It was a dark and moonlit night.
Out here, so far east of the vast and overflowing satellite cities of Old Europe, so far south of the mighty engines and machine-factories of the Technocracy, on nights like these, one might look up to the sky, and behold a twinkling tapestry of stars, unobstructed.
One might inhale deeply, and breathe pristine, sharp air, untainted by pollution, unblemished by drifting particulates.
And so Jeor, Knight-errant of the Sons of Dainsleif, did indeed look up at the skies and did indeed partake deep breaths of fresh forest air.
And did feel comforted by it.
And did try his utmost to stay the more…uncanny aspects of his surroundings from troubling him too heartily.
For it was a dark, dark night.
It was nearly midnight, here at Fort Crannoch. Despite its antiquity, the centuries-old bastion of steel and stone was not all that large, capable of supporting a mere fifty soldiers, perhaps. And so, as it stretched its crooked spires up high, but not too high, it did so lamely, as if a dying man reaching upwards for salvation.
Yes. Oh, yes.
It was dark.
Pitch black.
On nights like these, when the wind was high, and wound eerily about the trees to produce just the barest whisper of a weeping wail, and the shadows cast by Entropic torches reached out grasping, gnarled fingers towards one’s helm, and cuirass, as if to ensnare them whole, well…
One might find oneself inclined, Jeor thought, to a somewhat primitive sort of fear.
And indeed, as the wail grew louder, and began to echo unknowably about the stony crenellations old Crannoch, and the darkness hid all contents of the forest surrounding this humble fort from frantic eyes, one might find oneself begin to jump at each scratch and scrabble, to peer about nervously at those creeping, crawling shades, that seemed to ever more resemble the shapes of encroaching beasts, of horrible monsters, of ghastly ghouls, of–
Scritch-creak.
“W–WHO GOES THERE?!”
Jeor cried out, from his perch atop the fort’s main gate.
The noise had originated from somewhere beside him, and so he whipped around in an instant, his open, unarmored palms already starting to drip with bubbling, viscous acid, his eyes wide and white and frightened.
“A full moon strider,” came the clear, soft, and swift enough reply.
With a shuddering exhale, cursing his nerves as he did so, Jeor relaxed.
For the password spoken was correct, and more importantly, the voice was one he well recognized. It was a lilting, polished tone, accompanied by just the hint of an accented twang.
“Ho, Manton,” he sighed.
“Bonsoir, mon ami,” his fellow watchman greeted, drawing into the torch’s light, allowing Jeor to fully observe him.
~~~
Riposte
~~~
Manton strode calmly, confidently, with just a hint of embellished swagger to his motion.
The Striker boasted his customary well-embroidered leathers, flowing, well-coiffed hair, and twirling, well-manicured moustache and goatee. Going helmless was too bold by half for Jeor’s liking, but the Frank had always said he found it impossible to truly feel the battle when ‘trapped inside a metal tin.’
His ever-faithful rapier dangled gently from his hip.
Manton’s power, much like Jeor’s, was technically Striker, but delved quickly into Blaster territory. He could temporarily extend the length, durability, and piercing power of his weapon, lancing through flesh and bone with devastating strength and startling speed. His ability to pick off priority targets, composite with Jeor’s crowd-control, made for a fearsome combination.
It made them an effective team.
Manton chuckled at Jeor as he approached, grinning wide with white, white teeth that eerily reflected the blueish torchlight.
“We are on edge tonight, my friend?”
“Fuck’s sake, Manton,” Jeor cursed, more than a little angrily, stabbing a vexed finger towards the other man. “You’re fucking early. Again. You’re fucking early, again.”
Manton, unsurprisingly, did not deny the accusation, merely continuing to grin at him. Jeor’s fellow knight didn’t fear his words, or his wroth. The two of them had served together for the better part of a decade, by now.
They were brothers in all but blood.
“Why?” Jeor lamented, rhetorically. “Why do you do this? You know I hate the night shift. Priest, you nearly made me piss myself.”
“Now, would this be a sight?” His brother-in-arms smiled sibilantly, good-naturedly, speaking his jilted Common. “A Son of Dainsleif, with breeches besmirched. Besmirched, by paranoia.”
Then, a measure of the enthusiasm on his face dimmed.
“Ah, well,” Manton muttered. “I give you my apologies, my friend.” He let out a large and rather miserable yawn, then scratched at the back of his neck. “To tell it true, I have found restful sleep an ever more…distant proposition. Of late.”
Jeor nodded, understandingly.
He felt much the same. Fort Crannoch was far east, too far east, by far, and too far south besides. It was their very most southeastern base of operations, in fact, and thereby set them uncomfortably close to the REZ.
Walled and manned though it doubtless was. Such things gave Jeor little comfort.
Even Sons of Dainsleif knew well to fear the Zone.
And yet, Crannoch was important. Part and parcel to the dense network of similar emplacements that criss-crossed the many contours of Old Europe, allowing them to maintain the Coterie’s, and Assembly’s, peace. The Patrician’s peace. Such as it was.
Guard duty of this nature, though far from the glamours of delving, or tourney, or errantry, was just as much a necessary and essential aspect of their service as any other. The most essential, perhaps. Knights-errant or no, every Son had to do their part.
Jeor understood this. It didn’t bother him.
He just hated Crannoch.
So he nodded, shared in Manton’s exaggerated yawn, and slowly blinked a pair of bleary eyes. Now that his comrade had arrived, ostensibly, his watch had ended. Now, he could return.
Back inside the keep, there was fire. There was warmth. There was nourishment. There was a suitably comfortable bed that right now seemed positively heavenly. He wanted nothing more than to return, and promptly dissolve into its soft, feathered pillows.
