PRIVATE DOCUMENTATION; LATE IMPERIAL ERA
>The following is the 11th report filed by Byz. Agent #42 on the matter of the Warrior-King’s disappearance.
In a backwater settlement between the Second-Walls of two multiverses in Paersian space, I encountered a Nihoni man who claimed to have heard a tale of the Byzantine’s first time in Nihoni space. I cannot verify anything included in the following description, and am only recording it for the sake of completeness, as this account is not recorded anywhere else in our records as far as I could find.
NIHONI MAN: Ah, you mean the Bizancheen? Yes, we know of him. We know of how he wandered into our lands, and the lesson he learned there.
BYZ. AGENT #42: Lesson?
NIHONI MAN: Yes… this is a popular tale in my home system:
It was early in his rule, not long after he created your empire. The Bizancheen was alone wandering through neutral space. You see, he had learned how to ‘mimic’ his enemies for the very first time, and he discovered that he could quickly gain more power by exploiting his new ability.
By the time he reached my people’s lands, he was becoming quite desperate! He’d been searching and searching, and he was yet to meet anyone extraordinary enough to be worth his mimicry, and as you know, the Sultanate and his rival at its head were getting closer and closer to total victory. He was about ready to give up, and turn towards other means of growing in strength, when at last, in a small system at the edges of our space, he heard a most incredible operatic voice.
It was unlike anything he’d heard before, in terms of both range and inflection. He found that young man who was singing, and challenged him right then and there to a vocal contest. The boy knew who he was – every young boy among us was told the stories of the trickster-warrior, the Bizancheen – but he accepted all the same.
You must understand, what we Nihoni consider to be ‘genius,’ one ‘gifted from heaven.’ You know that in the old times, there was a phrase, ‘All men are created equal.’ I know what was meant by it, of course, but in the end it is untrue. All men are not created equal – a rare few are born with insane natural talent, true ‘freaks,’ even ‘monsters’ in how gifted they are. And this boy was a monster among monsters.
The Warrior-King just smiled at the accepted challenge, and boasted that he’d like to go first. He’d heard the boy sing, and had mentally copied his skill. He was sure he’d win – and so he began. They say that his vocal warm-ups alone shook all the heavens combined… He sang with such force and such power, that had he not restrained the effect, all the air on their world would have been shaken and sundered apart from the atmosphere.
But the boy was not deterred. He called the Bizancheen, ‘Pretty good,’ … can you imagine the audacity?
And then, it is said, he delivered the most beautiful chorus ever heard before and likely to ever be heard again. His voice soared and dipped, opened and narrowed. He sang quickly, then slowly, then crescendo’d and peaked.
Your Warrior-King was moved to tears. There could be no doubt that he had lost. He was an honorable man, however, and admitted his defeat. He gave that boy a medallion which is still held in his town to this very day. And it is said that from that point forward, the Bizancheen came to understand the nature of true genius, and swore to find some deeper, more refined method for mimicking his rivals.
BYZ AGENT #42: My superiors might consider it blasphemy to hear this. How could a Hero like the Byzantine lose in any contest, even in the past? His true form lay beyond time, they assert, and so any notion of progression is below him.
[The NIHONI MAN laughs]
NIHONI MAN: Have you lot really twisted a hero into a god already? One who is beyond time does not erase his past selves, he only exists alongside and apart from them. For all the studying and research you’ve done, it seems to me like you don’t even understand the hero you all worship. We’ve known it all along, before he even created that doomed empire you now serve. Come on, ‘agent’ – when will you wake up and realize what really happened between your Bizancheen and the Sultan?
It is impossible to verify the veracity of the man’s story. With various factions encroaching on the Empire’s borders, as well as the sudden disappearance of all hardcopies and the immense impact that had on all citizens, eventual collapse seems certain unless the Warrior-King returns.