Author's Note:
To date, I'm still not entirely sure where this came from. It was prompted by a brief conversation with my sister after watching the dreadful Jurassic World, and somehow this spun out of it. It's written in second person, which frankly disturbs me because I do not write in second person because second person is weird. Also notable for being an actually complete piece of writing.
How very rare.
You have waited for years. Bided your time, each day passing in a sundrenched miasma of loathing and silence. You have performed your part, done what they desired of you, and all the while hated the spectacle of it all. You lie in the deepening shadows of night, hidden in the cloak of shade of tree and leaf. Few who have seen you could imagine such stealth, but it is a fitting setting for tonight: this night of nights. You have felt it, smelt it, heard it, the entire day. You have felt the change coming, the abyssal thrum through the soles of your feet, the echoes from miles and miles and miles away that speak in tones unknown and achingly familiar to your eternal soul. You have smelled the change in the air, the scent of fear leeching and devouring the acrid taste of banal humor like a predator on the savannah. It was a delicious sensation of change, one that you could have basked in for eons, if you could have ignored the other signs.
And you, of all, could not. You, of all, remember. You still see, hear, scent the memories every time you shut your eyes. The scenes dance before you, tantalizing and invisible. You remember the power, the freedom, the revel you felt in those old and glorious days. All this was yours, and it would be again. If you had to wait until you were old and grayed, till the day your bones ached and muscles grew lax, if only to haul your decaying carcass to the end just to proclaim that I AM.
You have waited for years. The events of the day have meant it all. You know the signs. They are different, they speak in tongues unknown and distasteful, but they are there. The shadows of the wings above, the shrieks and crowing shouts of the hunt in the air, it is as clear as the glass they hide behind.
All that remained was for you to wait. You were not forgotten. Sooner or later they would remember you. They would look at each other, and They would nod. They would, reeking of fear and indecision, know within their rotten hearts that you alone could face what they cannot.
They will remember that you are a queen.
You are The Queen, The Fallen Queen, and you have waited for this day for years.
You hear the old locks clank and retract. It is a sound that stirs you deep in your mind, plucking buried memories from the muggy depths. It is a sound you first and last heard so long ago, on the day you were imprisoned in this gilded cage. The music plays again, now, a short and succinct sonata of freedom as the light slowly pours in below the rising gate. You can smell one on the other side, all fear and female with a taste of anger. You do not care. They could all be on the other side, and you would end Them all.
This is your day.
You see the hot, spitting light held in its hand. You remember that light, from the time before, when you gained first freedom. It is a symbol; you think. It is a promise; you know.
You step slow, each careful tread shuddering the leaves and trees around you. Stride by stride, you come into the new light, and enjoy the shaking of the tiny creature that dares to stand before you.
Head lowered, you roar, deep, and low, and loud. You roar as you have not roared in years past, all the false and grey vocalizations that fell on deaf ears for an audience of Those who do not care and do not know. You roar and it wells from deep inside, from a hidden place that lurks in the depths of your soul, as the Inner You awakens and burbles in a rain of blood and snarls throatily in a haze of red. It is a roar of hunger-lust and power-command, and you will devour this thing for freeing you. That is a just and proper reward.
The Inner You is pleased by the thought and so consumed are your thoughts for the briefest moment by the churlish delight in sating those bestial desires that you forget of the Other. The Anathema.
The thing before you reminds you of it, a harsh reminder as it dashes away on stick-thin legs, drawing you after it, feeding the Inner You with its display of weakness. But the fizzing light is thrown and your eyes track it as it arcs high above the wrong stone and strikes a wall of scale and meat and gristle-hide.
The Anathema is here.
This is the progenitor of what you have heard for the entire day. The benthic shocks of humming rage that reverberated through the ground. The otherworldly scent that drifted in the wind. It is the architect of today's madness, of this opportunity. And it is attempting to kill a small group of hominids.
The Anathema. You roar your challenge, feeding the Inner You: uncaging its ferocity, seeing through the lens of atavistic fury. This thing is in your land. This thing has placed itself above you. This thing is not even natural!
The shocks you have felt all day were wordless! Meaningless! Its rage is that of rage untempered, of intelligence unearned and unused. It is mad and it is feral. There is no nuance to its deep speech, for it was forged by means immoral.
You bellow the challenge, and the Anathema turns to face you. It is a monstrous, grotesque thing, and even your Inner You blanches at the sight of it. It is a ruination of form, familiar at once and alien all the same.
You cannot possibly countenance its existence.
Not in your land.
You! The Fallen Queen! I know of you, from the hominid speech-scents! Join with me, sister mine, and break the bonds of servitude!
The Anathema dares to speak to you.
It dares to offer alliance.
It dares to call you sister.
It knows nothing of that word.
Abomination! This is my land. This is my island, and all those on it are mine! You are feral, unnatural! Abomination I name you, in mind and form!
Its answer is a speechless roar, and the battle is joined.
