The atmosphere grew thick with tension as the thunder of motors heralded the rebels' arrival. Through the haze of smoke and dust, he appeared, the imposing rustic outline of Aygu, The Mad Butcher of Buriti. His scarred mouth was set in a cruel grin, relishing at having reduced the capital to smithereens. He clicked his tongue as the sound of feet and the cocking of firearms filled the air.
I had narrowly followed Aiko's athletic militant figure out the door before they had caught us off guard. There must either be snakes among my fellows' ranks or these guerilla fighters actually were a real threat and could prove such. I cupped my ashy hand to my eye as I was surrounded by royal guards. The large ally tank's barrel aimed dangerously a mere foot above my head.
Aiko moved swiftly in front of me, shielding my body with her own as she leveled her rifle at the warlord's bald head. Her entire body trembled with rage at the sight of her family's killer, her finger hovering over the trigger. I peered from over her shoulder to only see Aygu smiling to himself, he picked at his ear with the small of his middle finger before speaking."If it isn't would be Queen Aiko,"
Aygu rumbled in his gravelly voice. "I desired we would meet again. You've grown more stunning since our last encounter." His lewd gape raked over her as his 'men' fanned out, cutting off any escape, the whole street was now brimming with rebels and allies alike. I folded my arms silently soaking in the display of our powers at odds. I needed a way to turn them against this old man...but how?
"I've dreamt of this day," Aiko hissed through gritted teeth. Her brown eyes blazed with a fury I had never seen--even at my own antics. All soldiers but her were anxious, racing eyes and scowls marked everyone in attendance. I felt my dreadlocks blowing in the Buriti breeze. Chalky crimson dust integrated with silver dust stung my eyes as it clung to anything on its track.
Aygu simply chortled. "The orphan turned concubine still clinging to her delusions of vengeance. When will you realize your precious lineage were sufficient casualties?" He wiped his bald head with a small rag. His soldiers could be no older than mere boys. The head among them; was a 14-year-old boy with an eye scar like mine. We were not that dissimilar despite what old men and foreigners told us.
With a primal scream, Aiko crammed the trigger. Her shot thundered through the smoke-filled air. For a split second, her eyes blazed with a missed long-awaited vengeance as Aygu’s scarred mouth seemed destined to explode in a shower of gore. Then his cruel grin emerged unfazed, the bullet clearly having gone purposefully wide.
Aygu knew as much as Aiko and I rued we would get nowhere with more Buriti bloodshed. The smoke from her rifle rose above the barrel of the tank looming above us. I hoped I was not seeing the premonition of its blast. I cleared my throat loudly before fanning red dust from my face.
"You have said enough Aygu...If I were you--and im glad I'm not; I would think very carefully about the way you address the Minister of Internal Affairs and head general of all Vascan armies." His eyes narrowed as the titles stabbed his chewed ears. Not even Buriti Hallow-cased bullets pierced this man...but a woman in power appeared to gut him for every stray bullet meant to kill him he had dodged...his tenure as rebel leader marred in the dead faces of the charred bodies around us.
Hiding amongst the rubble and souls mixing with the decade-long cascade of war toll. Aygu twisted his lips to speak. "You mean to--" I stepped forward, emotions warred within. Red-hot rage at this butcher who'd brought ruination. The bone-deep weariness of an endless cycle of retaliation. Sadness to see our vibrance and community decaying amidst the flames and rubble.
But piercing through rang the conviction - the refusal - that this man would determine our fates any longer. We had battered each other bloody year after year, what did it achieve but mountains of Buriti dead? Our people deserved more. The choice loomed - answer violence with violence once again here in this blood-soaked street, or somehow, impossibly, try another path.
I felt something shift inside. My tongue would make the attempt, though I knew not what the outcome held. Ashes staining the bottom of my pants I raised my voice to near yelling. "I don't MEAN to do anything....My cousin said that to me and I let the people play with his innards. I am telling you how this works." I motioned to the half-destroyed statue of my father that sat in ramshackle near the factory.
The backdrop reminded me of the collapsed mines my father toured. His 'condolences' were always more than enough for the people--now those who didn't flee lay burned and dead among the ariel obliteration. Dennis lay lifeless, buzzard food.
"You have ALL quarreled your entire life for the interest of Buriti! Like Aiko, you bleed for our country and rally the people in campaigns to better our ways." I gestured with a raised solid fist, a calling card of anyone of status among the sands. "I do not see why we cannot work together to continue our push against Svetlan." I saw the weary young eyes of Aygus cartel members waning with each word.
I do not think I am doing anything to sway the adults but...disarming the enemy is key to this. I noticed the wide, exhausted eyes of several young rebel soldiers as Aygu and I faced off. Boys that couldn't yet be men, hollow-cheeked and covered head to toe in the same crimson dust that swirled around us. This must be how Aygu viewed me, a mewing calf waiting for parental assistance.
