Queen Yavara Ch. 59

Tiffany punched a hole through the ceiling, dragged the man through the hole, and twisted his head all the way around. His shocked face stared at me as she sank her fangs into his throat, and drank deeply. "City boy, but of decent birth. There's none of that rancid slum flavor in him, but he's not as tender as nobility. I'm detecting undertones of tobacco, and just a hint of liquor fouling. An alcoholic, but a classy one."

"Don't fill up on that swill, Darling, you're better than that." I scolded, and punched another hole through the ceiling. Pig farmer; no thank you, factory worker; no way, professional athlete; too gamey, professional chef; too marbled. Artist; not enough meat, blacksmith; too much iron, fisherman; too much mercury, accountant; not enough flavor. The bodies piled up between me and my daughter, and the shafts of sunlight grew more numerous. All around me, my children made their selection of meals from the Lowland marines until the arena floor was more empty space than sand.

"Ah, here we are!" I shouted to Tiffany, "A butcher! Do you smell how well seasoned he is?" I turned the still-living butcher toward me, and asked, "What spices do you usually add to your preserved cold cuts? The pork, to be precise."

"W-w-w-w-what?!"

"I'm going to use you in my sandwiches for the next few weeks; I want to know what you'd recommend."

He blinked stupidly at me.

I sighed, and broke his neck. "Black pepper and sea salt it is then. I really should buy a cookbook. Tiffany, could you be a doll and throw this body over there so that no one else takes—" the ceiling came crashing down around us. The beasts who had been trapped in the middle now stood upon an island of sand surrounded by the caved-in structure of the catacombs beneath. The sunlight glared overhead, beating oppressively down upon my black hood and robes. Through the tortuous illumination, I was able to make out about a hundred robed figures standing in the first rows of the risers, looking down at us. And though we vampires considered ourselves to be the noblest and most refined of creatures, when exposed to the sudden light, we scattered like cockroaches.

I grabbed Tiffany, and dashed for an exit tunnel. I was fast, but they were faster. The heat came down on us, a great downpour of fire that filled the veins and tunnels of the catacombs like water pouring into an aquifer. We raced into the blackness of the undercity, and the fire followed us behind, illuminating the rock walls and wooden beams that supported the subterranean network. I couldn't outrun it. I felt the heat against my back more with every step, and terror began to tug at me. I was almost consumed with the compunction to throw my daughter into the fire like a gazelle sacrificing her young for the pursuing lions, but my cooler head prevailed. There was only one way out. I pivoted, flexed my legs, and jumped upward. My fist smashed through the wood ceiling, traveled through cold soil, and exited through stone. We sprang out of the catacombs, and burst through the second row of risers.

Sunlight surrounded us on all sides, reflecting and glaring off every piece of flashing metal the surrounded us. I was so distracted by the inundation of solar power that I didn't realize three men were chopping at my legs with axes. How rude of them. I kicked one man in the chest, and his body simply folded around my foot. His chest caved in, his collar snapped, and his shoulders slammed together like the ends of tongs. I shook him off my foot, and kicked another man in the head. His skull exploded, his brains sprayed like confetti, and his eyeballs flew twenty feet behind him. The third man, I simply flicked like the insect he was, and my index finger caved-in his chin, shattered his jaw, and broke every tooth in his mouth. Tiffany finished him off with a swipe of her backhand, sending him twisting in the air with his spine looser than a noodle.

"My god, the world is ugly during the daytime." I bemoaned, staring out at the carnage, "It's like looking at yourself in the mirror after waking from a bottle of scotch."

"How many siblings did I just lose?" Tiffany gasped, struggling with her hood.

"Over half." I sighed, "When did my children become so expendable?" I casually tore a man's head off, "Life is such a precious thing."

Tiffany kicked a man upward into the groin, and her leg carried through him like he was made of putty. Her foot exploded from his neck, and his head flew a hundred feet into the air as the two halves of him wilted into a puddle of gore. She scraped the awful off her foot like she'd stepped in dogshit, then pointed to the steps below us. The mages that had sent my family scurrying were now focusing all of their attention on Yavara, who stood in front of the island of beasts in the middle of the arena, guarding them with her body. She deflected spell after spell, and launched undefendable attacks that broke open whole sections of the mages line, but even I could see that she was overextending herself. She knelt awkwardly on the ground, as one of her legs had been torn off just above the knee, and she raised her one remaining arm before her, and fired off her desperate incantations. Besides the missing limbs, she looked like absolute hell. Half her flesh was blackened, nearly all of her hair was missing, and she was bleeding from every surface of exposed skin.

