Chapter 47

Emsie once wrote. That, He had no notion of how the armies of acrimony would wage the upcoming war, but the war after, they’d fight with sticks and stones in the wreckage of what remained.

It gave grounds for current thinking, to abstain from using the weaponry of former times.

. The Banshee, wholly machine and only partly alive, was a relic from the days of yester. It hovered cloudlike over the now-darkened sky and descended, where it vanished through a gap in the crimson canopy of the tall wyne wood trees as it eeked out its prey.

Macabre was its visage, pale, frozen; it panned around, attending keenly for the subtle yet faint blip amongst the rich tapestry of background clangour, which stood out, as insignificant as the rattle of a cricket’s legs in a symphony of other sounds.

Almost alluring her… the vibration of a shield belt, perhaps.

. The eerie strangeness

Dilating her bio-mechanical eyes as if to trace the frequency and bandwidth source, as alike as wetting her index finger and unsheathing it into the wind.

A disconnected crackle from a mouthpiece emanated, almost as if it were radio static. It spoke, whilst her lips did not move or quiver.

“Processing the location of the anomaly – detecting heat source,” declared the machine, the unspeakable creature from antiquity beleaguered its vision onto a threatening, far-off heat silhouette of a canine form, diagnosing it as a non-hostile insurgent but perhaps dangerous, nevertheless. Hard-bitten, it decided to neutralise the lone Meerwolf.

The dark Hourie was only partially alive — its carnal pleasure receptors wired up perversely. as the Meerwolf infringed nearer on its unsuspecting prey. It observed its game moving, nearing, as it hindered its impulse to kill.

Until finally, it opened its mouth far wider than any normal creature could and shrieked in a maddeningly tragic fashion as the wolf arrested stock still, and its hide was seen to ruffle.

There it was.

An odd sound?

Not a howl to the two moons of mars.

This was something unnatural.

Cracking — unsettling, like fingers scraping across a chalkboard.

The wolf mewled as slowly the noise of shattering bones seemed to accompany the horrible constant noise until, eventually, the destitute wolf fell into a pile like tumbled Dominoes—eyes, teeth, ribs and other features that were unrecognisable now.

An ominous echo from antiquity that stated the obvious — These violent delights have violent consequences, and in their triumph ruin like fire and powder, which as they kiss is consumed.

The vilest thing ever made by Martian hands seemed to shiver with delight as she savoured her orgasm. A surge of endorphins jolted from the spine and the ribs to the crown of the head — and then, efficiently, quickly, with no emotion, it scoured once more for the anonymous blip In The small clearing.

Die a hero or live long enough to become a villain! Min understood the sentiment well.

You could be heroic for a time, but you could never be always heroic.

And some things, some things, were unstated in the covenant—the filthy work? It would undoubtedly be expunged from the slate, ignored by the histories.

Min looked up at the darkening sky as she looked towards Giddy

“My Queen, it would seem that we are stuck here for the time being!”

“And you dismissed Leftennant Ash Vani!” said the Queen, resonating cryptically.

The air without the rays of the sun was ostensibly chiller.

The Queen shivered — and cleared her throat as she awkwardly asked,

“You know what I remember most vividly about you? Your penchant for solving enigmas, riddles?!”

She mulled over the topic before she bluntly probed.

“Sx Min, are you going to kill me?”

“What an odd question!”

Min froze as she felt her sword arm twitch.

“I’m afraid to say your majesty, Yes… I am, and there isn’t a blind thing you can do to stop it!”

“Assassination, but why Min?” the Queen asked earnestly.

“Because you are not our Queen! Khdyjan blood has been preserved for millennia and has no corporal imperfections — it is improbable that you would contract Morgoths Anaemia as it would have been bred out of your genealogy long ago. Which can only mean… One thing? You are an anomaly, a changeling — but there is something I want to know?”

Gaudete’s expression was one of being unmoved.

“You know, I am actually relieved. I knew this time would come. So, you don’t know how heavy lies weigh upon you.”

She continued, looking somewhat relieved the end was nearing, and in a calm voice, she proceeded with.

“You want to know? How I knew about our waiting pact!”

Min nodded.

“I can’t do anything about what I am – what I am is an immutable characteristic,”

She frowned. “After the secret mortality of the real princess Gaudete khdyja, the old emperor sought out an orphan of a changeling genus so even the Queen mother wouldn’t know!”

