The General's Bride

by M F Sullivan

  Perhaps the city’s name on divinity’s dream-breath was what stirred memory of the wailing souls looking for God in the Void. “I was shown a vision of Jerusalem in—Your waters, I guess. The Ergosphere. Is it true? Are all those people lost souls?”

  There are many who seek Jerusalem and cannot find it, because they have been misled in life, or have misled others. Jerusalem, herself, is a pure and holy place. She is not responsible for misdirecting signposts. Those souls you see suffering are martyr and Hunter, murderers who repent in public but do not come to God in their hearts, those who are false of faith or lack the emotional faculty to experience it internally in its truest sense. They are half-formed souls swathed in robes of guilt and shame. It is better to spend an entire life unconscious than to dally with religion and swear half-true oaths.

  This bothered Dominia as much or more than the thought of soulless spirits wandering without identity in the Void. What a tahgmahr religion could be! After running her hand over her forehead, the General waved toward the tent that had once belonged to Tobias. “Why don’t You go ahead and take that tent until we find someplace decent in the city?”

  No: We will remain with the women for now. Speak with Gethsemane.

  Hesitant even as the named human closed her parasol, Dominia pressed, “There’s nothing I can do for You?”

  Your most important duty is to listen. Go, General. Dominia relented to the gentle tugs of the Bearer upon her arm. You were right. There are many changes to be made. The ones within yourself are no exception.

  In the cool shelter of the tent, the General sank into the chair once inhabited by Tobias to find Lazarus had not followed but remained outside with his divine ménage. Grateful to be alone with the woman who poured wine from the bar cart set against the far side of the tent, Dominia said, “You didn’t warn me about everything that was going to happen, and I get the feeling you knew some of it.”

  “Such a warning would have only made my work harder.” So she had known. All the Bearers must have. “I think it was difficult enough to relieve you of the burden you felt toward poor Cassandra, who would, I know, not wish to see you suffer.”

  That was quite true. Yet in all the tumult of the past week, Dominia had not had the luxury of guilt. She had become so swept up in the wildness of events, she had not even felt guilt for her lack of guilt: the true sign of…well, some sort of progress. As the earthly body of the nymph neared, wineglass in hand, Dominia extended an arm. The woman responsively filled her lap. “I haven’t given up hope that I’ll see her again,” said the General, determined, the faint impression of the recent dream still fresh in her mind. “But I don’t think Cassandra is my priority right now.”

  “There is too much to be done.” After pushing the cup to the General’s lips and forcing her to take it in her hand, the Bearer drew from her boot a small black phone that activated at the touch of a delicate finger. “I have been asked to show you this. It was an encrypted broadcast, transmitted to the upper echelons of your Father’s military personnel.”

  The recording that played was more subdued than those featuring Cicero and Theodore; yet, for its gentleness, the message was grave. At a plain desk before a stained-glass window of himself blocked almost entirely by the high wingback of his chair, the Hierophant sat with mournful expression. To his left elbow stood the Lamb, whose face inspired a pang of sorrow for the theoretically gentler of her two parents but who, nonetheless, was her enemy.

  “Oh, children.” The Hierophant heaved a piteous sigh. “It is with such pain we find ourselves thus. But, I am sorry to say extreme measures must be taken when faced with insurrection and terrorism such as that committed by my daughter, Dominia di Mephitoli. You are already aware of the bounty on her misguided life; but I do not wish for you, my men and women of the military, to think there is nothing you can do to help your country but remove the increasingly apparent head of a dangerous and, frankly, evil regime.

  “This world of ours demands a certain order. Much as animals in the wild possess a predatory hierarchy, the same can be said of conscious beings. What are men and martyrs both but animals, ensouled—souls, embodied? The predators and prey together form an elaborate web whose spinner we dare not hope to know. Each thread, delicately balanced against its neighbors, comes together by nature’s plan and animal’s instinct. That which eats functions with that which is eaten in careful harmony. Yet, it is always in the instinct of those predators imbued with consciousness to rise above the natural order and inspire full submission in their prey—even knowing the damage this may cause the structural integrity of the web as a whole.

