A/N: If only I could, I'd make a deal with god, I'd get him to swap our places, be running up that road, be running up that hill, be running up that building!
Kioko: RHEA!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME!!! PLEASE STOP SINGING!!!
Rhea: ;.;
XP
When blood runs gold and false gods dieShe'll rise through fire with an angel's cry
The sky shall turn a perpetual black
Seeking her pray, there's fire in her track
Her iron snake will sing to the dead
Her anger and wrath will end their breath
Beware the Empress seeks blood tonight
Forfeit their lives to her, a battle's in sight
When she embraces her blades shall run red
Her serpent's wrath stops all that is said
Undying, undefeated, all battles she's won
Keep your eyes upon her else you'll be undone
Her world is filled with shame and disgrace
She came to ours to show us her face
And when she whispers the world will see
All flaws of a future that's not meant to be
A stone, three swords and black skin of coal
Two rings of one and a god's own soul
An innocent sin meets a silent song
Her enemy was there all along
The same song was being repeated so many times it was becoming almost as annoying as the sound of the hanging lantern tapping on the prison bars as the ship swayed. Yes, it was a song, and the girl, woman, whatever, that was singing it had a nice, clear singing voice. The tune of it sort of reminded me of a song by Within Temptation called Ice Queen, a part of it anyway. I'd stopped bothering to feign sleep a while ago, and was simply sitting up against the wall in the shadows as this woman sang on, and on, and on. She wanted me to memorize the song and sing it with her, I knew it, and I hated her for it.
I was so not becoming a member of a cult that supposedly 'worshiped' me like their god, and neither was anyone else.
Few were still alive from that ship. The prince, Orzan, Aizira, Alzik, Keilic, Farah, Kassima, and a few others were still alive. But Bano…poor Bano, they had taken him and turned him into meat which they cooked for some sick soup.
And Aggle was going to kill them for that.
A dark smile crossed my face as I imagined unleashing my demons upon the lot of them. Saw them cower before Aggle's fury, and Monigan's truly horrific level of blood-lust. She was the sort of person that would watch Saw and Saw 2, and then complain about how much better it would be if they did this that and the other, all suggestions, of which, made the listener run to the bathroom so they could display their lunch for all to see.
And then there were others, there was Taskol, the fiery eastern dragon-like creature whose face was a mask upon its head, the Sisters whose lust for blood was vampiric, Kagero, Gorra, Wemlast, Kukarkin, even the Dahaka! There would be a bloodbath, and I was going to enjoy it.
"I like that smile." Said a deep, familiar voice that wiped it right off my face as I turned to glare hatefully at the Shahdee wannabe. She was smirking at me knowingly, as if she could tell full well I was just picturing horrific scenes of blood and gore. "But your bloodlust would be better spent directed upon our enemies." She said, and I snorted. She grinned, "Yes, your enemies too, now. And the moment you decide to accept your roll as our Sister, you will have a very high ranking, even above me. So don't complain."
"And you're happy about that?" I asked, almost incredulously, "Isn't this your ship?"
She laughed, "I am not the highest ranking Sister upon this ship. I am 3rd Magistrate Tsugara, the 1st Magistrate, Yuhalbis, will be your superior. As well, of course, as the Prophet Joklym." She explained.
"Oh? And what happens if I simply refuse to become your 'Sister'?" I asked coolly.
"Then you will rot away in this cell." She answered simply. "And don't think you can try pretending to serve the Empress so you can escape. Our Prophet is the real thing, and he will see your disloyalty the moment he sets eyes on you."
"I imagine that's not all he'll see…" I muttered under my breath.
"Something you want to share?" Asked Tsugara sweetly, though I knew she'd only heard me mumble threateningly to myself.
"Oh nothing." I answered, just as sweetly, giving her an icy smile and imagining her as a pin cushion for all manner of sharp and pointy objects.
"Oh well, you will reveal your secrets to your new family eventually." She told me.
"You sound so confident." I sneered.
"We have much to offer." She said airily, as though this were something I should know already, "And the more you learn of our Empress the more you will come to understand our ways, and you will seek her for yourself. Many just like you have been converted. I, too, was converted. I was very rebellious, and very stubborn, but I realized that, in the end, the Empress is all that truly matters. One day she will come to us and she will lead us to glory! The unfaithful will be dealt with, and the unbelievers will know that we were right all along!" She declared with a burning fire in her eyes that made my stomach turn.
"So, do you know what this Empress is like?" I asked her, "Where she comes from, what her name is, what sort of person she is?"