“Sometimes a lie to stave off grief, maybe a forgivable sin. I suppose… initially, it was only the father’s duty to see his wife smile again,”

“but over time, he came to love me as his own and forgot that I was a cuckoo in the nest?!”

“That’s how I know min,”

“Because it was me!” she said in a whispering tone.

“So, I suppose one is left with a dilemma!”

Min turned away momentarily and then stared once again at the sovereign as her jaw was tight and was seen to bulge at the mandible before going slack. “I’m not asking you for your story, or who’s accepting you or not accepting you?”

She let out a soft sigh.

“But now that I know, should I grant you mercy? Surely, I would find myself deceased — victim of the corruption in your D.N.A.,” she said as she let her thoughts seep out loud as she could barely contain them.

“Perhaps not!” she reassured herself. “Having no eyes against whatever’s out there hunting you – perchance, I’m the only thing keeping her alive,” she said, continuing her train of thought aloud.

“but, why take the risk!?”

Min fixed the Queen with murderous intent as she re-made the decision to kill – from the fringe of her eye. She thought she saw a female shape, distinguished and black, but as she turned, she saw nothing. The earth on the ground was undisturbed.

Then there was another sound, a disturbance in the underbrush.

Min concentrated hard but heard no rise and fall or faint heartbeat or savoured, no scent of anything that would be classed as ordinary.

“War, there is nothing civil about it. Emsie was right when he said it was about old men talking and young men dying!” said the old Queen.

“All my bad habits have come home to roost. I was surrounded by the wrong people. I swallowed the atrocities done against the winette-haired youth, and said nothing,” the Queen bowed her head and changed the cadence of her words. “I was perhaps more blind than what I am now, but isn’t killing me because of my biology the same thing, the only one of us who doesn’t have blood on their hands is perhaps Li Kay, and look at the revilement and suffering he endured,”

“I will not beg for clemency min. I could swear that this would be the last time and that I’m reformed, but it probably won’t. “

“Do it, call it Justice… and then hold me until it sleeps, my dearest Min, and may I unravel in your arms,”

“You are my executioner!”

There was something disturbing about being compelled.

And then she gazed in her direction as if she had eyes and said, “I’m glad it’s you!”

“I’m not here to call for justice, I’m here to talk sense to you,”

The Captain abashed stood firm as she expected to be hit by a wave of nausea, but was overcome instead by the distant experience of sad empathy. She did pity Gaudete.

Min looked upon the person she had known for all of her life. Could she be that devoid of compassion? Was everything a lie? Was there any truth in anything at all?

She acknowledged she was right and let out a loud shriek in frustration as she fell to her knees in a stupor and sighed heavily.

Suddenly, both of their attentions were drawn to a sudden eruption from the south as the few remaining birds seemed disturbed and flew away abruptly. Not the small birds like finches or starlings. The crows and the larger birds.

Which could only mean a predator was on the loose.

Lying in a heap, the Captain saw from an opposite corner of her eye, a silhouette of a strange girl with uncommonly raven hair and mocha skin wrapped in a blue cloak as she weaved in

Figures of eight through the copse of Wyn trees. Li Min expected to see her beyond the tree trunks up on the crater’s perimeter, but she appeared not to materialise, as physics would typically dictate. It was a strange an odd phenomenon, but somehow it made her feel calm and less alone — as a small orb of light seemed to follow her orbit amongst the crowns of the trees. practically seeming holy in some significance.

And then, suddenly, the light in amongst the gloom was gone.

Min contemplated whether she had imagined it.

“Mind incursion,” said the captain, as she identified the phenomenon of using delusions to lie in wait for you.

Min listened hard in the other direction as she rose to her feet and drew her sword, nearing the Queen. she recoiled and put her hands up in resistance.

“No, giddy!” assured Min.

“Stop! I will not do it—I—I’m not going to go through with it, I’m wrong about it – you’re right, ok, you are right,”

Suddenly the blind sovereign halted her hostility.

Hugging the troubled captain as she sobbed on her shoulder, her blindfold looked darker and exhibited two wet patches where her eyes should have sat. “Not you, please, I beg of thee, don’t!”

“When you were at your lowest moment, you were alone. I did not turn my back on you. I saw you then, the real you!”

Min hugged her back “we said we wait together through troubles and trials, didn’t we… I still hold on to that… We must go…” Min paused momentarily as she was going to use the title of Queen but found her using the words so naturally, it just seemed to fit.