But the night was dark, and the watch unsightly.
And, upon his leave, Manton would be all alone.
So instead Jeor sighed, and scratched his nose, and elected to keep his old friend company, at least for as long as he could reasonably bear.
Together, they listened to the wind moan and whistle through the trees. Singing incomprehensible verse and inhuman tercet in a language known only to the Gods, both above and below.
–oooooooOOoooooooOOOOOooooooooOOOooooooooo–
It whispered.
–OOOooooooooOOOOOOOOOoooooooOOooooooOoo–
“What do you say, my friend, to the words of Ser Declan, this evening past? To his report?” Manton spoke up, suddenly, interrupting the wind’s wailing with softly-lilting words.
Jeor frowned.
“What, the attacks?” He asked. “Frattol, and Galencia? I thought…I thought those were just rumors.”
Manton shrugged in reply, idly stroking the well-manicured moustache that rested comfortably upon his upper lip.
“All news are but rumor, mon ami. Right until the moment they are not,” he replied, cryptically. “Mais non?”
“Well, I mean,” Jeor hedged, uncertainly, “if it is true, I’m sure Lord Wergar will deal with it.”
Manton eyed him from the side.
“Your faith in our Knight Commander, this warms me,” he stated, dryly. “To execute imaginary enemies? Perhaps you choose the wrong profession, non? Perhaps, you better serve his holiness in Rome?”
“What?” Jeor maintained, becoming a trifle defensive, now. “You think he can’t? You think he won’t?”
“I do not say this,” Manton replied, evasively, “only…”
He paused, for a moment. To Jeor’s surprise, his colleague looked at a rather uncharacteristic loss for words.
Manton examined the forest quietly, introspectively, his gaze sweeping over and across the many rippling rows of aspen, and pine, through which the wind still wound and whispered, as uncannily as ever.
“Ah, my friend,” he murmured. “I do not say what it is, exactly. Only, I find it difficult to sleep. Difficult and difficult. I find myself plagued by…”
He glanced at Jeor, seriously.
“Troublesome dreams.
“I hear rumblings from the Scorch,” he recounted, nodding, “that the Balmut moves…erratically. Whispers from many Cells. Of Syn. Of Nycta. Of Slavers, on the rise.
“Tales from that far east,” he added, waving a hand. “The Emperor celeste levies army. I hear this, I hear this, and…I wonder.”
He glanced at Jeor, again. “Why?”
Jeor frowned, but said nothing. He didn’t put much stock in Manton’s words.
Their contents was worrisome enough, true, but then the Frankish man was of a far more superstitious sort than he. Prone to rumor. Inclined to gossip. Plenty of times in the past, his fellow had spoken much the same as this. Rare it was, that Manton’s doomsaying proved prophecy.
“The Devoted grow bold, of late,” his friend said, suddenly.
Jeor blinked. “That’s true,” he admitted. “That’s true, I suppose. But–”
“And the Proselytists. They expand influence. Electorate.” Manton paused, and spat on the ground. “Tumor,” he hissed. “Foul tumor in the heart of l’Assembly.”
Jeor shifted, uncomfortably.
He didn’t share the disdain, or disgust, that many of his fellow Blessed demonstrated, towards mundanes. Not that he was any manner of mundy sympathizer, himself, of course, but…well, were they truly so different from one another?
Mundanes were weaker. Uglier. Stupider. It was immutable, a fact of life.
Yet, ultimately, were they not human beings, still? Should they not be pitied, if anything? Jeor saw little reason, or purpose, for the hatred his fellow Patricians demonstrated towards their lesser-evolved kin.
And even for Patricians, Franco-Anglica was extreme.
“I tell you this, mon ami. I visit old friends, old colleagues, in Bern, months past,” Manton continued, regardless, scowling as he spoke. “I tell you what I see?”
Jeor’s discomfort deepened, but he nodded all the same.
“I see a Jehenist preaching in the street.” He paused, for dramatic effect. “A Jehenist, Jeor. Preaching. In the street!”
But Jeor’s mild reaction, apparently, was insufficient to assuage his comrade’s alarm, and so Manton exaggerated further, gesticulating as he spoke. “Wh–how can this be? How can this be? How ca–”
“The First Crusade was ages ago, Manton,” Jeor interrupted, shaking his head. They’d had this conversation many times before. “Centuries. Ancient history.” He met his friend’s eyes, challengingly. “In Bern, all have the right to speak their minds.”
Manton scowled again, and looked away, but did not refute his words.“Some things, they should not be say. Not aloud. Not to the masses. He who learns not from l’histoire ancienne, so you say, he repeats it,” Manton muttered, sourly. “Ou, peut-etre, he becomes it.”
Then, he sighed, and shook his head.
“You do not know it, mon ami,” Manton said, more softly this time. “The state of it. Of the cities. Of the Bern. You do not see it, in too long.”
Strangely, in place of the more usual anger, there now seemed a hint of uneasiness to his friend’s refrain.
“What has happen, what has develop, it is…” Manton licked his lips, uneasily. “Inhuman. C’est affreux.”
Manton’s discomfort was infectious. An airborne pathogen, carried forth by his half-Common, half-Frankish words.
Jeor shivered in the night.
“And but, I do not say what it is, exactly,” Manton repeated, still soft, still with that unease. “What that troubles me. Je parle de seulement…this pressure, I think. This great pressure. It builds, it builds. For years, it builds.”
Manton raised up a palm, and curled it into a tight, white-knuckled fist. “Hidden, from sight,” he whispered. “Concealed, from view. Still growing, still growing.”
