The reaver had rolled off to somewhere even deeper in Arabia Terra, and continued roving forward, leaving a wake of rumbling dust.
Kay-El had his calf bound up in a cast – he wasn’t quite hurt enough to earn another bathe in the bacta tank and it was setting quickly with the help of spirits and could be removed soon – and gingerly lifted it from the elevated position he had placed his leg, along the side bench of the reaver, and set it on the floor, so he could turn to Atell directly.
“Atell, you have to eat.”
Atell didn’t say anything. He had not spoken, or slept, or indeed even moved, from where he sat after he had taken off his carapace, after he had killed his sister last rote.
Third sat beside him and tried to shove a bowl full of gruel into his face, but Atell just flinched away, and the gruel splattered all over the simple smock that Second and Third had to pull over Atell to keep him warm, for he himself didn’t bother.
Third grumbled at the waste of perfectly good food, swiping up a trail of the stuff off Atell’s smock and sticking it in his mouth, “He’s shell shocked.”
Third, with his helmet off, looked remarkably similar to Kay-El, same as Second, only their noses hadn’t been broken, Third cut his own hair, a… a simple cut that he could easily accomplish himself so that his hair would not fall into his eyes – he was a marksman after all – while Second and Kay-El, well, they just didn’t care enough to cut their long, raggedly hair. Third’s eyes were much narrower and meaner for Third’s constant peering into rifle sights had deepened his crow’s feet wrinkles, while Second’s eyes looked dopier and more apathetic than kind, like Kay-El’s.
Kay-El in fact was the eldest of the three, but by an insignificant amount, just a few minutes. Second and Third both had the very common elvan pink irises, instead of the purple irises that Kay-El had, Second was a little bit shorter, Third a little taller, and neither of them were as gaunt for Kay-El usually let them eat more than him. There was no doubt that they were broodmates, and had shared the womb together with five others, including the recently passed Fourth.
Second shrugged, “More for us then,” and snatched the bowl from Third and tipped the contents into his mouth.
Kay-El furrowed his brow and shot Second a derisive glare, “Don’t you care about him?”
“Not much point. He’s not long for Aryss if he refuses to eat. He’ll get weak, he’ll get puppeteered into the suck. And he’s going to get himself killed. Or worse. He’s going to get us killed.”
“Do you think he wants to die?” Third asked. He was squinting into Atell’s blank look. “Maybe we should give him mercy.”
“They would never allow that!” snapped Second. “We’re in enough trouble already!”
Atell was now scowling for Third had indeed spilled gruel all over his smock and it was cold now, and sticky and discomforting. But he did not look back into Third’s eyes, he did not turn his head at all. He only kept staring straight in front of him, where Kay-El was sitting directly across.
Second had saved half the bowl of gruel, and now he offered it to Kay-El, who accepted it with a thankful nod. “Third, enough with such heavy talk. Let’s break out the geeds.”
Third moved to the supplies crate tucked away in the corner of the reaver, but when he lifted open the crate’s hatch, he noticed that the timelock on the green dragon vial dispenser was still flashing red. They had not yet been granted a reprieve.
“Sorry brother, Therys hasn’t permitted us another bottle yet.”
Second hunched his shoulders and stared glumly ahead, just like Atell was, but more in disappointment than this outright catatonic clinical depression that Atell was mired in.
Soon enough, with nothing better to do as the reaver trundled along, Second and Third curled up in the corners of the bare and hard gryphantene reaver floor to sleep. But Atell and Knight Leader were still sitting on opposite benches, continuing to stare each other down. Atell’s scowl had disappeared but now there was an accusatory forlornness. As if to ask the Knight Leader - why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you protect me?
If he hadn’t been mind blasted so badly, Kay-El could have gotten to Exasha first, and done the dirty work for Atell, spare him this misery. How he wished it were so. If he could have held on, for just a bit longer, and pushed past that torturous pain- then yes, he could have protected Atell from the wracking horror that an elvan soldier would feel after slaying his own self-styled Queen. Exasha wasn’t even a proper Queen, but the feeling of betraying the one thing your very existence was meant to protect- the feeling of not just losing your purpose, but going against it- it had hollowed Atell out.
It was all calculated, though. Atell was just a miner. He didn’t really know how to fight. But he wasn’t just cannon fodder either. The whole point was to break him. Put Atell in such despondency that he would never dare cultivate hope in his heart, never dare go rogue. He saw now, firsthand, what Clan Amallark does to rogues.
