The Seed – Part 5
by KM Scott

To BC – Happy Birthday and many more!

"Can you ever forget our times together?"

The voice was both a melodious hum and alien rasp. Gerald wasn't certain how the entity had gotten so close as to whisper those words in his ear. His most basic training would have had her at his sword point in an instant, yet here she was, a breath's distance from his very face, no space for sunlight between their bodies. Close enough to dance.

The apparition that stood – hovered – before him was unlike any human being he'd seen before. Had it not spoken to him, he may have thought it a sculpture. It's – her – face was unblemished, flawless, an almost silvery-gray shell. Two pools of infinite black space, topped by sculptured eyebrows, stared into his soul.

Her blood-red gown clung to every curve.

"Rhonda?" he asked again.

The corners of her mouth curled up into a smile familiar and disturbing.

"My sweet, brave Gerald. It's been too long," she cooed, the sound of wind blowing through silk. Her hand moved, and he was shocked to feel the softness of human flesh caress his cheek. "Why did we put such a gulf of time between us?"

His axe dropped to the ground, forgotten as he grasped her hand with his own.

"Rhonda …." He struggled for words. "Rhonda …. you've … gods, girl, what happened to you? What I'd heard was …"

What he'd heard was too horrid to mention, even then. A host of irg-wraiths had descended on her ancestral mansion home on Wellington Island. Of the few who survived, a lone servant related in horror what became of the Lloyd clan's youngest daughter. The body was never recovered.

Her infuriatingly pleasant smile remained as she slowly twirled in front of him, as if showing off a new dress. "You know me, Gerald. I float on the fickle winds of fashion. I was in bad need of a change …" Somehow, with a feckless subtlety that she'd mastered before hitting her twenties, she finished her twirl wrapped securely in his arms before he'd realized it, her hands clasping his around her waist. "… and I got my wish."

With every word, she proved herself to truly be the Rhonda Gerald remembered. But this could not be her. He refused to believe it. This was not the spoiled noble he'd grown up with.

"I heard you'd been killed …" he whispered.

"Do I feel dead to you?" she chuckled.

Gerald spun her around and took her shoulders. "Your family is gone. You're entire village was slaughtered! How can you be here?"

She took his arm. "I was made anew, Gerald," she intoned. "It sometimes puzzles even me, when I think about it. Which I don't, not often."

The quiet voice inside him that had warned earlier about the increasing distance he'd been putting between himself and the house noted loudly that he was again being moved away from the sanctuary. He anchored his heels.

"I was … set aside, as it were," Rhonda continued, "one of the chosen few who would oversee the work that must be done here."

At Gerald's puzzled look, Rhonda warmly grinned and waved her hand in the direction of the creatures around them.

"They are beautiful and effective at what they do – but they lack reason. They are but dumb animals in service to a cause far higher than they could comprehend."

She suddenly stopped and made a funny face. Movement on the edge of Gerald's vision caused him to spin and look. A cluster of the irg-wraiths had gathered a short distance away from him.

They were not attacking, though. They jumped up and down, danced little jigs. Here some were balancing on each other's shoulders, putting on a bizarre tumbling performance, over there was a gaggle standing at attention, warbling a familiar tune in their gargling, bestial voices.

It was absurd. They were putting on a show.

He shot a confounded glance at Rhonda, who was subtly directing the display with her fingers.

She was putting on the show.

"Rhonda. Stop this," he directed, his voice hard. His demand seemed to cut her somehow, a hurt expression coming across her face. Her hands dropped to her sides, and the wraiths suddenly ceased their gyrations and caterwauling. Gerald made no small show of walking over and picking up his dropped weapon as he trained his gaze at her eyes.

"I thought you'd like it …" she mewed.

"I'm not in the mood for theater," he said. "You said you were chosen. By who? What do you mean?"

She gave a flip of her hair, which sailed slowly behind her, violating the laws of physics seemingly out of spite. "I have been remade in the image of The Core," she began. "He had seen in me something that no one else had, nurtured it, made it thrive. I was given command over the Hive, and here we are now. Simple enough, really."

"Re-made …" he had softened his tone at hearing the hurt in her voice, against his better judgment. "That would explain your … new look. What is The Core?"

She began to approach him again. "The master of The Seed. The reason behind all of this. Do you really think you need that?"

He blinked in confusion. She was indicating the axe, which, he realized, he had subconsciously pointed at her. "You would use it on me?" she asked.

