The Ancients and the Angels: Celestials

by M.C. O'Neill

  ***

  Glynna was still beside herself as she primped with haste before the grand mirror in the foyer. She looked a wreck with all of the drama of that night and wanted to be sure that she appeared presentable for the warden. Because of the curfew and the fact that the house call was for a Mitlan, the doctor was being escorted by a cadre of hulking municipals.

  From upstairs, she could hear a barking rage in one of the lounges. Such muffled outbursts were becoming common from down the halls the longer the lady lived at this mansion. She shook her head and winced with mild annoyance as she could tell that Venn’lith had summoned some of her angry strength back. Either Ping, or maybe even Cadreth, was getting the third degree from her.

  When the house announced the arrival, she straightened herself for full effect. This was going to be a total tramwreck, she figured as her soon-to-be-stepdaughter was sure to be in the saltiest of moods. Glynna assumed she would be the most uncompromising of patients and didn’t, in truth, want to be present for the embarrassing behavior that she would be certain to display. Quen’die would never act in such a manner to a professional no matter how ill or frightened she might have been. But then, there was plenty about her daughter that she didn’t realize, like the fact that she was an amateur saboteur.

  Armors filled the foyer as a small and frail-looking health warden rolled in a portable manapump and some diagnostic equipment. Amongst the coterie of civil wardens was a young lad dressed in the red uniform of the Youth Parliament.

  “Mother!” Kaedish ran to Lady Reyliss as he swiped the wedged felt cap off his head. Her son was having so much fun with the AYP as he had shaped his body to fitness in the short month that he had served amongst its ranks. From the looks of it, Glynna wondered if he hadn’t sprouted another inch or so since turning fourteen. She made a short mental note to be more attentive to the young elf.

  “Hi kiddo,” she smiled despite her current frazzle. “You home for the night?”

  “Yeah, I am,” he chuckled. He was all sweaty from his daily duties. “They had me working late tonight. We busted some guys who were trying to steal rations and the captain said I did so good that he might even promote me to squad leader next week!”

  “Hey, that’s great,” she intoned with some phony mirth. Between Quen’die and Venn’lith, she was not feeling so celebratory for her son. Perhaps once things settled down some, she might be able to take the lad’s lust for law enforcement with more gusto. “Kaedish, honey, I need for you to go to your room for a bit. As you know, the doctor is here to see Venn’lith and she’s in a really bad mood, okay?”

  “Uh, yeah, okay,” the young elf lamented. Before signing up with the Parliament, he would have whined and cried over his mother’s demands, but the drills and discipline were having quite the positive effect on his behavior. At least someone was benefitting from the end of this world. “Lemme know when it’s over.”

  “Good evening, Lady Reyliss,” the tiny Tel’lemurian doctor presented a hand, ignoring her son’s departure. “I’m Warden Yag’ni and I’ll be giving Venn’lith the diagnosis.”

  “Good evening to you too, Doctor,” she flashed him a customary smile. “She should be down any moment. Eh, she’s just trying to compose herself.”

  “That’s fine,” he beamed. “That’ll give me some time to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Certainly,” she maintained her plastered smile.

  “Can you tell me of any outward symptoms she’s exhibiting? Also, could you tell me how she claims she has been feeling?” The doctor was scribbling over his tablet some of the preliminaries for his examination.

  Glynna huffed as she cataloged the foul conditions in her mind. She again had really wished that Venn’lith’s father were there with her for this. “Uh, yeah. Well, she has been vomiting, eh violently, for the past three days. Um, her skin is normally, you know, very Xochian, kind of caramel, but it has been dulling. Graying, if you will. And my biggest concern is with her eyes.”

  Yag’ni ceased the stylus. “Okay, what’s wrong with her eyes?”

  Lady Reyliss chewed her bottom lip for a moment. “Well, normally, her eyes are a dark brown, and now they are a bright yellow. Not yellow like a cat or something, but like a lemon rind. You’ll see. It’s amazing.”