His hand began to shake, so strenuously was he clenching it.
Finally…
“It bursts.”
He released, and his fingers fell open, once more. Jeor’s brother-in-arms regarded him, seriously.
“Do you tell me you do not feel the same?” Manton asked.
“Well, I mean,” Jeor vacillated, unsure. “I mean, even if you’re right, does it really matter? We’ve got Sybil. Grimnir. Pylon. Wergar.” He listed them off, on his fingers. “We’ve got the Faith, and most of the Assembly.
“What is it, exactly, that you fear?” Jeor pressed. “A new Crusade? We’ll put it down, like all the rest. A change in legislation? The Prosyletists won’t sway everyone. They’re radicals. They can’t.
“We’ve weathered storms like this, before,” he stated, confidently. “Time and again. In the end, the result’s the same. The Coterie’ll come out on top. We always do.”
Abruptly, and bizarrely, instead of the assuagement, or perhaps rebuke Jeor’d expected, his colleague barked out a short, sharp laugh.
Jeor frowned. “What’s so funny?” He asked, a touch offended. “Do you no–”
“Non, non, mon amie,” Manton cut him off, quickly, waving a conciliatory palm. “I do not laugh at you. No, no, no. No, only…”
He hummed, and looked up at the stars above, twinkling ever-so-softly.
“They remind me of something, your words. Your, ah, your confiance. A story.” Manton glanced at Jeor, and grinned, and his eyes twinkled, too. “A joke. My father used to tell.”
“Ah,” Jeor said, pacified. “What, a Frankish one?”
“I do not say,” Manton admitted, “He told it in Frankish, c’est vrai, but its origins…I do not say. Anywhere.” He paused again, thinking.
“Well, go on,” Jeor prompted. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“Mmm,” Manton hummed, contemplatively. “The translated version, it will be.”
“Right,” Jeor accepted.
“Mmm,” Manton repeated. “Well, then.”
He cleared his throat.
“There is…this man,” he began, then promptly paused.
Manton frowned, thinking. His brow furrowed, and he fiddled with his moustache, pursing his lips, searching for what to say.
Jeor raised his eyebrows.
“I’m riveted, already,” he said, dryly.
“Tres drole, connard,” Manton scowled. “I must to think it, in Frankish, in my head, before I speak it.”
He tsked, and cleared his throat, again.
“There is this man,” he began, glaring daggers at Jeor this time, who remained quite silent. “This man, and he…he falls. From the top of a tower, a building, he falls. Yes?”
Manton raised his hand up high, wiggling it in the air. “All the height, yes? Very top.”
Jeor nodded.
Manton paused again, and raised his eyebrows, consideringly. “I am…I do not say, how this man, he begins to fall. I do not say. Perhaps–perhaps, he jumps? Or, he is pushed? I do not say.”
Manton waved a palm, dismissively.
“It matters little. In any case, he falls.”
“I get it,” Jeor replied. “Go on.”
“He falls,” Manton repeated, stroking his moustache. “From, we say, from the twentieth floor.
“And soon enough, this man, he falls far. He reaches to pass the nineteenth floor,” Manton continued, gesticulating as he spoke. He raised a finger into the air.
“The nineteenth floor. He falls. He falls. He reaches it. And, as he reaches it, he has a thought, this man. He thinks.”
Manton grinned at his fellow watchman, pursed his lips, and affected what Jeor could only describe as a version of Common accent so bastardized it could hardly be called anything other than insulting.
“‘You know,’” Manton mimicked, “‘This really is not bad. Not too bad, at all. Jusqu'ici, tout va bien.’”
Manton reached into one of the many pouches of his leathers to extract a long, thin, elegant-looking dagger. He glanced at Jeor meaningfully, and raised it high into the air, just as he’d done before, as if to simulate a falling, prostrate human.
Then, having apparently reached the appropriate height, Manton nodded once, satisfied, and…
“‘So far, everything’s fine.’”
Jerked it downwards, lowering just a rung.
“The man reaches the eighteenth floor,” Manton described, slowly. “And still, he thinks; ‘This is not too bad. Fine so far.’”
His hand jerked downwards, once more.
“Seventeenth. ‘So far, everything’s fine.’”
Jerk.
“Sixteenth. ‘So far, everything’s fine.’”
Jerk.
“Fifteenth. ‘So far, everything’s fine.’”
Jerk.
“Fourteenth. Thirteenth. Twelfth. Eleventh. Tenth.”
Manton spoke the words in a low and ominous tenor, staring Jeor right in the eyes as he did so. Jeor, by contrast, had his gaze fixated on the swiftly-dropping dagger. He really was riveted, now.
With each word, he watched it jerk lower, and lower.
“‘So far, everything’s fine,’” Manton spoke, robotically.
“‘So far, everything’s fine.
So far, everything’s fine.
So far, everything’s fine.’”
Then, suddenly and unceremoniously, Manton dropped the dagger.
Together, the two of them watched it fall, and land upon the grassy forest floor with a softly-cushioned thump.
Jeor looked up at Manton.
Manton looked up at Jeor.
“But you see, mon ami? It is not the fall that kills you, yes? C’est l’atterrissage.” He said, pointing at the dagger. “It is the landing.”
Jeor blinked. “…and?” He asked, hesitantly.
Manton frowned. “And? What do you say, ‘And?’ This is it. This is the joke.”
Jeor mirrored his colleague’s frown. “Wait,” he said, confused. “I don’t get it. What’s the punchline?”
“This is the punchline,” Manton scowled, frustrated. “It is not the fall that kills you, it is the landing.”
