Empires | Arc 0 | Chapter 2 | Twists and Rewrites

A young Chaos looks bright, intelligent, and fierce, eager to do the right thing. There is no shred of the gloom on him that he carries in the future. He walks down a hallway, followed by a middle-aged man in a two-piece suit. Chaos is also in a two-piece suit, unlike his future signature dress.

The man walking a few steps ahead speaks, “Listen, I know it’s too much for you… you haven’t had time to mourn!”

Chaos looks up towards the back of the man’s head and says, “Thank you for your concern, but I am fine… they are gone, but they would have wanted me to handle the future rather than staying in the past!”

As they walk through the hallway into a room and the heavy wooden doors slap shut, the other people in the corners and the corridor start whispering.

“He is the new boss!”

“But he is so young!”

“Poor kid, fate is truly cruel. Now he has to learn all of it on his own!”

“True! I mean, an accident… they were so fine just the day before.”

“Who would have known?!” “Such an unfortunate story.”

Inside the room, Chaos settles into the plush leather chair as the man hovers over his right and says, “You take a look at what your parents have left behind… if you need me, you know where to find me.” He gives Chaos a warm, assuring smile and walks away, closing the door behind him.

Chaos leans back onto the headrest, staring at the ceiling. A few moments pass. Finally, he hunches over the table to see the papers in front of him. This is where he sees a few rough drafts of what looks like a floating ship of some sort, and below the page is his father’s signature and a date only two days before he and his wife, Chaos’s mother, died. Seeing his father’s handwriting—even though old, but for him, it is new—Chaos traces his finger over the signature. He smiles a soft smile, but his eyes break down.

A few days later, Chaos and that middle-aged man are in a meeting. The other chairs are filled with middle-aged to old men and women; Chaos is clearly the youngest one here. They are people from both Royal City, distinguished by their traditional clothing, and Titan City, with their modern attire. Chaos and his mentor clearly represent Abyss City. As those veterans talk about currency, the value of platinum, and how to increase transport via ships and Titan City’s current progression with new tech, Chaos suddenly speaks up upon hearing the word “tech.”

“How about a flying ship?”

The whole room stops talking and looks in his direction silently. Chaos looks at the man on his left, who is also looking at him like the rest of them. Seeing no support, Chaos gets up, opens the file in front of him, and says, “Before his death, I think my father planned for some sort of flying ship.”

He takes out the blueprints and passes them to his right. As every one of them looks at the designs and passes them on to the next, Chaos says, “We know… how many people die trying to cross the continents on foot, right?” He looks around the room and adds, “While there is sea travel, it takes too long! But what if we use this? We can save time and a lot of lives!”

One of the women, clearly from Royal City, speaks. “Who can build these things?”

Hearing someone finally speak, Chaos answers, “Titan City has the technology, right? And Abyss City and I can supply the currency, whatever it takes!”

One man from Titan City refuses, saying, “Our ship business will go down, which is currently running so smoothly.” That man gets up from his chair—bearing a striking resemblance to Friling, but more assertive—and says, “Not to mention it’s a huge financial risk. The griffins and wyverns might attack them, seeing them as threats. So they have to build new ones; it’s a never-ending cycle and a waste of resources!”

Chaos says, “I am ready to pay for it…”

He gets cut off as the man who came with him holds his left arm, silently telling him to stop.

A woman speaks up—this one having a striking resemblance to Lesca, but more passive-aggressive. “Control the kid!” she says to the mentor. “He might bankrupt his own company in a year if he talks like this!”

The man who resembles Friling speaks up again. “If he is the new leader, you better sell the company to us right now.”

The room full of people chuckles, with some holding back their laughter. Someone says, “Boy, we are here because they walk and we get paid so they don’t have to!” Someone else speaks up, huffing, “Air ships? What kind of absurd ideas are these?”

The woman speaks again. “What else did you expect from a child…!”

Chaos looks around the room. He is not offended that they are making fun of him; he is sad and angry because these people have the power to make something right, but they will not. What is worse is that they are not even letting him try. Chaos grits his teeth and sits down, briefly staring at the man and woman who just shut him down.

The next day, he goes to the Empress of Abyss City for help. When his mentor tries to stop him, Chaos leaves, saying, “This was my father’s wish before he died. I am not gonna let this go!”