"The Empress's name is unknown to all but a privileged few." She hissed, her eyes flashing with the insult, but she cooled herself down, regaining herself in light of my ignorance, "And where she comes from? She comes from another world, as you should know by now from the hymn." She told me. "She is a warrior, Sister, a fierce woman with the strength of ten men! With skin black as coal, hair and eyes of gold! And the Gold Crest upon her back! She commands the power of an iron serpent whose teeth can make ribbons out of men, and her voice is like the crashing of waves against stone, like the ringing of a huge bell and the song of a siren! She is the Empress of Time, and so Time she commands! Do you not yet see, Sister? The Empress will lead you on the path to glory and honor! You could become great in her view! And it is her view alone which matters most!"
"I both admire and pity such blind devotion." I said darkly, wanting more than ever to simply disappear and pretend that this zealot, whose entire life revolved around me, did not even exist. Yes, even though I hated her and wanted her dead, I couldn't help but pity her. "But," I went on, "Once you meet this Empress of yours, what do you think would happen if she is not at all what you pictured? What if her eyes are not at all what you imagined? If you do end up meeting your Empress, do you really, honestly believe that she's going to be pleased with you for you're views of her as being some goddess of battle? Do you really think she will thank you for all the innocent lives that you've spilled in your supposed 'quest for glory'!? What happens if your Empress turns out to wrathful because of your blatant disregard for the value of human life!?" I demanded, standing up angrily and glaring at her through the bars.
Her face was contorted with rage, and she had a dagger in her hand, which she looked like she was about to send through my skull. But the girl who had been singing put a hand on her arm to stop her, and shook her head, "'We must be patient and forgive the ignorant their blasphemy'." She said, sounding as though she were quoting some scripture.
If I was honest with myself, I was really, seriously, beginning to regret my rash acceptance of this Empress of Time deal. The thought of them having scriptures about this sickened me all the more. I felt nauseated, and I had to sit back down in the shadows.
"Don't, you, dare, say, such, things, ever, again!" Tsugara spat out jerkily. She looked like she wanted to kill me so much, but the girl wouldn't let her.
"I'll say them as much as I want, Sister. Your Empress is going to be a f(beep)ing disappointment for you, you mark my words. It always happens when cults turn a mortal into a god." I said.
"SHE IS A GOD!!!" Tsugara roared, "YOU, YOU BLASPHEMOUS LITTLE—YOU SACRILEGIOUS—YOU FILTHY HERETIC!!!"
"How can I be a heretic if I didn't even believe in your religion in the first place?" I asked calmly.
"LET ME IN, LET ME IN THERE I'LL KILL HER!!!" She roared, attempting to struggle free of the girl's restraint in order to get through the door.
I stood up and pushed out my blades, ready to cut her down and make a break for it the moment that door opened.
Unfortunately the cell door didn't open, but the door that lead into my own individual cell did, and a voice thundered, "Tsugara what are you doing!? I could hear you from the guard's quarters!"
"Lord Yuhalbis! This woman has defiled the name of our Empress! Let me cut her down for the insult she has spoken!" She cried.
"'Be patient and forgive the ignorant their blasphemy'." Yuhalbis recited in a very resigned voice. His clothing was that of a Crowmaster, except rather than his face being covered by those bandages, he had a hood and mouth cover, like what I wore when I went to get Farah, and the kanji for Destruction was on his chest rather than back, where a tattered cloak hung down. He didn't have the floating skirt thing, but his outfit was tattered, either through tradition or through battle, it was hard to tell. Perhaps through both. "Really, Tsugara, if you can't control your temper I'm afraid I can't let you do this anymore. Reluctant converts are ignorant and will refuse at first, but allowing your rage to control your tongue will do nothing but drive them further away."
"That's funny, and here I was thinking that the whole attacking their ship, killing their friends, and taking away their children was what drove them away! But I must have been mistaken! Silly me to have thought of something so ridiculous!" I said in a very sweet voice, giving a very false giggle and smiling daggers at Yuhalbis, who turned to me with a very patient look in his eyes.
"Your friends are unharmed, they've Proven themselves well enough in battle, and the child is being cared for as well. If you want to see her, we can bring her to you, but only for a short visit. Not now, however. She is being initiated properly, the way we initiate our own children. You will thank us for it later, and consider it an honor." He told me.
"In-initiated?" I swallowed, feeling the blood drain from my face as my hands gripped the bars so tightly my knuckles were white, "YOU F(BEEP)ING B(BEEP)!!! IF YOU HURT HER—"
"Pain is only temporary." He cut in firmly.