“Queen!” said Gaudete, filling up.

The blank in her dialogue

“NO! — friend” somehow had more value attached to it, a more coveted currency.

Min stood ready as she heard something rushing serpent-like through the underbrush. She rose to her feet and readied herself for close-quarter combat.

All she could see around the perimeter was blackness covering the mountain – inkiness covering the trees. There was scarcely enough light in Leers’ navel, the crater where they resided.

She pointed her Sabre tip towards the darkness and stood in wait.

Recounting words her tutor taught her many seasons ago- to comfort and acknowledge him as a living composition and a true teacher.

She recited it as a mantra, and it gave her comfort.

“Fear is the pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”

“I must not fear!”

“Fear is the dying that brings total ruin. “

“COURAGE IS the antidote TO FEAR, Mastery of FEAR, NOT ABSENCE OF FEAR.”

“I Must be fierce!

I will stand in adversity in the face of my torments.

I will become its master.

I will walk beyond this place of wrath and tears,

And I will make my footsteps firm. Many will heed and take note!”

And when the fear has vanished, only I will remain.!”

She looked deeply into the gloom and perceived the white biomechanical complexion of the Banshee emerge. She immediately bobbed behind some stones and stealthily uncoupled her shield belt.

No shielding was a match for the calibre of this infamous killing machine.

She would only have a brief window of opportunity.

As she moved on to her forward flanks and took a dread-filled look towards the abomination.

A crackle cut the blackness identified Captain of Mercias Queen’s Guard, officer Li Sx Min, Enemy of the New Republic.

Min knew she had only a split second to close the range as she fumbled amongst the flaxen earth and upturned a rock, hurling it with vigour in a north-easterly direction and then bolting and taking a hard left.

She Croix turned and drew her dagger, launching it at the Banshee’s eyes — one of the few known weaknesses.

The abhorartion turned her face with a furious expression and was frozen by the audacity of this insurgent; she was shackled by her looking. The captain took not even a second to close the range and swung at her neck with her sabre.

In a ferocious sweeping of steel and adrenalin.

But the enmity’s endurance would prove more than a measure as her arm shot out and barrel rolled Min in amongst some anomalous-looking bushes.

Meanwhile, the Queen fumbled around in her blindness as she began to feel away from the skirmish that was happening.

Something was standing over her. Something clear, Lucid, almost majestic.

“Who’s there!?” she asked in her most regal of tones.

A voice came back mysterious and inviting that was almost melodic. “Well now? Some they call me the silk faery or sprite, but I do prefer the name Brownie!”

“The Brownie!” replied the Queen, omitting the noun.

“Just Brownie!”

“I’m here for you Gaudete,”

“do you mean you are at my disposal, or that the reason you are here is personal and for myself, or that you are simply here because of something historically I may have overseen?”

A cryptic answer returned.

“Yes, I’m here for you,” before continuing, “to ask you three questions. “

“Riddles really. It’s too late in the day for such frivolity!”

But the little sprite continued as she cleared her throat.

“1, what have you done that really matters?”

“Who are you sprite, to ask such personal questions of me?” complained the monarch as she puffed out her chest in contempt, but in the dark giddy could not make out if she was still there at all, if her protestations were merely to a phantom or thin air. So, she mused over the topic in shame.

Hanging her head, she swallowed hard. Her lips twitched, but she could not find the words to convince herself genuinely, and like a petulant child, she mewed in frustration, and in a very petite voice, she answered at last, “nothing!” in self-pity.

But the voice continued. It had waited all this time in silent lucidity.

“2, why are you so lost?” asked the voice from the darkness.

Pointing out something that perhaps the monarch had not seen about her own plight or given it any depth of emotional I.Q.

“How do I know you’re even there? You could be nothing more than a figment of my imagination!” she remarked bluntly as she sat on her tuffet.

“Well then, like I said…you really are lost!” came the answer of the mysterious voice.

Then the voice recited strange words that were not of any relevance for seemingly no reason…

“Blind all of us together, a rage of storm and sky. Call the wind and heavy weather but let the sleepers lie. Time has to come to hold hands, a requiem for the brave, rise with the wind and call it by its name!?!”

It was a very abstract way of answering. It made Giddy’s head hurt, trying to decipher the meaning.

And then she added cryptically, “3, do you want to be saved?!”

And the first name that sprang from her lips was Elkie, as she remembered something synonymous with the earlier sentiment.