"Tiffany, let's go." I said, and tugged at her robes.

She shook her head.

I sighed. "Tiffany, there's nothing we can do for her."

Tiffany nonchalantly swatted a man who'd been trying to spear us, then looked back at me. She reached into her pocket, and presented me with my blow-dart. "Make me a promise, Dad."

I closed her hand around the weapon, and shook my head.

"I made you a promise!" she hissed.

"I'm a notorious hypocrite. Tiffany, she's not worth it."

"What is worth it then?" Tiffany asked, and dropped the blow-dart at my feet. She didn't even look back. She ran down the risers, crushed dozens of men in her way, and she charged headlong into the backs of the mages. I groaned, picked up the blow-dart, and charged after her.

We butchered our way through scores of men on our way to the mages, and though the marines posed no threat to my flesh, their swords cut right through my clothing. I could feel the sun against me in a dozen different places, and the thick coats of sunscreen I'd put on did little to stop the burning. The cuts seared across my back, smoking and sizzling, agonizing. The winter sun beat against my black-clad form, creating an oven within my leather bodysuit. Panic began to creep into my mind, the primal alarm bells ringing through every synapse, urging me to find cover.

Tiffany was a whirlwind of death, slaughtering at such speed that a mist of red formed around her as she decimated the mage's line. But I knew she wouldn't make it. All it would take was one mage to cast a spell, and twenty of them had already turned their attention from the crippled former Dark Queen, to the vampire tornado decimating their brethren. They moved in slow-motion compared to her, but it wasn't slow enough. As her whirling claws and feet burst through robed bodies, the twenty mages at the end of the line sequentially raised their arms.

"Goddamn it, Tiffany," I muttered as I drew the blow-dart, "why did you make me do this?"

I pressed my lips to the end of it, and blew. The Nadi wood dart shot through the pipe, and into my wrist. I felt the poison immediately, cold and liquid in my veins, numbing me where ever it spread. Not much time now. I leapt from the risers, raised my arms to my sides, and smashed into the backs of the Lowlanders. It was a brutish maneuver, and it galled me terribly that my last act of killing would be so ungraceful, but my motor functions were already shot. I simply flattened the mages I landed on, then used my forearms as blunt clubs to awkwardly smash-in the heads of four more of the bastards. I got eleven of them before the other nine turned their attention from Tiffany, and I got six more before they managed to set their eyes on me. Then, I got the last five. I killed them all without even taking a scratch. The last threat fell beneath my feet, and I came crashing to my knees a second later.

Tiffany rushed to my side; her red eyes wide. "Father!"

My tongue was so numb that I couldn't form the words back to her, but it didn't matter anyway, because there were no words I could say that would break the vomit of laughter coming from my mouth. I howled with it, succumbing in my last moments to the funniest joke I'd ever been party to.

Father? Tiffany whispered in my mind as she cradled my head in her arms.

I always knew my death would be terribly ironic. I smiled at her, though I could only guess where her face was. I'd gone blind. Tiffany, be a dearest and make sure my corpse stays pretty. I expect a grand funeral.

Of course, she sniffled. You'll say hi to Ivanka for me?

I already had my afterlife, Tiffany, and it was beautiful. I felt my heart stop. Tiffany, listen to me. Don't you ever...

ZANDER

I soared over the battlefield in my eagle form, catching the updrafts created by the great fires below me. From my vantage point, I could see the battle unfold. The scant remains of Soraya and Brianna's combined battlegroups were retreating from the arena sands to the northern gate, where Faltia's depleted battlegroup held a tenuous line against the pressing Lowland marines. The arena had been given completely to the Lowlanders, who also held most of the pavilion. Behind Faltia's line, Furia's goblins and Certiok's support troops were spilling in from the mouths of the northern streets. There were so few of them. I could only make out the shapes of a few dozen goblins skirting the rooftops, and perhaps five-hundred orcs emerging from the smoke-filled boulevards. We had begun this battle outnumbering the Lowlanders nearly two to one. Since then, we'd dealt such great damage to their marines that we'd halved their force of twenty-thousand, but they had dealt such catastrophic damage to our civilian force that they'd flipped the numerical odds in their favor.

