Chapter19; Freedoms Twilight
Dawn split the sky, twin halves of vibrant living color, one crimson, the other black. Blood and death, a mirror of what was to come.
It was finished by noon.
On stealthy wings slicing through the air with a sharp whistling sound, none were prepared for the eight batniks flying in low over the slumbering town. Flash bombs were dropped and detonated, illuminating the village with sporadic bursts of brilliant golden light; excruciatingly loud squealing screams emitting as each one exploded. People, half dazed with sleep, panicking, raced from their homes, grabbing their children and fleeing for the safety of the Whispering woods. They found instead a large army of Horde forces blocking their only exit. A line of battle tanks commanded by Scorpia between the path to the woods and them.
The braver ones grabbed what weapons they could, some had blasters but most were armed with nothing more than a wooden pitchfork, a wood axe, the stray meat cleaver, poles used for holding up shop shades during the heat of the day. Some ran right into the ranks of the Horde hoping to burst through to the other side. These were hopes in vain, the Horde blotted the horizon like a dark swarm of angry ants, they consumed any entering their ranks. Robots shooting red lasers into the panicked crowd, managed to systematically corral the villagers into dead end streets or small buildings. Some turned to run, only to find that sometime during the night their town had been surrounded by ground troops.
Women cried out in fear and pain, the guards were not gentle as they herded the people like animals. Men roaring their fury quickly learned the futility of such meaningless gestures of defiance with swift hard blows to the head or thrust of blaster buttes to the stomach and skull. Children cried for their mothers, weeping in terror and confusion.
She closed her eyes. Onyx could close her eyes but her ears rang with the screams of her people, screaming in anger, fear, shocked surprise, confusion and pain and horrified denial as their homes were destroyed; flames, licked a fiery path of greedy consumption in parts of the village. She supervised it all, hearing hope die all around her. It should have given her comfort.
It did not.
Worse were the resisters. Onyx stood in the midst of it all, a circle clear all around her as even her own troops feared her. Cold and and seemingly indifferent she watched grimly as the town was sacked, the meeting house burned to the ground, the people shepherded back and forth and the resisters "put down". They were few, totally outnumbered with no hope of winning yet they did not give up. Men, some young, some old, fought like warriors, screaming their defiance only to be brought down by the superior numbers and technology of the Horde. Women of all ages fought valiantly and futilely alongside their men, she saw a girl just beginning to blossom into womanhood, her face still rounded with the fat of youth, armed with a frying pan in each hand; she took out two soldiers, stomping them with her heel as they hit the dirt before moving on. Her blue dress swishing angrily as she dove into the fray.
A soldier shot her point blank, as her eyes closed she began falling, drawing back his freeze ray he slammed it into her face, blood began pouring from her now broken nose, her head flopped back, her body turned slightly as she thudded to the ground. The soldier moved on. An older woman, throwing fruit and vegetables, pelting the troopers with unmitigated glee whitened as the girl fell. Abandoning the safety of her hiding place behind a market stall she moved to aid the fallen girl only to collapse, stunned, to the ground as a laser blast took her out mere feet from the woman-child. The sun rose higher in the sky, waves of heat mingling with the stench of sweat and fear and blood and death, the aroma musky and putrid. Sweat rolled off Onyx beneath her suit in fat salty drops as more people fell to the might of her forces and she watched, mute before mounting her beast.
Numb to it all.
Miles away in Horror Hall, on the peninsula south of the dark Jungle near the mud swamps, Shadow Weaver focused all her strength on maintaining the spell of shriving on Castle Brightmoon. Tendrils of sick green lightning ejaculated from her dark bony fingertips. They shot onto a scaled to size model of the kingdom of Brightmoon. In this manner her dark magiks assaulted the ward of protection Queen Angella projected over the real Brightmoon. It was called sympathetic magic. On a spiritual plane the forces of dark and light fought a fierce battle for dominance in the physical realm over Queen Angella's kingdom.
Queen Angella maintained the castle without problem. Her guards keeping a wary eye on the horde troopers which lined the hill outside Brightmoon. She wondered briefly at Shadow Weavers ignorance. The dark sorceress had tried once before- rather unsuccessfully- to take the castle this way- and that was when Angella was at her weakest, during the eclipse of Etheria's three moons from which Brightmoons queen drew her power. Now though was the time of the new moon, her powers were at their peak. It took little effort to maintain the protective ward around her kingdom and castle.