“Oh,” Jeor said.
Manton nodded, and promptly bent down to retrieve his dagger, giving it a quick polish on the hem of his gambeson.
“I mean,” Jeor hesitated, breaking the silence. “I mean, it’s not really funny, though, is it?”
Manton turned towards him, raising a dangerous brow.
“I mean,” Jeor added, quickly “I mean, I get it. I get the joke. But it’s not, like…” He paused, attempting to discern a way he might phrase this, and not damage his friend’s feelings. “It’s not, like, ha-ha funny, you know?” He finished, lamely.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Manton, however, apparently taking no offense to his critique, merely shrugged.
“Peut-etre,” the Frank accepted. He tapped a finger on his goateed chin. “The translation, does not do it justice.”
“Mmm.” Jeor hummed, agreeably, although he doubted it.
“Regardless. Your words, they make me think of this,” Manton spoke, evenly, waving an arm about. “‘We come out on top. We always do,’ you say. And, you speak true. But, mon ami, I suggest you to consider this; you see seulement the many floors that pass us by. Yet, in the end…”
Manton shoved the freshly-polished dagger back into its leather sheath, and glanced up at Jeor, grinning.
“All that matters, it is the landing.”
Jeor swallowed, but said nothing, and nor did Manton press him for some manner of reply, so the two of them merely turned from one another to watch the midnight wood. To listen to the moaning wind, as it whistled through the trees.
–ooOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOO–
It whispered.
–OooooooooOOOoooooooOOOOOOOOOooooooOoo–
It wailed and whistled, wept and moaned, sang a doomed melody both haunting and enthralling, and then–
And then…
And then, Jeor heard it.
Another melody.
Another melody, but a truer one. A genuine one. A one that wasn’t natural, at all. That wasn’t moaning wind, or whispering pine trees.
A tune, of sorts, that echoed ethereally from deep within the dark, dark wood, faint at first, but growing stronger with each passing second.
“Mais, qu'est-ce que c'est…” Manton whispered, peering out into the pitch-blackness, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Is that…music?”
And he was right.
It was.
It was music.
Or, at least, it was, as far as Jeor could reckon. Except, if it was, indeed, music, then it was of a type he’d never, ever heard before. If anything, it reminded him of a mix between a lyre, an acoustic guitar, and those modern symphonics he’d heard once at the Distracted Globe.
From the depths of the forest, a fading, lonesome voice warbled.
When I die, and they lay me to rest,
It crooned.
Gonna go to the place that’s the best.
The words, still so faint he could scarcely make them out, serenaded Jeor from afar, spoken in a language incomprehensible to him, yet sung alluringly, all the same. The Son of Dainsleif mutely shook his head, in wonder, and in confusion, offering up nary an answer to Manton’s query.
Then both their eyes widened.
For a figure had emerged from the deep, dark wood.
And it was beautiful.
She was beautiful, for it was a woman they both saw.
She wore a simple, yet elegant attire. Black pants, white shirt, and a blood-red tie. A queer habit, a formal habit, a modern habit, adopted by only those in Europe wealthy and comfortable enough to afford luxurious clothes that served a purely cosmetic purpose.
Her hair was frizzy, wavy, and light brown. Her skin was pale, almost disturbingly so, and beset by a considerable number of freckles. Her eyes were a rich, warm amber, and her lips were painted crimson.
Yes, she was beautiful. Elegant. Attractive. In fact, her many features were arranged in such relative perfection to and with one another, that they seemed purposefully designed.
But her smile was not beautiful at all.
Even from afar, the sight of it made Jeor shiver.
It was an eager, almost ravenous-looking thing, spreading altogether too far from end to end, stretching and pulling painfully at the edges of her lips and the contours of her face, tearing at her cheeks, ripping her gums apart.
Bloody. Rictus. Maddened.
Vile.
“That, gentlemen,” the gorgeous, frightening woman grinned, “is an electric slide guitar.”
“And this,” she added, raising a single digit into the air and letting it dance entrancingly back and forth. “This is Spirit in the Sky. Norman Greenbaum, 1969 AD.”
She paused for a moment, distractedly tapping her chin.
“The Earth Aleph version, of course,” she caveated, as if such a piece of trivia was only obvious.
The woman, having spoke thusly, shut her mouth and simply grinned up at them from far below, from the bottom of the gate, her amber eyes squirming unnaturally.
Jeor observed her.
~~~
The Red Queen
~~~
“What the fuck…” he muttered, at a swiftly-rising volume, his eyes widening yet further.
No name, he thought, beginning to panic even as he did so. She doesn’t have a Name. She has a Title, but she doesn’t have a Name, impossible, how could that even–
“Manton, do, do you se–” Jeor stammered nervously, twisting to face his friend, who, it struck him now, had been unusually quiet.
And froze.
When I lay me down to die,
Goin’ up to the spirit in the sky.
Manton’s face was melting.
His eyes had started to weep tears of blood, and bile, and stomach acid. His hair was falling off in great clumps and patches. His teeth were popping from his mouth like droplets of rain, like bursting pimples. His arms and legs were lengthening, extending, elongating, growing new muscles and tendons and joints, shredding his clothes into little shards of fabric.
And he was growing more, and more, and more of them.
Towering over Jeor.
Goin’ up to the spirit in the sky,
Manton’s body reclined into a position parallel to the ground, now possessed of eight long, sinewy legs tipped in vicious, brutal spikes, eight beady, multifaceted eyes that rolled with madness, and wept with pain, and skin pale and pink and sagging, but thick with unholy muscle.
