"But I, I killed you."
Ex emperor Celex gave him a smile, a human smile, "Yes and you did a very good job at that, one of my better fights, though I do have a few notes."
All around him, his honor guard, and his subjects stood in gaping awe clearly disbelieving. Lord Avex might have accused the strange human of lying, but looking at the man's eyes.... There was no way it wasn't him. The eyes, and the pattern in the man's hair were just too familiar. His voice was different, of course, much deeper than it had ever been, but there was something in the way he spoke that was alarmingly familiar.
Not to mention that when speaking Celzex, he spoke flawlessly, which should have been outside the realm of possibility for a human. Humans can speak Celzex of course, but they can't do it convincingly most of the time. They tend to have a very distinct accent that makes it difficult to understand.
Lord Avex found himself standing there in confused awe, not entirely sure what to do with himself, he became suddenly aware of all his separate appendages and how they attached to his body, and that just turned into awkward shuffling as he tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. At any other point he might have worried about appearing weak in front of his subjects. An Emperor was supposed to take things in stride, to behave a certain way. He should have at least challenged the interloper or established some ground rules to start off with.
But he did none of those things.
And no one seemed to notice when he didn't.
They were all just as shocked as he was.
The human looked around at them with an expression of mild amusement, "Perhaps I should slip into something less distracting." His honor guard took a step back in confused shock as the man's face began to warp. Lord Avex watched in open mouthed awe as the human began to shrink and the hair on his head began to sprout. It was both mesmerizing and horrifying to watch as his upper arms retracted back into his body.
He continued to shrink, his ears migrating upward on his head, his nose widening and flattening out, the eyes growing larger.
Until...
Lord Avex was fact to face with a ghost back from the dead.
Lord Celex stood before him, and it was only then that Avex realized how aged his father had been when he finally passed. The Celzex that stood before him was in the prime of his life, at his peak physicality just like Avex was now. The fur on his body was bright and vibrant, his ears were perked and held high.
But still, he had the same hungry expression in his eyes that he had always had.
His honor guard took another step back.
No one was sure what to do.
They had never had an emperor come back from the dead before. So what was the protocol?
And sure they feared Avex, they respected him, but Emperor Celzex had had a reputation. He had annihilated a planet to bring the entirety of his species together under one banner, he had fought his way from the very bottom to the very top with only his skill in combat.
He was a legend, no he was a raw force of nature.
And here the two of them stood face to face, in a standoff that could turn violent at any moment.
And lord Avex knew he would lose. He was well aware of the Maker's power, their ability to harness energy. What he was looking at was not a construct, but simply a Maker anima pretending to be a construct. If he had wanted to Lord Celex could have returned to his human form and booted lord Avex across the room with relative impunity.
Avex wasn't' stupid, he was aware of physical limitations.
Ferocity can only get you so far.
And if his father could turn into a human now, he could also turn into a Drev, and if he did that..... well.
Celex laughed, eyes sparkling with a distinct madness and lurched forward suddenly. His entire honor guard scattered, and lord Avex reflected morosely that he was going to have to execute them all for cowardice now.
Thanks dad.
Lord Avex himself was the only one left standing, unmoved by his father's display. "Are you done/" he asked sourly. All around the room he watched as the others looked on at him in awe.
Lord Celex grinned, "Yes my lord, I am done."
It was with annoyance that Avex realized what his father had done. The old bastard had just single-handedly stabilized Avex's power on the throne, and he had done it in less than two seconds. Avex was reminded of how good a negotiator and politician his father had been, and was more than mildly annoyed to see that that had not changed since his death.
"You will accept my rights as Emperor." Avex said
"You beat me in combat didn't you, those are the rules." He felt like his father was mocking him somehow, but luckily it wasn't obvious enough for the others to notice
"yes but usually when someone is defeated in fair combat, They at least have the common decency to stay dead."
Celex's eyes flashed that same hungry look, "I find death to be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Now let us walk." He turned then towards the shadow thing resting on the floor, "Come on Kelly, this is no place to rest." His voice was soft, unusually gentle when he spoke, and the others around the room watched in awe and confusion as the figure on the floor slowly morphed and flickered into the general shape of a celzex.
It wasn't the transformation that surprised them so much as Lord Celex's sudden compassion.
In a way him coming back from the dead was only secondary in shock to how he treated his strange friend.
Lord Celex had had little compassion or empathy in life. If he had, than destroying an entire planet to get his way would never have been in the cards. Avex wondered briefly if dying had weakened his father's character, but that hardly seemed right.
Lord Celex let the void creature lean against him as he walked with his son into the bowels of his old ship.
"I was told you had been taken hostage by kazna." Behind him, his honor guard continued to follow, likely hoping they could redeem themselves from their earlier show of cowardice.
Lord Avex was sure they wouldn't, but it was an understandable attempt.
