by M.C. O'Neill
***
It was a dreadful process. The pain and shame continued even though the maiden was no longer racked on that gurney. The burly female guard rushed Quen’die through the corridors after having her disrobe. Her summer gown was tossed aside without any thought into a wheeled bin and Quen’die knew that she would never see it again. Being led through the empty and winding halls of Processing stark-naked was an assault to her sensibilities as she had been never much one for advertising immodesty and was always somewhat annoyed by the maidens who were. Now, she had no choice in the matter, and she used her arms to cover her state as best as she could. Strangely, she felt little embarrassment as her actions were nothing more than reflex. Too many other humiliations had already happened to her that night.
The worst part was the rough “delousing” that the female bull administered. She was so brutal with the agent and it smelled much worse than her minty sunshield; a bit like phony cherries. After that, the torrential rinsing of cold water caused the maiden to suck in a shocked gasp of frozen pain.
“Well, maiden, you get a special gown for a special guest!” the guard announced with feigned glee. The garment in question was bright red whilst bright white words on the back of it displayed in a giant, impacting script, “Convict,” “Terror,” Flight Risk,” “Shoot to Kill.” A laundry list of transgressions pertaining to Quen’die was advertised for all the denizens of the dungeon to see.
All of the dungeons were arranged by circle, much like other government institutions throughout the kingdoms. Each of the circle’s titles was cataloged by the banal names of animals for some psychological reason the logistics designers had fabricated. The guard slapped a yellow and black badge over Quen’die’s heart on her dreadful prison gown. “There’s your new name, Sweetie: 1-1-2-7 Tortoise. Remember it and we get along just fine.”
They seemed to float to the Circle of Tortoise and Quen’die could not hear anything but the whirlpool of blood rolling through her head. One of the strangest things she had recalled of that night was the fact that she no longer smelled of mint. That delousing agent really cleaned deep, she thought.
“You heard the warden,” the guard broke the maiden’s trance as they stopped in front of Quen’die’s assigned cell. “Tonight you get some palatial new digs all by yourself. Oh, and don’t let your new neighbor get the best of you. I hear that one can talk your pointy little ear right off. Isn’t that right, Travius?”
To answer the night guard’s question, the sound of a chain jangled from beyond the shut cell nearby. “Ahem…I speak when it is needed. You, bull, are not worth the conversation or the lecture.”
“Ah, you hear that, 1127? Travius has a lesson to be learned! Isn’t that something?” the guard chuckled at that. “What is it this time, Travius? Maybe how the slug is really nothing but a…a bio-organic transmitter designed by the government to snoop on gardeners across the kingdom? That’s right, Travius. We can’t have all those pesky gardeners causing trouble now, can we?”
His voice echoed back from the cell but it sounded so weak and informal compared to the thunderous tirades he was famous for on his public service announcements over the scrolls and the screen. “Don’t presume to patronize me, bull. The idle jibes of the doomed mean nothing to me.”
“See, 1127? We’re all doomed!” The guard paused at that and stared Quen’die square in the face. All humor had drained from the bull’s eyes and her smile was forgotten. Of all of Travius’s prattle and doom-mongering, it was quite possible that he was correct this time. “No thanks to you, 1127. Get in there!”
Considering how she was now locked up and no longer relevant, Quen’die could only agree with the old demented demagogue. There was nothing that she could do from inside these cells, chosen by Ui or not. Yes, the world was safe from the demonic Thelemex for the time being, so that could be construed as a minor victory, or rather a speed bump, but once that issue was rectified, the hellish forces would continue with their plans. The moment the maiden heard the deafening clank of her cell’s door, she knew that her mission was sealed over like a tomb.
A small, yet bright and horrible light shone at the top of the small quarters. There also stood a cot on one side and a hole in the ground in the other which was her toilet. There seemed to be no way to turn off the light as it failed to respond to her summons. How would she ever get sleep with this, she feared?
Right at that moment, Lauryl’la was asleep and dreaming of looters prancing through her head. The bull-maiden had the luxury of relief from duty right after she had helped bust Quen’die. What a horrible maiden she had become, she thought. Was this to happen a month ago, would it have been possible Lauryl’la would have taken her side? Most likely not. She was the type of maiden who somehow took pleasure in seeing the misfortune of others. The look on her face as Quen’die was shackled was nothing short of self-pleased glee. Venn’lith, On’dinn, Mother and her old best friend were all on the list of the fallen. More than could be certain, this Travius would prove to become an addition.
