Queen Yavara Ch. 59

SORAYA

I was on the top floor of a three-story church. The sounds of battle rang out in the distance, for the armies had passed me by some time ago, but not all the soldiers had gone to the front. There were scavengers that rummaged through the wreckage, looking for spoils to take back to their homeland. I was the greatest spoil of all. There were men right outside the door. They had found me. They pounded against the planks, blasting clouds of dust into the air, splintering the wood. The table I'd thrown in front of the door wouldn't hold for long. The roof of this building had been blown clean off by a falling boulder, letting the high-noon sun illuminate every dark corner. I was trapped.

I nocked one arrow, and waited. Though I now had the complexion of a woman in her late teens, I had once been a veteran ranger with twenty years of experience under my belt. Twenty years as a scribe, that was. Combat for me had been spent furiously scrawling messages and sending them out via eagle to Castle Thorum. The only time I'd even used weaponry was during training. I felt very-much like the balding middle-aged man I'd once been; helpless and useless. Why would anyone ever think I could command troops? Faltia had been my captain for ten years, and the only command she (then he) had given me was over the wash boys to make sure they weren't stealing food. Why the fuck would she put me in charge of thousands of people?! The very second adversity struck, I'd panicked and sent my entire battlegroup to the beach. If Yavara hadn't swooped down to rescue me from myself, I would've led every one of my soldiers to their deaths in a blind fit of vengeance. Oh, Eva!

I wiped the tears from my eyes, and tremulously drew my bow. I had to survive. Not for me, but for the child in my belly, the last piece of Eva that still lived. I watched the planks on the door flex and shudder with impacts until one of them was finally smashed loose. I shot my arrow at the crack, and missed a foot left. Cursing, I drew my bow again just as another plank was broken free. I could see the soldiers now; their faces drawn in gluttonous sneers, their avaricious eyes scanning every inch of me. It stirred the darkest hovels of my masochism to imagine what they'd do to me, but my primal terror overwhelmed my carnal instincts, and I loosed another arrow. This one missed high by two feet, flitting out of the window above the door, and into the streets below. I drew another arrow, and shot it wide left. It thudded into the wood, the haft quivering with spent energy. The soldiers smashed in another plank. The hole they'd made was nearly wide enough to fit through. I drew another arrow. My fingers were trembling so much that I could hardly grasp the arrow, and when I tried to nock it, it slipped from my grip and clattered onto the floor.

"Hey, Missy!" one of the soldiers growled gleefully, "Do you know what we're going to do to you when we get in?"

"We're gonna fuck you bloody, you little slut!" another of them giggled, "We're gonna fuck the baby right out of ya!"

"Little Missy," a third one cooed, "quit playing hard to get, love, and just open the door. It'll be much better for you if you do."

"You don't want to end up like your friend!" A fourth man snarled. "Ole' Ronnie got his mitts on her. Cut her to pieces while she was still breathing! Look," He held up a hacked-off pointed bronze ear, a recognizable earring hanging from it, "I even got a souvenir!"

I felt myself go white with horror. Kiera, no!

"Ah, you scared the missy!" the first one laughed, "Don't worry, love, we're not like Ronnie, but we can be right nasty if someone's being rude to us. Don't be shy now; we'll give you what you want!"

They smashed their weapons against the door, each strike causing a horrific crack to sound from the planks.

"Let us in, you bitch!" the one with Kiera's ear snarled, "Two more ears, and I've got me-self a valuable collection!"

The wood splintered, and broke. The men came pouring into the room. I dropped my bow, grabbed my sword, and—there was a flash of light, and the men were shrieking, dancing frantically in a vain attempt to quell the flames that had erupted from their clothing. Their helms melted to their heads, the molten iron dripped into their eyes, and the whites sizzled, burst, and cascaded down their cheeks like bloody egg-white tears. As they screeched in agony, their armor melted to their bodies, suffusing metal and flesh, cooking them in their own pots, wafting the terrible smell of bacon into the room. They suffered for a very long time before they collapsed. Yavara groaned in pain, and slouched against the wall.

I had found her in the middle of the street while my army was retreating. Somehow, she'd ended up five city blocks north of the wall she'd been at only moments before. Half of her body was singed black, and she'd lost an arm and a leg on that side, as well as all of her hair, one ear and one eye, but she was still remarkably breathing. For a moment, I was stuck in a horrible stasis between choosing the corpse of the woman I loved, and the wounded woman who had created me. I made the right choice, but it was shamefully difficult. While my army raced on ahead, I dropped Eva on the ground, grabbed the former Dark Queen, and dragged her unconscious body into this church. There, she had remained unconscious until just a second ago.