Hordack watched the battle progress happily from his throne on his view screen. No rebels came to the aid of Strathmoore. No She-Ra swooping down on her flying steed to save the day at the last minute. The day was his. And Commanding General Onyx sitting silently atop her steed watched it all through a dark mask which sat like an ebony shield between her and the horror she had wrought.
When it was done Onyx dismounted and began moving through the city. Horde Troopers were searching the buildings in a sweeping path. They were a brutally organized onslaught of terror. This city would feel no release. Onyx stood in the village square as the survivors were brought before her. Bodies littered the field, some Horde, most not. As she passed the spot where the girl had fallen she nudged her with her toe. Brown hair that stopped at her neck, matted with the dirt and blood she lay in fanned slowly out from her face.
She was dead. She must have choked on her own blood. Adora drew a Blaster from the holster on the hind side of her hip, their were gasps of fright from several villagers but it was not them who earned her wrath; it was her own troops. Her lips curling back in a vicious snarl, she fired ten shots and ten troopers fell at her feet, stunned into unconsciousness. She gestured to Mantenna, he stood in the background of it all holding aloft a long trident with the blue leathery head of his former comrade Leech. He moved swiftly through the crowd. Imp flew at his side.
"Just you wait Adora," Imp was shouting in his annoyingly whiny little voice, "I'm going to tell Hordack what you did, and you're gonna be in soooo much trouble hehehe-" Onyx lifted her blaster and shot him. He fell with a thunk to the ground. She spared him not a thought as an incredulous- but ludicrously grinning Mantenna stepped up beside her. She took the trident from his hands and lifting her chin addressed the assemblage before her.
"See this and remember this warning, members of the Horde. You know me. You know what I will do. You know the price of failure. On the floor of this city lies the body of a girl, not more than a child. She was stunned but then a trooper, one of your own, bludgeoned her unconscious body, causing an unnecessary death. Now ten of your kind have fallen with our enemies, recompense for her death. I tell you true, if the perpetrator of this vile deed is not dealt with by dawn tomorrow another ten of you will fall. And after this day, "she paused flooding her expression with menace and her voice with threat, "my stunner will be set permanently on kill." She had the entire crowds attention. "Look you now at the price for my displeasure!" She held up the trident with the head, waiting a few moments to allow her words to sink in, then, handing it over to Mantenna she turned her attention to the gaping prisoners.
"You are all now the property of the Horde, you will be fitted with a metal collar that cannot be removed as a symbol of your servitude. If you fought me and my troops well then, I pity you, I truly do. You will be made an example of, a warning to every person who dares to raise a weapon to the Horde. Then you will be shipped off planet to become slaves on some other Horde occupied world. Those of you who surrendered to us," Here she smiled, an evil baring of white teeth, "I pity you more. You and your children and your children's children are all slaves. You will work from sunup to sundown finishing the wall around the city. You will not eat. You will not speak. You will not think anything except what I or your Horde Commander tells you to think. You will eat when we feed you, what we feed you. You will speak only when spoken to. Now thank me." She waited several heartbeats before drawing a prodder and flicking it on. It glowed with a malicious jade light.
"Thank. Me." There was no mistaking the threat in her tone. Their came a chorus of mumbled thank you's. She grinned as if exultant. "Every night before you go to sleep you will thank your horde commander for sparing your life. You will thank me for ridding you of your wretched existence as a free person making you one with the noble Horde and you will thank Hordack for his tender mercy. If you forget, the village will be razed and the earth salted and your children taken to the Fright Zone to be raised as Horde Troopers." She snapped. There was stunned silence as the enormity of what had happened began to sink in and the people realized what life under the Horde would be like. Onyx however gave them no time to ponder their fate before putting them to work.
"Now I want the women to begin undressing the fallen." There were murmurs and protests at the unusual command. "I gave an order and I expect it to be obeyed! Mantenna!"
"Heeerrre Commanding Generalll." He saluted sharply awaiting her command.
"Take out ten women at random and have a trooper stand with a blaster in their backs." There was the usual crying and screaming and soprano protests as ten women were pulled brutally from the crowd and forced to stand at attention with a gun at each of their backs.
