by Rey Balor
“Aye, I felt it,” Olena said quietly. “Don’t do that to me again.”
He sat as close to her cell as he was able. There was more to say, but he swallowed it. For now, he could only sit on the cold floor with the knowledge that she was close, for better or for worse. Although it was worrisome what the Queen would do should she discover that Olena was his spica, he took comfort that they could handle it. They were together, after all.
“Ah, it wasn’t that bad.” The lie left a burn in his throat. Recognizing the nonchalant phrase for what it was, Olena gave him a glare that pierced even the barrier between them. “It doesn’t matter what happened. All that matters is what’s going to happen, Ol. This is the beginning, and we’ll need to be united for the rest. You can have the Queens, all of them. Just promise we’ll try to help the rest of the people.”
“I’m helping them by giving them the chance to lead themselves for the first time in their long, long lives. I’ll do nothing else for the city’s cowards.”
“Why’d you come then?”
“You’d have died if I didn’t.”
The spicas stretched out on the ground in their corresponding cells, each with a mouthful of stories to tell and no way to begin. Illias wished he could speak of the village — their birth village — where he had found Hops and Tapster and the kitchen girls, who all had their own loves and hopes and fears. He wished he could speak of entering the brightness of the Citadel, knowing how different, yet how similar, they truly were. He wished he could speak of Lye and Pan and how all the rest had stood by his side in face of the Aegis and of how much they reminded him of Olena. He wished he could speak of the Queen’s cruel questions and how, in the darkness of the prison, he had found purpose once more. After all, it was in this darkness that he found her again, real or imagined. Instead, he allowed her presence to fill the space. If there was one thing she was good at, it was filling a space.
“I missed you, Olena,” he finally settled on.
He nearly heard her eyes roll. “I missed you too, Il. I missed you.”
SPICA:
Brother and sister, the two spicas of the wild, laid in silence for hardly an hour when the Aegis came for Illias. Olena leapt to her feet, shooting her hand through the bars of the cell to grab onto whatever individual she could reach. They skirted away from her with no acknowledgement, and even as she began to yell obscenities at them — anything to bring the fight to her and away from Illias — they paid her no heed. As they dragged Illias from his prison, she was given her first look at him, and the edges of her vision grew black from blinding hatred.
He was far too pale, and the edges of his ribs were visible through the pathetic garb they had forced onto him. Where were his proud furs? Where were his bruised fists? He struggled against their hold, and Olena continued to shout. It was only him that met her gaze. With a slight nod, he tried to silence her, and with a harsh shake of the iron bars, her protests only grew louder. They took him away all the same, but Olena did not fall quiet at his absence. Her hands were filled with a hurricane, and they shook with all its force.
Any guard who stood for such torture would have to die with the Queens. She’d kill them all. Every last one of them! She’d rip their heads off, she’d tear their flesh, she’d kill and kill. She rattled the bars of her cell again and again.
“Bring him back! You want a fight? I’ve been begging for one for years! You pathetic cowards! Don’t touch him!”
No one answered her. As far as she could tell, the surrounding cells had been abandoned.83 The silence was deafening. It made her head pound and her chest ache. She screamed until her voice was hoarse. There was nothing she could do. The cell seemed to shrink around her. It turned her breathing shallow and made her head spin. There was nothing she could do. Olena punched the wall of her cage again, ignoring how the movement twinged her wounds and crunched her hand with pain. Tears welled in her eyes.
When they began their work on Illias, she felt it once more. It began with the same dizziness as it had last time — as if someone was prying apart her head, just to see what was inside. The furs on her skin felt too heavy, and every point of contact itched against her. She tore them off. There was no reason to keep herself from crying out, and cry she did. Soft, angry tears. As they fell, she made a plan.
