Did he feel apprehension?

Well, no.

Honestly he was beginning to wonder if he had some sort of identifiable medical condition that repressed his ability to feel fear. Then again, that wasn't exactly true, he had felt fear before at least twice that he could think of. Once when he had almost died in an ice storm on an alien planet, and another time when he had almost lost his throne and his life to an adrenaline addiction, a fact that he was still deeply embarrassed about to this day. Other than those instances, however, he couldn't think of any other examples.

Still the looks of pity being passed to him by his escort did not go unnoticed.

A billion years?

Would this really be so bad? Had he truly gotten himself into something he couldn't handle.

He hoped not.

Maybe one of these days his bravado would come back to bite him in the ass. Maybe today was that day. The guards walked him briskly forward stepping sharply onto an elevator that had no buttons or dials. Symbols appeared in the air at the center of the elevator car along with a cool female voice.

"Seventh Ring."

"You know, Ted Budy, Hitler, Mornix, and Geeanan are all on the seventh level too."

"Mornix, huh." Celex said as they began to move downward, "My great great great great great grandmother."

"So psychopathy runs in the family I see."

Celex shrugged, "I'm not a psychopath."

The guards exchanged a look, "Really?"

He shook his head, "No, I care about those people back on the Empyrean, they're my friends. I worry about them and I want them to succeed in battle."

One of the guards snorted, "Or you see them as your property. Are you even capable of remorse, fear, sadness?" The question was accusatory, and the guard had clearly already made up his mind, so Celex don't stoop to answering the question. Didn't stop him from thinking back to the incredible hurt he had felt when his primary wife betrayed him and set up her coup, the well of anger and sadness that had driven him, in a moment of rage, to destroy a planet just to get back at her.

No one should have that kind of paper, he was sure of that now.

And when that memory was gone he thought of the addiction and the fear that came with it.

Almost losing his life.

And finally, after his death, when he and Kelly had moldered together in darkness. He remembered the friendship they had established there held in each other's arms to stave off the horror of the blackness.

Had he shed a tear when they escaped?

Maybe

Only he and Kelly would ever know the answer to that question.

The door dinged open, and they stepped out into the hallway, cool and grey and lined with prison doors. Didn't look too intimidating, but it was really what was behind those doors that mattered.

The walk down the hall was a short one, turning towards the second or third door which opened with a soft hiss. The room inside was bright white, forcing him to raise his hands and squint. When they finally adjusted he found himself looking in on a small, sparse room, white padded walls, a small cot in one corner, a sink, but no mirror, and at the center of the room, a chair.

Looked sort of like those chairs you'd find in a human dentists office,, or an electric chair you would find in a prison.

And with that chair, stood a beautiful woman.

She was tall,

Muscular

Elegant.

And had a mane of technicolor hair, whose pattern he would have recognized anywhere, "Avix." He snarled.

Ex Emperor Celex's ex wife sneered in return, "You have no idea how much I am going to enjoy this." Celex tried to dig in his heels, but the guards shoved him forward, unfortunately within Avix's reach. She did not waste time, reaching out with one hand and grabbing him by the jaw, nails digging into either of his cheeks as she pulled him closer.

She squeezed hard, but he refused to make a sud glaring up at her with contempt.

"Don't try to fight." She said softly as the two guards retreated from the room, "WHile you are here, you are entirely within my power." She made that fact clear a moment later with a little demonstration. A wave of ice washed through him, and before he truly understood what was happening, his body began to shrink arms receding, body morphing, until he dangled from her hand by his fur, feet dangling down and kicking helplessly as she held him.

She laughed as she watched him struggle, "I get now why the humans think we are so cute, tiny.... Helpless."

He swung a foot at her, but that didn't really do any good.

She let him struggle for a while, a lazy smile playing across her face, "As much as I am enjoying this moment the chair fits you better the other way. The cold ice receded from his body, and before he knew it he was back to his chosen form. She still held him by the hair, her fingers tangled through his roots, pulling at his scalp forcing him to bend over and twist.

She was enjoying this

Having him in her power.

"Now I ghetto make you pay, for what you did to me."

Celex snarled, "What I did to you I don't regret, traitor." her hand gripped harder but he didn't stomp, "How was the ninth ring? Cozy I hope."

She twisted even harder, bringing him to one knee, "You will not speak to me like that, not here."

"Don't go playing the victim card. You and I both know you were a power hungry bitch." He tried tilting his head up to look at her, "But we both know I like that in a woman." She gritted her teeth at him, "Should have known you were going to stab me in the back, after everything we had been through together."

She laughed, "Please you had other wives to amuse yourself with, I was nothing important to you."

He snorted, "The infidelity card only works when your species is monogamous, and you and I both know you had your own "amusement as it were". As for being important to me, you were. I thought we had something, a similar goal."

"And that is where you were stupid. I didn't want to be your companion, I wanted to be emperor."

"Should have been better then."

She snarled, shivering him forward and into the chair.