Most looked more fatigued than bloodthirsty - years of grueling warfare having extinguished that early call for violence felt by our people's shared culture. Their destiny and lineages had been tangled with the rebel cause from birth; Aygu's closest followers knew no other life...much like my own call to crown.
I wondered if in their shoes, with my family destroyed and fatherland in ruins around me, I too would cling to any shred of purpose...even one as twisted as Aygu's dreams of power. In desperate moments it mattered little whether briefly shared goals were virtuous, only that they offered reprieve from despair...I would not be this--I will not continue this cycle.
As I stepped forward to confront the Butcher of Buriti, I felt a swirl of emotions. Foremost was bone-deep weariness--when would we stop tearing each other apart? Underneath lay cold rage at this demon who tore lives apart without a second glance. But the anger collided with resignation--the recognition that brute force had only bred more devastation.
If we continued answering blood with blood, retaliation justifying retaliation, eventually we'd all lay dead atop the smoldering ashes of a once-vibrant land. Neither Aygu's men nor my soldiers had enough spirit left for this ugliness without end.
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So I hid the raging black storm inside and instead spoke of ceasefires and compromise. Aygu searched my steady gaze, perhaps seeing the flickers of sorrow and fury and disgust within. In the end, he too was tired of endless war, the sacrifice bringing diminishing returns - what sort of leader can't deliver either basic security or hope?
And so an allegiance was brokered atop the ruins. Both believe we could use the other to advance our own goals in time. While those around us clung to weapons and glared across enemy lines, inside both Aygu and I felt the true fight seeping from our bones after too long with no glimpse of peace. Even warlords must bend before the promise of quieter days.
Aygu's face turned up in disgust as he spit viscously into the cracked city street. "I will not work with you while those Light-Dogs seek refuge in our border." His eyes flashed to two of my soldiers who were blue-eyed and pale-toned. I knew what was coming next yet I must play my part.
My eye twitched as he began pointing his gun at the two low-ranking soldiers. "Those two have no reason for life among our sands--I demand to be made honorary war chief counsel; This way you may not trick me with your silly 'politics'" He motioned to his open mouth as the only remaining teeth he had were 4 sharpened fangs. "I know what is best boy..."
This was one of the silliest traditions held since our people were mere nomadic storytellers of the dunes. What first was a generational mutation culled had resurged as culture late into the second century. Small contrivances like this and Aygu's family still keeping this trait are why im not deemed fit for the rule. I bared my straight teeth as I knew he would speak again.
"I am a true Buriti noble-blood, surely you can't deny me such right as to take hold of our kingdom's tribal might...If I am made head general--The war will be over. You have my promise by blood pact Huckleberry Vasca." He stepped forward. I could feel Aiko burning a hole in the back of my head in rage.
She most likely thought I had subverted her position--I did not have time to explain to her the superficial tactic of keeping a wild burrow hound in a coop. "You have my word you and your men will be treated as equal political and military entities throughout the country. I expect you to set up a base of operations and handle the task of briefing yourself on the current state of affairs." I stuck my hand out as he continued his slow pace. The gesture was meant to show my goodwill.
He pulled a knife from his belt and handed it to me blade first. This was a clear sign of disrespect among our people...meant to say I am a welp who needs testing before even handling the steel. "You will answer to your king like tradition dictates, Aygu. You know the sacred duty as my war chief is tantamount to blasphemy unkept..." I ignored this spit in the face grabbing the blade jerkingly.
I slashed my hand as my dark blood mixed into the ashes below me into a small drain. The smell of iron quickly disappeared with the shifting sands. Aygu stuck his hand out expentantly waiting for me to return the knife handle first as to respect his status and combat-proven title as elder.
I felt the hot sun on my back as I violently headbutted the bulky man square in the bridge of his nose. I put the knife quickly to his throat as the nearing 60-year-old man struggled to his knee. Aiko and my soldier's guns clicked in unison as the children seemed to freeze in fear.
Their leader lay there nearing death. "All you Vasca scum are the fucking same...you kill your own brothers to fill your pockets...." His words meant nothing to me, I only knew my next move as the air was thick with ash and pressure.
"Stick your hand out to me Aygu....again." He hesitated looking past me--most likely at Aiko's piercing gaze and firing squad ready to end us both. Slowly he stuck his hand out to me as I lifted the knife from his neck. I heard his baritone screams before I felt myself repeatedly hacking off his fingers with the blocky dull knife. His right hand poured blood as the once infamous butcher's digits fell to the ground with no fanfare.
Aygu clutched his bloodied wrist, face contorted in agony and primal fury. His knees buckled as he swayed, no longer the imposing rebel warlord but a weakened aging man undone by trauma. As his severed fingers dropped into the dust, he reached for them with his intact hand - a reflexive, pathetic attempt to undo the disfigurement. Masterless fingers twitched in the ashes like five separate hearts ripped free.
