Shattered Order
By: Allusion-Conclusion
Tragedy had struck. The peasantry, pockmarked and ragged, clogged the streets. They stumbled about, lost within their grief. A great cry reverberated whenever a heraldic flag was brought to half-mast, a great wailing rising from every tenemant house and manse with each toll of the bell. The fourth regiment, Solaria's Shatterers, had been wiped out to the last man. They had not fallen alone.
Squire Aquantius wept, she smelt burnt flesh and wept. Tears ran down her now troubled cheeks. She no longer needed to find Ser Taberc of Soapington a length of twine to use as a tourniqute, for now both his armstump was cauterized and the man himself, quite dead. Aquantius rolled for cover as the limestone behind her melted and split. Her tears evaporated from the most recent blast of heat, leaving salty trails in their passing. Her heart could not still, the thrice blessed wyrewood stirring crook clattering against doorways as she ran, it reverberated with a clang everytime it's weilder swung out to deflect her heart shapped foe. Far off wailings and curses from the few remaining, broken washmen echoed around the damaged halls of Aquantius's domain. Too, over the past forty-eight hours of mourning, the rare shout of reverentful triumph such as when the platinum shit-kickers were finally polished with an unscrolling agent.
Seven and one-quarter minutes were what the squire had been asked to provide. Barely two had passed before her knight had lost an arm in a spurt of blood, another thirty seconds before those baleful lances had melted away her senior's chainmain, underlying organs, and charred the bleeding apendage. It was time Aquantius brought this chase to an end. She knew that in moments she would no longer be prey, but bait for the trap!
Seven and one-quarter minutes. Pride and care had been thrown to the wind. Perhaps it was too much faith in their long chivalric history that had brought them low. The wizened Master of Soaps thought they'd known what to expect from Solaria. Both the high and low Keepers of Folding were sure that the wash would have at least one funeral of its own considering the vast array of martial spells Solaria had wielded in life. Never had the lords of the Wash considered that Solaria had always seen herself more as a general than as a warrior. Solaria's violent death had left her armor dented, torn, and covered in viscera. Her poltergown was powerful resplentant! Once freed of its runic storage trunk, the shattered garb had worked the fallen queen's greatest spell upon the heaps of laundry piled high across the wash. A legion of peasants befouled tunics and coarse dresses had sprung to life under the workings of poltergown magics. A parody of the transformation that befell Mina Loveberry and the rest of the Solarians! The clothes swelled, each article became like a suit of living armor, and they were all under control of Solaria's now phantasmal war-plate. The linen warriors fell upon the shocked knights like a horror-play.
Seven and one-quarter minutes. Aquiantus could not process how she had held out so long, but she had given her remaining fellow squires enough time to fill and fire up the Midnight Bitch, bucket sixty-seven. It was a long dormant monstrosity: covered in spikes and forged from the black, unamable metal of the underworld, and equiped with the harshest of cleaning cycyles. It was a mechanism of last resort. Only the quantities of bodily fluids spilling across these lower halls could cause the Order to break its taboos and dare use it upon a Butterfly's funeral garb.
She reached for the end of this deadly marathon, wrenching at a brass latch to throw open the oaken portal. The squire shouted a hoarse warning, "I have brought the stain!", as she cleared the doorway. She immediately realized that she was looking down onto yet another all too familiar hell. The girl of two days ago would have paused at such unfamiliar sights. The woman of moment though could taste ozone in the air and dropped to her belly. Forked bolts of lightning passed within a knife's width of her and darted downwards, comparitively adding little to the chaos below. A bolt was attracted to the copper buttons of a crusteacean red vest and struck them, lighting the garment ablaze. The vest ceased it's battle with Turgen and his golden hangers to writhe about like some panicked, violent dancer. Those undulating flames showed that the trap was a bust. Sure, black bucket sixty-nine was whirling maddly, the ochere colored bubbles displaying the twin facts that both the temperature was correct and that three drops of hell hound blood had been added. Squire Whosit was to have ripped out the columns supporting the wooden gantry Aquantius now strode across. The plan's failure lay in that Whosit lay dead or dying on the cold floor, supports untouched, seemingly strangled to death by an A-cup Armian-cotton brazier. The little ones were damn dangerous too.
Knowing that the dead queen's funeral procession was imminent, and that untold devestation would occour should the furious poltergown escape the Wash: the woman found her body moving of its own accord. The narrow gantry limited both her and the heartshaped breastplate's movements. Dancing between gouts of fire and immaterial blades the squire traded burns and various wounds for precious distance. Nearly spent, she at last used the enchanted crook to hook an exposed wyrm-leather shoulder strap. With a sharp tug and a leap backward the squire left the raised gantry and embraced gravity. She watched as the Solaria's chestpiece tried began to unbuckle its own strap, but the squire's weight pulled it over the short railing and downwards to the frothing black vessel.
Aquantius gasped for breath as she was battered by the thick metalic paddles of the tub, her vision obscured by the red bubbles. She could hear the breastplate, the sounds of two forigen metals slamming against each other, the great paddles adding more dents to the already battleworn object with every oscellation. She saw it rise menacingly like a shark from the depths, it's back to her as it hunte... no, Aquantius saw the breastplate as desperately trying to leave the tub. It wasn't hunting, it was desperately trying not to drown. It could not leave this basin!
She lashed out with the wyrewood crook again, pulling at the many leather straps grasping at the edge of the black basin like the tentacles of a kraken. With her left arm Aquantius held the side of the tub, fighting the current and her own threat of drowning. With her right, she and the crook forced the breastplate to the bottom of the Midnight Bitch. The magical wash vessel leached at the magics keeping the poltargown together, eroded the residual personality that sought to slay what it assumed were threats to the kingdom, the furious cycle even broke away the mortal gore that was caked on during Solaria's own violent death.
With the ending of the garments' general the previously violent piles of clothes became listless, easy to end. As Aquantius tumbled free, she lay gasping for air yet freshly cleaned. She would learn in days to come that the Midnight Bitch had even scrubbed away her own shadow. The deed was done, and the remaining Washmen folded up their phyric victory.
With every tolling of the bell the people mourned for Solaria, for their defender, and the fate of Mewni. Aquantius, with tears in her eyes mourned for the Order of the Wash.
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Author's Note:
Published 11-04-2018 Go checkout the Svtfoe Subreddit for other's entries. You'll enjoy the variety of stories, it's a long hiatus towards season four and the sub-members are fighting to get both you and themselves through it.