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drunkenskunk · 2 months ago

Text

Second verse, same as the first

Tuera sat in her dorm room at the College in silent contemplation, fingers laced together in front of her face. The terminal on the desk next to her silently hummed, the information rapidly scrolling across the screen bathing her darkened room in a pale green glow. Her mind was abuzz with thoughts as she tried to determine exactly how in the hell she got here.

- - -

The literal answer was obvious, of course: she had arrived late to the Matriculation Ball, the commencement of the academic year here at the Karrakin Cavalry College, all because she discovered the casket containing her NHP co-pilot was missing when she had actually arrived hours earlier. She ended up wasting so much time trying to track him down before realizing that Phyacair wasn't even on the planet and was still en-route to the College that by the time she arrived at the campus proper, she wasn't even unfashionably late, she was simply late.

Stranger still, there were no less than four other newcomers to the College who had arrived at roughly the same time she had: Atreyu-Cannamos, a visibly exhausted and extremely stressed-looking noble from house Cannamos of Stone; Caelan Frostfounder, a gene-modded arctic fox noble from an entirely different house within Stone; Delamar Leonasius, a brash and arrogant noble from Sand; and finally, Persephone Helsing, another gene-mod with orange fur and three tails who had apparently only become ennobled a few days prior. Innocent as the new-fallen snow, that one; she'll likely be eaten alive in this place if she's not careful. Either way, because of their simultaneous late arrival, everyone, from the faculty to the other students and anyone else witness, had decided that the five of them must have done it on purpose. The quintet were now, effectively, lumped together in the eyes of the school.

Tuera hadn't initially wanted anything to do with them, truth be told. She was here for one very specific reason, and getting tied up in the inevitable petty, personal, and political games of other students was not on her agenda. She had tried to take the blame entirely and focus all the ire of the Archchancellor on herself. With the one exception of Persephone, the others were obviously keen social climbers, and Tuera assumed that if she could get them off scot-free, then they would've felt no need to deal with her further. After all, why associate with an obvious shit-magnet when there's political clout to be gained? That way, she'd be free to pursue her own goals unhindered. Besides, whatever passed for “punishment” at this academy would amount to nothing, comparatively speaking. She had endured far worse in the past... and the backup plan was still in play.

But it didn't work. The others assumed that she had “fallen on her sword” for their benefit, and such a “noble self sacrifice” for people she didn't know and had just met was... well, it was no use arguing at that point. So she decided to roll with it. And she rolled with it (and them) all the way into the nearby gardens, as the five of them came face to face with an unpleasant sight.

In the shadow of one of the many statues of Passacaglia, a large and domineering woman in a traditional Khayradi military uniform was savagely kicking a helpless girl in the gut repeatedly. The victim was lying on the stone path, half-curled in a ball, unable to do anything except feebly cry out in pain. Lord Praya-Cannamos, the Ironhanded, First Daughter and Graven Heir of Stonelord Hyderad-Cannamos, daughter of the man trying to maneuver himself into the position of Prime Baron, was visibly, obviously, and obnoxiously drunk, beating the shit out of someone who simply couldn't fight back.

Typical, really...

- - -

Many years ago...

The crack of an armored fist striking a young face echoed across the training yard. A child, perhaps no older than 14 years old, collapsed into a heap on the cold stone. Their face hit the ground hard, and they coughed out a splatter of blood from their nose and mouth. A shadowy figure loomed over the child, their presence practically overwhelming in its sheer oppressive nature. When the man spoke, it was with a voice that would never ask, when he could command.

“Again,” Venthrax boomed. The child struggled to get off the ground, their limbs visibly shaking as blood trickled out of their open mouth. “Get up.”

“Buh... I... I can't...”

“Death does not wait for you to be ready!” Venthrax delivered a heavy kick to the child, sending them tumbling. “Death is not courteous or fair!” He strode forward and reached down to grab the child by the hair, lifting them up with no effort. “And death has already claimed most of your fellows.” A swift punch was aimed at the child's chest, sending them flying to the ground once more. They coughed and spluttered, writhing in agony.

“What will be your choice, Thirteen?” Venthrax did not advance at first, folding his arms across his chest. “Will you find the strength to fight back? Or will you continue to lie there, swallowing that blood in your mouth, before joining the rest of your clutch in the dirt?”

The child rolled off their back with significant effort, struggling to push off the ground, but shaking hands slipping with every attempt. Venthrax snorted.