"If this ground is not cleared of the fallen and they are not stripped of all but their undergarments by midday then these women will join the fallen and ten more of you will be selected to take their place. Scorpia!" She called. The strange half insect half woman Hordesman stomped out of the crowd of troopers away from the line of battle tanks to stand before her mistress. "separate the children and take them to the schoolhouse, get the teacher and she will help you maintain order.
"Aww, do I hafta', I mean kids n' me ,we jus' don' get along if ya' know what I mean-" Adora glared stonily down at her.
"Just do it!" She screamed. Scorpia gulped, saluting smartly.
"As you wish Commander!"
Onyx spent the remainder of the afternoon supervising the troops staking out the survivors along the roads in neat little lines. Their wrists were bound to large metal stakes which were then driven into the ground high above their heads, then the feet were similarly tied and staked out spread eagled. Then a piece of hemp was staked on either side of their throats so as the simple act of swallowing would be a torment. When it was brought to her attention that some of those that had fallen were her own men she shrugged and ordered them staked out as well.
She was having her men deliver the heads of the dead to all the towns in Etheria with a message to surrender to the Horde or suffer the fate of Strathmoore. She was hoping that fear of her and her forces would cause many towns to simply surrender, thereby avoiding a battle and this distasteful act. She realized many would view her actions as evil and heartless but the dead had no need of their heads.
She did.
It seemed that all her actions recently were one desperate act after another. She needed to induce reaction. Fear or rage, either suited her purposes. She secretly hoped that every town would do a Drile and give up all they had rather than be enslaved and join the rebellion in their fight for freedom but she doubted that would happen.
The casualties were fewer than she had imagined, thirty-seven horde troopers were lost, seventeen villagers dead and fifty eight robots destroyed. There were a good two hundred stunned towns people who had fought her occupation rather than submit to it.
The corpses of the fifty four dead were buried in a mass grave just outside of town, their heads now en route to the free towns and cities including the kingdoms of both Brightmoon and Mysticor. In three days those surviving staking would be led through the town in chains and then shipped to the mines or off planet. Grizzlor and Entraptra were seeing that each villager was fitted with a light weight steel collar. Entraptra designed them so they bonded to the skin and if you tried to move them or pull at them they would rip the surface of your epidermis until the polarity was reversed.
Very painful. They served no other purpose than to dehumanize the population and break their spirits.
The crowd gathered once again that evening before Adora and her troops.
"This is Entraptra, your new leader. You will obey her." Onyx smiled meanly, "or I will be back. Now I will here your gratitude." The crowd began to chant dispiritedly.
"Thank you Force Captain Entraptra for sparing our lives. Thank you Commanding General Onyx for ridding us of our wretched existence and making us a part of the Horde. Thank you Hordack for your tender mercy." Onyx smiled grimly down at Entraptra.
"They are yours. Have them repeat the devotion for the next hour, then send them to their beds. I want that wall finished in seven days. I am to Thaymoore."
"Thank you, Commanding General." Entraptra said sincerely bowing to her commander.
Onyx wheeled around atop her mount, cantering out of town, the echo of the mindless chant haunting her as she departed. Her personal squad of twelve fresh from the academy troops followed her as the sun slowly disappeared over the Horizon. Onyx cantered between the line of men and women staked to the ground, practically naked, their moans accompanying the droning chorus her attention was caught by a man in a horde helmet staked between two rebels. She dismounted and walked to his side. She recognized him as the man that had killed the girl. She removed his helmet and stared into his black eyes. They were full of fear and hope. She gazed dispassionately on him.
"Pleeeā¦.pleeeeeasse, hep maaa." She stood, gesturing to a trooper. One moved to her side immediately.
"I want you to be sure to give every prisoner here a drink of water, once in the morning and again in the evening." The trooper nodded.
"It will be done Commander."
"But not him."
"As you wish." The trooper saluted, scurrying off at her nod. Onyx moved to mount the Horde steed. She did not look back as she heard the mans loud hopeless wail. She did not pay heed as she heard him begin weeping piteously. She rode onward to join her army, they had left an hour before sunset on the march toward Thaymoore. It was there, she was sure she would encounter Rebel resistance, it was there she knew her resolve would be tested. It was there her name would become hated and from there her legend would spread across the world a synonym for terror.