When Aygu finally touched his forehead to the ground in submission, the effort nearly caused him to collapse entirely. I bore some of his weight as he shuddered, face ashen beneath the crimson dirt. Only by locking eyes with me did he slowly regain some composure - my own manic rage reflected back sparking his will to vengeance. I noticed a small play at the edge of his lips...almost approving of my savagery through the pain, I did not know.
Aiko's body flinched as my knife blade hacked bone. Her iron discipline kept her rifle trained ahead, but I glimpsed the fire in her eyes guttering to apprehension. The royal edict against obstructing a Vascan king flickered in her mind - to intervene was treason punishable by slow impalement even for one raised like a sibling. As Aygu's wailing subsided to whimpers, Aiko let her rigid stance falter ever so slightly, angling away from my dissolving sanity.
She had longed for righteous vengeance, not this perverse and pitiless mutilation. With Aygu kneeling in fealty she saw the truth - I was carving our fates as Buriti's protector and avenger myself now in blood using Aygu as my stepping stone in this quest. She would stand guard or die with locked jaws following any order...but feared what black future awaited with me enthroned. If not she knew now clearly where I stood for my country.
The young rebel troops looked on in dismayed shock as their leader - once seeming an indomitable monster - howled over his mangled hand. Eyes wide, one boy vomited into the crimson dust. Their faith in Aygu's strength was fundamental to their cause, as central as family. Watching his casual cruelty toward his own was deeply disturbing yet clarifying. They had pledged their lives to a master who considered them as disposable as Buriti waste. Their bodies recoiled in synchronized pulses of anger, nausea, and disillusionment.
As Aygu's blood dripped down my forearm and mixed with my own at the palm, my breath came swift and tough, almost euphoric from the release of violence. I realized a vital pressure valve had blown - years of swallowed rage at weak and corrupt leaders who brought our land only suffering. In maiming the warlord, I had crippled my own patience with non-solutions dressed as tradition or propriety. Buriti's head continued rolling, her body decaying; fear and frail dignity resolved nothing. We needed decisive action.
The electric fury slowly left me, but it felt righteous...even familiar already. I knew such power could grow addictive and toxic, yet offered the only way forward I now saw. I would rally our fractured armies and march North to tear that white Svetlan flag off Buriti's wretched face...or die with honor trying.
The facade Messiah would not get my sister's hand in marriage as they planned with my mother safe in their capital. He would feel my Moldavite fist buried deep in his esophagus; changing the fate of this world or burnt out in my own heat death.
His eyes bulged as he held his misshaped bleeding stump along with his severed fingers. "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU--THAT WAS MY SHOOTING HAND!" The mad war tyrant nearly seemed to cry as he looked into my eyes. Something must have chilled his bones because he no longer feared his bleeding hand but fell silent waiting for me to speak yet everything seemed too easy for such a long-fought war.
"You are mine now Aygu...Everything in this whole fucking country will bend to me or die beneath the sand--Do you understand me? Or is that not strong enough for a true Buriti King to expect of his sacred people?" Silence fell upon the whole area as I turned, Putting my bleeding hand in my pocket. I knew he would plot his revenge--He would have to get in line...and if he did it was now against the structured order not just my family alone.
Aygu clutched his bloodied wrist tightly, face deformed in agony and crude outrage. "You sadistic royal fuck!" he spat. "You expect me to serve under you after..." His chest heaved as he fought to stand, swaying unsteadily.
I came back swiftly before he could even catch his shitty breath then grabbed his shirt collar, pulling his face dangerously close to mine. "Look around you," I hissed, I felt my red eyes flash in the heat of the moment. "Your rebel army are nothing but children with deadly toys, your hand a mangled mess. Buriti burns while Svetlan's laughter echoes from the hills." I tightened my grip. "So yes, you will call me King and bow, or join the corpses feeding the fucking flies."
Aygu searched my cold red eyes, finally glimpsing the same unhinged desperation that drove him. We both knew the pain of watching our homeland raped and dismembered time and again. It resonated in the marrow of every Buriti child. He saw reflected in me the same willingness to visit cruelty upon enemy and brother alike when vision narrows to blind survival. I locked his gaze, refusing to be the first to yield.
"The enemy of my enemy...alright boy..." Aygu muttered at last. He tried to kneel, wavering as his body betrayed him. I steadied his mass, blood slick between our skin. His forehead touched the dust in supplication. When he rose again the warlord's eyes held a new gleam - the prospect of vengeance without bearing its ultimately lethal cost alone--or maybe an even deeper plan had laid its white-hot hands on his soul.
Aiko braced against the factory wall as this blood pact forged. I sensed her military rigidity barely caging the howl within. She had dreamed so long of wreaking vengeance herself....yet this was not justice. I knew an earful was in my future from anyone who could speak into it. Yet I chuckled to myself again.
I WILL NOT BE QUESTIONED....