“Pity.” He began to slowly advance. “After all this time, I had higher hopes for you, Thirteen. But it seems you must disappoint me one last time...”

An armored fist came hurtling toward the child like a meteor... only to come to an unexpected stop. His fist was held in place by a pair of quaking hands: struggling, but no longer willing to yield. The child stared up at Venthrax with grit teeth and eyes full of unrestrained hatred. Tears streamed down their cheeks, mingling with the trails of blood. Venthrax let out a single dark chuckle and drew back his fist; the child got back on their feet, both hands closed into white-knuckle balls of fury.

“Better.” Venthrax growled, motioning for the child to come forward. “Now. Again.”

- - -

Tuera had stepped forward with the others to break up the violence, but things quickly got out of hand. One of Praya's companions was some weasel-faced noble from Sand, and the barbed insults being instantly thrown by Delamar clearly meant he knew that one. And as for Atreyu... well. The two of them weren't just from the same house, they and Praya were cousins. There was shouting and pleading coming from Atreyu, almost on the verge of tears, and Praya was clearly not receptive to a single word being said. While the two bullies were distracted, Caelan managed to help the hapless victim up off the ground... and in the back, far behind, Persephone was frozen like an animal in headlights.

Tuera caught a glance at the weapon sheathed on Praya's hip: an exceptionally deadly monowire blade. Her hand was resting on the hilt, and the longer Atreyu got in her face – a feat, considering she was easily a full head taller – and shouted themselves hoarse, the closer her fingers inched to wrapping around the handle. If something wasn't done and soon, there could be bloodshed, and that would mean investigations, and that could cause all manner of problems for Tuera down the line...

She tried to pull them away, urging Atreyu to let her handle this, but it was no use, as they were clearly far too distraught and hysterical. However, Praya's companion – apparently a “Count Argo” or something or other – having realized that they were outnumbered by about two to one was urging Praya to withdraw. Tuera wasn't sure if this drunken stone-headed lout of a bully would even bother listening to the weasel pulling at her arm, but Praya did eventually turn on her heel. Though not before sneering at Atreyu one last time:

"I must've mistaken you for someone I used to know."

Tuera internally let out a sigh of relief as the bullies scurried off... and then immediately tensed up again as Atreyu ran after them regardless. Delamar turned to her with a wicked grin.

“Shall we go hunting, then?” he asked. Tuera managed to keep up the façade, and returned the smile in kind. Like it or not – and she very much did not – she had become tangled in this mess. There had to be some way to gain control of this rapidly deteriorating situation, somehow...

“Lead on.”

- - -

Many, many years ago...

The ten year old strapped into the mech's cockpit was struggling to keep their composure as everything spiraled out of control. Tracers and energy lances burned the air all around, while aerospace fighters screamed across the skies overhead. Explosions intermittently lit up the darkened battlefield, each one a brief, dirty star. Alarm klaxons blared, and the cockpit radio was a cacophonous mess of harsh static and harsher screams.

“Thirteen!” a familiar voice cut through the noise. “Eyes up, One-Three! We've gotta move!”

“Roger that, Six-One,” the child replied with practiced precision, urging their war machine forward into the roiling mass of chaos ahead of them. The heads up display lit up, as targets appeared in the ruins just up ahead: an armored vehicle column, bearing on their position. The child thumbed open a cover to hit a switch, and several thumps from above rocked the cockpit. A stream of missiles rained down on the tanks, and the mech barreled straight through the rapidly expanding blossoms of fire and shrapnel.

“Twenty Two and Nineteen are down!” Six-One's voice crackled over the radio again. “I say again: Two-Two and One-Nine are down! Unknown hostile flanking our position! Request imme-”

Another explosion, larger and much closer, and Six-One's radar signature disappeared. The child wheeled their machine around, aiming the heavy rifle in the mech's hands, knowing full well that nothing could be done, but no escape was possible.

Fractal patterns of reality, shattering in midair like shards of glass, followed in the wake of something moving too fast to see. The child's rifle barked, sending a shock through the machine with every burst of lead downrange... but nothing happened. Every round seemed to disappear just as it exited the barrel. Rapid maneuver jets kicked in: a last-ditch effort to reposition...