We were going to lose. It was inevitable. There were no fallback positions from the pavilion, for the streets leading to the castle were choked with rubble. There were no reserves, for the entire brunt of the Alkandran civilian force now fought in the pavilion, and only the children remained in the castle. Hundreds of enemy mages still lived, and I could not slay them all. I was so weak already. The cancer devoured me from the inside, hollowing me, killing me slowly and purposefully so that I was aware of each failure of my functions. I couldn't smell anymore, nor taste anything but the acrid flavor of bile. Even in my eagle form, my eyesight was getting worse by the second. My body was wracked with chills, and my back ached with pain. But I could still kill. I swooped down with a great avian screech, and transformed once more.

I was a ten-foot grizzly bear. Not ten feet standing up, but ten feet from paw to shoulder. I'd always wanted to ride a bear into battle, but it occurred to me halfway down to the fight that being the bear sounded way more fun. I let out a great roar, and pounded headlong through the ranks of Faltia's soldiers, and into the heart of the enemy.

I had seen spectacular things in my life. I'd seen meteors rain from a twilight sky and ignite the horizon. I'd seen creatures so rare and beautiful that it was like God had crafted them with her own hands. I'd witnessed volcanoes erupt from the hearts of glaciers, I'd watched the trees of the Great Forest change color in an instant, I'd seen a valkyrie flock battle a dragon atop a snowcapped peak. But none of those things was more beautiful than the looks on the Lowlander's faces when I burst through their line.

I trampled twenty men, swiped with my great claw, and tore five more men in half. An ambitious young mage woman came screaming at me with disintegration spells flowing from her hands, and they washed over my fur like water. She blinked, looked down at her hands like she wondered if they were working, then she looked back up at me. I swiped down, and drove her head through her shoulders, into her chest, into her belly, and out of her ass. Her head rolled away, and her crumpled body fell in two pieces. I bounded through the Lowland marines, crushing them like cans all the way, making their insides burst from their crumpled metal shells. It looked like I'd stepped on a hundred cans of tomato paste by the time I got through their ranks, and then I was in at the north entrance of the arena, staring at ten very confused mages.

I let out an earth-shaking roar, spraying spittle and flesh from my saber-toothed maw onto the two mages closest to me. Blood trickled out from their burst eardrums, and they stared dumbfounded up at me. I swiped, and drew six-inch gashes through their bellies with my claws. Their insides plopped out, and they pitched forward with a scream. The mages behind them recovered, and quickly formed a perimeter around me. They cast their myriad spells, and I absorbed them easily into my thick hide. I crushed one woman, tore three men apart, shredded another woman into strings, and simply punched through an elderly man. One of the younger men got a lucky laceration spell through my defenses, and I felt the ethereal blade cut deep into my back. I roared, thundered toward him, and was slammed in the side by a great force. I was sent rolling through the ranks of Lowlanders, flattening scores of men before I finally skidded to a stop. I looked up to see thirty robed figures walking toward me.

The lead mage barked a command, all the mages around her stepped in unison, and they launched their attack. The telekinetic blast hit me square in the chest, and sent me backflipping for forty more feet before I landed with a crunch into a platoon of Lowland spearmen. I stood up, plucked the spears and bodies from my belly, and squared my mighty shoulders. The mages formed up, stepped once, and launched the attack again. I braced against it, and the telekinetic wind hit me like an avalanche. I withstood it for a moment, but then I was torn from my feet and sent careening through the expendable Lowland marines, breaking a dozen bodies on my way to a grinding stop. That one hurt. One of my ribs snapped, my left forepaw broke in three places, and my tailbone was shattered. I growled, and got onto precarious footing. The mages closed around me, took one unified step forward, then died in a jet blast of fire.

Yavara Tiadoa limped up the steps of the arena on one leg, supported on her left side by First-Scribe Soraya Poneria, and on her right by Tiffany Titus. The former Dark Queen was darker than she'd ever been, and balder too. She looked like she'd been charred to well-done.