The Queens would die first, old and new. She did not care what happened to them after their deaths — whether they were honored or not, holy or not, it did not matter to her. They would die, and that would be the end of their reign. Queens that lived for centuries with no regard for the lives and deaths of others would never occur again. They would be extinguished, and in that way, people could reclaim the lives and deaths that the women had never cared for.
Secondly, Olena would give a single warning to the remaining guards and servants in the Citadel for Illias’s sake. They would be allotted thirty seconds to decide if they wanted to remain with the castle or leave. At the end of that time, the third part of her plan would be put into action.
The Citadel would burn, fire consuming any memory of its legacy. She would hold the torch that ignited the flames, and she would take responsibility for whatever fallout happened afterwards — but the Citadel would burn. People spoke of fire being the most divine death after space itself, and so she would cleanse the city with the heat of such divinity.84 After the Citadel was returned to ash, little else mattered. She would go back to her people, and they would return to the wilds. They would live. Illias would live.
Her body twitched, and she knelt on the ground. Her wrists stung as she fell forward, and her fingers dug into the dirt. Her feeling of self expanded. They were forcing the spicas to be something more — miracles, unnatural to this world. She tried to yell again, but her throat was closed and no one was around to listen. She needed to scream, and it welled inside of her, spilling over in ways she did not fully understand: heart pounding far too fast, darkness edging fully over her vision, hearing through a tunnel. Unconsciousness offered its hand to her, but she batted it away.
How long she remained bent over, with hands in her brain and pain in her limbs, she could not say, but gradually, she grew numb to the feelings penetrating her. Her breathing slowed, and she felt in control again — if only for the moment, and that, perhaps, was worst of all. Any second, she could be overwhelmed, and any second, she could lose herself to the pain. No, no, no… There was nothing she could do.
Except…
“Oi, one of you guards! I have information to offer — information about the leader of the wolflings, Khalsa. That’s me. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
She waited.
Chapter 32: The Citadel
“To know, to understand, to ascend:
these are the marks of the New Way.”
Death’s Lament, 20.14
The members of the Aegis sat carefully, avoiding accidentally forming the shape of the star they had once protected with such care. They were left uncertain what to do. Each avoided the glances of the others, but all five of them were bent over their weapons, tending to them. The weapons had to sing, the jewels had to glow, and the grips had to be strong enough to swing without problem. They let the sounds of their polishing be the sentences they could not craft alone.
Claymore had finished cleaning Oblivion several minutes before, but they continued to run the rough fabric over the edge just so that they carried an excuse to remain with the others. They could feel the weight of the Aegis’s condemnations slipping onto their shoulders, and they wished any would speak up about their uncertainties.85 None did.
The walls had been knocked down, the Queens had been disbanded, and the Old Ways were being ripped apart far faster than any prophecy could predict. The only faction that remained from their past was the very order that had ensured its downfall. The Aegis were the only part of the Old Ways left, and they would be met with ruthlessness soon, Claymore was certain. They looked at Glaive, Shishpar, Maul, and Falchion, and they wished they could bring up t
hese concerns. They did not. Everyone kept their eyes cast down.
To block the doubts, Claymore focused purely on the reassurances they had been given — moments that had been born of a greedy want, that spurred them through even the tumbling of the very walls they had protected… With their mouth, they had raised the Queen to the heavens she could so easily destroy; with their hands, they had cradled her close in a promise of safety from such chaos; with their sword, they had ensured none others could tear it from her. How poetic it was to find such pleasure when their body had been crafted to kill with ease. They had never understood how she could spill words like artwork until they were spilling her name in a symphony of wants, and foolishly, they believed they could find revolution in this show of worship. It didn’t work.
But in the end, those memories and cleaning Oblivion’s blade were all Claymore had to focus on. Neither helped to cover the hoarse yells coming from the wolfing in the room over.
“I can’t listen to much more of this,” Maul muttered, and it was clear from the way his warhammer gleamed that he had not needed to continue his cleaning either. Never before had the group of crusaders, of holy warriors, been so lost. Claymore found the sight sad.
