The King Arrives

[Meruem]

How very strange. How very unnatural.

I always knew what I was, even before I was born. King. The rightful ruler of all that stands below me. My birth merely confirmed it. I am stronger, faster, better, more intelligent, more fitting than any other living being.

That is simple fact. I am destined to rule.

Until one finds out that someone stands above you.

This Omni. I knew nothing of him until now, yet he has existed all along. So was I wrong?

“Hey. You there. Are you a new Prime?”

I look up. A white being. Not Omni. This one is taller, with black eyesockets and more of a ridged, chitinous exoskeleton. I suspect it is a human in armour.

Next to him stands another such being. “Careful, 34999.”

“I know.”

I find I am sitting, but I rise.

I …. what?

My body is … different! So much weaker! I feel as I did when that nuclear bomb went off. Unnaturally weak. Robbed of all but a fraction of my true strength.

I look up at the two white beings. “Where are my vassals?” A note of urgency passes into my voice. “Where is Menthuthuyoupi? Neferpitou? Shaiapouf?”

The second of the two, the calmer, raises his palms. “That’s okay, you’re confused. This is the Omniverse. You’re in the Nexus.”

I listen, even as I feel my stress level rising.

“We’re stormtroopers. We come from the Empire. Our home is Coruscant.”

He points far off, and my keen eyes spy an archway of shimmering steel. Human creation, or Omni’s? I have so many questions.

He leans forward. I can see that he’s scared, but trying to reach out to me. “You’re a Prime, right?”

Prime.

“What is that?” I ask.

“It means ‘someone who was summoned by Omni’. We,” he gestures to himself and the other white one, “Were summoned by Primes such as yourself. Some folks call us ‘secondaries’. We don’t have powers. Most of us … most of us are pretty normal. But Primes like you can’t die. And you can summon people, items … anything.”

My eyes widen. ‘Omni’ had mentioned these things, but only in vague terms. Summoning people? That means … Komugi can live again.

My heart races.

“So you,” I say flatly, “Wish to recruit me to your cause, yes?”

They balk momentarily. Then the speaker speaks: “We try to recruit Primes, yes.”

“That is only logical.” I touch a finger to my chin. “This world is very different to mine. There seem to be many new rules.” I look up. “Tell me, if I come to your ‘Coruscant’, am I obligated to join you?”

He shakes his head, and I can tell he’s pleased. “No, not unless you want to.”

Hm. “And there, can I freely obtain information?”

He nods energetically. “Yes. We have a library, the greatest in all the Omniverse! You’re free to peruse it. We’ll even give you a place to stay on Tier One. It’s the greatest place in Coruscant!”

He swallows. Something is making him nervous, and that’s plain. He’s afraid of me.

“… All that we ask is that you follow the rules. Violence is strictly prohibited. Theft, damage of property …”

He goes on to list a number of rules and I listen patiently. All of the rules seem perfectly reasonable. I would have decreed much the same. Though I’m surprised they allow such freedom. What does this ‘Coruscant’ look like?

When he seems finally done, he seems expectant. I am perplexed. Do Primes normally find these rules so difficult to follow?

I nod. “I understand your rules, and I agree to follow them for my duration in the city.”

The two stormtroopers look at each other, sharing something. I’ll admit, I’m not so taken with the idea of following the orders of lesser beings. But not all humans have proven to be savages, and whoever runs this city must be someone of reasonable power and intelligence. Perhaps this world is different.

“I have a question,” I ask.

“Fire away,” says the first stormtrooper, now seemingly less jumpy in my presence.

“Are you all … humans, in this city?”

“Yes, mostly. But we’re from a world where many races share the same planets.” He pauses. “What is it like in your world?”

I think back.

When I arrived in that world, I was different. Young. I did not shy from violence.

The King tears his way free of his mother’s womb. The Queen lie bleeding, and one retainer rushes forward to treat her injuries.

This retainer does not see the King. This retainer not prostrate himself.

His head vanishes.