“I’ve heard all about your work, young maiden,” the voice from beyond her cell wall uttered. “These walls have ears as well as mouths. Quite a valiant attempt, I must say. Have you or others decided to carry on with my mission?”
“I didn’t do anything!” she answered the “guru” by annoyed reaction. “I was framed or something.”
He laughed and his world-familiar gusto had returned with it. “Oh, we are all framed in some way. You’ll see, young maiden. We are all stabbed in the back by stupidity until there is nothing but our spines left to show for it! And when we are so sweet near that vital bone, that is when we have only the choice to act or be paralyzed forever. You, young maiden, have chosen wisely.”
“This has nothing to do with your mission, Travius,” Quen’die shot. Listening to this guy all night was a definite part of the torture the bulls must have relished to dole out. “I frankly don’t know what happened.”
She could hear his voice rev-up like it was some sort of machine that only carried the function of persuasion. “But whoever knows what truly happens? That isn’t for you to decide, maiden. I could give you scrolls upon scrolls of secrets and knowledge, but what really would that prepare you for? I could lay out every move you had ever thought of making and you would still come to your final conclusion.”
For some reason, she could not help but continue to react to his oratory. “What in the Nine is all that supposed to mean?”
“Fate, maiden, fate!” his speech was now barks and growls. “You will do what you will. Now, when I say that, maiden, I don’t mean you get to just do whatever you want. You don’t get to eat cake and custard all day and not become a cow. You will eat that cake, you will become the cow! Dig? Moo! Moo!” Upon that Travius began to cackle. His stint in the dungeons had warped his mind all the more. “It’s easy! It’s easy because you have no choice in your matter. Just flow with it, maiden! Flow with the tyranny of the universe!”
“That’s stupid, Travius,” she was already becoming enraged with him. He had to be a Scorpio. She couldn’t stand his whinging on the screen when he was a free elf, but being locked up next to him all night and in person was nothing short of a nightmare. “Just go to sleep or something.”
“What do you mean, ‘sleep!’” he exclaimed. “How could I possibly do that? This is my Wintersfest morning and I am but an elfling and you are the greatest gift that I could ever receive! I knew it too. I heard that name ‘Quen’die Reyliss’ and I knew you were something special even before I had heard that you did what you did.”
For years, there was speculation that this guy was psychic or mystic, or whatever. Upon hearing his declaration of her special status, Quen’die touched her belly right where her mark had rested for her whole life. Could it be possible he knows, she wondered? No, it was just the coincidence of her supposed sabotage and he was impressed by it, as only a true maniac would. That had to be the reason, she figured.
“See, you’re ch
osen. You have no choice in the matter! All those kids I shepherded were just mere practice for the main event. We are all gonna die, maiden. We are all doomed and there is nothing I or anyone can do about it. Don’t you know this all revolves around you?”
Quen’die’s eyes beamed wide and she was so glad that the guru could not see them from behind his wall. But could he? She continued with the practical theory that this was all coincidence, but his manic tirade held a frightening kernel of sense to it. That notion made her all the angrier and she just wanted sleep so that she could suffer the manaspike the next morning. “Good night, Travius, I am going to sleep. Shut your mouth.”
“Maiden, I can shut my mouth all you want, but you can still hear me!” It was relentless. This had to be some sort of softening so she would be dead tired tomorrow for the interrogation. She hoped in desperate silence that another bullish torture would let her off the hook.
As Travius blathered on about fate, stars and the universe, his lecture was halted through the thick walls by a charmless female voice about an hour later. “Shut up, Travius, or I will kill you.”
The guru gasped at the threat and took it to heart. Quen’die couldn’t even hear him breathing anymore. Who was that lady, she wondered?
Her cell clanked open and a tall figure stood backlit by the hall. The bright light of the cell illuminated her as she sauntered in with an arrogant stride. An eight-foot-tall demon ruffled her wings to accommodate the small confines of the tiny room. Long red hair that rivaled the hue of the maiden’s own fell down her back as it was nearly the length of Nanna’s. She cracked her neck and locked her green eyes upon Quen’die with no humor, no anger, nothing more than idiotic study. “Arise from your bed, maiden.”
Quen’die complied with fear. She lumbered her back against the wall, but could not get far enough away from the beast. She wanted to scream as she could smell its powdery breath and feel its cold body near her.
“I am Quezz. I have known of you since your birth. My master had assigned me to you a mere sixteen years ago and I will have you.” The demon raised a cupped hand to Quen’die’s face but did not touch it. It seemed almost as if she could not touch it. “It will be assured Mavriel will lose you to me.”
