Heretics
Julia laid in bed, intermittently dozing off, until around noon when she rolled off her comforter, slathered a thick layer of paint on her face and tossed on an old yucca-fiber dress that had once belonged to Dark Mother. She slipped out of her room at the top of the temple and made her way out into Ouroboros' courtyard, the stones of which were patterned in the shape of the compound's namesake. No one gave her a second glance. For the past year she'd been so visible that when she stripped off all her bangles and silks she was unrecognizable. She savored the anonymity.
Ouroboros was busy around noon. Sibyls all took their lunch breaks, Harpies shuddered awake to walk off their hangovers, and Hecate's Golden Children were given an hour of unscheduled time to relax. In the gardens ancient Mr. Handys thrummed and buzzed as they went about their work tending the plants. The Hounds who worked the afternoon shift rotated in and the Hounds who worked the morning shift rotated out, and with the Goddess's "blessing" couples would pair up and make their way to the breeding halls of the temple. Some of the older Golden Children had petitioned for permission to participate in the mating rituals, and while Hecate had tactfully declined to make a pronouncement either way, once she was gone Julia lifted the de-facto ban and allowed the kids to fuck each other. Within a year they were already well on their way to producing the next generation of Golden Children.
Julia couldn't have children. That hadn't always been the case. When she was a teenager she'd gotten pregnant a few times. She never gave birth, mostly on purpose, occasionally on accident. As the older women of the Twisted Hairs liked to tell her, her hips were awfully narrow for bearing children. It became a moot point, though, after her elective surgery to become a Maenad, during which she also elected to have a hysterectomy. When she found out Hecate was furious, angrier at Julia than she'd ever been in their entire relationship. As angry as she'd ever be until their final fight.
Although Julia figured she'd be upset, she was still surprised at just how upset she was. Julia was heir to the Twisted Hairs, to the Twisted Hair's most powerful family, the granddaughter of a man that Hecate loved so blindly she'd named an entire order of her church's hierarchy after him. On top of that, the goddess had personally complimented Julia on her genes, claiming they were "above and beyond" the average tribal, or even the average pre-war American (as determined by Diana's spotty records). Julia knew all this, yet the goddess's wrath still caught her off guard. It even seemed to catch Hecate off guard, too. After Julia returned from her first Maenad mission, the goddess sheepishly apologized, although she made it clear she was still greatly disappointed in her.
In the decade and change since, Julia often regretted her choice. Birthing children was one of if not the central tenant of Hecate's religion, which was simultaneously why Julia decided against ever doing it and why it was so hard to have complete confidence in her decision more than a decade later. Giving birth in Ouroboros was something Daughters took a lot of pride in. If a Daughter hadn't contributed to Hecate's child army by the time they were 35 (like Athena), they were looked down upon, unofficially a second class citizen. Officially, the Daughters only had three castes, the Maenads, the Sibyls, and the Harpies, but there was a secret fourth caste, the Women Who Hadn't Given Birth. It was worst among the Harpies, who might be outright shunned and treated like garbage; Maenads had it best, their transgression politely forgotten in public (but still gossiped about in private); and either-or for Sibyls, depending on their importance in the temple's administration. Thankfully, for the High Priestess of Hecate, either the faithful had no idea she hadn't and wouldn't ever contribute a Golden Child of her own, or it was a moot point, since as Hecate's second in command all Golden Children were her children.
Still, it is difficult to contravene one's culture and feel unselfconscious about it, especially when one is supposedly that culture's greatest champion, regardless of personal or moral objections. And Julia's decision had been made mostly for moral reasons. Contrary to doctrine, children weren't sacred and revered in Hecate's church. In actual practice, they were tools. A resource and nothing more. Hecate made children into weapons, she exploited and used them. Julia was too soft-hearted to bring a life into existence so that it could be twisted into a pawn in Hecate's game. If other women were willing to let their children be soldiers, then so be it. The hypocrisy of letting others do what she could not was leavened by the knowledge that it was their choice, a choice all the Daughters seemed unpleasantly comfortable with, even though she knew their complacency was a result of conditioning. As for the genetic specimens that had been snatched in their swaddling clothes from mothers across the four corners, well, Julia simply didn't think about that. It was easy when they were young, and any war they were to fight in was more than ten years away.
But Hecate's war against the Legion was approaching. The day when Ouroboros's children would march out into the badlands to kill and be killed got closer and closer. Caesar's health declined more every day, and Hecate's official plan was to strike the very hour he finally succumbed to his brain tumor. Incredibly, even that wasn't soon enough for some of her Daughters.
Julia knew about Butterfly's mutiny before anyone else in Ouroboros. Marceline had served as her second in command before Hecate named her High Priestess, and in deference to their personal and professional relationship Marceline had reported the sacking of Lake Powell to Julia first. In point of fact, Marceline had no idea what was happening, and for a long time in times of crisis had come to rely on Julia for guidance and answers. When Julia got the word that the Legion forces at Lake Powell had been overwhelmed and defeated by eleven Daughters claiming holy war, Julia defaulted to her patented strategy when things were out of control; pretend everything was alright and get more information. It was a plan that satisfied Marceline.