“We deserve nothing less,” Shishpar whispered back, graveness clear in his voice. “We brought him there. We left him there. We carry his screams. It is our duty.”
The wolfling named Roam was being torn apart and shoved back together as hours threatened to spill over into the length of a day. In his cries, there came the knowledge that he was staring into the tired eyes of Death. Claymore knew those eyes well. He was balanced on the edge of nothingness, yet he poured everything into his screams. The Lady of the Pillared Lands was cruel in her efficiencies, and she wanted to unmake him. Claymore did not want to guess why. Shishpar was right that the Aegis owed him their peace of mind as it occurred.
Claymore saw the edge of a silhouette pass by the open doors of their guard, and with a deep frown, they quickly stood to their feet to follow. The only others who belonged in this deep part of the prison, hidden away beneath the spiraling panopticon above, were the Queen’s damned and the Queen herself. Even if it was chasing shadows, the captain did not think they could remain sitting, festering away in the heat of another’s suffering, for any longer.
“I’ll return with news,” Claymore said.
The others simply nodded their heads, content to see their captain go.
Sheathing Oblivion and ensuring their gun was secured once more, Claymore exited into the circular corridor. Only two other rooms existed in the space, and each had doors barring entrance from those unworthy of it.86 It seemed that it was long ago when Claymore had been one of the worthy, but they still carried the air of someone who was. They approached. One door led to the wolfling, but it was the other they found curious. As far as they were aware, it was nothing more than another room like the one the wolfling occupied — empty, cold, and for one purpose alone.
Claymore nudged the door open with their foot, and the wood hit the wall perpendicular to the frame. They listened to the echoes in an attempt to sense the spirits that waited within. Nothing moved, and nothing approached them. Dust coated every surface, forcing them to cover their mouth and nose with a free hand. The room was dead, but if they hoped the silence would rid them of the wolfling’s cries, they were wrong. His yells echoed louder in the space.
A shadow stirred again, and Claymore squinted, cautious as they moved forward.
Sitting with her back to Claymore in the center of the room was a woman, and although Claymore longed to cry out for the others, something about her held their tongue. Perhaps it was the way she was kneeling, with hands clasped together in what appeared as a fervent prayer, or perhaps it was the way in which her fire hair fell over her like a cloak. She was as bare as the Queen of the Summer Isle had once liked to be,87 but while the Queen always ensured that she appeared radiant without blemish or scar, the woman before Claymore was covered in tiny cuts. Some were healed, but others dripped red onto the floor.
“We’re sorry,” she whispered.
Claymore dropped to their knees in the doorway. Whether it was in awe or fear, none could say. Reality altered in the purest way, and it reminded them of the offerings they had given to Death. In the face of one like her, the prayers of life that the Queen gave were pointless; only the familiar prayers came to Claymore. They found themself hesitantly speaking, “Hand of devotion, spirit of Death, you cannot hold such power alone.”
“We never meant for this to occur,” she spoke again, ignoring the captain.
Claymore could still not see the woman’s face, but they could hear the faint sobs and see the gentle shake of her shoulders. They wished to comfort her, but there was nothing to offer except further prayer.
“Hand of devotion, spirit of Death, please forgive me.”
“We speak of purity. We know only the song of entropy,” she continued.
“What is purity then? I admit that I’m lost…”
The woman finally turned to Claymore. They could not tell what color eyes she had, nor the age of her. She seemed both young with her cold beauty and old with the deep lines on her face. There was a blue tint to her that glowed in the darkness of the room, and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself. Claymore could not look directly at her; they were not meant to see this. They had intruded.
“Purity is not this,” she said. “Can you not hear his soul scream, my ghost? We were gone away when we heard it. It could not be ignored. We have not heard such torment in millennia. Oh, how wrong we were. How painfully wrong. There is but one option. Oh, we see now. Born of Blue’s Night, forged of Red’s. How sad, how sad, how sad. A man today, a ghost tomorrow.”
