The Shape of Things to Come
Julia gasped awake in a cold sweat. Her head pounded like the discotheque's bass. The taste in her mouth was awful, a mix of vomit and vodka and moonshine and tobacco and blood sausage. She was on the ground, but she couldn't tell where. She coughed up something black and shakily propped herself up. Wherever she was it was dark. It must've been the temple, because the walls and floor were cold stone. There were dark, dank prison cells deep within the temple, and Julia had the comforting thought that perhaps she was in one, to die and be forgotten.
That'd be nice, she thought through her hangover, that'd be fair. Unfortunately, it was not to be. She was where the priestesses left her, just outside Hecate's chambers. After a half-hour in darkness the automatic lights flicked on. It was six in the morning.
It took Julia another half-hour to summon the energy to crawl into Hecate's room. Once inside she ate an apple, drank a glass of water, and smoked bufo until she passed out. She was only asleep for an hour before her bufo-inspired nightmares woke her up. Visions of her victims clawed at her face, shrieking without words. Whole villages rose from the grave to drag her down into the cold earth with them. She awoke, rushed to the sink and vomited. It didn't drain, and was the same black color as her earlier bit of bile. She decided it must be the blueberries in Avata's moonshine. She poked bits of apple down into the drain.
Before she knew what was happening she found herself downstairs, in the temple's control room. It was sweltering hot, as always, but empty. The whir of computer fans was deafening, the hum of electricity and the rattle of the huge steel servers. Julia glided to a terminal and delicately woke it up with her little finger. The root menu flashed to life on the screen, offering what was probably the most comprehensive collection of information on the southwest wasteland, the United States, and the world at large.
She clicked idly through menus, not absorbing anything she saw until something in the index of Legion encampments caught her eye. Dry Wells. The records kept on every Legion camp were exhaustive, but Dry Wells seemed to be particularly detailed, no doubt at Hecate's personal request. Weather reports, water temperature, the Colorado's height, the layout of the Legion camp, troop rosters and movements, and the history of the region all poured out in a torrent of green computer script. Julia clicked through it all until she found a file labeled "Twisted Hairs- 2120-2259". There was no way to tell the accuracy of the starting date, she discovered as she browsed the file, but the end date was as accurate as if it'd been carved into the canyon walls of Dry Wells itself. There was a list included of former Twisted Hairs, but it was mostly men who'd been absorbed into the Legion. Julia saw Raven was included, still alive and in service to Caesar, and noted that Athena was included, but there was no Dark Mother, nor could she find herself. Most of the women didn't make it, she glumly noted. Certainly not to Ouroboros. They were forgotten by history, like so many women before them. Tears formed in the corners of Julia's eyes, but she didn't notice.
"Hey, are you okay?" Yvana startled her. She hadn't even noticed the priestess enter, much less walk up to her. She sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes, smudging her smudged facepaint further.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," she sniffed, "Sorry. Just... Just thinking about the past."
Yvana understood without need for further elaboration. Everyone in Ouroboros had a tragic past. Even Yvana wasn't immune to the vicious intrusion of painful memories, of a history better left forgotten lest its grief swallow her whole, lead her down dark paths no-one ever returned from. As a member of the ruling priestess council, she knew the consequences of losing yourself in cruel reminiscing better than most.
"It's hard not to," she airily gestured to the computer-banks, "When it's all laid out there in ones and zeroes."
She smiled a knowing smile and Julia returned it, and they let the air between them fill with sorrowful understanding before continuing. Suddenly Julia had a thought.
"How do you edit these files?" she gestured to the monitor, and clicked back to the menu listing Legion encampments.
"Well, usually a Maenad or Harpy-" though there weren't many reports from Harpys anymore- "will submit a new report on paper, and we type it up. Sometimes they only give us a verbal report and we transcribe it, but we always send a copy down to archives. All the priestesses review the reports and then we combine them all together and write a summary for Hecate. After we send it up to her we usually make copies of the files we're changing, edit the copies, and replace the old files," Yvana explained at length, then pointed out the hotkeys for copying and replacing a new file.
"You going to Temperance tonight?" Yvana asked suddenly. Julia was startled out of her contemplation.
"Well, it's my event, so I suppose I ought to," she chewed her lip thoughtfully, then glanced over her superfluous eyeglasses and added wearily, "Although, if I didn't, I'm sure it'd be just fine."
Yvana walked behind her and hugged her around the shoulders playfully, "You should be proud of your girls, High Priestess. They're strong and smart and no, they don't need you."
Yvana was one of the few priestesses on Hecate's special counsel that Julia truly got along with. There was something about the young woman, a certain grim fatalism mixed with dogged determination that Julia responded to, that responded to Julia. For most daughters loss and longing and sorrow stopped at the Strophades corridor, but it had managed to follow Yvana into Ouroboros, not like she'd ever admit it. Even still, she carried her burden with her, and it made her good friends with the High Priestess. It helped her speak her mind, kept the fear of hardship from reducing her to euphemisms and quiet whispers like the other women. It hadn't made her popular, but she didn't soften the truth.
"You're right. I guess I'll just go and get drunk, then," Julia smiled. It hadn't taken her long at all to position herself as head of the Daughter's Temperance movement, in fact they'd basically begged her to take command. The prevailing opinion among the priestesses was that as long as Hecate's top aid was in charge, they couldn't possibly be murdered for not acquiring the goddess's explicit permission for their lady's society. Julia, for her part, was so accustomed to command and so eager to think about something other than what happened between her and Hecate on that Utah plateau a month earlier, assumed authority like it was her idea in the first place, without giving thought to why her command was so appreciated. In any case, the Daughter's Temperance Union was an easy opportunity for copious alcohol, so it was unlikely Julia would stay away for long. After all, she had to do something to keep her self-loathing from hanging her in Hecate's quarters, and drugs and alcohol hadn't steered her wrong yet.