She saw white blinding light and then blackness. She removed her blindfold and saw the dim, spent light and the near objects in the foreground and then looked further into the bleak cold blackness of the abyss.

As her eyes watered and she felt that a great weight had been lifted from her, and her eyes had been not only regenerated but opened for the first time.

How is this possible? she thought.

“Wait!” called out the Queen as the forlorn figure turned away.

“Who, what, why!?” the Silk Faery looked back and with her renewed eyes, she could barely make out nought but a glitter that flitted the air about her and the colour clusters that cut the blackness.

“I promised someone I’d save someone!”

“Me!” remarked the Queen with her hand spread across her breast.

But in a blink, the strange sprite had vanished.

It was then she felt something sharp and jagged, as scornful as any barbed tongue and as black as polished jet. A dagger of the purest obsidian with a silky Patina that she saw herself in and her own darkness.

Then, in the next breath, she was drawn to the scuffle that was playing out and the sensation of softly falling rain beating the ground pitta patta melodically like some eternal and most faithfully musical instrument.

Min was lying on the ground, and the ashen-faced biomechanical abomination was closing the range as it towered over poor Li Min, who looked like a stunned fish flapping on dry land.

She gathered what remained of her strength but looked totally spent as she gawkily raised her sword flaccidly before it slipped her grasp.

The Banshee now was looking down on her with cold, callous intent as it readied its mouth to deliver the sound. That, indeed, was adept at killing from a distance.

But this time, the creature was standing mere cubits away.

It began as a Hum with the perverse intention of utterly obliterating its target.

Min squirmed as she, from somewhere, found the strength to raise herself to one knee, buttressing heavily on her other sword that was deeply driven into the ground, almost up to the hilt.

And her primary somewhere behind her.

Distorted was her vision as she found the very fibres of her being ripped apart as her nose bled, and her eyes turned bloodshot.

In the perfidious trance, she felt deep vibrations like tremors, shaking the very foundations of her being—a quake of the highest magnitude.

For a split second, she found herself in an empty space, neither here nor there.

In intense sunshine, under the light of Sol, as she noticed the drops of rain halted, a blurry image of a young girl appeared to stroll casually, a descant soul that she could barely make out as it stood close to and handed her a silk handkerchief.

Elkie, she called out, identifying the kerchief.

And the familiar voice of her daughter answered mama!

But the figure that stood over her was not one she recognised.

She couldn’t make out much, but it was a female form, petite with Raven hair and lips as red as ruby. An orb of light flitted about her as well as radiating from her, as she offered a hand to lift min to stand up.

To her feet… And her skin seemed to be luminous, like embroidered silk of the whitest kind.

There was something very familiar as min felt an odd sensation in her womb…

As the voice, delicate and powerful, spoke.

“I’ve seen this face before, etched in soot?”

“Li Sx Min!”

“If you abide with me, I promise… we will win,

If you can stay the course when all about you stray from the path, I promise … we will win. If you can inspire others and remain humble, I promise……. we will win,

And do you know why we’re going to win?”

And she filled the blank by saying, “goodnight and joy be to you all!”

The strange delusion had passed. Min, who had been formerly bashed and beaten on the ground, was now up for the fight.

It was strange talking in a plurality, making Min rally and grit her chattering teeth.

She was ready for wrath or for ruin. All she could hear was the whining in her ears and the sound of anguished mother’s distorted ooze out of the creature’s cracked black lips…

Suddenly, just before the point of fatality, Min saw the figure of giddy spring like a coiled Meer wolf stabbing viscously like a coyoper stabbing a black glass dagger into one of the eye sockets of the creature.

Whilst falling back and taking cover at a safe distance.

Min was glad to have a respite from the wail of the Banshee. As the dark creature seemed to go stiff and contort its body as a ball of electrical sparks shot itself out of the abomination and was soon followed by the smell of charred skin.

As the Captain readied herself for the final round.

Only to lose her footing and slump winded into a heap, as the contorted freak, now disabled but still capable, stared down at the Captain with the intention of inflicting pure suffering on her.

Min froze and held her breath, only to see a flash of a Sabre and the forward roll of the creature’s head plop into her lap.

Eyeing up, Min announced, “finally… I thought you’d never get here!” as she looked up to see Ash Vani and a platoon of the Queen’s honour guard standing behind her, adorned in the crimson of Mercia.

“Sorry, captain!”

“Never mind leftennant!”

“You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

“now help me up,”