Chapter 524 - 524: Mandate of Order

The hall was endless.

It stretched forward further than the eye could follow, a vast corridor of black stone and gold, with pillars as wide as towers rising on either side. Their tops vanished into a ceiling so high that it seemed to hold its own sky. Banners hung from every pillar, thousands of them, each one marked with the same symbol.

The floor was polished until it showed the reflection of everything above it.

At the far end, the hall ended in a throne.

It was colossal. It rose from the floor in a great stepped base and climbed all the way to the ceiling, carved from a special marble that was pale as bone and veined with gold. Nothing in the hall came close to its size. Everything else looked small beside it.

Someone sat on it.

It was a figure clad in full armor, with not a single part of its body showing. The plates were heavy and black, edged in gold, and they covered every inch of it from head to foot. Even the hands were hidden in thick gauntlets.

It was at least twice the size of a normal human.

This was Order, or at least his power, which he had placed on the throne to run it and to run the empire. He did not allow anyone to see what was under the armor. No one was meant to see Order.

He sat without moving.

From the base of the throne, glowing lines spread outward. They looked like veins, pulsing faintly with a pale golden light, and they crawled across the floor in every direction. They climbed the walls. They slipped through the stone and ran beyond it, out of the hall and into the rest of the empire, further than anyone could trace.

It was Order's power.

He was using it now to keep what little order remained safe. It held things together, and it kept the universe from collapsing.

Before the throne, in long, perfect rows, hundreds of figures knelt.

There were over a hundred of them. They were gods. Each one wore black battle armor, sleek and fitted, with no ornaments and nothing to set one apart from another. Their heads were bowed and their hands rested flat on the floor.

Every one of them was powerful enough to rule a major part of the cosmos.

Now they knelt in silence.

They had all pledged their allegiance to the empire. They were part of its corps now, and they stood at the highest level of power in the system. Nothing in the known universe stood above them, except the one on the throne.

No one spoke. No one moved. The hall was so quiet that the soft hum of the glowing veins could be heard.

Order was about to address them.

The figure on the throne raised one gauntleted hand.

He snapped his fingers.

SNAP.

The sound rang out across the hall. It echoed off the pillars and rolled down the long corridor and back again, over and over, until it faded into nothing.

A figure stepped out from behind the rows of gods.

He walked slowly between the kneeling shapes. He was cloaked like a priest, in long robes that dragged along the floor, and his face was hidden behind a metal mask. The mask showed two wide, staring eyes and a long tongue sticking out of the mouth, so that no one could tell who he was.

He climbed the steps and stopped beside the throne.

This was the narrator.

He bowed once to the figure in the armor. Then he reached into his robes and drew out a scroll. He held it in both hands, and the paper unrolled with a dry sound.

He began to read.

"By the order of the Throne, a mandate is issued to every world that exists within the empire's reach."

His voice carried across the entire hall.

"Each existing world must now bring forward worthy warriors, to fight against the abyss. This is not a request. It is a requirement."

He paused.

"Any world that proves incapable of bringing forward warriors of enough strength will be completely eradicated. Its energy will be taken and used as a resource, to power the empire even further."

The gods did not move.

"This mandate will be carried out by the god of each world," the narrator continued. "That god will hand it to someone in their world, whether a demigod or a being stronger than one. That person will be given the power to run any one of the few available methods, which will pick out the worthy."

He turned the scroll slightly.

"This is a necessary measure. It is required to ensure that the strongest beings are taken and used to aid in the war. That war is soon to become something far greater than what it is now. No world is an exception."

His tongue hung from the mask, motionless.

"Furthermore, every demigod in the empire is to become an elite warrior for the empire. All of them, without exception."

The hall seemed to grow colder.

"Those who refuse will be marked as traitors, and they will be treated as traitors from that moment on. They will be hunted continuously, until they have been completely eradicated and killed."

The narrator lowered the scroll.

No sound came from the rows of kneeling gods. Nothing in the hall changed. The veins of light kept pulsing on the floor, steady and slow.

He rolled the scroll closed.

It made a soft, final sound.

Then he bowed once more to the throne, and the meeting came to an end. He walked past all of them and vanished from the hall. One after the other every god there raised their head and turned to leave as well, they all walked out until they were fully gone and only Order was left alone there.

The hall returned to a silent state where even the insects walking could be heard.'