His fingers flexed on the handle. The question genuinely caught him by surprise. Could he actually hurt her, even now? Rhonda's reported death had ripped out a part of his heart. She had been an unlikely friend of his for years before their … youthful indiscretions. What they had done may have been wrong, but hadn't felt that way at the time, or even in retrospect. Yes, someone was hurt, but the circumstances had been complicated, and the result was -

His reverie ceased when Rhonda stopped in her stride and held out her hands in a motion of surrender.

"Do you think I could be made to hurt you?"

He could still make out the imploring look in her inhuman eyes. He forced it aside.

"Rhonda, you came all the way out here. You've brought an army of these demons with you. You didn't come for me." He narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?"

She sighed and gave her shoulders a little shrug. "The blacksmith's son, Gerald. We want Arnold."

She was just on the edge of dozing when he burst into her room. Helga snapped awake, instantly alert as Arnold grabbed her shoulders. Instinct overtook affection and she clutched his shirt collar as he hunched over her.

"Arnold!" Helga hissed.

Arnold frantically pointed out the bedroom door. "Helga, outside!" he choked, "The Seed! They're outside!"

She released him and bolted out of bed. Running into the front room, she peered out the window. Her jaw dropped.

"What in hell is he doing?" she barked.

"What? Who?"

"Gerald!" she pointed. "Can't you see?"

She pointed, but Arnold couldn't see anything for the wall of monsters that surrounded the house, glaring at them through the windows. "Gerald's out there? Where? I can't see him!"

Helga was no longer next to him. She had scurried to the back of the room, quickly opening up a small recess in the wall. It'd been hidden from view. "He's talking to someone. He's about to get himself torn apart. What's wrong with him?"

Arnold turned to ask again where she saw Gerald, but his words left him as he saw what Helga hefted out of the hiding space. It was a double-edged blade, simple in design except for the guard, which was heavily engraved with arcane symbols and text. Though it appeared heavy, Helga rolled and swiveled it about as if it had been a natural-born part of her body. She finished with a flourish, her angry glare as sharp as the tip of the weapon. Barely perceptive but clearly there, a tone seemed to ring out from the sword, as if it were singing.

"What is that?" Arnold stammered, his voice a mixture of shock and admiration.

"Elspeth the Avenger," Helga evenly replied.

Gerald's chuckle was both forced and genuine.

"You're serious. I don't believe -" he gesticulated his point, waving his arms in a wobbly, oval shape. "Have you seen this thing? It's laughable, Ronda. It doesn't even begin to resemble anything remotely like a sword. It looks like some sickly flat fish!"

The silvery woman narrowed her eyes, her face betraying no humor. Were she a fleshly human, Gerald would have taken her reaction as confusion. "We want him, Gerald. He must come with us."

He waggled a mirthful finger at her. "There is a reason why you called him 'the blacksmith's son'. You don't call me the priest's son, do you? No. Because I am a knight. I trained, I was a squire, I was knighted. I earned it. But Arnold is truly the blacksmith's son. Not a blacksmith. And that … joke of a thing he's working on is not worth" he gestured toward the throng of monsters "all this, I guarantee you that."

But Rhonda was not looking at him. She looked past him, at the cottage behind him. He quickly stepped into her field of vision. She averted her gaze again, but this time, she stared down at the grass.

The beasts around them were quiet. Gerald could hear the wind.

"It tears at me," she said, "to have to confront you like this. You don't know what you mean to me."

He grasped her hand. "Rhonda … if I mean something to you - if I mean that much …"

He held his arms out to his sides. "Then take me. I'm here. You can have me."

She gazed up at him. "But?"

"But you have to promise to leave them alone. I'll give myself to you. I'll leave with you right now. Just leave Arnold and Helga in peace. That's all I ask."

She took his face in her hands. "Do you have any idea what would become of you?"

He caressed her face as well. "If you're there with me, what's it matter?"

Then she moved forward, and was at his mouth. He tried to match her passion, but found himself outpaced. Her lips and tongue were desperate, drinking him. When they separated, he was gasping.

She slowly studied his face with the palm of her hand, and then withdrew it.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You don't know the world I've been shown. We're here for the boy. We will return with him."

Gerald started at her. "Rhonda…"

She turned her back to him and glided over to the divan. "You have five minutes. You may stay in the house, or go. I'd advise the latter. If you leave, no harm will come to you."

Then she was in the carriage, the door shut.

Gerald called her name again, but it was lost in the wash of irg-wraiths surrounding the divan. He gazed after her longingly, though he could no longer see even the divan as the monsters separated, leaving him a clear path to the cottage.

It gave him no sense of relief. Due to her twisted sense of mercy, in five minutes, they would swarm again.