  “This dilemma—the choice between symbiosis and conquest—is one that has haunted me for over two thousand years. When I must see my martyrs die, my children lose their lives in the sun and good people meet the horrific end of starvation, I wonder if symbiosis is the just choice. These past weeks, since the betrayal of my daughter and the bombing in Kabul, I have begun to determine it is most assuredly not.

  “The time for symbiosis has ended, sorry though I am to say it. The time of the martyrs to begin seriously considering global dominance is now. To that end, I wish to give you a gift. My beloved Lamb has informed me that the time for us to reveal our plan has come. Over the next several years, military and engineering capacities will all be directed toward one particular goal: the sustainable blackening of the sun. This is no fancy, no comic book plot. This is the true inheritance of the martyrs. This is what I give to you, children. Your Father has eternally walked in the sun. Soon, all of you will join me.”

  The clip ended. Gethsemane, studying Dominia’s tense face, slipped the phone away. “Do you understand what he’s saying?”

  “It’s practically a declaration of war. Yes—I understand what he’s saying.”

  There was no one, save perhaps Cicero, who knew as clearly what the Hierophant said when he spoke. This time, however, the translation was easy for anyone. As soon as he felt comfortable, the martyr army would be coming, and it would not be coming for her. It would be coming for Lazarus.

  “We will have many forces, General,” cautioned the Bearer, still studying the martyr’s stoic face. “But we will need more than that.”

  “We’ll need, among other things, a preemptive strike.” With the edge of the glass pressing into her lower lip, Dominia marveled at how her Father could be so cordial in his hostility. For her part, she was full to the brim with only the latter; she wished, was tempted indeed, to sweep into the Ergosphere to confront him, though that would do no good. Dominia did understand, however, what drew Valentinian to spend time with the Hierophant: for she, even with Gethsemane in her lap, felt quite alone in the middle of that camp.

  “You disappeared after the ceremony.”

  “I intended to meet you here, General.”

  “And the rest of the Bearers?”

  “They are attending to the women who escaped the temple, and organizing the rest.”

  “But what of the magician? You must know where he’s gone.”

  “Must I?” At the martyr’s stern expression, the human offered a thin smile. “He is in the Void, General. The Ergosphere. I have seen him in dreams. He meets me there to educate me.”

  “On what?”

  “On doing better service to you. I have been committed to your cause. I am afraid, however, that I am good at this juncture for little more than company.”

  “I get the feeling you’re good for more than that.” The martyr contemplated the evasive girl and slipped Cassandra’s diamond from over her own head. After a moment, she hung it around the neck of the Bearer. “Can you keep her safe for me?”

  “As though she were my soul.”

  “Thank you.” With a sideways smile for the gem that glittered in the low golden light of the tent, the General felt for an instant the graze of Cassandra’s fingertips down her cheek. “Would you leave me for a time?” she asked the woman, who nodded, but faltered before standing.

  “I was a
lso asked to give you this.” Gethsemane withdrew from her other boot that familiar deck of playing cards, dropped in the throne room of the Lady and left far behind with her revolver. “When I dreamed of him after the temple, I found this on my person. I am not sure”—she admitted with a shifty look away—“it was entirely a dream.”

  “Did he say anything about my gun?”

  The laughing nymph ducked from the tent. “That you’d ask about it, anyway.”

  Just as well. For now, she was surrounded by guns. Not having it here inspired the hope that she would have it back when she needed it. The comfort provided her by the deck of cards was more reassuring than any antique weapon, anyway.

  Less comforting was that message from her Father. How strange to think, a mere six months before, the General would have been on the receiving end of that video—would have been filled with patriotic vigor. Well…not quite so much as she would have been as a youth. Still, she had not expected her life to change in the severe ways it had: certainly not at this rate. She had never expected, not once in her life, to be called a terrorist. Yet, here she was. The head of a cell of them, and the leader of an army—arguably greater in size, for all the Red Market women, than units she’d led for the Hierophant. And with intentions she respected, if under the guidance of the Lady. There was a kind of self-respect in that: perhaps that was what she was learning. She wasn’t clear. She only knew that she had changed, and very much. But the most profound change of all was her instinct to genuflect before those cards.