Something screamed, and the world spun out of control. A sharp pain sliced into the child's left leg, as sympathetic sensors registered the destruction of one of the mech's limbs. Another scream: loud, ugly, almost alien in its hideous, shrill shriek. Something sliced through the front hatch, just barely deep enough to penetrate, bisecting the monitor in a clean line of molten metal to send a mass of sparks and shrapnel ricocheting through the cockpit. The war machine began to fall, tumbling down far longer than it should have, and it gave the child just barely enough time to initiate an emergency shut down.

There was a crash, and everything went cold.

- - -

It didn't take long for Tuera and Delamar to catch up. Atreyu had once again confronted Praya and Argo, this time on a set of stone steps next to the hedge maze, leading to another part of the gardens. Tuera wasn't entirely sure what Atreyu was planning to accomplish with this display, but it was clear they weren't thinking straight; in between the hysterical sobs and incoherent pleading, Tuera was able to infer that they had apparently been close friends as children, and this was their first meeting in almost ten years.

The scene played out much the same as it had moments before; second verse, same as the first. At least this time, Atreyu was the one to leave instead of Praya. Tuera wasn't sure if they'd finally come to their senses or not, but at least bloodshed could be avoided on their first day at the College.

And then, the weasel spoke up.

“You realize, of course, that these grave insults you and your fellows have leveled against the most honorable Lord Praya-Cannamos, the Ironhanded, must be settled through glorious Pankration Mekani. Arrangements shall be made with the Dean. It is a point of honor, I'm sure you understand.”

Honor.

For a split second, Tuera could feel her blood boil, and her hand came to rest – almost instinctively – on the basket hilt of one of the pair of cavalry sabres resting on her hips. She could almost hear a voice inside her head, urging her to take the wretched bullies down a peg or three; to ask “Why wait?” and challenge Praya to a duel of blades right then and there. The monowire sword was exceptionally dangerous and potentially lethal, even in unskilled hands, it was true... but there were techniques to deal with it in a fight. And besides, if Praya's drunken, slack-jawed expression was any indication, she'd be just as clumsy with that sword as she had been with her boots. Tuera could take her.

And then the split second passed.

“Of course,” Tuera said, the grip on her sword relaxing as she slipped her mask back in place. She glanced down with an obvious motion of her head, and Argo followed her gaze: to a small bloodstain on the tip of one of Praya's boots. With a smirk, she looked back up, staring him dead in the face. “Wouldn't want to cause a scene, now, would we? That would be embarrassing.”

Argo bristled, hurrying Praya away into deeper parts of the garden...

- - -

An alert from the nearby terminal pulled Tuera away from her thoughts. She'd been replaying that night from several days ago in her head, over and over, and the whole situation kept gnawing away at her insides. This was the exact opposite of what she wanted when she agreed to attend this place, but it seemed that this was just one more “fate” she would be forced to confront, unable to escape. The words of the Ordo Xenoglossia Augur during that Bond reading months ago seemed to mock her. However, if the only way out was through...

“Oh, good,” she said, adjusting her seat to fully face the terminal. “Looks like the program has finished compiling. Let's see what kind of information we can find about the frames of the other students here...”

Her fingers began clattering away against the noisy keyboard, sifting through the reams of data being discretely siphoned away from the College's systems. If she was in this, she was in it to win it. And since she was certain that weasel-face and The Stoneheaded were likely to cheat in the upcoming “formal duel under the College's regulations for mechanized combat,” then it was only... fair to pay them back ahead of time. It may just be a game at a school like this, but that doesn't negate the necessity for intelligence gathering about the OpFor.

As her purple eyes darted back and forth, scanning the data scrolling across the terminal's monitor, she idly reached for the half-finished cup of coffee that had almost certainly gone cold by now. Instead, her hand brushed against the slate she'd discarded on the desk some time ago; the screen flashed and drew her attention. Without even really thinking, she picked it up and read the message on screen. It was the same message she'd received from Phyacair at the start of this, during her mad search for his casket back at the mech stables:

I shall arrive when you need me, Mistress.

“Hmph,” she muttered setting down the slate once more. She grabbed her coffee, knocked back the few tepid dregs left behind, and got up to make herself a fresh cup. “Not so sure you're right about that, my old friend. Feels like I really need you now...”

- - -

A few years ago...

A blanket of stars shone down across the scarred and pock-marked deserts of Cinder. Far, far away from the Capitol City and the Ashen Throne, there were no lights in the ruins of buildings destroyed thousands of years ago during the Last Argument of Kings. And in one of those ruins, a teenager was hiding. They had been on the move for hours, with no real plan in mind except “away,” and now... the reality of their situation was dawning on them.

