The Queen's Procession
Thirteen-hundred winters past, the shores of Altera lay frozen beneath the stagnant sea. In a single moment of brutal trauma, the light of El surrounding the island vanished, snatching the spark of life from its inhabitants and plunging the domain of the nasod into a deathly silence. Days and weeks lingered on, each ending just the same as it began. Scattered helplessly across the plains and mountainside, the lifeless shells of a million nasod lay in restless repose. Drones and workers fell in the midst of their labor, their arms eternally reaching out toward their errant tools. Doctors slumped over alongside their patients, their faces vacant and hollow while their hands lay frozen across the shoulders and faces of the stricken. The great guardians of the outer plains stood as still as they had in life, their steel as good as stone without the light of El. High upon the mountainside and standing watch over the world below, the queen of the nasod rested feebly against the edge of a weathered balcony , her eyes petrified and opened wide as she gazed out across the broken remains of her people. Time, as well as life, had abandoned them all.
Untold months passed the island by and each day witnessed the same silent tableau. As months gathered into years, however, something changed. A small, fragile glimmer of radiant blue fell from the sky and nestled itself in the sandy soil of Altera's shore. With its light beaming out across the withered grass, the fallen El crystal called out to the lifeless isle, beckoning its residents into motion. Creaking, groaning steel clambered from the edges of the El's light as a dozen crippled nasod dragged their shattered souls toward the glowing stone. The years of death and stagnation had whittled their lives down to the frailest of breaths and gradually, most of the struggling nasod gasped and fell to the ground, silent even in the shadow of the El. Eventually, there was only a single, tiny nasod left at the crystal's side, a small maintenance drone with only a single working arm. Though it could scarcely move on its own, it scooped the El stone up and held it close, dragging itself across the ground mere inches at a time. Hours passed and evening fell as the tiny nasod carried on, pulling itself over the plains without pause.
Inches. Hours. By the following morning, the weight of the El and journey of a mile on its bare joints left the frail herald battered and mangled, its eyes flickering dimly in the daylight as it pulled itself toward a pile of torpid bodies. As the El neared, many of the lifeless nasod sparked and hummed, giving up their last living gasp before returning to their endless sleep. Sitting in the shade of a short transmitting tower, an aged, rusted porter hacked and moaned as his bearings began to move. Just a few feet away, he spotted the shimmering El and its tiny herald, whimpering with every agonizing twist of its arm. Still faint and disoriented, the rusted porter hobbled over and peered down at the tiny creature that grasped the El, scooping it up in his trembling hands and holding it close to his face.
A rasping, hoarse chirp issued from the mouth of the small nasod. Reaching out with its weak, ragged hand, it offered up the El to the rusted porter along with a single, unintelligible cry. With its message conveyed, the frail herald collapsed, finally able to commend its weary arms to their rest. Heeding the call of its brethren, the elder nasod clutched the El firmly against its chest and marched on toward the imperial palace. With uneven feet and a faulty knee, the rusted porter shuffled across the wasted plains, through the grey and stolid barrens that were once thriving markets and tranquil parks, over the vacant roads and finally to the great, gaping gates of the nasod's capitol. Though the gates were open wide and the halls inviting, the aged porter found himself defeated by the slightest of foes: A steep granite staircase. Unable to raise his feet high enough to ascend, he wandered throughout the antechamber, his muffled voice reaching out into the silence.
"Milady. Milady. Milady. Milady." He shuffled across the lower halls and throughout the hanging gardens until he finally saw a faint, subtle movement at the edge of the El's light. Approaching steadily, he happened upon a young girl, her arms wrapped tightly around a brightly colored drone. As he drew closer, her eyes flickered and her power core whirled and hummed as it regained its vigor. While she was still dreary-eyed and drowsy, the elderly porter pressed the El crystal into her hands and pleaded with her.
"Milady. Milady. Milady." His voice was strained, wavering as he fought to explain his intentions and dropping as he realized that his broken body could only convey that single, desperate word. Once she had the El in her hands, however, the young nasod felt as though she understood what it was that the old porter wanted to tell her. Nodding softly, she pulled herself to her feet and headed toward the central staircase, leaving the rusted porter to sit and take his final rest beneath shade of a lonely arch.