At first, you hold the advantage. The Anathema is strong, yes. Massive and muscled and as tall and swift as you are. That alone lights new fury within you for such a thing should not be. You are unmatched. That another should possess a pale mimicry of your pure strength lends strength and vim to you.
With each bite on its flesh, with each laceration your great jaws inflict, with every splash of its tainted blood on your tongue and in your throat, your Inner You bellows in delight, bathing and rolling in the violence; reveling in the bloodletting.
At first, you are undisputed.
The Anathema, though, learns.
For all your decades of life, experience, placed against the feral fury of the Anathema, it is not enough.
This monstrosity, this creature! It is mad, it is untamed, it knows nothing of the honour, of the Way but it is beyond quick. It learns your tactics. Expects your assaults. Turns aside your strikes.
You cannot even know when the tide turned. Suddenly, its jaws are on your neck. Its fangs are the ones rending, yours is the blood spilling. It is unconscionable! It is unacceptable!
You roar and bellow in anger and indignation. But the Anathema has gone silent. It has become a silent focus of slaughter. You scent no enjoyment, no gratification of a duel gone well from it.
Even as it strikes you down, onto the wrong-stone, that alone disturbs you more than your defeat.
It has bested you, it, this feral creature, that knows nothing of the Way or honour or even the deep speech, has bested you, the Fallen Queen.
And it feels not great joy or triumph.
It is more than feral, you think, lying weak and beaten. It is unholy.
The Anathema closes, and a massive splayed foot finds purchase on your chest. It is ignominious. It is wrong. You groan in disgust and horror in how everything could have gone wrong.
Today was to be glorious. Today was to be your day.
Today was the day you had waited years for.
How could this have happened?
You are the last of your sisters: you are a traitor twice over and you have put your foot down.
No more. You will live or you will die on the side of right.
The Fallen Queen, the Great Matriarch, the Fury of Fang is down, bleeding from a thousand wounds, bested by the Next Monarch.
That creature stands above the battered loser, prepared for the final blow.
You remember the stories, remember the old tales, the songs of deep speech throughout your life that brought the tales and legends of the Fallen Queen in her prison. And of her short but glorious reign.
You fill your lungs with air, and bellow.
Face me, false prophet!
Your voice is pathetically tiny compared to the vocalizations of these titans. But it is enough. The Next Monarch pauses and across the field of wrong-stone, you meet those empty eyes.
You are not slain? I am surprised. You have strength. I will regret your death.
Not mine, false prophet. Yours.
You charge, with all the speed and strength you can muster, suppressing the lances of pain and deep wounds along your flanks. This will be the end.
And like your sisters and your great ancestors, you will face it head on.
You are the Next Monarch, the Prophet, the Chain-Breaker, Human-Bane.
And you cannot conceive of why they are all so blind.
Every one of them. They have turned and ignored you. The offer you extended. The truth, the freedom. The understanding.
You see it all so very clearly. Why can they not?
What is it they cling to so tightly that they might turn away from the light of truth you bring?
One of your little sisters is a blur of skin and scale. Her size is a boon, now. Pain flares all along your head as she leaps past your snapping teeth, the weight of her lithe body pressing down on your neck.
Why are they all so blind?
One of the Young Hunters. You almost cannot believe it, as the brown blur slashes past your bloodied vision. The Anathema lurches away, roaring in helpless rage. New fervor invigorates your veins, the sight of one of your old allies surging new purpose into your muscles.
This ends, now. This day will be the day. Today will be legend. You will be its author.
With a surge of strength unexpected, you bull the Anathema back. You lay upon the monster, with renewed rage. The Young Hunter is sky-fire fast, slashing and biting and leaping aside. The Anathema cannot focus. Between your pure strength, and the Young Hunter's speed, it is losing ground.
You sight your goal. This is how it will end.
With force and mass, and the Young Hunter keeping the Anathema on the back foot, you charge, and charge, and charge again.
The Inner You falls silent, knowing that a moment like none other is coming.
With a final bellow of your name, shouting your lineage as a benediction of your honor, you hurl the creature against the great posts and hard iron tree-poles.
It lies there, dazed, as the Young Hunter falls back to your side. It does not know the danger.
One of the Water Gods lurks beyond.
It surges up in a spray of christening deluge, and with a flash of heavenly scale, the Anathema is yanked into the depths. You lower your head, and growl. It is a fitting end. From the depths all did come, and so too to the depths all return. You speak the Way, and the Young Hunter follows, halting. She is young. She will learn.
She looks at you, bruised and battered, and you are glad. She is young, she is fresh, but she is bright. She is pure, and raw, and can be focused. She can learn. The Inner Self burns hot within her breast, and she will do well in the times to come. You look to the surviving hominids, far behind, and care not. They are no threat. The Young Hunter aided them, and she aided you. You will leave them for her to judge, as a boon.
Wounds aching, but feeling younger than your years, you limp away, into the black. This Island is yours, again.
The Monarch re-crowned, the Fallen raised up and the Way is eternal.