Dawn split the sky, twin halves of vibrant living color, one crimson, the other black. Blood and death, a mirror of what was to come.
It was finished by noon.
On stealthy wings slicing through the air with a sharp whistling sound, none were prepared for the eight batniks flying in low over the slumbering town. Flash bombs were dropped and detonated, illuminating the village with sporadic bursts of brilliant golden light; excruciatingly loud squealing screams emitting as each one exploded. People, half dazed with sleep, panicking, raced from their homes, grabbing their children and fleeing for the safety of the Whispering woods. They found instead a large army of Horde forces blocking their only exit. A line of battle tanks commanded by Scorpia between the path to the woods and them.
The braver ones grabbed what weapons they could, some had blasters but most were armed with nothing more than a wooden pitchfork, a wood axe, the stray meat cleaver, poles used for holding up shop shades during the heat of the day. Some ran right into the ranks of the Horde hoping to burst through to the other side. These were hopes in vain, the Horde blotted the horizon like a dark swarm of angry ants, they consumed any entering their ranks. Robots shooting red lasers into the panicked crowd, managed to systematically corral the villagers into dead end streets or small buildings. Some turned to run, only to find that sometime during the night their town had been surrounded by ground troops.
Women cried out in fear and pain, the guards were not gentle as they herded the people like animals. Men roaring their fury quickly learned the futility of such meaningless gestures of defiance with swift hard blows to the head or thrust of blaster buttes to the stomach and skull. Children cried for their mothers, weeping in terror and confusion.
She closed her eyes. Onyx could close her eyes but her ears rang with the screams of her people, screaming in anger, fear, shocked surprise, confusion and pain and horrified denial as their homes were destroyed; flames, licked a fiery path of greedy consumption in parts of the village. She supervised it all, hearing hope die all around her. It should have given her comfort.
It did not.
Worse were the resisters. Onyx stood in the midst of it all, a circle clear all around her as even her own troops feared her. Cold and and seemingly indifferent she watched grimly as the town was sacked, the meeting house burned to the ground, the people shepherded back and forth and the resisters "put down". They were few, totally outnumbered with no hope of winning yet they did not give up. Men, some young, some old, fought like warriors, screaming their defiance only to be brought down by the superior numbers and technology of the Horde. Women of all ages fought valiantly and futilely alongside their men, she saw a girl just beginning to blossom into womanhood, her face still rounded with the fat of youth, armed with a frying pan in each hand; she took out two soldiers, stomping them with her heel as they hit the dirt before moving on. Her blue dress swishing angrily as she dove into the fray.
A soldier shot her point blank, as her eyes closed she began falling, drawing back his freeze ray he slammed it into her face, blood began pouring from her now broken nose, her head flopped back, her body turned slightly as she thudded to the ground. The soldier moved on. An older woman, throwing fruit and vegetables, pelting the troopers with unmitigated glee whitened as the girl fell. Abandoning the safety of her hiding place behind a market stall she moved to aid the fallen girl only to collapse, stunned, to the ground as a laser blast took her out mere feet from the woman-child. The sun rose higher in the sky, waves of heat mingling with the stench of sweat and fear and blood and death, the aroma musky and putrid. Sweat rolled off Onyx beneath her suit in fat salty drops as more people fell to the might of her forces and she watched, mute before mounting her beast.
Numb to it all.
Miles away in Horror Hall, on the peninsula south of the dark Jungle near the mud swamps, Shadow Weaver focused all her strength on maintaining the spell of shriving on Castle Brightmoon. Tendrils of sick green lightning ejaculated from her dark bony fingertips. They shot onto a scaled to size model of the kingdom of Brightmoon. In this manner her dark magiks assaulted the ward of protection Queen Angella projected over the real Brightmoon. It was called sympathetic magic. On a spiritual plane the forces of dark and light fought a fierce battle for dominance in the physical realm over Queen Angella's kingdom.
Queen Angella maintained the castle without problem. Her guards keeping a wary eye on the horde troopers which lined the hill outside Brightmoon. She wondered briefly at Shadow Weavers ignorance. The dark sorceress had tried once before- rather unsuccessfully- to take the castle this way- and that was when Angella was at her weakest, during the eclipse of Etheria's three moons from which Brightmoons queen drew her power. Now though was the time of the new moon, her powers were at their peak. It took little effort to maintain the protective ward around her kingdom and castle.