A massive, yet grotesquely-human spider.
That’s where I’m gonna go, when I die.
From between a too-large mouth filled with far, far too many dagger-like teeth, this creature that had once been his friend, his brother, moaned out to Jeor in agony, and anguish, and despair.
“Help…
“Me…”
When I die, and they lay me to rest,
Jeor choked, staggered, and crumpled to the ground.
I’m gonna go to the place that’s the best.
His vision swam. His legs felt like putty. He stared up at the monster made of Manton in terror, shaking uncontrollably, his breaths coming so fast they nearly suffocated him.
“Ahhh…”
Suddenly, somehow, the red-lipped woman was right between the both of them. Atop the gate. Sighing in pleasure, and delight. Staring at the thing that was Manton.
Jeor hadn’t even seen her move.
The Red Queen reached out a dainty, white-fleshed palm to stroke her cruel, corrupted creation tenderly.
“Oh,” she murmured, shaking her head slowly. “Oh, isn’t it beautiful?” Her breath was fresh, and light, and somewhat minty.
With the care and gentile nature that only a mother could show for their most beloved progeny, the woman softly caressed the Manton-thing’s many folds of rippling, pinkish skin dotted with patchy, human hair.
And she smiled.
“Ah, miss Dallon. Truly, of all the King’s errant children, your Shard is just my favorite,” she crooned, as she stroked her creation.
Her amber eyes flickered towards Jeor’s frozen form, speechless, sat petrified upon his behind.
“Well hello there, little ape-ling!” She greeted him with all the warmth and exuberance and enthusiasm of a kindergarten teacher, her voice soft and overly baby-ing, her porcelain palm extending out his way. “Little primate. My name is Larion Crow.”
From the midnight sky far above her horrifying gaze, the great and gaping void between stars seemed to throb ominously.
“Would you like to tell me yours?” She asked.
Jeor screamed.
He screamed, and screamed.
He let out a number of great and desperate cries, immediately alerting the outpost entire to their sudden and terrible invader. He grit his teeth and bared them at the woman, wrothfully, in hatred and in sorrow and in despair, calling upon his Blessing, feeling the Entropy surge within his veins, turning to bubbling acid that spewed forth from his palms, raging fury warring with the crippling fear that still wracked him from within.
Jeor would die here, now, today, he had little doubt of that. He would die, miserably, and alone, and afraid.
But he was no fledgling. No novice. No amateur. He was a Son of Dainsleif, and he’d trained for this. Fought for this. Lived his whole life, for this. He’d die here, now, but by the Priest, he’d at least take this vile creature, whoever she was, down with him.
Yet, despite Jeor’s fervent cry, the Red Queen made no moves towards him. None, of any kind. She demonstrated no alarm.
Instead, she just kept smiling at him. Sadly. With pity.
The pity a child might feel for an ant beneath its feet.
No matter. Jeor wouldn’t wait for her response. He surged upwards with every scrap of speed he could muster, pressing his palms tight against her face, pushing every last drop of acid lain within him outwards, that he might drown them all in death.
He surged upwards.
He surged…
He…
No.
No, wait.
Wait.
Shouldn’t his hands have reached her, by now?
And yet, they hadn’t.
Somehow, they still hadn’t reached her face. No, even more than that. His spine felt cold, and wet. His back, somehow, impossibly, hadn’t left the cold, hard ground. He hadn’t moved, at all. Were his hands even dripping with acid? He looked down towards them.
No.
No, he didn’t.
He didn’t do that, either.
Jeor didn’t move his head.
Because Jeor couldn’t move his head.
He couldn’t move his hands. He couldn’t move his head. He couldn’t move his neck, or his lips, or his mouth. He was paralyzed, yet conscious. A prisoner within his own body. The only thing he could articulate were his eyes. He’d never attacked.
He’d never even screamed out for help.
“Sorrrr–yyyy…”
The Red Queen affected a child’s tone as apologized, at once condescending and comedic.
She leaned over Jeor, staring down at him from up above. She quirked her head to the side. She raised a palm, extending her first two fingers and curling up the rest to form a ‘V,’ which she used to cover up one of her eyes.
She stuck out the edge of her tongue.
“Can’t have you calling friends, see,” she sing-songed, distonally. “This here’s a one man show, savvy?”
She snapped her fingers, and pointed left.
“One survivor!”
She snapped her fingers, and pointed right.
“One witness!”
She shot finger guns at him, winking, grinning.
“And, it’s you! Congrats!”
Jeor stared at her.
With a thumping of powerful footsteps, and dreadful scraping of stone on bone, the mutated monster than had once been Manton stomped over to where Jeor lay motionless, craning its inhuman, wrinkled neck to behold him alongside its Master.
Its eight eyes fixed upon his own, but curiously this time, betraying none of the remnant humanity he’d previously caught sight of, deep within. Instead, its savage maw hung open slightly, permitting a strand of yellow, viscous saliva to fall upon Jeor’s paralyzed face.
“Huuuunnnnnggrryyyyy…,” it drooled.
“Bad ape-ling! No eating the witness!” The Red Queen snapped angrily, smacking it on its bald, slimy head ever-so-lightly, her touch still enough to make the creature shiver backwards in fear and pain.
Then, she cocked her head, and tsked.
“But, you’ve got a point,” she admitted. “We’d best get a move on.” She clapped her hands, and snapped her fingers to the beat of the still-distant music. “Places to be, places to be, down in the deep, blue, sea. Right, then.”
So saying, the woman turned on her heel, and the spider-thing followed obediently behind her, with little dexterity, yet a frighteningly monstrous, rippling, bulging strength.
