Chapter 42: Kamura
She’d made her decision, and she would stand by it. Grandmother Mobutu was wrong. Toko was the rightful Prime of Shadriss, and he deserved the chance to take his place as Overlord. The decision had cost her everything—her position in her Family, the confidence of her grandmother—she’d thrown all that away when she chose not to call in the airstrike. Shaking, defiant, she followed Toko through the confusion of priests as he raced for the throne like a flame of red.
Grabbing the false Prime by the hair, Toki hacked at the back of the boy’s neck, slicing away the connector there. Hacking through sinew, bone, and nerve, until blood sprayed out, painting them and the throne in the scarlet of Nish. There was no resistance from the young host body. Slack faced and drooling even before Toko reached him, he didn’t seem to notice the knife in his flesh. Jak’s attack on Bolon must have had an even greater effect than they’d hoped. The body convulsed once as blood jetted across them both, and then went limp. The air reeked with the copper smell of it. From across the room, Kumara heard the Regent scream in agony. The music died, and the dancing staggered to a stop. Confusion swept the room like a wind through the reeds.
Kamura tore the crown from the hands of the shocked High Priest, shoving the red clad figure off the dais and into the milling red-robes below. The crown was an ugly thing, worse than the ornate gold throne. It was a helmet of platinum metalwork and faceted gems, mostly the emeralds and rubies symbolic of the two great priesthoods, with a spill of the silvery beads so favored by the nobles of Shadriss hanging down all around the rim. She thrust it toward Toko.
"Take it!"
Snatching the crown, he flipped it over, and Kamura glimpsed glossy black on the inside. With a tug, he ripped a simple black circlet free of the crown and threw the gaudy metal away. Was this unimpressive looking artifact the God Core?
"Mine," he said as he threw back his hood.
With his free hand, he tugged off the black mask that covered his face. He looked alien to her at that moment, his expression set and determined. Had she done the right thing?
"Mine."
He yanked the circlet onto his head, tilting it back so that it made contact with the connector on the back of his neck. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the circlet seemed to melt, to flow like liquid on his skin, disappearing into his hair, into the flesh and bone of his skull.
There was a pulse.
It was as if a still heart suddenly beat, as if a cacophony smoothed into music, as if a fresh wind blew away the fog; it was all those things, yet none of them. The world was abruptly right and orderly. Everything was exactly as it should be.
She smiled. Most of all, it was right that Toko was Overlord.