To my dull, mortal eyes, the captain’s private chamber appeared a cramped space. At the edge of vision, cabinets and shelves housing curious globes, figures, statues, fetishes, sextants, chronometers, lined up against every possible space against the walls. Truly a degree messier than the galley in the busiest hours of the day, but if the mistress of a veritable army of maidservants saw fit to leave it so, I supposed the disorder served a purpose beyond my mortal ken. All the more it seemed a dingy place for a creature whose wealth could shame even the greatest of princes, for where they lay the light did not reach. Yet in the middle of the room, upon a carved wooden throne behind one large desk, Aurora sat glowing in a mysterious light. I could not find its source: no candles, no hanging lamps, no prism upon the ceiling. The curious illumination encompassed the immortal and her immediate surroundings, but forsook all together objects and creatures outside of her circular vicinity.
She alone shone. And if this was not already obvious, it was no common glow. The instant we set foot within the circle, it penetrated us, casting upon us no shadow but a transparency. Look, could my eyes have stretched any wider, mayhap I would have been able to see through Litzia into the dark behind her. So that the outermost veneer of our flesh and mental boundaries had been stripped off and we stood but all naked to her eyes - those brilliant orbs they say could look into secrets of the souls.
“Speak, Gladiola, my prized warrior.”The captain but gave us a cursory glance before returning to the cluttered desktop where there were strewn maps and scrolls of undecipherable drawings and languages. What be their response? Could yond woman be an emissary to their lord? I think not.”
“Nay mistress,” answered Gladiola, “she’s a prisoner taken for rebellion against your messengers. As for the city, that she is no agent of, they gave no certain answer but to await their Lord’s command.”
“What a troublesome place! Do they recognize not my figurehead or my warriors? Still, I praise their unwitting courage! Return now to your Ala and bid them ready ere we march against Xenon – may their Gods have mercy on them, for I shall not.” That done and said, she took in her thin fingers a stylus and bade it dance upon a scroll, charting lines and circles over the crowded vellums. Dark mist emanated from the letters of her divine hand, and for a while she became so absorbed in the task that not one of us dared utter a breath. Or in Halal’s case, gagged and made to kneel on the floor as she was, the woman could but grumble.
“Mistress, if I may,” at length, Gladiola spoke up.
My heart shrunk at that moment, fearing wrath upon our Ala Leader. Aurora marked my fear, I think, and sent my way an enigmatic look along with one strange smirk.
“Speak.”
“What shall we do with this prisoner?”
“Whatever else? Deliver her to Justitia.”
“Justitia will slaughter her and hang her skull at the bow before the hour is sped.”
“If she so judges,” the captain answered evenly.
Gladiola’s voice grew impatient. “If I may, and I must, for what honor still entitled me in your service, Mistress - the chief mate is overprudent in her cruelty. Unheeded of own private judgments, she may risk injustice.”
“What is your proposal then, dear Gladiola? Could justice possibly be pardoning this woman and her insolent conduct, her witless violence?”
“I am no judge, mistress. I am a warrior in calling, and I recognize virtues if misguided in others. At present, Xenon is threatened by war, and losses of kins manifold anguish. This woman was right to assault her enemy when her allies seemed willing to bow their heads, to the Last of the Dragons or not. ‘Tis simply unjust to give her a rebel’s death.”
Gladiola's face was grim. Meanwhile at some pace behind her, I was unsure as to whether and when to interject my opinion as she had asked of Litzia and me. But I could not simply hazard my support. Conversing with the captain is treading on thin ice, to attempt is to anticipate likely perils at every misstep.
Presently, the captain’s gaze pierced Halal. For how defiant she was towards Gladiola, the crass woman seemed shrunk now under the captain’s scrutiny. A one-sided confrontation now occurred between the prisoner and the being who held not only her life but also her people’s fate.
“Woman of Xenon. What hope have you in rebelling against my warriors, the finest, fairest and bravest in all the known skies? It is inexcusable to throw away your life for such a hopeless cause, for little reason, and to assault I, who harbors your people no unprovoked grudge. Pray, do you take pride in your ignorant courage? I find it laughable, and not honorable as my warrior so claimed. You endangered your countrymen, knowing the extent of my might. You fought not with your own strength but a weapon seized from the very comrades who ought to answer in kind for your insolence. What my warrior thinks is honor, I think is selfishness. But what say you?”