Racing up the palace stairs, the young girl let out a sharp, painful gasp, wheezing as she forced her feet forward. A violent spasm shot through her body and she flinched, falling against the stair railing and nearly toppling over. Panting heavily and fighting her failing limbs, she dragged herself up to the balcony where the faint glow of the El released the whispering breeze. Scattering a delicate lock of ivory, the captured wind swept across the face of the small, slumbering queen of the nasod. As the El approached, Eve blinked and her consciousness returned to her. In her memory, a moment earlier she had been staring out across the skyline of Altera's war stricken cities. Now, all she saw was a barren land littered with corpses. Only six days after her coronation, Eve's empire had fallen.
"Milady Eve..." A small, fluttering voice called out to the queen. "Milady Eve... take this..." The young girl approached wearily, her eyes flickering and her arms shaking as she offered up the El to Eve. Carefully, Eve reached out and accepted the font of life, holding it with a grave reverence. She took a moment to process the cold, grey landscape below and then reached out to take the young girl's hand.
"Come with me. We must find the Empress." Eve headed back into the palace and the young nasod followed along beside her, panting and coughing as they ascended a flight of stairs. The hallways of the palace were full of guards and aristocrats laying prone across the marble floors, their lives flickering out in the wind as Eve approached with the El. No matter how many bodies she checked, she found no one alive. Soon, even the young nasod at her side was on the verge of collapse.
"Do you need to rest?" Eve stood in place as the young girl lowered herself to the ground.
"No, but... I cannot move my legs anymore... Milady Eve, please go on..."
Eve glared sternly at her. "If you leave the sphere of light from the El, you will die. We will go to the infirmary and fix your legs."
"Don't..." The young girl coughed and a stream of thick, dark fluid spilled from her mouth and burst from her side. "You have to save... everyone... but if I stay in the light, I'll keep breaking-ing-ing."
A moment's glance told Eve that this was true. It was more than age and wear that burdened the young nasod; her entire body was falling apart, and staying in the light of the El only hastened that decay. Eve's eyes trembled and mouth fell open as she backed away, preserving her young companion in the cold, breathless world beyond the light of the El. She turned away quickly and marched on toward the imperial throne where the empress held her court.
Balanced on a smooth steel track, a small dais waited to ferry passengers along the outer edge of the mountain and into the imperial court. Eve approached the control panel and tapped it twice. Silence. She quickly deduced that the electrical lines and generators were too far away for the light of the El to reach them, so she resigned herself to walking along the slender railing all the way up to the top of the mountain. Below her, the plains and cities held the bodies of the nasod race, extinguished in its entirety save for its queen. As Eve rounded the final bend, she saw that the gates of the imperial court lay open. Grasping the El tightly, she rushed inside, past the rows of fallen courtiers and over the bodies of the princesses and nobles as she searched frantically for the one person who could fix even that which was beyond repair. Sprawled out on the ground just behind the throne, Eve found the empress of Altera. As she approached and held out the El, nothing happened.
"Astarte. Astarte!" Eve called out in vain, receiving no response for her effort. Kneeling alongside the empress, she pressed the glowing El against her chest and called out to her again. Silence. Astarte's mane of jet spilled across the pale marble floor, her face smooth and frigid as she lay with her arms scattered at her side and her legs bent out unnaturally. For nearly an hour Eve sat next to the late empress, hoping that she would awaken and wondering what would become of the nasod. She was the queen, but she had only been queen for six days in her mind, even though in reality she had spent several years atop the balcony looking out over Altera. Surely, the empress would be better at this. Surely, there would be princesses and ministers who were still alive and merely sleeping in the absence of El. Surely, she wasn't alone. After gathering her resolve, she rose to her feet and made her rounds about the court, holding the El out toward everyone in the area and finding none still living. Astarte. Princess Ishtar. Tanit. Lilith. The old kings of the imperial senate. The ministers of the court. All lay motionless as their bodies bathed in the light of El, their breath stolen and replaced by a profound stillness. After nearly half a day in the imperial court, Eve accepted her role as the sole surviving member of the nasod race.