At least she wasn't hooked on Med-x anymore. One very rough week in the badlands had broken her of that habit, withdrawals so bad she'd practically begged to be discovered and murdered by deathclaws, Legionaries, raiders, anybody, so long as she stopped sweating and seizing. None came, so here she was, back in the goddess's holy city, lying to everyone she loved, and everyone who loved her. It was hard to kick the habit, though, especially in Ouroboros, and in a few more weeks she'd be shooting up again, lying to herself about how much and how often.
"What are you doing today?" Julia asked Yvana, still wrapped around her shoulders like a boa.
"Well, we've got Maenad Artemis arriving between ten and twelve today, I'll probably type up that report, unless someone else gets to her first. Then we've got Jill coming in at one, with word from the Bull Pen, and that'll mean a lot of editing, so everyone'll be doing that," Maenad Jill was an older woman with a cigarette-gifted baritone voice who infiltrated the Legion by dressing as a man. The 'Bull Pen' was a load of old fat centurions who were defacto in charge of Caesar's territories. They frequently got together and ran their fat mouths, on the whole a valuable and easy source of information on Caesar's movements and plans.
"You've got some time..." Julia said, "I was thinking, maybe, y'know, I'd go to the baths and, uh, clean up a little bit... Would you... Care to join me?"
"Yeah, sure. Why not?" the invitation was so pitiful Yvana had no choice but to accept. She didn't have to entertain the High Priestess for long, however, since as soon as she'd stripped off her bangles, her wraps, her necklaces, her rings, her fine leather sandals, her earrings, and her ocular jewelry and submerged herself in the warm water Julia fell asleep.
When she awoke Yvana was gone, replaced by a gaggle of younger Daughters who all stared in wide-eyed adoration at Julia. They informed her that the other priestess had stayed with her until they arrived, then had to leave for some important business, but before leaving asked them to keep watch over her and make sure she didn't drown. She thanked them.
"I think I'm clean enough, now," she said after examining her pruned fingers. She did feel better after some decent sleep, admittedly, but it was tempered by the feelings of guilt and self-loathing that bubbled up whenever anyone idolized her as much as these young ladies. The girls adoringly watched her as she hoisted herself out of the bath and began re-applying her gaudy trinkets. Julia dutifully ignored them until one spoke in a hushed voice.
"You know the Goddess, right?" a girl with hair dyed beet red asked. Julia slid a dozen bracelets of different colors and materials over her left arm.
"I do, yes. I commune with the goddess regularly," Julia managed to say without betraying any irritation.
"She... She has a plan, right?" the same girl asked. The others all took careful pains to stare elsewhere, yet listened intently. Julia took a moment to fix her skirt before replying.
"Yes," she answered patiently, "The goddess knows all and sees all. She has seen the shape of things to come," Julia adopted a more dramatic tone before continuing, raising her arms out and staring blankly into space like a good seer would, "Caesar's end has already been foretold. He will find his death when the Bear and the Bull meet over the Bright Light City, and his followers will be as sheep, and the Daughters of Hecate shall be shepherds, and assume his rule, each as a Goddess in her own right. And the word of Hecate shall spread to all corners, and she shall be feared and loved and worshiped."
She finished her grand prophesy by farting. Fortunately the sound of running water covered it up, and she left her adoring audience engulfed in her putrescent cloud while she went to re-apply her face-paint.
All the girls bought it. And why wouldn't they? Julia thought bitterly to herself, It's exactly what they want to hear. To be fair, Caesar's end in all likelihood was coming, she hadn't pulled that completely out of her ass. It was well known among the priestesses that he had a terminal brain tumor that was only getting worse. Perhaps if he didn't disdain modern medicine so much he'd have a good chance to survive it, but as it was now it would take a miracle for him to make it even five years. The violence between the NCR and his Legion was escalating, too, and although Hecate didn't have as many informants in California or Nevada as she did in Arizona all evidence pointed to a brutal defeat for the Legion in Las Vegas. It didn't really take a psychic to see that Caesar's time was running out. All the Daughters of Hecate had to do was watch and wait.
The rest of Julia's day went as expected. She sat in on Jill's debriefing, sipping moonshine and smoking bufo in a dark corner as Jill recounted the last meeting of the Bull Pen. The Legion was marching on the Hoover Dam in what was sure to be the first of many major military operations in a war the NCR didn't seem to be aware it was engaged in, yet. According to Jill, the Bull Pen was terribly excited about attacking the Dam, terribly excited about Graham leading the assault, and terribly excited about not having to participate. Having once personally witnessed an assault on the Dam, Julia thought their enthusiasm was unwarranted, as any military force occupying Hoover would have to be completely incompetent to lose it.
After Jill's debriefing Julia helped set up that evening's Temperance event, which was bingo, an anti-fashion show, and a tutorial on disabling and disassembling land mines. Julia mostly set up streamers and balloons, and drank and messed with younger Daughters. For the anti-fashion show she dressed in nothing but turquoise stones, hundreds threaded together into a dress and gloves, and MC'd with a Harpy named Sunflower. Everyone drank to excess but unlike the night before Julia didn't need any help climbing to the top of the goddess's ziggurat. She made her own way up, and even managed to get through the door. When she awoke the next morning, still hungover, she accessed Hecate's personal terminal. Using the hotkeys Yvana taught her, she copied the list of former Twisted Hairs, then edited it. She added every single woman she'd grown up with, then replaced the old list like Yvana taught her.