Where Mavriel’s voice was warm music, this demon’s reeds carried nothing but flatness. If a wooden golem could speak, it would sound like Quezz. Where Mavriel was confidence and encouragement, Quezz was a black hole of nothing and even less than that. It was almost as if she cared not for existence in general. Nihilism personified. When she (it?) opened her mouth again, Quen’die wanted to faint as it was the synthetic voice of oblivion. “I hate you.”
So this was her asura, Quen’die studied. Mavriel’s infernal counterpart. She was pure beauty and hell. Seeing Quezz at last made the maiden realize how much she loved her deva in so many ways. She closed her eyes and dreamed about him battling Quezz for her soul and could manifest the image of him winning as he smote her with a shining sword. The vision boosted her spirit from its depths.
“I hate you too,” the maiden braved.
The asura remained locked within her gaze of stupid spite. For just a split second, Quen’die could have sworn that the demon blinked upon hearing her defiance. She was not about to let this abomination have the best of her. Her will was good and her soul was in the right. Even if the beast tore out her throat right then and there, she knew very well that Mavriel would still win this battle.
Quezz was no longer breathing as she didn’t really need to. Her mouth hung open in slight wonder as she continued her blatant perusal of Quen’die’s face, mere inches away. The demon wanted to savor more fear from the maiden than she was getting and this must have frustrated her. She wagged her moth wings and blotted out the light of the hall behind her for a brief second. “Yes, Quen’die, you will learn to hate me all the more, and when you do, it will be forever. I promise you this.”
There’s a Weapon That We Must Use
“Ferd’inn! I can’t believe you finally got a hold of me!” Banda Na’rundi boomed into his phone despite the late hour. “Where are you anyway? Sounds like a party over there! You can tell me; this flow is peer-to-peer.”
Lord Na’rundi waited after some pause from his old friend. “Yeah, Banda. I hear you, but I’m still at the youth hostel. Heh, this whole end-of-the-world thing has pretty much made getting new digs pointless. Why should I sign a year lease for six months? Anyway, a bunch of masters’ school kids came back a while ago from their work details and now they’re getting kind of rowdy.”
“Look, Ferd’inn, I know all about Quen’die and I have to say that I don’t believe the cover story on all the scrolls. I’ve been talking to my daughter and her friend for the majority of the evening, and I have some pretty strong suspicions about our alleged friends from outer space,” the colonel slapped his forehead in embarrassment. He couldn’t believe he had just said “friends from outer space.”
Quen’die’s father raised his tone as the background din of merriment was ever increasing. He hated having to use this public hallway phone. “Yeah, I didn’t know what to do. I have a friend of Dee’s that has been looking for her too, but now it’s all over the scrolls that she’s been taken in. Well, he thinks they may be after me too and I just don’t know what’s going on. My phone’s been compromised by the government and I can’t call out. When I saw that warning on my screen I figured even you were after me!”
Banda grunted upon hearing that. “I guess the ADF is really trying to cover their bases, huh? Look, you have a safe haven here and I mean that. You may want to take a tram just in case the wardens are after your coach. Bring your friend too. He may be able to shed light on this matter.”
It was very tempting, but all feelings of temptation came with a price, so it seemed to Lord Reyliss as of late. Banda was a friend but he was also an attaché to the same government that had hauled his daughter in. Although he figured it only natural for a father to assume accusation of sabotage against his daughter was a set-up, but what if she really was somehow embedded with an offshoot of the Black Hood?
Mavriel had been setting him pretty straight about the situation and he appeared to hold no trust for the official story either. In all honesty, Lord Reyliss wondered, what could a mere theology student know about this problem? Ferd’inn was pleased to know that the lad had helped Quen’die get a job for the exodus effort; but then again, that job had just landed her in the dungeons that evening, and even he was now somewhat suspect. Was Mavriel just a wise young conspiracy theorist, as were many of the student body at the University, or was he truly one of them?
Lord Reyliss sucked in a bale full of air to clear his head. Somewhere down the hall of the hostel, he could smell that a gaggle of students were smoking some peppermint-flavored herb. With that, he felt young again, like he was right around the time he met his beautiful Glynna.
Living on the skids was bad enough, but he just wasn’t equipped in mind and spirit to live on the lam. He figured that there was a fifty-percent chance that Banda’s invite was a government trap and that Mavriel was its trigger. There was no way he could continue living under the veil of mistrust and, whatever the consequence, he wanted this over with.
“Yeah, we’ll be there,” he blew out after some pause.