Seeing that the captain had acceded to an interrogation at least, Gladiola ungagged the prisoner. That done, the woman raised her head and glared, not entirely fearlessly, but glared she did. And she said, “Dragon, I am not in the business of entertaining your pointless amusement. Hew my head and be done with it.”
“You heard it,” the captain smiled mutely at Gladiola, “deliver this creature to Justitia.”
“No!”
That was Litzia.
There was a mixed, exceedingly bizarre expression on the wyverness’ face that I was far too inept and lacking in worldly experiences to comprehend. A strange smile, a wild look, a furrowed brow.
“I wish to hear what she has to say,” she said.
The captain turned to my wyverness. And it was a scene repeated of that time between the assaults on the leviathan where she had stood against the captain to seek a pledge for herself and me. And much like last time, the captain was not so much angered by this crude afront as amused. She regarded Litzia curiously, patronizingly, as if my pledge-sister was no more than a kid throwing an adorable tantrum.
“What is there to hear? She wishes to speak not,” said the captain.
“Everything! But this stupidity, this pointlessness of being I cannot stand! You!-“ she turned to Halal, her long-dormant flame that I had known resurfaced, “Say what you have to say! Be not so eager for your own death having accomplished nothing, absolutely nothing at all with your pitiable life, save assaulting those who have little to do with your enemy in the first place! Is your life so useless and of little worth to you and yours? ‘Twas true you manned the ballista and courted death only for a fleeting moment of pride? Had you no nobler, deeper purpose? Is that all you are amounted to, a waste of air and mortal breaths? Even vegetables are worthier than you for they crave life and purpose of existence under the sun!”
Fear was gone, cool indifference was gone. Our prisoner grew red with indignation as she glared back at Litzia, doubtless wanting with all her might to strike the wyverness violently, and would have, if not for her restraints.
“Easy to say for a monster’s pet, wyvern!” she howled. And as she howled a thing came alive from within. It boiled and it stung. An intensified soul like that of bursting thunder unleashed charred splinters in blood-shot eyes. Obsession higher than all degrees of hate and love. Lives at risk, reason at risk. And what had been quenched by despair now erupted at their highest capacity, devouring all stray and clouded emotions, so that there was only one thing of purity left: “You wish to hear of me? Then hark, wyvern, dragon! Merely, I crave vengeance! I crave it for my child who perished in the fire! I crave for the spear! Even as his blade slew my family I wish to impale his every limb by my own burning brands! I call on birds of hell to feed on his heart! So that Prometheus’s agony be once more enacted! But I can’t! Can’t! What must I give to wield the spear of revenge, Revenge! - and take what‘s mine, to claim dearly for my taken things! But that is not for me, for here in this place, on this day, I perish!”
The sudden outburst stunned Litiza herself, stunned me. A fright came to Gladiola. What had just transpired was the manifestation of a hatred most pure. The darkest of emotions. The thing that conquers and consumes men and women alive. And now, it was plain, I could see it, as she snarled like a mad dog robbed clean of her wit. Never before had I wished it on anyone in this sky: Mercy would be granting her death right this instant. Yes, if not for justice then for mercy. Just mercy for the living, for this tormented creature, who would rather seek death for her enemy or herself than life. I was wrong. Gladiola was wrong. She did not wish to fight for his people, but for own personal revenge, unto death.
Aurora was quiet. An equal intensity now faintly made visible in her eyes, in contrast to the indifferent dismissal from before.
“Very well,” she said, and suddenly the air grew oppressive, a fell and invisible claw arresting our heartbeats. Dark, dark things lurked beyond her illuminating aura. She rose from the throne, and delicate fingers spread, as if to seize a throat:
“Crave you, woman, for a thing you cannot achieve! Yet your thirst moved even I, Aurora of the Dawn, who henceforth you shall call mistress and captain! I grant ye the spear you crave! You are thus sentenced to a year of service aboard this vessel. But be grateful, creature, for ere the year is sped and the mark expires that spear of dark revenge shall be yours to wield. That is a chance only I may grant!”