  To that, his eyebrows almost hit his hairline. “Wow! I can’t wait to see this. Are you sure it isn’t something like jaundice, you mean?”

  “Oh, no!” she shook her head with her own disbelief. “They’re so yellow now they practically glow. I’m really worried for her, especially since she’s been handling that Thelemex drug for her work and has had plenty of close contact with some of the Aldebarans.”

  “All right,” the doctor mumbled as he transcribed the lady’s report. “So, are any of these Aldebarans here tonight with you?”

  On cue, to answer the doctor, Cadreth escorted the slouching form of Venn’lith. She was hunching herself into his side as she walked while the lad held her hand with a tight grip. Glynna could see that the maiden was heaving from tears and kept her eyes shut like a vise. The doctor sucked in a gustful of air upon seeing the winged male. Yag’ni was no stranger to these new beings as they were in and about the Health Circle now and then, but this one was quite imposing.

  “Eh, Hello. Good evening,” the Aldebaran stammered. “My name is Cadreth and this is your patient Venn’lith.”

  The Xochian teen lifted her head with a slow grace from the lad’s shank and faced the doctor with her eyes still shut. Lady Reyliss was correct in that her skin coloration was as dull as ash. When the maiden opened her lids, the doctor could see that the whites were red from incessant bouts of crying, but the irises glowed like the light from a torch.

  Warden Yag’ni expelled a shocked gasp. It was unlike anything he had seen except for a monster in a movie. His spine writhed with a disgust that he could only describe as “unholy.”

  “Tell them Cadreth,” Venn’lith ordered the lad with a soft hiss as her face dripped with sorrow. “Tell them what you did to me.”

  Seal it Over

  “Delivery time?”

  “Eh,” the acting warden at interments checked his tablet. “11:11 a.m. Heh, make a wish.”

  “Thanks,” the arresting officer checked his own tablet for verification. “We caught us a big fish tonight, so we might be at this for a while. With the martial law going on, she won’t be able to have any legal counsel until at least midmorning tomorrow.”

  The internments warden poured himself another cup of tea from his thermos. It was growing rather tepid and he considered boiling up more water. “It’s the terrorist, yeah? That Reyliss maiden? I have to hand it to you, you guys are fast.”

  “Not fast enough,” Detective Tu’vall Op’yss grunted. “This kind of thing could have been prevented in the first place. The Circle of Transport reports the dock’s still knocked out and might be for weeks. This little scab may just have signed elfdom’s death warrant.”

  The desk warden winced at the brackish taste of the tea. “Yeah, without that Thelemis, or whatever they call it, we aren’t going anywhere soon. Well, bring the fiend in and we’ll have her processed.”

  Op’yss ejected a small chuckle. “Right. And please do it with some consideration.”

  Slugging the final contents of the thermos, the acting warden peered down the empty hall expecting to see the infamous detainee that instant. “She strapped?”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s getting the full welcoming treatment with mouth guard and everything.” Op’yss pointed to the grisly mask fastened on his face. “Wear a rebreather too and close your thermos. She reeks of mint. Could be a bio-agent.”

  “Sure,” the warden began to dig inside his desk for the suggested apparatus. “It’s probably just sunshield. That stuff can really stick to you.”

  “Sunshield trucking a bug,” the detective crackled through the filter. “You never know. These anarchist-types can be tricky. We’ll have the lab shuck a skin s
ample off her and make sure she isn’t hot. Alert Inquisitions and have them prep a manaspike and the biomana for tomorrow. We’ll see if she’s working with anyone else and if they have more nonsense up their sleeves. I think we’re going to have a really long morning with this one.”

  With his mask donned, secured and activated, the stumpy desk warden hissed, “Ah, poor baby. Bring her through.”

  “She’s dangerous,” Op’yss intoned for effect. “Okay, bring her in!” the detective barked into his comm.

  With an echoing series of clanks, the internment doors unlocked their internal mechanisms and the bulky portal slid wide open. Light from the dungeon’s courtyard bled into the long hallway announcing the arrival of the notorious with silent certainty.