Vilithe hoped that Atell could live out the rest of his life in relative peace. She hoped that they wouldn’t lobotomize him. But he was very frayed. At least menial mining wouldn’t fray him even further. Probably. For a moment she involuntarily recalled Kwandriss’s lost memory of a brighter, better Aryss, before she shook the intrusive thought away.
Vi. Kay-El could tell she was in his mind.
Kay. Vilithe acknowledged.
That last mission…
It was unbelievably fucked up. They finished each other’s thoughts now.
I failed him, Vi. I should have killed Exasha first! Now he’s- he’s a shell of his former self. And you shouldn’t have pain blocked me! You know I can’t bear-
-the thought of me hurting that badly? And then he knew that she really didn’t have much choice either, because she felt the exact same way.
Kay-El was still looking into Atell’s eyes. He softened his glance.
“I’m sorry, Atell.”
But Atell did not respond.
Kay-El buried his face in his hands. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. He was wracked with unbearable guilt, now an all too familiar concept and feeling. It sometimes felt like that was all he felt, all the time. They had managed a hat trick – three missions in a row without a casualty until Eighth had fallen in the raid just before Exasha’s assassination – and Eighth had blundered foolishly into a trap, so there was nothing that could have been done there. So, he had been feeling confident. No, not confident. Cocky. ‘I could do this all rote’. Ever since Vilithe had introduced the idea of heroism into his head, he had tried to attain that ideal.
But he was no heroic captain.
No void cowboi. No noble dragonrider, like his love.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
No defender of the clan. Nor a bounty hunter of justice.
No pirate seeking adventure and lost bounties of monarchs.
Not even a rogue.
He was just a killer.
A weapon.
A tool.
Of the God Empress of Elvankind.
How many did they kill on that last one? Could he even keep count anymore? Did he even want to?
Did he even care?
Kay…
Kay-El did not think back. His face stayed buried. He sometimes wished that it was he who was given mercy. How dreadful to know what heroism meant, when he was clearly nothing but just another baddie. A mook. A goon. Just another bug in the swarm. Worse than that, an effective one. A stain upon the universe. A big bad evil guy.
Kay, just get some sleep. You’ll need your rest. If they haven’t given you green miruvor, it means the next mission can’t be that long from now.
Kay, again, did not respond. It seemed that Atell’s hopelessness was creeping into Kay-El’s mind.
It wouldn’t hurt right?
She was just trying to help him, after all.
Without much thought other than that to justify it, Vilithe went into the Knight Leader’s head, and imprinted – it was much easier now that they were so close – as many comforting thoughts as she could, and to make it feel like Knight Leader had come up with these thoughts on his own, to soothe him:
And it was probably the truth, but Vilithe had no real way of knowing. He could also just be euthanized and discarded one rote, when his limbs gave out, long after a lobotomization. Then she remembered an old elvan prayer, when she had discussed the Mystery of the Redeemer with her broodmates, growing up on the Nimbii.
But neither of them ever gave serious consideration that an omnibenevolent and omniscient cosmic power could exist. The problem of evil was too great in their lives for that to make sense. If there was authorial cosmic divine order in their universe, it seemed to them that it was cold and indifferent to their plight.
And if a God existed in their universe, it was most certainly not the Empress. Immortal she may be – in fact if given the right resources it was arguable than at this point in development any elvan or orcan could live forever – invincible she was not. She could still be killed. Maetra was not truly omnipotent.
Because Vilithe was so, so grateful that he was still alive.
Still alive after all.
But none of it worked. Because Kay-El could tell that these thoughts were not original at all. He could snatch out the plagiaristic rotten core.
He was the one who thought ‘Soldiers die, workers don’t weep’ to Vilithe, and he knew this, and he could identify the way Vilithe was trying to turn around one of his own thoughts on him, that’s how inception worked, and he was getting pretty good at psi. So, of course, all of this was immediately understood, and Vilithe stopped trying and realized that Kay-El needed to mourn.
He needed to feel this anguish and pain.
It wouldn’t be right, otherwise.
It couldn’t be simply psionically excised out of his mind. To do so was wrong.
And now Vilithe began to understand what she had done to Kwandriss- it was unforgivable. And Kwandriss was his sister. She still had not revealed that memory – it seemed so distant and trivial now that he couldn’t scry it out of her anyway, even if he knew what to look for – But she couldn’t help herself! She knew she shouldn’t meddle in his mind, but she loved Kay-El too dearly, it became almost obsessive.
