“Show the Truth.”

Tingling crossed his skin, and he felt strange. Nothing happened though, “Strange. Unless…”

Her eyes widened and she flinched away from him.

“It can’t be,” she whispered as tears showed in her eyes. She collected herself before looking him dead in the eyes, “I know who your parents are and the magic you wield, but it was supposed to be a myth. They… left me here, and sacrificed their lives for you.”

He kept smoking the cigarette, writing down what she said in his other hand.

“Calm down,” he said with steel in his voice. “What do we have to do? How do we save everybody?”

She looked at him in a new light but maintained her distance.

“Ahem,” she cleared her throat and collected herself. “As I said before, you will be leading the expedition into the underworld. Despite the new information, neither of us is strong enough to stop the true monsters out there. A lot of them have single-handedly sucked up whole veins, if not more, of mana to empower themselves. The monstrosity that took down the tier three… There’s no hope above ground.”

He nodded in understanding, “So I’ll be leading all these people into the underground, most likely to our deaths, to set up a city? That requires terraforming, a massive amount of materials, continuous logistics, and maybe another dome.”

“There will be no continued support. After you’ve left, there won’t be another expedition sent your way for five years. Minerals will have to be gathered from the subterranean world itself, but many preliminary scans have shown plenty of high-value mineral deposits. Think of all the Games you’ve played, because you will become the permanent Avatar.”

She handed him a compact cube that fit in the palm of his hands. He felt no leakage of power but saw how small and detailed the runes were on the surface.

“This will allow you to remain safe for some time, but you will be on a clock.” She looked away as though and began to speak. “I will teach you how to take control of your people so that you can command them with little resistance.”

His stomach sank as the Dominate rune appeared in front of her, “Your Will is mine.”

He felt a force begin to pull at him, but not from his body or mind. Instead, it came from his soul.

Disbelief colored his face and he looked at her as a monster for the first time since he’d entered the room. “You can’t be seriously expecting me to dominate everybody. My life partner will be with me.”

“Just make her a Hero then,” she looked at him dumbly, thinking that he was thinking too simply. “This isn’t a Game, but if it eases your mind, you can think of it as such. If that is what it takes to make you do what needs to be done, so be it.”

“They’re all different though,” he said as he recalled the many different races that had gathered in the room when he’d attempted his resistance against her.

“You’re thinking too shallowly. The Games are an embodiment of the power of runes. You will grow with your people. Assimilate them all when they’ve been dominated. Everyone you’ve seen so far in Eternia is my creation for me. A home to lead from. Everyone here is mine.”

His eyes flashed with disgust, and he began to walk away. “Go meet your people. You leave in one month. That will give you the time you need to do what you need to do.”

Her words echoed about in his mind repeatedly as he walked to the gathering area. His stomach was nauseous and he wrote the manifest rune in the air four times in rapid succession. He put the notebook and stylus in the back of his pocket and lit the cigarette, flicking away the fire from his fingertips.

The Committee was easy to find, but he hesitated as he thought of what The One had said. There were about five hundred people in there, and he would need to...

He pushed through the doors open, walked across the stage through the curtains, and with a sinking feeling in his gut, looked at all the faces before him. The talk ended and they waited for him to speak. Tension hung in the air as he went face to face, only stopping to flick the burnt butt onto the floor.

He started over at the first person, met their gaze, and issued a magically empowered command, “Stand.”

The person’s eyes went wide and then they glared back at him, attempting to resist his command, but eventually stood.

“Who are you and why should I care?”

The only response was a glare and the sound of clenched teeth.

“Don’t speak then. I won’t force you, but I will be leading this expedition. Would you prefer me to send you off on a task without knowing what you’re good at? Should I send you into the face of danger if you have no ability to handle yourself?”

The raven-haired human continued to glare, spitting her response with venom, “Name’s Mina, and I’m from Grosdo, tier one. I been workin’ as a farmer mah whole life. I got two youngins at home wit’ mah Robbie. They quickly be approachin’ their Gamin’ Day, and I wanna join this here expedition in hopes that they’ll have somewhere they can grow and work and live in peace, without no threats of death from the sky collapsin’ on ‘em.”

They kept going through the crowd, and he recognized a pattern. Nobody originated from a northern city and nobody came from a tier three city or higher. When they realized he had come from a tier two city and was in the top 100, they stopped questioning his authority. Especially when they looked at his age.

After he had burned everything into his mind, all their names, family, origin city, and specialty, he looked around at each of the five hundred and forty-three people gathered before him. His eyes landed on Aria as she chatted with the person next to her, and he looked away as shame and guilt burned his cheeks.

He knew how much mana the runes he needed to cast cost, and started making time and appointments with each member, leaving Aria for last. He…

“Well done,” The One whispered from behind him. He ignored her and lit another cigarette, blowing it in her direction. “Childish, however, you must feel strange now. Those that would be seen as your kind, your family, peers, friends, even lovers… To find you’re different and have to put yourself above them so that you can lead and not be questioned…”

“Fuck off.”

“Language!” Her eyes all blared at him, but he wasn’t in the mood. She couldn’t see his face, but he hated everything he knew he had to do. He would be a bad guy, using all those in front of him, so that the rest of the world could survive.

His aura radiated out subconsciously and consumed the mana she had used to cow him. Her eyes dilating as she backed away in fear, not wishing to be too close to him.

Aria happily talked with the person next to her, not realizing the gloom and despair that Xavier felt. His first meeting would be in ten minutes, but it would be held privately so that none of the others could see what was happening.

He commandeered The One’s meeting room and blacked out the transparent walls with help of the command table, the controls able to modify anything in the entire facility. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of doing what she suggested.

When Mina walked inside the room, he gestured for her to sit next to him.

“Why you havin’ ta be meetin’ us like this?” she asked as she sat.

His hand quickly reached forward, touching the side of her head, and the world changed as the dominate rune hung above them.

They entered a dreamscape, much like the ones created for the Games, and he saw her Avatar. She held an obsidian pitchfork and brandished it toward him.

“Submit. I don’t want to hurt you, but I need to do this.” He tried to reason with her, but she screamed as she charged forward.

The amount of experience he’d accumulated over the years from actively controlling his Avatar was nothing to scoff at, and it showed when he quickly disarmed her and his knee digging into her back.

“If you don’t submit, I will break you. Do you understand?” he asked calmly, though he steeled himself for what he knew would come next. Her Will to life was…

“Fuck yerself, ya prick.”

“I’m sorry, but I warned you,” he said as her conscious mind was burned away, leaving only a husk of what formerly inhabited the body. Now that there was no Will, it was easy enough to assimilate her once they were back in the room with the basic control table.

He had Mina sit halfway down the table, maintaining a straight posture while staring lifelessly at the wall. He felt like a dictator, his mind racing a mile a minute trying to find any solution to be able to avoid doing the same, or similar, to another five hundred and forty-two…

“Hey, thanks for seeing me,” a chipper youth walked in, Malcolm was his name, and sat down. He looked at Mina and his face slowly started to become significantly worried at Mina’s lack of response to, well, anything at all. “Is she ok?”

Xavier rose from his seat and approached Malcolm, “She is an example of resistance. Malcolm, listen…”

He told the youth what he was about to do, and the man’s bubbliness faded. He slunk into the back of his chair and stared at the ceiling.

“Do it then,” he acquiesced, though a Xavier could feel the sadness and defeat as a nearly physical presence.

“I don’t like that it has to be like this-.”

“Don’t try to justify anything to me. Just get it over with.”