"Zander?" she croaked, her voice sounding like that of a ninety-year-old smoker.

The one and only. I answered telepathically.

She hacked violently, and spit red onto the ground. "Where the fuck is my sister?"

Likely dead by now.

She groaned in response, then whimpered in agony as Tiffany and Soraya lowered her gingerly into a wheelbarrow. She didn't move at all after that. Her eyes were glassy and distant, and the only motion her body made was the slow rise and fall of her chest that accompanied her rattling breath. Tiffany hovered over the mutilated high-elf like a protective hawk to her chicks, glaring at anyone who got too close.

Tiffany, where's Drake? I asked.

She didn't answer me, and that was the only answer I needed. Soraya tidied Yavara's cloak, then spotted Certiok at the rear of the army, and ran out to meet her. She ignored the battle that surrounded her, and flung her arms around the last friend she had left. I noted solemnly that Furia was not among the goblin archers shooting from the rooftops. Soraya was the last of her kind.

"Zander?" Yavara groaned from her wheelbarrow.

What?

She opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. She couldn't find the strength to speak anymore. When I next heard her voice, it came from inside my head. Where did I go wrong that it all came to this?

It was never supposed to be your responsibility to bear.

But it was, and I failed. Where did I go wrong? It was that I didn't attack the Highlands, wasn't it? I shouldn't have been so merciful.

I shook my head. Everyone told you to take the Highlands, and you refused. Everyone else was wrong, and you were right.

It doesn't feel like I was right.

This is the end result of all tyrants, Yavara. This is your sister's doing, not yours.

Yavara smiled weakly at me. If this is the end result of tyrants, then Alkandra was always doomed, Zander.

I smiled back at her as best as a bear could. I always knew Alkandra was doomed. You were going to make it something different, something beautiful. You were never Alkandi, and your fatal failures came when you tried to be.

And I just thought I was being who I was supposed to be. Life's a cruel and twisted bitch.

Indeed.

In front of us, the Lowland marines formed a great shield-wall, and their mages solidified it with a combined incantation. The beleaguered beasts used the opportunity to retreat and form up. I knew it was a mistake, but I didn't have the heart anymore to warn them. What was the point anyway? I looked up at great ships that lined the bay, and saw what I knew I would see. Hundreds of flaming boulders were released at once, followed by thousands of ballistae missiles. We were trapped between the Lowland marines and the demolished streets behind us. A collective swell of panic rose from the ranks of orcs. Some tried to charge the Lowlanders, but they simply bounced off the arcane shield. The rest tried to sprint for the cover of the streets, but the roadways were choked with rubble, and the mass of bodies were dammed before the corridors.

Zander, Yavara whispered in my mind. Her voice was so faint now.

What?

She extended her hand. Even after everything, I'm glad you found me. I'm glad it's you who's here with me.

You shouldn't be.

She smiled brightly, and though her face was blackened and her head was bald and scarred, she was still beautiful somehow. But I am anyway, Zander. It's good to have a friend.

I took her little hand in my great paw, and gently closed it. Yes, it is.

CERTIOK

The world was energy and inertia. Boulders landed with crushing effect, exploded into a thousand deadly projectiles, then erupted into gouts of flame. Scores of men and women were consumed in an instant, and those around the impacts were torn to shreds. Buildings exploded into bricks, the streets were turned to craters, and the people were turned to meat. The missiles fell like deadly iron rain, flitting black lines through the inferno, spearing everything and everyone to the ground. Though the impacts were thunderous, the screams were even louder, resonating in my skull as I clung to a flagpole for dear life. Soon, I couldn't hear anything; only a loud whine that became higher and higher until its pitch was like a circular saw burrowing into my head. I couldn't see anything anymore. Black smoke and dust blinded me, interrupted only by the blasts of fire that revealed for a horrifying instant, the silhouetted figures of the damned. They writhed in pieces upon the ground, their limbs flailing from beneath the rubble like eels in a reef, reaching toward a sky they would never see again. The pounding was relentless, the whistle of missiles was endless, and with every passing second, the number of flailing limbs dwindled. Soon, the boulders were just bouncing rubble. Then it stopped.