"Pain is eternal!" I snapped, flaring up at once. What the hell did he know about pain!? "Some wounds never heal, the inflicted simply learn to ignore them. Pain is a thief of youth! It turns children into adults far before their time and robs them of that ignorant bliss they might once have grown up with! Scars of the mind will never disappear! I guess I can see why you're all raving lunatics now! YOU KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OF HER!!! SHE'S SUFFERED ENOUGH FOR ONE LIFETIME YOU B(BEEP)S!!!" I roared.
"Yes, I've seen the scars for myself." Yuhalbis said in a grave voice as he came to stand in front of me. "You are not her true mother, however, that much I can tell."
"I might as well be!!!" I snarled.
"Yes, you saved her. But once you've seen that the Empress is the only one who can truly save her, you'll realize she is the only goddess worthy of your blades." He said.
"Oh, so you believe that the Empress has come to create paradise or something!?" I demanded, and when I said this something flashed in Yuhalbis's eyes, but I didn't care, "YOU IDIOTS!!! How can you have such blind devotion for the image of an Empress that tells you to kill other people!?" I shrieked, "Have you become so blind that you don't even care about a child's cries!? That you don't care about the people you kill!? About those people you don't!? What about the families of the ones you have killed!? What if a widow got sold into slavery because her husband left her his debts, having died at your hands!? What if it were her children!? But you don't care do you!? You have a rock-solid excuse for your bloodlust!!! 'Oh, the Empress made me do it, I can kill all I want to because she says to! Oh, yeah, I like killing a lot, but it's only because the Empress says I should'!!!" I screamed, pulling on my hair. There were tears in my eyes now, I could hear Kassima's cries in my mind, see her being held down by a number of constraints while a woman used needles to tattoo the mirrored destruction character onto her right forehead.
"You see!?" Exclaimed Tsugara, "She speaks nothing but blasphemy!!! Let me kill her now!!!" She cried, her dagger waving in the air, and I rounded on her.
"Go ahead and try it b(beep)! Go ahead! Give it your best shot!!!" I exclaimed, standing there with my hands spread out, giving her an open target.
The next thing I knew there was a dagger in my chest, and Yuhalbis had let out a roar of rage, which died away as I took the dagger's hilt and pulled it out of my chest. All three inches of it covered in my own blood, the same blood which was rising to my mouth. I just stared at it for a minute, and in that moment something happened which I wasn't expecting. The red on the blade paled into yellow, and became a shimmering gold gossamer substance, which dripped to the floor, and down my chest, as the wound oozed out the same golden blood. A wound that soon closed, healed, but the blood was still there, and I was just as shocked by its appearance as the others were.
"Golden…blood…" Tsugara breathed, "The hymn! The hymn!" She cried, "We must sacrifice her! Sacrifice her to the Empress and the Empress will show herself!!!"
"You, fool." I hissed, making the dagger disappear into the Manor. "You don't get it, do you?" I snarled, and by then I'd had more than enough. With one hard kick, the door flew open, and I unleashed the daggertail upon Tsugara, throwing her into the opposite wall with the force of the slash.
The girl that sang the hymn to me then began to scream, "The Iron Snake! The Iron Snake!!!" And she ran past the stupefied Yuhalbis out into the rest of the ship, screaming it over and over again.
"You…are the Empress!?" Yuhalbis gasped, falling to his knees, his hood falling back to revealed a face of shock, realization, and horror.
"I am the Empress of Time, but I am far from being your Empress!!!" I snarled at them both, "You see this?" I asked, indicating the eye-shaped mark on my chest, "This is the symbol of the Order of the All-Seeing Eye, and this!" I snarled, turning around, and pointing to the middle symbol on my back, "Is your little Crest. But you only got one part of it, I'm afraid. You know what it means? It means 'Destruction', how fitting for you! But you seemed to have glossed over the other two!" I pointed to the upper one, "Creation." I said, "Then Destruction, then Harmony." I indicated, and then I turned around, "The Order of the All-Seeing Eye were bad enough with Mychala as prophetess! But you? You're entire religion is screwed up!!! You don't deserve to see your Empress! You don't deserve to see me!!! You deserve to rot in hell!!!" I screamed, shaking my daggertail at the two of them.
"N-no! I, I won't believe it! You're not our Empress!!!" Tsugara cried, and she too fell to her knees.
"You're right, I'm not your Empress, I am the Empress of the Order of the All-Seeing Eye! At least they had an excuse for being so messed up! They had Mychala to deal with, dishing out an image of me as some goddess of wrath and battle!!! I'm not a god, and I didn't tell anyone to 'follow' me! I told them to seek their own freedom, I told them not to devote themselves blindly to me without reason, to continue their practices as long as it didn't harm or hinder another human being! But you!? You're entire religion is about harming other people!!! I am ashamed, ashamed that I have to be associated with you! You nauseate me! You make me sorry I ever came to this world! You make me sorry I decided to become the Empress of Time!!!" I roared, Tsugara struggling over to Yuhalbis, as if he would be able to protect her.