“Who?” Claymore was breathless. “The boy? What do you know of him? Is the Queen right to do as she does? Are the Old Ways truly dead?”
“How sad, how sad, how sad.”
The high pitched scream of another pierced through the conversation. It was not the howls of a wolf but the high pitched cries of a woman. Abruptly, Claymore stood to their feet and made their way to the door, but they made one error — an error all in history warned against. From old myths to their own scripture, there was always the same caution: never look back. They turned around.
The woman was gone, and the red that she had dripped onto the floor was nothing more than pools of rain from cracks in the ceiling. A blink, and the reality around them had returned. A blink, and nothing was different yet everything had changed.
They met with the other Aegis in the corridor, and together, they burst into the room where the Queen remained with the Lady of the Pillared Lands and Roam. Where they had expected to see him slumped over in pain, they instead saw him standing over a broken chair. He was nearly unrecognizable in his tempest of a fury. Long hair was matted to his cheeks, but while others would sweat, it seemed as if he had bled. There were no physical injuries on him, but red covered him. His eyes were wild — wild in a way far beyond anything of the wolflings’ standards. They had turned him feral, and what did feral dogs do first?
They turned on their masters.
The Lady of the Pillared Lands was sprawled onto the ground, wheelchair toppled beside her. Protruding from her stomach was a shard of wood from the chair the man had been trapped in. After a moment of trying to pull it from herself, the Lady simply let out a soft cry and squeezed her eyes shut. The Queen was frozen several feet away, and even from a distance, Claymore could see the hazel in those wide eyes — and the sheer terror present there. Something had gone wrong.
The wolfling lumbered forward, and each step fell heavily against the ground. Out of instinct, the Aegis fanned out in an attempt to encircle him. To their captain’s pride, no fear was reflected in their pupils. Claymore’s goal was to protect the Queen even now, and despite their hesitations about the new world order, they placed themself between danger and the one who they served.
“You try to make me kneel?” Roam bellowed, and
the Queen visibly flinched. Frantically, she waved her guards forward, but they were more cautious than that, enclosing around the man before he could hurt another. “You try to break me from my spica? You think we’re your pawns? You don’t know what the fuck you’re getting into, Queen.” The title became an insult on his lips, and the Queen continued her frantic waving. Rarely had she appeared desperate, but she was desperate now. The Queen understood that Death loomed, and Claymore could envision the redheaded woman’s smile, although they had only seen her in sadness.
The Queen tried to speak. “I’m making you better than you were, Roam! I’m doing it for the good of everyone — so that they might experience it too. Is that so wrong? I’m helping the world, my dear wolf.” Hand extended to ward him off, she stumbled backward, even as he took another heavy step forward. “You’ve survived together, and you’ve survived apart. How incredible you are! Do you not see how I can help strengthen your connection? That I alone can help you understand it? I’m giving both you and your birthmate strength, don’t you see?”
Instead of calming him, the reassurance only seemed to infuriate Roam further. “We’re stronger together than you could ever make us!”
One of the Queen’s serving girls dashed into the room, and Claymore nearly decapitated her with a swing of their sword. She hardly blinked at the threat, merely ducking aside and rushing by. Her chest heaved as she fought to capture her breath, but between pants, she managed to get her message across: “Ranger with… wolfling… Wants… audience…”
A man ran in after her, clearly horrified. “My Queen! I… A thousand apologies. She said… A message… Been trying to get down here for hours. Couldn’t stop her… Please…”
The Queen held up her hand to quiet them both. “The scout returns? And you said it was with a wolfling?”
The girl nodded. “The wolfling attacked a number of guards in the city, asking after something called a spike or maybe a spick? A spica? Something! The one called Ranger helped for a bit, but they apparently fought before being captured. It’s been hours! The guards dragged them up… I would have told you sooner, but…”