“Do not make me repeat myself,” says the young King. “Bring me food.”

So imperious was I that I let my mother die without even learning the name she had given me.

That only came later.

With his three vassals, the King moves East, to the republic of East Gorteau.

Along the way he feeds and discovers his power. He feeds on the nen of others. Rare humans, those with great power, fill him with especial power and taste the best.

I took their country … I dethroned their despot ruler.

I was still so young …. I knew so little.

That’s when I met … her.

In boredom, the King has begun to learn various games. He reads, learns their rules, and then proceeds to play the world champions of each board game.

None of them offer any challenge. Some of them try to run. They don’t make it far.

Then arrives a young woman. Blind and feeble, a snotty nose. A pathetic sight, but the greatest Gungi player in the world. And she beats the King.

Time and time again, she beats the King.

And he finds it …

Invigorating.

My vassals were all wrapped up in the final preparations for processing the country’s denizens, bringing them to me to eat. That was my purpose. To be the King. To rule.

And yet, all I cared about was a game. Because every minute I spent playing, I could feel my mind expanding. New concepts …. new potential strategies. I was compelled. I dove willingly into the depths of the game and found my hunger for greater depth growing in tandem with my mind.

Shaiapouf feared it.

The first day I felt fear was when all the people of East Gorteau had been assembled to be processed. That is the day when the humans struck back. They bombarded the palace with lances of nen from the sky, not knowing that other humans in the firing line.

The King finds Komugi bleeding out and orders his vassal, Neferpitou, to save her. She will live.

He understands now. He cares for her.

But even though they had struck against me, I found it in myself to be the better leader.

I went to parley … with that man.

Netero, chairman of the Hunter association, challenges the King to fight.

The King refuses. He offers to talk. To make peace between their two races.

The chairman Netero hesitates. Then he tells the King of his mother’s fate. That she died … and told the doctors the name she’d decided for her son. The King’s name.

Netero knew it. And he would tell the King, if only he could beat him.

I was blinded by hunger. By the game. It was just like fighting Komugi in Gungi. It was exhilarating.

I executed my strategy flawlessly. Unlike Gungi, the sides were not equal. While he was a truly exceptional human, the most powerful and the greatest fighter I have ever met, I was objectively his superior.

But he had not expected to win. I could not fathom his logic. I did not understand my enemy.

The Chairman, Netero, his right arm and leg gone. His vital energy, nen, spent entirely on his final attempt to win the fight …

He has accepted his death. He smiles and speaks the King’s name.

Then he plunges his fingers into his own heart.

Within his chest explodes an atomic bomb.

Even the atomic bomb didn’t kill me. But I only barely clung to life.

Shaiapouf and Youpi … they found me. Fed me most of their own bodies. They were … exquisite. Filled with the greatest energy I had ever tasted.

But the bomb had infected me with a sickness that nothing could purge. It spread from me … first to my vassals. And then to her.

The King sits, playing Gungi with Komugi. The radiation sickness that grips him is contagious. But still she sits with him, even after his retainers have passed from it. They play.

“Komugi …” he says. “It appears I never defeated you a single time.”

“What are you saying? We’ve just gotten started!”

“Yes …”

They play.

But the King is tired.

“I need to take a short nap,” he says. “Will you hold my hand?”

“I understand,” she says.

They sit in the silence.

“Komugi,” he asks. “Will you call me by my name, one last time?”

“Good night,” she says.

“Meruem.”

All these memories are difficult to recall. It feels like it was all a long time ago, somehow.

Perhaps this is all a dream. Perhaps this is the afterlife.

The stormtrooper clears his throat. “Well … well then, would you like to come with us?” He motions to his vehicle, a small bike.

I realise I have been standing still and silent for a long while. “Yes,” I say finally. “But I think … I think I would like to walk.”

The troopers share a look. “As you wish,” says the speaker.

His voice sounds a bit like Netero’s. My tail coils. But his body language is totally different. He wears a helmet, but the fear is written on him like plain ink. He is common.

We walk, and I think.