I stared at him, at the ancient thing wearing the skin of a tired old man, and I did not kneel. My legs were shaking, my body still aching from the pressure he had applied, but I did not kneel.
"You are not my master," I said. "Everything that you represent and follow is against everything I believe in. I have watched your body break in front of my eyes. You are a prisoner, and the Soul Flayer is using you; the Sovereign of the Stars is using you. This place is your cage, and you shall not leash me to it."
The Sovereign’s laughter stopped, and his face went still. I could see something flicker in his grey eyes. Maybe it could be pain or rage; it was hard for me to know, not against something like a Sovereign.
"You think I do not know?" he growled, and for a moment it was as if what stood before me was not a man but a gigantic beast. "You think I have not known for millennia? I am a Sovereign. I have lived longer than your entire fucking bloodline. I know exactly what I am."
The darkness came with the word. Not the darkness I had faced when I was attacked by the Soul Flayer that was hungry and invasive... the darkness fell on me like a floor dropped from a height, and my knees hit the ground before I decided anything, and I understood, in the half-second it took, that I had been wrong about who the dangerous one was.
Sad borrows this power... this darkness, but the Sovereign, Sid, owns it.
Silver blood lifted off my split lip and floated up past my eyes, and I watched it rise, and I thought, distantly, that a man about to be crushed should not be noticing his own blood go the wrong way.
"There," Sid said, gentle again. "That is better. That is the correct shape for a boy in front of a god."
∞
I did not stay down... I want that on the record. My knees were on the ground and the weight of a Sovereign’s Law was on my back, and I got one foot under me anyway, because the alternative was to let the word master stand, and I have knelt to the loop and to death and to a demon eating my mind for three months, and I was not going to add this old man to the list, even if he had the powers of a god.
My body was changing, constantly transforming into something that even a being like the Hollow Avatar did not understand, and perhaps it was what gave me the strength to push through, or perhaps it was the fact that I was pissed off and no longer knew the fear of death, but I refused to stay down.
"You," I said, through my teeth, "are not my master, and I serve no god."
The weight on me doubled, causing my foot to slip. More silver rose from me, from my nose now, and from a cut opening on my cheek under the pressure.
"I have been many things, master, king, emperor... god," Sid said. "This whole facility, millennia of working with the dead. I kept a god’s heart beating against its will. You are not a large thing to add, Elric Voss, and like it or not, you shall kneel and take me as your master."
If you asked me how I stood against this pressure, till this moment, I could not say, but I found myself able to speak through the world falling on my shoulders.
I gasped, "I’ve noticed a problem with your ownership." I got the foot back. I did not stand, but I did not sink either, and holding the line between the two took everything I had, which was the point, because I knew that as long as I was spending everything holding still, I was not being crushed, and as long as I was talking, he was listening instead of pressing.
"Everything here is dead, and you cannot see it. The knights. The heart of the god... This whole place." I looked up at him, and the darkness pouring out of him like a flood. It was one of the most spectacular displays of magic I had seen. "You don’t own things... You just keep them from stopping."
"You presume," Sid said softly, "to lecture the ruler of Darkness."
"I presume that you’ve been alone a very long time." The words came hard, one at a time. "You don’t want a servant on his knees; everything in this place is a testament to creatures on their knees, and I am the one thing in this place that will not kneel!"
The grey eyes of the Sovereign flickered, and for one second the Law of Darkness lightened, the crushing pressure lifting an inch, and in that inch I felt him wanting it, the thing I’d named, the awful loneliness of a god kept as a battery in his own house, and I felt how much it cost him to want it and how long it had been.
Then his face closed; the Conclave was a place of slaves and masters, and my words would not change this truth.
"Ah, you naive child... Wanting," Sid said, "is a habit I broke a long time ago. It is when you believe the answer might be yes." The weight came back, full, and my foot went out from under me again. "The answer here is never yes. So I do not want. I take. Kneel, boy, and you shall be the disciple of a being who has killed gods, and I will learn what you are at my leisure, and perhaps in a thousand years I will have found the language to ask you kindly. I have the time. You have given me a great deal of time."
The fox had been silent all this while, and I felt her move before I heard her; she had not been affected in the least by the pressure of the Sovereign, and she spoke out.
"He said no,"
The Sovereign’s eyes went to the sound, tracking the empty air beside me, where the sound came from, and his eyes could not see the fox, but went through her.
He could not see her!
The Law faltered, just a hair, and I stopped wondering whether I was the only one who could see her and started using this unexpected advantage.
"You hear that?" I got my foot under me. Stood, an inch, then more. "You can’t see what said it. There’s a great deal in this place you can’t see, Sid. I’d think about that before you decide you own me."