Title: Gift of the Goddess
Author: RenoxRayne
Summary: A one-shot starring one of my protagonists from my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, Amaya Sorako. Her first mission as she gained the rank of Major, she's sent to seek out a rogue exile Deific Xukyn and exterminate it. Written on the prompt "Monster" for a 21 Fic Countdown at Collab Coven.
There were no stars tonight, then again, there rarely were. In a place like Qing Yuan, a city of Lights and Water, there was rarely a night where you could see even one sparkling gem in the sky. Those who lived in the city paid it no heed, either too hungry to notice or too rich to care. Of the children who frequented the playgrounds and arcades this night, many were born here, not knowing a star outside the scientific properties of it. It was something insignificant, far away, hardly anything to waste their attention on.
Amaya Sorako rarely had time to ponder the existence of balls of burning gas in the space outside of her planet, as this night, like many others was spent on a mission. Another Deific had been sighted, un-registered, within the city limits. It was likely to be little more than an exile seeking a life somewhere other than the burning sands of the Delilah region, but that was little matter to her.
Deific were different, unlike other Xukyn whom existed this side of the Sayoru Mountain Range. They claimed to be holy, to have some self-righteous connection to the Mother Divine. As if they somehow held a relationship with her only the Princess of Xukynsious could identify with. Anymore, they weren't let into the schools unless the military could get something out of them. They were born, registered, and left to die in exile for their heathen beliefs.
Or they were enslaved, tortured, and murdered without so much of a footnote in the history books.
The young Saturnine felt little pity for them, it was their own faults if they wished to continue their blasphemous claims about the Goddess. It was a concept that completely blew her mind, to think that a race as a whole would rather forsake their freedom and condemn their selves to a life of hardship rather than recant on their claims of having connections to a divine entity. Then again, it was a well known fact that the genetic differences between the Saturnine and Deific made it nearly and impossibility to spend long periods of time in the same room with one another without physical discomfort. Why should she care if a few of them got waisted along the wayside?
"Sorako."
"Commander?" Her voice was a mere whisper over the com unit.
"Its cornered. Lasara will come in from the left, I'll take the back. We're going to flush it out toward you," he replied, his own voice gruff from his years of smoking.
"Understood. Tag and capture?" She questioned, confirming the usual plan as she pulled her pistol from her holster and began to set the charge dial.
"Negative. Shoot to kill."
She opened her mouth for a moment, but closed it almost immediately afterward. It was an order, this was a mission not a discussion of ethics. Whatever this Deific got, it deserved and it wasn't any matter to her what it had done to deserve this fate. Heathens should all be put down as such, it was her mission as a follower of the Mother Divine to put them to rest, was it not?
Pressing the silver button on her Militia College uniform, her body flickered a little before an invisibility field sparkled to life around her, blending her in with her surroundings. A shadow as the left wall showed the large oaf of an Anura, Patrick, closing in as ordered and she had no doubt that Commander Flynn was in sync with his movements on the other side.
Taking a deep breath, she reset her weapon charge and held it at the ready, counting backward. Three... two...
"Stop! Militia!"
Neither had even been near the rogue exile, but the shout was easily enough to frighten them from their hiding place. The cacophonous sound of trash cans falling over as they booked it back down the alley toward Amaya echoed off the sides of the brick buildings that the alley lay between. Four feet... three feet... The young major took her aim.
At one and a half feet, she fired her weapon as a light blue burst of light exited the barrel of her gun and struck the target between their eyes. Falling backward, smoke filtered out from the hole formed now in their forehead as her invisibility field became disabled. Closing the distance between her and her game, her stomach lurched suddenly and she had to cover her mouth and will her dinner back down.
The Deific couldn't have been older than eight or nine, a visage of skin and bones. Scars marred its—the body was far too malnourished to tell whether it was male or female—flesh and its once lively golden eyes were glossy and unresponsive. Amaya found herself looking away, gripping the nearest thing to her (a trash can) and losing the fight with the contents of her stomach.