Hordack watched the battle progress happily from his throne on his view screen. No rebels came to the aid of Strathmoore. No She-Ra swooping down on her flying steed to save the day at the last minute. The day was his. And Commanding General Onyx sitting silently atop her steed watched it all through a dark mask which sat like an ebony shield between her and the horror she had wrought.
When it was done Onyx dismounted and began moving through the city. Horde Troopers were searching the buildings in a sweeping path. They were a brutally organized onslaught of terror. This city would feel no release. Onyx stood in the village square as the survivors were brought before her. Bodies littered the field, some Horde, most not. As she passed the spot where the girl had fallen she nudged her with her toe. Brown hair that stopped at her neck, matted with the dirt and blood she lay in fanned slowly out from her face.
She was dead. She must have choked on her own blood. Adora drew a Blaster from the holster on the hind side of her hip, their were gasps of fright from several villagers but it was not them who earned her wrath; it was her own troops. Her lips curling back in a vicious snarl, she fired ten shots and ten troopers fell at her feet, stunned into unconsciousness. She gestured to Mantenna, he stood in the background of it all holding aloft a long trident with the blue leathery head of his former comrade Leech. He moved swiftly through the crowd. Imp flew at his side.
"Just you wait Adora," Imp was shouting in his annoyingly whiny little voice, "I'm going to tell Hordack what you did, and you're gonna be in soooo much trouble hehehe-" Onyx lifted her blaster and shot him. He fell with a thunk to the ground. She spared him not a thought as an incredulous- but ludicrously grinning Mantenna stepped up beside her. She took the trident from his hands and lifting her chin addressed the assemblage before her.
"See this and remember this warning, members of the Horde. You know me. You know what I will do. You know the price of failure. On the floor of this city lies the body of a girl, not more than a child. She was stunned but then a trooper, one of your own, bludgeoned her unconscious body, causing an unnecessary death. Now ten of your kind have fallen with our enemies, recompense for her death. I tell you true, if the perpetrator of this vile deed is not dealt with by dawn tomorrow another ten of you will fall. And after this day, "she paused flooding her expression with menace and her voice with threat, "my stunner will be set permanently on kill." She had the entire crowds attention. "Look you now at the price for my displeasure!" She held up the trident with the head, waiting a few moments to allow her words to sink in, then, handing it over to Mantenna she turned her attention to the gaping prisoners.
"You are all now the property of the Horde, you will be fitted with a metal collar that cannot be removed as a symbol of your servitude. If you fought me and my troops well then, I pity you, I truly do. You will be made an example of, a warning to every person who dares to raise a weapon to the Horde. Then you will be shipped off planet to become slaves on some other Horde occupied world. Those of you who surrendered to us," Here she smiled, an evil baring of white teeth, "I pity you more. You and your children and your children's children are all slaves. You will work from sunup to sundown finishing the wall around the city. You will not eat. You will not speak. You will not think anything except what I or your Horde Commander tells you to think. You will eat when we feed you, what we feed you. You will speak only when spoken to. Now thank me." She waited several heartbeats before drawing a prodder and flicking it on. It glowed with a malicious jade light.
"Thank. Me." There was no mistaking the threat in her tone. Their came a chorus of mumbled thank you's. She grinned as if exultant. "Every night before you go to sleep you will thank your horde commander for sparing your life. You will thank me for ridding you of your wretched existence as a free person making you one with the noble Horde and you will thank Hordack for his tender mercy. If you forget, the village will be razed and the earth salted and your children taken to the Fright Zone to be raised as Horde Troopers." She snapped. There was stunned silence as the enormity of what had happened began to sink in and the people realized what life under the Horde would be like. Onyx however gave them no time to ponder their fate before putting them to work.
"Now I want the women to begin undressing the fallen." There were murmurs and protests at the unusual command. "I gave an order and I expect it to be obeyed! Mantenna!"
"Heeerrre Commanding Generalll." He saluted sharply awaiting her command.
"Take out ten women at random and have a trooper stand with a blaster in their backs." There was the usual crying and screaming and soprano protests as ten women were pulled brutally from the crowd and forced to stand at attention with a gun at each of their backs.