I rushed to her side. "Can you heal yourself?" I asked softly.

She tried to open her mouth to respond, but stopped. The burnt half of her face revealed all the tendons and bones beneath the flesh of her cheek, displaying the scorched and blackened inside of her mouth. Her tongue was little more than a charred piece of pulp. She closed her one eye, and let out a pained squeaking breath through her nose. With the utmost effort, she moved her trembling hand to her face, and cast a spell. She did not heal herself completely, but closed the hole in her cheek, regrew her eye, and righted the damage done to the inside of her mouth. She left the open burns on her face, and didn't attempt to regrow the hair on her head. She opened her half-charred lips, and croaked, "Water?"

"No." I shook my head apologetically.

She closed her eyes, and let out another pained breath.

"Why don't you heal the rest of yourself?" I asked.

"Can't," she answered tersely, "not powerful enough anymore. Need rest and time." Her blue eyes rolled to me, and she winked, "So I'm fucked."

I laughed ruefully. "We're both fucked, Yavara."

She sighed. "My name. You never said my name before. Now you all say it."

"Sorry."

"No sorry. Not now. Too late." She offered me a horrific smile, "I'm in so much pain. You might think I'm a lucky girl."

I fished through my knapsack, and pulled out a syringe. "I can—"

"No. Drugs are bad."

"Are you fucking serious right now?"

Her horrific grin widened. "Pain is life. Death is numb. I choose life." She coughed violently, speckled her lips with blood, then her breath eased back into its rattling rhythm. "I'm sorry about Eva," she croaked.

"Yeah..." I muttered.

She hacked again, the sound so dry and terrible that I could practically hear the vessels bursting in her throat. "No grief!" She yelled, "Just vengeance! Kill them all!"

"Well, hello again, Dark Queen Yavara."

"No. Do not give Alkandi credit for me."

"Oh, so you were always a murderous psycho?"

"I guess it runs in the family." She laughed painfully, "You and I are similar, you know."

"How so?"

"Same kind of love." She wrapped her fingers gingerly around her throat, "Fear, pain, pleasure. I love how you love."

"Ah, another connoisseur of the wicked side of romance."

"Yes," she smiled, "but we hate differently. I was a killer long before I was dark. You are no killer."

"No."

She raised her hand, and pointed out the window. In the street below, there was an upturned wheelbarrow. "I can't walk, but I can kill," she said, "you can't kill, but you can walk."

I looked from the wheelbarrow, to her. "Are you fucking nuts? Never mind, don't answer that."

Her horrific grin widened.

YAVARA

The wind blew through what was left of my hair, the wheel thudded against the cobblestones, and the sounds of battle became louder. I bounced haphazardly in my wheelbarrow, barely able to stay on my back. Three times Soraya had lost control of it and spilled me onto the ground, but now the dips and craters of the streets were gone, and we were rolling at full-speed across the flat pavilion. The enemy's back was turned to us as they surged into the arena, and our wheel bounced off of thousands of their dead along the way. Faltia's front was pressing from the north, keeping the Lowlanders from committing fully to massacring the few thousand poor souls left in Soraya and Brianna's combined battlegroups.

"Full speed ahead!" I laughed manically, pounding the side of the wheelbarrow with my one hand.

"What?!" Soraya exclaimed, "Yavara, we have to go around!"

"Into the belly of the beast!"

"I'm not suicidal!"

"A coward dies a thousand deaths, Soraya, but a brave woman only dies one!" I shouted back at her.

"Okay, cool. You first."

"I don't have the strength to cast spells and push myself! Come on! For Eva!"

"Eva would've wanted me to stay behind and save the baby!"

"Eva would've dressed you as a warhorse and rode you into battle herself!" I pounded the side of the wheelbarrow, and let out a whoop, "Come on, horsey, let's get go!"

"What is wrong with you?!"

"I've been under quite a bit of stress lately!" I scooched violently in my seat, trying to urge her forward, "You can only take so much before you finally fucking CRACK! NOW LET'S FUCKING GO!"