At the last of her word, a heavy pang fell upon our soul and the firmament itself seemed shaken. The world was shifted and fate corrupted.
A prophecy had been made. A dark curse had been cast.
“Mistress!” Gladiola cried out. The warrior had been stricken in place by the sudden change in Aurora. This was not what she sought or had promised the prisoner’s commander, instead this was perfect injustice. A curse compels and corrupts, but shall never serve goodness.
“Silence! Do naught but bring I the iron!” the captain bellowed in her perverse excitement. “And do not tarry, for this hour is one reverable Fate has marked!
So without a choice the Prima of our Ala went to fetch a branding iron. The evil mark of Raiser Aachen glowed upon its red hot end.
“Untie her,” she commanded. And Gladiola did. What scruple could that honorable woman afforded, when she could not contradict her liege’s order, honorbound to duty before personal promises.
Now freed from her restraints, still Halal of Xenon did not move from where she was kneeling in front of the captain. Her head downcast, her eyes concealed behind the dark of her forelocks.
“What say you, human, do you beg pardon from your sentence?”
Presently she lifted his head and, even under the illumination of the captain’s aura, those eyes were dark.
“My life is yours, mistress,” she said.
At this moment I sent Litzia a pleading look, or rather I could not bear to look at what was to soon transpire. But the wyverness was in no state to respond properly. She had been shaken to the core. By quivering lips, she said with her gaze averted, “She chooses this. She chooses this. It is not for me to stop them. No, no, not I…”
The captain pressed her iron. The smell of burnt flesh invaded our nostrils, allowing us no escape from the evil knowledge of this accursed rite. A throaty cry escaped the woman amidst the sizzling sound. And there, the deed was done.
When at last I looked, Gladiola’s visage as she stood beside the newly made slave was anything but agreeable. She was against this act with all her heart, by all personal values. Yet in all ways, this honorable warrior who failed a promise blamed not the mistress but herself for this consequence, for she did not look at the captain, but merely laid her forlorn look on the twisted flesh upon our prisoner. The chained torch. The mark of slavery. But there was something more, a darkness far more sinister than the mere binding sorcery, but fetters that reached from the hands of Fate, henceforth ever dragging the victim towards her predestined future.
That done, the captain threw the iron aside. The evil tool clattered in the darkness beyond her aura and turned cold almost at once. “Take the slave to her cabin. And prepare your warriors ere we march to the city.”
And so this too was done, Gladiola made away with our new shipmate.
As for us, my pledge-sisters and I carried ourselves back to our cabin for one short repose. It had been a trial for us all. Miseries wrought upon innocent lives by the mistress inflict also on the pawn’s conscience. But as servants to a most feared tyrant, our guilt-ridden pain could not compare to that of our victims.
A different grief was ours to bear, one that we deserved perhaps. But if those victims of the Dragon and our service might be lamented and pitied by those who peer from beyond the pages of history, in whom have we, these desperate wings, to confide and console but our ached selves?
That day the proud and composed Litzia collapsed on her bed into a raving mess. I hugged her tight. As tightly did the sight arrest my young heart.
On and on the wyverness would repeat like mad: “Not my fault! I did naught, I did naught! Rightly, wrongly, she chose it herself!” But she never sounded convinced, though she threw her all into the quenching of this aching guilt, while her pained tears ceased not. “‘Twas not my fault!” so she repeated.
But it was, my Litzia. It was your fault in its entirety. For there ever is a risk in daring one’s own mind, in saying things better left unsaid, or in unleashing evil thoughts we all harbor, but always keep check so long as sanity reigns. It was your fault, Litzia. You were to blame.
But even so, even if all upon this sky condemned you for your sins, still I alone would forgive it all, would accept all that is yours: ugliness, foolishness, pitifulness, everything.
But not for that Halal, whom you had condemned, nay, not that woman now enslaved to a prophecy. Salvation and redemption would never be hers.
