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Creitus knows he's the kind of success story they wave under the noses of kith to keep them in place. "Look at this great man who rose from nothing, born a slave on the edges of the empire, now advisor to kings."
Well, no longer an advisor to kings. They caught him.
"You too can rise, if you only work hard." As if everyone's as lucky as Creitus has been. As if everyone's as canny as Creitus has had to be, to turn luck into this.
Creitus remembers little about being a slave. He was very young when the Engwithans came with fire and liberation, and even that young, he showed enough promise that he was scooped up, educated, shaped to be the example to keep others complacent.
It's a way to ensure the loyalty of a conquered people. Break the bonds of culture and family, and the child will be loyal to the only home they know. Raise up their brightest, their most talented, ensure promise will be rewarded, and drudges will work to give their children a chance at something better, even if that reward comes to only one in a thousand, one in a million.
He doesn't remember punishments or work or more than a hazy impression of his mother's face, but he remembers being hungry. When he really focuses on it, he can still feel the pain that came with it.
He has read the military records of that campaign that explain when the Engwithans marched, owners left their slaves chained, caged, to starve, while they tried to run. A pointless cruelty.
He can still remember the taste of the rich foods the Engwithans brought with them and how it tasted coming back up when his stomach couldn't handle it. He can remember the soldier that had held him on her lap laughing when he fell to the ground, sobbing because it felt like his stomach itself was trying to leave him.
He has never stopped being angry since that moment. It is always burning inside him, threatening to eat its way up his throat to fill the world around him with flames. Sometimes he wants nothing more than to scream, to sink his teeth into the nearest person like he's no more than an animal.
He hasn't come this far by giving into those impulses. He has held down the fire. He has pressed it into form, sharpened it to an edge, and turned it into a weapon against the Engwithans.
As if nobody starves in the empire. As if no one is enslaved.
He knows who starves first in a famine.
Creitus has dedicated his life to taking it down from within. He has earned kings' ears with his wit and luck and willingness to do anything short of sacrifice himself. He has lied, forged, and killed to undermine them.
He's made money off it, sure, but he hasn't kept it. It's all gone back to people: to feeding people, to helping them find stability, to helping them escape cruel masters. He had to be clever about that, too. Too much in one place, or money given directly to the wrong person, and he'd have been found out. He's let people die when he could've helped them, to ensure he could help the next five.
He wasn't clever enough in the end to destroy an empire. He's been found out, and now-
And now-
And now, they've given him a choice, and he's chosen to live.
Now, he's helping build something larger and far more terrible.
There are people alive who wouldn't be, if he hadn't done this. There are people with food to eat, people more free from the tyrants than they ever could have been otherwise, all because he has acted.
He knows he's done good work, that he's unstabilized things, because they wouldn't have put him on this project if he wasn't good at what he does. He'd do it all again, if he had the choice.
It would've been easier to let them kill him. It might have been less painful to be tortured to death than it is some days to work on this - project.
They haven't told him everything, but Creitus is sharper than the inquisitors' knives, and even if he's not an expert, he's stolen enough delicate research on the subject of souls to have an idea what they're doing. He's sure enough of just how much it's going to take to make this happen, and he knows how little people in power value the lives of common kith.
It's going to involve sacrifice. It's going to involve a lot of sacrifice.
There's no way Creitus can stop that, even as good as he is. They'd kill him if he tried anything, and even if he could kill the other architects, even if he could take out everyone directly involved in this grand, cruel plan, more would just step up to take their places.
It's the most united the Engwithans have ever been, and they're all going to pay the price for it.
Creitus turns himself wholly toward finding the ways to turn his anger into a waiting knife in the gut of these new gods.
It isn't easy work. They want a god of slaves. They want a cruel god, a violent god, a god that demands its worshippers sacrifice more of themselves than they can destroy of their oppressors. They want something cruel and biting that will look like it's helping slaves even while it's keeping them in their place.
They want the same promise they have now: If you give enough, you, or someone near you, can have a better life.
There's only so far Creitus can stretch it before someone notices what he's doing, like everything in life, and the great white flame in his stomach threatens to devour him whole. He accepts that there are going to be so many more unknown sacrifices before anything can change.
But there will be a change. He'll see to it.
Kith are going to die and die again before anything good can come of Creitus's work, but he pours all his hate into his design with intent to turn one god against the rest. Not the superficial rebellion they want, the treacherous slave, the simpering servant, but something that will consider the long game. A creature that will make those sacrifices worth something, in the end. The system will be destroyed, whatever the cost.
Creitus hopes to build something like himself.
***
Creitus, like all the architects but one, is part of the sacrifice. It's a reward to some and a punishment to others. Creitus is past caring. He feels emptied, even before the machines do their work.
All Creitus hopes is that he's done this right. He's going to die, and the thing that exists next-
He'll die not knowing if it's been enough.
The machines switch on, and Creitus is pulled from body. He experiences a brief, disorienting moment as a soul in a sea of souls, and then he ceases to be.
(Skaen wakes, hunched and smiling, and looks askance to Woedica.)