Speechlessly, motionlessly, helplessly, Jeor watched the two of them walk towards one of the craggy crenellations of Old Crannoch. From the corner of his eye, he watched them open the door. He watched the Red Queen glance back at him, once.
And wink.
And disappear into it.
What Jeor heard, then, would haunt him forevermore.
He heard sounds that would plague his dreams, populate his nightmares.
He heard the screams, first. Shrill, and sharp, and high-pitched. Swiftly shifting from alarm, to fear, to desperation, to pure, unadulterated agony. He heard screams both high and low, from all manner of voices, some he recognized, some he did not.
He heard bestial howls of the creature, the monster, that had been made of his best friend. They were howls of hunger, and anger, and delight. He heard the hideous squelching and squishing of fangs and claws and bone on tender flesh. He heard the revolting gurgling of blood caught between esophagus and trachea, drowning its poor victim on their own ichor.
He felt the crumbling walls of Old Crannoch shake mightily, very nearly brought to powdered rubble by the strength and furor of the blows exchanged below. Ser Declan, no doubt. They shook so heartily, and for such an extended period of time, that Jeor actually started to hope, beyond hope, that this nightmare of his might be over.
But soon enough, they were replaced by a chilling, dismal silence.
And, to Jeor’s dismay, by the grating, giggling laughter of the red-lipped woman.
He heard the light tapping of approaching footfalls. And, from the darkness sat beneath the same stony archway she’d entered, the Red Queen re-emerged.
Except, now the woman lived wholly up to her namesake, so covered was she, from tip to toe, in blood. Blood saturated every inch of her exposed skin, soaked her suit, and tie, and drenched her hair so thoroughly it was slicked-back and matted.
The only thing remaining pure and unblemished by the ichor of what could only be Jeor’s own fellow Sons were the woman’s white, white teeth.
The Red Queen let out a deep, deep, breath, closed her eyes, and a ripple pulsed across her form, spreading slowly from top to bottom, swallowing the blood into her, and rendering her as clean, and pristine, and elegant as the moment Jeor’d first seen her.
“What a lovely night,” she sighed. And smiled. And snapped her fingers.
Causing, along with the subtle popping inherent to teleportation, another figure to appear.
This one was a man, but clothed much more simply than her, wearing a large and unshapely but otherwise featureless tawdry, beige shawl, a set of pooling, draping, roughspun robes that appeared thoroughly uncomfortable, and covered all but his head, and neck.
His hair was long, very long. Long and greasy and tangled, as if uncared-for, unwashed for months, or years. A number of thick and twining cables had been, seemingly, crudely and primitively sutured to the back of his scalp, leaving yellow-blue, seeping welts, such that they, too, fell ungainly past his shoulders.
The man’s face was secreted partially from Jeor’s view, covered up by a strip of plain, white cloth tied behind the back of his head. A bandage.
It was burnt and blackened in two places, where the man’s eyes should otherwise have sat, yet these spots were nevertheless stained a rich, ruby, dripping red.
~~~
Clairvoyant
~~~
The man carried on his back a large, boxy Entropic device emitting what Jeor could now identify as that same song he’d heard before.
“I’m gonna go to the place that’s the best,” the woman sang along to the music, tapping her foot and nodding her head in time, as she did so. “Go to the place that’s the best. Mmmm. Man.”
She clapped her hands, and snapped her fingers, still speaking as she danced.
“Man, you guys just have the best music,” the Red Queen went on, twirling back and forth. “Seriously. You’d be amazed. Most civilizations, they just don’t bother. Or, they come up with some, some conceptualized dogshit.”
She sashayed left. She sashayed right. She spun in a full circle.
“Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that ridiculous? Space-faring, and no music? I mean, what’s the point? I just want something I can move to, y’know?”
She flicked an arm. She tapped a toe. Her feet shuffled in erratic, nonsensical patterns.
“Something I can move to, while the world falls down. Something I can groove to, while the stars burn out.”
Her limbs began to twist, and warp, and spool out as she moved, whipping around in bizarre and ungainly rhythms. Her dance was incredible, exceptional, but not beautiful. It was awful. Uncomfortable.
Nauseating.
“Oh, yeah, this is my shit! Yeah, FUCK YEAH!”
The music climaxed, and petered out, leaving naught behind but silence, and the whistling of the wind in the sea of pines, and the deep, satisfied, heaving breaths of the red-lipped woman.
Her face was flushed, and her smile downright horrific.
Jeor watched her, speechlessly, paralyzed. His mind was fuzzy and unfocused. He felt a strangely comforting distance growing within him, separating him from the impossible circumstances that he’d been unceremoniously thrust into.
Reassuringly and with great relief, Jeor abandoned himself, departing his sanity in favor of the idea that this was simply nothing more than a particularly terrible dream.
The bandaged man, though not paralyzed, might as well have been. He stood still as a statue. If his master’s incomprehensible monologue or eldritch prancing meant anything to him, he didn’t show it.
The Red Queen frowned, and pursed her crimson lips.
“What is the ‘Spirit in the Sky,’ though?” She asked, frowning. “I mean, really? Is it God, you think? It’s probably God, right?”
The bandaged man said nothing in reply, remaining just as silent as ever, if indeed his master’s question had been directed at him. Jeor, obviously, stayed equally mum.
Needless to say, even if he’d understood the lady’s question, he couldn’t physically respond.
“But, God isn’t in the sky,” she went on, regardless, waving a hand about as she spoke. “He’s not. He’s down below. He’s deep, deep, inside the belly of //Fauna Evaluation Engine, Subunit Two, Directive: Cultivation//.”