To my dull, mortal eyes, the captain’s private chamber appeared a cramped space. At the edge of vision, cabinets and shelves housing curious globes, figures, statues, fetishes, sextants, chronometers, lined up against every possible space against the walls. Truly a degree messier than the galley in the busiest hours of the day, but if the mistress of a veritable army of maidservants saw fit to leave it so, I supposed the disorder served a purpose beyond my mortal ken. All the more it seemed a dingy place for a creature whose wealth could shame even the greatest of princes, for where they lay the light did not reach. Yet in the middle of the room, upon a carved wooden throne behind one large desk, Aurora sat glowing in a mysterious light. I could not find its source: no candles, no hanging lamps, no prism upon the ceiling. The curious illumination encompassed the immortal and her immediate surroundings, but forsook all together objects and creatures outside of her circular vicinity.
She alone shone. And if this was not already obvious, it was no common glow. The instant we set foot within the circle, it penetrated us, casting upon us no shadow but a transparency. Look, could my eyes have stretched any wider, mayhap I would have been able to see through Litzia into the dark behind her. So that the outermost veneer of our flesh and mental boundaries had been stripped off and we stood but all naked to her eyes - those brilliant orbs they say could look into secrets of the souls.
“Speak, Gladiola, my prized warrior.”The captain but gave us a cursory glance before returning to the cluttered desktop where there were strewn maps and scrolls of undecipherable drawings and languages. What be their response? Could yond woman be an emissary to their lord? I think not.”
“Nay mistress,” answered Gladiola, “she’s a prisoner taken for rebellion against your messengers. As for the city, that she is no agent of, they gave no certain answer but to await their Lord’s command.”
“What a troublesome place! Do they recognize not my figurehead or my warriors? Still, I praise their unwitting courage! Return now to your Ala and bid them ready ere we march against Xenon – may their Gods have mercy on them, for I shall not.” That done and said, she took in her thin fingers a stylus and bade it dance upon a scroll, charting lines and circles over the crowded vellums. Dark mist emanated from the letters of her divine hand, and for a while she became so absorbed in the task that not one of us dared utter a breath. Or in Halal’s case, gagged and made to kneel on the floor as she was, the woman could but grumble.
“Mistress, if I may,” at length, Gladiola spoke up.
My heart shrunk at that moment, fearing wrath upon our Ala Leader. Aurora marked my fear, I think, and sent my way an enigmatic look along with one strange smirk.
“Speak.”
“What shall we do with this prisoner?”
“Whatever else? Deliver her to Justitia.”
“Justitia will slaughter her and hang her skull at the bow before the hour is sped.”
“If she so judges,” the captain answered evenly.
Gladiola’s voice grew impatient. “If I may, and I must, for what honor still entitled me in your service, Mistress - the chief mate is overprudent in her cruelty. Unheeded of own private judgments, she may risk injustice.”
“What is your proposal then, dear Gladiola? Could justice possibly be pardoning this woman and her insolent conduct, her witless violence?”
“I am no judge, mistress. I am a warrior in calling, and I recognize virtues if misguided in others. At present, Xenon is threatened by war, and losses of kins manifold anguish. This woman was right to assault her enemy when her allies seemed willing to bow their heads, to the Last of the Dragons or not. ‘Tis simply unjust to give her a rebel’s death.”
Gladiola's face was grim. Meanwhile at some pace behind her, I was unsure as to whether and when to interject my opinion as she had asked of Litzia and me. But I could not simply hazard my support. Conversing with the captain is treading on thin ice, to attempt is to anticipate likely perils at every misstep.
Presently, the captain’s gaze pierced Halal. For how defiant she was towards Gladiola, the crass woman seemed shrunk now under the captain’s scrutiny. A one-sided confrontation now occurred between the prisoner and the being who held not only her life but also her people’s fate.
“Woman of Xenon. What hope have you in rebelling against my warriors, the finest, fairest and bravest in all the known skies? It is inexcusable to throw away your life for such a hopeless cause, for little reason, and to assault I, who harbors your people no unprovoked grudge. Pray, do you take pride in your ignorant courage? I find it laughable, and not honorable as my warrior so claimed. You endangered your countrymen, knowing the extent of my might. You fought not with your own strength but a weapon seized from the very comrades who ought to answer in kind for your insolence. What my warrior thinks is honor, I think is selfishness. But what say you?”