  Alone in her tent amid her growing army, Dominia di Mephitoli prayed for victory against the Hierophant. She was not sure to whom the prayer was addressed; but, if God wasn’t listening, the magician certainly was, and he would help her prayers be heard. That, somehow, proved more reassuring. But somebody else also listened—somebody who thought or wished or dreamed he was God, though he coyly danced around the subject whenever asked outright. Somebody who seemed next to her in a sandalwood haze, whose specter knelt beside her. Somebody she so loathed to see here, in this place, in the midst of victory, that she kept her eyes shut and prayed: raised her voice: all but shouted her supplications for the divine against the smugly spoken words of the Hierophant’s unwelcome phantasm. A being so real her own ears heard him say:

  “You’ll have to let me know if you get a response.”

  Had to get the last word, didn’t he?

  [ed.: The following is a copy of the Rosary of the Holy Martyr Church as it is practiced in the time of Dominia di Mephitoli. It is the English version of a prayer most popularly said in Modern Mephitolian, which appears to have its structural root in Latin while containing many words of Germanic influence. As the General has high familiarity with many works of English literature and her companions use it regularly, it seems probable English is used as a lingua franca.]

  The Rosary of the

  Holy Martyr Church

  Make the Sign of the Cross

  In the name of the Father, and of the Lamb, and of the Eternal Children.

  Amen.

  Recite the Creed

  I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

  Creator of heaven and earth,

  And in the Holy Lamb, his Second Son, our Savior.

  He was preceded by his Brother,

  And borne of the Hierophant’s blood.

  He suffered under humanity’s reign,

  Was martyred, died and was buried.

  He descended into hell.

  On the third day, He rose again.

  He was shown Acetia,

  Returned to Earth,

  And is seated at the right hand of the Holy Father.

  He has come again to judge the living and the dead.

  I believe in the Eternal Children,

  The Holy Martyr Church,

  The communion of saints,

  The forgiveness of sins,

  The resurrection of the body,

  And life everlasting.

  Amen.

  One “Our Father”

  Our Father,

  Good servant of God,

  Hallowed be Thy Name.

  Acetia come,

  Thy Will be done,

  On earth as it is in heaven.

  Give us this day our daily flesh,

  And forgive us our weaknesses,

  As we forgive those who fail us by their weakness.

  And lead us not into heresy,

  But shepherd us from ignorance.

  Amen.

  Three “Hail Lavinias” in the

  Names of Faith, Hope, and Charity

  Hail Lavinia,

  Full of Grace,

  The Lord is with thee.

  Blessed art thou among women,

  And blessed is the miracle you represent,

  The Protein.

  Holy Lavinia, Daughter of God,

  Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.

  Amen.

  One “Glory Be”

  Glory Be

  To the Father,

  And to the Lamb,

  And to the Eternal Children.

  As it was in the beginning,

  Is now,

  And ever shall be,

  World without end.

  Amen.

  The Mysteries

  (Repeated Five Times)

  1 “Our Father”

  10 “Hail Lavinias”

  1 “Glory Be”

  1 Elijah’s Prayer

  Elijah’s Prayer

  O my Elijah, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those Lazarenes who are in most need of Thy mercy.

  Hail Holy Hierophant

  (Said After Five Mysteries)

  Hail Holy Hierophant

  Father of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Acetia. To thee do we send up our sighs mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile show us the blessed fruit of thy blood, Elijah. O clement, O loving, O sweet Holy Father.

  Pray for us, O Sacred Servant of God,

  That we may be made worthy of the promises of the Lamb.

  In the Name of the Father, and of the Lamb and of the Eternal Children.

  Amen.

  Don’t Miss the Final Installment of

  The Disgraced Martyr Trilogy

  THE LADY’S CHAMPION

  january 9th, 2020

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  M. F. Sullivan is an author and playwright currently residing in the town of Ashland, Oregon. An avid student of the occult, Sullivan fills what little time she does not spend writing with reading, attending the local Shakespeare Festival, and the company of her significant other. With the trilogy finished and behind her, she is already hard at work on yet another series. She loves cats, baking, painting doll heads, and 5-star Amazon.com reviews. Sign up for essays and book release updates on www.paintedblindpublishing.com, and consider leaving a nice note on Amazon while you’re browsing the Internet. It would make her day.

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