The words she spoke were no words, at all.
They were a horrific and horrendous noise, a savage assault on his spirit and his senses, terrible in a way that transcended description, the mundane letters and phonetics superceded by something ghastly. By a whirling, whipping, scalding stream of lights and colors and consciousness, a great and barren void that pierced its way into his mind and festered within his grey matter.
The madness-speaking woman glanced Jeor’s way and wiggled her eyebrows, playfully. An awful emptiness cavorted gleefully behind her amber eyes.
“And he’s waking up,” she whispered, delightedly. “He’s waking up. He’s waki–”
“Incoming report,” the woolen-robed figure interrupted her in a cold, emotionless, deadened voice, pressing lightly at its left temple as it did so.
The Red Queen, remarkably, despite her monstrous sadism, demonstrated no anger, or outrage, at the interruption, instead glancing towards her servant eagerly.
The bandaged man paused a moment, as if thinking, or watching, or listening, and then nodded.
“Group fourteen has returned from the Agoge.”
The Red Queen let out an enthusiastic and rather unbecoming squeal in response to this news, clapping her hands together, dancing a short and precise jig, and whipping an arm outwards, pointer finger extended towards Clairvoyant.
“Now!” She exclaimed, a staff of bone growing from her fingertip, which she ripped brutally out to twirl about and hold up to her lips, as if speaking into.
“Lllllllllllllllllll–adies and gentlemen! We go live, now, to the very latest news from the Frontier! Agoge, C! X! X! X! I! And its SURVIVORS!”
She whirled the bone-staff about once more, her fingers dancing with incredible litheness and dexterity, elongating slightly as they did so, her feet tip-tapping against the stony floor, and swung an arm towards Clairvoyant for the second time.
“Take it away, two-six-five!”
The bandaged man, incredibly, again demonstrated nary a response to his master’s antics, such that Jeor, even in the midst of delirium, was beginning to wonder if he was truly human, at all, or simply a well-forged golem.
He delivered his missive in a typically monotone voice.
“Agoge CXXXI confirmed concluded. Exotic Maw closed. Sole surviving group; fourteen. All other groups; deceased. Survivo–”
“Wait, wait!” The Red Queen cut off her subordinate with another eager grin. “Wait, don’t tell me! Let me guess!
“Two survivors!” She exclaimed, giggling. “Survivor one: Thaum! A young girl! Emerged first, totaled the encampment, slaughtered the Blessed embedded there! Survivor two: Glare! A blond Immortal! Ignored the dead, ignored the damage, took off immediately for Old Europe!”
Then she sighed, and sagged, though Jeor could not rightly tell if her sudden sorrow was authentic or affected.
“It’s a shame Vox had to die,” she said, sadly. “I quite liked that Shard. Quite the history. And he took to it well, too. A good student, he was. Difficult to see it go. Difficult to part with it. Difficult to part with the both of them. But then, sacrifices must be made.”
Her sadness vanished as quickly and startlingly as it had arrived, and the Red Queen laughed anew, turning to whisper conspiratorially at Jeor, this, though at no lower volume, jabbing a thumb his way.
“Watch, watch,” she grinned, gesturing at Clairvoyant for the third time. “He’s about to repeat what I just said, watch.”
“Survivor one: Thaum.” The robed man recited steadily, just as the Red Queen had said he would. “Survivor two: Glare, Light of Remembrance.”
“You see?” she giggled again, elbowing Jeor’s paralyzed body in a sickening manner. “You see? Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I would not want to be an Aristocrat right now, the Cells’ve got quite a–”
“Survivor three: Hero,” the robed man continued, in a clear, loud, and just as mechanical voice, interrupting its master with little apparent care. “Survivors met with Coterie. Survivors debriefed by Coterie. Encampment of Delver’s Guild Blessed subsequently abandoned. All parties presently absent. Suggested direction of survivors; Bern Institute of Entropic Arts and Sciences.”
His report finished, Clairvoyant fell silent.
And, for a brief while, this silence hung unsightly in the cool, cold, whistling wind.
The Red Queen’s smile had, for some reason, fallen from her face. Rotted. Wasted away. Returned to the oblivion from whence it came.
“Number of survivors,” she spoke, softly and with a frightening gravity.
“Three survivors,” the robed man answered her, just as promptly and obediently as ever. “Survivor one; Thaum. Survivor two; Glare, Light of Remembrance. Survivor three; Her–”
“NO,” she repeated. “No, there aren’t. No, there aren’t. There are not three survivors. There are two. Only two. A boy, and a girl. Number of survivors.”
“Three survivors,” the robed man repeated, just as monotonous as before. “Survivor one–”
“NO!”
The Red Queen let out a shrill and piercing shriek, her hands clenching into white-knuckled fists, from which blood streamed, freely. Her amber eyes had turned a deep, dark red.
“NO, NO, NOOOOO!”
Her muscles and veins and arteries began to bugle hideously, all swelling and growing and engorging in unison, making a travesty of her otherwise dainty, hand-crafted beauty.
“NO, THERE AREN’T THREE! NO, THERE AREN’T THREE!”
Her dripping, weeping, bloody eyes seethed with a fury that Jeor, even in spite of all he’d seen, could barely fathom. It was impossibly old, and unfathomably vast. It was simply beyond him. But, she could not take her anger out upon Clairvoyant.
And so, the Red Queen turned towards him.
“NOT THREE!” She wailed. And reared back. And struck him.
And Jeor felt pain.
“NOT THREE!” She howled.
And Jeor felt terrible, terrible pain.
“ONLY TWO!” She shrieked.