Seeing that the captain had acceded to an interrogation at least, Gladiola ungagged the prisoner. That done, the woman raised her head and glared, not entirely fearlessly, but glared she did. And she said, “Dragon, I am not in the business of entertaining your pointless amusement. Hew my head and be done with it.”
“You heard it,” the captain smiled mutely at Gladiola, “deliver this creature to Justitia.”
“No!”
That was Litzia.
There was a mixed, exceedingly bizarre expression on the wyverness’ face that I was far too inept and lacking in worldly experiences to comprehend. A strange smile, a wild look, a furrowed brow.
“I wish to hear what she has to say,” she said.
The captain turned to my wyverness. And it was a scene repeated of that time between the assaults on the leviathan where she had stood against the captain to seek a pledge for herself and me. And much like last time, the captain was not so much angered by this crude afront as amused. She regarded Litzia curiously, patronizingly, as if my pledge-sister was no more than a kid throwing an adorable tantrum.
“What is there to hear? She wishes to speak not,” said the captain.
“Everything! But this stupidity, this pointlessness of being I cannot stand! You!-“ she turned to Halal, her long-dormant flame that I had known resurfaced, “Say what you have to say! Be not so eager for your own death having accomplished nothing, absolutely nothing at all with your pitiable life, save assaulting those who have little to do with your enemy in the first place! Is your life so useless and of little worth to you and yours? ‘Twas true you manned the ballista and courted death only for a fleeting moment of pride? Had you no nobler, deeper purpose? Is that all you are amounted to, a waste of air and mortal breaths? Even vegetables are worthier than you for they crave life and purpose of existence under the sun!”
Fear was gone, cool indifference was gone. Our prisoner grew red with indignation as she glared back at Litzia, doubtless wanting with all her might to strike the wyverness violently, and would have, if not for her restraints.
“Easy to say for a monster’s pet, wyvern!” she howled. And as she howled a thing came alive from within. It boiled and it stung. An intensified soul like that of bursting thunder unleashed charred splinters in blood-shot eyes. Obsession higher than all degrees of hate and love. Lives at risk, reason at risk. And what had been quenched by despair now erupted at their highest capacity, devouring all stray and clouded emotions, so that there was only one thing of purity left: “You wish to hear of me? Then hark, wyvern, dragon! Merely, I crave vengeance! I crave it for my child who perished in the fire! I crave for the spear! Even as his blade slew my family I wish to impale his every limb by my own burning brands! I call on birds of hell to feed on his heart! So that Prometheus’s agony be once more enacted! But I can’t! Can’t! What must I give to wield the spear of revenge, Revenge! - and take what‘s mine, to claim dearly for my taken things! But that is not for me, for here in this place, on this day, I perish!”
The sudden outburst stunned Litiza herself, stunned me. A fright came to Gladiola. What had just transpired was the manifestation of a hatred most pure. The darkest of emotions. The thing that conquers and consumes men and women alive. And now, it was plain, I could see it, as she snarled like a mad dog robbed clean of her wit. Never before had I wished it on anyone in this sky: Mercy would be granting her death right this instant. Yes, if not for justice then for mercy. Just mercy for the living, for this tormented creature, who would rather seek death for her enemy or herself than life. I was wrong. Gladiola was wrong. She did not wish to fight for his people, but for own personal revenge, unto death.
Aurora was quiet. An equal intensity now faintly made visible in her eyes, in contrast to the indifferent dismissal from before.
“Very well,” she said, and suddenly the air grew oppressive, a fell and invisible claw arresting our heartbeats. Dark, dark things lurked beyond her illuminating aura. She rose from the throne, and delicate fingers spread, as if to seize a throat:
“Crave you, woman, for a thing you cannot achieve! Yet your thirst moved even I, Aurora of the Dawn, who henceforth you shall call mistress and captain! I grant ye the spear you crave! You are thus sentenced to a year of service aboard this vessel. But be grateful, creature, for ere the year is sped and the mark expires that spear of dark revenge shall be yours to wield. That is a chance only I may grant!”