"Let's fucking go!" Soraya's terrified voice squealed in concurrence, and we charged. In truth, I was as terrified as she was, but the adrenaline dumped into my blood didn't compel me to flee, but to race headlong toward the source of my terror. I grinned below bulging eyes as the wooden wheel bounced off the cobblestones, and the backs of the enemy came closer and closer. When we were fifty yards out, one man turned around. He looked at me, then he looked at Soraya, then he tapped the shoulder of the man beside him. That man looked back at me, then at Soraya, then tapped the shoulder of the man beside him. The third man turned around, pointed his sword at us, and let out a great laugh. Twenty men turned around, and each of them let out a jeer when they saw us. We were quite the source of amusement for another ten yards, then one of the men recognized me, and his smile faded. He said something frantically to the men beside him, but none of them would pay him any heed. He tried with all the communication tools in his lexicon to convey the threat that was approaching, but he was dull-witted and incoherent, and so when we were twenty yards away, he dropped his shield, and ran away. It was only when we were ten yards away and not slowing down, that the men watching us realized something wasn't right. When we were five yards away, and Soraya was screaming at the top of her lungs, I finally saw the horror I was owed cross the men's faces. It was only then that I launched my attack.

A wall of fire consumed the back ranks of the Lowland marines. The men who had jeered us were nothing but black silhouettes dancing in the flames, singing their death-metal outro into oblivion. Soraya pivoted hard to avoid the blaze, nearly pitching me over the side. She ran alongside the wall of fire as I held out my hand, and nursed the flames. I could hear the screams on the other side, and I could smell the cooking flesh. When my flame sputtered out, I launched salvo after salvo of telekinetic blasts into the plasmatic barrier. The first blasts fanned the flames deeper into the enemy ranks, creating infernal horizontal sheets that cooked the enemy alive. The next blasts put the fire out, but these were stronger attacks. Great circular shockwaves radiated from my hand, creating oscillating sonic booms that ripped men to pieces. I could see the frequency of the waves in the pattern of corpses they made in their wake. Arms, legs and heads were separated violently from torsos and flung into the ranks of men behind them. The waves traveled ten feet through metal and flesh before they dissipated, and even then, they knocked men clean off their feet.

"Mages!" Soraya cried.

Twenty robed figures were running quickly toward me, stumbling over heaps of their own dead. Only twenty? Where had the others gone? This wasn't nearly enough!

"Charge!" I yelled, and pointed my finger toward the enemy. Soraya screamed in terror, ducked behind my body, and charged as fast as her little legs could run. The wheel thudded over corpses, the distance between me and my enemy closed, and their weak little minds became clearer and clearer to me. They had many names and memories, but at the forefront of their consciousness was sheer terror. They thought they'd killed me. How could anyone survive that blast?! It was impossible! These thoughts radiated from their minds as they prepared their pathetic spells, each of them digging into their magical reservoirs to summon the murderous incantation they'd practiced on a thousand dummies, that surefire killer Prestira had taught them to use only in the direst of circumstances. But I was Prestira's greatest student of all. The mages charged their attacks, and I dove into their minds. As if pirouetting in a ballet, all twenty of the mages turned to the person beside them, and cast their spells. They all crumpled to the earth in various stages of death; some shrieked as they were acidified, some gargled as they vomited out their organs, and others just lay there bleeding out of their eyes and ears. Sadists, the lot of them. They deserved it.

We barreled through the battlefield, carving out a new front in the Lowland formation all by ourselves. Arrows fell around us, and shattered on my shield. Hundreds of soldiers charged us, and only dozens lived long enough to run away. I killed scores of men in a second, launched their broken bodies into the charging ranks behind them, and moved relentlessly toward my objective. The archways of the arena began to loom overhead, casting their shadows on my face. The soldiers became denser the closer I got, and it took more and more of my magic to drive a path through them. Soraya gasped and gulped behind me, stumbling with every step. Though our progress slowed, and though my magical resources were nearly exhausted, I expended myself without restraint. Why not? What waited for me in the arena but more death? My objective was my end, I was certain of it. The coliseum would be my tomb.