He could not defend himself. She had not restored his locomotive faculties. He could but lie there, and receive her meaningless, agonizing punishment.
“ONLY TWO! ONLY TWOOOOOOOOOO!”
With each attack she harmed, and yet, with each, she healed in equal measure–but poorly. Ungainly. Improperly.
Wretchedly.
“NO, NO, NO!”
Her blows shattered bone and pulped the precious organs lain beneath, and when she grew them back, she did so spuriously, making great gaping caverns of weblike bone, all calcified and fibrosed together, making his organs sprawling and grotesque, such that they wept all manner of fluid and loathsome detritus.
“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”
With each word, she struck.
Her brutal strikes flensed skin and flayed flesh, and what she regenerated was a great and clotted scab, a massive scar of blood and pus and gelatinous cartilage that covered up his body. His eyes were squished, his head was scalped, his limbs were minced and reduced to a fine mash, a mush, a mess of human stew.
And yet, the pain never ceased, or softened.
“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
When at last she finished, Jeor was no longer Jeor.
He was a pile of moaning flesh, a mound of somehow-sentient meat, a gross and oozing lump of tissue without eyes, or ears, or nose, without lips, or limbs, or digits, without hair, or tongue, or anus, with no orifices at all, such that he could not even cry out to express his mind-bending, unending pain.
He had no mouth, and so, he could not scream. But, somehow, he could still perceive his surroundings.
The Red Queen panted from above the wreck she’d left of him, breathing deep and heavy.
“No, no, no,” she moaned, miserably, digging her claw-tipped fingers deep into his glutinous carcass, tearing into him from within. “Centuries, and centuries, and centuries of labor, all to waste, all to waste…”
Then, she paused. Her eyes flickered about, eclectically. Her brow furrowed.
“Or, perhaps…? Perhaps…not all…is lost?”
Frowning, she straightened, lengthened, stood to her full height, and ran a bloody, grimy, gory palm through her thick, brown hair.
“Hooh,” she breathed, raising an eyebrow, regarding what she’d made of him. “Almost lost my cool, there.”
From at her side, Clairvoyant mutely watched his master. Unspeaking. Unresponsive. Unsympathetic. The Red Queen started pacing, back and forth, slowly at first, then swifter and swifter.
“No, it’s not all lost,” she muttered. “Not yet, not yet. But, plans must be changed. Strata, adjusted. Perhaps…”
She frowned, biting at one of her fingernails.
“Yes. Yes, that…that could work. The Cells live another day, then…then let us make use of them, no?”
She sucked in air through her teeth, sharp and shrill and tight, and waved a distracted arm in the direction of the bandaged man.
“Two-six-five, inform our agents in Syn, and Nycta. And Raphael. It is time, I think, for us to treat with Slavers.”
She scowled.
“And get me the twins. Get me Comedy, and Tragedy. They’ve had their fun, traipsing about Old Europe. It’s high time I put those girls to work.”
“As you command, my Lady” the bandaged man uttered, softly, raising his hands in prayer. “The world will burn.”
“The world will change,” Lady Crow replied, rolling her eyes. “Yes, yes, of course it will. Off you go, now.”
Clairvoyant pressed a pair of fingers to his temple, obligingly, and, with a distinct popping sound, disappeared.
The Red Queen took a deep, deep breath.
And she looked down at Jeor.
And she smiled at him.
“Ape-ling,” the red-lipped woman sweetly sang. “Shall I leave you, then, to keep your fellows company?”
She picked up Jeor’s nerveless, limbless, fleshy heap of a frame, carried him gently over to the large, stone door that marked the entrance to the fortress, and, with impossible strength, shoved it roughly open.
Allowing him to witness a horror scene.
The place that had once housed Jeor and his friend, and fifty other Sons of Dainsleif housed them still, but–piecemeal. In splatters of blood and great gouts of gore that streaked the walls and stained the windows crimson. The wooden tables had been shattered, the chairs splintered, the bowls and cutlery smashed to shards, and the once-grand hearth reduced to a mere pile of smoldering rubble.
The whole place stank of wet meat, but then, Jeor wasn’t much troubled by it.
He could no longer smell.
No, what troubled him was that thing which dominated the wrecked room’s center.
It was an effigy of blood, and bone, and brain matter. An awful masterpiece, a towering sculpture wrought from flesh by a maddened, twisted virtuoso. Its central pillar was forged from Manton’s spider-like carcass, rising up to scrape the stone ceiling, its many legs spread out to make wings of gangly, muscly sinew.
An angel of churning flesh.
The howling faces of Jeor’s slaughtered comrades had been carved somehow to form a fan of flames that crept up from below, eating into the visceral angel atop them. The angel’s face was contorted into a lament of fear and pain and horror, and her wings strained furiously, as if to escape the fire.
Underneath this macabre, unholy sculpture, there was a message scrawled in blood.
Sigrun died screaming.
Can you still hear her, Cub?
When you close your eyes?
Despite the atrocity bearing little, or no resemblance to its namesake, Jeor recognized all the same to what it referred. There wasn’t a Son alive who’d miss it, he reckoned.
The immolation of Sigrun the Savior.
Lady Crow let out one final, terrible, creaking laugh, letting Jeor fall to the cobblestone ground with a wet and meaty splat, and danced out the door behind him, disappearing into the night.
As she did so, he heard her sing.
“Oh, the world will burn,
And the world will change,
Yes, I can feel it, deep in my veins,
FO–or~
In the darkness–he’s waiting!
The golden hour–he’s waking!
He’ll bring about our ending and he’ll take away our pain.”