  Quen’die Reyliss’ head was swimming. The grasping and groping of the demons and arresting wardens left dull aches though her body. Her neck hurt most of all and the upright gurney to which she was strapped did nothing to quell the pains. It was almost as if she were being crucified and drugged at the same time. The hallway seemed miles long in her confusion and much too bright for the eyes to adjust. The saline sting of tears stabbed at her eyeballs, but there was no way her bound arms could rectify that problem. All she could do was blink, which may have been aggravating it.

  After what seemed like a sluggish eternity, the gurney halted in front of the masked processing warden at the end of the hall. Terror lit up the maiden’s eyes wide as she soaked in the formal display of security before her. The squat bull rose from his seat and rounded over to her square in her face.

  “Quen’die Reyliss,” he buzzed with menace through the rebreather. “Too bad you weren’t male or else I’d give you a warmer welcome with my fist to your gut!” The two demons in tow behind her began guffawing upon that rude introduction and the maiden blurted out a muffled weep upon hearing it.

  “Aww,” he continued with his abuse. “The little princess gonna cry? Not as much as all of elfdom when we can’t evacuate, no thanks to you!”

  Changing his mind about chivalry toward females, the warden thrust a reactive ham hock into the maiden’s tiny belly. Quen’die sprayed that evening’s elderberry muffin through her mouth guard. Cruel laughter from elf and demon alike rang in an infernal chorus to the warden’s foul performance.

  “Bor’gann, knock it off,” Op’yss chided the desk warden. “We have to do this by the scroll. Don’t worry, the Inquisitors will give her what-for in due time.”

  The admonished warden formed a sheepish wince from behind his mask. “All right, but I want a front-row audience for that!”

  This may have been the entrance to the Nine Hells as far as Quen’die was concerned. What more horrors had these bulls in store for her as the night wore on, she feared? With the foul guard shutting her mouth, she couldn’t protest a thing and the taste of her bile was making her all the more ill.

  Op’yss began filing preliminaries into his tablet and flowing the data over to the desk warden. “We’ve tried to contact the parents. They’re estranged currently and the father is nowhere to be found. The mother is en route right now. We’re going to try her grandmother’s place too. It doesn’t matter really because this one’s gonna be charged as an adult, so…”

  Upon hearing that Mother was on her way made the maiden want to lose it right then and there. Quen’die needed to see her in the worst way, but she knew the long-awaited reunion would be cold and unwelcoming. She figured these accusations of terrorism were only cramping Mother’s new life and, for that, the lady would only be all the more enraged with her. A surge of anger rose through the maiden’s trunk upon considering this and she replaced her worry with one insectoid thought: Kill Venn’lith Mitlan.

  “Just so you know, we’re going to have a few members of the AYP arriving here for interrogations’ observation tomorrow morning, so make ready of them,” the desk warden informed Op’yss. “Prime Warden Mitlan won’t be among them. She probably has another commercial or announcement to make or something.”

  “Gods!” the detective countered. “We can’t have a cadre of kids milling around this freak! Those little whelps only get in the way. I’m sick of them. Just last week, one of them contaminated evidence at a collision scene and that really ticked me off. They’re too young to know what they’re doing.”

  “Royal orders, buddy,” Bor’gann shrugged. “Some kind of publicity stunt or something. We gotta do what we’ve gotta do.”

  “Hail Cai’lee Du’gonn,” Op’yss moaned. “Whatever. Sequester her into the visitor’s room and keep her strapped. Someone clean her mask off too. Mama’s on her way over right now to say goodbye.”

  As Quen’die waited for her mother to meet her, more tears ran down her face while the worries returned through her mind. She was displayed in the lonely white room like a monument whilst secured to that gurney. The security glass before her was airtight in case she was harboring a biological agent. No matter which way she tried to shift her form, the aches and pains found nowhere for relief. The last time she saw her mother as she drove away into her new life, the maiden had wondered if she would ever see her again. Revisiting her in a dungeon was not quite how she had imagined the reunion.