I sent a telekinetic blast through a row of soldiers, and their separated body parts exploded backward to reveal a vast open space. The arena. Here was the fulcrum of the battle. Faltia's battlegroup was gridlocked beneath the north gate with the bulk of the Lowland marines. At least ten-thousand Lowlanders held a stiff line while hundreds of mages lined the rear skirmishing positions to cast devastating spells into the ranks of beasts. Dead trolls littered the ground near the north entrance, and at the entrance itself, the two converging lines were steadily growing taller atop a mountain of dead. On the sands of the arena below, the remnants of Soraya and Brianna's battlegroup were surrounded by thousands of Lowlanders who were content with keeping the beasts penned-in until the mages pushed back. Skirmishers shot volleys of arrows, and though the trapped beasts formed an impressive shell of shields, a few unlucky beasts were struck each time.

"Where to, boss?" Soraya breathed heavily behind me.

"Faltia's battlegroup is holding its own for now. We need to rescue yours."

"The arena isn't exactly handicap accessible."

"You'll have to carry me down then."

Soraya laughed.

"I wasn't joking."

"I know," She said, "but there's no fucking way I can carry you, Yavara, no matter how many limbs your missing. I don't know if I can take another fucking step."

"I only need you to get me halfway down. I'll do the rest!" I grunted, and pulled myself out of the wheelbarrow, "We just need to push the enemy into the arena!"

TITUS

The ground above us shook with footsteps, but not the right kind. I could distinguish the wild footfalls of the beasts from the regimented marching of the Lowlanders. Not only that, but I could smell through the foot of wood, sand and soil above me, and distinguish friend from foe. I could hear the sounds of battle, and intuit its progression by the tenor of screams and the patterns of movement. Things were not going well for us. Many of my children paced anxiously around the catacombs, eyeing the ceiling above them with trepidation. The rendezvous was supposed to happen here. The Alkandran force was supposed to stage a strategic retreat through the arena, and lure the Lowlanders onto the sands. Something had obviously gone wrong, for the only people on the sands were our own troops.

"Father?" Tiffany asked me, "Should we go back to the castle?"

"No," I muttered, eyeing the ceiling, "if we don't play our part now, the castle will provide no protection later. This is where the battle will be decided."

"I think the battle has already been decided." Tiffany said quietly.

She was right. The only smells that reached my nostrils were of the terror-soaked sweat of the orcs being slaughtered above, and the only sounds that reached my ears were the pattering of falling arrows and the screams of the mortally-wounded. It was hopeless. The enemy would march right around the arena without ever... I cocked my head, honing-in on a sound that was different from all the rest. It almost sounded like a gust of wind, but it was localized, and bore with it, a great chorus of human screams. There was suddenly a great stampede of footsteps down the risers, and a second later, the ceiling above us shook with movement.

"What the hell?" Tiffany whispered.

I followed the sound of the infernal wind with my eyes, and a smile stretched across my face. I recognized that smell. She was half-cooked and reeked of adrenaline, but the scent of Yavara Tiadoa was as distinct as ever.

"Alright, boys and girls," I said, cracking my neck, "it's lunchtime."

I donned my black hood and veil, and tightened my leather gloves. I laced up my leather bodysuit, tightened my robes, and... shit, when was the last time I put on sunscreen? I stripped naked, applied ten layers of sunscreen, shoved my slimy body into my leather bodysuit, tightened my leather gloves, donned my black hood and veil, and wrapped myself in my robes. The whole process took less than a minute with my inhuman speed, but there was no way to gracefully stuff one's body into a leather bodysuit after applying five bottles of sunscreen to one's flesh, and so my children looked upon me with bemused smiles.

"Shall we try that again, Father?" Tiffany smirked.

"Equanimity and elegance don't always go hand-in-hand." I sneered back, and put on my sunglasses. "There's nothing gained by trying to capture a lost moment." I punched my fist through the ceiling, grasped an iron-booted foot, and ripped downward. The Lowlander's leg dislocated before his hip aligned with the shape of the hole his thigh had made, and the rest of him came crashing down. His body was a twisted mess on the floor, but he hadn't yet realized it. He just blinked up at us, uncomprehending of what had happened. I raised my foot, and brought it down, and his head splattered like jelly across the floor.

"Damn waste." Tiffany mused.

"He was too fat anyway." I said, and wiped the brain-matter off my heel, "Why settle for a substandard cut of meat, when the entire herd is right above our heads?" I punched another hole in the ceiling, snatched a man by the ankle, and broke his body through the sand and soil. I caught him by the throat, plunged my fangs into his neck, and sucked him into a shriveled husk. "Ah, a farmer boy," I said, smacking my lips, "and a vineyard horticulturalist to boot. What a delicacy."