She’d lived through it once before and all.
“Carry, carry the book of Code
Carry on all its pages.
Don’t dare belay (we pray we pray)
The children through its great ages.
Harry, harry the senshi heart,
Harry for all the world’s worth.
Dare you assay (we pray we pray)
The power of Cosmos’ great aegis.
True night fell slowly across the wasteland of a wasteworld, and the dark seemed to carry Grieve’s gently crooked hymn to encompass the entirety of the land. The air was cooling, at least. Bit of ******** reprieve to go with both the grim certainties and likely even grimmer uncertainties up the road. The shape of the mountain had gotten softer over the centuries, worn by wind and storm and time. Worn by the loss of the sad scrub trees that had once held the last line of defense against both the greed of desert and that of its lords.
Nayat S’em, The Broken Tooth. The mine that was abandoned time after time, always until some curious a*****e would strike a “nerve” and the shifting destruction revealed something new and exploitable. The trail led right to the entrance and past. They must’ve come here in hopes of just getting out of daylight’s brutality.
“Dumb bitches get dumb prizes, yeah?” Grieve croaked to herself, then coughed. Squatting outside entrance, she took out a glass water bottle and luxuriated in a long, cool pull of fresh, clean water. She hoped they’d been fantasizing, dreaming of something so simple and nice and necessary on their last day.
Chaos is always hungry, always thirsty. A hole in a world that could never be sated, even as it turned to consume itself. And the sight that greeted her just inside the cavernous entryway only put proof to it.
In the light of her phone, Grieve read the scene as clearly as if she'd just watched it on TV. The clear arc of dried blood ascending to a burst of it. Tidy and no doubt sudden in its violence. The body on the ground skewered by…not the blade of the pick axe, that had only broken along the body’s side. fell in pieces to the ground. But the handle had been good wood, solid enough to finish a job. After a few dozen tries. Would’ve been a lot kinder on them if the Chaos Queen saw fit to arm them with anything other than small toys and trinkets. The Queen and the Code. Ready and willing to feed their children to the pit as needed, with no more than feathers in hand to survive. More bodies were cheap, but weapons and magic were expensive. They had to earned the right to live. At least Cosmos had to give senshi the semblance of a s**t.
It took too long for her to do anything but just stare at that body, knowing what she had to do but really wanting to just ******** off and never come back tot his world again. Maybe Roka had the ******** right of it. Since going to Earth and learning that everything had fallen along with her own world, Grieve had drunk, long and deep, from the well of grief and nostalgia near nightly.
But this world wasn't what she wanted, and this past wasn’t what she reached for.
She reached for the wooden handle embedded between the body’s ribs and darkness sprayed out of it like a geyser, shooting high and wide across the room. Hundreds, maybe thousand of winged bodies circled, black wings blocking the light of her phone as they swarmed her. And then, as the breath she held started to fight its way out, they left.
Yeah, that's right. She was no food. At least not here, with her own world under her feet.
The rustling of their passage echoed, down and down, further in. On the ground, the once lieutenant, once human, lay near flat and in pieces. “A whole shitty existence of shitty choices, and this is how you ********’ end. Burst like a ********’ balloon on a world without a single mourner.”
She spit, then rolled her shoulders with a brief shudder, feeling the ghost of all those wings still. And then, as yet another shitty existence, who made shitty choices, she followed. Walking down the primary tunnel, Grieve tried to summon some puerile song or ditty to keep her company, but all her mind could dredge up were the last moments of poor ******** after s**t poor ******** dying on this world. To her, one another, and themselves. All of it walking behind and beside her. Maybe more waiting in the darkness ahead.
And then the light of her phone flickered. Died.
“Damn.” Oh thank ********> Thank Cosmos, the bare minimum of merciful b***h.
She’d have to come back later. Better prepared. And maybe, <********’ absolutely, with some backup.