He tried to turn but before he knew it she was already strapping one of his hands into place,

"I am told, when the Makers designed the Celzex construct, it had the unique issue of causing something they referred to as rage bleed. In layman's terms it means that the celex construct was bad at containing the side of a soul that controlled rage. Construct biologists believe that's why we were such a callous and warlike race, more so than the Drev or the humans."

"There a point to this/" Celex grumbled.

"Yes," She strapped his foot into place, before leaning forward over him. Her hands searched for the buckles over his chest, "It means, I am disappointed to see the true you, weak, unambitious."

That stung, but he didn't show her that.

"You're just jealous I have people that actually like me."

She laughed, "Your need for validation is amusing to me."

She stepped behind him, slotting a small half circlet onto his head to rest against his temples, "This device is designed to channel memories and emotions into your brain." She laughed, "I had to get the newest model in order to calibrate it to your request. The amount of information I will be forced to funnel into your mind is.... Well it definitely leans on the side of cruel and unusual, but you insisted, and I wouldn't want to disappoint you." She tapped the side of the device, "With this you will be able to feel and experience the lives of others as if they were your own simultaneously. At such a high rate of flow, this will probably tear your soul into little quivering pieces." She grinned, "I look forward to watching the show."

And then she pressed the button.

Celex could not have described in words what happened next, because no words could ever convey the sheer amount of pain and terror that followed. The fear of one, manageable, easy, but the fear of a couple billion stacked on top of each other all at once.

Incredible.

Unfathomable.

Terrible.

Over and over again, he felt the ground shake, the sky turn red. Violent death after violent death plagued him as the planet was ripped apart, billions trillions dying in a matter of seconds, but living just long enough to understand the apocalypse he had brought upon them. His very soul screamed, churned and attempted to escape as it was racked with a billion lives second after agonizing second. Celex had rarely experienced fear, but in that moment, he understood fear more deeply than any creature had ever truly understood because he felt it through the experiences of others.

And finally he realized.

He had never known fear, not in his life, not truly.

And when he thought it would be over, still it came in a torrent, racing through his mind and ripping him apart piece by piece. He couldn't have screamed even if he wanted to scream, but he couldn't find his mouth, and the screams of the dying weren't enough to express the agony of fear and pain that followed.

The children's fear was the worst, because it came with confusion, and the inability to understand what was happening. All he knew was that the end was coming.

How can one describe the feeling?

He was a glass, and the ocean had been poured into him all at once.

He was the singularity of a black hole, the center of a collapsing universe, an impossibly small point of mass with matter collapsing in around it.

He could not hold the memories, the cumulative experiences that in themselves added up to hundreds of thousands of years of experience, over and over and over again, his soul rubbed raw on sandpaper until there was nothing but a bloody smear left, infinite pain and suffering that seemed it would never end, go on to eternity until the very universe decayed away.

He could have been there for an eternity and he wouldn't have known the difference.

He didn't expect it to end.

But was surprised when it finally did.

All at once the pain was gone, and its sheer absence was a relief so incredible, it too could not have been described in words. Light filled his eyes, and for once he was not alone. The room above him was white, the walls around him white. He barely recognized the place, as a distant memory behind a wall of suffering and pain which was so poignant it was hard to see past.

Had he known this place.

He turned his head, looking up into the face of a woman who was barely familiar.

Her eyes were wide.

It was, hard to remember who she was, or where he was, but as the pain trickled slowly away he began to recognize things. She looked....scared, awed maybe, he couldn't tell, but the pain was gone, evaporated, and behind it left a gaping chasm in his mind where he was unable to process what had occurred.

But still it was gone

Hot tears rolled down his face.

But with them came something else, a certain sense of urgency. He had to.... Help.... Someone?

He pulled at his bonds, "Let me go.:

The words felt foreign on his tongue, but the woman obliged, and it was to his surprise that he recognized her.... He had felt her. And then it came back to him, Avix, and with that realization followed other memoires, ones that were recent to his body if not his mind.

He was here to be punished

That was once his wife.

And there were others waiting for his help to save the universe.

He stumbled to his feet.

She stepped back.

He leaned heavily against the wall, feeling as if his very mind was bleeding, hemorrhaging like a civ, but then he began to laugh. She seemed quite unsettled, and as his laughter continued, two guards burst into the room, freezing in place and backing up as he straightened to his feet, familiarizing himself with the memories of the past few years, before the chasm in his head.

The tears did not stop, not even a little, but still the people who looked on him seemed unsettled

Terrified.

He knew now

He shouldn't have come out of that being able to think, remembering who he was at all, But.... he did.

And he knew who he was, and he knew what he had done..

But now.... He had paid for it.

And that made him very dangerous.

He stumbled past the guards and out into the hall, leading himself away, past everyone who stepped back in shock and confusion, not daring to go near him. The more steps he took, the steadier he became slowly knitting the chasm in his head back together.

Remembering

Until he could almost pretend a thousand years had not gone through his head.

He stepped out into the docking bay watching the faces frozen in shock around him.

He was not supposed to have survived in tact.

Yet here he was, on his feet.

And ready to Kick apollyon's ass.