family had spread far and wide over the many billions of years he’d been alive. And because he cared for them so much, he always made sure they would survive, even if they died.
He stood from his throne, stepped down the steps, and stared at his great-great-grandson’s apparition. Jhanku couldn’t help widening his eyes—he couldn’t quite remember the last time he was surprised by something.
“Arrack? What happened?” Jhanku’s eyes narrowed. Rage spilled into his voice. “Who did this to you? Was it The Grandmaster? Was it Luffani?” He took another step toward Arrack’s soul. “Tell me it wasn’t the Old Man!”
There were other old monsters out there who had their sights set on Xavier Collins, but how could any of them know of that secret base? How could anyone of them know that he’d captured the young dragonkin?
Who would risk starting a conflict with me over the young dragonkin?
But he wasn’t the only one who’d been watching when Xavier Collins had taken out the World Destroyer. He’d done something he shouldn’t have been capable of, and he’d done it with a single punch. Jhanku wasn’t the only one who’d been impressed.
“Tell me!”
Arrack’s face was pale—even for a ghost. He was terror-stricken. Jhanku supposed he couldn’t blame him. The shock of dying wasn’t exactly an easy one to go through.
Jhanku took a slow breath and calmed his voice. He reached out for the apparition but of course couldn’t touch it. “I do not blame you, Grandson. I simply need to know what happened. You understand? What happened to you? Who killed you?” He paused. “They were there for Xavier Collins, yes? Did they extract him alive?”
If another of the old monsters was able to gain the young dragonkin’s strange powers…
Arrack shook his head slowly, though he didn’t raise it. The man’s mouth moved. Xavier Collins. The words entered Jhanku’s mind in that strange way that spirits always communicated to the living.
“Yes. Xavier Collins. Tell me of him.”
No, Grandfather. Xavier Collins. He was the one who killed me.
Jhanku stood there, stunned. A mix of anger and confusion warred within him. How could Arrack fail against a child like Xavier?
And how could that dragonkin kill one of his family?
He wanted to rant. Wanted to rage. But such a thing would help no one. He calmed himself. “Explain.”
The things he was able to do… he was trapped, but he broke free. I don’t understand how.
“Tell me everything. All of it.”
Jhanku’s mind worked. Already, he was contacting the most powerful ritual mages within his empire and having them locate a suitable replacement body for his great-great-grandson to inhabit. Once he’d been properly resurrected, his soul placed inside a new vessel, Jhanku would be able to review the man’s memories of the incident firsthand.
There was a part of him that wanted to accuse his grandson of being a failure.
Xavier Collins was powerful, yes, but only for a C Grade. He was nothing compared to Arrack, and in that prison, he wouldn’t have had access to the powers he’d clearly pulled from his own people. That was, after all, the only reason he’d been strong enough to take out the World Destroyer in the first place. It was that combined power he’d possessed that had allowed him to do it…
If I could get a hold of such a power…
But accusing Arrack of failing, of being weak, without all the information was a folly he wasn’t about to partake in. It also wouldn’t help keep his great-great-grandson calm enough to recount the events of what had happened.
I had him trapped, then—
Jhanku head cocked. He raised a hand, silencing the soul. He’d just sensed something—something very strange. Something that shouldn’t have been possible.
A time distortion had been activated around his palace. No… not only around his palace. It spread from his palace all the way up through his powerful planetary shield to somewhere out there in orbit. He had many time mages in his employ, but this wasn’t something he’d authorised.
Some kind of mistake… but how?
There was something else out there he sensed. A portal—an intergalactic one—and a single Denizen, floating in space.
He used his spiritual sense to examine that being. Along with his spiritual sense, he had many Observation Crystals in orbit around his planet that he could access. One such crystal was within the time dilation field—something that looked as though it hadn’t been a mistake made by whoever that being was.
Jhanku accessed the crystal’s vision through a device in his Storage Ring and once again was struck by surprise.
The young dragonkin, Xavier Collins, hovered in space above Dostril, and he was looking directly at the Observation Crystal.