"I was."
Lord Avex stopped to look at his father, who met his gaze with his cold hard eyes mostly unchanged since the last time they had met, "So she wasn't lying to me."
"No, she wasn't." Celex continued walking, "When I died, she was there to receive my anima before I could join the makers. I am not entirely sure how she captured me, but she did, and she chained me in darkness. She did her best to mold me to her will. She used fear, and bribery, and threats, and torture. She brought void creatures to look into my mind, and then she took me to see Behemoth, hoping that I would go mad at its sight."
Lord Avex remained quiet for some time before, "But it didn't work."
His father hissed almost as if he were offended, "of course it didn't work. That old hag made the mistake of thinking she could break me." He turned to look at his son, "The humans have a saying you know, unstoppable force meets immovable object, well.... I am an immovable object, and it turns out Kazna is NOT an unstoppable force. I was hardly going to let some one-ton bitch with a chip on her shoulder corrupt me towards the forces of darkness? Hardly. Every horrific thing she said to me, showed to me, and it only increased my hatred towards her, only strengthened my resolve to do the exact opposite of what she wanted of me."
Lord Avex glanced at Kelly and then back at his father.
Avex caught the look, "She was smarter with Kelly. I have no doubt that if she had tried the same tactics she used on me Kelly wuldn't have broken either. But she wised up the second time around. She left Kelly to stew in darkness for almost two years. Man's greatest fear is not existing, or even existing in nothingness. Kazna had her convinced that there was nothing after death, that there was simply the void. She exposed her to the full force of nothingness, to the Legion's kingdom, for two whole years, and by the time she came back she was changed. However, she made a mistake...."
Avex nodded along with his father's impassioned rant watched the glee in his eyes as he described flipping the worlds biggest proverbial bird in the history of the universe.
"She kept Kelly and I together. It took some time but I was able to bring her out of it. At least to some degree, we still have a long way to go, but I am confident we are out of the danger zone."
"And how did you cure her/'
There was a pause, and he, again, saw his father's eyes soften in a way they never had in life. The expression on his face was an unfamiliar one, and for a moment he hardly looked like himself, "I've learned, a lot of things since dying. I spent a lot of that time in a constructed human body." He paused again as if wondering how to phrase his next words, wondering how much he should admit to his son The door before them opened, and they stepped into Avex's private chambers. Somewhere in the darkness Avex heard the soft pattering of feet, likely some of his own children hiding themselves away to avoid being eaten.
They were in no danger from him of course.
Surprisingly it was only the females of their species that ate the young.
There was silence between them for a while before his father finally spoke voice measured, softer than it had been before, "As it turns out feeling certain things is difficult when you live inside a construct, but now that I am simply Anima, I have access to a whole range of things I could never feel before. Or at least if I did, it was not to the degree that I can now." He turned to look at Avex and when he did the expression in his eyes still held that same strange quality from earlier, "Your construct, the construct I had before I died, does not feel compassion or empathy very deeply. Our ability to create loyalty is the reason we don't kill each other outright, but now that I..... am no longer what I once was. I feel.... Things now." The words came from him slowlyas he tried to articulate in a way that Avex could understand, "It is not the first time I have felt these things, we aren't incapable, but now it just comes so easily."
He looked over at Kelly who had curled up again, a mound of fur and stars in one of Avex's seats.
"Once upon a time it was my loyalty and honor that drove me to do the things I did, but now its something else. Not spite or even anger." He looked up at Avex, "Spending time with Kelly, I felt her pain, experienced her sadness and her anger. Its hard to describe having an emotion that didn't come from you and isn't for you. If it wasn't for that I would never have gotten us out."
Avex listened quietly.
His father really had changed.
He was softer.
As if in response he saw his father's eyes flash, and almost took a step back, "Don't mistake my compassion for weakness, boy." He stepped closer and Avex had trouble holding his ground, but he did anyway, "You are my son.... I love you, and if I have to fight the armies of Legion to protect you from the hell they bring with them, then I will do it single handed."
... his words held such fervor, such conviction that Avex knew it had to be true.
Yes he had made a mistake. He wasn't softer he was just.... more.... More of soemthing.
It was hard to say.
"Why are you here? Why have you not returned to the Makers? Arent' there rules against coming back."
Celex had relaxed back down a bit, "Well its not like I made it to maker orientation." He seemed to think himself particularly clever, and chuckled to himself softly at his own words before, "Joking aside that is a bit true, I am not sure if there are rules, and even if there are, I don't know them. Secondly my anima was interrupted don its journey to Revelation, so I don't know how to get there, three no one came to find us and take us, four the Makers are a bit busy at the moment and Five, I said I was going to protect you and the others, and that is what I plan to do. I came to you first because I trust you the most, but I am going to need you to make a very important call."
Avex was not surprised, "Adam Vir."
"Yes, who else."