At the last of her word, a heavy pang fell upon our soul and the firmament itself seemed shaken. The world was shifted and fate corrupted.
A prophecy had been made. A dark curse had been cast.
“Mistress!” Gladiola cried out. The warrior had been stricken in place by the sudden change in Aurora. This was not what she sought or had promised the prisoner’s commander, instead this was perfect injustice. A curse compels and corrupts, but shall never serve goodness.
“Silence! Do naught but bring I the iron!” the captain bellowed in her perverse excitement. “And do not tarry, for this hour is one reverable Fate has marked!
So without a choice the Prima of our Ala went to fetch a branding iron. The evil mark of Raiser Aachen glowed upon its red hot end.
“Untie her,” she commanded. And Gladiola did. What scruple could that honorable woman afforded, when she could not contradict her liege’s order, honorbound to duty before personal promises.
Now freed from her restraints, still Halal of Xenon did not move from where she was kneeling in front of the captain. Her head downcast, her eyes concealed behind the dark of her forelocks.
“What say you, human, do you beg pardon from your sentence?”
Presently she lifted his head and, even under the illumination of the captain’s aura, those eyes were dark.
“My life is yours, mistress,” she said.
At this moment I sent Litzia a pleading look, or rather I could not bear to look at what was to soon transpire. But the wyverness was in no state to respond properly. She had been shaken to the core. By quivering lips, she said with her gaze averted, “She chooses this. She chooses this. It is not for me to stop them. No, no, not I…”
The captain pressed her iron. The smell of burnt flesh invaded our nostrils, allowing us no escape from the evil knowledge of this accursed rite. A throaty cry escaped the woman amidst the sizzling sound. And there, the deed was done.
When at last I looked, Gladiola’s visage as she stood beside the newly made slave was anything but agreeable. She was against this act with all her heart, by all personal values. Yet in all ways, this honorable warrior who failed a promise blamed not the mistress but herself for this consequence, for she did not look at the captain, but merely laid her forlorn look on the twisted flesh upon our prisoner. The chained torch. The mark of slavery. But there was something more, a darkness far more sinister than the mere binding sorcery, but fetters that reached from the hands of Fate, henceforth ever dragging the victim towards her predestined future.
That done, the captain threw the iron aside. The evil tool clattered in the darkness beyond her aura and turned cold almost at once. “Take the slave to her cabin. And prepare your warriors ere we march to the city.”
And so this too was done, Gladiola made away with our new shipmate.
As for us, my pledge-sisters and I carried ourselves back to our cabin for one short repose. It had been a trial for us all. Miseries wrought upon innocent lives by the mistress inflict also on the pawn’s conscience. But as servants to a most feared tyrant, our guilt-ridden pain could not compare to that of our victims.
A different grief was ours to bear, one that we deserved perhaps. But if those victims of the Dragon and our service might be lamented and pitied by those who peer from beyond the pages of history, in whom have we, these desperate wings, to confide and console but our ached selves?
That day the proud and composed Litzia collapsed on her bed into a raving mess. I hugged her tight. As tightly did the sight arrest my young heart.
On and on the wyverness would repeat like mad: “Not my fault! I did naught, I did naught! Rightly, wrongly, she chose it herself!” But she never sounded convinced, though she threw her all into the quenching of this aching guilt, while her pained tears ceased not. “‘Twas not my fault!” so she repeated.
But it was, my Litzia. It was your fault in its entirety. For there ever is a risk in daring one’s own mind, in saying things better left unsaid, or in unleashing evil thoughts we all harbor, but always keep check so long as sanity reigns. It was your fault, Litzia. You were to blame.
But even so, even if all upon this sky condemned you for your sins, still I alone would forgive it all, would accept all that is yours: ugliness, foolishness, pitifulness, everything.
But not for that Halal, whom you had condemned, nay, not that woman now enslaved to a prophecy. Salvation and redemption would never be hers.