When he meets the Empress who rules over Abyss City from a diamond castle, she refuses, saying, “We operate as an independent world, and joining with Royal and Titan will take that independence. And I, as the Empress of Abyss, will lose my agency.”

Chaos begs, taking a few steps forward. “But Ma’am… millions of lives will be saved. And we are not merging our lands; we are just signing a contract for a brief period, and they…”

He gets cut off as the middle-aged Empress says, “Contract or not, this will give them a reason to visit my land, and I don’t want their foot in my land!”

Before Chaos can say anything more, he gets escorted out, with the woman saying, “Naive little boy.”

As Chaos is escorted through the door, he crosses paths with a young girl, striking blonde hair, expressive, empathetic eyes.

At night, exhausted, he returns to his office.

It is after hours; everyone is gone. He has the blueprints in his hands. As he walks, he looks at them and suddenly starts mushing them together into a paper ball in frustration. He looks at the ball in his hand, thinking how nice it would be if the world were this easy to fold to his liking. Why is it so rigid? If only it could just bend a little.

He is thinking all this when he reaches his office. There is a light coming from inside the room, and two men are talking. One is saying, “I can’t believe you let him embarrass himself like that!”

The other voice—the voice of the man who told Chaos he was always there for him—answers, “Well, it’s his company!”

Hearing that voice, Chaos looks through the gap of the door and sees that his mentor is sitting in his father’s chair, where Chaos sat previously, while another man sits in one of the guest chairs.

The second man speaks. “But you did all this…” He lowers his voice a little and says, “…that so-called accident…” He raises his voice to normal and asks, “All for that brat to take it over?”

The mentor leans back in the chair and says, “His father was the problem, and he is just a clause!”

The other man leans onto the table and asks, “Clause?”

The mentor looks at the ceiling and replies, “I cannot take over the company as long as the original founder’s heir is of sane mind!”

The other man says, “So that meeting…”

The mentor leans onto the table and says, “I let him run his wild theories. Soon he will be discovered as unfit and forced to close the company…”

The other man finishes his sentence, saying, “And you get it!”

From his peek, Chaos listens to all this, and he feels nothing. Since he sat in that chair, all he has faced is failure, so losing the company is just another one of those.

As Chaos turns to move away, the mentor speaks.

“He was my best friend, but when it was necessary, I turned him into a story. And his son? With how he is doing, he will be nothing more than a story too!”

Both men laugh.

Chaos freezes in place, looking at the ground. His father and mother are gone. He failed to turn his father’s dream into a reality—not just a dream, but a last wish.

Suddenly, something flickers in his palms. Slowly, golden sparks fly and catch the paper, and that paper turns into something gooey and falls out of his hands, but Chaos is too zoned out to notice. He is resting his left hand on the door frame; when golden sparks fly there, the door melts into wet paper too. The two men see Chaos looking at the ground, and they freeze in place.

Seeing the light from inside the room now directly hitting his eyes, he finally turns to them. His eyes are dead. His palms are burning with golden flames, but his skin is intact. He walks into the room, saying, “You are right… nothing matters. Everything is a story!”

He looks around the room as the men stay frozen in place.

Chaos says, “And I would have happily become a part of it, but…” He finally looks at the man sitting in the family chair and says, “But a story needs twists too, right?”

Chaos flashes his serene smile as he simply lifts his palms up, not even pointing at him, and says, “Let me give you one!”

The golden flames suddenly jump out of his palms and engulf the mentor, who immediately screams, “AHHHHAHA,” and moves around frantically in the space between the desk and chair, thinking it is actual flames. But then he stops, looking confused, because it is not burning his skin, and he is not actually feeling any pain.

Then comes the track khat kat tract and a choking scream. His elbows twist backwards, and his knees twist forwards. He is folded backwards from his waist, his head snaps back, and the scream immediately dies. As his body twists, he falls onto the floor. DHUMP.

The second man falls onto the ground on his ass, staring at the dense ball of meat sitting in front of him where his friend was just standing. He is frozen in place, perhaps even passed out while sitting.

As Chaos walks to the chair and looks at the ball of meat, a black hole suddenly appears, swallowing it whole.

Chaos takes his seat, looks up at the ceiling, and says, “This story is getting boring… I think I will write a new one!”