"If this ground is not cleared of the fallen and they are not stripped of all but their undergarments by midday then these women will join the fallen and ten more of you will be selected to take their place. Scorpia!" She called. The strange half insect half woman Hordesman stomped out of the crowd of troopers away from the line of battle tanks to stand before her mistress. "separate the children and take them to the schoolhouse, get the teacher and she will help you maintain order.
"Aww, do I hafta', I mean kids n' me ,we jus' don' get along if ya' know what I mean-" Adora glared stonily down at her.
"Just do it!" She screamed. Scorpia gulped, saluting smartly.
"As you wish Commander!"
Onyx spent the remainder of the afternoon supervising the troops staking out the survivors along the roads in neat little lines. Their wrists were bound to large metal stakes which were then driven into the ground high above their heads, then the feet were similarly tied and staked out spread eagled. Then a piece of hemp was staked on either side of their throats so as the simple act of swallowing would be a torment. When it was brought to her attention that some of those that had fallen were her own men she shrugged and ordered them staked out as well.
She was having her men deliver the heads of the dead to all the towns in Etheria with a message to surrender to the Horde or suffer the fate of Strathmoore. She was hoping that fear of her and her forces would cause many towns to simply surrender, thereby avoiding a battle and this distasteful act. She realized many would view her actions as evil and heartless but the dead had no need of their heads.
She did.
It seemed that all her actions recently were one desperate act after another. She needed to induce reaction. Fear or rage, either suited her purposes. She secretly hoped that every town would do a Drile and give up all they had rather than be enslaved and join the rebellion in their fight for freedom but she doubted that would happen.
The casualties were fewer than she had imagined, thirty-seven horde troopers were lost, seventeen villagers dead and fifty eight robots destroyed. There were a good two hundred stunned towns people who had fought her occupation rather than submit to it.
The corpses of the fifty four dead were buried in a mass grave just outside of town, their heads now en route to the free towns and cities including the kingdoms of both Brightmoon and Mysticor. In three days those surviving staking would be led through the town in chains and then shipped to the mines or off planet. Grizzlor and Entraptra were seeing that each villager was fitted with a light weight steel collar. Entraptra designed them so they bonded to the skin and if you tried to move them or pull at them they would rip the surface of your epidermis until the polarity was reversed.
Very painful. They served no other purpose than to dehumanize the population and break their spirits.
The crowd gathered once again that evening before Adora and her troops.
"This is Entraptra, your new leader. You will obey her." Onyx smiled meanly, "or I will be back. Now I will here your gratitude." The crowd began to chant dispiritedly.
"Thank you Force Captain Entraptra for sparing our lives. Thank you Commanding General Onyx for ridding us of our wretched existence and making us a part of the Horde. Thank you Hordack for your tender mercy." Onyx smiled grimly down at Entraptra.
"They are yours. Have them repeat the devotion for the next hour, then send them to their beds. I want that wall finished in seven days. I am to Thaymoore."
"Thank you, Commanding General." Entraptra said sincerely bowing to her commander.
Onyx wheeled around atop her mount, cantering out of town, the echo of the mindless chant haunting her as she departed. Her personal squad of twelve fresh from the academy troops followed her as the sun slowly disappeared over the Horizon. Onyx cantered between the line of men and women staked to the ground, practically naked, their moans accompanying the droning chorus her attention was caught by a man in a horde helmet staked between two rebels. She dismounted and walked to his side. She recognized him as the man that had killed the girl. She removed his helmet and stared into his black eyes. They were full of fear and hope. She gazed dispassionately on him.
"Pleeeā¦.pleeeeeasse, hep maaa." She stood, gesturing to a trooper. One moved to her side immediately.
"I want you to be sure to give every prisoner here a drink of water, once in the morning and again in the evening." The trooper nodded.
"It will be done Commander."
"But not him."
"As you wish." The trooper saluted, scurrying off at her nod. Onyx moved to mount the Horde steed. She did not look back as she heard the mans loud hopeless wail. She did not pay heed as she heard him begin weeping piteously. She rode onward to join her army, they had left an hour before sunset on the march toward Thaymoore. It was there, she was sure she would encounter Rebel resistance, it was there she knew her resolve would be tested. It was there her name would become hated and from there her legend would spread across the world a synonym for terror.