Of course soldiers wept for each other. They were brethren. Battle brothers. If a soldier couldn’t weep for the soldiers that he fought with, what could he weep for?
If he fell in battle, would Second and Third and Atell weep for him?
He wiped his face and stared up at the reaver’s spine. And now his tears fell freely.
But Atell could recognize what was happening, realize that it wasn’t really Knight Leader’s fault, and that Knight Leader was crying for him, and that accusatory stare now blinked back to numb denial because this couldn’t really be happening, could it?
Yeah, right.
He didn’t just kill Exasha, who was in fact, his own governing psion back in the Boucheran mines before the Talauthians invaded – little wonder why he couldn’t fully separate his anger at Clan Amallark from his anger at Clan Talauth – Exasha, who had treated him with nothing but kindness. Exasha was his sister. She was of his own clan. His own spirit-blood! He didn’t remember, or understand, or truly know any of these things, but he felt it. Which made it worse. An ineffable agony that he could not vocalize, could not describe, could not resolve. Acceptance is impossible in a forced denial.
To stop the contagion of suffering, Vilithe suppressed his torment with psionic encryption, and without the intense emotion to sustain, and in his weakened, hungered state, Atell finally passed out from exhaustion. And soon, slowly but inevitably, the Knight Leader winked out too, drained from the physical toll of fighting and the emotional toll of experiencing his comrade’s breaking and fraying.
Vilithe had not even a moment to prepare herself her own bowl of gruel when that slithering presence wrapped itself around her again. It was suffocating.
Amefrid. But she had only scryed her for the first time naught but a rote ago.
Typical of Amefrid’s invasive scrying, she responded, I have already sent you closer to the next target than the legions, vassal. Scry ahead and scout.
Yes, your highness. Vilithe thought mechanically.
Amefrid then gave her an intricate psionic projection of their next destination. It was yet another underground bunker, but massive, hidden deep in the brain terrain mazes of Deuteronilus Mensae. Brain terrain was a curious Aryssal feature. Five meter high rock walls, shaped by glaciation, curved and bent and split in patterns reminiscent of the folds on orcan and elvan brains. This was a very ice-rich area, and with the right equipment, an Aryssal encampment could survive here for a very long time. But this wasn’t an encampment, it was a veritable fortress. Attacking it through the nooks and crannies of the labyrinthine brain terrain that surrounded it was going to be a nightmare.
The underground fort reached deep into the ground, a roughly hewn five-hundred-meter-long descending tunnel going in at a roughly fifteen-degree angle with hundreds of hallways and rooms branching out from it. What rogues could still have such resources?! This was…
Oh no…
And once again, Amefrid ignored any sense of psionic decorum and plumbed into Vilithe’s thoughts like they belonged to her, and thought to her, you guessed correctly, vassal. Vilithe felt a wicked delight emanating from her enslaver, and pulled her psionic cloak around her mind tightly for she could tell Amefrid was trying to probe into the folds of her brain, just like how they would have to cut through the brain terrain in the four hours travel left to take the knights to the last stronghold of Clan Talauth.
Your target is Talisa. She didn’t even bother calling her Rogue Queen.
Don’t ask.
Einstein Talauth
Meaning death, because where else could they go?
A common slang, used by any combat unit, for combat. The ‘suck’. Because combat… sucks. What else need be said?
‘Geeds’ was a common soldier slang for green miruvor, or green dragon.
Finish? It was hard to tell who began and who ended, thought Mal.
Or so he thought.
Mal, immediately understanding the risks, cautioned Vilithe not to mess with Kay’s mind, but Vilithe pushed him away with yet another Shush, Mal.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
To make room for these thoughts, she deleted thoughts of concern for the squad members that had already died. Including Einstein ‘Fourth’ Talauth. It felt wrong. He was Kay-El’s brother. And he did not even know this yet, for Vilithe did not let him know. But Vilithe no longer cared about right or wrong- anything that could ease her love’s aching heart.
He would not be, he would continue fighting to the end of his rotations.
It was not the truth.
She made sure not to use the word ‘Goddess’. They knew who that meant.
I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin- …I am claiming the right to be unhappy.
I’ma fuck up my life… What do you know about love? What do you know about life?
Who Atell had in fact shared pleasure with, even if he didn’t remember it.