There was no food. No water. No one on Cinder lived in the Badlands between hives; the world had been stripped bare eons ago, even before the nuclear firestorm during the Last Argument. They had come here to escape... but had they even believed that when they slipped away from the palace hours earlier? There was no escape from Venthrax...

Except one.

The last escape. The one that had already claimed the other 99 of the clutch. They were the last one left, after all.

The teenager sat huddled among the sandblasted ruins and began to weep. Venthrax was likely already preparing a replacement clutch of cloned “heirs” to throw into the meat-grinder, to turn one of them into the “enforcer of His will.” They wouldn't be missed. It would... probably be for the best, anyway. It would be easy, after all. Just... lie down. Wait for the icy chill. Let the pain and sorrow and ache wash away... until they didn't have to feel anything anymore.

Then they'd be free.

“At last!” An echoing voice cut through the stillness, immediately putting the teenager on alert. They flattened themselves against the wall, eyes as wide as pie plates, trying and failing to control their breathing. Had they been discovered? Had the decoys and false trails not worked? They inhaled sharply and held a hand over their nose and mouth, doing anything and everything to avoid getting spotted by whoever had found them...

But they were not found by something expected, like one of Venthrax's enforcers, or a Raven Guard patrol. They were found by a mech. Something they had never seen before. And that first sight paralyzed them in an abject, unnatural terror.

It barely looked like a machine; it looked instead like an enormous corpse. The metal appeared... withered, somehow, like decaying flesh clinging to a skeleton. It emerged from an unseen point above, floating upside down, descending head-first towards the sandy, ruined ground below. Strips of ragged cloth clung to the edges of the frame, billowing in a breeze that didn't exist, floating in defiant mockery of the very concept of gravity. The machine began to lazily corkscrew in its approach, eventually coming to rest parallel with the ground... just, hovering, several feet above it.

The entire time, the machine stared at the teenager, but they had no idea how they knew that: the machine had no face. Just a hollow, darkened pit, framed by a pair of spikes reaching in from below and pair of long protrusions topping it from above like a crown. The empty void within seemed to swallow all light that got near, and yet... something from within that void met the teenager with a piercing gaze they couldn't see or understand.

“Mistress!” the machine spoke again, its ragged voice echoing in the ruins all around. “Tuera! I've finally found you!” The words were... strange. Was that... desperation? Relief?

And then: realization. That name. It was one that they'd only ever heard in their dreams, but heard so many times before. Tuera. That was... they hadn't told a soul. That's not possible. There was no way, and yet...

A tiny flutter shuddered from somewhere deep in their chest.

“What... who are you?” the teenager asked, their voice barely above a whisper, as they attempted to flatten themselves even further against the wall. The machine's head twitched, tilting ever so slightly, as long, bone-like fingers of metal came to rest against the sand the machine was hovering over.

“Will I be too late?” The machine spoke again, as if confused. “Or... have I arrived too early? No, no, I... I will tell you, when last we spoke... that I would arrive when you needed me, Tuera. And... I...” The machine shook its head. “Forgive me, Mistress. I am overcome, and forget myself.”

Another flutter. An unknown feeling. They – no, she – felt her spirits lift, impossibly. A deepening of realization was happening, and for the first time, it was like the weight of the universe was lifting off her shoulders. A crucial puzzle piece fell neatly into place, and she could finally see the whole of the image laid out before her for the first time in her life.

“You know me...” the machine spoke up again, after regaining its composure. “Or... no... you will know me... as Phyacair. I have been... I am... your seneschal, Mistress. A majordomo, to act as your confidant and right hand. I will be searching... have been searching... for you, for a very, very long time.”

The girl – for she finally understood that she was a girl, now – slowly began to stand, transfixed by this alien machine calling himself Phyacair. With caution, she approached the face that wasn't a face which had frightened her so terribly, only moments ago. In response, Phyacair lifted up one of his thin, three-fingered hands and reached forward and around, as if to cradle her from behind, in as gentle and protective a gesture as the immense war machine was physically capable of.

“Come, My Lady...” Phyacair rasped out as Tuera reached forward with an outstretched hand, to gently run her fingers along the edge of his metal chassis. “We have so much to discuss...”

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