> “ ‘Break even’? I’m going to break your ass if you don’t shut your mouth right now.”
> -Trisakti to a particularly clueless middle-level manager that somehow snuck into a board meeting.
“What a fucking mess. Clean this up.” Trisakti spoke to a couple of his employees while making his way back into his office. The teleportation chamber was now guarded by well-armed guards, with much of the splendor and grandeur that graced the Trium Illustricate headquarters losing out in favor of defensible positions and killzones. Even in these depths, Trisakti could still hear the faint sounds of fighting that was becoming all too familiar to the aging patriarch’s ears.
It wasn’t too bad at first. Any settlement that lasted as long as they did in the Retribution Fields did so mostly from how strong its inhabitants were, and Blood Falls carried its weight proudly. But that was only if they were all united as a single front, and that was a fantasy more impossible than the gods of the Godhome suddenly developing a conscience for anyone not a god.
Slowly, like high tide, the forces of the mad moon goddess divided, encircled, and eventually annihilated most of the lesser factions of Blood Falls, taking the remnants under their wing to bolster their growing power base. It forced the three major factions of Blood Falls to set aside their differences and unite, pushing back against the army into the uneasy stalemate that was Blood Falls new normal. There were no illusions of whether or not they’d be able to defeat the unending horde, no strategy to strike at the heart and end the threat.
There was only survival in everyone’s mind, with their own being placed right at the top of the list with everything else coming in second.
Trisakti had come to terms with such a predicament for a while now. The benefit of having three heads, one supposes. But there’s another weakness borne of multiple heads, one which even the single-minded could relate to. It was this pain that accompanied Trisakti through the portal into his private office, wherein more guards were standing by, though they were of the more constructed variety. They stared at him for second before resuming their vigil over the sole entry point to this disembodied space within Blood Falls. With a couple more steps, the weary king resumed his post upon his throne, and sighed upon the reports that was coming his way.
He set them all aside, however, for one ritual he performs without fail everyday, since this invasion began. He re-opens a the live feed of a camera looking into a room, wherein two figures lay in a hospital bed, deathly still, but still alive and breathing, by the steady beep of their heart monitors and air-pumps taking in the place of their failing lungs. In a corner, a child was sobbing softly, though her tears had long since dried.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“ … “ Words failed the man, as his hand brushed gently against the screen, wanting more than anything to come through and comfort his loved ones, but this would have to be enough. This was as close as he was letting himself get close to them; a small sacrifice for his complete and utter failure.
What he can do now then is to win the war, or die trying.
----------------------------------------
She was but a whim, a wish floating in nothing as her parents made love with flights of fancy of children they will never have. Their pleasure hid the growing passion of love bursting at the seams, desiring more and more of eyes that look like his and hair that curled like hers. It was simple want and nothing more, and soon even she would fade away were it not for that spot of hope; the impossibility made real, as a spark laid claim to a womb, and soon, a heartbeat. For a moment it seemed inevitable that she would be the one in control of her own destiny at last, in command of the perfect vessel to carry her will. But then he appeared, a mote of possibility appearing in a trailblazing path that led it to supersede his sibling and take hold of the body and mind.
She, already too entrenched in the growing body’s confines, found herself becoming more and more real, and yet not the slightest bit corporeal, while her brother grew and expanded, locking his own sister within a prison of his own flesh. She sat and waited in the dark until at last light came and the birth cry of the Dragon-God was heard upon by everyone in the world. And in that very moment, the second after the two of them came to be, that a chance appeared for her to take the reins from her brother, and no one would be the wiser. It was the thing to do, as firstborn, and yet as the woman later to be named Kiasan Sanjung found herself hesitating, she found that she didn’t had it in herself to do something so cruel, so deprived of innocence.
And so she let go of everything. Her desires, her dreams, her place in the world. She retreated and watched the world pass her by, as her parents only politely acknowledged that she existed, while her brother, bless him, inherited a kindness that could touch the most hardened soul. It was a life more than she could have asked for, and were it to continue forever, she couldn’t have asked for a better fate.
That was, of course, before her brother began to solve the impossible.
----------------------------------------
Anagas Song, the Fire’s Heir, looked upon the walls that hid Blood Falls from the rest of the world, enveloped as a spider would to its prey. To most, they were impenetrable, but to him, they might as well not be there at all. The real problem was what would happen if a superior force made its way through the walls. In the worst case scenario, the walls would collapse onto one another faster than Anagas could catch up in short notice, annihilating everything inside. Such compression could even lead to the birth of a black hole, wasting the godling’s entire trip in one fell swoop.
He needed to get in some other way. And as he spotted a particular craft inching its way away from a hole in the walls, an idea began to form.