Though she had been queen for only six days, she had no trouble deciding on her next course of action. If El energy could sustain her, then perhaps, if she could find a way to transmit that energy to Altera's Core, perhaps she could infuse other nasod with that energy directly instead of by proxy. On the first day, Eve grafted the El into forehead, fusing it to her power supply and allowing her to work more freely. On the second day, she started running power lines to the Core. A quick test confirmed that she could transfer the energy provided by through electrical lines and directly into the Core, allowing it to operate just as if it were in the presence of an El crystal. On the third day, she began the arduous task of twisting, binding, hauling, and laying out power lines from the Core to its control room high on the mountainside.
Scarcely pausing for rest let alone sleep, Eve walked the length of Altera's imperial palace thirteen times over in the space of each day. In every moment, a sharp, stinging pain filled her chest. She told herself that it was not loneliness, because nasod cannot be lonely. It was her duty to restore her people to their former glory. It was necessary to establish a sense of community and solidarity. More than anything, she felt that it was essential to revive the nasod race so that she could be sure that there was at least one intelligent species on the planet. Humans, after all, were highly suspect.
After four days of tireless labor, Eve encountered a problem. The energy of the El could not be transmitted without an intermediary. If she were to separate it from herself, it would never be able to power the Core. As such, she would have to be the power converter for the El so that it might give birth to a new generation of nasod. Her work was far from finished. On the fifth day, she crafted a capsule for herself, a living coffin that would keep her alive at the most minimal levels, allowing as much of the El's energy to be transferred to the Core as possible. On the sixth day, she faced a much more daunting decision. Since she would have to enter an endless sleep in order to power the Core, there would be no one left to oversee its operation and no one to protect the newborn nasod. Returning to the imperial court, she searched the minds of each courtier and noble for any suitably intact memories. The empress, the royalty, the ministers of the court, all were too far gone for Eve to obtain any useful information. Finally, she was able to extract the physical memory of the old kings of the senate and compile it into a full history of the magnificent nasod. Eve spent the rest of the evening at her console, painstakingly constructing the Core's first creation: her chosen successor. He would be something new made of something ancient, a revival of the old kings who once ruled the far reaches of the empire. By the time she had finished, the seventh day had dawned upon her.
With her work nearly completed, sleep was the only task left to Eve. Shutting down her console and closing off the Core's control room from the rest of the mountain, she climbed into her capsule and attached herself to the Core's power supply. As the lid of her casket closed upon her, Eve began to tremble. She told herself it was just the cold and soon, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Now Eve stood before two humans, each bearing a weapon, and all around her the air bristled with the energy of El. The room around her was covered with a thick coating of dust and debris, the result of several centuries of neglect. As Eve stared out at the Core's control room, she saw that the power lines running from her capsule to the Core were frayed and sending sparks into the air. Moreover, there was no indication that any nasod had been in the control room since she sealed herself away. What had happened? Had she failed? Did the Core manage to produce a new generation of nasod? What were humans doing in the resting place of the queen? Eve's mind filled with questions and, though she denied that she would ever feel such a thing, anxiety. She wanted to know the status of the Core. She wanted to know what became of her people. Most of all, she wanted to know why anyone would allow her capsule to be so covered in filth. As the tension mounted within her, she gazed down at the humans before her. A red-haired boy and a petite girl stared at her in awe and disbelief. Before Eve could gather herself and begin a proper interrogation of these intruders, the red-haired boy shut his mouth and scowled.
"What the hell? It's just a kid."
The queen of the nasod would not suffer such indignity. Eve answered with a firm slap across his face.
Author's Afterword: Hi everyone! I don't do afterwords as a rule, but I thought I should let you all know about a couple of things. I don't wanna clog up this chapter with my rambling though, so please go to my writing blog [rhblithely . tumblr . c om] to see more.