Step one was investigating the armory, which was unsurprisingly informative. Butterfly's little gang had stolen everything they could carry, which meant they weren't carrying anything more than guns. That was her second mistake. Her first was assuming she had enough leverage over Ouroboros's command to create a panic. That there was a Goddess who would pay her ransom and submit to her will.
Julia got the names and ranks of every one of Butterfly's terrorists from Marceline. She looked up their information in Ouroboros' computer. It was easy to determine that aside from Butterfly they weren't soldiers, that they didn't have discipline and they were ill-suited to fight an actual war. Finally feeling informed enough she developed a plan. Then, finally, she told the Council of Priestesses what was happening.
"In defiance of the will of the Goddess Hecate, a small but well-armed troupe of Harpies led by a single Maenad have declared war against Caesar's Legion," she explained to the assembled Priestesses. "They claim they do so in Hecate's name, yet failed to acquire permission from the Goddess and are therefore traitors to the Daughters of Hecate, Ouroboros, and the Goddess Herself."
"Oh, fuck," Olaya was the first to speak. Every Priestess's mouth was agape. Never before had a Daughter acted against the temple. Treason was unthinkable. Not when every Daughter knew well the horrors visited upon tribes that had rejected Hecate and her message. The name Let-It-Bleed flitted through every mind in the control room.
"Fortunately, our benevolent and wise Goddess has decided what we are to do about these heretics," Julia couldn't help but smirk a little, "Nothing."
The Priestesses gasped.
"Maenad faithful to Hecate have already infiltrated the heretics, and on Her order they will be dispatched promptly," Julia said, "No further action is necessary."
The Priestesses had questions of course. Most pressing was what chance was there that The Daughters of Hecate could be exposed to the Legion. If these women were captured would they confess that there was a secret organization working to undermine Caesar's authority? Would their excursion into Legion territory warn Caesar against their future plans to strike? To those questions, Julia didn't have a definitive answer. There was no way to tell if these defectors hadn't just cost the Daughters their war. That was their one bit of leverage. Thanks to their betrayal, it might be now or never for the Daughters. Even if they weren't willing to give up information to the Legion, there was no guarantee that some clever Centurion wouldn't piece together enough data from their actions and apparel. After all, Scipio Venator had much less evidence when he'd figured out enough to mount his attack. Most of the knowledge he'd put together about a secret nation of women had been speculative. Now a small contingent of that nation had marched straight up to the Legion's door and knocked.
After having weighed the options, though, Julia hadn't found a better course of action, and when she presented them with all the facts, neither could the other Priestesses. If they dealt with the problem too lightly, the rogue Daughters might be captured and interrogated, or, worst of all, they might make a formal declaration of war against the Legion, explicitly introducing Caesar to his unseen foe in the misguided belief that Ouroboros was already marching to their aid. If the council's response was too heavy-handed against the heretics, if they publicly and openly concluded their heresy, it would almost certainly expose the church and risk not just the war but everything and everyone they'd kept secret from the Legion.
"These fucking idiots have, in one single stroke, destroyed years of delicate planning and ruined the Goddess's vision!" Priestess Theresa was an older woman with elaborate facial tattoos not unlike a Maori. She was the oldest Sibyl among Hecate's council and was quick to anger.
"Hecate's vision has been refined and developed over the past eighteen years, largely by the women sitting in this very room. If it's so fragile it can be undone by eleven idiots and forty-two guns, then it was never a good plan to begin with," Sibyl Gita was more level-headed, if not any less mean.
"We need to maintain perspective on this. What is really at stake if the Legion realizes we're a threat because of these fuckwits? We go to war, just earlier than we planned. It's not as though we're completely fucked here. Just because this isn't the ideal time doesn't mean we can't mount an offensive. We'll go to war, like they want, and they'll die, like we want. Everyone gets what they want," Olaya said bleakly.
"... Just not the way they want it," Yvana finished.
In the end all of their handwringing was completely unnecessary, naturally. The threat they posed to Caesar's Legion would never be taken seriously. In the months before Butterfly finally killed herself, all the intel they gathered from the Legion proved it, time and time again. Almost every Centurion either completely ignored the occupation of Fort Veritas, or they considered it an amusing diversion. They only ever remarked on Shonto in an offhand way during their preparations to march on the Dam. The single dissenting opinion, the sole Centurion who actually considered the women a possible threat, was coincidentally killed in a random attack on his Centuria by a group of super mutants. In fact, just before he died, Centurion Barbatos was upbraided by the new Legate for not focusing enough on the war plan, for allowing himself to be distracted by the "ridiculous spectacle of the Diamond Woman". Butterfly wasn't a harbinger of a war to come. She was a carnival sideshow.
The priestesses considered the matter solved. Just like Caesar, they considered it an aberration, a brief hiccup in their designs. Butterfly's rebellion was, officially, a minor inconvenience to all parties involved. A week after she killed herself, the only person who still thought about her was Julia. In what was apparently an attempt to compensate for the rest of the world's apathy, Butterfly's effort to jumpstart a war was the only thing Julia thought about. For a month.