"NO!!!" She cried, falling to my feet, "NO!!! Empress please!!! Forgive us! Forgive us all!!! We were only following what the Prophets told us to be your will!!!" She cried.
"I told you!!!" I yelled, "The supposed 'Empress of Time' that you know is not real!!! She never existed!!! I am the 'Empress of Time'!!! I am not a god! I was born a human, I was born from another world, yes, that much is true! And here you are, my iron snake! And I have another form than this one! Black skin and gold markings with the freaky voice! But I'm not a god!!! And I'm certainly not your god!"
"The false god dies…" Whispered Yuhalbis, "'When blood runs gold and false gods die'…" He repeated, "You are the Empress!" He cried in despair. "You are our Empress!!!"
"I'd sooner mate with a barn animal than claim to be your Empress!" I snarled, putting my boot on his chest and kicking him back so that he landed hard upon the ground, where I pinned him with my boot. "Now this is what you're going to do for me, you're going to release my friends, you're going to give me back my daughter, and you're going to get us to Egypt as fast as you possibly can, and if I do decide to kill you all, which I really, really want to do right now, then I'll make sure it's swift and painless. And trust me, this time, I won't hold back. You'll see some things that'll make you wish you were never even born." I told him.
"Empress please! I beg of you!" Cried a new voice, and my head shot up to see as an elderly man with rich robes like Mychala's stumbled in through a door, the other side of which a large number of terrified cultists had congregated, likely all of them hearing either all of my speech, or having had the information passed on to them by those in front. This man fell down to his knees beside Tsugara, "I know why you are angry! But it's not what you think! It's not our fault! Please believe me!" He gasped out.
"Oh it isn't, is it!? Do you even know what I'm accusing you of!? Do you even understand what it is that I'm so furious about!? You don't, do you!? You don't understand why I'm angry, because you don't know me! You know someone else!!! Do you even know my name!? Do you!?" I cried.
"Yes!" Gasped Yuhalbis in desperation, "Yes, Empress, I know your name!"
"Yuhalbis wait!" The prophet exclaimed.
"Then what is it!? What is my name!?" I demanded.
"You're name is—"
"Yuhalbis don't!!!"
"Is Sacrosanct."
XP
Kaida: OoO…
Kage: Wow, I did NOT see that coming.
Kioko: I can honestly say that I didn't either.
Kage: Can't we just kill them all and take the ship for ourselves?
Kaida: Um, yeah, right, even if we could pilot that thing with so few of us, how do you think the Egyptians would react to it? Still, I WANT TO SLAUGHTER THEM ALL!!! LET ME AT THEM!!!
Rhea: Um, I have something a bit different planned and, you're sort of going to need them in the future, so if you really want to kill them, go to the Drabbles page.
Kaida: I WILL!!! AND YOU'D BETTER WRITE IT SOON OR ELSE!!!
Rhea: Yes ma'am!
Kage: Can I do the FAQ now?
Kioko: Go for it.
Q: What's with the song thing?
A: I don't know and I don't care. It probably has nothing to do with anything whatsoever. The authoress just likes writing poetry about nothing.
Rhea: Hey…just because you can't understand it doesn't mean…
Kioko: Forget it Rhea. He doesn't even like poetry.
A: Not really, no.
Q: Is Aggle going to avenge Bano's death?
A: That would be funny, wouldn't it? But I'm not sure, maybe, maybe not.
Q: Is that mark going to stay on Kassima?
Kaida: Not if I can help it!
A: Heheheh, what she said.
Q: Okay, why is the name of the Empress of Time Sacrosanct in this religion!?
A: No idea, I think we'll have to wait for the next chapter for that one. Which, if you people don't start reviewing some more, may not be for a while.
Rhea: Where are all my reviewers!? So far only General Tommy and DarkxPrince have been faithfully reviewing every chapter! And last chapter they were it! I know there's more of you, where is you!? PoP Isn't popular enough a game that many people read the fanfics, nor do they review, so what few reviews I can get, I'd really like! Sniff.
Kioko: Rhea's working really hard on this story after all. A little recognition would be nice, especially since it'd keep her from crying! Ugh…
Kage: So you just want them to review so she'll stop crying?
Kioko: Yes!
Kage: Now that's what I call ulterior motives!
Kioko: Shut up.