"Don't tell me you made it to Major and you've yet to down one of these bastards," Patrick scoffed unimpressed as she heaved again. "You got a bleeding heart for the heathens, Sorako?"
"Sit on it, Lasara," she began as she regained a small sense of composure about her, letting her maroon eyes find anything but the corpse to rest on. "Go slime yourself."
His aquamarine eyes flared as he secreted a clear gel from his pores, the gills just behind his slightly pointed ears huffing heavily. Whatever come back he could have had was cut off as the Commander stepped between them to toe at the body with a steel-toed boot. "I wouldn't get so cocky, Lasara. Its Sorako's first kill, and a clean one at that. Good work, Major."
"Heh, I didn't lose my lunch over wasting some Deific piece of shit my first time. I think Sorako's soft," he murmured, giving the body a good kick. Amaya cringed at the noise, the subtle crunch of a rib cracking.
"It's dead. Brutalizing it now only shows you have as little worth as they do," Amaya growled, keeping a lid on her fiery temper. Her patience was always thin when it came to nuisances like Patrick Lasara, and tonight he was doing a damn good job of tripping ever tender nerve she had. "Sir. Permission for sending?"
Commander Flynn smiled at his subordinate, giving a curt nod. "Send away."
Stepping over the lifeless cadaver, she closed her eyes and held her right palm over the center of its chest. "As you are in this world, so be you in the next. I grant you eyes to see beyond the veil, the ears to hear the Mother Divine's call. Heed it and with your new body, step forward into the dark." Removing her hand, she brought her hands together in a cupped motion and opened her softly glowing red eyes to the sky. "Beyond illusion, your soul is freed."
A delicate lavender glow began to form in her palms. At first just an inkling of color, it continued to shake and shimmer, swirling and growing until it was the size of a baseball. "Take to the sky, so mote it be." Her final words were a mere whisper as she bowed her head. The energy that had comprised in her hands lifted above the three soldiers, hesitating and bouncing there for a moment before winking out of reality.
She didn't move off from the now empty shell of a body, a dull buzz taking over her senses. It had been there earlier, when the Deific had taken off down the alley toward her, but she'd been able to ignore it. With her power spent, the soul residue left on her palms from the sending allowed the buzz to graduate into a full grown roar. Trembling slightly, she found herself in a trance, staring into the haunting gold eyes.
How lovely art thou stars, Amaya. Do monsters like you... see the stars too?
The child-like voice filtered into her head, and had it not been for the strong hand that gripped her bicep and lifted her off from the body she would have probably lifted both of her hands to her forehead in attempts of squeezing the voice out. It wasn't unlikely for a Saturnine Xukyn to get echoes of the soul they send on to the next life in their mind if the person was of a strong enough will.
"Lasara, grab the corpse and take it to the pyre. I'm going to get Major Sorako back to the barracks."
His voice sounded far away, as if she were hearing it through a dream. "Am I... a monster?" Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears, the youthful fear in her eyes equally as alien as she looked up to her superior. Shaking his head, the Lapin Xukyn smiled down at her kindly and hoisted her into his arms. As thin as he was, his corded muscles seemed to house a strength that seemed uncharacteristic to his form.
"Shh... ignore the echoes. You've done well, soldier. Just rest and let us take care of the clean up."
She let her head lull onto his shoulder, her strength failing her as the headache roared on. Those her eyes closed and she seemed unconscious to the outside world, her mind still warred within, fighting to justify her actions. It had been orders, official orders from a superior who she trusted and respected more than any Xukyn on the planet. She'd done her Princess, her planet, and her Goddess a favor by delivering the heathen.
However, she couldn't stop herself from wondering if the Deific was truly born with the sin it bore. They believed they were close to the Goddess, that didn't mean they were inherently guilty, did it? If it had been born without the knowledge, could it had been different? Would it still be as misguided as one straight out of the sands?
No child... monsters like me will never see the stars, she thought to the echo inside her head. My place is in the City of Lights, delivering it from evil... like you.